Hello new machine, so-long hot dinners for the next 2 months.

[ExceededGoku]

By all means, we all have different preferences. Another reason, in retrospect, I'm quite happy to use a separate controller, is the many boot/install problems people are reporting on the new P35 boards. Just hope RAID 5 on the ICH9R proves unproblematic....

all I can say is good luck, and if you don't have problems with your RAID5 don't try and overclock (past your most stable overclock) or even update the drivers... things like that cause RAID to fail. I lost a RAID on my ICH8R because I was experimenting with my overclocks... Ever since then as well I have never been able to overclock as well.......

[Agrippa]

Hmmm, interesting that. I don't really intend to push the system at all, just get the CPU up to 3GHz and stop there. That's presuming I get an ok CPU of course.... If it'll do that with no stress, I'll probably not even check what the max o/c is. I'll certainly keep the BIOS upgrading, or lack of such, in mind.

[Agrippa]

Thought I'd indulge in a little necro.

Just been to the post office and swapped all my money for all the parts to my new machine. For now at least, it feels like an ok deal..... Building will commence once the old RAID array has been transferred to new disks.

A couple of things while I wait for that to finish:

1. If anybody is wondering if the Enermax Infiniti's SATA power cables, which have been described as (and are) short by several reviews, will reach the bottom drive bay in the largest Lian Li cases, the answer is yes. There won't be any spare length, but they will do the job.

2. Seems I've gone and bought the wrong cable (sort of) for my SAS RAID card. I thought SATA and SAS cables were interchangeable, but that ain't so. It seems SAS cables can be used on SATA drives, but not vice versa, as SATA drives have 2 separate connectors while the SAS drives have one, combined, connector. Sort of anyway, not sure how to explain it well. Anyway, I bought a mini-SAS-to-4xSATA cable rather than the mini-SAS-to-4xSAS I should have gotten. Slight bummer there.

Oh well, I guess it'll be a real, phat(!), h/w RAID 5 array after all then on the LSI card and the OS will have to slow-boat it on a SATA drive instead of the Cheetah 15K I had in mind. For now anyway. The more annoying thing is that I'll need to find a PCI SAS controller as well, once the bank account has filled up again.

Wish me luck folks, it's been a while since I last did this. A few crossed fingers will do wonders I'm sure.

[Thijssens]

I am building a machine a lot like the one Agrippa built, but ran into some problems. I used a P5N32-SLI SE motherboard and installed a SAS 8344ELP card. That was as far as i got, because I now know that it doesn't work with this motherboard... The ELP8344 isa PCI-E x4 card and it should normaly work in a x16 slot. I checked the manual and it states that this specific x16 slot can run at x 8 speed, but doesn't tell anything about x4 speed. I just went to my reseller and tested the board in a machine with a x4 slot and it worked fine.
So the question: does it work ok in the P5K Deluxe that you used ?
Please let me know so I can go buy this board...

[shaithis]

I personally would have gone with the new ABit QuadGT (P35) board and an Areca SATA RAID controller.

Really growing tired of the Asus boards niggles and the Areca cards are amazing value with great performance and support.