Computer geekery

[plonq]

Here is my current shopping list (subject to tweaking here and there prior to purchase).


Sorry guys, no Mac for me this time around.  I'm open to ideas and suggestions if you've had good/bad experience with any of these, or think I'm setting off in the wrong direction.

Motherboard:
ASUS -- (A8V-E-DELUXE) (VIA K8T890) AMD SOCKET 939 / 8 CHANNEL AUDIO / DUAL CAHNNEL MEMORY / 10-1000MBPS GIGA LAN / 8X USB 2.0 / SATA / RAID 0,1 / IEEE 1394 / (3 PCI / 2 PCI-EX1 / 1 PCI-EX16 / 4 DDR 400 / MAX 4.0GB MEMORY)
CPU
AMD --  ATHLON 64 (3200+) SOCKET 939 (64 BIT) (RETAIL W/ COOLER) (3 YEARS MFG WARRANTY)
Memory
2 x Generic --  PC-3200 DDR (400MHZ) 512MB W/O ECC
Video
Sapphire --  (RADEON X800 PRO-VIVO) (RETAIL) 256MB DDR / PCI-Ex16 / TV-OUT / VIDEO-IN / DVI
Hard Drive
Seagate --  (BARRACUDA SERIAL ATA V) 200GB (8MB) / 7200 RPM (SATA) (5 YEARS MFG WARRANTY)

The two components I'm wavering on the most are the CPU (I'd save $60 going with the 3000+) and the video card (because there's a question of availability).  I'd love to go with an X850, but I'm not eager to part with big dollars when I'm pretty sure an X800 will meet my needs for a few years.

Comments

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

If I were to set up a new desktop/tower I'd scratch that S-ATA disk and instead get hold of a couple of 10K or 15K Ultra-SCSI disks.
Three or more of those, connected to a RAID controller does wonders for the overall speed of the system...
At work, old PIII/500MHz servers with 256MB RAM and serving 100+ users are just as responsive as 1GHz+ desktops with 512MB RAM.
(Servers run W2K, PC's WinXP Pro)

With todays fast processors, the only REAL performance-bottleneck today is the relatively sloooooow HDD speeds.

I recently replaced the HDD in a 386 portable with a CF-card, and it now performs almost as fast as a Pentium based laptop when running Win3.11

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I can get a 200GB Barracuda 7200RPM 8MB cache drive for CDN$147.95

I can get 4 of those and RAID them for just under $600.00

I can get a 146.8GB Seagate Ultra SCSI 10K RPM 8MB cache for about $809.97

If I go with the 15K RPM that jumps to about $1957.99

That doesn't include the cost of the controller card.

If I was looking to run a server with 100+ users to it then I wouldn't even hesitate to buck up for Ultra-SCSI. It wouldn't even be a matter for discussion. On the other hand, am I really going to see a 7.5x speed improvement at 10K, or an 18x improvement at 15K when I'm surfing the web or playing Counter-Strike?

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

I guess, not having to sign the bills helps...
(That's my boss' job :-)

But even getting a stack of 36GB SCSI-3 drives and RAID'ing them helps to increase speed... (In a raid you don't always need the largest drives)
A pity that all the 9 and 18GB SCSI-2 drives I have laying around at the office won't fit in my PC... (HP Hotplug drives) I even have decent RAID controllers for them. Maybe if I take the drive-bay out of an old server and taped it to the top of the maxitower...
Would probably have to replace the PSU, too.

[tamarik.livejournal.com]

What type of RAID are we talking about here? RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5?

[anthony-lion.livejournal.com]

We only use RAID 5.

If the server is speck'ed right, and has a decent controller, the users won't notice any lag if a disk fails.
If there's one thing I've learnt it's that server disks do die.
(They run 24/7 after all, and never go into any power-save modes)