The new beast

[Barron]

Built my new computer the other day with help from Jacko and Mike_182 for tech support lol

Had abit of an issue with the RAID0 but everything is sorted and is now runnning smoothly

Spec:
Intel Core Duo Q6600 (Overclocked to 3.01ghz)
8gb 1066mhz Corsair Dominator Ram
2x 750gb Samsung Spinpoint (RAID0)
ATi 4870x2 2gb
Asus Formula Rampage Motherboard
Corsair 1000w PSU
Creative XFi Extreme Gamer Soundcard
LG Blu-Ray HD Drive
Coolermaster Cosmos S Case

other things you can see in the photos
Dell 24" LCD
Razor Lachesis Gamer Mouse
Logitech G25 Keyboard
Apple Iphone 3g
Xbox 360 Elite
Logitech z5500 speakers

thanks

 

[AhmedRSi]

Nice... not been into the pc gaming scene in a few years, but still appreciate a bit of decent kit when i see it!

 

[JackoR26]

Glad you finally got it up and running mate the raid was a b**ch!

Wish i actually got to to see it in action :dapprove:

That case is far too big to be on top of your desk though!

Thank god you live in a bungalow or it would be going through the floor! haha

 

[Griff]

It's a G15 not G25 keyboard.

I wouldn't have bothered with RAID either, well certainly not 0, as the benefits are absolutely minimal over todays latest drives.

 

[JackoR26]

Whats the best RAID to go for then as mirror is slower and 0+1 takes up too many drives

Just a normal drive?

 

[Barron]

oh i am ever so sorry griff

 

[KDF]

I wouldn't have bothered with RAID either, well certainly not 0, as the benefits are absolutely minimal over todays latest drives.

providing you use the correct transfer size for it you can see 40-60% increases in performance.

Although if one of the drives fail

 

[Andy_con]

cost?

 

[KDF]

Whats the best RAID to go for then as mirror is slower and 0+1 takes up too many drives

Just a normal drive?

RAID1 is only slower at writes. There is a performance boost when reading.

RAID10 ( 1 + 0 ) is the best solution for speed/redundancy but is most expensive and has the biggest loss of usesable space (50%)

RAID5 has a minium of 3 drives and single drive failure redundancy, its highest loss of space is 33% but this decreases with the more drives you add.

RAID6 is basically RAID5 but can sustain the failure of two drives.

You can also have hot spares in the RAID array.


This is dumbed down explanation of RAID, its quite complex once you get into it.

 

[Schweppy]

Someone has way too much money...

 

[Andy_con]

but how much

 

[Barron]

£1300 for the base unit

 

[Andy_con]

meaning?

 

[Schweppy]

Bet my EEEPC is as good...

 

[Barron]

meaning?

?

 

[Griff]

I wouldn't have bothered with RAID either, well certainly not 0, as the benefits are absolutely minimal over todays latest drives.

providing you use the correct transfer size for it you can see 40-60% increases in performance.

Although if one of the drives fail

40% 60% !?!?

I think you've plucked those out of thin air. Maybe 10 years ago but not these days with such high density clusters on the larger drives.

Of course if you can find me a recent set of benchmarks that show such a large performance increase I'll take back what I've said.

 

[Griff]

oh i am ever so sorry griff

Apology accepted.

 

[knoxy101]

meaning?

?

Meaning you must be up to something illegal potter as the 4 hours a week you work in halfrauds cant pay well enough for 1500 pc's and 2 clio's!

 

[Barron]

?

Meaning you must be up to something illegal potter as the 4 hours a week you worki n halfrauds cant pay well enough for 1500 pc's and 2 clio's!

4 hours? worked 55+ hours a week for the past 3 months mate lol

 

[Paul RN]

A 10,000 rpm drive is a fast alternative to RAID0, some people say its faster and better for gaming whilst RAID0 is better for things like video editing and large files. I suspect its probably not much difference either way. Now a RAID0 configuration with two 10,000 RPM drives now your talking!

I'm liking the set-up though and love the monitor, must upgrade mine!

 

[knoxy101]

Meaning you must be up to something illegal potter as the 4 hours a week you worki n halfrauds cant pay well enough for 1500 pc's and 2 clio's!

4 hours? worked 55+ hours a week for the past 3 months mate lol

Surely working that many hours is illegal!

 

[Barron]

4 hours? worked 55+ hours a week for the past 3 months mate lol

Surely working that many hours is illegal!

+ im not getting taxed so

 

[knoxy101]

Surely working that many hours is illegal!

+ im not getting taxed so

There you go, defo illegal. I have a few mate's who work in the tax office. I could make a call but my silence can be bought. :rasp:

 

[JackoR26]

Good old knoxy lol

 

[Barron]

+ im not getting taxed so

There you go, defo illegal. I have a few mate's who work in the tax office. I could make a call but my silence can be bought. :rasp:

heh c**k :rasp: dealing with chavs for 55 hours a week really does kill you lol

 

[Griff]

Whats the best RAID to go for then as mirror is slower and 0+1 takes up too many drives

Just a normal drive?

The June issue of PCFormat covered RAID in some detail..

Here's their conclusion..

In all our real-world tests, the difference between the single drive performance and the dual-drive RAID 0 striped setup was virtually non-existent. And in fact, the single drive was ever-so-slightly faster than the other setups, including the RAID 5 system that we'd hoped would offer the perfect combination of performance and data redundancy. So what does this mean when it comes to setting up your rig for the best performance at the best price? Well, in our opinion, there's no point in going to a RAID setup unless you're using it for it's (sic) original function - as a system for ensuring the safety of your precious data. If you're simply after the best performance, a fast, ordinary, non-striped single drive is absolutely fine - and it will have a statistically lower chance of failure than a dual-drive striped setup, just to add a little icing to your hard disk cake.

 

[Barron]

The June issue of PCFormat covered RAID in some detail..

Here's their conclusion..

In all our real-world tests, the difference between the single drive performance and the dual-drive RAID 0 striped setup was virtually non-existent. And in fact, the single drive was ever-so-slightly faster than the other setups, including the RAID 5 system that we'd hoped would offer the perfect combination of performance and data redundancy. So what does this mean when it comes to setting up your rig for the best performance at the best price? Well, in our opinion, there's no point in going to a RAID setup unless you're using it for it's (sic) original function - as a system for ensuring the safety of your precious data. If you're simply after the best performance, a fast, ordinary, non-striped single drive is absolutely fine - and it will have a statistically lower chance of failure than a dual-drive striped setup, just to add a little icing to your hard disk cake.

does it really matter? lol i can get 17k in 3dmark06 so im happy

 

[Griff]

The June issue of PCFormat covered RAID in some detail..

Here's their conclusion..

does it really matter? lol i can get 17k in 3dmark06 so im happy

Not really. I merely said it was a waste of time. If you're happy then fair enough.

My quote was merely to dispel the myth that RAID 0 is is "60%" faster which it's blatantly not.

 

[VeinAST]

Love the keyboard tbh

 

[Mike_182]

The June issue of PCFormat covered RAID in some detail..

Here's their conclusion..

In all our real-world tests, the difference between the single drive performance and the dual-drive RAID 0 striped setup was virtually non-existent. And in fact, the single drive was ever-so-slightly faster than the other setups, including the RAID 5 system that we'd hoped would offer the perfect combination of performance and data redundancy. So what does this mean when it comes to setting up your rig for the best performance at the best price? Well, in our opinion, there's no point in going to a RAID setup unless you're using it for it's (sic) original function - as a system for ensuring the safety of your precious data. If you're simply after the best performance, a fast, ordinary, non-striped single drive is absolutely fine - and it will have a statistically lower chance of failure than a dual-drive striped setup, just to add a little icing to your hard disk cake.

RAID owns, PCFormat is one of the few publications that genuinely annoys me because of the amount of shite they put on their reviews.

£250 to the first person to beat those read speeds across the board with a single drive based on traditional rotating platter technology.

P.S. - You won't. : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/HDD-SATA-VelociRaptor,1914-5.html - fastest consumer drive, and it's licked with most read tests outperforming it by a MINIMUM of 50%. And that's using the slower RAID5, not RAID0.

 

[Mike_182]

Nice rig though bud, I know how hard it's been getting it right and I can only hope my advice helped! Now enjoy!

 

[meady100]

providing you use the correct transfer size for it you can see 40-60% increases in performance.

Although if one of the drives fail

40% 60% !?!?

I think you've plucked those out of thin air. Maybe 10 years ago but not these days with such high density clusters on the larger drives.

Of course if you can find me a recent set of benchmarks that show such a large performance increase I'll take back what I've said.

This is true - I have two identical systems in every way in the office, except one has raid and the other does not. Using each heavily back to back with Photoshop, there is just no noticeable difference. I'm not saying it isn't there - but day to day it's not significant enough to register. It was a b**ch to set up aswell! Wouldn't bother again myself when you factor in the greater data loss risk. Good geeky fun though! Your system looks awesome aswell by the way! 1000 watt PSU's scare me!!

 

[Mike_182]

Windows XP users are unlikely to see the benefit of RAID as significantly as Vista (or Server 2003, or XP x64):

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/wss2003/techinfo/plandeploy/storportwp.mspx

Amongst that is a tremendous increase in potential throughput in the Storage subsystem.

 

[spirez]

And i bet it still won't run Crysis smoothly on max settings!

 

[Mike_182]

40% 60% !?!?

I think you've plucked those out of thin air. Maybe 10 years ago but not these days with such high density clusters on the larger drives.

Of course if you can find me a recent set of benchmarks that show such a large performance increase I'll take back what I've said.

This is true - I have two identical systems in every way in the office, except one has raid and the other does not. Using each heavily back to back with Photoshop, there is just no noticeable difference. I'm not saying it isn't there - but day to day it's not significant enough to register. It was a b**ch to set up aswell! Wouldn't bother again myself when you factor in the greater data loss risk. Good geeky fun though! Your system looks awesome aswell by the way! 1000 watt PSU's scare me!!

Photoshop is not a disk-intensive application so is an APPALING way of judging a system's performance. Your systems will be limited by either the amount of RAM in them, the memory controller, or the processor.

However, on boot there is a massive bottleneck in the way of the HDD, and the same on large application launch/games/videos.

 

[timmmah]

Well nice!!!

The cosmos cases cost like £180 alone!!!!

 

[Barron]

And i bet it still won't run Crysis smoothly on max settings!

1920x1200 high settings and no dps drop so far

 

[Darren S]

Nice piece of kit Barron!

Always feels good having a new PC setup. You spend ages just throwing all sorts at it to stress it to the max!

The 4870 is a great card. Well chuffed with mine, so you'll be even more chuffed having got two of the buggers in there.

edit - oh, and the G15 is a cracking keyboard too! So used to the display on that now. I think I'd miss it if I had to replace it!

D.

 

[Barron]

Nice piece of kit Barron!

Always feels good having a new PC setup. You spend ages just throwing all sorts at it to stress it to the max!

The 4870 is a great card. Well chuffed with mine, so you'll be even more chuffed having got two of the buggers in there.

edit - oh, and the G15 is a cracking keyboard too! So used to the display on that now. I think I'd miss it if I had to replace it!

D.

thanks mate :star:

yeah the 4870x2 is a fantastic card. Getting some sick fps in almost any game lol. Its a shame there isnt that many games i really want to play atm

G15 is really nice, the keys are just perfect. The only problem i have found is the black stuff has worn away on my WASD and alt keys. Too much world of warcraft :rasp:

carl

 

[Colin-S]

You should be able to easily overclock the Intel Core Duo Q6600 upto 3.6 GHz (safely) thats what i've had mine running at for the past 3-4months without any problems.