I hate computers!

[tmcd35]

Theres nothing to buy, its called probability.

 

I have a bag with 9 green marbles and 1 red marble in it. You get 1 pick, if you get the red one you lose (or you get a duff HD).

Now you decide you want raid0, so you get 2 picks. Are you telling me you are not twice* as likely to pick the duff marble?

 

 

 

*Actually in this case its 1/10 + 1/9 as there are a finite number of marbles to choose from but in the case of HDs there wouldnt be...

 

What are we arguing about? The chances of selecting 1 or 2 duff drives out of however meny a supplier has in stock? Or the chances of either drive developing a fault over x-hours use? I still don't think that by using raid-0 that your system is twice as likely to fail. You have increased the number of parts that can possibly fail - but you are also using each part for less of the time. 1 single drive should have double the iops of 1 drive in a raid-0 pair as the workload is spread across the two drives. Maybe 2 drives in raid-0 could last longer than 1 single drive? You're certainly in the same basic position if 1 drive fails - no data (yes data maybe retrevable from a single non-raid drive).

[Midget]

do you know how raid0 works? Data is written in stripes. if you have a 512kb stripe (most have this) and are writing 1mb of data, you have the same number of writes as if you are writing all 1mb to 1 drive.

 

I've dealt with a huge number of RAID0 failures, and they're not always down to simply one hard drive dying. Software RAID0 for instance, is rubbish, but I assume that you'll have one of those basic RAID1/0 chips on most modern mobos.

 

In this case if eeking an extra second from a game loading is what's required get 2 good 320GB SATA drives (WDs are about £35ea) and RAID0 them, and get a 1 or 2TB drive to store everything on.

 

OS, progs and games go on the RAID0

pr0n, ISOs, mp3s and divxs go on the standard HDD.

 

Once it's set up make a ghost image of the RAID0 and stick that on the 1-2TB drive.

 

When the RAID0 fails, you can easily get up and running again with 2 new cheap drives and sticking the image on and you don't lose your data which is always a PitA even if it isn't highly important.

[localzuk]

Ok, just a couple of things firstly, I won't be going with any GPU from XFX, from what I have read and heard they really are a nightmare to deal with, so the GPU I'll be getting will be either an Asus Radeon HD 5850 1GB or Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB or even maybe the factory overclocked Sapphire ATI HD5850 Toxic 1GB, what to you guys think about those GPU's?

 

Can't talk about the GPU's, but I can say that I've had very good experiences with Asus GFX cards in general.

[Techie101]

Time to get the stuff ordered I think, after I get some more quotes.

[owen1978]

Are you planning on taking over the world? or just gaming? lol

I remember the days when I used to dream about putting a high powered pc together!

Dont personally think its worth the money!

 

So instead I concentrate on overclocking to get best bang for your buck.

Looking at the amount your spending you could build yourself a nice media server and still have change

left over for a very good overclocked system.

 

Anyway just my opinion, good luck with the build!

[Techie101]

Thanks Owen but the deed has already been done, system is up and running, just gota install the drivers etc, ok, I know it was a lot of money, but I'm happy with the end result, and its fast as fook!!

[tmcd35]

I'm happy with the end result, and its fast as fook!!

Give it six months and it'd be as slow as...

[Pottsey]

As I understand it when a SSD breaks often you can still read the data you just cannot write anymore to it.

[flyinghaggis]

Wouldn't a single 5870 or 5900 be a better option than 2x5850's? I've not checked recently but from my experiece it's almost always better to buy a single faster card than combining 2 slower ones?

 

I'm also tempted by an SSD but for what I'd want to spend all I can get is a 64-80Gb drive which really isn't big enough as a windows/programs partition as far as Im concerned. Maybe when they start offering 256Mb drives for around £200 i might re-consider.

 

If I had to make a call between spending the cash on an SSD or graphics i'd probably go for a video card. Or better yet why not just buy a single HDD, a single video card and save the £200-300 you would have spend on and SSD/2nd vid card for upgrades next year?

 

Tempted by a new PC myself but there's always something shinier just about to be released! At the moment it's Fermi that's stopping me upgrading but I'l sure there'll probably be something else next month (Gulftown ,SSD, 3D monitor, touchscreen, list goes on!) aswell

 

 

EDIT: Just noticed you reply and that you've pretty much done what i'd suggested anyway!

Edited March 8, 2010 by flyinghaggis