Finally building my new rig! Come help me out.

**trailhunter** · 02-20-09, 01:56 PM

Originally Posted by Cybs

Might be to get total HDD space.

Trail, you asked me about a RAID card, I wouldn't bother with one. I've had more problems with RAIDs breaking with a card then I have with the onboard setup.

You never mentioned what case your using? Keep in mind that everything in there will be running HOT so you need a really good case.

I PM'd you this but I figured I would mention it again, AM3 is out now. For the people that have talked with me about speccing out a PC, you all know I'm HUGE on price vs. performance and I rarely buy "The best" since I think it's a waste of money.

Also, I read some reviews on that vid card. You might want to rethink it.

As for HDDs and vs. SSDs, Rhys had a lot of good info. SSDs might not be the oh so awesome thing people claim them to be...
http://www.texasteamplayers.com/index.php?topic=54349.0

Plus, looking at how they have to be set up, I would wait another generation on them.

Are you talking about the ATI card that I originally mentioned? or the GTX295 right after that?

I found a way to save about 80 bucks on the EVGA motherboard and EVGA GTX295 card as a package deal so that puts me right into line with the price I had originally posted with the Sapphire 4870x2 and motherboard.

Yeah, the ssd's I am going to wait for. Price per gb is still out of line and the OCZ, while still a good ssd is giving people problems.

I don't think that $1700 to $2000 dollars for a better than average gaming rig is to much. I don't get why everyone is thinking I am going overboard. Hell, I spent that much on my rig 5yrs ago and it has lasted me this long. Why not spend the extra few bucks and get the nicer stuff now for 2grand instead of $1200 now and in 2 years spend another $400-$600 to upgrade it?

**_BuRn_** · 02-20-09, 02:26 PM

With a stripped raid performance increases for each drive you add.
The mainboard I linked will actually handle up to 6 drives in a single stripped array.
Basically you are adding each cards throughput to the total.
2 of the same drives in the same setup would yield less performance (about half) than 4.

However with each drive comes an increase risk of failure as it only takes a single disk to fail to destroy the entire raid.

Raid 10 and 5 attempt to address this with a Mirror/Stripe Combo or Parity drive but you see less performance and requires more CPU to perform.

Through the years I have found my 1 stripped volume for performance and 1 mirror volume to be an excellent solution.
I put a bootable OS on both volumes so I always have a recovery option if one were to fail.

**Cybs** · 02-20-09, 04:38 PM

BTW Trail, I don't know what your doing with your old rig, but you might look into getting WIndow Home Server. It's extremely easy to setup and you can automate your backups with it as well (Small install package to link Vista to Home Server). It also acts like a file server as well. I'm still playing around with mine to see everything it can do. The software is $100 on NewEgg.

There is a ton of stuff it can do provided you want to buy some hardware for your house (Like RF Light switches and such) as well as media server applications.

**WileECyte** · 02-20-09, 09:06 PM

Intel X25-M SSD Performance:

Problem is, they're pricey. $325 or so for 80 gig.

**trailhunter** · 02-20-09, 11:52 PM

Well, I am going to go back to the drawing board on a few things and repost what I come up with. I would own that X-25 if it was only a 150gb or better for that price. The requirements for Vista Premium alone is 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space. I couldn't even come close to putting most of my games on that 80. I have a bunch from steam and would want them loading from the main HDD.

**WileECyte** · 02-21-09, 08:41 AM

Yeah. The larger SSDs are either astronomically priced (Intel's next larger size is like $800) or they have lower performance. I got an OCZ 120 gig drive for $230 and it performs about on par with a 7200 rpm SATA drive. The main reason I bought it was it was for my laptop, and it increased performance over the 4200 rpm drive in it and used less power.

**DJ Ms. White** · 02-21-09, 08:51 AM

Yeah, I have a Samsung 120 GB, which is just lovely especially for my laptop, but yeesh, it was pricey (mind you through Dell so extra extra pricey). I know SSD's will become standard, but the normal HD companies are sure pushing the limits and making some great, high quality, and much more affordable products.

**trailhunter** · 02-24-09, 02:22 PM

Well, here is what I ended up purchasing mostly from our newegg affiliate. I did change up a few things but was stubborn about some of the others.
I changed the motherboard to ASUS because I have always had good luck with them.
I changed the memory from Corsair to OCZ, we'll see how that works out. They are $70 cheaper, have better timings and in their forums, it looks like they are foregiving when it comes to overclocking.
I changed out the DVD player because newegg was out of stock on the Samsung.

I chose the GTX285 SSC for now through EVGA because they are out of stock in the GTX295, plus the EVGA sales rep said that he heard the price was going to come down

a few bucks for the 295. So when that happens I can do the step up program with them and use my current rebate form also.

All in all I spent 2 nights going over combo deals in newegg and picked up a few more rebates. That gave me enough money to upgrade to a Antec 1200 case and use the 900 case I have for my wifes rig.

I am so excited :9 and so far it looks like it will all be here by Friday.

1 x CASE ANTEC|TWELVE HUNDRED BK RT

1 x DVD BURN LG|GH22LS30 22X LS SATA

1 x MB ASUS P6T DELUXE 1366 X58 RTL

1 x CPU INTEL|CORE I7 920 2.66G 45N R

1 x MEM 2Gx3|OCZ OCZ3X1600LV6GK R

2 x HD 150G|WD WD1500HLFS

1 x HD 1T|SAMG 7K 32M SATA2 HD103UJ

1 x MS WIN VISTA HM PREM SP1 64BIT 1PK

1 x CPU THERMPASTE|AS5-3.5G

1 x CPU COOLER MASTER V8 CM|RR-UV8-XBU1-GP R

1 x PSU CORSAIR|CMPSU-850TX 850W RT

1 x VID GTX 285 SSC EVGA 01G-P3-1287-AR