Author Topic: New Rig Complete...any tweeking that you think it needs please (Read 2371 times)

Changeup · « **on:** March 10, 2011, 07:27:39 AM »

Hey guys,

My son, daughter and I just finished our first home build. It was a great father/kids project (although it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would because things fit together better than I thought they would) and they are already telling family members that "we" can build computers better than Dell. Don't ask...

Anyway, here are the specs of what we built:

ASUS Sabertooth X58 MB (for a first time build, sure seemed like a snap to use and the bios was great)
Corsair Dominator Memory - 1600 mhz (3 X 2 gig)
nVidia GTX 460 - Factory Superclocked 1 gig, DDR5
Antec Earthwatts 750W PS - 80, Gold
10000 RPM Raptor - 600 gig HD SATA 6 (OS, HTC, Office 2010..the used software)
7200 RPM Barracuda - 2 TB HD SATA 6 (Pictures...thousands of freaking pictures, music, storage)
Core i7 950
Cooler Master 212 Plus heat sink
LG Blue Ray/Writer
Windows 7
Thermaltake Black v9 case with top loading hot-swappable HD bays (I moved our old computer info in less than an hour with this and my laptop's information...sounded cool but worked even better than I thought it would)

I don't know how to OC...and don't even know if its necessary but I am willing to learn.

IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO MAKE IT RUN BETTER, MORE STABLE (its fine but only been in use for a week), MORE RELIABLE, ETC. Again, this is our first one so I have no idea how to tweek it. Thanks for the help.

V/r

Changeup

ebfd11 · « **Reply #1 on:** March 10, 2011, 07:10:43 PM »

Changeup

for having your kids involved, and it looks like a stable set up and you should have fun with it, just remember doing builds is likee doing crack.. once you start you have to upgrade this, upgrade that, and by the time you get done you have enough spare parts to build a whole new rig. LOL so be aware of that one issue.

LawnDart

Buzzard7 · « **Reply #2 on:** March 10, 2011, 08:46:17 PM »

Yep tis true. I have three working machines here and two of them are from parts.

eagl · « **Reply #3 on:** March 10, 2011, 11:06:17 PM »

A couple of things stand out, but they all cost $$$.

1. That's not the top of the line vid card, so later on consider a vid card update. The latest radeon is a single card dual GPU solution and according to the reviews it is very fast. Not necessary right now, but it's probably your first mid-life upgrade option.
2. You went with 2 mechanical HDs. A SSD drive for boot and program files would be MUCH faster than the velociraptor. Cost is an issue, but if it's just for boot and program files then you could get a "cheap" 60GB one. That may cause an immediate increase in how fast the system *feels* (responsiveness).
3. Backup and archive system - you need one. Doing this right would be a good project for you and your kids, because it would teach you guys something useful and important, and also make it clear how important it is to get that right. I suggest using old parts to make a windows home server system, if you have enough parts to do that. WHS is still based on windows XP so it should run great on older hardware. My WHS box uses an old 1ghz celeron from the old Pentium 3 family, with a fairly bare bones configuration. I had to buy a $25 SATA card so I could put in a 1TB hard drive though, since the onboard IDE setup in BIOS was limited to only 80GB (old mobo!). It runs fine and is very stable - I had it running unattended for almost a year without any faults, doing backups for 4 machines. The current WHS lets you keep adding drives as necessary, automatically increasing the size of the backup volume whenever you add a drive and tell the server to include the new drive for backups.
4. Put all of your systems on UPS backups. I like APC ones but Falcon also has a good reputation. Make sure you get a big enough one, and take the time to hook up the USB cable so you can monitor the UPS health and let power failures trigger automatic system shutdowns when required.
5. Gigabit ethernet for everything, if you haven't done so already. Hook up your broadband router to your cable modem (or whatever modem you have), but then instead of hooking your computer straight to the router, plug a gigabit ethernet switch to the router and then your computers to the gigabit switch. Most routers still have old 10/100 switches in them, which is fine for internet access but which would slow down connections between computers in your house. A gigabit switch would make it so your computers talk amongst each other at the fastest possible speed.
6. Surround speakers and add-on sound card?
7. Triple monitors? Would probably need a new vid card, but the newer AMD/ATI cards should let you drive 3 monitors with only a single vid card.

Pigslilspaz · « **Reply #4 on:** March 11, 2011, 03:28:31 AM »

Looks a lot like the build I'm doing once I finish getting the parts in, until my next paycheck (2 weeks ironically

)

Xclio Blackhawk Full Tower
640GB WD Caviar Black HDD
3x2GB Corsair XMS3
Gigabyte x58 usb 3.0 Mobo
i7-950
EVGA GTX460 1GB
Corsair 850w

also a cheap salvaged dvd burner and a Rosewill PCI wireless adapter.

Changeup · « **Reply #5 on:** March 11, 2011, 02:45:04 PM »

Thanks guys! Much appreciated....and now for the questions:

1. SSD drive crashes, you lose it all....zero chance of recovery or reuse. Was I told correctly?
2. Anything in the bios that might make it run better that you can think of?
3. Should I have the OS HDD RAIDed or just leave it with no virtual drive? If so, which level of RAID and can I do it safely after I've installed the OS?
4. In Windows 7, is 6 gigs of memory enough?

Thanks fellas!

V/r

Changeup

gyrene81 · « **Reply #6 on:** March 11, 2011, 05:50:45 PM »

Quote from: Changeup on March 11, 2011, 02:45:04 PM

1. SSD drive crashes, you lose it all....zero chance of recovery or reuse. Was I told correctly?

haven't heard even a rumor of an ssd drive crash but...ya never know. since there are no moving parts, wouldn't be any way of reading anything if it did crash.

Quote from: Changeup on March 11, 2011, 02:45:04 PM

2. Anything in the bios that might make it run better that you can think of?

generally default settings on home systems is good enough...be careful or you can lock yourself out of your own computer.

Quote from: Changeup on March 11, 2011, 02:45:04 PM

3. Should I have the OS HDD RAIDed or just leave it with no virtual drive? If so, which level of RAID and can I do it safely after I've installed the OS?

i'll let someone else answer that one, i never use raid...i find it silly on a home system but that's just me and i keep "important stuff" backed up.

Quote from: Changeup on March 11, 2011, 02:45:04 PM

4. In Windows 7, is 6 gigs of memory enough?

ya, more than enough...i have a much lower end system than you just build running win7 enterprise 64bit with 4gb of ram and it's fast.

there is a list of services that you could tweak (turn off) to make the os faster but, to do/not do is going to be up to you...overclocking that computer would be like adding a nos system to your family car

AAJagerX · « **Reply #7 on:** March 12, 2011, 02:17:59 AM »

SSD's do crash. Mostly under a TON of write conditions. If you're using them for your home rig, ya prolly don't need to worry.

MrRiplEy[H] · « **Reply #8 on:** March 12, 2011, 07:22:03 AM »

Quote from: Changeup on March 11, 2011, 02:45:04 PM

Thanks guys! Much appreciated....and now for the questions:

1. SSD drive crashes, you lose it all....zero chance of recovery or reuse. Was I told correctly?
2. Anything in the bios that might make it run better that you can think of?
3. Should I have the OS HDD RAIDed or just leave it with no virtual drive? If so, which level of RAID and can I do it safely after I've installed the OS?
4. In Windows 7, is 6 gigs of memory enough?

Thanks fellas!

V/r

Changeup

Gyrene already answered some but here's my take:

1) SSD's will be hard to recover from 'crash' using home methods but same exact thing applies to any serious harddrive failure. You need to back up your important stuff no matter what you use.
2) Bios settings can be tweaked to gain some performance but as Gyrene said you can render your computer unbootable or EVEN BREAK it. Overclocking is usually done in bios

3) Raid is not equal to 'virtual drive'. I think you confuse a raid with partitioning. Partitioning creates a 'virtual drive' i.e. splits the harddrive in two separate parts (drives). A raid involves connecting several hdd's through a raid controller (or fake raid through OS) so that data is written to several harddrives instead of just one.

With raid 0 x2 drives you achieve theoretically near double read speeds (especially on SSD/dedicated raid controller) but you double the risk of failure. Raid 1 brings no advantage in speed but gives you almost half the risk of failure. Raid 1+0, 5, 10, 50 etc. try to bring the best of both worlds but require you to buy 3 to n amount of drives and a 500 dollar controller!
4) 6 gigs is enough for 99% of use. Most applications are still 32-bit based so they're not even designed to use more than 2 gigs of ram at once. You can run 10+ normal size applications with your 6 gigs and not run out of memory. If you're like Skuzzy and like to render movies then more cores and ram is not bad.

Pudgie · « **Reply #9 on:** March 13, 2011, 05:57:59 PM »

With the latest Fermi renditions of the GTX 570 class of vid cards DisplayPort is now being offered on the vid cards so Nvidia is getting in on this as well.

I believe that Nvidia is leaving this up to the card vendors to provide or not ATM.

I do know that the EVGA GTX 570 series has 1 card offered w/ DisplayPort port.

Just saying....................... ............................. ........................

Changeup · « **Reply #10 on:** March 16, 2011, 02:58:34 PM »

Great info and thank you guys. I think I will watch and listen to you guys for a while before I try to tweak anything because it runs great as is for now. I am being performance greedy!

V/r

Changeup

SectorNine50 · « **Reply #11 on:** March 16, 2011, 04:30:29 PM »

Quote from: MrRiplEy[H] on March 12, 2011, 07:22:03 AM

Gyrene already answered some but here's my take:

1) SSD's will be hard to recover from 'crash' using home methods but same exact thing applies to any serious harddrive failure. You need to back up your important stuff no matter what you use.
2) Bios settings can be tweaked to gain some performance but as Gyrene said you can render your computer unbootable or EVEN BREAK it. Overclocking is usually done in bios
3) Raid is not equal to 'virtual drive'. I think you confuse a raid with partitioning. Partitioning creates a 'virtual drive' i.e. splits the harddrive in two separate parts (drives). A raid involves connecting several hdd's through a raid controller (or fake raid through OS) so that data is written to several harddrives instead of just one.

With raid 0 x2 drives you achieve theoretically near double read speeds (especially on SSD/dedicated raid controller) but you double the risk of failure. Raid 1 brings no advantage in speed but gives you almost half the risk of failure. Raid 1+0, 5, 10, 50 etc. try to bring the best of both worlds but require you to buy 3 to n amount of drives and a 500 dollar controller!
4) 6 gigs is enough for 99% of use. Most applications are still 32-bit based so they're not even designed to use more than 2 gigs of ram at once. You can run 10+ normal size applications with your 6 gigs and not run out of memory. If you're like Skuzzy and like to render movies then more cores and ram is not bad.

I think he was referencing RAID creating a "Logical Drive." Which is, in a way, a "virtual drive" created by striping/replicating two or more.

His X58 should have a RAID 0,1,5,10 controller built in.

Gman · « **Reply #12 on:** March 16, 2011, 04:40:47 PM »

Fairly similar to my system I just put together, I got the 960 CPU, same MB, and dual 6850's, as I had one free already, so I have about the same horsepower as you in terms of video.

Eagl is right about the SSD, I was hesitant as well for the same reasons as you, but trust me, it is MORE than worth the risk. I went with a 120ish gig SSD, and it makes such an incredible difference that it is like a totally different machine compared to running the two raptors in raid that I had with it for the first couple of weeks.

Changeup · « **Reply #13 on:** March 17, 2011, 03:49:06 PM »

Quote from: Gman on March 16, 2011, 04:40:47 PM

Fairly similar to my system I just put together, I got the 960 CPU, same MB, and dual 6850's, as I had one free already, so I have about the same horsepower as you in terms of video.

Eagl is right about the SSD, I was hesitant as well for the same reasons as you, but trust me, it is MORE than worth the risk. I went with a 120ish gig SSD, and it makes such an incredible difference that it is like a totally different machine compared to running the two raptors in raid that I had with it for the first couple of weeks.

Ok, ok...Im in. I am going to buy it this weekend. You guys are tough, tough, tough!.....I will use the 2TB for data storage and the 600 Gig, 10K RPM for software.

Changeup

(I should ALWAYS question a SIG guy...HK and Beretta are the only REAL way to the enemy's heart...lmao!....well, Barrett is fine too but messy)

PFactorDave · « **Reply #14 on:** March 18, 2011, 12:19:04 AM »

Quote from: Changeup on March 17, 2011, 03:49:06 PM

(I should ALWAYS question a SIG guy...HK and Beretta are the only REAL way to the enemy's heart...lmao!....well, Barrett is fine too but messy)

I loooooooove my SIGs. Best handguns I ever owned! Never have had an HK pistol, but would be interested. Beretta? Pffft. Great shotguns, not impressed much by the pistols to be honest. Just my opinion though.

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