ripken204's new comp - build progress

[ripken204]

so i've decided to upgrade my computer and i thought that i might as well share it with you guys. i'll be taking plenty of pics as i go about the build.

here's the parts i'm getting:

Q6600 G0 (been on a wait list forever and it's finally coming!!)

EVGA 8800GTS 320MB (had for about a month of so)

Corsair 620HX (just arrived today)

ASUS P5K Premium (costs alot but i think it's worth it)

Mushkin HP2-6400 5-4-4-12 2x2GB (2GB is just not enough for me )

Samsung SH-203B (sata dvd drive)

Seagate 7200.10 320MB (already have, gunna get a 7200.10/11 500GB soon)

Lian-Li V2000b (finally gunna get a kick-a** case, especially for water cooling)

i'll get some pics up tonight of the psu. i should have everything by saturday except for the case which wont be here for another week

Edited August 15, 2007 by ripken204

[Zxian]

Why did you get 2x2GB? Wouldn't 4x1GB be considerably cheaper?

Also - Pioneer DVD drives are better than Samsungs. I've got a DVR-111D, DVR-112D, and a DVR-212D, and all are fantastic.

Personally - Lian-Li cases have never piqued my interest. I find them relatively... boring and the layout is overly complicated in my opinion. Secondly - you're paying that much for a modern case, and they still use 80mm fans? Has nobody brought them up to speed yet?

Why did you say "Finally gunna get a kick-a** case"? What is wrong with the P180? It's one of the best thought out cases in terms of noise and airflow.

Oh... one last thing. If you're gonna spend that much money - you're killing your performance by running it off a single hard drive. Get yourself a couple of Raptors instead of the 500GB seagate and run them in RAID0. I've got two 80GB drives running in RAID1 over a PCI RAID card on my old system, and the performance boost is VERY noticable. Remember - this is still over the PCI bus, so I'm limited by it's bandwidth.

[ripken204]

the case has 120mm fans, except for the ones on the way bottom i think, and im getting it for a good price. the p180 is just to small inside for me, especially for water cooling.

the samsung drive is an excellent one, the pioneer 112D is also excellent.

2x2GB=better overclocking, less heat, less stress on motherboard, future expandability if needed.

i still dont like RAID but you guys are almost forcing me to now

edit: ya the only 80mm fans are right aboe the psu where i can put 2x80mm, i guess for more hdd cooling which i dont really need since there is a 120mm fan for the hdds on the front side of the case.

Edited August 15, 2007 by ripken204

[Zxian]

Why don't you like RAID? What's not to like about RAID0 for a system drive? You've spent that much money on the system, and then you're killing the performance boosts over your current system by running a single drive.

To give you a slightly older example - I went from a single PIII setup with 1GB of RAM using a single hard drive to a dual PIII setup with 2GB of RAM and the same drive. Then I went to RAID0. The RAID0 was far greater of a performance boost than the dual CPU and doubled RAM.

[ripken204]

see your forcing me too now, lol. which means i prolly will now

now the question is, which drives

i dont feel like spending 400$ on raptors.. although i would love to. i will most likely wait till the 7200.11 comes out, they claim to have a 105MB/s sustained transfer rate and they are available with 32MB cache.

[Zxian]

The correct answer? Any drives really.

HDTach - 160GB Maxtor 2MB Cache - PATA

HDTach - 250GB WD2500KS - SATA

HDTach - 2x80GB Seagate 7200.7 - RAID0 - PCI SATA RAID card

I think that the speed of the RAID0 setup I've got is severly limited by the PCI bus. Notice how the speed only tails down at the very end? That's probably the "slow end" of the RAID configuration, but my guess is that the fastest speed is upwards of 120-130MB/s.

Need I say more?

[ripken204]

well i will get a 500GB drive next week prolly, then we will see from there. my case can hold 12 hdds so i have plenty of room

pics:

Gallery

the gallery is a work in progress, so please bear with me

Edited August 16, 2007 by ripken204

[nmX.Memnoch]

Woah.....let my eyes recover for a second.

You need a better backdrop for your pictures than that rug. Get yourself a solid colored sheet (or a table) and lay the parts out on that for pictures.

And I'm with Zxian...definitely get a RAID0 setup for at least your OS drive. Since you have enough room for drives you can add a RAID1 setup for important data (MyDocs, pictures, etc).

[ripken204]

lol, maybe for my future pics i will use a sheet.

as for RAID0, should i get another 7200.10 320MB along with a 500GB for my other stuff.

[nmX.Memnoch]

I'm sure you meant 320GB.

Considering that two 320GB drives in RAID0 is 640GB...uhhh..yeah, that's WAY more space than you'll ever need for an OS/application drive. I've got two 250GB drives RAID0'd for my OS/application drive and I'm using less than 100GB on a 500GB array. I'm running XP Pro, Office 2007 Pro + Visio 2007 + Sharepoint Designer 2007, Adobe Creative Suite 2 (the entire thing, not just Photoshop), a TON of games installed plus all of my scripting utilities and what not. You'd be hard pressed to use much more than I am if you keep it just for the OS and applications. As I said, important data should go on a RAID1 array (2x500GB should be plenty for that).

I can't wait to see some reviews on those 7200.11's to see if they're as fast as Seagate claims. I thought they'd be available by now though.

[ripken204]

lol, ya 640GB really is huge. i'de rather have that then buying 2 smaller hdds.. i just cant imagine what i would put on there.

OS, apps, games.. where should i put apache? it runs fast enough right now on a single drive and i definatly dont want to risk losing that data.

[jcarle]

<ripken204> Q6600 G0 (been on a wait list forever and it's finally coming!!)

Why get the Q6600 when the E6750 is cheaper?

<ripken204> ASUS P5K Premium (costs alot but i think it's worth it)

That's a complete waste. The X38 chipset is going to come out in a month's time. The P5K series is reknown to have problems at the moment. And, at the same price, you can get a P5B Premium which has proven it's stability and supports ALL current Core2 Duo / Core2 Quad processors.

<ripken204> Mushkin HP2-6400 5-4-4-12 2x2GB (2GB is just not enough for me )

<Zxian> Why did you get 2x2GB? Wouldn't 4x1GB be considerably cheaper?

<ripken204> 2x2GB=better overclocking, less heat, less stress on motherboard, future expandability if needed.

Better overclocking? No. Memory PCB surface area is fixed. So the more memory you include on the same stick, the higher the density of the chip circuitry. The higher the density, the less resistance and distance there is between circuits, the higher the change for "signal leaks" and "data corruption". So no, overclocking is not better, it gets worse. 2GB modules run much hotter then 1GB modules for the same reasons as above. Stress on the motherboard is irrelevant. The only things that "stress" a motherboard are heat and age. If anything, increasing the heat generated by your modules will reduce lifespan, not increase it. Future expandibilty is a non issue. By the time you'd even possibly consider moving beyond 4GB of memory, you'd already have changed technologies.

<ripken204> Samsung SH-203B (sata dvd drive)

<Zxian> Also - Pioneer DVD drives are better than Samsungs. I've got a DVR-111D, DVR-112D, and a DVR-212D, and all are fantastic.

<ripken204> the samsung drive is an excellent one, the pioneer 112D is also excellent.

I also vote for Pioneer. I've burned over 1,200 DVDs in a year with 2 x DVR-111D... nothing else would have done so well.

<ripken204> Lian-Li V2000b (finally gunna get a kick-a** case, especially for water cooling)

<Zxian >Personally - Lian-Li cases have never piqued my interest. I find them relatively... boring and the layout is overly complicated in my opinion. Secondly - you're paying that much for a modern case, and they still use 80mm fans? Has nobody brought them up to speed yet?

<ripken204> the case has 120mm fans, except for the ones on the way bottom i think, and im getting it for a good price. the p180 is just to small inside for me, especially for water cooling.

<ripken204> edit: ya the only 80mm fans are right aboe the psu where i can put 2x80mm, i guess for more hdd cooling which i dont really need since there is a 120mm fan for the hdds on the front side of the case.

<Zxian> Why did you say "Finally gunna get a kick-a** case"? What is wrong with the P180? It's one of the best thought out cases in terms of noise and airflow.

Yes, the Lian-Li does use 120mm fans as well as 80mm fans. The case is unnecessarily huge. Not to mention it's fugly. If you want to go enormous, go for a P190 then. Or even the P182. Both of them are designed with water cooling in mind. The Coolermaster Stacker series is also plenty roomy and has water cooling considerations built in. The P180 is nowhere near a slouch in the size department either.

<ripken204> Seagate 7200.10 320MB (already have, gunna get a 7200.10/11 500GB soon)

<Zxian> Oh... one last thing. If you're gonna spend that much money - you're killing your performance by running it off a single hard drive. Get yourself a couple of Raptors instead of the 500GB seagate and run them in RAID0. I've got two 80GB drives running in RAID1 over a PCI RAID card on my old system, and the performance boost is VERY noticable. Remember - this is still over the PCI bus, so I'm limited by it's bandwidth.

<ripken204> i still dont like RAID but you guys are almost forcing me to now

<Zxian> Why don't you like RAID? What's not to like about RAID0 for a system drive? You've spent that much money on the system, and then you're killing the performance boosts over your current system by running a single drive. To give you a slightly older example - I went from a single PIII setup with 1GB of RAM using a single hard drive to a dual PIII setup with 2GB of RAM and the same drive. Then I went to RAID0. The RAID0 was far greater of a performance boost than the dual CPU and doubled RAM.

<ripken204> see your forcing me too now, lol. which means i prolly will now

now the question is, which drives i dont feel like spending 400$ on raptors.. although i would love to. i will most likely wait till the 7200.11 comes out, they claim to have a 105MB/s sustained transfer rate and they are available with 32MB cache.

<Zxian> The correct answer? Any drives really. I think that the speed of the RAID0 setup I've got is severly limited by the PCI bus. Notice how the speed only tails down at the very end? That's probably the "slow end" of the RAID configuration, but my guess is that the fastest speed is upwards of 120-130MB/s. Need I say more?

<ripken204> well i will get a 500GB drive next week prolly, then we will see from there. my case can hold 12 hdds so i have plenty of room

This is another classic case of blind ignorance. So many gaming kiddies always take the same bloody approaches. They spend all their cash on the processor, memory and video card and just blattently ignore what's really important. Your computer is as fast as it's slowest component. That slowest component has always been and will most likely always continue to be, the storage subsystem. From the controllers to the physical hard drives, the storage subsystem has always been trailing behind the rest of the system.

My computer has always been a better gaming machine then ones where the builder spent twice as much simply based on the fact that I concentrated the bulk of my money on the hard drives. I droppped around $700 for my two raptors at the time (they were freshly arrived onto the market). My computer was still faster with my 6600 GT then others who bought a 7800 GT simply because of the raw speed of my storage subsystem.

And you know, you talk about not wanting to do RAID, yet you're showing off the fact that you have 12 drive bays so you have "plenty of room" to expand. How do you think you're going to hook up 12 hard drives to a single motherboard without using RAID? This isn't 1976. It's time you got up to date and realised the potential RAID offers if you want to be a serious gamer with serious hardware.

[ripken204]

as for cpu, i got what i wanted to get, i know what my other options were and i made my choice.

as for mobo, yes i realize that there are problems but it is still a great board. i know that x38 is coming out in a month but i wanted to get a comp built this summer, the school year is extremely busy for me.

as for ram, ive searched alot on 2x2GB vs 4x1GB. the set of ram that i got can get to over 1100Mhz which is good even for a 2x1GB set.

as for case, the p180 is a huge case on the outside but small on the inside.. you have to admin that.. i was expecting it to be much larger in the inside. i love the look of the lian li case and that's why i'm getting it.

as for hdds, i most likely will be going with RAID. and i have no clue where you are going with gaming, all the benchmarks that i have seen show almost no increase in performance while gaming. map load times is about it, but im always one of the first on the map in BF2142 so that wouldnt matter so much. for everything else RAID would be nice.

as far as the raptors go, how loud are they compared to your normal drives and are they really that fast? i just want to see how the 7200.11 performs before i make any large hdd purchases.

[Zxian]

The P180 has plenty of space inside, but it's partitioned out into the different sections. Each of the sections might be smaller than you expected, but it helps channel airflow. It's reviewed as one of the most thermally advanced cases on the market. I really don't see the advantage to using an inverted ATX case... can someone fill me in on the big picture here?

I also would have suggested another board from the P5K series. The P5B series is still known to be one of the best overclocking boards there is. The only thing you'd be giving up is DDR3 support, but the advances of that in the near future are somewhat negligible (it's the old latency vs clocks argument all over again).

[ripken204]

ya the airflow is amazing in my case but i just want something bigger..

and i could care less about ddr3 support right now, it's going to take a while for that to mature and to be available at a reasonable price.

as for RAID now, should i get myself a controller?