New computer coming...

Ciaran · Apr 4, 2005

DHS said:
www.newegg.com is saweeeeet

i decided i needed a new PC. and a new Network setup

so ordered up,
MB ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo
Geforce 6800GT Pci-express vga
AMD 64 3500+ ATHLON 64
1gig 3200 DDR ( have 2 sticks of 512 already, so 2gigs of ram would be nice)
the new Plextor SATA 16xDVDRW
a nice new box that is meant for the SLI board, temp gauges and such
and a linksys router to hook up the other computers.

should be very nice, i have a 19" flat panel lcd here and some keyboards and such to choose from. love building em myself. its what i do for a living so why not splurge on myself for that.

anyone else have a SLI board already too?

Excellent! I don;t have any experience with that particular board but Asus does make some pretty nice mobos. Any particular plans for it, or is this your main, do it all PC? 19 inch flat panel sounds awsome too. Lots of desktop real estate. (I run dual 17's)
Muscle cars for geeks. Gotta love it! :thumb:

SkaredShtles · Apr 4, 2005

DHS said:
www.newegg.com is saweeeeet

i decided i needed a new PC. and a new Network setup

so ordered up,
MB ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo
Geforce 6800GT Pci-express vga
AMD 64 3500+ ATHLON 64
1gig 3200 DDR ( have 2 sticks of 512 already, so 2gigs of ram would be nice)
the new Plextor SATA 16xDVDRW
a nice new box that is meant for the SLI board, temp gauges and such
and a linksys router to hook up the other computers.
<snip>

Wow - I work in the computer biz and have NO idea what all that stuff is................. :dead:

-S.S.-

Ciaran · Apr 4, 2005

SkaredShtles said:
Wow - I work in the computer biz and have NO idea what all that stuff is.................

-S.S.-

You must be a programmer.

SkaredShtles · Apr 4, 2005

Ciaran said:
You must be a programmer.

Nope. Unix admin.

-S.S.-

Discostu · Apr 4, 2005

DHS said:
running Quake 2 and Unreal at the highest settings possible
this will mostly be used for games.

Are you joking????? You got a 6800GT plus an SLI mobo, for Quake 2 and Unreal? You could get a $50 card that could run those games at max quality. The only games that can use that much power are far cry, Half Life 2 and Doom 3. Otherwise its a waste of ~$350.

-dustin · Apr 4, 2005

i really need to learn how to build computers

narlus · Apr 4, 2005

just saw they sell external enclosures w/ USB2.0 and FireWire...so you can take an internal hard drive and then use it externally? any geeks w/ comments on this? currently i've got a 300GB external drive (Maxtor) but redundancy is a big concern right now...i was thinking of buying another one just to back the data up (music and pictuers, but i've backed all the photos to DVD so it's mainly music) because i've been ripping cds and fixing mp3 tags for months, and while i've got all the originals still it woudl be a major pain in the ass to have to do it all over again.

if i were to get an external enclosure, i could pop a drive in, back it up, then put another one and use that for new storage, etc. is that a decent plan?

JRB · Apr 4, 2005

SkaredShtles said:
Nope. Unix admin.

-S.S.-

nerd....

rvlacich · Apr 4, 2005

Sounds like a sweet setup. This summer I'll be building a new box as well.
I was considering the A8N-SLI and dual 6600GTs, but I've decided that I'll probably save a bit of cash and go with a non-SLI board and a single 6800GT. I've heard too many horror stories about people who drop the cash for SLI but couldn't set it up to work with their games. I'm probably also going to cut corners and go with a 3000 or a 3200.

What power supply did you choose?

Ciaran · Apr 4, 2005

narlus said:
just ... <snip>... if i were to get an external enclosure, i could pop a drive in, back it up, then put another one and use that for new storage, etc. is that a decent plan?

If you are worried about storage back ups you might try a low level RAID setup. I run RAID 1 which is two hard drives that are mirror images of each other. The PC shows them to you as one drive. So when you write to it, it writes on both drives. I originally got it to store my MP3's but have since built a file server with this setup and all data is stored there. No need to worry about making regular back ups, no buying and burning 100 CD's. If a drive fails I put in a new drive and the array rebuilds itself. It really is the way to go if you have data that you regularly back up because of changes (adding or removing files).

Discostu said:
Are you joking????? You got a 6800GT plus an SLI mobo, for Quake 2 and Unreal? You could get a $50 card that could run those games at max quality. The only games that can use that much power are far cry, Half Life 2 and Doom 3. Otherwise its a waste of ~$350.

Yeah, and like any of us really need that 5000.00 dollar bike to ride. Or a Porsche to go back and forth to work. It's not about being practicle, it's about having fun toys!

SkaredShtles · Apr 4, 2005

loco said:
nerd....

You ain't jokin', Tex.

My home "PC" doesn't even have an IDE drive in it. They're all SCSI.

-S.S.-

narlus · Apr 4, 2005

the RAID setup sounds good, but i'd need a very large one (i'm at around 250 GB now, and could realistically add another 100GB). what would you recommend?

Discostu · Apr 4, 2005

Ciaran said:
Yeah, and like any of us really need that 5000.00 dollar bike to ride. Or a Porsche to go back and forth to work. It's not about being practicle, it's about having fun toys!

Ha, yeah I suppose you're right, I can't really justify my Turner DHR by my own logic.

Q3 will be sweet at 430 FPS. You should really check out some of the newer games that take advantage of that graphics card though, they're pretty incredible.

Ciaran · Apr 4, 2005

narlus said:
the RAID setup sounds good, but i'd need a very large one (i'm at around 250 GB now, and could realistically add another 100GB). what would you recommend?

Either multiple arrays, or RAID 5, which is multiple disks with part of the info written to each drive. Check out this web page... http://www.acnc.com/raid.html It has a great description of the various RAID levels, with illustrations that kind of draw it out for you.

If it was me I would use multiple arrays with one dedicated to music using very big drives. When you start getting into the 250+ gig range you are talking about some serious storage. With RAID 1 (mirroring) you are limited by the max size drive you can find. beyond that you need to look at the other RAID levels that can take 3 250 gig drives and give you 500+ gigs available. With most RAID systems you will "lose" a drive or two to back up space. (Fault tolerance). With that much music I would at least get a RAID 1 set up going so it's all backed up. I had a boss once who loved his MP3's... had 50 gigs or so... then one day is drive stopped responding. It turned out that the heads took a dive into the platters. Data recovery places quoted him 1500 - 2000 to recover the info... how much is your music collection worth to you? I would hate to see you lose all that music, man... 250 gigs! Dang! I think I need to send you a hard drive...

Hope this helps a bit. I've had a few Guinness tonight and lose my train of thought easily.

merrrrjig · Apr 4, 2005

siiiiiick!

binary visions · Apr 5, 2005

The RAID arrays are most useful for a constantly changing environment. Frankly, for MP3's, the complexity and cost in hardware is not even close to worth it (IMO). You take a hit in disk thoroughput (obviously, since it has to write the data in multiple places), and do you really need every new MP3 you download to be backed up as soon as you get it? If you lose a couple dozen songs out of your 250+ gb collection, are you even going to notice that they're gone?

Realistically, a couple of external drives is your simplest option. No new hardware, no new software, just plug the drive in, drag everything onto it, and walk away from your computer. RAID is great for geeks who like toys (I will absolutely have a RAID setup on my next computer), but external drives are simple and straightfoward.

binary visions · Apr 5, 2005

DHS said:
have 4 Hard drives =800gigs. altogether theres like 30gigs left. i need more room

Jesus.

I bet that takes a while to defrag

Ciaran · Apr 5, 2005

binary visions said:
The RAID arrays are most useful for a constantly changing environment. Frankly, for MP3's, the complexity and cost in hardware is not even close to worth it (IMO). You take a hit in disk thoroughput (obviously, since it has to write the data in multiple places), and do you really need every new MP3 you download to be backed up as soon as you get it? If you lose a couple dozen songs out of your 250+ gb collection, are you even going to notice that they're gone?

Realistically, a couple of external drives is your simplest option. No new hardware, no new software, just plug the drive in, drag everything onto it, and walk away from your computer. RAID is great for geeks who like toys (I will absolutely have a RAID setup on my next computer), but external drives are simple and straightfoward.

Personally, while I acknowledge that BV really knows his stuff (geek!) I would disagree that RAID arrays are mainly for geeks. I think that in the old days when you had to buy a RAID card and really know how to set up the array it was more geeky. But nowadays there are many mobos with RAID 0 and 1 built in with simple software that makes building the array easy. Also, depending on the level you use, and with todays hardware there is no noticable loss of throughput.

With RAID 1 (mirroring) you use 2 discs. How is that different than using an external drive as a back up? You still have two drives that are basically mirror images of each other. With the RAID, the drive is in my case, not on my desk taking up space with more cables. And I don't have to worry about making regular back ups. As soon as I write to the array, it's backed up!

IMO RAID 1 is the simplist way to go. But to each their own. Go with whatever is best for you, but make sure you back up that music!
Edit: 800 gigs may go beyond mirroring! That's a TON of stuff! :thumb:

narlus · Apr 5, 2005

sounds like i will wait until i build my system to go RAID (which does sound like a good idea). for the time being, i'll probably just bite the bullet and buy an external drive(s), back up everything, and be done w/ it.

binary visions · Apr 5, 2005

Ciaran said:
But nowadays there are many mobos with RAID 0 and 1 built in with simple software that makes building the array easy.

Good point.

Also, depending on the level you use, and with todays hardware there is no noticable loss of throughput.

"Noticable" being the key word there, and very relative. If you typically push the limits of your hardware, it's still gotta write the data twice. A normal user won't notice a thing, though.

I still hold that an external drive is the easiest option, though, for most users. It doesn't require the user to open their computer (which is very intimidating for many people), and you can use the external drive for multiple uses - bring it to your friend's house, use it for transfer of data between computers, have a selective backup for, say, just music, back up more than one computer on the same drive, etc.

DHS, if you end up with a terabyte, self-cooled backup unit, please post pictures

binary visions · Apr 5, 2005

DHS said:
why, OS X on the mac requires no defragging.

That's just incorrect, and I've talked to some very knowledgeable people that are under the delusion that Windows XP doesn't fragment drives either.

You know what causes a drive to be fragmented, right? The basic physical workings of a hard drive, by nature, cause fragmentation. The only way to avoid this is to have a program that's constantly sucking CPU cycles and disk write times to provide real-time defragmentation. That would be a huge processing drain.

Here's a good discussion on mac defragmentation programs: http://tinyurl.com/6n3sj

Here's a quote:

MicroMat Tech3 said:
The claim that installations of Mac OS X on HFS+ volumes do not fragment is a myth believed by people who do not have disk optimizers that allow them to see how much fragmentation their disks have. It is an example of ignorance that is not able to be removed by any amount of evidence. I think theologians call that invincible ignorance. It is now a widespread form of the pollution of information space.

qualude · Apr 5, 2005

You know RAID is definitely a bonus if you are doing things that are disk intensive. If you morrior, you can run off of your 2nd drive, while you replace the first. Also, SATA's are hot-swappable, which is a nice bonus. After losing approximately 80 gigs of photos, I went to a RAID1 setup, instead of RAID0, and used 2 Maxtor 160GB 7200 RPM SATA drives. I have tried hot swapping just for fun, and it works incredibly well, and is pretty easy. Not to mention, faster than writing all my data back from a USB 2.0 external.

binary visions · Apr 5, 2005

DHS said:
yup and have most of the programs
they still say that my harddrives only have like 2-3 files fragmented and its alsways 1-1.9% fragmented. no point. most the time just defrag the free space. but there never is any so ya.

Right, but with a small amount of gigantic files that you don't move around a lot - high resolution video files - it won't fragment much. It has nothing to do with OS-X, though, it just has to do with fact that the way you use your drives doesn't cause a lot of fragmentation.

It's kinda like saying that you don't have to change your fork oil because you run a Fox Vanilla, even though the real reason is that the only miles you log on it are on smooth pavement.

New computer coming...

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