-Upgraded!- i7, here I come!

[Sajuuk]

Some of you may remember my thread about a month ago - I fried my computer. ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=17960&pageNo=1')

So, the time has come for me to upgrade, but I wanted to get some more advice before confirming it.

6gb G.skill 1333 RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231223
P6T Deluxe Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131346
920 i7 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

I have a couple other things in my shopping cart - support clip for a previously purchased (but never used) CPU heatsink/fan, as well as four copies of Wrath (Woohoo newegg 36.99 each)

Since this is my upgrade time, I was wondering if it would be worth it to get a couple hard drives and RAID 0 them (Not going SSD right now, I did fine multiboxing on one hard drive, the same drive had my OS on it as well. I also want some extra storage) I did a couple searches and so far it doesn't look like two drives in RAID 0 is worth it, but I do want the storage space.

Opinions?

[Kicksome]

I think getting 8 gigs of ram (vs. 6) would be more of a benefit. I notice I am swapping quite a bit even with 8 gigs of ram and 4 wow instances with Vista 64.

Maybe even get 2x of the 6 gig kits. That would be REALLY nice. I think that would be better than another HD.

But getting 2x hard drives would be nice, 10K RPM drives would be better.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Id go fro the rampage II over the other mb. 920 is fine. Ram lookig good.

Never use raid. Get a small raptor (like 30ishG) for wow and 1.5T drive for other stuffs.

I7 boards will be 6G, 12G or 24G.

[moosejaw]

Congrats on finally reaching your cash goal. The I7 will be a blast to box with.

[Sajuuk]

Well, the smallest raptor drive was 74GB using SATA 1.5Gb/s for 99.99, looks like I might get that and get a bigger hard drive later on to vastly increase my storage.

But nothing's final.

Edit: The reason for not getting something...bigger/more expensive? I don't want to wait another two weeks, and I want to be able to start my accounts back up at the same time.

[Kicksome]

If you are looking for speed increase just for wow - wow only takes like 12 gigs or so. So no need for more space. If you want to store other things on that drive, it might make sense to get something bigger.

But keep in mind, 2x 72gig drives are going to be a lot faster than 1x 500g drive as far as running multiple copies of wow goes (and probably anything else).

Right now, having 6 gigs of ram is going to a be your bottleneck, assuming you run 5 copies of wow. Each copy of wow takes close to 1gig memory, plus the OS can cache used with excess memory. in addition, the OS overhead of Vista is close to a gig, not to mention all the other utilities and programs you have on the machine taking up memory. I have 8 gigs of ram and run 4 copies of wow and I'm maxing my memory out and it's accessing page files on the hard drive.

So I think you're better off getting 12 gigs of ram vs another hard drive if you want to maximize wow performance.

[Sajuuk]

To be honest I noticed a small improvement going from 4-8Gb on my old system. So I'll see how the 6Gb works for me while I let RAM prices go down.
In the meantime I was wondering if it would be more worth it to replace the Raptor with a SAS drive. (Motherboard does have a SAS RAID controller.)
40 dollar difference, 5000RPM increase.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033 WD Raptor SATA 1.5Gb/s 99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116057 Fujitsu MBA3073RC SAS Drive. 139.99

[Yo-Yo Freak]

if you are going to be spending that much on a hard drive already then why not go SSD? i mean if you are going to spend that much, and you can clearly see from what everybody has said on these forums, an SSD is clearly superior to any 10k rpm drive. here is a cheap 30g one on newegg with a read time of up to 155MB/sec and write of up to 90MB/sec. it has low write times but almost all SSD's do and we don't ever write anything on it. we only want them for the read speeds.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227372 ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227372')

if you want about the same performance as the intel X25-E ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167013') then get 2 of the above and put them in a RAID 0 configuration. i read somewhere on these forums (not sure if it is true, would have to do a little more reserch to be positive) that you can get about 250MB/sec read times or higher and something like 170MB/sec write times. again i am not sure if that is true so don't take my word on it but i remeber reading it somewhere on this forum.

6g should be fine for a little while but i would consider upgrading to 12g as soon as you can afford to.

havent read much about the mb you selected but i have herd and read on alot of well know tech sites a lot of good things about the Rampage II ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131352').

don't think i have anything else to add, gald you finaly got the funds up for your new system and w/e you go with i hope you like it! ^_^

~YYF

PS
maybe Silencer can drop by and shed a little light on the HDD vs SSD and RAID delema, i would also sudgest reading his review of the SSD's vs 10k rpm raptors (OCZ Core 64GB MLC SSD Review.. (Testing in progress..) ('http://dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=12529')) if you havent already. it may be a little out of date on prices but the info in there is invaluable for us boxers.

hope this helps some! ^_^

~YYF

[sqeaky4100]

In all honesty, if you can - Raid 0 these drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260

It'll cost $460, but it's insane just how fast it is.

I recently built an i7 rig, and RAID 0 these drives, here's my results:

- Installed windows in literally 10min. ( it was unbelieveably fast )
- The drives are dead silent. Even quieter than my other 7200rpm ones.
- Installed WoW ( regular, BC, and Wotlk ) in about 15min.
- I click "down" on my mouse button to launch something, it's usually open before my mouse button comes back "up"... Im seriously not joking.
- Things load in WoW ( the loading bar ) in 1-2 seconds max.


I upgraded everything on my computer... Added 12gb ram, added a gtx 260, etc etc... and the biggest difference in performance were these HDD's, its insane how fast they are.

[Sajuuk]

Senor Yo-Yo does have a point. I may as well go with a SSD. I still have one hard drive slot left for a nice, large data drive.

(And the drive I was thinking about getting (15000RPM) is out of stock. :p)

Aaaand it's ordered!

[Yo-Yo Freak]

well i hope everything works out for you! ^_^

don't forget to keep us updated :P

might want to do a little more research before overclocking this system ;) lol

~YYF

[Sajuuk]

Run the processor without a heatsink. Got it. ;)

I'm excited to get back up and running!

[Shaitan256]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260

I upgraded everything on my computer... Added 12gb ram, added a gtx 260, etc etc... and the biggest difference in performance were these HDD's, its insane how fast they are.

Do you still have your old stuff ?! to test it ?! :)

Maybe it scales much more with a great PC. If it would give me an big advantage this would be my first upgrade then. :) (not exactly these 2, but something comparable)

[Sam DeathWalker]

Thats the first raptor with Sata 3.0 (instead fo 1.5) interface.

With raid 0 you get 6GB/sec

If you set up your 12G ram with a 8G ram disk you get 28G/sec. WoW takes more then 8G for all folders though.

I don't think access time is important (why would they store a zone data non consecutively in the data files?).

These are cheaper AND FASTER then the 300G ones:

http://cgi.ebay.com/80-GB-Velociraptor-WD800HLFS-New-Sealed-80GB-10kRPM-WD_W0QQitemZ140298242094QQihZ004QQcategoryZ64462QQ ssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I think 2 of those is by far the best cost/performance upgrade you can do. I hate raid but 2 of those in raid zero, or 4 in raid zero (12Gsec transfer rate humm.) for just $250 for 2 or $500 for 4 well ...

$500 for 12G/sec humm hummm

[sqeaky4100]

Thats the first raptor with Sata 3.0 (instead fo 1.5) interface.

With raid 0 you get 6GB/sec

If you set up your 12G ram with a 8G ram disk you get 28G/sec. WoW takes more then 8G for all folders though.

I don't think access time is important (why would they store a zone data non consecutively in the data files?).

These are cheaper AND FASTER then the 300G ones:

http://cgi.ebay.com/80-GB-Velociraptor-WD800HLFS-New-Sealed-80GB-10kRPM-WD_W0QQitemZ140298242094QQihZ004QQcategoryZ64462QQ ssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I think 2 of those is by far the best cost/performance upgrade you can do. I hate raid but 2 of those in raid zero, or 4 in raid zero (12Gsec transfer rate humm.) for just $250 for 2 or $500 for 4 well ...

$500 for 12G/sec humm hummmThose are the same speed as the 300gb raptors.

Plus, they're a LOT louder. I have a 80gb in my computer right now, and it's annoyingly loud compared to my 300gb.

[Sam DeathWalker]

They review faster cause they are smaller so there is less maximum access time. Ya rated the same speed but maybe like 1 percent faster in tests, due to their smaller size.