I am thinking really seriously on buying a computer... but the question is should i wait a little longer... is there anything cool coming out in the next couple of months eg graphic cards or cpu? looking at getting the following:

Intel ATX E8400 CORE 2 DUO /3.0GHz/6MB/1333FSB/LGA775

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 1600MHz Dual DDR2-1200 Dual PCI Ex16 SATAII RAID PATA GLAN 1394 8Ch DTS UDES ATX

DDR2 4G(2x2G)PC8500 1066Mhz Platinum OCZ(2P10664GK)

2 x Western Digital 750G SATAII 7200 rpm HDD Raid Edition

Gigabyte GeForce NX9800GTX PCI-E 512MB 256Bit DDR3 675/2200MHz 2x Dual DVI HDTV

Pioneer DVR-215BK 20x Dual Black OEM with software- SATA

Thermaltake Xaser6 VG4000SWA Silver Sluminum case(NO PSU)

Corsair HX-620 ATX Power Supply 120mm fan Dual PCI-E Graphics Card Connector 8 SATA Connectors

Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard Refresh

Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit version(OEM)purchase with Hardware Only

What do you think??? too much? wasting?

New Comp Threat

I'm afraid of what you'll do to me if I try to help you.

Yeah looks good

You need a velociraptor for your boot drive though

What keyboard do you use? Because my t isn't next to my d

I have a G15 keyboard and find it to be too big.

You need a velociraptor for your boot drive though

i was going to do this, until computer guy at work showed me the 750g drives are just about as quick

way better to go two of em in raid

why would i need velciraptor for my boot drive...

i was just going to raid 2 drives???

I have a G15 keyboard and find it to be too big.

They have released a smaller more compact version of the G15 Keyboard with orange back lighting.

is there anything cool coming out in the next couple of months eg graphic cards or cpu

What keyboard do you use? Because my t isn't next to my d

Probably not what he was going for, but the threat of new tech coming out in a few months may have swayed his decision to wait a little longer to get better/cheaper stuff.

why would i need velciraptor for my boot drive...

access times, it's not just about how much data you can push through

ps, imo you'd be mad not to get the q6600.

1.5tb is a helluva lotta porn

I'd swap the WD with either Seagate or even Samsung (apart from being exceptionally cheap, they're quick and getting the thumbs up by a lot of people).

You can pick up a 750G Samsung for $135.

i was going to do this, until computer guy at work showed me the 750g drives are just about as quick

Depends on the use. There are still area's where it's the bee's nuts.

New Comp Threat

I'm afraid of what you'll do to me if I try to help you.

hehe, move to beige alert!

you should fix the subject typo before it gets typwned

Trog the terrorist.

I honestly believe you don't need more than 250gig of HDD space unless you're doing rendering or something equally space using. Stop being such a horder, you're not going to listen to that 80gig of music, or watch all 200gig of movies, you also don't need the ripped DVD versions of all those movies, nor are you going to play all 150gig of games, or jerk off to 1TB of tranny/einstein porn.

Is velociraptor real hardware product? I thought he was joking.

when 500gb harddrives cost like $100 why wouldn't you have more than 250gb unless you're on some crazy tight budget?

ATI's RV770s are due out in mid June and Nvidia are following close behind with the GT280 and 260s. Expect massive gains from both companies in terms of computing power, and with Nvidia - price.

Also, why do you need an X48 motherboard? You should only consider such an overpriced motherboard if you are planning on putting a QX9650 or +, CPU in your system. Otherwise just stick with a P35 or if you must an X38. If you can wait, the P45 chipsets are on the way. The P45s are upgrades to the P35 series and should be price between the P35s and the X38s.

Edit: woot! 1000+ posts of bulls***e

last edited by Lynx at 22:53:22 26/May/08

mmm thanks for that info lynx

might wait a bit for the P45 and the new graphic cards....

thanks for the advice!!

f*** waiting because if you do something better will be coming out and you'll be waiting again.

Just buy what's out now and have fun.

cant find anyone who sells velciraptor hard drives?

Reverend speaks the truth.

What sort of raid were you planning by the way? Raid 1? 1.4 tb is a little more than I would risk on a raid 0.

yeah was thinking about stripiing....

Is there a vague release date on the P45s yet?

Expected in mid-June 2008

<5 seconds

when 500gb harddrives cost like $100 why wouldn't you have more than 250gb unless you're on some crazy tight budget?

Apart from the fact that you don't need it, TiT is buying 3 times that much space.

2 x 750gig in raid0?

lol when they die.

TiT, Raid-0 isn't really worth it, you'll double your chances of your s*** failing, and the performance increases are over-rated.. Seek times up, IO's negligible, only real improvement is ATR's.

If you want your computer to feel fast, and load stuff quickly, a boot drive with awesome seek times and high transfer rates by itself will do that.

Check staticice for the velociraptor, they're due today-ish, so Umart, etc may be a few more days before they get stock.

I would recommend one of those for a boot drive, then either a single big drive, or even two big drives in RAID-1.

yeah f*** raid 0, raid 1 or raid 5 is where its at on a budget
just chuck a third drive in and raid5 them, that way you get your 1.5TB and keep some redundancy

sif greazy - 250gb is weak sauce, my main box is approaching 4TB and I'm looking to replace the 300gb's with 750GB's soon so I can double the space and get another few years out of the drives
just because you dont use more than 120gb doesn't mean the rest of us don't have legit uses for storage when its so cheap

yeah f*** raid 0, raid 1 or raid 5 is where its at on a budget

Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.

If you want your computer to feel fast, and load stuff quickly, a boot drive with awesome seek times and high transfer rates by itself will do that.

Check staticice for the velociraptor, they're due today-ish, so Umart, etc may be a few more days before they get stock.

Sorry dude... have you used Raid 0?

My two old RAID0'd Seagate 160GB drives feel mighty fast... and they're old drives.

f*** spending $350+ on a 300GB HDD! For that much, I could nearly buy 4x500GB WD HDD's

last edited by mongie at 10:21:14 29/May/08

So far, I've used/played with, in RAID-0:

2 x ST3250310NS (Standard 250GB 32mb cache 7200)

4 x ST3250310NS (Same but 4x)

2 x ST3320613AS (320GB Single platter 16mb cache)

2 x WD360ADFD (36gb Raptor)

4 x WD360ADFD (Same but 4x)

2 x WD6400AAKS (640GB on 320GB Platters)

2 x WDB800AAJS (Old school WD 80GB JS Drive)

2 x ST373455SS (Seagate 15k SAS)

2 x ST373455LW (Older Seagate 10k SCSI)

4 x ST373455LW (Same but 4x)


Now of all of the drives, SCSI aside, Raptors in a single disk configuration felt the fastest - general windows responsiveness, applications, games, etc.

I'm sure if I got the 3ware controller I want this would change, but for an onboard controller I think single disk is the go

thread hijack:
When I was talking to Dell trying to sort out my monitor issues, the chick got me to go into the setup menu before Windows loads (eg. pressing F2 when booting). I had to "load defaults", and now every time the PC boots it says system drive failure 0, then gives me the option to enter setup or continue anyway. My guess is that it's trying to boot up a non-existant disc drive? Is that right? And how do I fix it so it doesn't do it anymore?

Is it a dell pc ?

jmr... i'm impressed that you have a large Raid e-penis.

What you didn't cover was how you justify buying a $350+ 300GB HDD over a RAID solution that would be better in the long term.

You could EASILY have RAID5 for $350-400 and you get a reasonable performance gain, WAY more storage + redundancy for 1 disk failure.

I only posted what I've had experience in to show that you can't automatically assume what people have used, like you naively did.

I wouldn't call RAID-5 a performance increase necessarily, and a $300 drive is a complement to a high end system - which he is obviously chasing?

Definitely wouldn't boot off a software RAID-5 either

mine's a Dell.

Single disk ? That is definitely weird

Have a look to see if it's defaulted back to having a FDD or something like that

dont bother with the raptor, not worth it

i agree with mongie;

check toms hardware for various performance graphs to find out we're right;

Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about.

tell that to my raid controller

raid 0 on a budget = sure fire way to lose all your data
rail 1 is redundant but you only get 50% capacity
raid 5 is redundant and you get 2/3rds of your capacity (using 3 drives)

where is it that i dont know what im talking about again?

i think the cheapest and best way to go is to get a velciraptor for my bootable drive.... and just 750gb for backup, videos and music etc....

sorted!

Well, thats definatley not the cheapest way to go, but hey... your money.

If you want speed, then don't bother with Raid-1. If you want redundancy, don't bother with Raid-0.

I've had my Raid 0 setup for about 3 years and haven't had a problem. I don't see how its any different to any other system. You end up with one big drive, and if a small part of it dies, you lose it all. How often do drives die though?

even one 750g drive is as fast as the velociraptor for most things

lawl 7ms vs 13ms

yes, its better at random access times:
pretty much every other test the raptor was beaten by various drives that are cheaper and with more storage

harddrives are measured by lots of different benchmarks though eh

lots of benchmarks and random access benchmarks



last edited by Spook at 16:38:21 29/May/08

im looking for a decent keyboard now too, is this g15 any good? can anyone recommend a goodie?

If you are looking to spend all day transferring data from one drive/array to another of equal or better speed, then I would recommend RAID-0.

If you use your computer like a normal person I wouldn't

See benchmarks like workstation performance and windows xp startup performance.

Even Fileserver benchmarks would be a better indication of typical performance and speed feel.


last edited by jmr at 16:40:23 29/May/08

Disclaimer: I didn't read through the whole thread so excuse me if I'm a couple of pages late.

Velociraptor is overkill. Unless you do a lot of hard drive intensive work like CAD or video editing or host a heavy-traffic server. 5 seconds faster loading time on OS. Great! $92 more and 600GB less capacity. Not so great. The Velociraptor has one of the worst GB/$ ratios. It was designed for ultra-enthusiasts with money to burn seeking to milk out every last bit of benchmark bragging rights or small businesses who don't want to fork out for a SCSI drive and card in a server. If that's you, then by all means go ahead. If not, you're better off looking at a cheaper HDD for which the performance difference you will barely notice in real world performance.

this is probably worth a read when factoring in the above advice also:

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Western_Digital_Caviar_RE2_750_GB_/

^ That drive does look good spooky

I will call you with this article and this thread.

velciraptor are much faster then the normal raptors... they acutally 2.5" hard drive

s*** hey;

i aint seen 2.5" harddrives in desktops before;

Velociraptor is overkill. Unless you do a lot of hard drive intensive work like CAD or video editing or host a heavy-traffic server. 5 seconds faster loading time on OS. Great! $92 more and 600GB less capacity. Not so great. The Velociraptor has one of the worst GB/$ ratios. It was designed for ultra-enthusiasts with money to burn seeking to milk out every last bit of benchmark bragging rights or small businesses who don't want to fork out for a SCSI drive and card in a server. If that's you, then by all means go ahead. If not, you're better off looking at a cheaper HDD for which the performance difference you will barely notice in real world performance.

QFT!!!!