2 new rigs - any advice before I pull the trigger?

normski

normski

normski

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17 Oct 2006
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After weeks of deliberation I am about to place an order for the parts for two rigs, the first is for me (and the mrs as our business is gonna pick up half the cost) and the second is for my boys and me to game on a 26" LCD TV, (they are only 8 and 3 so don't need to go mad):

Anything that I have obviously got wrong?

Lian-Li V2000+
Lian-Li V1000+
E6600 conroe x 2
Gigabyte DS4 x 2
Corsair HX 620W x 2
Couple of pairs of SATAII 7200.9 Barracudas for raid (have plenty of Hard Drives for storeage/backup)
2 x Scythe Ninja's
eVGA 8800GTS for me
eVGA 7900GS for the boys (step-up if something comes out inside 90 days, but this cadrd is more than enough for 26"TV, just would be nice to have DX10 for the future)
2 x 2GB kits of GEIL PC6400 800MHz CAS 4-4-4-12

Also getting a DELL 2407wfp from elsewhere at a ridiculous price...can't wait for the "perfect" LCD any longer

Apart from feeling like I have decided on good quality for price parts across the board, I want most items duplicated so that if my PC goes down, then I can move the parts over from the kids rig dead quick as we do a lot of time critical DTP and graphic design work and a 7 day RMA turnaround would hurt bad...

I have two main concerns - The PSU...is the 620 overkill for either PC, the 500W version is only £17 less so can't save much by downgrading, but neither PC is ever going to run SLi, just a couple of optical drives and 4 HD's max.

My biggest dilemma is memory...the GEIL looks good, then there are horror stories, the CORSAIR looks great for the money, then they replace the IC's with Promos etc. etc. Are the GEIL kits a pretty safe bet?

I wouldn't normally bother with OC'ing anything, but I know it is a shame not to and will be having a go this time around.

Anyone's thoughts will be very much appreciated...
 
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It looks good, the Corsair 520w PSUs would be more than sufficient but like you say it won't save that much cash anyway so it might be as well to just get the 620w versions in case you sell them on and they do give more capacity for overclocking. I'd recommend an 7200.10 over a 7200.9 because they are newer and faster. The Geil is good solid Ram and is definitely compatible with the DS4 so I'd just go with it, you might be unlucky and get problem Ram but it could happen with any component at all. :)
 
Aprreciated...

Would have gone with the 7200.10, except they aren't available below 250gb as afar as I can tell.

Wanted as small a pair of drives as poss for the OS on RAID.

Have just decided on getting 2 V2000's as well, for an extra 20 quid and having a real squeeze with the PSU into the V1000, it seems a shame not to. Only 10cm deeper which is nothing, and the height is nice.
 
Really only for the speed. Do the 7200.10 get close to RAID0 speeds?

I would happily accept a 20% hit in performance to have my data safer (even though I back up every day without fail). One drive is more reliable than 2 after all, especially from what I have read on the 7200.10.

As for the PSU, am gonna stick with the 620's. All of the 8800 cards recommend a 500 min and ideallty 600+, so although I am sure some of that is a gimmick to get you to upgrade your PSU, £34 quid across 2 PSU's when you are spending £2,500 is nothing.
 
The 7200.10s are close to Raptor speeds but I don't know exactly how that compares to Raid0 speeds, I suspect it won't be all that far off but I'd need to do more research before I could say for sure. :)
 
I have just benchmarked 2 Maxtor DM9 SATA1 2mb 80Gig drives in RAID0 against figures for a test of the 320gig 16mb 7200.10 from a benchmarks on Anandtech, and the RAID0 with old drive on the SATA150 setup is nearly 40% quicker than the 7200.10 in almost all operations! Have triple checked and it is very clear (especially OS and game load times which are important to me).

Hope I haven't got the figures wrong cuz they seem pretty conclusive.
 
That's a great link mate, twenty seconds after I had made my order so you had me panicing a bit...thought I had made the wrong choice for a sec.

Yes, the OS boot up is pretty similar for sure, adn as I read that I really paniced...thank god it shos RAID0 as whipping a single drive in pretty much anything else.

Definitely happy I have gone the right way with this, and just to make it better, I threw in a Seagate 320 gig 7200.10 as well, so I can test it out in the real world (I realised I wouldn't have enough IDE connectors on the DS4 for one of the set-ups and needed another SATA drive for storeage).

Just gotta figure out how to pay for it all now... :D
 
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