Thinking of buying XS Systems Intel i7

[Ciderman]

Is this a good set up? I already have keyboard/mouse/speakers and i have dual monitor set up (23 inch and 19 inch).

System Overview

Case: Antec Twelve Hundred Case
CPU: Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz 4.8GT s QPI @ 3.6Ghz with 20% OC (D0 Step)
CPU Coolers: Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 Exclusive Dual Fan CPU Cooler (Fans Included)
Overclocking: 3XS System Core-Logic Overclocking *0 - 10%*
Memory: 3GB (3x1GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) CAS 9-9-9-24
ATI Graphics - Multi GPU Crossfire Options Available: 512MB XFX HD4870 775Mhz GPU 800 Cores GDDR5 Mem
Power Supply Unit: 850W Be Quiet Dark Power PRO PSU (Dual Graphics Cards)
System Drives: 750 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 7200 rpm 32MB Cache
Storage Hard drives: 1000 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 7200 rpm 32MB Cache
Floppy Drive Flash Card Readers & Writers: Akasa Multi Memory Card Reader & USB 2.0 Port
DVD Writer: Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±R 12x DVD±DL DVD+RW x8 -RW x6
Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional - PCI-E (x1)
Gaming Network Card: *Use On Board Network Port*
Case Cooling Fans: 120mm Coolermaster Internal Case Fan with BLUE LED
Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit
Software - DVD Blu Ray Decoding: CyberLink PowerDVD 8 Standard Movie Audio Player & Decoder
Extended Warranty: Standard 3XS System Warranty - 2 Years (1st Year Onsite 2nd Year Return to Base)

1 Question:

If i decide to order is there any chance i could not have this installed? How do i go about it?

Software - Application: Microsoft Office 2007 - 60 Day Trial

2 Question:

Also what raid i should choose.

Sorry about these questions

[Disturbedguy]

In regards to RAID, it depends what you actually want.

I don't know much about RAID if am honest, one of them things I could never remember.

All I remember is: -

RAID 0 This is generally used for speed only as it does not offer fault tolerance.

RAID 1 Mirroring, two disks, usually of equal size, data is duplicated to both disks. However there are performance drops.

RAID 3 Striping with parirty (Bit Level), Minimum of three disks, data that is being written divided into stripes. Again some performance issues.

RAID 4 Striping with parity (Block level) Again, minimum of three disks, Each entire block of data is written onto a disk. RAID 4 can only sustain one disk failure at a time.

RAID 5 Distributed parity. minimum of three disks is required.

How did I do?

Anyway, if you backup on a regular basis, as I know quite a few people on here do, I would personally go for RAID 0 and take the increases speed over the other RAID configurations. If you don't backup regular and require the redundancy, then if I am honest, I don't know which RAID type to take, as I haven't used RAID at all.

Also, ask yourself, do you actually need RAID, will it be beneficial to you? If not, then I believe you can ask for the disks not to be set up in a RAID.

[leepen@scan]

Ciderman,

Please don't apologise for asking questions, that's what this forum is for

Knowing that we clock the CPU's to 3.6Ghz if you go for the 10-20% Overclock (which actually works out at 40% or so) I'd go for that immediately.

Otherwise, your OS drive has 32Mb of Cache so you'll be nice and speedy in terms of loading times but I'd personally go with an Nvidia card over ATI any day, purely based on performance, current drivers and temperatures. 4800 series still run a little warm for my liking. GTX260's have had a bit of a price drop recently and shall be able to power your resolution in max on most games.

Most gaming systems have RAID 0 across two drives for speed. I guess the ultimate at the moment is two SSD's in RAID 0 but having two Samsung 750's in RAID 0 would be extremely nippy too!

The removal of the Office trial shouldn't be a problem, just get your order in, PM the invoice number to one of us and we'll have it taken off the order.

All the best

[Ciderman]

Thank you for your replys.

Knowing that we clock the CPU's to 3.6Ghz if you go for the 10-20% Overclock (which actually works out at 40% or so) I'd go for that immediately.

Sounds like a good idea.

Otherwise, your OS drive has 32Mb of Cache so you'll be nice and speedy in terms of loading times but I'd personally go with an Nvidia card over ATI any day, purely based on performance, current drivers and temperatures. 4800 series still run a little warm for my liking. GTX260's have had a bit of a price drop recently and shall be able to power your resolution in max on most games.

I heard so many good things about ATI card so thats why i changed to it. I am glad that i asked.

Most gaming systems have RAID 0 across two drives for speed. I guess the ultimate at the moment is two SSD's in RAID 0 but having two Samsung 750's in RAID 0 would be extremely nippy too!

Good to know.

Now i just need to convince my wife

[Ciderman]

One more question: Does all the system come with Acronis software already installed?

[leepen@scan]

Yeah, complete with a securezone on your drive with a backup should anything go wrong.

[Ciderman]

Yeah, complete with a securezone on your drive with a backup should anything go wrong.

Thank you.

[Roughrider]

Sorry Ciderman I jumped into your thread thinking you were done, also realised entire forum is made up of "pls advise on my spec" threads so I'm starting my own and deleting my questions from here

[Ciderman]

Hello!

Sorry to bother you again. I was thinking about the raid issues. So if i understand correctly i really dont need it especially if the second harddrive is for documents, pictures and music. I would also use it for back ups aswell. I use program called FirstDefense-ISR (immediate system recovery) so i have copies of my c drive backed up on 2 places. D drive and external harddrive.

[SonyCloWn]

not to confuse you also - both Starfry and I have had ours overclocked to 4.00ghz ... its like the sound barrier but better

[Ciderman]

not to confuse you also - both Starfry and I have had ours overclocked to 4.00ghz ... its like the sound barrier but better

Sounds good.

I have done some reading on RAID. I believe as i use my second drive as backup puposes then i shouldnt use RAID at all...correct?