Extra hard drive - which?

Glenn Chan · September 10th, 2003, 10:09 AM

You can price all the parts at newegg.com and add a few hundred for the builder's work (taking into account unpaid hours such as finding work and speccing systems with clients who may not buy).

Or you can work the other way and find an equivalent system from say Dell and go down.

Is the guy going to overclock and test the computer for stability for you?

Bruce Johnson · September 10th, 2003, 10:54 PM

Thanks for the reply i am sure he'll burn it in for test sake. But i am not into the tech specs enough to know if these parts are what i should be looking for or not. Dell can(my current mach. is Dell) build what they say is (video) ready, p4 3.0ht 800fsb 1 to 2 g ram two 120 raid hd etcetera with xp pro about $3300. But the items he is talking about... i dont know. I will try the referal to the web site you gave and research it.Thanks B.

Lloyd Roseblade · September 11th, 2003, 05:32 AM

Had a quick scan through the previous posts in this thread and didn't see any mention of Serial-ATA. If you are looking for maximum HDD throughput then you may want to consider looking at the SATA IDE type disks. You will need a motherboard which supports this interface too. Throughput is around 150-600MB/s (bytes, not bits) using SATA I. SATA II will come out in soon which will include additional features (whatever they may be) but I think the max theoretical throughput will still be 600MB/s. Also there is something called Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), but I don't know much about it, or even if it's readily available yet.

Anyhoo, it might just be worth evaluating some of these new HDD technologies.

Glenn Chan · September 11th, 2003, 04:40 PM

The hard disks aren't fast enough to saturate the SATA or PATA (ATA 133, ATA 100, etc.) interfaces. The top ATA drives right now go to around 60-70MB/s maximum (in real world situations they are much slower). Some of the SATA drives are marginally faster than the PATA versions (something neglible). There's the WD raptor which is a 10k SATA drive but it is not ideal for video storage (great for a system + applications drive though).

Maximum interface speeds
ATA 133 is 133MB/s
ATA 100 is 100MB/s
SATA is 150MB/s (later versions will be 300MB/s and then 600MB/s)

Quote:

Thanks for the reply i am sure he'll burn it in for test sake. But i am not into the tech specs enough to know if these parts are what i should be looking for or not. Dell can(my current mach. is Dell) build what they say is (video) ready, p4 3.0ht 800fsb 1 to 2 g ram two 120 raid hd etcetera with xp pro about $3300. But the items he is talking about... i dont know. I will try the referal to the web site you gave and research it.Thanks B.

Quote:

What this means is it has a bigger pipe for data and you will be able to upgrade to P4 chips with HTT technology when the prices come down from the stratosphere.

Hmm I noticed that your builder is implying that your computer is not going to get a hyperthreading pentium processor. I would likely put one in my system because the processors run at a higher front side bus speed (800mhz versus 533mhz) and the processors have hyperthreading, which gives a performance boost (20-30% maybe but it depends highly on the application... you could even lose performance, but that's on synthetic benchmarks).

It looks like some of the other parts are quality. Enermax is a reputable manufacturer of power supplies. The RAM is good if it's the kingston hyperX brand (you only need quality RAM if overclocking). MSI motherboards give good performance. One of them performs better than other motherboards because it dynamically overclocks (kind of cheating). It has lots of controls for overclocking AFAIK (some other mobo manufacturers won't let you overclock or will limit it). I don't know about the video card. For some NLEs it won't matter as long as it supports dual monitors. Dual monitors would be nice.

Jake McMurray · September 12th, 2003, 01:30 AM

if your in no hurry to upgrade your computer. Research and learn how to do it yourself. My brother a complete newb did it just by researching on the internet. Do you have someone that could help you? This will insure that you have exactly what you want, save you money for a better system, and you will know a heck of a lot more about computers than before you started which in this day and age is invaluable.

September 10th, 2003, 10:54 PM	#17
Bruce Johnson New Boot Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Scottsdale,AZ Posts: 9	new comp or not? Thanks for the reply i am sure he'll burn it in for test sake. But i am not into the tech specs enough to know if these parts are what i should be looking for or not. Dell can(my current mach. is Dell) build what they say is (video) ready, p4 3.0ht 800fsb 1 to 2 g ram two 120 raid hd etcetera with xp pro about $3300. But the items he is talking about... i dont know. I will try the referal to the web site you gave and research it.Thanks B.

September 11th, 2003, 05:32 AM	#18
Lloyd Roseblade Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Thatcham, UK Posts: 34	Had a quick scan through the previous posts in this thread and didn't see any mention of Serial-ATA. If you are looking for maximum HDD throughput then you may want to consider looking at the SATA IDE type disks. You will need a motherboard which supports this interface too. Throughput is around 150-600MB/s (bytes, not bits) using SATA I. SATA II will come out in soon which will include additional features (whatever they may be) but I think the max theoretical throughput will still be 600MB/s. Also there is something called Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), but I don't know much about it, or even if it's readily available yet. Anyhoo, it might just be worth evaluating some of these new HDD technologies. __________________ Lloyd " Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others." - Groucho Marx

September 10th, 2003, 10:09 AM	#16
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	You can price all the parts at newegg.com and add a few hundred for the builder's work (taking into account unpaid hours such as finding work and speccing systems with clients who may not buy). Or you can work the other way and find an equivalent system from say Dell and go down. Is the guy going to overclock and test the computer for stability for you?

September 12th, 2003, 01:30 AM	#20
Jake McMurray Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Bellingham Washington Posts: 102	if your in no hurry to upgrade your computer. Research and learn how to do it yourself. My brother a complete newb did it just by researching on the internet. Do you have someone that could help you? This will insure that you have exactly what you want, save you money for a better system, and you will know a heck of a lot more about computers than before you started which in this day and age is invaluable.