the1greg

right... i bought a new gaming / schoolwork / 3d design / 2d drawing + photo editing + graphic design / general computer usage rig a few weeks ago and i **** up the motherboard, (foxconn X38A), i bought a new one and i would like someone to give me some advice before i rush in again and cost me another £150 or even a new rig. here is the specs:

cpu: intel core 2 quad Q6600
ram: 4gb (2x2gb modules) pc6400
video card: nvidia 8800 GTS
hdd: WD raptor 10000rpm 150gb (will get second one on raid 0 when i have enough money)
CD drive: asus fast combo drive thingy
mainboard: asus STRIKER II :S
PSU: coolermaster 700w
2x cibox 22" wide monitors (haha i just thought id add that in XD)

now, i have heard horror stories about the striker two... maybe not such a good idea but i just could not resist the awesome features and overclocking potential. the mainboard is mainly what i want to know about... since i heard rushing through the bios could **** everything up, but if you got any other advice i'd be glad to hear it.

I have never made a computer from scratch before, i have rebuilt ones, added in new components ect (i have a friend's dad and a cousin who are both IT engineers on standby if anything i dont like happens tho). but i am in enemy territory when it comes to running it up for the first time and am not sure to what to expect with a board with such a reputation.

cheers,
Greg

blackduck30

The striker is quiet a nice board, the only thing i have heard is that they had a few bios updates that have resolved some issues so it may be worth looking into the bios version you have and checking for later releases and what problems they address

TheMatt

Make sure that if you get the Cooler Master PSU it is the Real Power Pro series. I would also look at the Thermaltake Toughpower 700W as an alternative.

My other suggestion is to use RAID 1 when you get the second Raptor. The WD Raptor drives have a higher failure rate than Western Digital's other drives and if one drive fails in a RAID 0 array then you loose all data array. Also, RAID 1 has the same read performance boost as RAID 0, just no write performance boost.

the1greg

if i get three more right... could i stick a raid 0 pair backed up by a raid 1 pair? that way i get the performance boost and also the backup?

could that work or would having to copy files to the raid 1s as well just discount the performance?

TheMatt

Yes, you can, and that is called RAID 0+1 which most controllers support. Better yet, if the controller supports RAID 10 (two RAID 1 arrays that are striped in RAID 0) use that because it will double the write speeds and quadruple the read speeds.

This is all theoretical however and if you plan to do 4 disks a dedicated RAID controller would give you the best performance, although the onboard would do fine for 4. I would start with RAID 1 but if you really want the write speed increase I would start with the 4 disks because rebuilding the array later on can be a hassle.