Build Time

[Knipex]

Now my prizes have started to arrive and I have found some suc... I mean discerning buyers ;) to buy the unwanted prizes and some of my old gear I am ready to start ordering for my new rig.

Uses are 80% gaming and 15% browsing, email and office apps, 5% digital image manipulation.

From the sale I have €660 (I did give some stuff away)

Forgone conclusions. (Well they came free)

MSI KT8 NEO -FISR2
Hightech radeon 9800 pro ICEQ
1Gig Corsair twinX 3200 LLpro


Currently open for debate.
AMD 64 3200+ €210.25

Western Digital Raptor 10K SATA 73.4 gig drive. (for a few quid more I could get two 37 gig grives and raid 0 them. My raid experience is 0 so is it more touble than its worth.) €85.32

I have on board sound on the MSI but seeing as its CPU intensice I am looking at a SB Audigy ES Bulk card that I can get for €33.60

I have a 40gig baracuda V I can use as a secondary drive if I need it but a DVD writer is handy to have so I am looking at a DVD IDE LG GSA-4082b 8x +/- for €85.32

For the americans and queen's subjects among you

€100 = $120 = £65

Giving a grand total of €414.50 that leaves me with €200 still in the kitty (allowing for postage) all the watercooling bits and pieces are sorted (a mutually benificial deal and seperate sale covered that).

Now I could use the €200 for beer but since they banned smoking in pubs here :rant: I dont visit those establishments as often as I used to.

Sooooo.

Go raid on the raptors and buy another aquadrive, leaving me with €100 or
go the whole hog and get the 3400+ or
Save the cash for XP 64 ?? or
Something else........

[JBM]

Sell the 9800 and buy a 6800 gt?

[fivecheebs]

I thought you had raptors already! Must be my mind playing tricks on me again :blink:

I would reccomend the 74 gig raptor. By raiding the raptors you will increase thier seek time which is why we all want the raptors in the first place. The 74 is quicker than the 36's anyhow. It will make windows feel much more responsive if you have one 74 but game levels will load a bit quicker if you raided 2 36's. You only start to see any real benefits encoding video or other intensive data transfer.

If you feel inclined to learn alot about RAID before you take the plunge look at storagereview (http://www.storagereview.com) on the first page there is a snippet called "stop the raid 0 insanity" ... then there is a comparrison (http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0) of maxtor DM9s raided and not raided, And also this (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/) is the definitive guide to raid and all its pros and cons. Beware ... its long

[Risky]

If you feel inclined to learn alot about RAID before you take the plunge look at storagereview (http://www.storagereview.com) on the first page there is a snippet called "stop the raid 0 insanity" ... then there is a comparrison (http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0) of maxtor DM9s raided and not raided, And also this (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/) is the definitive guide to raid and all its pros and cons. Beware ... its long

That's an interesting peice there. I read the forum post too for amusement

I've got into the Raid idea, but for security rather than performance. Give the reasonable price of drives, its tempting to go Raid 1 on a general use machine to give a bit of security. However on my big box I've managed to get proper Raid 5 card and I'l see how it goes. However I'm having a dither on how to configure the rig. Should it be 3drive Raid 5 +Hotspare or 4-drive Raid5 and shoudl it really be Raid 10, but that would be rather less fun.

[Starbuck3733T]

What proper raid card? the proper kind with a hardware XOR engine I hope :wub:

[Risky]

What proper raid card? the proper kind with a hardware XOR engine I hope :wub:

Yep, Adaptec 2410SA (http://www.adaptec-uk.com/worldwide/support/techspecs.jsp?sess=no&language=English+UK&cat=%2FProduct%2FAAR-2410SA&prodkey=AAR-2410SA_UK) - it has a Intel 80302 I/O for the XOR!

[Knipex]

Wow talk about rising from the dead.......:eek: :eek: :eek:




This thread is so old Im actually looking at an upgrade or 2 on this PC allready.....

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

rofl i thought it was a long time for your prizes to arrive! :lol:

[Starbuck3733T]

LOL it was so old, I thought to myself Kev won again?

[toby]

i thought it was odd when i looked at the thread!im still waiting for one of my prizes -_-