Yes I'm a nerd but I don't care - finally finished tidying the PC

[papaspur]

Says its running at 1333!

The Diablo comment was tic - i ve been looking to up the juice for my rendering programs fir a while and prices here have been very reasonable lately.

Wookie - check the system requirements on Blizzard s official site

I was browsing around in a chinese pawn shop in Queens when I stumbled upon some RAM chips. I replaced my old dinky modules and threw the new ones in there and I'm now running at 1337 mhz. The 4 extra mhz made the biggest difference in the world!!!

 

[edgey-the-yid]

Just taken a quick look and for a five year old machine I'm quite happy. Not quite up to recommended but it dumps on the minimum requirements... At least I get to play

A great site (if you haven't already got it) is http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/intro.aspx which basically runs a check on your system to tell you what games will work on it or not. Very handy if you've got a slightly dated system and your not sure if the latest games will still run on it

 

[WookieD]

Nice one, cheers mate

 

[Dorothy]

I put together mine last week and have been very surprised by the hiuge increases in performance while editing in Photoshop and Prem Pro. I've not bothered with any Overlocking of the CPU or GPU but it is saving me a lot of time already. I still need to figure out how I set up all the discs as I want to keep the main Windows drive largely free of clutter and need to figure out how RAID works. Can I split four identical discs into two lots of RAID ?

I need a Win disk (done), a scratch disc, a disc to hold original files with a RAID copy and a disc to hold edited files also as a RAID copy. I'll probably hotswap to archive work.

Also any reccommendations on a big, fast, robust external HD as I need to transfer files regularly when out in the field back to the orrifice. Would USB 3.0 be faster than SATA 6 GB/s ?

 

[ArcspacE]

Would USB 3.0 be faster than SATA 6 GB/s ?

Nope, it wouldn't be

 

[Dorothy]

Cheers Arcy. Will have to add a SATA port to the front. I should read up on the difference between the SATA 6 gbs connectors as I know there are Marvel and standard and Im unsure of the difference. I did add an Akasa Superpseed USB 3.0 card reader but alas their InterConnect offering did not have proper USB 3.0 connectivity to cover the card reader slots.

 

[Ralphy Coates]

I put together mine last week and have been very surprised by the hiuge increases in performance while editing in Photoshop and Prem Pro. I've not bothered with any Overlocking of the CPU or GPU but it is saving me a lot of time already. I still need to figure out how I set up all the discs as I want to keep the main Windows drive largely free of clutter and need to figure out how RAID works. Can I split four identical discs into two lots of RAID ?

I need a Win disk (done), a scratch disc, a disc to hold original files with a RAID copy and a disc to hold edited files also as a RAID copy. I'll probably hotswap to archive work.

Also any reccommendations on a big, fast, robust external HD as I need to transfer files regularly when out in the field back to the orrifice. Would USB 3.0 be faster than SATA 6 GB/s ?

Can you post your complete system spec?

You can make 2 separate raid arrays with 4 drives. There are plenty of guides discussing different raid set ups, Ill post one later.

What do you need to use your external drive for?
USB3 might be fast enough for your usage. I recently bought a USB3 HDD enclosure for use with any 3.5 internal drive. Means I can swap different drives around and it is plug and play. I get decent speeds off my USB3 port but I am only transferring media files.

Cheers Arcy. Will have to add a SATA port to the front. I should read up on the difference between the SATA 6 gbs connectors as I know there are Marvel and standard and Im unsure of the difference. I did add an Akasa Superpseed USB 3.0 card reader but alas their InterConnect offering did not have proper USB 3.0 connectivity to cover the card reader slots.

The fastest SATA III port on my board is the Intel. Marvell is poor in comparison. You can buy a Raid/ACHI controller that plugs into a PCIE slot - that will also give good bandwidth.

 

[scaramanga]

I put together mine last week and have been very surprised by the hiuge increases in performance while editing in Photoshop and Prem Pro. I've not bothered with any Overlocking of the CPU or GPU but it is saving me a lot of time already. I still need to figure out how I set up all the discs as I want to keep the main Windows drive largely free of clutter and need to figure out how RAID works. Can I split four identical discs into two lots of RAID ?

I need a Win disk (done), a scratch disc, a disc to hold original files with a RAID copy and a disc to hold edited files also as a RAID copy. I'll probably hotswap to archive work.

Also any reccommendations on a big, fast, robust external HD as I need to transfer files regularly when out in the field back to the orrifice. Would USB 3.0 be faster than SATA 6 GB/s ?

Do you want RAID for redundancy or speed? If you want it for speed, let me know, if you want it for redundancy, it may be cheaper and just as effective to have a decent plug-in backup drive.

There are arguments for striping your scratch disk for performance, but I've heard good reports of using large, fast solid state drives. You'll get through them as they're limited to a certain number of read/writes but it would probably improve performance.

BTW, did you choose your username for the new "friends" function on the forum? If so, well played.

 

[Dorothy]

The new "friends" function :O I had to reregister as I could not get on as 'Clarky' I tried for a password recover but nothing happened. I cried a bit but got over it.

You have me with 'redundancy'. The RAID is just aobut ensuring I have two copies of everything should a disk die. Speed is less of an issue really.

@Ralph - I shoot stills and video in the field. I back up too my laptop/external HD at set periods as I am working maintaining the memory card files too. I can edit in the field but usually bring the laptop/HD back and then transfer onto my office pc for editing and permanent storage. Workflow probalby needs tweaking but the transfer to the office pc needs to be quick. I need to make sure that I don't double and triple back up 'pre cull' where I make a rapid judgement on what is a keeper or not.

It might be an idea to have an entirely seperate raid storage setup so I don't have to start taking machines apart to access the archives if a pc goes into meltdown.

 

[scaramanga]

The new "friends" function :O I had to reregister as I could not get on as 'Clarky' I tried for a password recover but nothing happened. I cried a bit but got over it.

You have me with 'redundancy'. The RAID is just aobut ensuring I have two copies of everything should a disk die. Speed is less of an issue really.

@Ralph - I shoot stills and video in the field. I back up too my laptop/external HD at set periods as I am working maintaining the memory card files too. I can edit in the field but usually bring the laptop/HD back and then transfer onto my office pc for editing and permanent storage. Workflow probalby needs tweaking but the transfer to the office pc needs to be quick. I need to make sure that I don't double and triple back up 'pre cull' where I make a rapid judgement on what is a keeper or not.

It might be an idea to have an entirely seperate raid storage setup so I don't have to start taking machines apart to access the archives if a pc goes into meltdown.

If you want to ensure that the computer is still running when a drive goes, the cheapest method is mirroring (RAID1). That will use two disks acting as one - it'll speed up your reads but slow down your writes.

RAID5 will require a minimum of 3 disks but has almost the fault tolerance of RAID1 with slightly better than single disk performance. The performance will depend on the RAID controller though - you'll probably have a dedicated one in your system but if (like some on-board GPUs) it uses your CPU and some reserved memory it could affect performance.

If you can get your system up and running reasonably quickly on failure, and your redundancy is purely for data then you may be better off with a NAS - you can get one for about ?ú70 that will hold two drives in RAID1 configuration.

 

[Ralphy Coates]

The new "friends" function :O I had to reregister as I could not get on as 'Clarky' I tried for a password recover but nothing happened. I cried a bit but got over it.

You have me with 'redundancy'. The RAID is just aobut ensuring I have two copies of everything should a disk die. Speed is less of an issue really.

@Ralph - I shoot stills and video in the field. I back up too my laptop/external HD at set periods as I am working maintaining the memory card files too. I can edit in the field but usually bring the laptop/HD back and then transfer onto my office pc for editing and permanent storage. Workflow probalby needs tweaking but the transfer to the office pc needs to be quick. I need to make sure that I don't double and triple back up 'pre cull' where I make a rapid judgement on what is a keeper or not.

It might be an idea to have an entirely seperate raid storage setup so I don't have to start taking machines apart to access the archives if a pc goes into meltdown.

Redundancy is basically backup...

How much data do you write over a set period?

Was writing out a big thing about raid but scara ninja'd me

 

[Dorothy]

Corsair 600T White ( to match my desks )
Corsair HX 850W PSU
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
Intel i7 2700K 3.5 GHz CPU
ASUS GTX570 Direct CU II GFX
16GB RAM Corsair Vengeance RAM
Akasa Superspeed USB 3.0 Card Reader
Akasa SATA 3.5" Hot Swap
600GB 10000rpm For Win 7 and CS5 (waiting for SSD prices and tech to improve)
2 x 2TB WD Caviar
Host of assorted other legacy HDs

 

[edgey-the-yid]

Corsair 600T White ( to match my desks )
Corsair HX 850W PSU
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
Intel i7 2700K 3.5 GHz CPU
ASUS GTX570 Direct CU II GFX
16GB RAM Corsair Vengeance RAM
Akasa Superspeed USB 3.0 Card Reader
Akasa SATA 3.5" Hot Swap
600GB 10000rpm For Win 7 and CS5 (waiting for SSD prices and tech to improve)
2 x 2TB WD Caviar
Host of assorted other legacy HDs

View attachment 310

Thats the case I shall be getting hopefully... after April (month of bills)! In the meantime tho just gonna boost my RAM and maybe get a Corsair H60 watercooling unit for my processor.