Should I switch Anything?

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Willus

New Member
Critique Time, any Suggestions?

Hi everybody. I had a post a few days ago, but I'm about to buy all of my parts. I was wondering if there is anything better for the same price I could get instead. Any help is very much appreciated.

Case:
$85 Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Mobo:
$240 ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

Processor:
$289 Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor

Processor Fan:
$40 Dynatron G555 77mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler for Socket 1366

RAM:
$70 Mushkin 3GB (3 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit

Video Card:
$270 SAPPHIRE Toxic 100269TXSR Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5

Power Supply:
$94 CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified
 
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Willus

New Member
I will definitely follow that advice with the RAM and the cooler. This is my first build, do you think i will have trouble fitting the fan in the Antec 900 case?
 
lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102830

dont buy the toxic version. sure, its a nice overclock, but if you spend five seconds to do it yourself, you'll save $40

and to answer your question, the Xigmatek works nicely in an antec 900 (i have another version of the same cooler in my 900 right now)

EDIT: just remember to install the fan before you install the motherboard in the case lol. it was much easier for me that way.
 
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Trio

New Member
There shouldn't be a problem fitting the heatsink into that case. The case is 8 inches in width, and the heatsink is 4 inches in height.

Do you have an OS to use? Like Vista or XP? And do you have a hard drive? What will be your budget for your hard drive if you don't have one already? If you're looking for a simple hard drive with lots of space (1TB), they're around $70. But if you want to RAID, it'll cost at least $150 I think.

**http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835203001
?? :x . Personally I'd stick with the Xigmatek... but the heatsink choice is really up to him. If you want a quieter heatsink, you can always buy a "softer" fan to replace the one that comes with the Xigmatek heatsink I posted earlier. One below 31DBA, which doesn't sound very terrible...
 
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Trio

New Member
Willus said:
I have Windows XP. For my hardrive I was planning to use the crappy one I have at the moment until I can buy a 10000 RPM one. I have heard of RAID before, but I wouldn't know what i need for it. I was planning on getting this drive.


Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM
Click to expand...
Well basically, RAID splits files between all the hard drives that are in RAID. So if you have two hard drives, it'll split a file into two. That'll increase the read speed and write speed.

Well, to tell the truth, when I look down the list of hard drives at 10k RPM, they all have the same read/write and latency times. I just think the VelociRaptor is a brand thing, but that's just my thought; I've never used a Raptor before. You could always look up benchmarks and see how these hard drives do performance wise.
 
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Willus

New Member
How beneficial is RAID with video game data? Is there a configuration of RAID device, and hard drives that would give noticeable performance increase under $180? (compared to the Western Digital Velociraptor 10000 RPM drive?)
 
lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
no latency is one thing. we arent trying to shave the 4ms latency off, we are trying to increase the read speed. if you spend five minutes loading a file, who cares about the 4ms at the beginning? the big difference is a hard drive that can open files at 90mbps vs one that can do over 140mbps.

and honestly, neither paths are worth it. a raid system can break down if either hard drive gets even a single issue. then all of your data on both hard drives is lost forever. and 10k drives are insanely expensive for what they do.

my suggestion is to get a performance version of a 7200rpm drive. look for western digital BLACK drives. they cost a tiny bit more but regularly get above 100mbps. i have 2 in my computer right now, and they are much faster than my third hard drive.
 
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lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
are you determined to use raid then? its true, it is faster, but you probably wouldnt notice, and its much more dangerous.

if you really want to use raid though, any good motherboard will have RAID capabilities.
 
lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
RAID systems rely on two seperate hard drives working simultaneously, perfectly. if one makes even a small error, the entire RAID array will be destroyed, rendering all of your files useless. its rare but it happens much more often than a single hard drive failing.
 
lovely?

lovely?

Active Member
at a very high cost to you, and you would probably have to buy a RAID card, which can be pretty expensive.
 
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Willus

New Member
Alright, thank you for all your help. I plan on ordering all the parts tomorrow. Wish me luck on the build, any thing i need to know that i cant plainly figure out?
 
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