Any obvious errors here ?

[Darzil]

Trying to design a fast but reasonably quiet PC, with reasonable looks (must be silver). Trying not to break the bank too badly in the process.

Anything badly broken here ?

Graphics Gainward 7900 GTX
Graphics Cooler Zalman VF900-CU Quiet Dual Heatpipe
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz
Motherboard Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3
CPU Cooler Zalman CNPS9500-AT Aero Flower
Memory Corsair 2GB XMS2-6400 C4
Power Supply Zalman ZM460-APS 460W
Hard Drive - Game WD Raptor 36Gb SATA (x2 in RAID 0)
Hard Drive - System / Data Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200 Gb
Case Thermaltake Aguila VD1000SNA - Silver
DVD-RW Sony DWG120A - Silver

 

[Saggy]

Hard Drive - Game WD Raptor 36Gb SATA (x2 in RAID)

I assume you already have those? 36Gb is noisy as hell compared to bigger Raptors (or have they made new model of 36Gb during the last year?) :S Apart from that looks good to me (Most of the 9500 Zalman's are "twisted" so you probably have to get some sandpaper to make it straight - horrible thing to do really).

 

[confused]

As said above the small raptors are loud!, might suggest some silentmaxx HD enclosures, as they really do make them quieter. Also that particular Thermalite case is really not the best for a quiet case, I'd suggest something like a Lian-Li v100, as it comes in silver and is quietenned quite easily.

 

[Ballard]

Go for raptor II.

 

[Raven]

curious, why do you have 200 gb for system stuff and only 72 gb for games, surely you should swap them around, or even just use a small partition on the 200 gb HD for system files/folders

 

[Darzil]

curious, why do you have 200 gb for system stuff and only 72 gb for games, surely you should swap them around, or even just use a small partition on the 200 gb HD for system files/folders

I rarely play more than a couple of games at once, and if I don't play one for a while I deinstall it. It's rare for me to have more than 10Gb of games on a disk.

Thanks for the Raptor advice, I'll look at quieter options.

Darzil

 

[confused]

The case in the first place isn't that quiet... thats gotta be the 1st place to look really

 

[Laddey]

Darzil - How much are you planning on spending for that system?

I've recently started my new job, and the moneys great since i don't have rent etc to pay. So i'm looking for a new system. Anybody in the UK able to make a decent gaming computer leave a message or pm me.

If your location isn't to far away from Lancashire i can more than likely come and pick it up etc. Well if anybodys out there thats able to do this. Send me a pm

 

[Darzil]

How about this (changed case, increased drive size, added enclosures, changed cooler, dropped vga cooler - as I've seen my father in law's SLI 7900GTX's run pretty quiet - and not sure this is worth the hassle of losing the warranty) :

I'm also considering whether it's worth seperating game and o/s onto seperate drives, or simply having a RAID0 o/s and game setup, with the third drive for data. The o/s may not have to do much disk i/o whilst running games.

Graphics Gainward 7900 GTX
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz
Motherboard Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3
CPU Cooler Scythe Ninja Plus
Memory Corsair 2GB XMS2-6400 C4
Power Supply Zalman ZM460-APS 460W
Hard Drive - Game WD Raptor 74Gb SATA (x2 in RAID 0)
Hard Drive - Enclosures Silentmaxx Aluminium Hard Drive Enclosure
Hard Drive - System / Data Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200 Gb
Case Silentmaxx ST11-Pro Silver
DVD-RW Sony DWG120A - Silver

Laddey - this system would now come in at something like £1230+Vat, getting the above from overclockers, other than the case, which is from Quiet PC.

Darzil

 

[Darzil]

For info, bought it, built it (got the ram replaced cos one was a dud), it's playing beautifully.

I've not yet tried the frontier in large zergs, but everywhere else I've tried it's been very, very smooth, even on top quality settings (other than anti-aliasing no higher than 4x, as higher makes the text harder to read). Swaps between zones are very, very fast. Was able to take a horse around Aerus without monsters 'popping' on me due to slow loading up of those models/textures etc.

Darzil

 

[Mojo]

Your choice of drives and drive config makes no sense to me, I would mirror and speed up your sys drives if anything. But tbh I would just get 2 fast large drives and mirror them for your whole system) seems pointless having a single slower sys drive then a no redundtant stripe for your data (games), if your sys drive went down u would have to import the striped set into your new system which would take time.

Mirror your entire system IMO. It will be nice and fast (well as fast as anysingle drive) and if a drive fails then simply put a new one in your back up and running, you won't have any down time, just a period where u have no redundancy (til u replace the failed drive)

If u want to keep the drives u have chosen mirror the 2 raptors and make 2 partions, one for sys and apps 1 for games, then use your other drive for just data, movies mp3's etc.

 

[Mojo]

I'm also considering whether it's worth seperating game and o/s onto seperate drives, or simply having a RAID0 o/s and game setup, with the third drive for data. The o/s may not have to do much disk i/o whilst running games.

I cant see games making that many read/writes either tbh, use perfmon to see if u have any drive bottle necks before you make a decision on striping drives.

 

[Boni]

Looks fine to me.

 

[Darzil]

Your choice of drives and drive config makes no sense to me, I would mirror and speed up your sys drives if anything. But tbh I would just get 2 fast large drives and mirror them for your whole system) seems pointless having a single slower sys drive then a no redundtant stripe for your data (games), if your sys drive went down u would have to import the striped set into your new system which would take time.

A mirrorred (RAID 1) pair of drives reads at the same speed as a single drive.

A RAID 0 pair of drives reads at up to twice the speed of a single drive. (In practice probably 60% faster)

Yes, if it breaks I have to reinstall the lot, but as long as there isn't data on it, I'm cool with that, it doesn't take long.

Darzil

 

[Naffets]

Darzil - How much are you planning on spending for that system?

I've recently started my new job, and the moneys great since i don't have rent etc to pay. So i'm looking for a new system. Anybody in the UK able to make a decent gaming computer leave a message or pm me.

If your location isn't to far away from Lancashire i can more than likely come and pick it up etc. Well if anybodys out there thats able to do this. Send me a pm

Laddey, I live in lancs and I can built systems at not much above cost price due to my job.

I'll pm you.

 

[Mojo]

A mirrorred (RAID 1) pair of drives reads at the same speed as a single drive.

A RAID 0 pair of drives reads at up to twice the speed of a single drive. (In practice probably 60% faster)

Yes, if it breaks I have to reinstall the lot, but as long as there isn't data on it, I'm cool with that, it doesn't take long.

Darzil

Yeah but you are getting a speed increase by getting the raptors anyhow?, are you really going to have bottle necks on the system being 1 person running 1 application? If your going to have bottle necks then fair enough you will see a benefit, but with 10000 rpm drives? It might be better to use cheaper 7200 drives not the 10000. Don't get me wrong I have been using laptops for the last 5 years and am not really into the high end gaming pc scence, i just cant imagine games being so demanding that your system with a 10000rpm sata drive won't be able to keep up. In which case u won't have any benefit, where as with a mirror u have a benefit albiet one which in realty u wont likely ever rely on and isnt speed related which i know gamers dont go for.

 

[Darzil]

Yeah but you are getting a speed increase by getting the raptors anyhow?, are you really going to have bottle necks on the system being 1 person running 1 application? If your going to have bottle necks then fair enough you will see a benefit, but with 10000 rpm drives? It might be better to use cheaper 7200 drives not the 10000. Don't get me wrong I have been using laptops for the last 5 years and am not really into the high end gaming pc scence, i just cant imagine games being so demanding that your system with a 10000rpm sata drive won't be able to keep up. In which case u won't have any benefit, where as with a mirror u have a benefit albiet one which in realty u wont likely ever rely on and isnt speed related which i know gamers dont go for.

Yes, it's overkill, but I was having fun ! (And it's very good in practice)

Basically one of the most annoying things for me in Camelot is that textures aren't cached for far away objects in the zone. If you move through lands at speed (especially areas like Aerus and at large scale keep fights), you find that you suddenly get large lag, due to objects having to be loaded from disk. This sort of bursty, small file, loading is exactly what this sort of setup is designed to cope with.

Darzil

 

[Chronictank]

Remember your Ninja doesnt benefit from overly large airflow, so you can get away with a push/pull config with fans running on a lower speed (push air through the ninja, pull out the case)

I personally didnt bother with RAID, i simply made a "Recovery" partition with a blank install on windows on it (shrinked it down manually to about a gig), so i can simply load up the main OS from a backup