Topic 'Contemplating a rebuild' in forum 'PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews' - dslreports.com http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Contemplating-a-rebuild-23215290 en Sat, 11 Feb 2012 06:17:09 EDT Sat, 11 Feb 2012 06:17:09 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23291191
After a number of updates to the motherboard/chipset/drivers etc. and the new hard drives I finally got the WEI to run.

[attachment=1]

Obviously the GPU is the weak link (as expected) but I was generally pretty pleased with the evaluation results.
Click for full size
WEI
]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23291191 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:02:29 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23260942
Back to NewEgg. I believe those caviar black drives are back in stock.

Thank you again the help.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23260942 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:09:12 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23259978 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23259978 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:50:59 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23259406
BTW, this is being posted from the rebuilt machine with W7U. Unfortunately I cannot seem to run the WEI index on it but it seems to be running fine beautifully.

Left the old graphics card in and used the old disks in RAID 10 array. Replaced the PSU as previously discussed and plugged in the new parts and was up and running within 3 hours of getting the box.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23259406 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:06:25 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23239375
The reply was not to you though and I'm not trying to minimise valuable input, sometimes it's a difference of opinion. Nobody will actually nail a solution 100% for somebody else, including myself because needs are different for everybody and all those needs are hardly ever expressed completely, shouldn't matter either. ;)

To recap why I gave the response I did, I'm really old school and over many years like to keep an OS tight on a small footprint, in it's own partition. Often people get large drives and don't do maintenance or divide partitions and therefore it's easier to steer people away from something they might well regret. To me a primary drive should be big enough to house the OS and a few readily accessed files/downloads for software; the rest goes onto secondary dives, I do use them to the tune of three terabytes.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23239375 Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:28:10 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23235819 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23235819 Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:22:24 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23232664
There is a larger concern for me related to the endeavour of assisting people; A larger drive [I+G] is not always the best solution to optimising an OS or function. There ARE in fact other criteria that should be considered and if I have to spell that out, I'm in the wrong place.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23232664 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:13:32 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23230159
I'm looking Matrix RAID for my next build. You can make a stripe using just part of 2+ drives and put your performance stuff on there (OS, apps, games, swap file) and meanwhile use the rest for a RAID1 or RAID5 to provide redundancy. Or I might just bite the bullet, buy 4 1TB drives and build a RAID10.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23230159 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:28:31 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23230154 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23230154 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:27:31 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23230026 said by seagreen:

I believe I will hold off on the SSD and see how things shake out over the next couple of years. Having bought a few of them to try out in several different systems, I emphatically agree with your caution. Right now, the marketplace for these things is a chaotic expensive mess. The technology itself is still in turmoil as you can see from the "controller of the day" situation and neverending firmware updates. Then there's the matter of installation Voodoo where the user is expected to know how to "align" the system partition at installation, and administer tweak after tweak to the O/S. Naturally, NONE of the SSD manufacturers give you the least bit of guidance on how to do this, much less providing utilities with the drive that do the dirty work for you.

Then there's the matter of maintaining performance that apparently degrades through normal usage. Back to the forums for more hours of trying to sift through post after post trying to grasp what's really going on, and finding that there *is* no good answer.

The takeaway from this is that the manufacturers themselves really don't know much about what they're selling and the post-sale support situation reflects it.

You're far better off with something like a Caviar Black drive set for a system partition at the front of the drive. The speed difference in actual use, compared to a SSD, is very small, and certainly not worth the high price and installation/maintenance headaches of the SSD.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23230026 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:04:43 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23229939 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23229939 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:50:31 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23229712 I'm just not impressed with the raptor any more. They coast on a reputation that was built years ago but is largely outdated. They don't perform significantly better than a recent 1-2TB drive. At best their benefit if quite modest today.
I understand if seagreen doesn't feel ready to move to an ssd. That can always be done later with only a new OS install. I think concerns about performance degradation are becoming obsolete now, especially with trim around the corner, but I can understand the desire to hold of for a while yet.
Still, I don't see the point in spending for the raptor: double the price, for 1/3 the space and a modest, if any, performance difference. An ssd is a whole different performance ballpark. A raptor isn't and I would just save the money. It just seems like a costly half-measure with little benefit at this point. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23229712 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:25:29 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23229078 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23229078 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:59:19 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23228143 Just get the 1TB drive then, that will be fine.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23228143 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:58 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23227715
I'll let others muddle the pro's and con's of an 1156 verse 1366 because as yet I don't own either, but have a decided preference for the 1366 base and it's inherent ability to reduce memory issues (Short story).]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23227715 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:14:15 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23227261
Re: the SSD - Understandably, I've been doing a fair amount of reading since I decided to undertake this project and there seem to be some issues with performance slipping over time with the SSDs.

I wonder if a 300G Velociraptor (for a little bit less $) might not be a better option until the SSD drive technology matures some. Warranty is longer too.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23227261 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:48:54 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226898 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226898 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:28:35 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226843
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···-Product

gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R:
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···13128401

1TB western digital caviar drive:
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···22136284

I don't know why I said 6GB. 1156 is dual channel so I would go with 4 or 8.
If you want to choose a build like this we can talk about the specific ram. We can also talk about ssd drives, possibly an ocz agility:

»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···20227461

or a supertalent ultradrive(I can't figure out the price on this, whether it is a misprint for the 64GB) Can someone provide some insight into the extremely low price.:

»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···20609393]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226843 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:18:09 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226347 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226347 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:20:20 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226327 http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23226327 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:19:52 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23225233
I usually buy from NewEgg as they seem reliable. I will never buy from Buy.com after having to sic the credit card company on them.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23225233 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:50:38 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23221353 If you have a particular place you want to buy from I can get into specifics if this is a direction you are interested in or I can post links from newegg.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23221353 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:52:07 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23219882 said by asdfdfdfdfdf :

A true power 650 will be plenty for what you are wanting to do.
Good

said by asdfdfdfdfdf :

At this point I'm not convinced that you need more than 4 GB.
I will put Windows 7 on the rebuilt machine and, although I have 4 GB now, I have brought my current computer to its knees in PS or should I say PS has brought this computer to its knees. The images are large and I use image stitching fairly frequently which means a lot of images may be open. 64-bit would probably help that but RAM isn't very expensive now.

In fact, with the exception of the motherboard, everything I considered is a whole lot cheaper than what the original build was 4 years ago so I'm not terribly concerned about the prices of what I'd been considering. CLEARLY I don't need a $1k Core i7 975 Extreme processor so I'm considering price to some extent. ;) I want a solid build that will last through software upgrades for, ideally, 3-4 years. :) ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23219882 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:18:23 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23219224
I really like the Intel G2, and SSDs are such a noticeable step forward, one of those upgrades that looks and feels modern. Plus, they're TINY! It's like looking at a CPU, you can practically smell the science behind it :).

-P]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23219224 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:28:32 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23218604
Amd options become more compelling if you buy something like an athlon II x 4. At the upper mid to higher end you are better off sticking with an i5 setup.

"Money is always an issue."

Then I certainly would not be going the original direction you considered.

What kind of budget would you like?
What size files are you working with in photoshop? At this point I'm not convinced that you need more than 4 GB.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23218604 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:07:05 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23217613
The 650W power supply has never been used. I bought it thinking that power may have been part of the problems but ended up deciding it was more likely the MB. Not sure if 650W will be enough but I'll check before using it.

I'm not wholly committed to the idea of an SSD. Just exploring the idea with the more knowledgeable folks here. Bottom line, I'm looking for system stability and security. As mentioned, I've not had good experiences with RAID arrays.

Money is always an issue. ;) That said, if I do rebuild this machine it will most likely become my main working one as what I'm using now is x86 so my goal would be to have it be a good solid build with good parts. Spending a few $ more to stave off future obsolescence would be well spent.

Haven't explored the AMD options but going that route might shave a few $ as well.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23217613 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:39:41 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216672
The move to an 860 could save close to $100 even with the higher price of the processor (there are good boards in the 110-$140 range).
This is roughly half way toward such an ssd. Before I would consider a second hard drive for raid(which would be most of the second half of the way) I would get an ssd, which will have significantly better performance for most things.
Another option would be the 750 cpu, which would be plenty as well and then you are most of the way toward the ssd.

I would rather have a 750 with an ssd than an 860 or a 920 without one for a typical desktop. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216672 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:13:55 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216333 said by asdfdfdfdfdf :

In my view spending $300 on a 1366 motherboard and a 920 doesn't make a lot of sense. I would get an 1156 board and an 860.
I would put the money saved toward a solid state drive in the 80GB range. We can discuss specific options later.
Would the savings going from 1366 to 1156 really be significant enough to make a dent in the price of an SSD?

An SSD isn't a bad idea for speeding things up, but if you're talking 80GB I have a feeling you're going to suggest the Intel which is in the $250-300 range.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216333 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:32:51 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216320
One thing worth looking at is Matrix RAID on the new Intel disk controllers.

Basically with two drives you can set up part of them as RAID0 and part of them as RAID1, the idea being that you could use the striped part for the OS, applications, swap file and scratch files and then the mirrored part for archiving things you want to be secure. One drive dies you lose the stripe but keep the mirror. I'm definitely setting this up on my next build, I'm thinking 2 1 TB drives with 200GB of stripe and 900GB of mirror.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216320 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:27:08 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216304
You say gaming isn't important but you say the x700 is anemic. If games don't matter there isn't much reason not to use it.

Given that you describe issues I think it would be best to replace the power supply. Money doesn't appear to be an issue and it isn't worth risking reuse of this key component when you have had consistent problems hardware problems. Reusing the case is no problem.

In my view spending $300 on a 1366 motherboard and a 920 doesn't make a lot of sense. I would get an 1156 board and an 860.
I would put the money saved toward a solid state drive in the 80GB range. We can discuss specific options later.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216304 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:23:14 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216065
Yeah, I knew Photoshop CS4 made good use of 64 bit. I'm looking forward to that :D

I was a bit out of touch with computer hardware and wasn't aware that all the high-end processors were 64 bit now. I was wondering why the specs no longer said either 32-bit or 64-bit.

I will never do RAID 0 - been there; done that and have lost data to show for it. :huh: My main concern having done that more than once with various RAID configurations is security.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23216065 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:57:10 EDT Re: Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23215764
Don't be worried about modern CPUs not supporting 64 bit. They do now and that's something you do not need to worry about, especially if considering an i7, which is a relatively new and high end CPU.

From my collection of experiences of other people, and a few of my own, RAID seems to be the budget speed booster nowadays, especially RAID-0. I know a lot of people that raid 0 the Western Digital 640GB Caviar black drives, which rival the really fast 10,000rpm drives in raid 0. As for SSD, they're the absolute fastest, bleeding edge technology, but they are incredibly expensive. There's nothing wrong with getting one, but for the budget minded it isn't a smart idea. Typically one would use a smaller SSD as their "OS" drive, since it reads extremely fast, then use standard hard disks to store data.

If it means anything, a few months ago I built an i7 based computer for a professional photographer who uses the computer for the same reasons you do - the Adobe Suite. I set up 2 of those Caviar Black drives in RAID 1 for mirrored backup, and he has only had good things to say about overall performance. I know CS4 is very good at multi threading applications, and with a cpu like an i7, you have 8 threads at your disposal.
--
My Site -]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Re-Contemplating-a-rebuild-23215764 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:45:13 EDT Contemplating a rebuild http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Contemplating-a-rebuild-23215290
What I would like to do is make use of what I have that is still usable and update the parts that a) aren't working or b) pretty outdated.

Use-able
ATX Mid Tower Case
4 160 GB Drives (SATA II) (have tested OK but I'm not sure how much I want to trust 4 y.o. drives)
Antec EPS12V 550W PS or Antec 650W Tru-Power PS (maybe not enough?)

Junk-able
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard (this being what I think is the source of the "issues")
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 ClawHammer 2.6GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Single-Core Processor
SAPPHIRE X700 PRO Radeon X700PRO 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card (This was pretty anemic even two years ago)

Considered Replacements:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920
ASUS P6T WS PRO LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Core i7 / Xeon Intel Motherboard
6 GB triple channel Memory

Not sure what to do:
Video card (Don't do any high FPS gaming)

Other Considerations:
I'd like this to be powerful enough not to choke on Photoshop and to be fairly future-proof.
I had an AMD processor but have no emotional investment in either AMD or Intel.

Questions:
Are all of the processors 64 bit now? I don't see 32 bit or 64 bit mentioned anymore.
Have not been real happy with my experiences with RAID arrays even mirrored ones. Would SSD or IDE for the OS be more secure?

I'm open to other thoughts if anybody has any. Thanks!]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/Contemplating-a-rebuild-23215290 Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:07:32 EDT