OK Guys

I need a new PC as my trusty old P4 1.6 has seen better days.

SO

I think after discussions with Alan (Sierra) I want the following:

Gigabyte P35-DS3P
Intel E6750
nVidia 8600GT 512

Now my questions:
What ram do I want. The CPU has a bus speed of 1333 and the motherboard apparently can support DDR2 ram at that speed also. But I can't find DDR2 @ 1333 even though I can find articles on it. But I'm pretty sure PCs benefit greatly from a 1:1 ratio for memory and bus speed so how do achive this? this may sound a bit naive but if I run 2 sticks of DDR2 667 ram in dual channel mode does this give me the memory speed I require or am I barking up the wrong tree?

My next question is Vista. What should I get? I'm leaning towards Vista Home Premium 64? is that right for me?

Help appreciated

Cheers,
Kirk

sounds like a good base for things

just quick thing.....peripherals/case/psu all taken care of already???

vista......mm....sorry cant help you there.

to make use of a full 4gig of RAM you'll need a 64bit OS yes, but as far as differentiating between the versions, not a clue lol. I have business because its what i can get through uni, and its fine. (???)

RAM.

yes.......DDR2 667 is good for you for 1333.....both the 6750 and DS3P will like it.

setup the System Memory Multiplyer to 2.00x, incase it isnt standard. (cant remember sorry)....and the stock speed of the RAM should be 667.

(go go google search button.......im not too sure on this myself,reading through it now....certainly seems like you're on the right track)

so in summation....yes...

buuuudget?

u could go for some nice Crucial ram and clock it....though.....seems that people've seen improvements by underclocking RAM to run slower.

mmmm....yeh...hope that sorta helped...?

Yeah ... good on ya Kirk .... tell everyone I put you up to it ....

I don't know why you need an upgrade since you are running a P4 1.6 .... it's much faster than my P3 1.0 ....


Regarding your memory question ....
As Enzo pointed out DDR2 667 is the ram you would use in your situation .... as you said, you won't be doing any over clocking with it.

DDR (Dual Data Rate) ram natively runs at half the FSB (Front Side Bus) speed. This is because for each clock cycle of the FSB
the ram can access data from 2 individual memory locations at the same time, hence it only needs to run at half the bus speed.


Regarding Vista 64 .... Hmmm .... I dunno .... you might have to research that one Kirk.
Perhaps the video encoding you want to do may benefit from the 64 bit version .... providing the encoding software is designed for it.

What's the price difference between the two?


PS - I still haven't found a case I like yet for my new PC .... without going into a $300~400 price range
Damn it .... this is the hardest component for me to decide on

the metallic/reflective P182

Thanks guys

Enzo I suggested the P182SE also. Its awesome. I have a P180 I'd upgrade to the P182 but I just dont think I really need two super quiet (and heavy!) cases.
Im going to use the P180 and the old PC I'll chuck in an old case and do something with it.

Budget I'm looking to spend around the 2k mark and by the time I use these components and setup a raid config (per my other thread) I should be just a smidge over my budget which is fine.

64bit vista is the same price as 32bit. With a retail box you get both versions if you buy oem you have to pay postage to get a 64bit setup disk sent to you - you use the same CD key.

I'll research a bit more into Vista and then I think I'm gunna go shopping!

Edit: Enzo Personally I think the P182 is a better case - it wont show up finger prints as much

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...ons/choose.mspx

Well according to this Windows Home Premium does everything that I want out of vista bar one thing - Remote Desktop connection. I dont use it a lot, but I do use it to log onto PCs at work when I'm sick or after hours if I think of something that needs to be done (ie I can send a fax from my work PC to get steel quotes @ 10pm - something I dont do a lot, but something that I have used in the past and has saved my hide more than once).

So do I spend an extra $100 to get ultimate or do I look to other avenues for logging into my PC at work? Whats PC anywhere worth these days?

I can't answer any of the other questions you have lol, but in regards to the remote login, we use a program/service called Logmein. Apparently you can set it up for free as well to remote access, not sure if it will give you all the features you need. But you can have it set up on as many pc's as you want, and is simple to use. Might be worth looking into.

bit of research suggests to me that ultimate is worth the extra $100

The 182 is a nice case ..... looks very well built from the pics on the web. But I've not seen a picture of it with the door open yet.

It's on my short list for sure but as you say Kirk .... the SE would be hard to keep clean.

I would really prefer a case without a door over the front .... that looks good .... and has a perspex side.
So far I haven't found one that I like ... I wouldn't have thought it would be this hard


When you used to use Remote Desktop connection with XP from home to work ..... how did you get a secure connection back to your work PC before using Remote Desktop ..... VPN?

Kirk, If Home premium only supports up to 4Gb of RAM then pay the extra $100.
Within 3 yrs we'll all be using 16gigs of RAM



oops sorry my BAD, anyway you get my jist.

Guys I just dropped about $700 on an 8 port PCI-x SATA II raid card from 3ware (thanks for the tip alan - after a bit of research I found out why the 3ware is worth the coin)

Now is it practical to have 4 x 750gig drives in raid0 and another 4 in raid1 (ie a raid10 or raid 1+0) mirroring the first 4 and partitioning these as a smallish "drive" for OS and and the rest as storage or would i be better to have 6 750s in raid 10 and 2 smaller drives in raid 0? Obviously with the first scenario there is more HDD space available - but what about speed wise?

Jeezuz Kirk .... you buy a card like that and you're not going to run RAID 5!?! .... OK .... I'm going to have to slap you now!


This is the config I would run ....

1) Use 2 small hard drives (160 Gb are cheap) and configure them in RAID 1 (Mirror) This will be where you install window onto, the 2 mirrored drives will be for the operating system only.

2) Use the rest of your drives (however many you want) and configure them into RAID 5 .... this will then be your data array where you store everything else.
You will loose the equivalent capacity of one disk to parity in a RAID 5 configuration.

Congrats on the card though .... I'm jealous ....

Get some 1066 ram if ya can, allow you to clock it to over 3.6ghz

800 at the minimum. Decent cooler Tuniq, Ultra extreme etc.

If your doing alot of Cad stuff I would definetly look at atleast a 8800GTS 640 & quadcore. Nothing worse than a laggy graphics box your working on day in day out.

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/index.php - good resource, massive forum.
www.pccasegear.com - coolers/fans etc

Definately not over clocking Drifte.au and not doing CAD work. If i was doing CAD work i'd be building a far different system thats for sure. These days I have no use for CAD as I'm no longer working as a drafty - not i just employ draftys

This PC will basically be used as a file server / media storage (using something like this : http://www.sarotech.com/english/product/dvp-570s.html as the media player - only i think im going to wait till they come out with one that is HDMI 1.3 before buying one of these) and basic web browsing and photo storage (ive got around 7,000 photos I've taken over the last 4 years) and playback and I'll possibly buy an epson or cannon photo printer and setup a CIS system - but i dont know cause photo printing at a photo lab is so cheap these days.

Alan the only thing that puts me off raid 5 is that I've heard a few reports of raid 5 failing to rebuild on SATA drives.
Also for the OS I think I'd rather run that in raid 0 than raid 1 - not like it really matters if the OS craps I can always reinstall it, and the additional speed would be nice

That's why you just forked out the big bucks for this card Kirk .... so that it WILL work!

However I would still suggest you test for disaster recovery to confirm the RAID 5 works as it should.
I would recommend this be standard procedure with any fault tolerance .... test it first before "going live" with data.


I doubt that striping your windows disks would have a big increase in performance seeing that the bulk of your read/writes will be done to your RAID 5 array.

Yeah Im still dodgy on it. "rebuilding" data... whats missing? I think I'm going to stick with Raid1+0 at this stage Im still going to have 3-4Tb and I dont think i need 5.25 - 7tb which is what id get using 750g - 1TB drives

But now my next question Seagate or WD? Are the new WD proper SATA or are they still the PATA driver with a SATA retrofit?
I like Seagate but recently I've had a few just drop out partitions etc which is a bit worrying.

I don't think it'll make a huge difference really between WD and Seagate. I know we only sell the Seagate nearline series in all of our machines (for the past year or so roughly) because they are built for servers to run 24/7, so hopefully they are a bit more reliable.

Though the WD Caviar RE's are apparently "optimised for raid" whatever that means.

I'd go seagate, but that's more a personal preference, we've still had seagates drop, but out of the dozens to hundreds of the nearlines we've put in systems maybe only 1 or 2 so far have had any issues (if any at all)

yeh umm...WD

lol.....its the most bullcrap argument........as contested than Ford vs Holden....though probably not nearly as physicially and moronically

as louie mentioned, there're the server drives you can get which're fairly exy, but yeh, built to run 24/7

again, as said......personal preference

i've had a bad run with seagate.....so yeh, for me its WD

well that sells me

The WDs are slightly cheaper and are available from msy in a 1tb disc where as the seagates are not.

Do I smell chicken?


As the other guy's have mentioned .... it just comes down to personal preference as to which brand of hard drive to buy.
They are pretty well much of a muchness as far as reliability goes.
With MTBF quoted by both WD & Seagate of over 1,200,000 hours .... that's a lot of years of continuous running

It's just luck of the draw if you happen to get a dud one.

As an example .... last week at work I had a disk fail on a HP server (RAID 5 array) .... the replacement drive that was shipped out to me was DOA .... so they had to ship me out a second one.
What are the odds of that .... 2 dead drives in one day.

On the other hand I have an 80 Gb WD in my current old PC that is over 5 years old and has never missed a beat

hahaha kirkles is scaredy of Raid5 lol

dooo eeeet it's well worth it. in 0+1 you lose 50% of capacity. in raid5 (4 discs) you only lose 25%, so 3TB vs. 2TB I know what I'd choose. and rebuilding a drive is as easy as swapping out the dud one, and controller does the rest.

oh, and if you have lots of ram, you can make a 'ram drive' as swap space - that's just waaaay too fast.

one more thing, if you run 32Bit windows, then you're limited to 4GB ram total, including the graphics card, so if you have a 512MB graphics, only 3.5 left for ram. OTOH, 64bit windoze has allowed "petabytes" of ram or something silly like that.

I'd go WD only because they have a lower failure rate ( as I have been told ).



Hmm, I didn't know that included the GPU. 64bit ftw then

Yeah I knew that the memory addressing issue affected the GFX memory. 64bit FTW just a bit pissy that my Lexmark x215 doesnt have a 64 bit driver (ive even emailed and called their support - they dont plan on bringing a driver out as the machine was superceeded 2 years ago. Spewing as its a good machine for our use at home and weve only had it 3 years, its only on its second toner cartridge)

So raid 5 means 5.25TB of storage or 7TB depending on if I use 1Tb drives or 750 gig drives.... It is tempting

As for RAM drives try this on for size http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Storag...?ProductID=2180 I've got a friend of mine thinking about using a few of these in raid 0 for his PC so i'll see how it goes before I take the plunge - but should be interesting

^^^^^^^

Alan,

I've been thinking about this a bit.

Currently I only need about 700gig of storage but I forsee in the future that I will need a LOT more hence going raid etc.

Can I cheap out and buy 160gig drives now (7 x 160 = 1.12Tb) as they are $62 a piece which is under $500 for the 8 drives required. And then add in larger discs later when I have the coin or am I better to wait till I have the $ behind me and just drop the $1600 its going to cost me for 8 x 750 gig drives?

Im lead to believe that I can use the 160 drives then at a later date swap out the drives individually and let the raid array rebuild it self each time then use M$ diskpart to change the size of the partition?
Or am I playing with fire

I don't think you can re-size a raid array on the fly.

better to make one now, and another later, then JBOD the two arrays once you fill up the first one

my Raid 5 consists of 6x 18GB UW SCSI drives - still only 1/2 full.

You are playing with fire Kirk .... generally what you are suggesting won't work as you think.

If you had an array made up of 160Gb drives and were to replace one of those with a 750Gb drive, the array would rebuild yes.
However it would only rebuild using 160Gb of the 750Gb drive and leave the rest as free space. The array will rebuild using the original amount of disk space only.
Partitioning software will only see the size of the logical drive of the disk array, not the physical size of the disks that make up the array or the free space created by the bigger disks.

What about this option instead? (check your 3Ware documentation to see if you can do it with the model you've got)
Create a Raid 5 array using 3 or 4 750Gb disks for a start. (3 disks is minimum)
You should then be able to add additional 750Gb disks to the array over time to increase it's size as you go ..... all the way up to your 8 disk limit.
This is the normal method of increasing Raid 5 disk capacity (as long as your card supports it)

Some of the high end 3Ware cards will let you change raid configurations on the fly without data loss, in any case read your documentation very carefully to fully understand what your card can and can't do.

Other than that .... save up for all your 750Gb drives at once.

Cool Think I'll take that option.
The card I've got is a 3ware 9650SE-8LPML.

I thought with something like partition magic or diskpart I could change/increase the size of the logical drive as long as it wasnt supporting the OS and I wasnt decreaseing the size and I had at least 10% free space.

I think adding drives is going to be the best choice for me though now I think about it.

Simon I'm jelous of your SCSI drives.

Well Ive decided to save for all the drives at once.

I've done a bit of research and I think I'd preffer to play it safe when talking about the amount of time and dollars im looking to invest here.

I need to buy a few other things first so this is getting pushed down the priority list any way (I need a new 42" 1080P plasma for a start )


I might actually buy the drives over a period (ie i mnight buy a couple next week ) that way hopefully I will get drives from different batches I'm tossing up wether to go raid 5 or raid 6 now...

Nerds!

I've got Raid 2 in 1, indoor and outdoor.

Seriously i have no idea what any of you have said!

^^^^^^
LOL @ Trav

Wouldn't worry too much about the 1TB Western Digital drives if i were you... they are designed to be efficient and economical rather then fast, and IMO are just too damn slow. The WD7500AAKS 750GB drives are a hell of a lot faster, and even beats the Raptor X (10.000rpm) in some tests.

If you are after a drive that is quiet, and with low power consumption then the 1TB models are great - but for pure performance they are a tad sucky.

Also wouldn't go for the E6750 Processor either...the new Core 2 Duo's are now out (6mb cache, .45 micron) and the 3.0Ghz model (E8400) costs around the same as the 6750, but is actually faster then the old E6850. As long as you get a board that supports the new processors, you'd be crazy to go for the older series!

Also how much gaming do you intend to do? The newish 8800GT is a bloody fast card for the money...they can be found for around $300-$350 and provide roughly 90% of the performance of an 8800GTX, yet they use far less power (thanks to them now being .65 micron from memory). They are however, PCI Express 2.0, meaning you may need a PCI-E 2.0 motherboard to run it (or run it to full potential). I know the newer ATI X38 boards support PCI-E 2.0, as well as the new Nvidia 780i chipset, but the X35's and older Nvidia 680i's don't (have out of the box support typically. If you aren't a very hardcore gamer it may not be necessary, but if you plan to play future games like Crysis you'd be wanting two of those babies in SLI. Even my 8800GTX struggles with that game at 1920x1200 with everything maxed out.

When looking at boards one other thing to consider one thing - the ATi boards have a reputation for being a little more stable, however if you go for a Crossfire model you may be wasting your money. You cannot run Nvidia card's in SLI on an ATI crossfire board (crossfire is ATI's equivalent of SLI, but supports ATI cards only). If you intend on running SLI, you will need an Nvidia chipset..if you don't then it's not really a problem as you don't mind having an extra PCI-E port sitting around doing nothing.

Finally, if you don't plan on overclocking it may be a waste of time for you to buy the faster clocked memory. You can save yourself a ton of money by going for some low latency DDRII-800 memory such as the Corsair TwinX and Geil Ultra models. The Geil Ultra stuff is dead cheap, has 4-4-4-12 timing, is lovingly reliable and comes with a sexy metallic orange heat spreader! 2GB should really do you fine. From tests i've seen, very few applications are able to benefit from 4GB ram over 2GB, so while it's always tempting to follow the 'more is better' principle, the extra cash may be better spent elsewhere in the system (unless money is not a factor, then by all means go for it!).

I'll second the recommendations for the P182 case as well - just consider you'll need to add a seperate power supply as well, as they don't come with one. I run the P190..it's basically an eATX version of the P182, but with twin Power Supplies provided. Aside from the lack of power supply and standard ATX form factor, the two cases are almost identical. Heavy cases, but very very nice...also extremely quiet, with fan speed adjustment, sound deadened panels and one of the easiest to use layouts I've seen. Plus, it's from Antec who pretty much never release a bad product !

Oh final thing, I'd probably avoid 64 bit Windows also. Although it has some advantages, compatability is still not 100%, and there are plenty of reports of stability issues as well. On top of this, you'll only gain significant benefit from applications that are written to take advantage of 64bit processing. Some are, but most aren't.

Bugger... if you were in NSW I could have fixed up a good deal for you

You may be better off going for an LCD in that size - I may be wrong but it's my understanding that Plasma's typically don't really hit 1080P until you get into the larger sizes (42" is pretty much entry point for a plasma). That said, I may be wrong as I typically deal in TV's much - I spend most of my time in IT / Audio / GPS / MP3.

One thing I do know though, is that the LA40M81 Samsung panels are bloody good buy, especially after the somewhat recent price drops

Thanks Muzzy,

Not interested in speed really so the 1TB drives should be fine.

As for TVs Plasmas start at 37" though in Australia we really dont see them till 42"
Mum and dad have a 42" LCD 1080i and I really dont like it. the colors are un natural and the ghosting sucks. Dont get me wrong its still good and its a good LCD as far as LCDs go but for the coin I'd prefer to go Plasma
I know when I get it home the difference between plasma and LCD I wont be able to pick BUT it will still play on my concience that I didnt get the best that I could afford.
At this stage even that has been put on hold though cause missy wanted a new bed - and a King sized bed at that so thats all new manchester and everything so she has to deal with a small TV for a while So i might hold off an extra couple of weeks and just bite the bullet and get a 50"+ plasma ...

Why not

One friend of mine has one of the older series 50" Pioneer Plasmas and I have to says it does look pretty damn brilliant!!

That said my brother has the 40" 1080P Samsung running his PC in his bedroom, and that looks pretty damn amazing as well.

It's pretty much one of those lovely big debates that will always keep turning until the end of time (or end of the technology). 80% of people I speak to these days prefer the look of a good 1080P LCD over a Plasma because they tend to look smoother and less grainy...I'm not sure though. Sometimes I feel the LCD's almost look a little too good to the point where I feel the Plasma's kinda look a little more natural.

Regardless of which way you go, you really can't go wrong as long as you get a good one. The main drawbacks of Plastma is that they have lower resolutions, are more expensive to run, have potential for screen burn, get a lot hotter (can be a problem in a small room) and also cost a lot more to repair if something goes wrong (hence why we change about $150 for an extended warranty for an LCD and about $450 for an equivalent plasma).

On the other end of the equation, LCD's can get dead pixels, can't produce a true black (because they are backlit, some degree of light always comes through) and have lower refresh rates which can lead to ghosting (generally non-existent in the better panels these days).

Downside is that once you go beyond 42" LCD's start getting very expensive, wheras even a 50" Plasma can be had for a pretty reasonable price these days.

So yah, one way or the other if you get a good one, chances are you'll be happy

Thanks for the tips Muzz. Might hit you up via PM for a bit of advice when the time comes to go shopping.

Cheers,
Kirk

You need to check out the Sony Bravia b4 you make that descision m8, best picture I've seen to date, no ghosting.
And if you get in b4 the 28/02/08 you'll get a PS3 thrown in FREE.

Yeah but being a Sony you pay through the nose.

My experiance with Sony home gear is less than pleasurable

Granted, I would never buy anything Sony apart from Televisions.
They are apparently the best at LCD in that price bracket (this argument has been played out on another forum )
Have you compared current costs Kirk? , The bravia is not all that expensive compared with the competition LCD's

In all honestlu I havent paid a great deal of attention to the LCD prices

42" plasma is about 3k AFAIK the sony bravia LCD is about $3500

We can help you there, i know a guy who knows a guy

I have to say, the new Full HD Bravia's do have a bloody good reputation. Even the previous X series was pretty damn nice, and the new ones seem like a significant improvement again.

If i were getting an LCD and wasn't feeling too tight, it'd be my choice. On a budget, I'd go the Samsung LA40M80, as they pretty much halved in price since I got my bro his one

Another vote for the Bravia here Kirk .... our little baby 32" is absolutely stunning.
Was walking through Harvey Norman on sunday and had a quick look at the big Bravia LCD's .... beautiful display .... razor sharp, vivid natural colors .... same as ours .... only BIGGER

Anyway .... all this domestic homemaker $hit is distracting you from your PC .... get your priorities right!

.... Damn .... the next thing you'll be getting engaged .....

At this rate you'll get your PC going before mine ..... damn car rego has just arrived

hmm yeh......i've started thinking about TVs as well actually....ah well....other things first i guess

just poppin in to see progress

*signing off from some dodgy "20mins for $2" internet computer at my hotel in caloundra (checkin uni sign-ons)*

dropped into a store today and compared the Panasonic and Pioneer Plasmas to the Bravia LCD and Im sorry to say but im not conviced that the bravia has anything on the Plasmas. Bang for buck I just dont seem to be able to get past the Pana even if the pioneer is a tiny bit better...

and little d!ck I know I need to speak to you to line me up with that guy we both know to do a good deal. You & Emma still looking at a 50" panel?