Check Out This Bad Boy

[hutch--]

I have learnt this from my last 2 new computers, stay away from boards that have inbuilt video only, make sure they will take a modern video card, half gig or more memory as Win7 64 has much more graphics to drive than the earlier XP and similar vversions. I may not be up to date here but its common to get PCIexpress boards with dual video slots and see if you can find a board that supports more usable slots, make adding toys a lot easier. I built my i7 in a Gigabyte P55A-UD3 board and it has performed faultlessly, I gather the later Gigabyte boards with later chipsets are even better.

Also keep an eye on what SATA and USB they support, there is newer much faster stuff in the pipeline so don't settle for just SATA2 and the USB2.

[Twister]

I saw on ASUS front page that they support USB 3.0, which is 10x faster than USB 2.0. I am also planning to have a high capacity HDD (high throughput, too). 1 TB should be a good size, and it's cheap so why not. :P

I have been running A Seagate HDD for years, and I can't decide which HDD I would want. I'll take a more in-depth look at the products for features, or go with Seagate since how nice it's been to me. It's also been very quiet too. :bg

=== Could I possibly have two internals, or is it just one internal and externals in this day and age? I'm afraid it would bottleneck and the drives will fail.

[hutch--]

Do 2 or more internal drives, it gives you the redundancy if one fails. The trick is to put a disk image of the boot partition on the second disk so if the first fails, you can just install a new one and write the disk image back to it. On my dev machines they each have 4 disks, its very hard to fully trash a machine that has muliple redundancy and you can rebuild from a serious crash if it happens. Also avoid RAID or any hardware specific disk layout as you may not be able to duplicate it on another board if it fails.

[anunitu]

The trick with any hardware now,is making sure it isn't out of date before you get out the door with it.
I think it is BestBuy that is doing the ads where they offer to take a trade in if your purchase goes out of date, the ad shows someone buying an Iphone with I guess G4(I think thats Wireless speed) walking outside he sees an outside ad for the NEW G5.
Tech is moving very fast these days.

The link shows news on rollup monitors using Oled, that seems about to bust on the scene.

http://www.oled-info.com/

I am getting to old to keep up anymore..Tech is changing faster than my hair is turning gray....

[zemtex]

If you want a pc dedicated for software developing you can use 3 disks in raid 5. You get excellent read performance and as a developer you don't need all that write performance. You can lose one disk (which is fairly inexpensive, if you buy 3 x Seagate Barracuda 500GB disks, all 3 disks will cost less than 150 dollar combined)

Then you will have an excellent "developers storage platform" with 1 TB storage, the extra 500 GB goes into parity. But I would recommend that you buy 4 of these cheap disks, when one disk fails you need to quickly be able to replace it. The raid controller will automatically rebuild all lost data.

On top of this, I recommend setting up a batch script to automatically ftp your source files to a dedicated ftp storage device, like a nas server or even a server on the internet. A good auto script interval is every 30 minutes perhaps. Using the nmake utility can help with that to find if any files have changed.

You could also backup your coding sessions, but you need an editor that can do that, and store the session as you write, sometimes the session can last very long and you can lose alot of data.

[Twister]

I think that something like this would be more beneficial.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&q=1TB+Seagate&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1920&bih=927&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=3057009246753246200&sa=X&ei=Uc_6TbCBKNCztwfe17y8Dg&ved=0CIABEPMCMAQ

It has a quicker access speed [600 MBit/s; ~75MB/s (not bad, huh?  :wink) ], and it is double the size. But if I had one more hard drive, with less space on each one, it could possibly save me from complete data loss (?) ( The data is saved on all hard-drives but different places.)
I do think it would be more beneficial because the access speed is higher, and that is the best for gaming rigs. Maps and textures load much quicker.

>> I'm not sure if data loss is a big concern to me with it being so easy to get it back. I'm more concerned with speed, the temperatures, and that the drives won't fail me or bug out. I don't want hundred dollar paper weights. :dazzled:

[hutch--]

Horton,

My dev box has 4 x 1 TB WD Green disks and they run cold. I have them on 2 other boxes and have not lost 1 yet. There average data transfer rate is just under 100 meg/sec in HDTUNE so they are fast enough. If you really need disk speed you go for a SATA3 solid state drive but be warned they are still expensive and don't hold much. If you go that route you keep your speed critical stuff on the solid state and the non-critical stuff on normal hard disks where you get much greater capacity.

Still, with mechnical hard disks, be very careful about using RAID, unless you use a very good RAID controller the board BUS speed will limit the data transfer rate and you are at the mercy of a failed controller that you cannot duplicate and losing all of your data. This is where having backups on a normal HDD has its advantages, if the board or controller fail, you just plug it into another box.

[zemtex]

I think that something like this would be more beneficial.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&q=1TB+Seagate&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1920&bih=927&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=3057009246753246200&sa=X&ei=Uc_6TbCBKNCztwfe17y8Dg&ved=0CIABEPMCMAQ

It has a quicker access speed [600 MBit/s; ~75MB/s (not bad, huh?  :wink) ], and it is double the size. But if I had one more hard drive, with less space on each one, it could possibly save me from complete data loss (?) ( The data is saved on all hard-drives but different places.)
I do think it would be more beneficial because the access speed is higher, and that is the best for gaming rigs. Maps and textures load much quicker.

>> I'm not sure if data loss is a big concern to me with it being so easy to get it back. I'm more concerned with speed, the temperatures, and that the drives won't fail me or bug out. I don't want hundred dollar paper weights. :dazzled:

I forgot you were building a gaming rig  :P

If you aim for speed, then there is no holding back. SSD gives great speed and less storage space at a higher cost. Mechanical drives like WD Velociraptor gives great speed, good storage at a medium high price. I have 2 x velociraptor disks in raid 0 on my main computer and another 2 in a different storage device. Although I do not game alot, I can clearly tell the difference from typical hdd's. Last time I checked I had 230.6 MB/s access speed with an on-board raid controller and NCQ enabled (it is faster with it disabled). This is the second generation raptors, the new generation raptor disks are about 30 percent faster and they offer better storage compared to earlier versions, up to 600 GB per disk.

Beware that some hdd's work best for file transfers and will suck during boot, the new 3 TB disk is a good example of that. It works good for file transfers and it is good at that, but will do bad during boot.

The cheap drives I talked about earlier is more suitable if you want to build a developer's computer to be able to easily afford replacing a lost disk. It is not fun to replace a 300 dollar drive if it goes bankrupt, it is much more fun to replace a 50 dollar drive  :bdg

Like hutch said, keeping the ssd for critical programs and for the os is good. If you plan on getting more drives it might be better to stuff them on a nas server or some other storage device so that you can unload the main computer, leaves more power to the graphics card, less heat production, less cpu overhead and less chaos.

Using the SSD drive to install programs onto and use a dedicated nas server to fetch your programs. There are always exceptions to every rule, if you have a case with split chambers, you can easily deal with that.

I bought a Lian Li cube case a few years ago and you have 18 bays to stuff drives, two chambers, so you can spread the heat. I have mounted 14 fans in total so heat is no problem for me  :bdg

[zemtex]

Horton,

My dev box has 4 x 1 TB WD Green disks and they run cold. I have them on 2 other boxes and have not lost 1 yet. There average data transfer rate is just under 100 meg/sec in HDTUNE so they are fast enough. If you really need disk speed you go for a SATA3 solid state drive but be warned they are still expensive and don't hold much. If you go that route you keep your speed critical stuff on the solid state and the non-critical stuff on normal hard disks where you get much greater capacity.

Still, with mechnical hard disks, be very careful about using RAID, unless you use a very good RAID controller the board BUS speed will limit the data transfer rate and you are at the mercy of a failed controller that you cannot duplicate and losing all of your data. This is where having backups on a normal HDD has its advantages, if the board or controller fail, you just plug it into another box.

OFcourse you don't need raid, you can just duplicate the most important files across the different hdd's, that will give you more storage leftover for the unimportant files.

but...

I recommend raid smart batteries, it will flush the cache if anything goes wrong with the controller or if you lose power.

[dedndave]

i have bought a couple of these Hitichi 1 Tb drives and had great success, so far...

hhttp://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-Deskstar-7K1000-C-HDS721010CLA332-internal/dp/B002U22U6S

at that price, you can buy more drives and raid them all kinds of ways   :P

[zemtex]

I will buy myself a new computer too.  :bdg

Intel Pro/1000CT PCIe Desktop Adapter 1000BaseT, Inc Low Profile Bracket, bulk
Intel® Core™ i7-2600K Processor Socket-LGA1155, Quad Core, 3.4Ghz, 8MB, 95W, Boxed w/fan
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme B3, Socket-1155 E-ATX, P67, DDR3, 4xPCIe(2.0)x16, CFX& SLI, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, BT, EFI
Corsair Dominator DHX+ DDR3 1600MHz 4GB Kit w/2x 2GB XMS3 modules, CL7-8-7-20, for Core i3/i5/i7, 1.65V, with Connector
Corsair SSD Force Series™ 3, 120GB SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 550MB/510MB/s read/write, SandForce® SF-2281
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler Socket 775/1155/1156/1366, AM2/AM2+/AM3, 1300 RPM, 110,3 m³/h, 19,8 dBA
Sony Optiarc Blu-Ray Burner, BD-5300S SATA, BD-R DL: 8x, BD-RE: 2x, DVD±R: 16x, DVD±RW: 8x, Bulk, BLACK
Seagate Barracuda® XT 3TB SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3.0), 64MB Cache, 7200RPM, 3,5"

The corsair ssd drive is very fast and can be used for the OS and all of your installed programs. The 3 TB drive can be used to store less frequently used files.
The motherboard comes with dual gigabit lans but I added an intel pro network card because they are so much better and has some very good features.