asked on
Reccomendations welcome for speeding up this system (mainboard upgrade).
Hi all,
I am looking for ways to speed up the following system, including replacing the mother board with one that supports RAID5 with all four SATA Raptors. Any ideas/links are appreciated.
Quan.1 : Abit AA8-3rd eye (the '3rd eye' is an external lcd display useful for fine-tuning overclock settings).
Quan.1 : P4 LGA775 cpu (3.6GHz) Liquid cooled by a Thermaltake 'Bigwater' kit.
Quan.4 : Crucial 512MB DDR2 'Ballistix' memory.
Quan.1 : ATI Radeon x800 (PCIx16) video card.
Quan.4 : 10Krpm SATA 74GB hard drives, WD740GD 'Raptor'
Quan.1 : MS Windows XP w/SP2
The owner primarily wants a 'gamer rig' so changing the OS isn't an option...
I thought about adding a peltier to aid the cpu cooling / overclock capability, but without changing the Thermaltake l/c kit design I don't think that is wize. I also thought about a dual processor solution and/or a PCIx SATA card that supports RAID5 on all four drives. My head hurts...
If anyone has some (other) good ideas please type them in.
--
Thanks,
Zak
I am looking for ways to speed up the following system, including replacing the mother board with one that supports RAID5 with all four SATA Raptors. Any ideas/links are appreciated.
Quan.1 : Abit AA8-3rd eye (the '3rd eye' is an external lcd display useful for fine-tuning overclock settings).
Quan.1 : P4 LGA775 cpu (3.6GHz) Liquid cooled by a Thermaltake 'Bigwater' kit.
Quan.4 : Crucial 512MB DDR2 'Ballistix' memory.
Quan.1 : ATI Radeon x800 (PCIx16) video card.
Quan.4 : 10Krpm SATA 74GB hard drives, WD740GD 'Raptor'
Quan.1 : MS Windows XP w/SP2
The owner primarily wants a 'gamer rig' so changing the OS isn't an option...
I thought about adding a peltier to aid the cpu cooling / overclock capability, but without changing the Thermaltake l/c kit design I don't think that is wize. I also thought about a dual processor solution and/or a PCIx SATA card that supports RAID5 on all four drives. My head hurts...
If anyone has some (other) good ideas please type them in.
--
Thanks,
Zak
Desktops
Last Comment
stockhes
SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
PCLANTECHS - Sorry, I miss read. I missed the fact that the ram was X 4, so I thought it was only 512. I thought that seemed strange, now I know why.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
ASKER
-
mwnnj,
The power supply is an Enermax EG851 AW(W)-VH (660W) and the case is a Coolermaster Wavemaster (the owner supplied both of these components, as you say he wants the best)... Good call on the seagate cheetah drives but we already have the four sata WD Raptors so I am trying to make them as fast as possible. I was thinking of adding the FastTrak S150 SX4-M raid card from Promise Technologies and building a RAID5 array stripped between all four drives. Does anyone (here) have experience they want to share building a RAID5 array with this card? Any advice on making a faster (WinXP) raid array is welcome.
stockhes,
I agree about the NVIDIA video and Athlon 64 performing better than this P4 system for gamming but all the system components have been installed so it's too late to choose that route now. I know Intel will be releasing a 64 bit cpu in May but I have heard they don't run as cool as the AMD equivalent. Anyway most of the components in this P4 system were in place when the owner brought it to me, I've just been hired to optimize it so I'll keep the Athlon 64 in mind for the next gamer system I build from scratch.
As is, the normal o/c settings read 3860MHz but the CPU temp is peeking at 52C running 3DMARK so I may lower the clock some more. Another problem is I don't have an accurate reference thermometer; I guess I need to verify this temp before I return it to the owner, yea? Any recommendations for an affordable i/r thermometer?
--
Thanks,
Zak
mwnnj,
The power supply is an Enermax EG851 AW(W)-VH (660W) and the case is a Coolermaster Wavemaster (the owner supplied both of these components, as you say he wants the best)... Good call on the seagate cheetah drives but we already have the four sata WD Raptors so I am trying to make them as fast as possible. I was thinking of adding the FastTrak S150 SX4-M raid card from Promise Technologies and building a RAID5 array stripped between all four drives. Does anyone (here) have experience they want to share building a RAID5 array with this card? Any advice on making a faster (WinXP) raid array is welcome.
stockhes,
I agree about the NVIDIA video and Athlon 64 performing better than this P4 system for gamming but all the system components have been installed so it's too late to choose that route now. I know Intel will be releasing a 64 bit cpu in May but I have heard they don't run as cool as the AMD equivalent. Anyway most of the components in this P4 system were in place when the owner brought it to me, I've just been hired to optimize it so I'll keep the Athlon 64 in mind for the next gamer system I build from scratch.
As is, the normal o/c settings read 3860MHz but the CPU temp is peeking at 52C running 3DMARK so I may lower the clock some more. Another problem is I don't have an accurate reference thermometer; I guess I need to verify this temp before I return it to the owner, yea? Any recommendations for an affordable i/r thermometer?
--
Thanks,
Zak
hi Zak,
i'll give you just few links the decision is yours.
about your Promise FastTrak S150 SX4-M controller:
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=124&familyId=2 RAID 5 is supported
about RAID 5:
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html not suggested for Video performance,medium write access,,,
about RAID 0:
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html not so stable ,but best for Video performance,best for big banwidth transfer,for best prformance you need a separate controller for each sata drive ,asuming you use RAID 0 with only two sata drives,,,
later
i'll give you just few links the decision is yours.
about your Promise FastTrak S150 SX4-M controller:
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=124&familyId=2 RAID 5 is supported
about RAID 5:
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html not suggested for Video performance,medium write access,,,
about RAID 0:
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html not so stable ,but best for Video performance,best for big banwidth transfer,for best prformance you need a separate controller for each sata drive ,asuming you use RAID 0 with only two sata drives,,,
later
Hi Zak
Sorry for misinterpreting your post
Before you eventually go SLI check this:
NVIDIA's SLI Shortchanges Gamers?
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NzEx
The present configuration is maxed at 2GB of ram. I will need a m/b with more than four slots to add another 512MB...
all,
Upon rereading my initial post I realize I need to clairify, the OS is WinXP Pro w/SP2.
--
Thanks for your ideas,
Zak