The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

My GTX 570 plays games quite respectively But I don't have any cutting edge games Just the ones I like

 

This I believe would be the rough US equivalent:
http://rackmountmart.stores.yahoo.net/newrm4030.html

 

The GTX570 is rather powerful and is capable of playing most new games at high or max settings at reasonable resolutions.

 

That is nice too but the X-Case has 120mm fans instead of 80mm and would be much quieter but the price is right and same layout otherwise.

 

Yeah, It's actually the same unit, manufactured by Norco. The version Xcase are selling is newer though as they did sell the 80mm blue version previously. I can't tell whether it's a newer version the US store doesn't have or one that they've modified themselves. Either way, the use of 120mm fans is welcome.

 

Ahhh all this is rather tempting. Am very interested in getting one of those multi-drive chassis but I currently only have 4 drives in my storage box and another 5 in various places.

Have often talked about a Raid 1 setup using WD 1TB Greens. Rather expensive proposition but the fact stands that I need more storage. At the very least I might be adding another WD Green 1TB to my array soon.

Already am at the point where digging out the old Thermaltake Armor and getting some drive bay adapters might actually be beneficial. If that old case has anything it's drive space, lol.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133154

It is truly a tank, but sadly not the most up to date case anymore. Think of it as an ancient HAF, lol. Sadly not very suited for Crossfire due to its layout, which is what led to my purchase of the HAF to begin with.

 

You have to be careful with using WD Greens with RAID controllers due to the head parking procedure occasionally creating false 'drive offline' positives. I've yet to see how the new Caviar Red drives fare in the same situation - they're designed for home NAS use but not enterprise servers. That could just be a MTBF/thermal/vibration resistance issue, or it could also be representative of the controller circuitry suitability with RAID cards. Since most home NAS units use basic RAID or JBOD you'd expect them to handle RAID, but to what extent?

 

Absolutely you would have to disable the energy saving feature of the Green drives or your RAID will/might corrupt.

Also with those 4U servers Sam linked to you could have one SAS array designated to a backup system and the other could be your operating storage which could start with a few drives and be expanded as you go.

There are tons of options with these 4U units, I'm seriously thinking about getting one.

 

If capacity is such a problem, then why not get 2TB drives? At least on Newegg, many 2TB drives are only somewhat more expensive than 1TB drives of the same (or at least a similar) line.

 

With current disk prices, 1TB drives are very much a false economy. $95 for 1TB and $120 for 2TB, the latter is a no-brainer. In the UK, as far as WD are concerned, 3TB drives are actually the cheapest per-GB at the moment.

 

interesting that the topic turns to storage. i have used 4x1TB in RAID5 for the last few years. i am thinking of upping disks to 2 or 3TB. last time i migrated to new disks, i had enough external storage to backup data, install the new disks and reload data onto new array. this time i dont have enough extra storage to offload data, and i'm not sure how to go about this migration. i'm a networking guy not a RAID guy so any ideas or links to information would be appreciated


TIA

 

This was the biggest problem I had, not using RAID made it a fair bit easier. There isn't really a short answer, a lot the people I know that have rebuilt into new arrays have borrowed free space in other people's larger arrays to swap the data around!

 

I'm pretty sure that's the answer...Now that i'm home from my day job (can you still call your primary source of income "day job" when you work the night shift?) i looked at my situation closer. with my external disks+ empty space on wifes machine, HTPC and an unused laptop, i should manage to offload everything.

 

I'm sort of split on getting 2TB drives ATM. Not that I can't use them, but I'm not sure how much I should be willing to spend at this point. Is very tempting though, and I wouldn't need to add storage so often. Not that I add storage very often right now, lol. I haven't looked at drive prices much since the flooding caused the artificial price jumps. Last time I bought drives the 1TB Greens were about $70 and my WD1001FALS was $80.

 

Well, 2TB drives are only slightly more expensive than 1TB drives, so it's not like you're breaking the bank with them.

 

Yeah prices have come down, but not as low as they were before the floods. Hence 2TB being the obvious choice. Prior to the thailand flooding the sweet spot was 1.5. Now, it's 3TB.

 

What are people's thoughts of cooler masters cosmos 2 case? Seems to be a beast, and really is making me want a new build

 

Thanks for the tips guys. Will probably be investing in a couple 2TB drives then. I prefer the low noise and heat from the Green drives not to mention power usage, though that might be a moot point with so few drives. I've heard whispers of reliability or performance problems but none that I've seen. My oldest one still has perfect S.M.A.R.T. ratings. How do the 2TB Green drives compare? I know early models had some issues.

Cooler Master isn't the greatest for quality but the actual designs are pretty nice. Have heard nothing but good things about that case.

 

Well the good news, rackmount case is ordered and should be here Friday.
Bad news is, due to a line fault I have essentially no internet for 5 days, so won't be able to make much use of it :/
A week spent in the dark ages is pretty infuriating these days!

 

OMG - Sam's mini-google tendencies are heating up - rackmount is on the way!

Actually I've been thinking a lot about your "quiet fan" days, Sam, of about 4 or 5 years ago before 4870x2 monsters. This spedo that I dragged out of the garage is proving to be interesting, and I have picked up a bunch of fans, mostly 140mm and one 200 mm ceiling exhaust. So I put the quiet phantek on an intake grill and it emitted a bothersome whine at E on the piano (middle C then D then E - Russ knows what I'm talkin about) and I was going to RMA all 3 back to the egg, until I put a filter on it, and the whine disappeared. I just took delivery of another $100 in fans, to try a 140mm noctua, corsair, gelig, and enermax - with 32 leds, lol.

But the most exciting thing tech-wise is the frozencpu Demciflex 140mm fan filters, which I initially thought were defective and had no magnetism, until I discovered that they ship a second magnet tightly bound to the first, in case you are putting the filter on a plastic area. When I saw the "useless magnet" come apart, my faith in god was restored.

The fan material is a type of hosiery, I believe. A very fine mesh. I have already done some testing, and I will post some pictures of some high-res scans I took of the Demciflex filter versus a Silverstone and versus the b-gears type I have been using for years. More on that later.

By the way, in the frozencpu page on the square Demciflex 140mm filter, there is a link to the Demciflex article on the advantages of positive case pressure, from the Demciflex web site. As I recall, only Shaff supported me on that notion - (hey Shaff, what's up dude) - as the only sure-fire way to keep dust out of the case. In fact Shaff came up with some studies that supported positive pressure cases - the comparisons showed those cases ran cooler. Anyway, needless to say, Demciflex support the idea of positive pressure, with all inlets having their filters. The article includes too many useless formulas, and they also think it's important to include internal fan CFMs which don't matter in my opinion - being internal they are part of the same frame of reference and therefore they don't need to be factored in - so I sent them an email thanking them for the filters, and "correcting" their article, lol.


In the meantime, back on the beautiful Antec Sonata case with no airflow, other than the modded kama bay and side inlet 3000 rpm kazes, the second HIS IceQ 7950 is flawless, never above 70, just like the first. No crossfire yet, Jeff, until I migrate to the spedo case.

When? Well, I am certainly outfitting it with fans, and I installed my new custom kama bay at front top - I have the new answer since kama no longer makes the module converting 3 5.25" bays to a 120mm fan mount. I'll post pictures on that solution also later.

But right now I am too busy on Far Cry 2. Yes, I had put the game away when the lack of AA was too glaring, and now I am getting over 60fps with 8xAA and ultra everything. I already finished crysis, crysis 2, and warhead, on ultra everything, just around 30 fps with occasional dips into the 24-25 fps range on crysis 2, and once or twice I noticed a slight lag.

Too much to say on those games for now, but picture me with my jaw open in astonishment. Crytek is outstanding. DX11 - I love it - I ran Crysis 2 with the DX11 upgrade, and the high-res pack. I would imagine, given my love of digital vibrance, that crysis 2 on DX11 seems a bit cartoony to some of you (Sam) but I thought it was just awesome!! LOL

So yes, I'm back to Far Cry 2, having only spent about 40 hours in it the last time about 2 years ago. For now, after the 3-pack of Crysis, it isn't quite as thrilling graphics-wise, but it is close with DX10. Should I enable HDR, and turn off bloom? I don't recall the difference, but I seem to recall that HDR put a heavier load on the graphics card, but now I don't seem to mind. I enabled vertical synch, just to see, and then disabled it. I seemed to have been experiencing more micro-stutter with it enabled, and I could not see any visual improvement - that's just me I guess, and my insensitive eyes.

The Far Cry 2 world is sooooooo open. I am getting gazelles now, not zebras. I think that's at the highest graphics setting - maybe gazelles are harder to render. I like seeing them run around. Maybe when I spend more time up north I'll see the zebras.

I'm playing at the hardest level, and these guys are shooting me and I don't even know where the fire is coming from. It takes some getting used to, because the people can blend right into the other textures. So I'm practicing quite a bit of stealth right now, reminding me of running around the awesome Operation Flashpoint, which Jeff tipped me off to.

Jeff, you felt crysis 2 was too linear, compared to original crysis, and I can see your point. But I still loved it.

Far Cry 2 is the opposite, and for now it is holding my attention very nicely. I picked up a sniper rifle this time, but also a light machine gun on the heavy setting - and I just bought an smg for the pistol setting. No shotguns; I am basically not a shotgun guy. I need something on auto fire that I can strafe sideways with while unloading hot lead.

I am glad to have the sniper rifle which I never got a few years ago. It is helping balance out the action between the in-your-face tense "they can virtually pop out from any corner" to - "they're a mile away and say goodbye to your head, mate!" Heh

Wow, Jeff Jelinski, cousin of race car driver Jelinski - that is awesome and incredible! How'd you do it - go white tail hunting and lived out in the blind for a month? Seriously, that is a major accomplishment. Yes, consider the military. Good college benefits when you are done.

Good for you dude - go Kevin! No wonder you didn't want my modem for $20. I was gonna give it to you but then you'd have said "No, I won't take charity." LOL That worked out okay - I loaned it to a roommate who just headed up to North Dakota for several months where there is no cable. I said "Even in the boonies there are gonna be phone lines, so this DSL combo modem/router might prove useful to you." He's going to a city that has 712 people, Mott ND. We looked it up. I said "What?" In the whole county there are only 1700 people. That's like where Jeff lives.

Well, I don't know about cop-out. They need support people in Afghanistan. It can't hurt to go talk with a recruiter and get a few ideas going that you can bounce around with your folks.

That HR gal - she has to justify her position somehow I guess, Steve. I wonder if she is Certified to be the HR person. Sure she is, degree in psychology, or business, or some such. With a minor in how to be stuffy and dogmatic. LOL

Wow, Sam, 4 towers just like Kevin. I will say this - all of them look pretty nice too. I can see where 32 hard drives are nothing for you - I would guess, counting the ones on top, you are running at least 20 hard drives right now.

Haha - and there gentlemen, you have the true reason for wives, to give everything a fresh perspective, and keep egos in check, lol.

Rich