New Computer (me too), (3rd try) Options

[Stahlseele]

as you probably gathered by now, cost is not of the essence right now *g*
i just bought a laptop für 800€ to tide me over for 2 to 3 months . . i figure about 1.5 to 2k € will be what i spend on the system as a whole . . RAM, CPU(s), GPU(s), PSU, Case(allready here), HDD, Optical Drive(yeah, it's probably not worth it, but i calculate 200€ for a Blue Ray Writer) and Software . .
8 Gigs of FB DDR2 will cost 400€ right about now, which is allmost as much as one Xeon Processor with 4 Cores cost some weeks ago . .
another idea . . let's say i am ready to spend about 2k nuyen . . erm €uro i mean . .
what kinda hardware would you suggest for that kinda money?
Complete Setup, without having to really look at the price, as long as it's below 2k . . no screens, only tower interior . .
and if you feel like it, would be nice to see, what you would suggest to get a really good price/performance rating too O.o
if you don't wanna have to look up €uro prices,just use $ prices and let's say 2k $ . . with todays €/$ Exchange Course, i will actually probably save money that way ^^

[bofh]

I happened on a Slashdot article on best gaming laptops and someone linked back to an earlier Slashdot article on best gaming rigs. I snagged the link and used it as a base for the $1,000 rig I put together. It's not exact because some bits seem to not be available here in the US but it still provided some good information, especially since no one's beat me up for my rig (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

http://www.gameplayer.com.au/gp_documents/...ey-Can-Buy.aspx

Carl

[Stahlseele]

Acer Aspire 5930G-584G32Mn
that's the laptop i bought to tide me over untill i can build my new gaming rig
aside from HDD Capacity, it is better than my current desktop
my current desktop has an older AMD CPU 64 the 3200+ with 2GHz Singlecore,
2 GB DDR1 RAM at i don't know what speed
1 Gainward GeForce 8800GTS with 640MB GDDR3 RAM,
1 TB HDD space on 3 IDE HDD's
1 older Plextor DVD Writer,
1 Asus A8N SLI Deluxe in the very first incarnation
1 BeQuiet 800 Wats PSU

that link looks usefull, thank you ^^
as for things not available in the US of A . . i'm in Germany, should not be too problematic ^^

[hyzmarca]

another idea . . let's say i am ready to spend about 2k nuyen . . erm �‚�uro i mean . .
what kinda hardware would you suggest for that kinda money?

Since you want a Blue Ray burner...

The case is really a matter of taste; so long as it has enough space for all of your parts, there is no problem. The only time it really matters is when you're generating a great deal of heat and need optimal airflow, in which case I'd recomend just taking a dremel to it to make space for large fans. But, realistically, thats $50-$100, paying anything more is insane.
You say you already have one, but I'm throwing the cost into my estimates anyway.

For the Power Supply, since we plan on doing some hardcore gaming, I'll recommend the Rosewill RX950-S-B 950; 4 rails, 950 Watts, and enough connectors to do anything you want at $150. It isn't a cheap power supply, but it also won't break your budget and is pretty nice.

A BD-RW/DVD-RW(DL)/DVD+RW(DL)/CD-RW will go for about 250 here.

I'd suggest a cheap 1TB Drive for about $120, you should be able to find plenty of those.

That $620, estimating high, and we're just getting started.

_And here is where we start making choices_

Branch 1) Yorkfield

For a processor, I'd go with the Q9550 at $320 and use the stock cooler
That puts us at $940

Next, we have to chose out video card and our primary hard drive.
Video cards are so close that they're more a matter of preference than anything else. Both ATI and nVidia have their up sides and their downsides. nVidia drivers currently suck with Vista, while ATI drivers currently suck with Quad Crossfire
The choice between a Crossfire compatible motherboard or an SLI compatible motherboard is essentially a bet on future driver releases. If Nvidia gets their Vista drivers together, then they'll rock. If ATI gets their Quad Crssfire drivers working then they'll rock.

The hard drive is another thing altogether. You can make due with the 1TB, but seek times will be a biach and gamers love fast hard drives. There are six (several more actually) ways to go, in addition to just using the 1TB drive. You can a) Get a cheap small 7200 RPM hard drive and use that as your primary, at 80 GB that's cost you $40. You can get two cheap small hard drives and RAID 0 them together. You can get a velociraptor at 10,00RPM, 160 GB and $160 or you can get two at twice the price, or you can got for $200 high-performance Solid State drives, which are superior to even the velociraptor but which only hold 64GB each.

Personally, I don't like RAID 0. It defeats the purpose of RAID, which is data integrity, in favor of speed. But that's a philosophical issue rather than a practical one. If you want absurdly fast hard drives, RAID 0 the SSD drives. If you want to go cheap, a couple of 80-gigers in Raid 0 will do and you won't see much difference. The only issue arises when playing MMORPGs, in which you really don't want to see loading screens for very long.



Branch) 1a The Good Drives
Since I have some overhead left, I'm going to RAID 0 together a couple of Patriot PE64GS25SSDR 64GB SSDs and choose the less power hungry and slightly less expensive GeForce GTX280 on the assumption that nvidia isn't run by total morons. My main motivation is the ability to obtain an open box version (possibly used or possibly just a display model) for $350, a great deal. You might not be so lucky.

That'll be $420 for the drives and $350 for the open box GTX280
That gives us a total so far of $1710, just enough space to sneak a motherboard and some RAM in under the wire.

The ASRock Penryn1600SLI-110dB goes for $90. It is a budget motherboard, but not a cheap motherboard.
And any one of a number of 5-5-15 2x2GB DDR2-800 RAM kits for $45

Total cost = $1845


If I were devious, of course, I might spend an extra $60 on a ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT 110mm 2 Ball Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler, underclock the RAM to 667MHz and then overclock the FSB to 1600MHz, bringing the RAM back up to 800 and the processor up to 3.4.

That'll be $1905, $2005 if you can't find a discounted open-box GTX280.


Of course, you could save 80 bucks going with Velociraptors instead of SSDs, which wouldn't be a bad idea at all. If you don't care about an extra 3-5 seconds of loading, you can shave off another $240 by just using cheap drives and you can shave another 80 off by short-stroking the 1TB drive at the cost of another 3-5 seconds of load time (On second through, forget what I said earlier and just short-stroke the 1TB - unless you're a hardcore MMORPG player it the extra drives ain't worth the cost) You also might want to get some tighter timing on your RAM, with'll cost about $40 extra

I might set out some other possible builds later, but I'm tired at the moment.

[bofh]

I'd suggest a larger primary drive if you're going that route. I had an 80 in my last box and I had to move my Home Directory off to another drive. Perhaps with better planning and less games on my C: drive it'd work out better but I hate that sort of mucking about.

One thing I haven't done is check out the system's power consumption on boot. During game play though, it just tips over 200W. That's Half-Life 2, Dead Space, or Fallout 3 so far.

Just saying.

Carl

[Wounded Ronin]

SP3 has some nice features, if you're a network administrator. If not, then there is little point to it. As long as you've kept SP2 up to date and have installed all of the security updates, you should be fine without it.

I'm not a network admin, and I have been scrupulous about keeping SP2 up to date. So I won't bother to "upgrade". Thanks very much for your advice. It is much appreciated.

[hyzmarca]

I'm not a network admin, and I have been scrupulous about keeping SP2 up to date. So I won't bother to "upgrade". Thanks very much for your advice. It is much appreciated.

It is an upgrade, it just isn't a retail-consumer-oriented upgrade. The entire point of SP3 is to increase the life of XP in enterprise settings by adding networking features that are present in Vista, because big corporations are substantially more reluctant to upgrade to Vista than Microsoft had anticipated (When upgrading consists of spending hundreds of thousands on software and changing or replacing thousands of machines, and what you've got still works perfectly, and you're in the middle of a recession, upgrading doesn't seem like a good idea at all) .

And you're very welcome.


________

Back to the system idea

Branch 2) i7

Core i7 920 - $350, Intel DX58SO Motherboard $300, two sticks of 2GB DDR3 at 1600MHz $180 Total = 830

830+650 = 1470

Redeon 4870X2 $520

= $1990

Ultra Products ULT-33186 ChillTec Thermo Electric CPU Cooler $120

= 2110

A bit overpriced and no fancy RAID 0 Dirives, but this is a great overclocker. All you have to do is match the RAM's native speed by increasing the base clock to 200 and you've got a 4Ghz system. all you have to worry about is CPU voltages.

[Stahlseele]

thanks, those are really nice . . and only 200 above 2000 ain't that bad, as that is more or less the difference between € and $ i think . .
the overclocking options are nice enough to have, but i don't know my way around there as i don't like the idea of risking my good base hardware in trying to squeeze more performance out than they are supposed to deliver . . and one has t have such ideas like underclocking ram so one can bring it up again by overclocking somewhere else in the first place ^^#
i will probably go with an in between of those two systems you so nicely statted out for me, if the prices don't drop as much as i expect them to after christmas.

[hyzmarca]

The reason I chose RAM that is faster than necessary with the intent to under clock it is that you don't have to alter the RAM voltage that way, nor do you have to worry about it running too hot.

In the Core 2, you want the RAM to be synchronous to the FSB, anyway, since that produces less latency and better performance. In a Core i7 920, if you don't overclock you might as well go with cheaper DDR-3 1066, because that's the limit of the on-chip memory controller. You could also go with cheaper DDR-3 1333 for less overclocking potential (probably not a bad idea) as you save about $30. That'll let you overclock the i7 920 up to 3.3, which isn't bad at all and is substantially safer than a 4Ghz OC. (Though you can also do so with the more expensive RAM, you don't have to use its maximum rated speed). The main reason to underclock the RAM and bring it back up to its rated speed is that you don't have to increase its voltage above stock or worry about it overheating. You can even do this with cheap RAM.

The key to good overclocking is to be careful with your CPU voltage, you don't want to push it too high but at the same time you don't want it too low, keep it the lowest you can without introducing instability. Also, on the i7, make sure the memory controller voltage is equal to the RAM voltage (or within half a volt of it at the most, because the memory controller will burn out quick if there is a voltage differential there larger than .5 volts). Other than that, the only issue is keeping it cool. Just go very slow when raising the FSB speed. Raise it a little, boot up and see what happens. When you start having problems back it down. If you can't boot reset the BIOS.

Also, another, perhaps more efficient way to get good hard drive speeds to is go with a second 1TB drive of the same make, RAID 0 them together, and short-stroke them. Partition off the first 100-200GB or so of the RAID 0 array for system and games. (Generally, Temp and page files first, then system and games works best, though you could also make a seperate games partition having the temp and page files on a separate partition reduces fragmentation on your other partitions). Because the outside of the platters are the fastest parts, you'll get the best read speeds that way, probably better than two cheap 80-gigers , and possibly better than two velociraptors on average. Of course, you'll end up with a 2TB RAID 0 array, which is a lot of lost data if one of the drives fails. It's probably the most efficient way to go about it, as it saves you money over velocipaptors or SSDs. I would have actually included that idea earlier if I had thought of it.

[Stahlseele]

heck no, i'm not going to make a 2TB Raid0 O.O
that's maximum NTFS can support and IF something goes horribly wrong, then losing 2TB of Data does NOT sound nice x.x . .
probably one or two 1TB HDD's for Storage and 2 VelociRaptors with up to 300Gig each as a Raid0 . . 10kRPM . . to store Games . .
and maybe use one or two small SSD's for operating System . . can one Raid0 two SSD's? would that bring performance?
and i repeat, i don't know my way around overclocking and thus avoid it because i am afraif of fucking things up beyond repair <.<

[hyzmarca]

heck no, i'm not going to make a 2TB Raid0 O.O
that's maximum NTFS can support and IF something goes horribly wrong, then losing 2TB of Data does NOT sound nice x.x . .
probably one or two 1TB HDD's for Storage and 2 VelociRaptors with up to 300Gig each as a Raid0 . . 10kRPM . . to store Games . .
and maybe use one or two small SSD's for operating System . . can one Raid0 two SSD's? would that bring performance?
and i repeat, i don't know my way around overclocking and thus avoid it because i am afraif of fucking things up beyond repair <.<

Yes, one can Raid0 two SSDs, which is why I included it in the first build I posted. Now you could make it RAID 0+1. You'll require twice as many drives but the drive mirroring protects you from catastrophic HD failure. One could also try RAID 5, which would sacrifice some speed for more reliability with only three disks.

As for being the limit that NTFS can support, that's what partitioning is for. It is a smart thing to do on an large disk. Each partition is treated as a separate disk, so disk size limits aren't a problem.

[Stahlseele]

no no, NTFS supports maximum filesize of 2TB, because that is the maximum partition size too . . NTFS doesn't work with more than 2TB at once, as far as i remember my education. And Raid0 is basically the exact opposite of partitionioning . . but wait, did you mean raid0 STRIPING and then PARTITIONING the 2TB Raid0 Disc into smaller partitions? @.@
ok, that's another idea i would never have thought off ^^
so, 2 small SSDs in an Raid0 Array Striping for the Operating system, then another Raid0 with 2x10k rpm HDD's of up to 300Gig each for software like games and the such . . and two usual 1TB HDD'S for storage, that sounds about as usefull as it will get. enough storage for about enything i will most likely ever need(as long as i don't start mirroring linux distro or something like that) and performance through the 2 raid0 arrays . . and maybe regular backups by hand to the big discs . .
let's say this alone will cost about 600 bucks i think . .

[hyzmarca]

Using all three RAID 0 solutions is a bit overkill. In addition to costing over $1000 in drives alone, there wouldn't be much performance gain.

The reason I suggested RAID0ing the 1TB drives is to take advantage the physics of circular motion.

The Velociraptor spins at 10,000 RPM, but that's just the angular velocity. Data is arranged in linearly across the surface of the disk, and how fast it can be read is determined by the linear velocity of the disk under the read/write head.
To determine the linear velocity, you need to use basic geometry to convert radius into circumference.

2πr*RPM = linear velocity. 2 and π are constant but radius is not. For this reason, hard drives read and write fastest on the outside of the disk, which generally comes first. As you put more and more data on, you get closer to the center of the disk, your radius drops, and thus your linear velocity drops as does your read/write speed.

By creating a small system or game partition at the beginning of a very large hard drive, you ensure that all of the data in that partition will be read at the fastest rate that the drive is capable of. The maximum read speed may be lower than a velociraptor's, but the average could easily be the same or higher. I really should have though of that earlier, as it is a great way to save money on a high-performance system. Now, due to teh way RAID 0 works, if you were to partition it, the first partition on the combined virtual disk would be striped across the outsides of both disks.


SSDs, the big advantages are no seek time and the fact that they don't spin, meaning that you've got similar read times throughout the medium.
I have also been doing a little bit more research into SSDs and I wouldn't recommend them for storing temporary files the page file, are any log riles, since there are issues with wear after several million writes. It isn't enough to be noticed with games, but with files that get re-written extremely frequently, such as the page file, it could pose a problem.

Actually, if you're going to use SSDs, I'm going to recommend using them just for games and putting the system on another drive. That'll mitigate any potential issues of the drive wearing out from constant writing.

I need to so more research into SSD drive wear patterns, as it could last a very long time or it could last a very short time, depending on your write-erase needs. Using the SSD for games instead of for system would maximize its lifetime. It would, at least, be prudent to move page and temp files off of the SSD and onto another disk.

[Stahlseele]

what do you mean, all 3 raid solutions at once?
i meant one raid0 for the 2 SSD's for the OS,
and then one raid0 for the 2 velociraptors for games
and then one JBOD for the 2x1TB HDD's for Storage
hmm, so installing os onto striped SSD's and then doing one partition on the striped velociraptors to put pagefile and temp files into and install games into . .
and maybe use another partition on those striped velocities as a backup windows install and to shovel save-games in maybe . .

[hyzmarca]

what do you mean, all 3 raid solutions at once?
i meant one raid0 for the 2 SSD's for the OS,
and then one raid0 for the 2 velociraptors for games
and then one JBOD for the 2x1TB HDD's for Storage

That is, in fact what I meant. It seems a little excessive, to me, given the cost. If you're going with the velociraptors for games then you might as well just drop the SSDs and put your system files on the velociraptors, too. You aren't going to notice much of a difference, certainly not $420 worth of difference. Plus, you'd need a board with at least 7 SATA ports (remember your Blu-Ray drive, it won't work if there is no place to plug it in).

[Stahlseele]

hrm . . ok, you're right . . ok, i will drop the SSD's . . never really did like that idea . . i did not even think to use them in the new rig, untill you mentioned them *g*

[Hocus Pocus]

yippie for new comps!