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Thread: New computer

  1. #11
    It's a gas!
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    nihil, an upgrade may well be the best solution, but my presumption was that if this guy was looking to purchase a new comp, then his current one mustnt be up to much.
    Going by the specs he has mentioned, i dont know why hes looking to upgrade for the purposes he mentioned, karbon?
    Why in the mother of god do you need 1tb of hdd space for personal use? Thats just ridiculous! You ever hear of backups?
    Also why would you want/need a raid configuration? All you need to implement raid is an os that supports raid. That is unless you want to splash out a heap of money on some server h/w.

    Edit:
    Be careful? at the moment hardware is in advance of most software so these "kiddies bragging rights" thingies are pretty much irrelevant?
    Im not sure what you mean by this...im assuming youre referring to the 64 bit os comment i made? If so then if youre planning on buying a new box to play with for the next 5 years, then i would recommend buying a mobo with 64 bit support. Within the next year s/w will be available in 64 bit to match the upcoming os, so the s/w aint that far behind the h/w.

  2. #12
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Hi, r3b00+,

    At present, it is difficult to specify upper end kit that is not a pure gaming outfit, or a specialist CAD, publishing, graphics machine. The reason being that there is a distinct gap between current hardware capabilities and current software capabilities.

    As a general rule, something that costs €200 today will cost €100 in 12 month's time, or there will be a far better specification available for your €200 (The Euro has to be our common currency because karb0n has ¿ on his keyboard ) So, I take the view that spending the money now, could be wasteful, unless you have a current use and need for that hardware.

    Looking at his current specifications, I cannot see much need for improvement, given the requirements he has stated. I would look to increase the RAM to 1024Mb and upgrade the video card. Those are about the only improvements I can see.

    Another consideration is Windows Vista...............I would not really want that until 12 months from now, so as to give it time to stabilise. Therefore, my advice would be to wait until then (September 2007) before making a major investment.

    Why in the mother of god do you need 1tb of hdd space for personal use?
    Possibly for an entertainments box to store videos and music? The requirements for such a machine would be somewhat different than those of a gaming or general purpose machine. It might be a conversion project for the existing machine when he buys the new one?

    Also why would you want/need a raid configuration? All you need to implement raid is an os that supports raid.
    Strange though it may seem virtually everything I have built or implemented in the last 5 years has been RAID. I use RAID1 for SOHO and design type environments and RAID5 for small businesses. RAID0 is very attractive because it is fast, but it is also very vulnerable so I avoid it.

    The operating system is irrelevant these days. The question is whether you go for a hardware solution or a software one. In recent years, good quality motherboards have been available with a hardware solution for RAID1 and RAID0. I prefer this to software.

    karb0n, my last question was about whether you have any old peripheral equipment that you must use? I would expect the answer to be "no" and that you would buy new printers, scanners and so on, if you need them.

    I think that the real issue is going to be Windows Vista, and I would recommend that you delay your purchase of a new machine until that has been on the market for a few months. Linux should not be an issue.

    What is it about your current system that you are not happy with, or would want to improve?


  3. #13
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    My current system is fine. I dont want to upgrade it really, I was thinking of puting my current PC as a media center behind the TV (by the way, I am using now ~500GB of media and moving from one drive to another is slow for files of arround 700MB, that's why I wanted RAID, but since it's vulnerable I'll think of it more :P). So the thing is that since I have some components from other computers I could use them (monitor, keyboard, mouse, some HDs, etc) so now that I think of it since I only need a motherboard, processor, graphics card and some RAM (maybe some disk space too) I think it would cost a lot less than a whole new computer. For example I've been looking and found a motherboard that supports AMD dual core 64 bits at 2000Mhz, the said processor, an nvidia graphics card thats not too bad (the good ones cost a lot...) and memory for arround 520€, I'll post the full specs later. Oh btw, I dont want vista to use it like I would use any other OS, I want to try it, and *maybe* use it when it goes out of beta.

    Thanks

  4. #14
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Hmmmm,

    I think that if you go for the "media centre" approach you will solve some of your problems because it will now be a dedicated system, so you should be able to organise your files better.

    I would also add a new case, or at least a power supply to your budget. They are not that expensive, and a 500Watt or better would be a safer option than trying to use an old one from an earlier generation of PCs. Power supply failures can destroy virtually all the components in your PC so I tend not to take chances with them on a major upgrade.

    The reason that I use RAID1 is that it provides an instant back up (I guess I don't trust my users that much ) and it will allow work to continue if one of the drives fails. I don't think that you have a need for that.

    As for Windows Vista, it is supposed to be released March/April 2007. I would personally prefer to wait for the first service pack, which I would expect around September 2007, given that it is quite a major change from previous versions of Windows. I am talking about using it as the major operating system, of course, not just experimenting.


  5. #15
    It's a gas!
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    Just a note karb0n. raid is not vulnerable, quite the opposite. What my learned friend nihil explained was that raid0, i.e. striped volumes, do not have any fault tolerance, so if one of the volumes die, all volumes die. raid1 and raid5, particularly raid5 are fault tolerant.

    Hope this clears things up a little.

  6. #16
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    That is correct, some would argue that RAID0 is not a true RAID array because it has zero fault tolerance. Sure, it is very fast, but can you imagine recovering from 4.7Gb DVDs............ you would have over 100 of them with the volumes of data you are talking

    This is a supplier's site but has a pretty good basic explanation of the various types of RAID arrays:

    http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

    There is a little bar near the top where you click for each type.


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