kithylin wrote:

Primary storage: Dell PERC 5/i hadware sas raid card. Using 8 x 15,000 rpm, 16MB buffer, SAS 3 Gbps @ 73.4 GB Seagate Cheetah 15k.5 hard drives in raid-5, 512Gb primary storage.
Secondary storage: 3 x Seagate 7200 rpm, 16MB buffer, Sata 3 Gbps drives @ 750 GB, raid-0 for 2TB secondary storage, on raid-0 on onboard intel raid chipset.

I am confuse.

RAID-5 for your smaller scratch storage. RAID-0 for your slower, long-term storage.

Wouldn't one want the faster throughput for "working" drives, and redundancy on your "storage" drives?

SquallStrife wrote:

I am confuse. […]
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kithylin wrote:

Primary storage: Dell PERC 5/i hadware sas raid card. Using 8 x 15,000 rpm, 16MB buffer, SAS 3 Gbps @ 73.4 GB Seagate Cheetah 15k.5 hard drives in raid-5, 512Gb primary storage.
Secondary storage: 3 x Seagate 7200 rpm, 16MB buffer, Sata 3 Gbps drives @ 750 GB, raid-0 for 2TB secondary storage, on raid-0 on onboard intel raid chipset.

I am confuse.

RAID-5 for your smaller scratch storage. RAID-0 for your slower, long-term storage.

Wouldn't one want the faster throughput for "working" drives, and redundancy on your "storage" drives?

More like I use the raid-5 setup for OS, and games. And the other storage is for stuff I don't use often. Also I can only put 8 drives on the raid card at a time. So, while the onboard intel chipset does support raid-5, the performance is abysmally crappy, and the recovery is very poor. Stuff for other storage is more like: Game installer downloads, Program installer downloads.. and mainly for a large cache to put raw uncompressed video on when I get to video editing, sometimes it can exceed the total size of my raided storage. Also the second storage is just fast enough to record game footage in real time of some games I play without dropping FPS during the game below 60. Also when I need to make a backup image of the main raided storage, I have to create it somewhere else, and then copy to my file server, so.. it works for that too.

I only paid $175 out of pocket for building the entire raided setup.. and that was back in 2012, and it's as fast as, or a little faster than all of the "generic" or lower tier Sata-III SSD's. At the time when I built it, almost all of the 512GB SSD's were more than double that price. We have some that are finally coming down to near that price today, finally, but I like the redundancy part of my setup. When they get cheap enough, some day I could put SSD's on the main raid controller.. that'd be fun and really fast.

kithylin wrote:

After x58 / first-generation I7 platforms (Sandy bridge and later) we no longer can use xeon chips in desktop motherboards any more, as the newer generation xeons have an entirely different platform controller hub (PCH / AKA Chipset), and different socket (LGA-2011).

You can buy LGA1150 Xeons, and they do work on desktop motherboards.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H97MPLUS/HelpDesk_CPU/

I've seen people use an E3-1230v3 in place of a similarly priced i5-4690 since it offers many of the same features as the more expensive i7, but has about the same cost as an i5.

My grandmother wanted a new computer and gave me her old Dell Dimension E520 with a Pentium 4, 512MB Ram, and Windows XP as a gift. It was too slow for her (it had a bunch of malware on it). After investigating it further, it comes with a G965 chipset which has surprising upgrade capability. So I threw a bunch of extra parts I had and purchased a few others and its now:

1Pentium 4            -> Core2Quad Q6600 (with an improved heatsink with copper heatpipes)
2512MB DDR2-533       -> 8GB DDR2-800
3160GB HD             -> 1TB Western Digital Blue
4Integrated Graphics  -> Radeon HD 4800 series
510/100mbit Ethernet  -> 1Gb Ethernet
6Floppy drive         -> Card Reader w/ 4x USB 2.0 ports
7300W PSU             -> 500W XClio GoodPower
8Windows XP           -> Windows 8.1 (modernized downgrade IMO :-P) 

It's my main system right now. Gonna probably get a new GPU and an SSD to go as the boot/app drive. 🤣

Right, my system is as follows:

The CPU is overclocked to 3.78GHz @ 1.25V and all features enabled, meaning that most of the time it boosts to 3.96GHz. I've got it cooled using a Cooler Master Nepton 240M closed-loop liquid cooler.
The "R9 200 series" is a Gigabyte Windforce 3 R9 280X. This was purchased second hand to solve the issue of running out of VRAM with my old HD 6870 crossfire setup (only 1GB).
This provides me with pretty much constant 60fps @ ultra settings in Elite: Dangerous, which is currently my most essential gaming requirement 😀
I've had this system except for a couple of upgrades (graphics card, liquid cooler and doubling the ram) since 2009. I'm surprised at how well the CPU is holding up. It still feels like a really fast system.

So after 3 and a half years of service from a used part, my PERC 5/i started having problems in my "current computer", it was constantly-failing healthy drives on port #8, and so since I needed to replace it, I went and looked and the next-family-up PERC 6/i card was only $36 today for card + battery + cable + PC bracket, so went ahead and upgraded instead of staying on the old one.

After updating it's firmware to the newest, getting raid-5 all set up and "Raid-built" and running, here's the result:

www.outfoxed.net/perc6/512KB-Stripe-Rai ... -Dell).jpg

Not embedding in to the thread cause it's kinda large.

Anyway... I'm very pleased with the performance from this raid card with 'spinner' mechanical hard drives. 😀

By the way, I tried to find the size of EVGA X58 Classified 3-way-SLI but failed. Is it EATX, HPTX or something else?

bristlehog wrote:

By the way, I tried to find the size of EVGA X58 Classified but failed. Is it EATX, HPTX or something else?

I just typed: evga x58 classified 3 way sli newegg <=- in to google and found the old newegg page from when it was sold new. Just.. so you know how I found this.

If you click the "Specifications" tab, and scroll down to the "Physical Spec" section, it has Extended ATX with the exact diemensions. They're big boards.. part of why I used an antec 1200 tower for mine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16813188048

kithylin wrote:

it has Extended ATX with the exact dimensions.

Aha.

Also, why did you choose E760? What are it's differences against E758, E759 and E770 that are also seen here and there at ebay?

bristlehog wrote:

kithylin wrote:

it has Extended ATX with the exact dimensions.

Aha.

Also, why did you choose E760? What are it's differences against E758, E759 and E770 that are also seen here and there at ebay?

The answer to that is rather long... and would probably run this thread off topic. I'll respond elsewhere. Mostly since it seems you're the only one here interested in the response, I think.

The CPU is overclocked to 3.78GHz @ 1.25V and all features enabled, meaning that most of the time it boosts to 3.96GHz. I've got it cooled using a Cooler Master Nepton 240M closed-loop liquid cooler.

A I7-xxx series is still quite good. And at 3.78 GHz, it will will be hanging with current gen processors.
1.25V seems really low.

Updated my main "BMW":

Athon 64 3200+ 2.2GHz (OC)
ASUS M2V-MX
1.50GB RAM
GT210 1GB
Delux ATX-450W P4 PSU - fixed and added missing components
Realtek HD Audio - crisp quality on headphones,need to get my old speakers fixed though
22" Horizon H-W2205S
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
LG GSA-H55N DVD Writer
1TB Samsung HD103SI SATA HDD

2nd rig - "Retro Style" 🤣

MSI K7N2 Delta-L
Athlon XP 1900+
512MB DDR
Powerlink LPK2-30 400W PSU
CMI C-Media 8738 PCI audio card
Realtek RTL8139 PCI NIC
FX5200 128MB TV-Out
Lite-On DVD-ROM drive - might change for my black LG and get another white LG,not sure atm
20GB Maxtor 6E020L0
Windows Vista Home Premium SP2

3rd rig - "Black edition"

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Athlon XP 2500+
1.50GB DDR
Sumvision KY-450ATX 350W PSU
nVidia inbuilt audio card
Realtek RTL8201BL+nVidia's integrated NIC
Radeon HD3450 512MB HDMI AGP
2x Sony DVD-ROMs
80GB WDC WD800JD SATA + 40GB Maxtor 6L040P0 IDE
Windows 7 Ultimate

These are my rigs,with the Athlon 64 being my main rig. The two rigs below it are backup rigs. BTW,the 3rd one is the only one that has a firewire/1394 port on the front which is connected to the onboard 1394 controller. (a Marvel controller iirc)

Last year i finally moved from 775 socket to 1150,but only this year i changed case,psu also had to change optical drive to a sata one,since new mb doesn't have ide.
Videocard,soundcard,ssd and hard drive stayed the same.

Spec:
Intel I5 4690K Haswell-Refresh 3,5ghz-4ghz turbo
Zalman CNPS10X cpu cooler
AsRock Z97 Pro4 mb with intel z97 chipset
8giga ram Corsair 2133mhz
Evga Geforce gtx 760 2gig memory
Samsung 840 EVO 120 giga
Wester Digital Caviar Blue 640g 7200 rpm.
Creative X-fi Extreme Music
Sirtec EP-750S 750w semi modular psu
LG dvd writter sata optical drive
ANTEC Gx500 case

bristlehog wrote:

kithylin wrote:

it has Extended ATX with the exact dimensions.

Aha.

Also, why did you choose E760? What are it's differences against E758, E759 and E770 that are also seen here and there at ebay?

E759 is the 'limited edition', first launched x58 Classified board that had an NF200 chip to complement the x58 with extra lanes and allowed for Full 3-way SLI @ 16x PCIe 2.0 + a dedicated card for physx, and then come the E760 and E770, which are almost exactly the same board with the exception of not having the NF200 Nvidia chip, and in case of the latter, with USB 3.0 and Sata 3 controllers(IIRC).

There was also an special version of the E759 called the E762 4-way SLI Classified, which was an stupidly big XL-ATX that had two(yes, two) NF200 chips, 7 PCIe slots and allowed you to run 4-way SLI(as you might guess from its name) with special Classified versions of the GTX285 made by eVGA too.

Unfortunately my current PC is junk.

What is "screenfetch"?

It's a util in *nix that shows your system specs, kinda like Archey, although there's a Windows equivalent, CMDFetch, circulating too.

RetroGamingNovice wrote:

Unfortunately my current PC is junk.

You can pick up early C2D board/CPU sets for really good prices on ebay these days.

RetroGamingNovice wrote:

Unfortunately my current PC is junk.

Your CPU is junk, swap it out for a 2800+ Sempron with 256Kb Cache, yours has only 128Kb.
And the 2800+ overclocks often to 2,2ghz and was a nice budget performer.

i played Dead Space, Mass Effect, Crysis, Fear 1 and 2 and many other Titles on it with a 8800GT GeForce 😀

if you have a S939 Platform Sempron, you could easily Swap a Athlon X2 inside 😀

PcBytes wrote:

Updated my main "BMW":

Athon 64 3200+ 2.2GHz (OC)
Athlon XP 2500+

Is the Athlon 64 a venice core?if it is it should do 2300mhz at stock voltage,also the athlon xp 2500+ if it's a barton core should run at 2200mhz at stock voltage without any problems.