Get 2 x 2GB memory since you're planning to OC. Most chipsets don't OC that well with all 4 slots filled. This will also give you headroom should you want to go for more RAM in the future. I read a review on that motherboard online and it did well @ 472mhz bus speed (OC'd from standard 266mhz) but generally the Gigabyte p965-ds3 is the known OC'r for your CPU. I guess if SLI is important to you then the ASUS board you've chosen will be the most appropriate for you.

Hmmm, I first was going to go with 2gb sticks but I heard performance on this board was better with all slots filled and 1gb sticks have better timings than 2gb sticks.....

but I do hate the though of 4 1gb sticks since if/when I add more memory I'd be wasting memory whereas with 2x2gb sticks I could always add 2 more 2gb sticks....and I have heard that all 4 slots being filled is troublesome with some board. (WTF is the problem anyway? This has been an issue with desktop motherboards for ever....)

I'm not worried about wasting money on DDR2 memory even though DDR3 memory is coming out. It will be quite awhile before DDR3 memory is up to par with DDR2.

I guess the only way to know for sure is to find someone who has experience with this board and those memory configurations.....

As for SLI....I don't care about SLI so that isn't important to me at all. Now when Nvidia releases a new video card in the future and if I can pair it with my current card then I may give it a shot but SLI isn't important to me at all.

Hmmm, Gigabyte. I've stuck with Asus/Abit over the years and for good reason. Never was a Gigabyte fan. I'll check out the specs on that board tonight though.

I think I may have to risk it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16820231098

Mind boggles....

I'm planning on 400FSBX9=3600 and according to what I'm reading these chips should be able to do 4 4 4 12 by upping the voltage a bit. Even if they can't 4gb for that price isn't bad. Hell, I wouldn't have any qualms about throwing the memory in the trash when I get around to upgrading it!

Here's a great thread on this memory: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthrea … t=135578&page=3

DosFreak wrote:

Hmmm, Gigabyte. I've stuck with Asus/Abit over the years and for good reason. Never was a Gigabyte fan. I'll check out the specs on that board tonight though.

Since the Asus/Gigabyte merger/joint venture happened in August 2006 it appears that Asus has been designing and producing the Gigabyte line of motherboards and video-cards anyway...

As to your hard drive selections - the WD Raptors sound good in a RAID 1 mirror configuration for your Boot/OS drive. This would make sure that your OS configuration(s) and the labor it takes to install them would be protected by the drive mirroring... When it comes to your mass data storage you might consider the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 drives in the 500GB to 750GB size with a 16MB cache buffer. The five year warrenty is nice, however Seagate has a very good rep for drive reliability. My boot drives are SCSI Atlas IV and three storage drives are all 1.5MB/sec SATA interface Seagate Barracuda 7200 drives. I am looking to get another Seagate Barracuda 7200 drive in the 5500GB+ range in the next month or so - for my Intel-desktop board P4 model 640 system.

Does the Cooler Master 830 ATX/BTX case have silicon/rubber gromets for the mounted hard drives? I have found this reduces hard drive vibrations quite a bit...

The fast Intel Conroe dual CPU combined with your other components sounds like you are building another state-of-the-art system - at least for a week or so... 😁

Best of luck in configuring your new PC workstation,

dvwjr

dvwjr wrote:

Does the Cooler Master 830 ATX/BTX case have silicon/rubber gromets for the mounted hard drives?

Don't think so. It seems that it has a mounting system similar to the STC-T01, this one just has a big amount of 5.25" bays and you get some kind of snap-in "harddrive cage", which places up to four 3.5" drives within the height of three 5.25" bays.
The plastic clamps in the bays dampen vibrations a bit, but on the other hand, the whole snap-in cage may rattle when vibrating disks are mounted inside.

Hey 5u3,

DosFreak has picked a nice case, I believe that another case he might consider is the new Antec P182 model. Here is a link to the Bit-tech.net review website for 26 April 2007 with reviews of both the Antec P182 and the Cooler Master 830/832.

I was helping a friend look for a new case for his one every five year upgrade and liked the previous Antec P180B because of the layout with the power-supply on the bottom and the rubber grommet isolator for the hard-drives. The two pull out drive trays are also vibration dampened. The newer P182B is even better when it comes to routing wiring. Lots of sound insulation, too.

Now the Cooler Master 830 might be DosFreak's 'cup of tea' since it can go either ATX/BTX, has a removable motherboard tray and is made of aluminium. It can also hold a server-size array of hard drives and a LOT of fans. Fans mean coolness and noise. However you start putting enterprise class hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration in the future the undampened vibrations will annoy you AND the drives - makes the head settle time go up. Now for a single user PC workstation this might not matter... 😁

The fit and finish are probably better on the Cooler Master 830, just suprised that a high-end case that expensive would not have dampened the hard drive vibrations 😦 Both would make a good home for his new system...

dvwjr

That P180 looks nice.....arrrgghhh...

I too build computers with a 5 year lifespace (with occasional video card/peripheral upgrades). Computers parts are so cheap nowadays though that I won't mind upgrading the processor/motherboard within this timeframe.

BTX isn't a factor especially with the P180, the whole thing with BTX formfactor was the cooling which the P180 seems to fix and BTX seems to be taking forever to become popular. Besides although some people thing $250 it's expensive it's not really.

Looks like people are having issues with the P182 as far as putting the sides on and door warping issues....

I think I'll stick with the Stacker. I've always wanted one and it seems like it would be easier to upgrade and modify in the future. Whereas the P180 looks like a PITA to setup and upgrade....

As far as HD vibration, I'll just buy some rubber washers and that should do the trick. I'm not sure if I'll go crazy with the HD's for this computer. The plan is to have an NAS with a couple of terabytes for storage so I'll probably minimize storage on this computer.

DosFreak,

Yep, it's all in the execution for those cases. Bending sheet metal and making plastic molds shoud not be that hard, but hey...The design may be good but if reports filter out that the factory build is not up to snuff - then the premium that Antec wants to charge will disappear when people don't buy... 😳 The Cooler Master 830 will make upgrades easier with that removeable motherboard tray. I had an older US made PC case that I used for a young nephew, had a removeable motherboard tray and I have a BX440 motherboard with a Tulatin 1.4GHz Celeron for his everyday and retro Dos games system. The tray makes system building much easier. His father has a lot of older DOS games which are now installed and he thinks the are all very playable and 'cool'... 😁

Now I have to ask about your future external RAID disk farm, how in the heck are you going to backup something massive like that? 😳 You are in the IT business so you are more than familiar wil the issues. Or are you just going to depend on the RAID to protect the data? 😮 Let's say you have half a terrabyte of DOS games in your collection in say, another five years... 😁 And then you have torn pages in your RAID array and your 3.5" floppy media are no longer readable - what will you do, what will you do? </American Express ad>

Let me put in a plug for the IBM model M keyboard, which you may find at ClickyKeyboards for reselling real IBM model Ms or those newly producted buckling spring keyboards made by Unicomp who also does have models with both PS/2 and USB connectors. I know I sound like a broken space bar on this subject, but don't you owe it to yourself? You've worked hard, now it's time to reward yourself with that special keyboard - the one that audibly announces to the world that you have arrived. 🤣

Looks like a great system,

dvwjr

Storage

Well, currently I have....

EXTERNAL USB DRIVES
1 500GB w/ 250GB for TRAVEL drive (All downloaded programs/personal data pictures, etc) (have to delete unecessary data periodically on the 250gb).
1 250 w/ 250GB Backup for my GAMES1 drive (A-N ISO images backup of CD cases))
1 250 w/ 250GB Backup for Games 2 drive (N-Z ISO images backup of CD cases)
1 250 w/250gb Backup for WORK images. (Basically anything that is not games)
1 250 w/250gb Backup for Music/Movies. (MP3's/Divx compressed movies).

The backup of the ISO images is absolutely necessary. My CD's get scratched like crazy through some magical force as soon as they are removed from the packaging. Also alot of my older CD's have degraded over the years.

I want to make absolutely sure that 30yrs from now I can still go back and play Baldur's Gate/Zork/whatever without any problems. (Assuming the world doesn't go the Mad Max/Fallout route......I guess I need to work on my Vault project next....)

Plan is to setup an NAS and then use USB drives for backup of the NAS. It's a hell of a lot better of an idea than 2x USB external drives! 😁

I was thinking of upgrading each of my externals to 500GB and then simply moving the Backup 500gb's into the NAS but considering how slow I'm going and the fact that I also want to put my DVD movies on the NAS I may just start going with 1terabyte drives.... (1 terabyte drives I can consolidate alot of my external drives down)

Tape is a PITA and I constantly (CONSTANTLY) reorganize my data. I've been using the 2x external USB backup method since 2001 and out of all that time only 2 drives failed. Considering the deployments I've been on, # of times I dropped 'em, amount of use they got I didn't blame 'em. I've been all Western Digital after that IBM Deathstar fiasco which bit me in the ass. Segate/Western Digital are all I bother with unless when I build/fix a PC for someone and they want to go cheap I'll buy a Maxtor.

I'm currently using the Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard which seems to work fine. Kinda plasticy with no weight to it....I can't kill anyone with it unfortunately. 🙁 But I don't have any gripes with it.

DosFreak wrote:

MOTHERBOARD: Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus

and

DosFreak wrote:

VIDEO CARD: EVGA Geforce 8800GTS 640MB

Just wonder: do you plan to do SLI with Gf 8800?

Not any time soon, if ever. (Not made of money).
It's nice to have the option tho.

DosFreak wrote:

Not any time soon, if ever. (Not made of money).
It's nice to have the option tho.

I'm just thinking: do you plan to the system exclusively for Vista, or do you plan a Vista/XP dual boot?

By the way, how compatible GeForce 8800 series with older games like WarCraft III or Quake III engine? Do you plan to play old (Windows XP) games with the system, or is it exclusive for Vista (DX10) games?

200364bit/Vista64bit/Linux triple-boot.

AFAIK, Geforce 8800 is just as compatible as all of the other Geforces in D3D/OGL.
I plan to play every game in my collection..... (well the ones I haven't finished/played) and I still need to work on my 64bit compatibility list. (Check the sig for my PC Game Compatibility List)

64 bit? Whoa....

Downloading the list now.

DosFreak wrote:

200364bit/Vista64bit/Linux triple-boot.

AFAIK, Geforce 8800 is just as compatible as all of the other Geforces in D3D/OGL.

Actually the OGL performance of the 8 series so far. particularly in apps like 3DSMax and Maya, has been poorer than previous generations. Supposedly this is being dealt with in driver revisions but there's also some noise from nVidia that OGL performance is part of the new generation Quadro range and no longer a given for Geforce 8 cards.

Just so you're aware.

Called SVC today wonder where my case was at.....

Looks like just like every other place on the Internet the Stacker 832 is in high demand. They said they were getting some in today though so I should have mine by the end of the week.

With that said, Newegg actually got them back in stock a day and a half after I ordered from SVC....and newegg ships most of their stuff out of TN so I get it alot faster too. Oh well...

Getting Motherboard/Ram/Fans/CDR/HD from newegg on wednesday. Hopefully the case/heatsink on Thursday. Might have this thing built and ready to go for the weekend!

Well I finally got my case in yesterday, I threw everything together crossed my fingers and pressed the power button.....and it booted! Woohoo!

There was only one problem....the memory.

When I first got the memory in I tested it out on my work computer one stick at a time. The first 3 sticks tested fine at default voltage but when I tested the fourth stick I kept on getting memory errors. I bumped the voltage up to 1.9v and that fixed that. So I stuck in all four sticks and ran memtest over the weekend, came back in and the memory was fine. I then left the memory in my work machine and used my work machine all last week with that memory. Memory was fine (with voltage to 1.9v).

So I put my new computer together and I kept on getting memory errors. Doesn't matter what voltage I use or what memory settings. If that 4th sticks is in there I keep on getting errors.... If I take out all 3 sticks and put in the "bad" stick and test the memory then it tests fine.....

I'm not sure if this is a motherboard issue with 4 sticks of memory or a memory issue....Thinking about returning the stick and getting another gskill stick of memory...

I can't believe how fast this computer is and I'm not even overclocking it (The Ultra-120 didn't come in). I'm sitting here running Stalker,Oblivion,Doom 3, Supre me Commander, etc at 1920x1200 resolution with all details to max and it runs beautifully. (I'm not using AA since I'm not seeing jaggies and they don't bother me that much anyway).

I'll post some benchmarks later.....

I'm currently running 2003 (32bit) on it and I noticed some problems with games\DosBox (only in dynamic core). 2003 has DEP turned on by default which seems to cause alot of games not to work unless you add them to the exception list for DEP. I can't believe that Duke3D is running at 50+ fps in DosBox @ 800x600...

Sounds like Christmas arrived early this year 😀

MiniMax wrote:

Sounds like Christmas arrived early this year 😀

Yep, and I'm not even done yet.... 😀

I did some more research on the internets and it looks like some boards can't run 4 sticks of memory at 800mhz. (The Abit P5B seemed to run it just fine....). So I dropped the memory down to 667 (4-4-4-12 1T) and am currently running memtest. So far it's gotten alot farther than it has before so it looks like it worked! Yay!

Now to get my Ultra-120 EXTREME 🙄 on Monday and overclock the heck out of this thing.