PC Upgrade Advice and Specific questions

[LaughingJon]

Hey All

I am starting to build up the latest PC upgrade for my main rig (yeah its a little later than November ) and I am probably going to wait until the latest ATI graphics card to be released though, however, while I am sorting it out I wanted to see what others thought and to get some specific answers.

First is the case, I have read some rave reviews about Silverstone TJ09S-W (Silver) case and really like the look of it, but is it worth the money? Are there better cases out there for similar cash?

Next is the PSU I am looking at the 600w Seasonic M12 from reading around this should be enough if I want to go SLI in the future is this correct as I would prefer to keep the wattage to a lower level rather than going over the top.

The Raptor drive is it worth getting 2 of them and putting them in RAID? I read some saying only use 1 raptor as its fast enough by itself while others swear using them in raid is better. (I currently use 1 x 74gig raptor and it seems fast enough, but always looking for faster)

Sound Card – Are Creative going to release a PCI-E version of their cards at some point soon as I would prefer to get a PCI-E version if possible, but haven’t seen any info about them doing so.

The Spec

(scan)
150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Silverstone TJ09S
768Mb EVGA 8800GTX PCI-E
2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2 Dominator,
500 Gb Western Digital WD5000YS RE2
Asus Striker Exteme NF680i SLI
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer + Bay NEW - UK Retail
NEC AD-7170S-0S 18x DVD±RW/RAM silver internal SATA oem
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64Bit
600w Seasonic M12

(ocuk)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound


I already have 2 x Dell 24” Widescreen Monitors.
APC 1500 Smart UPS


Cheers in advance
Jon

[GSte]

That's a great looking line-up. I wouldn't bother with raiding raptors. The 150GB is great.... the 74GB ones with 16MB cache are ever so slightly faster if you are bothered....

Good idea about waiting for the ATI cards... there still aren't any DX10 benchmarks to judge the Nvids by, and the ATI will apparently have a 512bit memory bus..... ouch.

Which Dominator are you planning on getting? Only the high end stuff uses Micron D9 chips now, which is important if you are planning to OC the memory.... you shouldn't need to though unless you want to exceed 3.6GHz with the CPU.

[LaughingJon]

2GB (2x1GB) CorsairTwinX XMS2 Dominator,DDR2 PC2-6400,240 Pins, NonECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, EPP

That was the RAM i am looking at.. the other stuff seemed to be crazy money for slightly tighter timings.

[Blitzen]

Raptors are a waste of money if you dont Raid them.

A RAID 0 array with any SATA drives will be quicker than a single Raptor.
Either :
a) Get 2 Raptors and Raid them
b) If 'a' too expensive then get two normal SATAII drives and raid them.

[GSte]

Raptors are a waste of money if you dont Raid them.

This is a ludicrous suggestion..... A raptor is far faster than a normal 7200RPM drive, so the money isn't wasted if you are trying to reduce your major system bottleneck.

A RAID 0 array with any SATA drives will be quicker than a single Raptor.

Well, it will have quicker data throughput, but will have slower access times, so I don't think it's worth the hassle unless you plan on doing plenty of video and audio editing.

[Blitzen]

You misread what i meant.

1 x Raptor vs RAID 0 Array of normal drives is my point.

Why waste cash on a single Raptor when RAID 0 on normal SATA drives (even 2x 250gb drives would be cheaper than a 74gb Raptor) would be quicker. Its pointless!

Plus the fact....Raptors may be fast but they are bloody loud also.


SOrry if i didnt explain my point well enough.

[GSte]

Yes they are loud Scythe have just released a caddy that's supposed to quieten them remarkably though.....

Ah, you meant from a price/performance point of view...

Well, maybe, but the 5 year warranty probably evens it out. Plus you are increasing your chance of data loss, as there are now 2 drives that can potentially fail.

Although to be honest, as I own a Raptor and you a Raid0 setup, we're probably destined to disagree.

[Clunk]

You might want to have a rethink on the Striker, or have a look round at the problems that all the 680i boards suffer from, could be an expensive and frustrating mistake that.

[philipbain]

I decided to go with a small yet well thought out RAID0 array of 2x 160GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA drives, chosen due to thier high platter density (single platter drives), cooler operation (a spin off of a single platter drive) and excellent drive performance and reliability, its been one of the best decisions i've ever made when building a PC. The benchmark results are great too, access times seem virtually unaffected vs. a single drive and the transfer rates are much higher of course, i'd say whatever drive you choose to get, get 2 of them in a RAID0 setup, if your concerned about data backup RAID5 may be worth considering though be careful to use a decent RAID controller as some RAID5 systems can add a significant overhead in order to operate.

[DratUK]

Getting away from the Raid discussion the Case TJO9 is worth it. At the time I was changing cases it was too expensive for me and I went for the LianLi (see sig), but I did a fair amount of research on both. Everyone who has used this case has been happy with it, so I would chaeck on the reviews and make your mind up on those reviews.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=615&num=1

http://techgage.com/print/silverstone_tj09

Some light reading

Make sure if you go for this that you get some extender cables for the PSU
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=204562

If you dont want to go for something so big I would reccomend my own case the LianLi A10
http://www.lian-li.com/Product/Chass...C_S_PC-A10.htm

I would also agree with Clunk, the 680i series still have issues, fine if you get a good one but for the cost they are not much quicker than the 975x or 965p. So unless you want SLi then there is not much else it can offer over the Intel chipsets.

[BUFF]

Sound Card – Are Creative going to release a PCI-E version of their cards at some point soon as I would prefer to get a PCI-E version if possible, but haven’t seen any info about them doing so.

they have shown 1

[aidanjt]

1 x Raptor vs RAID 0 Array of normal drives is my point.

Why waste cash on a single Raptor when RAID 0 on normal SATA drives (even 2x 250gb drives would be cheaper than a 74gb Raptor) would be quicker. Its pointless!

Barely faster.

Plus the fact....Raptors may be fast but they are bloody loud also.

Bloody loud during heavy sustained disk i/o yes, otherwise you can't hear them. Even at that I usually listen to music when I'm busy working/waiting on stuff, so system noise is drowned out anyway.

The whole point of raptors is their access time and performance, there simpily is no other disk that can match them in the SATA class, they make fast, and cheap system disks.

[LaughingJon]

arr lol glad to see the raid or not to raid with raptors discussion is still as good as ever we shall see if i have the cash when i order it i may well throw in a 2nd for giggles. as for the volume of them, i have 1 and tbh i kinda like the noise.. but thats not to say i wont consider one of those bay things

You might want to have a rethink on the Striker, or have a look round at the problems that all the 680i boards suffer from, could be an expensive and frustrating mistake that.

isnt the 680i problems based around SLI and sound problems? as i wasnt going to go SLI from the start (but defo consider it an upgrade path for the future) i was sort of hoping it would get fixed by then with a Bios upgrade or something?

Make sure if you go for this that you get some extender cables for the PSU
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=204562.

cheers for the links DratUK will check those out shortly! Also double thanks for this link to the extenders.. i hadnt even thought about that so would have been quite annoyed had it not fitted!

they have shown 1

humm have they? guess its google time

cheers everyone
Jon

[LaughingJon]

hum.. ok so AMD have said no R600 until 2nd Quarter.. i think im going to order this sooner now lost interest waiting for them.

one question i have is the case, does anyone know how many 120mm fans come with it?

Also which are the best 120mm fans to get (quiet ones) and will i be able to plug them into the motherboard headers to control the speed via those? Or is this not possible with 120mm fans due to the power requirements of them?

I may hold off with the soundcard if there is a PCIe version coming, but i cant find any annoucements from Creative about it >< just reluctant to use onboard sound with the problems i had with this board.

*edit:

what are these like:

Scythe S-FLEX 120mm Fan (1200 RPM, SFF21E)
or
Scythe S-FLEX 120mm Fan (800 RPM, SFF21D)

read a few reviews and it says that they can sit off mobo headers ok.. i assume its just older/faster 120mm fans which draw too much juice to allow them to be plugged into mobo headers is it?

[Blitzen]

Barely faster.

Install HDTach and take a look. There is a 10-15% increase with Normal RAID 0 drives over a single Raptor, and less noise.

RAID 0 Raptors of course far faster but
RAID normal vs Single Raptor = Normal Drives win each time.

[Clunk]

RAID 0 Raptors of course far faster but
RAID normal vs Single Raptor = Normal Drives win each time.

Even on seek times? Don't raided drives become fragmented really quickly? What about cpu overhead when using on board raid? How does all this affect the overall speed?