New build

[digitalwingx]

- I'm living in Australia so the choice of product is much limited (wish we had newegg here)
- I want to be able to use Dell's U2311H monitor with its Eyefinity feature, so I will stick with ATI
- Generally I don't like spend too much on CPU and GPU since they depreciate quite quickly

Ok now here is the list (the price is in AUD):
MON DELL U2311H $300
GPU Gigabyte RADEON 5770 1GB $186
CPU AMD AM3 Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition $174
MB GA-870A-UD3 $138
MEM 4G PATRIOIT OR TRIDENT 1600 $125
HD SEAGATE 500G X 2 RAID 0 $100
CASE LIAN LI PC8B $115
PSU Seasonic S12-II 80+ 520W $99
COOLING Coolermaster Universal Hyper 212+ $39

Things I'm not sure about:
- Purchase a SSD instead to boost system speed? But I'm not familiar with SSD technology and I heard they are still relatively expensive and unstable
- 8G memory?

Now say if I don't mind spending another 200~300 bucks, where should I put the money to? and any comment on the list?

This is the price list (where I plan to buy from)
http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf

Thanks in advance.

 

[batuchka]

IMO your RAID config is eating up your frames in games and i would manipulate config possibly sticking to stock HSF for the moment in order to land a HD 5850?

 

[digitalwingx]

5850 is twice expensive down here.

And this is gonna be a noob question, how is RAID eating up frame rate in game? Shouldn't RAID speed up harddisc read/write speed?

 

[batuchka]

What i meant is pump funds away from 2 x Hdd unless mission critical to hit a better GPU hence better gaming performance ^^

 

[digitalwingx]

I guess the question is "does RAID 0 increase performance"? The two hard disks are 500gb which kinda already halved the cost since most ppl would go for a much larger than hard disc (I don't download alot so dont need large HD)

 

[digitalwingx]

Hmm did some digging it seems raid 0 does indeed increase performance and even there are alot of suggestions for 3 HD raid 0 build.

 

[Mr Pizza]

well yeah, RAID 0 does increase performance..... it sends half the data to drive A and the other half the drive B. Raid one sends all the info to drive A and B. Then there is RAID 5... RAID 1+0.. RAID 50.... RAID 100!!!!!! ^-^ RAID 2.. RAID 3... 4... 6.
RAID DP, RAID Matrix...

 

[digitalwingx]

Ya I understand the theory aspect of RAID the reason I HAD doubt is to allocating the data spreading them across harddiscs means extra burden on the CPU and other part of the system, but seems it turns out the gains from RAID is far greater than the loss.

And ofcourse there is concern of losing data but my data aint that percious and it is frequently backed up anyway.

Now let's not going offtopic I'd still like to receive some comment on my config.

 

[batuchka]

Think we getting off tangent here: was speaking from a *gaming/frames* P.O.V : RAID in no way make your games more buttery smooth so depends on priorities here hehe

 

[sp12]

RAID does not really help desktop use. The random accesses are often a bit slower due to CPU overhead. Avoid RAID 0.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/294490-31-samsung-spinpoint-raid

 

[Mr Pizza]

RAID 0 rocks. Period. It makes EVERYTHING faster!

 

[sp12]

:/ Not really. It only makes sustained transfers faster, which doesn't really matter except for, as you guessed, transfers of megabytes in size or more.

In my opinion it's not worth the reduced cost/gigabyte and increased failure rate.