Wester Digital [bold]160GB[/bold] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144203 eVGA [bold]7900GT KO[/bold] 256MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814130033 ASPIRE [bold]600W[/bold] Sleeved PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817148025 CORSAIR [bold]1GB[/bold] PC5300 RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820146580 BIOSTAR [bold]Nforce4[/bold] LGA775 Ultra ATX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813138276 Intel Pentium [bold]3.4Ghz[/bold] Presler D http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819116255 ASPIRE [bold]X-Discovery[/bold] Mid Tower http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144172 Does This Qualify As A [bold]"HIGH END"[/bold] PC? Or Should I Change Something
Personally I wouldn't class that as high end at all. A reasonable spec, but now just about average. Before reading what are only my views, remember you are asking about high end, and as such I am looking at parts in relation to what is now high end, so please don't take it personally that I am forced to knock just about everything you have listed. There is nothing wrong with the PC you intend to build and it will work just fine for most apps you chuck at it, but it isn’t high end now and can never be upgraded in the future to bring it closer to high end spec. If you have a max budget you could probably build a system with far more potential than what that has. HDD - you should be using SATA 2 drives, and if possible use a raid to increase performance, using IDE is creating the slowest bottleneck in the system. Video - using a GTX with 512MB memory would be getting there; using 2 in SLI would be high end. PSU - OK but nothing special (no SLi option for the future), don't just look at the power rating, look at efficiency (not even listed) and load per 12v rail, even 600W is hardly high powered any more. Memory - using 1 single stick is not high end at all, 1GB is not high end, value memory is not high end, and PC5300 with high latency is not high end. You should be looking at 2GB at least (2x1GB) also looking at proper matched TwinX memory with high speed and low timings. If you are forced to use 1GB max, then get 2x512MB not 1x 1GB. Motherboard - How far from high end do you want to get? The make is far from high end, no serious PC builder would use that make. The spec is far from good, and the CPU support is yesterday’s technology, which was never great to start with. CPU - You need to be looking at a Conroe for high end, those CPUs were never considered a good buy for performance. Case - Cheap and nasty, may look nice with the window, but airflow will be crap. Build quality poor, and ease of system build won’t be great. Cases have moved on the screw-less quick release designs some time ago, and Aluminium is now the material of choice over steel. You’re also wasting money on buying a case with a PSU that you will be removing and replacing with the 600W PSU
ok then what would u rate it? 1/10? hey is this a good cpu? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115005
I would rate it a 4/10 I would suggest 2gb of ram and a SATA HD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144 I have the same eVGA 7900GT KO card and it does kick ass but I would go another rout with the HD and RAM.
Oh come on guys, that's a mid to high end PC, but my recommendation would be an X1900XT, a 250GB Caviar SE16, 2GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo of some sort to make it truly high end. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814241006 - $299 post-rebate (and newegg do honour their rebates), which is barely more than the 7900GT KO and a fair bit faster! This CPU is cheap and will mop the floor with the Pentium D: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115005 These cases are nice too http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811133145
what about this mobo to throw it all together http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128015
I can only list items from newegg, as I don't know many USA sites, if you know where to shop around you can maybe get the prices down. This is more like what I would get with your budget. ASUS P5NSLI(LGA 775) nForce 570 SLI Intel Edition ATX Intel Mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131032 Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz 2M L2 Cache LGA 775 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115005 WD Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144415 OCZ Gold Series 1GB (2 x 512MB)DDR2 667 SDRAM Unbuffered (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227046 ASUS EAX1900XT/2DHTV/512 Radeon X1900XT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI E x16 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121554R HIPER HPU-4B580-MS ATX12V 580W Power Supply http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128001 Case (get whatever you can afford, but do some research into tests to see build quality and air flow capacity.
P.S. Personally I wouldn't even look at a board unless it supported raid, then again I've been using it for years so won't go back to single drives. I get a sustained score of 125MB/s on my raid0. heres a review of the board mentioned above http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2820&p=9
I personally dislike RAID due to the inconvienience of moving data around and the increased seek time, but hey, each to their own. However, I would agree pretty much entirely on that parts list. A 250GB SE16 would top it all off. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701 Not sure I'd have the confidence to go open box with the X1900XT, especially when: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814241006 same price after the rebate, and you get a retail version!
I wasn't going to spend too long looking around, the idea is there though for that card as it is proven on that board and is best bang for buck under $300. Just ran sisandra disk benchmark and drive index is showing 137MB/s and seek time is 8ms. On a WD250KS Sata 2 drive on the same nvidia controller the index is 62MB/s and seek time is 14ms. 160MB IDE drive is 54MB/s and 16ms. I always back up my system every week so the raid poses no threat in relation to losing data, but you do have to keep on the ball or start to take risks.
I don't pay much attention to the sandra seek time benchmark as statistically seek time should increase with RAID, not decrease, and it rated my raptor at 19ms, which is complete rubbish.
Just ran PCMark05 and the results are almost identical. 139.567MB/s and 8.170 ms. I know that SiSandra is not considered the best test tool period, but it is widely used by both PC enthusiasts and hardware test reporters. Maybe there is a problem with the version you are using or you had some other application running which interfered with the results, or the drive has a problem, as your time does seem extremely slow. As for RAID0 setups decreasing access times I’m not sure where you get the impression that raids give a drop in performance, every benchmark I've run has shown almost no difference in access times and shown vastly increased performance using raid and my real-time applications have benefited from increased drive speeds. That said, it's personal choice fore me, and something I recommend to those I build systems for, although I do realise that the majority of people still don't use raid in their systems. http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx The test here shows that the seek time on a single drive was at 8ms which when set in raid0 increased to 8.5ms, that is then counteracted by the increased read and write speeds which are doubled in average scores, and increased by about 70% in burst speeds. One drive even showed a decrease in seek time when set in a raid, in the worst case out of any of the drives tested there was an increase of less than 1ms from the single drive to the raid setup (hardly a drop of performance that anyone would even start to notice.
Fai enough, I always presumed the seek times increased greatly. There goes that theory then! Still, doesn't really solve my problem of getting data off two RAID drives and onto the same drives singularly as external disks. What fun that'll be.
If I understand you correctly, you shouldn't have any issues. I always backup my data to an external HDD as well as my second raid. I have a single Maxtor 320GB one touch. I also have several other SATA drives which can be plugged directly into the back of the PC which have all my PC, XBOX and PS2 ISO images on them. Copying anything off is the same as copying anything from a single disk, the PC treats all the files the same, it’s just the ways its stored and retrieved that’s different. The only problem can be if a drive in the raid crashes, you loose everything, hence why I am so precise about my backups. I've had 2 or 3 disks fail whilst in a raid, luckily only the first time caught me out and made me loose data.
Yeha that's gruesome. Yeah trouble is my External disk is 160GB and three quarters full, I have 270GB worth to transfer, so I need to get a 320... That'll be my 10th Hard disk...
