nudone's new pc

[nudone]

i've been reading a pc hardware forum and making a few posts to get the opinions on the new pc i'll be putting together within the next week or two.

there are a few questions i'd just like to ask DC members as i believe i'll get a less biased response.

i'm going for the highest spec machine i can afford (£3000, it's only money!!!) which will be taking me into new territory (hopefully).

my main question that seems appropriate to ask is: how good is raid 0 - speed wise, i'm not worried about disk failure and losing the data as i'll be backing things up onto non raid drives.

i wouldn't ask such a daft question as to how quick raid 0 is, but what make me wonder was that a uk computer magazine mentioned that raid 0 wasn't' that big a deal compared with the speed of the latest hard drives (in a non raid 0 configuration). this sounded odd to me but it made me wonder.

i'm looking to get two Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM's and use them in the raid 0 setup. this would then be used for my operating system, games, large programs and video encoding/editing. i'll also have a couple of 250 drives for storage purposes and other video editing.

does this sound like a reasonable setup so far? i would like to dual boot into at least another operating system (maybe have 3 if can get away with it - Carol's setup sounded like a good system when separating operating systems for video, etc)

can i put more than one operating system onto a raid 0 setup? or would i have to use the 'storage' hard drives.

other than that, can i ghost the operating system on a raid 0 (i'll need to back it up for sure as i'm always ruining my operating system).

can i partition the raid 0 drives?

i'm sure these will be quite basic questions - i'm hoping Carol will be able to answer them if no one else can.

anyway, thanks for that so far.

[brotherS]

i've been reading a pc hardware forum and making a few posts to get the opinions on the new pc i'll be putting together within the next week or two.

Bad decision IMHO - take your time!

there are a few questions i'd just like to ask DC members as i believe i'll get a less biased response.

i'm going for the highest spec machine i can afford (£3000, it's only money!!!) which will be taking me into new territory (hopefully).

Especially when you are willing to pay so much for the new PC I'd give it some time!

my main question that seems appropriate to ask is: how good is raid 0 - speed wise, i'm not worried about disk failure and losing the data as i'll be backing things up onto non raid drives.

i wouldn't ask such a daft question as to how quick raid 0 is, but what make me wonder was that a uk computer magazine mentioned that raid 0 wasn't' that big a deal compared with the speed of the latest hard drives (in a non raid 0 configuration). this sounded odd to me but it made me wonder.

i'm looking to get two Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM's and use them in the raid 0 setup. this would then be used for my operating system, games, large programs and video encoding/editing. i'll also have a couple of 250 drives for storage purposes and other video editing.

does this sound like a reasonable setup so far? i would like to dual boot into at least another operating system (maybe have 3 if can get away with it - Carol's setup sounded like a good system when separating operating systems for video, etc)

can i put more than one operating system onto a raid 0 setup? or would i have to use the 'storage' hard drives.

other than that, can i ghost the operating system on a raid 0 (i'll need to back it up for sure as i'm always ruining my operating system).

can i partition the raid 0 drives?

i'm sure these will be quite basic questions - i'm hoping Carol will be able to answer them if no one else can.

anyway, thanks for that so far.

RAID is good, be it RAID 0 or RAID 1 or RAID xyz. And yes, AFAIK you can partition the drives.

And - more important than most of the other things IMHO - find yourself someone (or a specialized forum) for good advice on how to get that PC silent! It's good for your ears AND for your health.

[Carol Haynes]

RAID 0 is faster if you need raw writing speed. Trouble is that disc access isn't usually the bottleneck it is usually other system operations and application speed.

To give you an idea - when I installed my current system I experimented with the RAID setup. I installed a clean version of Windows 2000 (I didn't have XP at the time) and nothing else. I then ran HD-Tach which is a disk benchmarking utility.

On pure write speed 2 drives in RAID 0 (stripe) ran at about 1.6 times the speed of the same drives run as standard IDE drives.

You can acheive a little faster but the theoretical maximaum of double speed isn't reachable because the RAID system iteslef has system overheads.

If you have more drives in the array you can theoretically acheive faster times, so 4 x 60Gb drives in a RAID 0 array should theoretically be much faster than 2 x 120Gb drives.

This is all assuming a hardware RAID system (not a software RAID which have less benefits).

This is great if you want to do things like video editing which needs fast writing, but really doesn't make much difference if you are simply installing Windows on the array.

If you use RAID 1 (mirroring) you won't see any speed improvement, in fact you may find the speed degraded slightly.

I haven't used SATA based interfaces yet but I'd guess the speed increase in SATA and the capacity and speed of  new drives would make RAID pretty much redundant as a technology unless you really need the extra speed and set up a SATA based array.

As for partitioning etc. you can do pretty much the same with a RAID 0 array as a standard disc - ie. partition it and install multiboot operating systems etc. As far as the computer you are using is concerned the array is a single drive.

A couple of other cautions - not all RAID interfaces are supported by Linux (if you want to use Linux) - at least not in a trivial setup manner.

Also I found that a combination of RAID arrays and standard drives in the same system have interesting effects on Windows when it tries to install. I found that even if RAID is set as the default boot device in the BIOS Windows still made its own assumptions about which should be the C drive. The way I got around this when I used to run Windows on the RAID array was to unplug the other drives during installation.

Nowadays I still use RAID 0 but just as a massive hard disk for writing video data quickly.

Good luck with the build ... I can see one day soon I am going to have to start upgrading again, but I think this time I will do it in a slow, piecemeal sort of fashion rather than spending a huge amount of money in one go.

[nudone]

thank you brotherS and Carol.

i'm still in the position that i'm not sure what to go for. the new system is going to be based around an Asus a8n deluxe or premium motherboard with sata drives - sata II drives if the raid 0 isn't going to be used.

to be precise i'm looking at:

motherboard: Asus a8n nForce4 SLi deluxe (or premium)
cpu: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+
ram: Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL Pro TwinX
graphics: XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3
case: Antec P180 SPCR (the black one)
power supply: Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX 2.0
sound card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition

some bits may change - i'm still undecided on whether to go straight into water-cooling.

regarding the hard drive setup i was looking at:

two of these - Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA 8MB in a raid 0 setup. the idea behind this being that 10,000 with raid 0 is about as fast as i'll get (without scsi).

i would also be using two Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II as the storage drives.

the question really is, shall i just stick with the samsung sata II drives (this was my original plan) and scrap the raid 0 idea.

raid 1 and other configurations aren't really what i'm after - it's just the speed freak machine i was after.

i will be video editing in Adobe Premiere and encoding in other programs as well but as i'm used to doing this on a amd xp2200 machine i think any new piece of hardware is going to seem fast to me. hence my uncertainty about raid 0.

Carol has certainly given me something to ponder on regarding the raid 0 array - maybe i should get three or four Western Digital Raptors. the price is something i could just about swallow if i'm going to see an incredible performance increase.

as for the hardware or software raid management - you know, i didn't even realise this. i shall have to investigate - if the Asus motherboard doesn't have hardware raid management then i guess it's not worth going the raid way.

good point about the installation process with raid - if i get that far i'll definately disconnect the other drives first.

sorry that this is getting so geeky.

this raid business is pretty much the final thing i need to work out then i can start buying.

anymore advice would be greatly appreciated.

(i'm trying to make this new machine as silent as possible - raptor drives aren't going to be good for this so i'm looking at using cases around them. all other components will be cooled with 120mm fans or passive heatsinks or whatever i can get that is meant to be near silent. water-cooling would probably make more sense for this.)

[brotherS]

some bits may change - i'm still undecided on whether to go straight into water-cooling.

[...]

(i'm trying to make this new machine as silent as possible - raptor drives aren't going to be good for this so i'm looking at using cases around them. all other components will be cooled with 120mm fans or passive heatsinks or whatever i can get that is meant to be near silent. water-cooling would probably make more sense for this.)

Water-cooling is not necessary if you get good regular cooling components - and btw, I wouldn't want water in my PC at any cost 

[nudone]

i know what you mean, brotherS, but it's the geek in me telling me to do it.

i really hate noise - computers have driven my mad for years. it seems to me i can either put the computer in the next room to where i'm sitting and feed cables through the wall or less drastically try to get 'silent' hardware components.

the choice of hardware i've made so far has been low noise based - but with water cooling it could potentially be quieter, so i've very tempted. there is even a totally silent case on the market that uses heat-pipes (no moving parts like fans or anything)  but it costs nearly £1000. it's something i'd eventually buy if i can't find satisfaction with other hardware.

having water inside your pc can be avoided even with water-cooling. there is a substitute liquid that doesn't conduct electricity that you can buy - can't remember the name but it's something like £50 a bottle. how big is a bottle - probably not very.

[Carol Haynes]

Seagate do some really quiet drives ...

I have to confess I had a bad experience with Seagate - they released a batch of drives a few years back which were described as good for RAID setups but were completely useless (a RAID 0 was slower than the individual drives). All fairness to Seagate they owned up and gave replacements or refunds. At the time I opted for refunds and went for WD Caviar drives. In may ways I wish I had stayed with the Seagate option as they were lightening fast (as fast or faster than the Caviars) and almost silent.

Is run my system with SpeedFan running, and most of the time the only sound I get is the drive noise and the PSU noise. Having water cooling wouldn't affect these noise levels and I would say they are at least 90% of the overall sound. If I disable Speedfan (so I have 3 fans then at full speed) I notice a slight rise in noise level but not much.

[nudone]

point taken, Carol, for water cooling not reducing PSU and drive noise. this is why i've chosen the Seasonic S12 600W Silent ATX 2.0 power supply - should be quiet. as for drive noise the Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II is meant to be the quietest on the market but unfortunately the raptor drives are the complete opposite.

the amount of money going into this project makes me want it to be perfect - probably i should just calm down a bit and accept i'm going to have to change things over the next few months as i learn from experience.

the initial idea was to build a system that i could adapt of the next 12 months. starting with the quietest air cooled system i could build (hence the antec p180 case), then in a few months swap things over to water cooled (Zalman Resorvator based) and then if i'm still in the same frame of mind i'd get that totally passive cooled case (also by Zalman). a very expensive journey, i agree, but it's not something i'll be doing every year.

[mouser]

if noise is a big deal then make sure that every single component with a moving part has been reviewed by someone who says it is quiet as can be.  this means graphics card fan, powersupply fan, case fans, hard drive, etc.  all can make substantial noise.

another thing is this, if i had to rate the most important part of my computer, it would not be the cpu, memory, or hard drive. it would be the 2 monitors. we've talked on the forum about using 2 monitors and everyone i know who's tried it agrees it makes such a difference.  i'd easily go down to a slower cpu, less memory, etc., but giving up having two monitors, never.

[f0dder]

Yes, RAID-0 aka striping *will* give you a decent speed boost - don't trust those silly magazines. I assume the raptors are SCSI since they're only 74GB in size? If not, go SCSI since you have the money to burn . 10k RPM might be a bit noisy though.

You could also consider RAID-5/parity which is a compromise between speed and security. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID5 for more info.

You could even look out for an iRAM "drive" - a PCI card with up to 4 gigs of ram that connects as a SATA drive, is backed by PCI bus power when the PC is off, and a 72-hour battery when you unplug the machine. Doesn't get much faster than this

Yes, hyou can partition RAID drives, and I suggest that you do this. You can easily have multiple operating systems installed, but it's safer if each goes on their own partition (for example, DO NOT TRY to install 32- and 64-bit XP on the same partition, your 32-bit install will be messed up).

This is great if you want to do things like video editing which needs fast writing, but really doesn't make much difference if you are simply installing Windows on the array.

I beg to differ - I used to run a striped RAID on my P4 box, and that helped a good deal with windows and app startup times, and when copying data around. Things like unpacking large RAR archives went a lot faster, too.

If you use RAID 1 (mirroring) you won't see any speed improvement, in fact you may find the speed degraded slightly.

Theoretically, you can get the same read speedup that striping offers; the controller doesn't have to read both drives and compare, since harddrives can report read failures, so the same disk alternation that stripe offers can be done with mirror. I've never benchmarked this, though.

SATA drives aren't really that much faster than PATA drives, it's just that the interface allows for higher throughput - which means you have a higher theoretical maximum. A single drive can never reach this speed sustained, and I've never seen it reached in bursts, either. The higher theoretical maxium speed of the interface (combined with the smaller and less cluttery cables) makes SATA nicer for large raid arrays, though

The way I got around this when I used to run Windows on the RAID array was to unplug the other drives during installation.

Good point! I had to do a couple of reinstalls when I installed to raid because of this. You can get around it by manually installing a MBR and the NTLDR files on your raid array and messing around after install, but the drive letter assignments won't be "right" then, and I don't think you can easily change the letter assignment for the "system drive".

I can recommend the ASUS A8N-SLI premium motherboard, I have good speeds and the system seems rock stable. I really enjoy that the chipset is passively cooled, since those chipset fans tend to be NOISY. And dualcore AMD64 is pure sweetness.

as for the hardware or software raid management - you know, i didn't even realise this. i shall have to investigate - if the Asus motherboard doesn't have hardware raid management then i guess it's not worth going the raid way.

Both the NForce4 and Silion Image RAIDs (which are on most NForce4 based motherboards) are "software" raid, in that those chips do some raid jobs, but leave some to the drivers. Still good speed and low CPU usage, though. If you want "real" RAID, check out controllers from 3ware or adaptec. Stay clear from promise, since that's just soft-raid as well.

Stock CPU coolers from AMD tend to be very silent - and so are decent 120mm fans. The noisiest components in your system will probably be the GPU fan and your 10k rpm disks. Even if you go watercooling, you'll want 120mm fans to cool down the drives, and the drives are hard to silence anyway. So watercooling probably doesn't make too much sense. And you *WILL* want to cool down your drives, even if you go for regular 7200rpm. Placing a 120mm fan infront of my drives lower their temperature about 20C, and improves lifetime.

[brotherS]

Yeah, Samsung SpinPoint HDs ARE quiet, really great! 

And do as mouser suggested, get two 19" TFT or instead one of those new great 24" DELL 2405FPW displays - I'd get one ASAP if I had the cash right now

[nudone]

thanks mouser and fodder for those replies.

mouser, i can't fault what you say about the dual monitor setup - i've got two 19" crt monitors at the moment but i feel guilty or just too lazy to turn both on at the same time - i need to get into the habit of using both of them.

i also have a further dilema with this new pc build i'm going to do - my main 19" crt monitor is several years old but it was a high quality one when i got it and it remains that way today (good dot pitch and all that), it's better than any LCD monitor (no great achievement there really) but i'm tempted to go for one of these beasts...

Eizo Flexscan s2110w http://www.eizo.com/products/lcd/S2110W/index.asp it's a 21" widescreen monitor that is getting fantastic reviews - but the price is high, about £700. again i'm prepared to go for this but i really can't fault the 19" crt monitor i've got now. the flexscan is bigger of course but perhaps limited in other ways. i would even go so far as to buy a 15" or 17" or  even 19" LCD monitor to compliment the 21" Flexscan. Pure insanity to have dual monitors of this size maybe, but i'm sure i can find a use for such things even if i can't be bothered to use the two 19" crt monitors at the moment.

f0dder, you've certainly given me a few more things to consider. what you say about the Asus board and the way it handles raid is reasuring. the raptor drives are sata even though they are 10,000rpm - they aren't SCSI or have i missunderstood what SCSI can be, i thought you needed a SCSI card for SCSI drives(?).

the iRam thing would be nice (i've read about it elsewhere) but it's not available where i'll be shopping - 4 gigs isn't going to change the world, though, maybe when it gets into double figures.

i certainly agree with you with what you are saying about raid 0 and start up times for programs and the operating system. whilst sat in front of the computer i tend to drift from one program to another to another and then another, so i'd certainly appreciate quick loading times. loading in game levels quickly would be nice also. video i don't really know - editing videos of several layers would be easier(?).

regarding the hardware i've picked out - it's all chosen on the basis of a couple of UK computer magazines. the quality, performance and noise level all being factors i've looked into - their reviews stating how quiet things are. so, i'm confident things will be quiet - the raptor drives are noisy for sure but if i get them they'll be put inside hard cases that will dampen the noise.

i think the antec p180 case will allow me to put a couple of fans in (at least) to cool the hard drives down.

i've included a spreadsheet if anyone would like to see the specific items i'm looking at ordering.

[f0dder]

the raptor drives are sata even though they are 10,000rpm - they aren't SCSI or have i missunderstood what SCSI can be, i thought you needed a SCSI card for SCSI drives(?).

They might be SATA - I've seen people talk about 10k rpm SATA drives. The lines are probably a bit blurred though, the size of 74gig sorta hints that they've "put SCSI technology in a SATA package" - so the real question is whether the SCSI interface + protocol is that much better than the SATA protocol, if the rest of the hardware is the same.

the iRam thing would be nice (i've read about it elsewhere) but it's not available where i'll be shopping - 4 gigs isn't going to change the world, though, maybe when it gets into double figures.

Not available here either. The main use of this would be an insanely fast boot drive for windows and your most used (or most heavy) apps. It should be able to max out the SATA bandwidth easily, and have VERY good seek-time. I can't remember if it's SATA-II though, 150/300 meg sure does matter, especially as one of those puppies should give you max interface speed sustained.

It does feel a bit silly to limit the card to the SATA interface though, since ram can go a lot faster than a couple hundred megabytes per second - but it's still fast, and since it shows up as a regular SATA drive it should be usable on all OSes that supports SATA drives, with no special drivers.

Will be interesting when the second generation of these cards come out, though (if planned). SATA-II speeds and support for more RAM would be nifty. Then we just need to wait for RAM prices to drop...

the raptor drives are noisy for sure but if i get them they'll be put inside hard cases that will dampen the noise.

Just be careful, most of those cases tend to build up heat as well. And I guess that a 10k rpm drive goes hotter than a 7200rpm one?

I wish I had personal experience with SCSI, so I could tell whether it's just elitistic hype, or if it realy IS that much better than IDE/SATA drives.

[mouser]

scsi seems to be dying to me, am i wrong?
it seems incredibly over priced and fading fast in terms of desirability compared to the new satas.

[nudone]

i'd say SCSI is dying (but i'm no expert).

the Antec p180 case has plenty of fans and is designed with compartments to help air flow so it should be okay - which defeats the point of water cooling a bit.

[mouser]

by the way i'm a big fan of drive racks..  something more to consider.

(for example see http://www.directron.com/mobilerack.html
and hot swapable sata rack for example: http://www.directron.com/mrk200stbk.html)

[f0dder]

<3 drive racks <3

If you're getting those you'll really want to make sure they're metal and not plastic, that they're compatible with your main casing, and that there's proper ventilation. And that they do NOT use small and whiny fans >_<

[nudone]

they will be metal cases if i get them but i've had another big think - prompted by what Carol mentioned earlier.

i was talking of getting two Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA hard drives and putting them in a RAID 0 array. but because of thei noise i would have to also buy two cases to put them in.

the total cost of the above would be about £310.

BUT, i could get THREE Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB hard drives for £250 and then put these in a RAID 0 arrangement - this is assuming i can do this with the Asus a8n deluxe/premium board (i have no idea).

OR, i could get FOUR Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB hard drives for £335 and put all of this into a RAID 0 array.

so, i'm asking - is the FOUR (or THREE) disk array going to blow the socks off of a TWO disk Raptor 10,000rpm array.

the Samsungs would be quieter and hopefully a great deal quicker - plus i also get 250 gig to play with instead of the 74 gig on the raptors.

someone please say 'yes' as i really want to believe in the four disk setup. but i can understand due to other issues with RAID 0 that the speed increase would not be as much as i hope.

thoughts please.

[mouser]

i'd personally be a little worried about the complexity of four hard drives in a raid.. but that could just be me, i'm always a little suspicious about raid.

[f0dder]

There are eight SATA ports and two IDE ports on the motherboard, allowing for a total of 12 connected drives. 4 SATA are handled by NForce 4, and the other 4 by the silicon image controller. So yes, you could have 2 arrays of 4 drives each (I even think one of the controllers allows you to span both SATA and IDE drives, but that seems a bit fishy to me). Also, four drives in stripe... eek. One drive dead = all data lost.

If you're going to get four drives, you really should consider looking into raid-5

[nudone]

well, i've never used raid at all, so i could be in for a hard time i admit. but "in for a penny, in for a pound" is what i always say. (i don't really.)

hmm, well yes, raid 5 with four disks in the usual approach but i'm thinking have super speed on the 4 disk raid 0 stiped array and then have a couple more of non raid hard drives for backup/storage purposes.

i'm used to backing things up so i'm not too bothered about raid helping me out in that respect - and if have ghost images stored on the non raid drives of the operating system(s) that are on the raid 0 drives then i'll feel safe enough.

this project is really about 'speed' and 'silence' without going into totally over the top hardware using Vapochill cases (which i would get if they were quiet - maybe they are).

i think i'm getting carried away with the speed element.

[nudone]

i missunderstood how raid 0 worked - the four disk array made out of 250 gig sized disks would be overkill.

still thinking...

(nice photo, by the way brotherS.)

[Black Mamba]

I have some comments:

1. If you won't upgrade to second graphic card (SLI configuration), you don't need a SLI motherboard. You could get a nF4 Ultra motherboard and save some money for other components. Also check DFI (the best overclocking motherboard) or MSI brands.
2. Are you a gamer? If you aren't, that Creative doesn't worth at all the money. I would choose an audio card based on VIA Envy 24 HT (M-Audio Revolution is a stunning card) - really better for music and movies than Creative. If you are a gamer... I still would think twice to buy that expensive card. Why? You won't get the chance to really use the superior power of X-Fi. Think about this: there are few games today to support all the features of Audigy (EAX 2) on the market... And considering that X-Fi already has EAX 5... The create a game supporting all the features of X-Fi, a producer needs million of dollars for that because implementing EAX 5 in a game is a slow and painful job. Only big companies can afford the money. But this doesn't guarantee that many games supporting EAX 5 will appear in the following future. Don't listen to all "great" reviews of X-Fi cards... 

I hope I made myself clear.  

[f0dder]

If you won't upgrade to second graphic card (SLI configuration), you don't need a SLI motherboard. You could get a nF4 Ultra motherboard and save some money for other components. Also check DFI (the best overclocking motherboard) or MSI brands.

I got the SLI motherboard even though I don't plan on going SLI, since it got very good speed & stability reviews. Dunno if they've used better power regulation components on the board or something? After all, two mean graphics cards draw more power than one

[Black Mamba]

Stability and speed aren't a problem on top brands. 

Either you buy an Asus nF4 Ultra or SLI, you get the best.