Rig Check prior To Order

[dgr]

Its up to you but I'd swap that 74 gig raptor for 2 36 gigers and raid 0 them It should cost the same price.... And they'ed be faster!

No they wouldn't. Show me a benchmark that says otherwise. They'd also be louder, the RAID0 array would increase failure risk, you'd use more space up in your case, increase temperatures and use up one more of the SATA headers.

Not only that, but dual booting between Linux and Windows (if the OP ever wanted to do that) would be difficult.

Why would you post such crap?

dgr

[dgr]

Oh and for the OP - the system looks good, but IMO you're spending over the odds. unless you really need that spec, I'd downgrade the CPU and GPU slightly and save on the pennies - buy something useful like a second LCD. The X2s will be coming out soon, and I reckon that'll push the prices of CPUs down a fair amount. You'll easily be able to upgrade to one when you want as well.

[Nox]

No they wouldn't. Show me a benchmark that says otherwise. They'd also be louder, the RAID0 array would increase failure risk, you'd use more space up in your case, increase temperatures and use up one more of the SATA headers.

Not only that, but dual booting between Linux and Windows (if the OP ever wanted to do that) would be difficult.

Why would you post such crap?

dgr

ditto, agree with this - keep the 76 gigger

Nox

[myth]

No they wouldn't. Show me a benchmark that says otherwise. They'd also be louder, the RAID0 array would increase failure risk, you'd use more space up in your case, increase temperatures and use up one more of the SATA headers.

Why would you post such crap?

dgr

Ok, I had enough of people dising raid arays! Do you boot in 4 seconds? Do you burst at 192 megs? Do you sustain a transfer rate of 90 megs? And lets talk drive failure rate! How often does a raptor fail????? And they have a 5 year warenty as well!!! To take a quote from you,


"Why would you post such crap?"

Edit: My apologies to EvilMunky for disturbing the topic of this thread...

[Nox]

Ok, I had enough of people dising raid arays! Do you boot in 4 seconds? Do you burst at 192 megs? Do you sustain a transfer rate of 90 megs? And lets talk drive failure rate! How often does a raptor fail????? And they have a 5 year warenty as well!!! To take a quote from you,


"Why would you post such crap?"

Edit: My apologies to EvilMunky for disturbing the topic of this thread...

erm, no idea, never benchmarked my u320 15k seagate cheetah raid array I would go with the 70 gb drive for the option of bunging another in there in the future, all the points are valid though, some people want speed, others reliability to the extreme, other peace and quiet. each and to their own.

back to the topic in hand - ok, one thing i love about that dfi mobo, is memtest in the bios... first chip, happy as larry, second chip is borked, big time!!! and it is quite happy running a little over standard i'll post back in a bit!

Nox

[Trippledence]

I would go for an asus A8N SLI - Delux personaly, i have one and its grrrrrate!

[Nox]

ok, get loads of errors at 250 mhz very fast in memtest, none in first min or two at 245 mhz... don't know processor limit yet tho either

gah, montrhs of no oc

Nox

[Nox]

nope, bugs out at 245 aswell, down to 240 but point proven, ignore my previous fears

Nox

[rajagra]

No they wouldn't. Show me a benchmark that says otherwise. They'd also be louder, the RAID0 array would increase failure risk, you'd use more space up in your case, increase temperatures and use up one more of the SATA headers.

Not only that, but dual booting between Linux and Windows (if the OP ever wanted to do that) would be difficult.

Why would you post such crap?

dgr

Myth made a perfectly valid - and surprising - observation: that you can get 2 x 36GB Raptors for roughly the price of a 72GB one.
Even if you don't RAID them, you can load balance in other ways. E.g. OS on one drive, apps on the other, or try out options for the paging file (drive 1, drive 2, or both.)
Why would you be so confrontational in your post? Especially when your first sentence is so clearly untrue? Of course 2 drives in RAID 0 are faster. It might only be by 1%, or it might be as much as 100%, but it will be faster. I'm sure somebody could post a HDTach benchmark to prove the point, but none of us need to see it to know that the RAID system would have a much higher sustained transfer rate. I'm assuming you would discount HDTach as not being a real world benchmark, but even plain file copying can make use of the improved throughput.

[EvilMunky]

Thanks for the info guys - i think im pretty much set with my original plans - nox seems to think the memory is gonna be ok

Sticking with the 74gig for now - with potential to update to another one at a later date.

Also gonna run with the onboard sound for now - see how that works out for me - after all - at worst i can just shove another one in.

As mentioned in a previous post - i am spending a fair bit of money and potentially overpaying stuff - but thats not too much of an issue for me. Ive got the money there - and want this kind of spec. I agree i could maybe save some cash n get an extra monitor but thats not needed at the mo. Tis a good point u make tho and usually thats what i do - but this time......well im feeling fruity

[Nox]

yeah, can't believe i've been using a duff stick since sept... ho hum... how much faster is the ultra over a gt? and is it worth £100?

btw, i heartily recommend cpu city, i was amazed receiving a delivery next day on something I ordered pretty late!

Nox

[noah]

yeah, can't believe i've been using a duff stick since sept... ho hum... how much faster is the ultra over a gt? and is it worth £100?

personally id go for the gt and hope for an oc to ultra speeds but the ati seems to be the faster card and its quieter. either way its a fine rig.

[dgr]

I appologise to EvilMunky for posting this to his thread, but I felt that I must correct some rather dodgy information.

Even if you don't RAID them, you can load balance in other ways. E.g. OS on one drive, apps on the other, or try out options for the paging file (drive 1, drive 2, or both.)

Thats entirely true, and indeed what I do with my 2 raptors. OS is on the first one, swap, VMware, etc run on the second. But this isn't what myth said!

Why would you be so confrontational in your post?

High tech is an area where a lot of bull**** flies around. I dislike seeing people make misleading comments.

Especially when your first sentence is so clearly untrue? Of course 2 drives in RAID 0 are faster. It might only be by 1%, or it might be as much as 100%, but it will be faster.

Ok, I had enough of people dising raid arays! Do you boot in 4 seconds? Do you burst at 192 megs? Do you sustain a transfer rate of 90 megs?

RAID0 doesn't make all your drive accesses faster, don't forget. Sequential reads / writes will benefit of course - but most of your drive reads will be to small and here the *much improved* seek time of the 740 will make *massive differences*. Where reads are on larger files, i'm likely to be maxed out by some other bottleneck, e.g. Ethernet or DVDR, etc.

Oh and a boot time of 4 seconds is quite irrelevant - it takes *much longer* to get through the BIOS. Mind you, my window manager saves my session when I log out - so any time I lose through only running raptor 360s is easily saved by being able to use my system sooner .

How often does a raptor fail????? And they have a 5 year warenty as well!!!

The 5 year garantee means buggar all. Within a few years, a drives value falls massively and WD know they can replace it for very little cost - whilst making massive returns off suckers who see it as an "investment". Besides which, most drives have at least a 3 year warantee anyway. I've had a suprisingly high number of HDDs break over the years.

dgr

[rajagra]

the *much improved* seek time of the 740 will make *massive differences*.

Err... not in my system where the random access times are 8.1ms vs 8.0ms!
WD360 36GB Raptor HDTach
WD740 72GB Raptor HDTach
The 740 does have about 10% greater average transfer rate, though.
Fine drives, both of them, even if they aren't quite up to the standard of 15K SCSI drives, which can be bought off eBay for less. (Of course you'll need a SCSI controller too.)

[Clstrphbc_donut]

I would go for an asus A8N SLI - Delux personaly, i have one and its grrrrrate!

Got rid of mine for a DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR.

[dgr]

Err... not in my system where the random access times are 8.1ms vs 8.0ms!
WD360 36GB Raptor HDTach
WD740 72GB Raptor HDTach
The 740 does have about 10% greater average transfer rate, though.
Fine drives, both of them, even if they aren't quite up to the standard of 15K SCSI drives, which can be bought off eBay for less. (Of course you'll need a SCSI controller too.)

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=65
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/produ...asp?DriveID=40

Read seeks are 4.5ms and 5.2ms respectively, according to WD.