Gaming Getting an excellent Desktop, Need serious help

[FAST6191]

Fans: the stock fan will work but not for serious overclocking. Graphics cards come with fans if they need them and the case should too.

Graphics card: the card should last as long as any other component, the reason for replacing is that future tech will outdo that card and future games will require it as you say. What others are saying is that a cheaper one will all work as well as your eyes do for the same games for about the same amount of time in terms of being able to play the latest and greatest.

PSU: It was only trying to keep your budget down, I have no objections to the PSU on a quality basis. Aircon (especially those I have dealt with coming into/out of the middle east) are power hungry monsters (probably more so than the PC), here is one I plucked off a search: http://www.digitalfotoclub.com/sc/from-fro...dfdate=9_9_2009 (power is nearly double). You also have to remember the computer is not going to always be on and running at full capacity (more here http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/com...onsumption.html ).

Rails: the PSU takes the power from the wall and divide it up (see Kirchhoff's current laws) into rails, each rail is set a given amount of current it can draw before things start going wrong (it will be on the label), the only time to really get it wrong is to use the auxiliary rail for pata style drives (the fan connectors will probably be the same connectors which is what the aux rail is intended for).
As you asked amps is current (and what you pull in from the street is limited) and Watts is power, Watt hours is true power but people use amp hours sometimes if the voltage is constant (more in the realms of batteries though) but either way you should be OK.

Cases: you got the right idea.

PCI slots: there are slots for everything you described and more. Be careful as some things that are internal to the system still use USB (some boards are even coming with internal USB sockets these days for it although in most cases you will end up wiring it to the internal connectors instead).

Motherboards: the asus one is probably the better (it is certainly no worse).

 

[DaMummy]

the internal card reader i posted is the one i use, except black, and have no problem, it connects to a usb slot on the inside of your mobo, not in back or front, and it fits into a hard disk space, not a dvd drive space, and comes in handy often instead of having a separate usb reader for everything or have 50 blank-to-sd adapter or something, and i would always recommend an aftermarket cooler, especially for high performance parts like processor or high end gfx card, tho the high end geforce coolers are a pain to replace. one more advice, many companies give you an extended warranty on your products if you register them on their website, i know evga does and they are a very good warranty company and will replace anything no questions asked, registering is definitely something you wonna do takes you 10min at most at no cost

 

[myuusmeow]

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=11135

Might want to wait a few weeks for a 5870.

 

[Madridi]

Thanks everyone, I think I'm clear on everything now. Thanks again

Special thanks to FAST6191.. You've great help as you helped me understand everything.

I'm still hesitant on the motherboard, I think ill go with the evga one. But other than that, the setup is almost the same as I last mentioned. Changed ram to ocz which is $55 cheaper, and power supply from 750w to 850w same brand.

Thanks again

 

[Madridi]

Well it's been about 2 months since I posted an update. I didnt go through with my plan cause shipping to my country cost about 600$ which I wasnt going to pay for really. So I had a friend who is studying in the US order the following items for me and he'll be back before christmas, so I should have everything in 3 weeks or so.

So here is what I got:

Processor:
Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz
279.99$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

Motherboard:
32-BL-E758-A1
284.99$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

Case:
Cooler Master 922M ATX Mid Tower Case
89.24$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

Power Supply:
Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850-Watt TX Series
129.99$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

HDD x 2:
Western Digital Caviar Black
99.99$ x 2 = 199.98$
Shipping 8.27 x 2 = 16.52
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

RAM:
OCZ DDR3 1600MHz 6GB Platinum XTC Triple Channel Kits
CL 7-7-7-24/(CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)
173.99$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

GFX Card:
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970
649.99 (pre-ordered, havent received it yet)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

CPU Cooler:
Cooler Master V8
54.58$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

DVD Burners x 2:
Samsung Internal Half Height DVD-W Supermulti SATA 22X Lightscribe
30.99$ x 2 = 61.98$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

Mouse:
Logitech G9X Laser Mouse
88.40$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

Card Reader:
Sony Internal 17 in 1 Memeory Card Reader/Writer
14.99$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance

Case Fans x 2:
Cooler Master 120mm Red LED Case Fan - (R4-L2R-20CR-GP)
9.99$ x 2 = 19.98$
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...ER&v=glance


I wanted to buy a keyboard too, but sadly the ones online are English keyboard only (opposed to English/Arabic ones sold here in my country)
I'm planning to overclock the CPU to 3.0GHz while setting the ram timings to 7-7-7-24

Now what I need is someone to explain to me RAID, I dont get it at all. (As I mentioned I have 2 x 1tb caviar black hdd)

 

[playallday]

Dude, get two 1.5TB for $90 shipped each. At 3TB you'll never need to use that delete button.

 

[Madridi]

Well.. I already bought the 1tb hard drives.. I was gonna buy this as a third drive but I heard problems with this series and honestly I don't wanna put myself at risk

 

[playallday]

I would still buy it (NewEgg's RMA is great). Hard drives can be like motherboards, high failure rate. Still doesn't mean it's bad.

Still on sale for some unknown reason.

 

[Joe88]

nobody is buying seagate anymore after they had those huge failure rates with the 1TB drives

 

[Cermage]

Coolermaster V8 was never all that great when it came to cooling for its price. If you want you can fork out a bit more for a Prolimatech Megahalems. iirc you can get them around 65-75, its the best on the market for air cooling. otherwise get the Xigmatek Dark Knight/ Red Scorpion, which you can get for around $40. In a majority of benchmarks i've seen, it outperforms the V8 on Idle and load temps.

 

[Joe88]

Coolermaster V8 was never all that great when it came to cooling for its price. If you want you can fork out a bit more for a Prolimatech Megahalems. iirc you can get them around 65-75, its the best on the market for air cooling. otherwise get the Xigmatek Dark Knight/ Red Scorpion, which you can get for around $40. In a majority of benchmarks i've seen, it outperforms the V8 on Idle and load temps.

the Prolimatech Megahalems is far from the best, it did really bad on the max stable cpu test

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/d...roundup_18.html

the thermalright ifx-14 was the undisputed king

 

[Madridi]

well, I wish i had some recommendations earlier in the discussion.. I already bought the v8..


As for RMA, as I said, I'm gambling alot here because a friend is getting this to my country from the US, so if something DOES turnout to be bad when I receive it, I dont think I'll be able to return it.

Still hoping someone would fully explain RAID, its type, and whether I would need that or just set both hdds as IDE, and stuff..

 

[Joe88]

I just noticed you are getting a mid tower
the 5970 has pretty much no chance of fitting, its over a foot long

 

[Madridi]

The HAF 922 is just "called" a mid tower, it's really big

currently checking for online sources that supports my claim

 

[FAST6191]

RAID: I thought we already took care of this but OK. One link:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.htm

RAID is a way of merging discs together to make one massive disc, speed things up or add a level of data recovery (or something from of each of them).

Most people around here will probably use RAID 0 in their home machines (not an official RAID level but probably supported more widely than any other level) which makes the biggest drive but if something corrupts on one then the data on both is liable to go as there is no recovery data. You will probably see a fairly big speed boost if you do this.

RAID 1 just mirrors the drive so you will only have 1 terabyte of space but it will be near bulletproof.

After this we get into other levels which require more than two discs.
RAID 5 is the next main level: it uses parity data to enable you to pull back data from corrupted drives but without having to "sacrifice" an entire drive like RAID 1.

I will note that RAID levels can be "nested" so you can have RAID 0+1 which is 4 drives: two of which act as RAID 0 while the other two mirror the RAID 0 drive (it is about the only way you will every see me run anything in RAID 0).

On top of this you have things like JBOD (just a bunch of drives): every drive will appear with as many partitions as you bother to make or if you want as a single drive (called span/concatenation, think RAID0) but without the speed gains and without the corruption issues (one drive can die and you will probably only lose the files off that drive give or take files "hanging over" and fragmentation.

The debate as to whether it will be worth your time is a tough one. Personally I would go in for the bunch of drives approach with a small partition for the windows install and tweak windows to use different logical drives for installing stuff (you can move my documents and program files with relative ease).

Setting drives as IDE: this only really applies if you are installing using an old OS (like windows XP) as many installers of that era can not read SATA drives that easily. You can either have the drivers on disc (I think it is press f8 to install third party drivers when the installer first starts, it is all on screen though), merge them into the windows install with something like nlite or use the "fake IDE" mode in the BIOS (remember to switch it back once you are done).

I will leave it to others to debate the parts (a quick scan flags up nothing bad for me) although I will again question the need for an uber powerful (expensive) graphics card when a substantially cheaper one will do the job just as well for about as long (remember the human eye is usually happy with 30 FPS).

 

[Madridi]

RAID: I thought we already took care of this but OK. One link:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.htm
Sorry about that, I understood the basics of it when we discussed it, but once I saw the different types of RAID I got confused

RAID is a way of merging discs together to make one massive disc, speed things up or add a level of data recovery (or something from of each of them).

Most people around here will probably use RAID 0 in their home machines (not an official RAID level but probably supported more widely than any other level) which makes the biggest drive but if something corrupts on one then the data on both is liable to go as there is no recovery data. You will probably see a fairly big speed boost if you do this.

RAID 1 just mirrors the drive so you will only have 1 terabyte of space but it will be near bulletproof.

After this we get into other levels which require more than two discs.
RAID 5 is the next main level: it uses parity data to enable you to pull back data from corrupted drives but without having to "sacrifice" an entire drive like RAID 1.

I will note that RAID levels can be "nested" so you can have RAID 0+1 which is 4 drives: two of which act as RAID 0 while the other two mirror the RAID 0 drive (it is about the only way you will every see me run anything in RAID 0).
Thanks for that. I understand everything now. I do have a couple of questions though
- So if I do set it to RAID 0, it will combine both of my drives into a huge 2 TB HDD which will gain me some speed boost? If that's so, what will happen if i need to replace one of these drives (since they are somewhat connected and all? Also, I would be able to partition it normally.. correct?
- Um, I heard that RAID 5 only works with 3+ HDD? True or false?

On top of this you have things like JBOD (just a bunch of drives): every drive will appear with as many partitions as you bother to make or if you want as a single drive (called span/concatenation, think RAID0) but without the speed gains and without the corruption issues (one drive can die and you will probably only lose the files off that drive give or take files "hanging over" and fragmentation.

The debate as to whether it will be worth your time is a tough one. Personally I would go in for the bunch of drives approach with a small partition for the windows install and tweak windows to use different logical drives for installing stuff (you can move my documents and program files with relative ease).
well, since JBOD wouldnt gain me more speed? whats the advantages of that vs. IDE?

QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Nov 29 2009, 09:28 PM) Setting drives as IDE: this only really applies if you are installing using an old OS (like windows XP) as many installers of that era can not read SATA drives that easily. You can either have the drivers on disc (I think it is press f8 to install third party drivers when the installer first starts, it is all on screen though), merge them into the windows install with something like nlite or use the "fake IDE" mode in the BIOS (remember to switch it back once you are done).

when you say installers, you mean OS installers? or programs installers?


QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Nov 29 2009, 09:28 PM)

I will leave it to others to debate the parts (a quick scan flags up nothing bad for me) although I will again question the need for an uber powerful (expensive) graphics card when a substantially cheaper one will do the job just as well for about as long (remember the human eye is usually happy with 30 FPS).

lol, I know, I just want it

Thanks alot FAST6191

 

[FAST6191]

The drives are sata drives and you can not just turn them into pata/ide: the BIOS will fake them as IDE if you want though.
The only real use for it is to trick the old installers of operating systems into thinking a drive is there (it will just not detect it), program installers should only come into once you have an operating system installed in which case it will use the operating systems APIs to work.

"So if I do set it to RAID 0, it will combine both of my drives into a huge 2 TB HDD which will gain me some speed boost"
Correct, with RAID0 the speed boost comes from being able to spread reads and writes across two discs. Naturally this means the discs are tied to one another and if one fails or corrupts the data will probably be lost and you can not just yank it out and stick it in another machine.

"partition it normally": it should appear as one physical drive to anything that matters. Some operating system installers may encounter similar problems if you have a RAID drive but for the most part you should be OK.

It is probably apparent by now but for clarity it is not JBOD vs IDE but JBOD vs RAID:

JBOD will be slower although you can kick the OS to one disc and everything else to the other or make programs use both discs (read from one drive and write to the other negating the random access time penalties) which frankly will solve most situations that machine will probably ever see (I dare say RAID only really comes into play when you start looking into bigger servers with a lot of database work).
It will also mean you can swap out drives at will and if one falls over then you will only lose what is on that drive.

Oh and yeah RAID 5 needs three discs.

 

[Cermage]

Coolermaster V8 was never all that great when it came to cooling for its price. If you want you can fork out a bit more for a Prolimatech Megahalems. iirc you can get them around 65-75, its the best on the market for air cooling. otherwise get the Xigmatek Dark Knight/ Red Scorpion, which you can get for around $40. In a majority of benchmarks i've seen, it outperforms the V8 on Idle and load temps.

the Prolimatech Megahalems is far from the best, it did really bad on the max stable cpu test

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/d...roundup_18.html

the thermalright ifx-14 was the undisputed king

guess i havent checked latest benchmarks

usually just use frostytech for aftermarket hsf but they don't have an i* section up yet.

 

[Madridi]

The drives are sata drives and you can not just turn them into pata/ide: the BIOS will fake them as IDE if you want though.
The only real use for it is to trick the old installers of operating systems into thinking a drive is there (it will just not detect it), program installers should only come into once you have an operating system installed in which case it will use the operating systems APIs to work.
err.. I'm probably just confused, but from what's written above, I can understand that setting the drive as IDE is not the default form? It's SATA
Well I assumed the default was IDE because I saw some videos on youtube that had IDE in the BIOS options..

"So if I do set it to RAID 0, it will combine both of my drives into a huge 2 TB HDD which will gain me some speed boost"
Correct, with RAID0 the speed boost comes from being able to spread reads and writes across two discs. Naturally this means the discs are tied to one another and if one fails or corrupts the data will probably be lost and you can not just yank it out and stick it in another machine.
Well that sucks, I dont wanna risk both drives going to waste (data wise) by having one failing or corrupted or whatever.. So what would you recommend in that case? setting the drives normally as SATA drives..?

It is probably apparent by now but for clarity it is not JBOD vs IDE but JBOD vs RAID:

Actually what I meant was, JBOD vs the default form (SATA?) ..
I mean, RAID gains speed boosts, while JBOD doesnt, so what's the point.. (makes sense?)

QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Nov 30 2009, 03:14 AM)

JBOD will be slower although you can kick the OS to one disc and everything else to the other or make programs use both discs (read from one drive and write to the other negating the random access time penalties) which frankly will solve most situations that machine will probably ever see (I dare say RAID only really comes into play when you start looking into bigger servers with a lot of database work).
It will also mean you can swap out drives at will and if one falls over then you will only lose what is on that drive.

Ok this looks like something like I wanna do, but I dont fully understand it. Can you please explain it in simpler terms?
From what I understood so far:
- No speed boost
- transfering from one drive to another is simpler (time and memory wise?)
- if one drive fails, I could switch that drive only without risking the other one

Anything else?

Edit:
Also, if I use JBOD can I partition a small space to OS, and others to whatever?

Thanks Again FAST6191

 

[FAST6191]

I suppose I had better take it right down to basics: standard drives (those not built using flash memory or RAM) are electromechanical devices. They have little read heads that scan across the surface of the disc and read data from it (think record player).
This is why they are so slow compared to the rest of computing speeds, can not take abuse and are reasonably prone to failure. On the flip side this is how we can store so much data on a "permanent" basis (flash memory is catching up but it is not there yet) and erase things at will many times over for a relatively cheap price.
It also means that if you have a piece of data scattered across the disc (fragmentation) it takes longer to dig it up and it is also why trying to read several things at once or write several things at once takes a considerable amount of time as this read/write head has to change position (it is one of the various sounds you will hear on a drive working hard).

Drives come in several connection types as you probably know. The two big ones as far as modern consumer level hard drives go are IDE aka pata (strictly speaking they do refer to different things but nobody will call you on it and everyone will know what you are on about) and the other is sata. PATA/IDE is slowly being phased out but people still have legacy devices that use it and manufacturers have made some fairly big drives (for the "normal" person anyhow) in such a form.

Sata is also relatively new compared to IDE and as such some older or cut down operating systems do not carry the relevant info to operate with it unless you have drivers. To this end most BIOS implementations will "emulate" an IDE connection/drive for the sata drive which you can use to work around this driver problem if you want (as in it appears as an IDE drive to anything that cares to check, read and write commands for the IDE drive will be translated internally into sata commands and so on and so on).
Once you have the OS installed though it is the BIOS that initially loads the drive so that does not really matter any more.
The main reason anyone cares about this is because people like windows XP (and I do not blame them given vista) but you have to remember the first installers (which have not really been updated in subsequent years) are now over 8 years old and as such arrived before sata took off (or was even released: indeed it will probably not say sata but press * to install drivers for RAID or SCSI when it also means sata).

---

Indeed RAID0 is risky and for the most part I do not suggest it unless you do not have anything of worth on the machine (or good backups) and can argue otherwise with someone who knows about this sort of thing.

Best way to think of the standard JBOD is what happens when you put a bunch of external drives or USB flash devices (many different drive letters in windows) but instead they are inside your machine.
Also yes if you have it as such you can partition them however you want including kicking 10 gigs or so to the OS. Standard JBOD is what happens normally when you stick multiple drives in a machine, you will probably not have to switch anything in the BIOS to do it (it is probably for the best that it does as we normally suggest people only use RAID on identical model drives of the same age and amount of use which only really happens in cases like this or when you build for it).

Raid0 boosts speed (not all raid increases speed remember) by alternating writing one drive and another (or doing different two reads/writes to the two drives at the same time) meaning stuff gets done quicker than it would be for just a single drive which has to do it all one after the other.
This means your data is scattered across discs and why failure/corruption is not a good thing at all and why you can not swap drives around at will.
As JBOD is still effectively "stuck" with one disc unless you swap where things are located you are stuck at single drive speeds (probably nothing to be snorted at mind) compared to the "nearly" double speed from a RAID 0 setup (it will never reach double speed, probably more like 50% on a good day).