Rebuilding a Beast

[rspassey]

Alright guys,

Some of you might recall that an unfortunate accident (or possibily unknown cause) took out my motherboard and harddrives on the PC in my sig. While this was many moons ago, I waited until I moved into the United States before proceeding with repairing it - the parts are much more accessible here.

So, while I am pretty sure all the parts are compatible, I'd like to run it by you guys incase you catch something I didn't.

Old Parts:

AMD FX55 Clawhammer - skt 939

2x 1GB Cosair XMS PC3200 DDR400 RAM

1 ASUS DVDRW Combo Drive

1 ASUS CD Drive

2x ASUS Nvidia 6800 PCI-E Cards in SLI

Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic

New Parts:

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe - http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=247022

Enermax Noisetaker 600W SLI Compatible - http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=270366

Seagate Barracuda250GB Ultra ATA/100 - http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101549

Thermaltake Gaming Tower XaserV WinGo V7000D - http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=370459

Thanks again guys.... I really appreciate it.

Ryan

EDIT
_______
While this is of really no concern, I was wondering what you guys think about the case. I've seen it in action before and I quite like it, but I've been looking for a full tower that's also not that expensive. For the same price as the case, I could get another harddrive - that's crazy.... However, there is really no way I could keep working with my old case, it just didn't provided the airflow needed, and everything was very, very close. Any other case suggestions are appreciated.

[Mr.Ferrari]

Looks great to me, any specific reason for no sata?

[rspassey]

Looks great to me, any specific reason for no sata?

Well, I've had one bad experience with SATA in my past, and while I know I shouldn't hold that against the SATA technology, I'd much rather go with something I'm more familiar with. I'll probably be ordering two harddrives (one now and one in mid september), and if so, one will be SATA (which I will use externally).

[rspassey]

Alright, since everything looks to be compatible, I'm going to place the order this evening - hopefully the parts will get here before the labour day long weekend so I have three days to tinker around with it.

[Chris_Rootes_Wizard]

Yeah whats the matter with sata?! lol sorry It looks good to me!

[blue60007]

I think you can get a Western Digital SE16 250GB drive for $10 or so less...it's SATA, but a few bucks cheaper. Just something else to look at.

[rspassey]

Aight, thanks for the suggestions. Like I said, I had one bad experience with SATA before, and was thinking of sticking with PATA for now. I'll look into the one blue mentioned, however, since I'm trying to save some dinero.

[blue60007]

I think it's even got a $10 rebate going on Newegg (might be old news though)...

Do you mind sharing your bad experiences? (I think I may know what it is...)

Yep -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144701

$68 (after $10 MIR) + shipping

[doubledragon5]

You will like that board. I just finished a new on this week. and it runs great...

[rspassey]

Just some stuff on the Windows install with trying to get it to detect the SATA drive and use the floppy with the driver on it. Nothing really, but just enough to make me fed up with it and finally take out the SATA drive and stick in a PATA one (this was when I was helping out at my school's IT department). I found out later that it really was just a messed up floppy and not really my fault or the drive's fault.

Looks like a good deal - I'll look into it, however, I've always bought through ZZF (without problems) and they've been really kind to work with me on some special shipping deals when I was living in Argentina - I think I owe them one for that.

I'm hoping I'll like the board. My current ASUS one was one that eventually had a defective chipset fan, and that was more than enough to make me look for a fanless motherboard.

[blue60007]

Ok, niether one is a bad choice. :)

[rspassey]

Ok, niether one is a bad choice. :)

Yeah, I know that I could manage to install a SATA drive, but I don't know if the few dollars saved is worth the potential headache :D

[rspassey]

I just placed the order, but unfortunately the case I wanted was out of stock - so I didn't get a new case. Tomorrow I'm heading to the local used computer shop to see if I can find a nice server tower or large mid tower case for around 60$ or so. If I don't find anything, I'll just build it without a case (on cardboard) until it comes back in stock.

[rspassey]

Since I still couldn't get ahold of a decent case, I'm just planning on building it caseless for the time being. Just out of curiousity, I know that it's safe to build it on a large piece of wood or cardboard, but do you think that running it without a case for what might be 5 days be a problem? The only think I can think of might be dust accumulation and a fly or insect or something that crawls or flies into a fan.

[Mr.Ferrari]

Well ive kept my build out of the case for a month once. What I do is use the motherboard box as the rack. Works great and doesnt mess with solder points. If its on a table where you work just make sure you dont spill anything foreign on it :D.

[rspassey]

Good point. I'm also going to use legos or Knex to build a little frame for my harddrives to keep them supported and off of the cardboard.

[DarkPacMan77]

here i am thinking i am poor.... lol, legos or knex... made me giggle.

DarkPacMan77

[rspassey]

here i am thinking i am poor.... lol, legos or knex... made me giggle.

DarkPacMan77

Yeah, it wouldn't have been an issue if they'd just had the case I want in stock. The next one I like is like 50$ more - while that's doable, I'd rather not use a case for the moment and save that money for another computer game.

[rarchimedes]

NewEgg has exactly the same drive for $4 less. In general, with the new MB, it will not notice the difference between IDE and SATA. In fact, most new MB's expect SATA. I had to buy two SATA to IDE converters for my old drives to go to my new MB. They work fine, but stick out a bit. SATA's on newer chipsets do not use bus bandwidth, and almost all are now 3.0 gig per second transfer rate cache to RAM, so they have significant advantages. Do yourself a favor and build on a SATA, and use the IDE for junk space.

[Mr.Ferrari]

Hey if he feels more comfortable with IDE then let it be..

[rspassey]

NewEgg has exactly the same drive for $4 less. In general, with the new MB, it will not notice the difference between IDE and SATA. In fact, most new MB's expect SATA. I had to buy two SATA to IDE converters for my old drives to go to my new MB. They work fine, but stick out a bit. SATA's on newer chipsets do not use bus bandwidth, and almost all are now 3.0 gig per second transfer rate cache to RAM, so they have significant advantages. Do yourself a favor and build on a SATA, and use the IDE for junk space.

Correct me if i'm wrong but:
You don't really acheive those speeds anyways. Just like when drives are advertised with burst rates that don't even come close to using the full Ultra ATA capacities.

[rarchimedes]

Ferrari,

The purpose of this forum is advice, and the advice I gave is good, solid advice. I am a consultant, and I do not believe in putting my customers on the bleeding edge, but I do want them to have as current a technology as is reliable and reasonable in cost. There is a knee-function in the price of most technologies. Except for extreme game players and other such, the best place to buy is somewhere very close to that knee-function, but slightly above it if you can afford it. That way, what you buy does not become obsolete quite so fast. 3.0 SATA is the dominant technology in the market at this point, and the only reason to buy IDE HD's is for an older system, and even there, with the available converters, there is little reason. If I need a new drive right now on an older system, I would buy SATA with a converter, knowing that in a new system, I can take the converter off and proceed. There are no reliable and/or reasonably performing SATA optical drives at this point, and it isn't worth buying all the SCSI folderol for an optical drive unless you do a lot of professional level disc cutting. I suspect that will soon change, but it isn't here yet.

In addition, I suspect that SATA tech is going to have a good long ride, since it can and is running off many controllers for SAS in pro setups. I cannot see many more straight SCSI drives being built, so SATA is the way to go for the reasonably predictable future. IDE drives are already starting to get scarcer.

[rarchimedes]

rspassey,

Of course they don't achieve those speeds, but drives seldom transfer direct anymore. Most transfers are from cache to RAM. When transfer happens at three hundred instead of 100, 133, or 150 MB, much less system time is absorbed in the transfer, and that is time that can be used elsewhere. As cache goes up, and it inevitably will, this trend will rise. In the future, I suspect that the spinning part of a drive will be there almost entirely for backup. As that trend extends, things like the SATA interface in it's present and future versions will even better show their advantages. In the meantime, SATA does run faster than IDE, steadily, but not hugely. As we start to have house servers with multiple virtualized systems running on the same hardware, the SCSI-like command stacking of SATA will also become significant. There are current desktop uses of this, but more rare.

[rarchimedes]

In case anyone cares, I worked for an HD manufacturer at one point in my career. It wasn't recent, but the basic considerations have not changed, just the underlying technology.

[blue60007]

Correct me if i'm wrong but:
You don't really acheive those speeds anyways. Just like when drives are advertised with burst rates that don't even come close to using the full Ultra ATA capacities.
I don't think there's a big difference in performance...I compared a PATA and SATA drive once with *benchmarks* and the SATA was a bit faster. *however* the results aren't conclusive as the SATA drive had a 16MB cache vs 8MB had less data, different ariel desnities, etc...too many factors in that particular set-up.

[rarchimedes]

blue60007,

Those comparisons were probably done on 150 MB transfer drives. Most are now 300 MB, and it does make a difference. As I said, it is not huge, but it is steady, and it is there. The busier the system is, the more difference is found, especially if something else on the bus is sucking up cycles. The point is that there is no longer any price advantage for IDE over SATA, making the point rather moot. Even if you need a converter, they are cheap, and the future-proofing is worth the few bucks. If price isn't an issue and performance is improved, even if slightly, what other issue can there be. If you aren't into new technology, I can't help you much there much.

[rspassey]

Well, perhaps I did make a mistake buying a PATA harddrive :D - but the system is up and running now (apparently one of my opticals died along the way - only one of the two are detected- checked jumpers and cable - it's apparently gone). Just formatting and installing Windows / Drivers at the moment.

Rarchimedes, I really appreciate your insight and advice. However, being one with computer experience myself (ie this isn't my first and wont be my last build), I still reserve the right to go by my instincts. I know that I shouldn't hold a previous unfortunate instance with SATA against the technology, but I needed my PC up and running as soon as possible, and I have enough stress at school and in my life right now that I don't need to walk into another stressful situation - perhaps this time the SATA install would have gone perfectly as planned, but then again, maybe. Well, enough on that discussion - I will be getting another harddrive in the next month; that one will be SATA, and it will be a secondary drive for games and media files only.

To fill in some time until the formatting and Windows install completes, I'm hoping that this time Windows wont throw a fit when I try to install both my video card drivers and my X-fi driver (last time I had to physically remove the sound card, install the video card drivers, then reinstall the sound card and it's drivers.).

Thanks again, I really appreciate it:
Ryan Passey

[rspassey]

You will like that board. I just finished a new on this week. and it runs great...

Out of curiousity, how long does your board hand on the pre POST stage (where you can press Del to enter set up)?

Mine seems to hang there for a while (more time than what I would expect and more time than any other BIOS I've worked on), before moving into loading Windows.

[rspassey]

Okay, the build went great, and I got it into a case, however I'm feeling that my temps are a little on the highside. (38 idle and rising quickly on games).

So, I've pretty much decided it's time to get a real case, and stop using my junky argentine one with 5 slow and tiny 80mm fans. What do you guys think about this case - http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=371331 . I know it's on backorder, though I've stripped the sides off my current case and have a big fan blowing air on it from a few feet away (dropped motherboard idle temp to 34).

TIA,
Ryan

[blue60007]

Looks like a sweet case - I've heard good things about it. :) Thermaltake have quality cases (heck, my TT case I got for $10 after MIR is pretty high quality for the money).

EDIT: Whoa, that's the version with a huge fan on the side...I'm kinda skeptical about how well that works. I would think it would just blast air around randomly in the case killing any airflow (maybe not though, haven't seen any results on it)... Here's the one without it.
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=371252

Also cheaper and in stock.

[rspassey]

Looks like a sweet case - I've heard good things about it. :) Thermaltake have quality cases (heck, my TT case I got for $10 after MIR is pretty high quality for the money).

EDIT: Whoa, that's the version with a huge fan on the side...I'm kinda skeptical about how well that works. I would think it would just blast air around randomly in the case killing any airflow...

I've read a few reviews, and it seems like the huge fan actually does help - some say it's lowered their motherboard temps by 4 degress. I'm skeptical too, but that's pretty much what I've got going on right now and it's helping a ton (and this big fan I have pointing at it might only be 20cm). Thermaltake wouldn't sell it if it didn't work properly.

[blue60007]

Yeah...I think I'm thinking of another brand that did that and I don't think they did a good job. Wasn't a top quality brand either. I don't think Thermaltake would put stuff in either if it didn't work.

[rspassey]

Thanks for the link blue.. I think I found a way to get what I want and still save 25 dollars:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=371252 - case w/o fan

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=371326 - side panel w/ fan

Both in stock.

[Mr.Ferrari]

Well those big fans do help lower temps of the motherboard and/or cpu. But I wouldnt ever use one due to the fact it will cause turbulence in the airflow.

But hey if you can afford it go for it. Although Ive had a Armour before. Its a great case. Tons of room. But I would be hesitant I pay 200 bucks for it..

Edit: You will save some money without the fan included. Good find.

[rspassey]

I think what I'll do is buy the case without the fan side panel for 135 after mail in. Then, monitor the temperatures and see if I'm satisfied or not. If I still feel they are quite high, I will buy the side panel.