Building my own PC

[Yikes]

Hello All, My office PC is Dying, about half the time when booting it

[Dusty Chalk]

Play a game...on your work computer? I don't think so. Raise? You're lucky you have a job, get back to work.

I'd start by reloading the operating system. If'n you must upgrade hardware, I'd start with a new disk drive -- something more than 100G, presumably, and 7200Rpm, if you have any room to play.

[mrarroyo]

This may sound crazy but when was the last time you opened up your current PC and dusted it off? I find that a lot of "krap" collects and causes overheating and other problems. Give it a try, it is a "dirt" cheap solution. Good luck.

[manaox2]

Dust it, run memtest, replace thermal compound in that order to maybe if you want to repair.

[Yikes]

Sorry I'm not really looking to troubleshoot the old PC, just asking if anyone knows about the Video Cards (Chipsets) that I mentioned.

[Ben Gramain]

If you want a media server, get an HP MediaSmart EX495 and build/buy a separate PC for doing whatever. The MediaSmart is awesome - it's quiet, expandable and easily configurable / controllable - and for a lower-end NAS it's fast. And unlike a RAID1/5 array you can dynamically expand the array without having to repartition it by decommissioning one drive then plugging in a bigger one, and repeating that for the other drives. There is a new version of the WHS software out very soon and it's unlikely that the 495 will be upgradeable to the new version, but I don't think you need to wait for it.

[robm321]

After a lot of research I went with a HD4850. It was a nice sweet spot for price performance. That was 5 months ago though, so my research might be ancient by now.

[Yikes]

Well I made up my mind and ordered the parts. Stuff should arrive on Monday. It's not a gaming rig, but it's still reasonably powerful. Primary use is as a RAID server and a general purpose PC. I cheaped out as far as the video goes with a HD 4670 card.

If anyone is interested here's what I ordered:

Motherboard

[HDen]

Hard Drives (For NAS function) 3 Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB 5400 RPM (In RAID 5 for approximately 4 TB of Network accessible storage)

I've got a pair of these too, they work well but are slow, were these on sale? why didn't you go for the samsung f3?

Oh and what are you using as a NAS?

[Yikes]

I've heard of the Samsung drives being a little unreliable, not to mention the f3 has 32 mb of cache and the WD20EARS has 64 mb for the same price. The entire computer functions as a big RAID NAS. NAS's are basically little computers that run an operating system and software. I'm just building my own, oh and the computer part of mine will actually be worth using.

[Nebby]

I've been running Samsung F1's in a raid for some time now without issues, though I hear their RMA process isn't exactly as easy to use as WD/Seagate. The WD Green drives may not be the best choice for RAID as their tendency to spindown very often might interfere with the RAID controller.

[Yikes]

The first Motherboard was bad, it still worked but just all F-d up. Got tyhe replacement, works like a charm. One of the WD20 drives was bad, got a replacement, works like a charm. I'm proud of my little system.

Case: COOLER MASTER ATCS 840 RC-840-KKN1-GP Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 AM3

CPU; AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor

Memory: 4 GB of kingston (Easily expanded to 8 GB, max of 16)

Video: GIGABYTE GV-R467ZL-1GI Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x1

System Drives - 2 WD 1 TB Green drives in RAID 1 configuration for 1TB of redundant System storage.

NAS drives - 3 WD 2 TB Green drives in RAID 5 configuration for almost 4 TB of storage (With room for two more drives)

Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower XT TPX-775M 775W

Monitor: Viewsonic VX2739WM 27"

The desk is new and wicked inexpensive. I chose it to fit the monitor and it accommodates my B&W DM601's for nice near-field listening. It does have 4 convenient USB ports right under the monitor.

Amp for the B&W's is a NAD C 326 BEE (Highly recommended for those on a budget)

I'm waiting for my Music Hall DAC 25.2 to be modded by Exemplar Audio to use as the source. In the mean time a Nuforce uDac serves as the DAC. In the last day I've ripped 53 CD's to the system (Full WAV), only 3800 some odd CD's to go.

Internal Pictures. I tried to be neat. The case is HUGE with room to grow. Followed by a Picture of the entire system. I'm going to be pissed if the Bridge Sucks, this entire exercise is specifically for use with the bridge.

Thanks for the help. Oh and sorry I posted this over there as well.

[HDen]

Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower XT TPX-775M 775W

Did you already have this psu from something else? It's way more than the computer will use, a 500W even 430 should be enough

[manaox2]

Did you already have this psu from something else? It's way more than the computer will use, a 500W even 430 should be enough

Good tip on building a PC is to overspec the PSU. It will stay better regulated, quieter, and ultimately keep the computer more stable. I use an 800W in my own and use a passive video card even.

[robm321]

Very nice!

[Fungi]

Good tip on building a PC is to overspec the PSU. It will stay better regulated, quieter, and ultimately keep the computer more stable. I use an 800W in my own and use a passive video card even.

For the same price though, I would get a 450W-ish Antec/Seasonic/Corsair over a 750W Thermaltake.

[Dusty Chalk]

...sorry I posted this over there as well.

[punctuation-pedant sarcasm]Why are you sorry you posted this over there as well?[/sarcasm]

[manaox2]

For the same price though, I would get a 450W-ish Antec/Seasonic/Corsair over a 750W Thermaltake.

Yeah, thats true. I also use a Corsair.

[tkam]

Actually you don't want to overspec a PSU by too much, you want it to be operating at around at least 50% of it's capacity otherwise you won't be getting anywhere close to the rated efficiency.

[Yikes]

Concerning the PSU, remember that the PC currently has 5 Hard drives (3 x WD 2TB and 2 x WD 1 TB) and at some point I will probably upgrade the Video Card to a more up to date more powerful (and Power Hungry) model. Not to mention that if I decide to Rip my DVD collection I have the facilities to add three more hard drives to the RAID 5 array. For another $420 I can make this a 10 TB RAID 5 NAS unit.

[manaox2]

I kind of think the benefits of RAID are almost dead with hard drives larger then 1TB and its especially hard this days with all the eco and green hard drives that don't do well with it. But, yeah, over-specifying the power supply isn't a bad thing at all.

[tkam]

RAID is still very useful, but I do agree that the green drives aren't the best choice for a raid environment.

[Yikes]

I agree that the Green drives are not ideal in a performance oriented RAID environment. My application is a little different. The RAID array will only be for streaming music and maybe video for one user, me. So I like the trade off of efficiency vs speed.

[tkam]

Well for the green drives performance wise they do suck, but I was speaking more toward reliability. The failure rates for the green drives seems to be significantly higher than other SATA drives that and they don't play well with certain raid cards.

Edited June 18, 2010 by tkam

[Yikes]

That I had not heard, I hope that your saying that hasn't jinxed me.