Your RIG

[Cujo]

my raptors are nice and cool with just a fan sucking air off them. just keep them installed with a gap in between.

[Cobalt]

my raptors are nice and cool with just a fan sucking air off them. just keep them installed with a gap in between.

 

I'm going to assume you were talking to me about this Cujo, and my raptor is in a Vantec Nexus II enclosure. The Seagate storage drives are the ones that are RAIDed.

[Cujo]

lol you're really concerned with cooling your hard drives.

[Cobalt]

lol you're really concerned with cooling your hard drives.

 

 

Heheheheh. They ARE hot swappable enclosures so I figured why the heck not. Originally I had them just set up as JBOD 300GB but the performance with RAID 0 is nice. I am still considering putting them back to JBOD. What's your setup Cujo?

[NOFX]

lol you're really concerned with cooling your hard drives.

 

no lie man... My father bought me some hop swapable enclosures.. One of them did not have a fan on it. A 160 gig data drive I had for 3 years, died 1 month after using it in the enclosure. Be sure and keep your drives cool.

[tWc|WhiteyFord]

my rig consists of

 

4400 dual core amd

3 gigs of ram

250 ata hard drive

sli 7800gt oc's

numerous fans

[Cobalt]

my rig consists of

 

4400 dual core amd

3 gigs of ram

250 ata hard drive

sli 7800gt oc's

numerous fans

 

 

3 gigs of ram? Are you using Windows x64?

[tWc|WhiteyFord]

no just got a slamming deal from a buddy at best buy it was dirt cheap so i got what they had left for my custom comp, figured it wouldnt hurt.

 

the comp is a beast.

[Cobalt]

no just got a slamming deal from a buddy at best buy it was dirt cheap so i got what they had left for my custom comp, figured it wouldnt hurt.

 

the comp is a beast.

 

 

Well make sure you get Vista when it comes out because right now you are only using 2gigs of that memory. Windows XP 32bit can only address 2gb of memory, 64bit can address up to 3, and Vista can supposedly address up to 16.

[Tek-Almighty]

' date='Apr 6 2006, 08:57 PM' post='320733']

 

 

 

That is a pretty nice looking rig Tek. You mod it at all? And those components you are going to upgrade to are nice Hehehhe...I have some of them.

 

 

No real modding other than the OC...I've only had this system up and running since last June, when I bought the mobo and cpu....

 

Cutting into the case scares me a bit, cuz the stacker is a beast, but I am thinking of putting in a lexan window on side and liquid cooling if I move up to the X2 4800+. That way, I can get a better overclock.

 

You have a damn fine system yourself...I looked at your dual core and eVGA and drooled involuntarily.

 

Also, whitey ford...if you are running 3 dimms they are going to be super slow comparatively.

 

In my early building days I tested different dimm combos and found a 45-50% hit in games by running mismatched memory or trying to run 3 sticks instead of 2...even after turning off dual mode.

 

I have 4 sticks of 1GB OCZ platinum, but I can't even use all 4 b/c windows won't see it...they are all double sided too, which is a double whammy.

 

Listen to cobalt on this one. Take out 1 GB and set to dual channel in BIOS...you will see a difference.

[Cobalt]

When I got done buying the case and the uber low latency memory and the hard drives, etc, etc (this was like a 3 month process) I had purchased that GeForce 6800 Ultra from my work for pretty cheap. I was sitting at work one day and decided that since I had spent so much money on the rest of the stuff in the system I might as well buy the best video card possible. How convenient that we JUST got that 7900GTX 512 and it was only $480 which is a steal compared to internet prices especially since no one even has them. And that AMD processor well you don't even want to know what I paid for that.

[whudats]

Just built my new rig. Got it to POST first time too. I'm stoked...

 

 

(edit - updated CPU OC, sound card, HDDs)

 

Lian Li PC V1200B (Black Case)

PC Power and Cooling 510W SLI

FX-60 (running stock speed)

Arctic Cooler 64

A8N32-SLI Deluxe

2x eVGA 7800GT OC SLI

2GB OCZ Platinum

2x 74GB Raptor SATA

250GB Maxtor SATA (Storage)

Creative X-Fi Platinum

Samsung DVD/RW w/LiteScribe

Logitech G5 Mouse

Old Dell Keyboard

3.5" FDD

Windows XP Pro

Edited October 12, 2006 by whudats

[Tek-Almighty]

That FX-60 is nice...

 

Falcon NW overclocked that cpu to 2.86 ghz...which is pretty dang fast.

 

Of course, it was liquid-cooled.

[whudats]

That FX-60 is nice...

 

Falcon NW overclocked that cpu to 2.86 ghz...which is pretty dang fast.

 

Of course, it was liquid-cooled.

 

I've got it at 2.81 now. Running at 44c with little load, and the arctic cooler 64 fan. I'll put some work to it this afternoon to see what it does temp wise. So far no issues though...

 

[Cujo]

so much money... lol. i find it facinating where people spend their money. an fx60 but you skimp on the video cards, sound card, and hard drives. you failed to mention a monitor but you'd better be running games higher than 1280x1024 otherwise you might as well have just donated one of those 7800gts to someone else in these forums. btw a single 7900gtx will outperform those 7800gts and for less money. nice power supply though. i love mine other than the noise it puts out.

 

edit - been away the last couple days so here's my current specs cobalt.

 

DFI NF4 ULTRA-D

A64 X2 3800+ Manchester @ 2.8GHz w/ 1.4v

2x1024MB PC3200 Corsair VS @ 254 (3-4-4-12) w/ 2.5v

ATI X1800XT w/ PE Bios

2xWD Raptor 150GB RAID 0

Pioneer 16x Slot Load DVD

SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum

Tt Armor Aluminum Tower

PCP&C 510W SLI

DELL P1130 21" Flat

 

 

nofx, my raptors stay at ~32c with a fan sucking air off them. i'd try turning it off for a bit to see what they went to but when running raid you can't get smart temps. at least not with mbm5. i know they're at ~32c cause 1 by itself was at 30-32c.

Edited April 10, 2006 by Cujo

[whudats]

so much money... lol. i find it facinating where people spend their money. an fx60 but you skimp on the video cards, sound card, and hard drives. you failed to mention a monitor but you'd better be running games higher than 1280x1024 otherwise you might as well have just donated one of those 7800gts to someone else in these forums. btw a single 7900gtx will outperform those 7800gts and for less money. nice power supply though. i love mine other than the noise it puts out.

1) When I bought the stuff I was still in Iraq. The 7900gtx and the 150gb Raptor weren't out yet (I think). Besides, I don't keep more than 4 or 5 games on my system at a time, so I don't need 150gb of Raptor speed. Nor do I do movies or CAD or anything like that - just games and music - so no need for a bunch of speedy space.

 

2) I figure it's easier and cheaper to upgrade the sound card (or my "skimp"-y video cards, for that matter) than the CPU or mobo, and frankly I was perfectly happy with the performance of the Audigy 2 Value card in my other system.

 

3) As for the monitor, I'm still using my Dell 2005FPW (20" wide), and run CS:S in 16:10 1680x1050 with maxed out settings, full HDR, etc. I max out BF2 as well. Those are the only two games I've installed/played so far.

 

[Cobalt]

so much money... lol. i find it facinating where people spend their money. an fx60 but you skimp on the video cards, sound card, and hard drives. you failed to mention a monitor but you'd better be running games higher than 1280x1024 otherwise you might as well have just donated one of those 7800gts to someone else in these forums. btw a single 7900gtx will outperform those 7800gts and for less money. nice power supply though. i love mine other than the noise it puts out.

 

 

When I read that part about the power supply I was quietly thinking to myself "he better have PCP&C cause I have that and Cujo didn't say a word about mine" hehheeh. Looks like I was right. Regardless of some of the choices people make in components it is definitely nice to see that people are not skimping on their power supplies. This is the most common thing I see with customers in the store and it always ends badly for them.

 

In terms of hard drives, video cards, and soundcards I think there can tend to be debate there. I can't disagree with Cujo about the video card performance of a 7900GTX. It does outperform SLI 7800Gts which is the exact reason that I bought one. But 7800GTs are still a pretty sweet setup when it comes to gaming. In terms of the soundcard I suppose it really does depend on what kind of speakers you use, if any, while gaming.

 

If you use ANY optical or digital speakers when playing games or watching movies for that matter you are better off with an HDA/X-Mystique card. Creative cards, even the X-FI do not have true optical and digital Dolby Surround or DTS. The issue with that card being the fact that Creative exclusively owns the rights to the EAX technology. Because of that, their cards are the only ones with hardware EAX and it is on version 5.0. With the HDA card the EAX is software based, more cpu bandwith wasted, and it is only version 3.0. In line with wasted processor cycles though is the atrocious creative drivers. So in the end you really should make the decision depending on what you plan on doing with the card. The HDA is a great card but gamers will still probably tend to deviate into Creative territory. The HDA card with 7.1 normally runs about $50 less then the intro X-FI as well.

 

-EDIT-

Forgot the part about the Raptor hard drives. Did anyone do any benchs yet about the performance of the Raptor X drive in RAID? Cause I know Anandtech and Bit-Tech I believe did benchs with the 74 gb ones and found that there was almost no performance gain in RAID0-ing those drives.

Edited April 10, 2006 by Cobalt[Infinity]

[Cujo]

the headphone positional audio with xfi is unbeatable. you hear EVERYTHING from where it is coming from out of just plain stereo headphones.

 

you didn't mention that you bought the parts over a month ago. you also didn't mention your monitor and since the majority of people here use 19inch lcds, it seems, i pooled you in the same category as them. that 20.1inch is a very nice monitor. most video cards that we're talking about are more expensive then most cpus and mobos that you could have bought so i'm not sure the cheaper part of your "easier and cheaper" applies...

 

i max out both those games with my single x1800xt at 1600x1200. hdr, 6x aa and 16x af. framerate never falls below ~60fps in source on hdr maps. non-hdr rarely goes below 100. i would say the only questionable thing with my system is my video card. i got it cheap back at christmas with the help of ZD and i only still have it because i really wouldn't benefit from something better at this point.

 

the only reason i questioned your system is that you bought an fx60 for twice the price of say an opteron 175 that is only 400mhz slower and can be overclocked to fx60 levels and higher. since you are overclocking your fx60 i make the assumption that you'd be overclocking a lesser cpu as well.

 

question. do you really like xp64? did you do any comparisons? customers tell me every day that the driver support is attrocious and any reviews i've read have shown no noticable gaming improvements and some losses in performance. i don't recommend xp64 to anyone.

 

 

cobalt, i never did single drive benches but i can say that using raid 0 is noticably faster. games definately load to ram faster (i watch on my g15 lcd) and extracting archives is double the speed of a single raptor according to 7zip. that said the reviews i've seen have shown the 150gig to be at least 15% faster than the 74gig.

Edited April 10, 2006 by Cujo

[Cobalt]

Yeah. The 150 is faster then the 74 and it does have a larger cache as well. Like I said, I read some reviews from reliable sources stating that the 74 gig didnt benefit from RAID0. Who am I kidding though, I'm a hardware junkie so as soon as I find the 150s for a good price I'll probably throw them in just because.

 

I definitely agree with Cujo about xp64. I would describe it with a couple choice expletives if this were not the GC family friendly forum. Sure, CS:S will run in the Xp64 environment, but the driver support sucks. SO HARD. I didn't think there were too many ways to make windows any worse, but they did. It is my personal opinion that with Vista being as close to release as it is (that phrase almost seems oxymoronic given that it's describing a Microsoft os) that they aren't going to even bother anymore with xp64 as Vista is going to replace it.

[Cujo]

the review you're talking about where they didn't benefit from raid i read as well. it shouldn't be any different with 150gig raptors then with any drive in raid. i believe in the review there was about a 5-10% performance increase with raid in most areas. how much of a gain vs just having two separate disks and working back and forth with them i can't really say. i just know that source loads faster and that archives extract faster. those are the two main things i do hard drive speed inpacts. mostly i got the second drive for the space as 150gig was not enough and 300 is just right for me. plus i had the money to spend on my system, what else is there to upgrade?

Edited April 10, 2006 by Cujo

[whudats]

I just have the trial version of xp64 right now. So far I can't complain. I have been able to find all the drivers I need, but it's the other little software/updates/fixes/tweaks that are either hard to find or non-existent.

 

I had xpPro on my other one, and obviously it was easier to support. I haven't tried it on my new one, and probably won't for a while. I have everything running like I want, so I don't really see a reason to switch. Maybe in 177 days when the trial xp64 runs out I will have to decide. But for $6 (shipping) it was worth it to try.

 

I did hours and hours of research on processors, and everything I read pointed me to the fx-60. With the RAM controller and the incredibly easy OC ability I figured I would treat myself when I got back.

[Cujo]

I did hours and hours of research on processors, and everything I read pointed me to the fx-60. With the RAM controller and the incredibly easy OC ability I figured I would treat myself when I got back.

 

 

the unlocked multipliers definately make it easier to oc. that said, i've not had any oc problems on my 3800 and i'm at 280htt. like anything it's luck of the draw. you could get an opteron that hits 2.8 and an fx60 that doesn't. you've got about the same chance with either. if you've got the money to spend then why not. my only argument was the logic behind spending a grand on a cpu and less than 50 on a sound card. it's just not a balanced system.

[Laz.e.rus]

hey all, Im planning dual Hitachi 80s for raid 0 as primary ( $50 each), then a single 250-300 as storage with a regular backup of the 80's. Get the raid 0 speed without concern for a single drive fail = all data lost.

 

Whatcha think?

[Cobalt]

hey all, Im planning dual Hitachi 80s for raid 0 as primary ( $50 each), then a single 250-300 as storage with a regular backup of the 80's. Get the raid 0 speed without concern for a single drive fail = all data lost.

 

Whatcha think?

 

 

What kind of controller will it be hooked up to? The reason I ask is if you can get Hitachi drives for that cheap you could just get a bunch of them and setup a RAID5 array.

 

mostly i got the second drive for the space as 150gig was not enough and 300 is just right for me. plus i had the money to spend on my system, what else is there to upgrade?

 

 

Hehehhehh....man after my own heart. It's like we are the same person when it comes to hardware.

[tWc|WhiteyFord]

' date='Apr 6 2006, 08:57 PM' post='320733']

 

 

 

That is a pretty nice looking rig Tek. You mod it at all? And those components you are going to upgrade to are nice Hehehhe...I have some of them.

 

 

No real modding other than the OC...I've only had this system up and running since last June, when I bought the mobo and cpu....

 

Cutting into the case scares me a bit, cuz the stacker is a beast, but I am thinking of putting in a lexan window on side and liquid cooling if I move up to the X2 4800+. That way, I can get a better overclock.

 

You have a damn fine system yourself...I looked at your dual core and eVGA and drooled involuntarily.

 

Also, whitey ford...if you are running 3 dimms they are going to be super slow comparatively.

 

In my early building days I tested different dimm combos and found a 45-50% hit in games by running mismatched memory or trying to run 3 sticks instead of 2...even after turning off dual mode.

 

I have 4 sticks of 1GB OCZ platinum, but I can't even use all 4 b/c windows won't see it...they are all double sided too, which is a double whammy.

 

Listen to cobalt on this one. Take out 1 GB and set to dual channel in BIOS...you will see a difference.

 

hey what did you want me to do with my comp for it to run better?

 

let me know please