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

[Agrippa]

Almost time, at last, for a tearful farewell to my trusty P4 Northwood based system, as new components have started arriving at the post office awaiting next pay-day. With (more than?) a little luck the new beast should serve me as well as this one has, providing 24/7 service and requiring only a GFX upgrade somewhere along the road to the next build, a projected 2+ years hence.

If I've overlooked something crucial, please shout out loud while I still have time to send stuff in return and order substitutes before taking delivery and opening boxes. I'm fairly sure it's all good, but a second, third , fourth, etc opinion can't hurt. I'm not really interested in "advice" along the lines of "I think brand X is far better than that POS brand Y you're buying, coz I just don't like brand Y, so there" (not that this site is riddled with that #¤%#¤, unlike some), but rather if I've made any unsound choices in terms of known compatibility problems and the like. After all, it's been almost 3 years since my last complete build and I've been completely out of the loop for most of that time.

New stuff:

Motherboard: Asus P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP
Processor: Intel Core2Duo E6420
Memory: 4x2GB Corsair TWIN2X 6400C5DHX
Graphics: Inno3D GeForce 8800 GTX
Storage: LSI Megaraid SAS 8344ELP (Boot device)
- Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 73GB SAS (OS)
- 3 x Maxtor MaxLine III 250 GB SATA (Misc)
- 4 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB (RAID5)
Power Supply: Enermax Infiniti 720W
Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme
HS Fan: Panaflo 120x38mm FBA12G12M1BX

Stuff I'll carry over:

Case: Lian Li PC-71
Keyboard: Logitech diNovo
Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution
Speakers: Logitech Z-4i 2.1
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 225BW

OS: most likely XP x64, perhaps Server 2003 x64.

The only projected change is a Q6600 or Xeon 3220 once the next price cuts from Intels hits us. For that reason I went for a fairly low-spec CPU just to tide me over and give me a taster of what C2D is all about. I could have gone lower still, but as I intend on selling it as soon as the new one arrives the loss would likely be about the same regardless of the model.

[Lucio]

One thing, the case you've selected don't always play nicely with Asus brand boards. The reason I've steered clear of Asus is that they can't guarentee, which if any of their boards heatpipes are capable of functioning in the inverted position Lian Li are so fond of using.

I'd switch your board to aBit's version as they at least have stated in their section of the Hexus forums all their new boards are capable of running inverted.


(Before people start the old "heatpipes don't work invertered" arguement, some do, some don't, it all depends on how they return the liquid medium back to the hot end wether it's by gravity or capailary action)

[eddta]

Thats the DDR3 RAM board. As the notch has moved for DDR3 you can't use DDR2 RAM on a DDR3 board. This would make even 4GB worth of RAM very expensive.

[Clunk]

One thing, the case you've selected don't always play nicely with Asus brand boards. The reason I've steered clear of Asus is that they can't guarentee, which if any of their boards heatpipes are capable of functioning in the inverted position Lian Li are so fond of using.

I'd switch your board to aBit's version as they at least have stated in their section of the Hexus forums all their new boards are capable of running inverted.


(Before people start the old "heatpipes don't work invertered" arguement, some do, some don't, it all depends on how they return the liquid medium back to the hot end wether it's by gravity or capailary action)

Huh? The PC-71 isnt inverted.

For people with inverted cases, theres no need to miss out on a great board, just because of this. Take a couple of zalman passive heatsinks, one for NB, one for SB and a set of Ramsinks for the mosfet area. This works better than the heatpipe setup on every board that Ive tried it on. Total cost is around £12 ish.

Edit: And yes, youve got DDR2 there with a DDR3 board.

[Agrippa]

Sorry, that's a typo - corrected now. Not sure why I made that mistake, since I never considered the P5K3 version.

I guess it's all hunky-dory then, since my case is non-inverted and all? :-) (What's an inverted case anyway?)

[Clunk]

(What's an inverted case anyway?)

Like an inverted nipple, only metal

[DratUK]

Like an inverted nipple, only metal

He strikes again

Will be a beaut system and well balanced.

[Agrippa]

Cheers mate, I sure hope so. I hate tinkering these days, so I'm praying for a smooth build and perfect stability from first boot-up.

[starbuck]

Can I just ask how much that little lot is costing you and what made you go for some much HDD space

[ExceededGoku]

SAS?! Please tell me you are going to use this machine as a server.. You really wouldn't notice that much performance improvement in everyday tasks and stuff...

[Agrippa]

Can I just ask how much that little lot is costing you and what made you go for some much HDD space

It'll come to around £2200 I think and the storage....well, my current RAID 5 is 440GB total with only 7GB free, so around 3x that volume seems reasonable considering more stuff will no doubt accumulate over the next 2 years.

SAS?! Please tell me you are going to use this machine as a server.. You really wouldn't notice that much performance improvement in everyday tasks and stuff...

Eh....nope, I'm not. I've used SCSI for my system drives for years and years and apart from the nice speed and responsiveness of a fast SCSI drive (which, by the way, is easily noticeable over even a Raptor), the supreme reliability is a real boon. Had you checked the card out you'd have seen it also has an external 4-lane port, giving me the opportunity to further expand the storage capability later on without cramming even more drives inside the case., or make it a lot easier to transfer the contents of my next RAID 5 array over to the one after that.

[starbuck]

I'm guessing that thing is gonna get a tad hot. At least it'll keep your heating bill down this winter

[ExceededGoku]

Eh....nope, I'm not. I've used SCSI for my system drives for years and years and apart from the nice speed and responsiveness of a fast SCSI drive (which, by the way, is easily noticeable over even a Raptor), the supreme reliability is a real boon. Had you checked the card out you'd have seen it also has an external 4-lane port, giving me the opportunity to further expand the storage capability later on without cramming even more drives inside the case., or make it a lot easier to transfer the contents of my next RAID 5 array over to the one after that.

I used to run a SCSI setup with a 15k rpm drive but I got annoyed with the lack of a tangible benefit over normal drives and teh fact that I had a PCI card which killed it for me...

[Agrippa]

As always it's a case of YMMV I guess. My Adaptec 29160 has served me very well for around 3 years now and I have to say I thought the difference from (S)ATA was quite tangible even with my current 10k rpm drive. Of course I only have a single drive on the controller, so the PCI port has never had a chance to get saturated, as it would have with several drives connected. The next card is a PCI-E x4, so even with 4 drives that won't be an issue. Again though, more than the advantage in speed & responsiveness, I appreciate the "enterprise-class" reliability of a top-spec SCSI drive. While it's been a good while since I had a (S)ATA drive die on me, for 24/7 operation there's nothing like SCSI when it comes to making me sleep well at night.

[ExceededGoku]

Yeah I had the 29160 as well, and only 1 drive... so I dunno must have been me, I definitely don't want to go back to that sort of tech. Benefits aren't really tangible...

[Agrippa]

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....