the Sys building advice (parasite strikes again)

pencil

Originally posted by unkel
Forgot this: make sure you check on the Zalman site that the mobo is compatible with the fan. I'm pretty sure it is since I've the A7N8X-X which has similar layout afaik

Several motherboards can not accommodate this fan, so beware!

Cheers for that unkel,

The Zaldmans site

the compatiblity table on the zaldman site for the A7N8X Deluxe, indicates that Power Supply must not interfere with the heatsink Compatibility requires that no physical interference by the power supply occurs within the 55mm radius of the CPU socket's center. I don't know what this means - does anyone know if this is problematic?


Ths site also says the following:
"* Specified maximum weight for a cooler 300g for the AMD Socket 462 CPU. Special care should be taken when moving a computer equipped with a cooler exceeding the weight guideline. Zalman Tech is not responsible for any damage that occurs when moving a computer. "

Should I be wary of this?

unkel

My interpretation of those comments on the website was:

1. If you have standard size case (or larger) with the PSU mounted in the top of the case above the mobo, it's grand. Not so good if psu is physically over the motherboard (not above) as in mini cases, etc

2. All is grand as long as you are careful moving the PC about. Unsuitable for a PC that gets hauled around all day (or LAN parties etc)

Hope this helps

netman

Originally posted by Dempsey
Thats the one alright. Not sure what your asking me about "implementing RAID " Read that link if you not sure what im on about. But implementing RAID will improvement access times siginificantly. There is a RAID controller on yer motherboard, thats why im recommending you to consider it.

You'll have the capacity of the two drives but i think they are considered one drive (in RAID 0). I still have to use RAID myself but other ppl can give you the finer points of what to expect.

The RAIDed Raptors could function as the OS and the General Storage. And get a ATA-133 250Gb for your achives(they are quite fast even the ones with 5400rpm and 2Mb cache). But one raptor is still very FAST.

erm, just one clarification there. RAID 0 won't improve your access times, if anything it could reduce them slightly. what gets improved is transfer rates.

what pencil needs to ask him/herself is what will you use the drives for:

if you need a system that's able to process large files fast - either reading or writing sequentially (but not read & write / copy) - RAID 0 is the way to go.

if you need a system that's able to access files, process, write back etc, you're better off with two separate drives. for example if you're reading an mpeg stream, applying filters in adobe aftereffects and writing it back, in a RAID 0 scenario it means every drive in the array has to read and then write. generally reading and writing to the same drive is much slower than reading from one drive and writing to another.

if you're not going for a RAID solution, WD Raptors are still a great choice for the system drive. get a raptor and a large 7200rpm 8MB sata drive as your second drive. 36 gig is more than enough for your windows, applications, swap space and temporary files. you can use the slower drive for storage and as a part of video processing.

netman

one comment on the memory:

AMD systems don't generally get much improvement from a higher bus speed, and nForce motherboards don't generally provide much of an improvement in dual-channel mode, unless you're using the integrated graphics - which you won't be doing.

i'd go for faster (lower latency) memory, matching the fsb of the processor. since the difference between 2x256 and 1x512 is minimal, i'd get two sticks of RAM. if you plan on upgrading later, go with 1x512MB and get another 512MB stick later on.

for a 166mhz fsb processor, you need pc2700 memory. if you plan to overclock it, and get the fsb to 200 or over, you'd need pc3200 memory.

pencil

Cheers netman. v. helpful

Dempsey

Originally posted by netman
erm, just one clarification there. RAID 0 won't improve your access times, if anything it could reduce them slightly. what gets improved is transfer rates.

Sorry, I meant to say what you've said. Sorry for being misleading.