Guess I've pretty much reached perfection....

[Agrippa]

After about two years I've finally come to what I think is pretty much 7th PC heaven. I've got just about everything I want and need and everything from here on in will be incremental upgrades, as things get better, faster, bigger, etc. At least I can't think of anything else to upgrade just now except what's mentioned below, but maybe you guys and girls can...? Feedback and opinions on my system would be welcome, to help me implement any improvements which can be made to my system. However, before you come on screaming for GF4s and 120GB HDs, let me say that I'm not bothered about CS and Quake FPS, as I don't play them, nor do I, currently, need any more storage space than I have. Other than that, I'm open to suggestions... My system is as follows:

Lian Li PC 71 Full Tower
Enermax 550W ATX12V PSU
Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra
Intel P4 1.6GHz @ 2.2GHz
TwinMOS PC2700 512 MB DDR RAM
Alpha PAL 8942 Cooler w/ Enermax variable speed fan.
4 x IBM 60GXP 60GB ATA100 7200rpm in RAID5 array (permanent, secure storage area)
2 x IBM 60GXP 60GB ATA100 7200rpm (system, download and games partitions)
1 x Maxtor ?540 ATA133 5400rpm (temporary storage)
Thermaltake Hard Cano 5 drive cage/HD cooler/temp. monitor (IBM 60GXP drive)
Aluminium drive cage/cooler (IBM 60GXP drive)
Pioneer 16X DVD drive
TDK Cyclone CD-RW 40X/12X/48X
Sony FDD
ATI Radeon 8500LE 128MB
CL SB Audigy Player
3Ware Escalade 6410 IDE RAID 5 Controller
CL Inspire 5300 5.1 speakers
Logitech Cordless Optical Desktop
Hansol 920D 19" CRT Monitor
4 x 80mm case fans (inc. w/ case)
2 x Enermax 92mm variable speed case fans

Currently my only planned upgrades are a better monitor, probably a 21 Sony and a 3Ware Escalade 7850. because, frankly, the write performance of the 6410 suck. However, the latter is not at all important, asthe RAID5 array only serves as storage and eliminates the need for constant backups.

And that's it. Any room for improvements? Let me know.

Agrippa

 

[Thor86]

You can't call IDE raid as "perfection", but you also can't beat the price. Nice rig. Come back and post some temps as I am curious what they would be like in the Li-Li case with all those drives.

 

[Agrippa]

Sorry, that's "perfection" as related to price/performance, of course.... Sure, I'd love a pure SCSI setup, but even I'm not mad enough to shell out the readies needed for that kind of system. As for temps: case around 31C, cpu 43C/49-52C idle/full load respectively. Ambient around 20-25C.

Agrippa

 

[Deskstar]

Perfection is more than one monitor; at least two...possibly three. When working on multiple documents, spreadsheets or net sites, the more "desktop" the better. Try it, and you will not go back.

 

[boyRacer]

Wow... nice rig. I felt that way too... until a month later when my whole setup was obsolete.

 

[trikster2]

> Perfection is more than one monitor; at least two

Or if space is a concern: Two computers and one monitor with a KVM..................

scroll-lock, scroll-lock, up arrow and I am in a whole other world...........

> RAID5 array only serves as storage and eliminates the need for constant backups.

Forget about constant, how do you back up your 180GB of storage period?????

You keep a couple hundred spare CD-Rs laying around and a CD-R monkey or something?

While Raid5 is protection against hardware failure it does not protect against everything, like filesystem corruption, say due to a power outage. Or what about flood/fire/theft, you have no off-site capability.

Problem with wonderful modern hard drives is that tape drive technology has not kept up. A good LTO or Super-DLT would probably equal the cost of your entire system........

(personaly I'm with you. Ignore the problem IDE drives these days are insanely reliable, and put the extra money into a nicer car or something)

But yeah data integrity concerns aside, nice system!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Ilmater]

Nah, first, if you're going to have an Intel, get RDRAM. Second, don't; get an AMD. Third, get a new vid card. Fourth, get this RAID controller:
http://www.promise.com/product/subsys_detail_eng.asp?pid=86&fid=2#
Fifth, more than one monitor (as stated above). Sixth, you better have either rounded cables or, even better, flat cables that are laid out properly. Seventh, if you're not running W2K, then you haven't reached perfection. Hey, people, this may be the last OS that Microsoft gets right. We have to use it so that they know....

Otherwise, exactly what I'd have if I had the money - except for the cooler. I'd have a Swiftech because they're better, but the two are very close. I would have bought Samsung RAM also. I'm building my own dream system, and I figure, if I'm going to have a RAID 5 array set up, why not pay the money for the little extras like rounded cables and better RAM. Just me...

Damn fine system

 

[Ilmater]

Oh, and by the way, I'm with him; RAID is good enough. File system corruption protection isn't reasonable any more. I have 300GB of hard drive space and when I upgrade my computer, I'm going to put in a RAID 5 array as well. There's no way I'd go through the trouble of backing up all of the stuff on my computer. Besides, at least I can replace a hard drive. If a CD scratches once in the wrong place, everything's gone. RAID 5 is better than nothing. Oh yeah, and it's fast too.

Speaking of which, I was curious. When you first put in the array, did you see any performance differences?

 

[CrazySaint]

Personally, if I were building a system like that I'd get the new 8MB cache HDs from WD that offer near SCSI performance.

 

[Agrippa]

Thanks a bunch for the comments. Some interesting thoughts, but I fear none which I will act on...

Deskstar: multiple monitors is a nice idea as such and something I have, although briefly, tried before. Severely impractical however, until I can afford multiple 19" LCD screens - which isn't on the cards anytime soon!

trikster2: A KVM is out too, I'm afraid.....had one, but didn't particularly like it. More of a bother than boon, I though. Very true about the backups of course. I did consider a tape drive, but to get one good enough to serve a setup like mine would, like you say, cost more than the system itself.

Ilmater: 'fraid I'm not with you on that Promise card, mate. I've had one of their basic RAID cards before, as well as a couple from HighPoint, not to mention that my ten last MBs have all had RAID made by one or the other and basically I've found both the integrated solutions and the cards to be unreliable. There's no way in hell I'll ever trust my data to products by Promise or HighPoint again!!! The 3Ware card on the other hand, has performed flawlessly since day 1 and have given me no indications as to future problems - very much unlike the other solutions. As for performance differences, I'm not quite sure what you mean... The array does not contain my boot/system partition, so as far as I can tell it has not affected the overall system performance at all, unless of course you count the extra 5 second boot-up delay introduced by the 3Ware BIOS. Like I mentioned though, the 6410 has an awful write performance, but this, after all, is of no consequence in its present role.

As far as a new video card and top spec WD hard drives go - a GF4 would be pointless for someone like me, who never touches an FPS and the HDs will be upgraded as time goes by and when more storage is required. Today the WDs are the champs, tomorrow 8MB or larger cache will be standard and will not fetch such a price premium. In any case, the 60GXPs are excellent disks and more than fast enough for now.

Agrippa

 

[trikster2]

>trikster2: A KVM is out too, I'm afraid.....had one, but didn't particularly like it. More of a bother than boon,

A month ago I would have agreed with you: Mouse or keyboard would lock up every hundred times I switched or so. Since I was playing two characters in an online game this was VERY annoying as invariably it would happen when things were hot and someone would die due to the #$#@$ KVM.

However now all is fine.

I got rid of my logitech mouse replaced it with a MS explorer, still same problems. Uninstalled explorer drivers went with stock 98SE drivers and have not had it lock up a single time since. I'm using the new Belkin E-Series which like the SOHO series supports an ungodly resolution of 2048x1536@85Hz. At 1280x1024 I'm seeing no screen degradation at all.

I much rather have two good computers than one "perfect" computer.

>There's no way I'd go through the trouble of backing up all of the stuff on my computer.

Ilmater: That's the point. There is no way for you to affordably back up "all the stuff" on a modern computer.

Until there is, we won't have "perfection".

That CD scratch thing made no sense. I pointed out that CDs are impractical (unless there really is a CD monkey?), the only way to backup that storage is with tape and you can't afford a tape that backup solution like a
$3,200 LTO or superDLT that does 100GB per tape..........

 

[Howard]

Any system that includes CL speakers is definitely not perfect.

However, I don't wish to rag on you, so I'll just suggest that you now spend your time building your own speakers (which have the potential to be better than Klipsch 5.1s, let me say) instead of upgrading your system. The instructions can be found anywhere on the Internet; the time and money I'm sure you have.

Spanking system, mate.

 

[Barrei]

Nice rig even if your cpu is running a little slow.