My desktop died a few weeks back now (just a dead hard drive I believe, the rest of it should be working fine) and given that I mostly just use my work laptop when I'm at home for browsing the web etc (no time for real gaming in general, and when there is I generally spend it on Guitar Hero anyway) I decided to see if I'd mind leaving it dead.
Well, I've been coping well so far, with no real need for it, but recently I've seen a bunch of my friends start to build themselves new PCs, and quite frankly I'm getting a bit jealous. I want new shiny stuff so I can play all the latest games. Even more tempting is the fact that I get discounted stuff from Scan.co.uk thanks to Microsoft :)
I haven't ordered it yet, but here's what I'm sorely tempted to get, any comments/suggestions would be appreciated:
- Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 G0 SLACR, 95W, S775, 2.40 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB Cache, Retail
- Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI NF650i SLi, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX
- 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18
- 480W XClio-SCF aPFC Super Silent SLi (21Db) 12cm Fan 8/20/24 ATX2/2.01 12vEPS + SATA+PCI-E Hi-End
- Antec 900 - Nine Hundred Ultimate Gamer Case with 200m Top Fan w/o PSU
- 2x: 80 Gb Seagate ST380815AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.9 ms
- 500 Gb Seagate ST3500630AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ
Now, I'm not too familiar with RAIDing, which is obviously what I want to do with the two smaller hard drives. I presumed I wanted RAID 0 (striping) for increased performance, but I recently came across this in Wikipedia about RAID 1:
Mirrored set (minimum 2 disks) without parity. Provides fault tolerance from disk errors and single disk failure. Increased read performance occurs when using a multi-threaded operating system that supports split seeks, very small performance reduction when writing.
Will RAID1 (mirroring) really give me a performance increase? Will it be comparible to RAID0?
Let me know folks.
Xx
Hello, world!
Leave a comment, or read the 14 comments so far.
I have very little knowledge about raiding sorry. But about that case, it is much better than it looks. I was really surprised by it to be honest.
As far as quad/dual core goes. Is it really worth getting quad, as far as I know it doesn't actually increase your 'straight line' processing speed. It only benefits multi-tasking, which is something I doubt I will be doing much of...
For the prices (only ~£20 more for Quad) I certainly think it's worth it. Quite a few applications can thread their processes to run on two cores, and increasingly, on four cores.
It's certainly not unfeasible that I'll have my OS (greedy Vista) using one core, other background apps using up another and then a game/app which can take advantage of the two spares :)
You've got the case yourself then? Seems to be a popular one..
I would stick a 750Gb / 1Tb drive in there, they are dirt cheap at the moment.
How much you expecitng it to cost?
Looks nice, but you'll need a bigger psu 480w is tiny.
Another thing is, RAID1 will mean you only have 80gb if using two drives (1 for data, 1 for backup). I think a better way of doing it would be getting 3 drives (they're cheap as chips anyway ;)) and then use 2 for data and 1 for backup. I was reading about doing this for when I get my new pc. But I'm just going to get 2 500gb and use them at raid0, can't be arsed with small drives.
Hope this helps :)
I'm not sure what the performance of that motherboard is like, do you want to overclock the q6600? Also what cooling are you going for?
Hey Ben, long time no see :)
Was tempted, but I've splashed out on fancy RAM & CPU so was hoping to save money there, as I've got a 400Gb drive already.
That lot, on Scan, comes to £640 or so, but I get a Microsoft discount which should hopefully knock it down a bit, they're getting back to me about how much that discount actually is.
Hey Yam/Atarii,
Drives are indeed cheap as chips, but motherboards with lots of SATA slots aren't. The one I've got there has 4 slots, and I already want to put 4 drives in there *and* a SATA DVD/RW.
I just wanted a RAID on my OS hard drive to improve boot time and file loading etc, not too concerned if the OS drive dies, as all my data is elsewhere.
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Hey anonymous (use names people!),
I'm a complete n00b when it comes to overclocking, if someone wants to do it for me (Safely) then great, otherwise I'll leave it at factory.
Cooling I haven't considered a bit, I was under the impression the CPU came with cooling, apparently not. Any recommendations?
Forgot to say, get some decent cooling for the cpu.. like a Zalman or something, that way you can clock the shit out of that cpu. And get like 2 silent 120mm fans to stick in the Antec, so you maximise cooling, you can also run them on the slowest setting to lower the noise and you won't lose any cooling.
You can buy sata cards for cheap too, ebay for like a fiver, so port slots isn't an issue :)
I love how we're chatting on this, despite both being on msn. <3
I recommend getting the Tuniq Tower 120 cpu cooling (it's one big mamma), but that may be overkill tbh. Overclocking is reletively easy on the q6600, so long as your mobo and ram can take it, and you can take it up nicely to 3.0/3.2Ghz with no problems on air cooling.
Atarii
Ignore Ben, he's a noob. You can tell because he clicked anonymous and typed his name at the bottom instead of clicking other and typing his name in there.
lol owned :(
Atarii
Yeah yeah enough spam =p
That cooling looks very nice :)
When you say 'relatively easy', are we talking a soldering iron, or just pushing some buttons in BIOS?
Buttons in bios and maybe some other applications that are just run in windows. Don't have to mess with anything inside the pc.
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