Help with new build

[Varg]

Hey,
My system is almost done. I am kicking around ideas for a build, on a budget. Trying to stay under 1000 and really want to stay around 700-800 but flexable.
What do you think about this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.391749

This kit features the latest, powerful AMD Six-Core Processor, Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz for supporting the latest Microsoft Windows 64bit OS, delivering a vivid visual experience and better multitasking than the conventional PC system.

With the HardOCP Editor's Choice Gold Award Winner, ASUS AMD 785G Chipset HDMI ATX Motherboard, this SuperCombo supports the latest AMD Socket AM3 45nm processors, featuring 100% All High-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors, SidePort Memory, Energy Processing Unit (EPU), CrashFree BIOS 3 and 8+2 Phase Power Design. It supports ATI CrossFireX and ATI Hybrid CrossFireX Technologies.

This board has an extensive Back Panel I/O Ports design (including 1 x eSATA, 1 x HDMI, 1 x IEEE1394a, 6 x USB Ports and Optical S/PDIF-Out Port) for connecting to a broad variety of external devices.

In addition to the outstanding CPU and Motherboard platform, it's also equipped with the fastest memory in its class: G.Skill Ripjaws Series DDR3 1600 4GB Desktop Memory Kit.

For saving more energy and being eco-friendly, a Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive is included to reduce power consumption and yields lower operating temperatures for increased reliability and low acoustics.

To efficiently power up your multi-graphics system, this barebones kit included the OCZ ModXStream Pro Power Supply Unit. This unit consumes up to 33% less energy than an equivalent power supply with absolutely no reduction in performance.

“Created for Pros.” Thermaltake Element G series ATX Mid-Tower Case is included to finish your powerful system with a sophisticated, spacious design. Designed with Colorshift Fan with 6 colors exchange patterns for optimal gaming experience and adjustable fan speed control for performance mode or silent mode.




I am still evaluating what graphics card to go with but push come to shove i can reuse my 9800GTX till I can afford crossfile monsters. I have a license for windows 7 64bit. Is it worth it to get a 10k RPM drive?
Any thoughts on this? Is there a weak spot I am not seeing? The price on this combo @ newegg is 614, which is pretty damn good I think.

[Jim Tressel]

Good kit.  I'd recommend slapping in a second hard drive and raid-0ing those bitches (looks like the board supports sata raid, like most newer boards).  It's far more cost-effective than a 10k hdd.  Also, if you zoom in on the pic, that board has "GPU NOS".  Vin Diesel approves.

[Varg]

Raid 0 ? Color me a-tarded, but how does that work for performance? if you have 7200 RPM drives, they can only spin that fast right?

PLZ ESPLAIN.

[majer]

correct me if I'm wrong but your drives only spin at 7200 rpm,  your data/ OS will be distributed across both making it basically one drive. Your processor can read and interpret the info coming from the drives faster then they can send it, so in a raid config you have two or more drives sending info to the processor giving you increased load times and cool stuff like that.

[Jim Tressel]

In raid 0, both drives act as one logical disk.  Unlike raid 1 where it writes the same data to both drives simultaneously, half the data is sent to one drive, half to the other.  This effectively halves your read/write speeds.  Each disk will still only perform as well as that disk can perform (seek times, platter rpms, etc.), but you're splitting the load across two average disks which equals performance increase.  The badass processor and board that you are looking at will hardly be the bottleneck. 

Raid 0 ftw.

Of course, raid 0 doubles your potential for failure, so keep your important shit backed up.

[Varg]

OK well that makes since. I might just do that, all my important shit gets backed up anyway and I am going to start keeping and incremental copy at my dads house in case of fire (i think my role as Tivoli Storage Manager admin is brainwashing me to think disaster recovery all the time lol), lots of family photos and stuff that only exists digitally.

I am having second thoughts on the 6 core though, do games even take advantage of it? I guess it does not matter this is a pretty good price, but i could put a little more cash into a video card (5870 looks like the tits). Decisions Decisions.

[Varg]

Well I pulled the trigger on this. I added and 5850 gfx card that is supposed to be pretty awesome, couldnt justify the 8570 at 300+ tough and I can always add another 5850 and crossfire.

[ZONK]

I don't think RAID 0 with platter hard drives is really that much improvement. If the computer is idle and the platters spin down you will still have the delay while they spin up. Not sure what backup method you are using, but if you do RAID 0 might as well just RAID 5 (requires 3 hard drives) and you will still a get the tiny speed increase and RAID 5 has parity so it is a backup itself, if one hard drive fails, throw a new one it, it rebuilds it. Is backing up a RAID 0 with a software solution even possible? (I know you can hardware backup the RAID but that requires more hardware in which you again might as well RAID 5)

If I had SSD hard drives I would totally RAID them because of their faster access time that stack better.

[Varg]

Done and done.
Pretty nice machine. Will be shooting your face off in BC2 this weekend.

[gr0n]

Here's a handy guide to RAID and the tradeoffs of the various levels:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp-c.html

From my own recollection that chart does seem accurate.  We use RAID-10 for our transaction log volumes since the write times are about twice that of RAID-5.  RAID-0 is the best for pure all-around performance for the least money.

SSD's have epic quick read times but writes are somewhat on-par with platter disks.  So, just imagine a RAID-0 of SSDs.... giggity!!

-gr0n