Buying new system from OCUK need reassurance!!!

Well Splattered · 20 May 2007 at 17:26

Please take a quick look over the items in my basket and advise if your experience suggest a better product in same price range. I am going Intel again after a few years with AMD!!! (P133MMX).

Motherboard DFI Infinity P965-S Dark (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Memory 2 x Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator DHX PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) 8Gb Total.

CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

Stuff I already have to complete system.
BFG 8800GTX
2x WD2500KS
2x Raptor 36gb
2x I-Ram 4gb
2 x PC Power and Cooling 510DLX - Its in DFIClub PSU LIST I suspect a new one will be purchased and the two 510 DLX's sold
Hercules PCI Game Theatre 7.1
Water Cooling loop, new block needed for Intel. 120.1 Rad - CPU cooled only.
Dual boot Vista64 and XP32 Home.

Intentions are;
I-RAM for OS+Pagefile
Raptors sold off.
WD2500KS RAID0 for games and storage.
RAMDRIVE created for main game (hence overkill on capacity)

Any oversights on my part?
Thanks
WS

Edit: Typo fixed

man_from_uncle · 20 May 2007 at 18:07

What are you going for in the way of a power supply?

All in all that's a fairly monsterous set-up. You really don't like loading times do you? Using I-ram for your OS? You're a far braver man than me. Using it for page file is a clever idea though. I suspect that would help a lot.....if you didn't have 8 gigs of ram already.

What is the RAMDRIVE for though? Will it actually make things any quicker in your main game (and what is that game)? There aren't many games out there that have a footprint far enough under 8 gigs that you'd be left with enough RAM to be comfortable with.

I am very interested in some of the technology you are using, but how much of an impact does it really have? I'd be happy with a pair of Raptors in RAID 0.

EDIT: Sorry didn't realise that PC Power and Cooling was a PSU brand.

Jimmy1983 · 20 May 2007 at 18:14

How are you going to fit 8Gb's of ram on that motherboard?

Dureth · 20 May 2007 at 18:17

Jimmy1983 said:
How are you going to fit 8Gb's of ram on that motherboard?

He can do it, hes buying 4x2GB sticks.

Ninja Edit: I wouldn't trust my OS to the RAM drive as the second you have any sort of power cut you will need to re-install everything. Even if you take an image of the drive and place it on the hard drive thats going to be a major pain in the arse should you not have updated the image file recently.

Also I doubt very much that you will be able to fit your main game on a RAM drive and still have 2GB+ left for the OS and processes. Most games that would have a long load time would also have an install size far in excess of 4GB. Heck they normally take that much up on DVD comrpessed.

Jimmy1983 · 20 May 2007 at 18:26

Dureth said:
He can do it, hes buying 4x2GB sticks.

Ninja Edit: I wouldn't trust my OS to the RAM drive as the second you have any sort of power cut you will need to re-install everything. Even if you take an image of the drive and place it on the hard drive thats going to be a major pain in the arse should you not have updated the image file recently.

Also I doubt very much that you will be able to fit your main game on a RAM drive and still have 2GB+ left for the OS and processes. Most games that would have a long load time would also have an install size far in excess of 4GB. Heck they normally take that much up on DVD comrpessed.

Sorry didnt even know that there are 2Gb sticks on sale! :eek:

Nelly · 20 May 2007 at 18:30

I would change the motherboard to a P35 chipset board, people are clocking the Asus P5K Deluxe with E6600's at virtualy stock volts to 3.6ghz & apparently ram can be clocked at lower volts compared to the out of date P965 / 680i / 975x / 650i chipset boards. . .

Well Splattered · 20 May 2007 at 18:47

Thanks for responses, I have done a quick PSU wattage calculation from a website tool - sadly i cannot link but google is your friend

I need 810watts for everything!

I understand using I-Ram for the OS will be risky. As I understand it, a normal XP standard install with all updates weighs in at about 3gb before any additional packages are installed. Not sure what Vista 64 uses, but I am expecting less than 6gb. Still using google to confirm! Thankfully the I-ram has battery backup and a PCI feed so unless the machine is unplugged for several hours I should not lose the OS to powerfailure.

The RAMDRIVE would be for COH, this would be lost if the machine is switched off, but hopefully a mountable ISO or image will help with this. Otherwise Suspend is my favourite feature! Again 6gb is my limit for the RAMDRIVE and currently COH and other games I play fit

*Just*.

No idea on which PSU to get, been looking at the PC Power and Cooling 750 Noise taker series.

So far I have seen load times decrease by half on COH on one Iram on the current setup. View this thread.

Replies have me thinking of future proofing. 8Gb may not be enough for long!

Well Splattered · 20 May 2007 at 18:50

Nelly said:
I would change the motherboard to a P35 chipset board, people are clocking the Asus P5K Deluxe with E6600's at virtualy stock volts to 3.6ghz & apparently ram can be clocked at lower volts compared to the out of date P965 / 680i / 975x / 650i chipset boards. . .

I considered this, but I need 2 Pci slots with space below them for I-RAM and 1 Pci slot for my sound card. I also need 4x SATA300 capable of RAID0, but not Nforce as that chipset is unreliable in RAID with the I-RAM.

Its been tough!

*Chris · 20 May 2007 at 18:59

I would change the Q6600 to an E6600 for now.

It will do you fine at least until intel's price reductions (where you could then buy a Q6600 as well basically without losing any money) and will overclock much better to perform much better in most applications (unless you really need quad core now, in which case i apologise

)