View Full Version : building a "conroe"
ok guys. after reading on these forums i think there is a lot i dont know to pc's. before i thought i had enough knowledge to build my own pc. there are some things i dont know so if you guys can help me it would be nice. some things i dont know are timings. i know the lower is better but what are they exactly. other stuff like the things in bios. is there anything i need to know when building and overclocking.
thanks
(i didnt know where to post it so i posted here because im building myself a conroe.
Drunner611
06-07-2006, 09:11 AM
?, why don't you list possibly what your planning on buying and then maybe we can help.
[XC]Atomicpineapple
06-07-2006, 09:37 AM
Yup go for the currently planned list, and we'll come up with ways to improve it (if we can). As for overclocking, best leave that untill youve got your PC running!
i'll be getting a e6600 for sure. g skill pc2 6400. wd 80gb hd sata 3.0gbps. but for the case, psu, andmobo im not exactly sure what i want. i know that retailers are very overpriced but if you have any recommendations from micro center please let me know because i have a $50 coupon.for the ram im not positive thats what i want either but for right now thats my pick. if you all can recommend anything good please let me know.
why 80gb HD when 160gb are only $10 more ?
SamHughe
06-07-2006, 10:46 AM
i'll be getting a e6600 for sure. g skill pc2 6400. wd 80gb hd sata 3.0gbps. but for the case, psu, andmobo im not exactly sure what i want. i know that retailers are very overpriced but if you have any recommendations from micro center please let me know because i have a $50 coupon.for the ram im not positive thats what i want either but for right now thats my pick. if you all can recommend anything good please let me know.
Since this is your first built, I'd stay away from building a relatively new cpu+mobo combination like Conroe + intel975. Conroe is not even released yet. Nobody knows for sure what kind of issues these cpus will have. I'd go for proven systems like socket 939 CPU +NForce4 mobo. Then you can find a lot of help here. You can get such a system for very cheap too.
Word of advice: first decide what mobo are you gonna use. The rest of your system heavily depends on what kind of features your mobo will have. SLI? RAID? Wi-Fi? air cooling? water cooling? You seem like under the influence of Conroe hype and I suggest you to snap out of it. Not that Conroe is a bad cpu but, it can be frustrating experience if you have a very unstable system.
[XC]Atomicpineapple
06-07-2006, 11:09 AM
Good point SamHuge, however genally its mobos that present issues, not CPUs (it was the 1st gen A64 mobos that really sucked, not the chip). If he went with an Intel 975x Bad Axe, a board that been out for a while and doesnt seem to have any problems. He'd avoid the majority of issues that new platforms can bring
[XC] DragonOrta
06-07-2006, 07:04 PM
He could also buy a different s775 CPU to get the hang of OCing an Intel while he waits for Conroe. Something like an 805 or a 631.
i am actually thinking of getting one of the asus motherboards. like the p5b deluxe or the p965 ones they if they arent too expesnsive. the case ill t\be getting the aerocool extremeengine3t. i was actually thinking of getting a 939 but i want good performance and i dont have too much to spend if i want to get 2 systems(am2 and conroe)
XS Janus
06-09-2006, 12:51 PM
You are on the right path my friend.:)
But don't concern yourself wit ram timings too much chances are great that you will never need to tweak them in you Conroe comp, and when you get that wish after reading more about it around the web, you will notice almost no perf. increase.
In your place I would stay away from the very expensive Rams that have very tight timings as their prices are likely to tumble due to the Amd's AM2 platform.:cool:
I definitely would invest more money in a good and new model hard drive
TRUST me a single 74gb Raptor will do wonders for your PC and it will be the best money ever spent beside a E6600.:woot: Just wait until WD740 ADFD become more available.;)
As a second choice I would try to find a single plated hdd with around 200gb if possible, if you don't want to spend much now. That way you could buy the Raptor later and see and measure the difference yourself and use the bigger one for data storage and/or backup:)
Any way you decide you must get the new WD740 ADFD Raptor that has 16mb of cache. Test here: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=nl_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2ftweakers.net%2freviews%2f621%2f 1 :woot: :woot:
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g.l.amour
06-10-2006, 01:52 AM
Janus, you seem to know a little about the raptors...
1) how much sound do they produce compared to the regular 7.2k discs? i'm a silence watercooler and would hate it to get a whining component in my case.
2) what would you put on the 74G raptor: win + progs; and a slower disc for data (movies/pics/mp3)?
Janus, you seem to know a little about the raptors...
1) how much sound do they produce compared to the regular 7.2k discs? i'm a silence watercooler and would hate it to get a whining component in my case.
2) what would you put on the 74G raptor: win + progs; and a slower disc for data (movies/pics/mp3)?
Yes it is louder cos it has more rpm's than a standard 7200rpm hd. In your silent comp I wouldn't recommend getting a Raptor cos you will deffinetly hear it, unless you have some kind of box that lowers the sound of the hd. For kais good options for case and psu would be Antec P180 and Antec Neo HE 430w/Seasonic S12 430, both very quiet and the case has very good air circulation. For mobo Asus board would be good choice like the P5B Dlx or P5W DH Dlx. For ram 2 gigabytes of DDR2 sticks and choose the best ram based on if you oc or not.
grimREEFER
06-10-2006, 03:53 AM
make sure u get 2gb of ram
MrGarrison
06-10-2006, 03:59 AM
Janus, you seem to know a little about the raptors...
1) how much sound do they produce compared to the regular 7.2k discs? i'm a silence watercooler and would hate it to get a whining component in my case.
2) what would you put on the 74G raptor: win + progs; and a slower disc for data (movies/pics/mp3)?
If you're going for a silent but fast system disk I'd say NAND SSD's would be a great choice. There are already some disks available, but if I where you I'd wait a few months until SATA NAND SSD's are available. This is of course if you can afford it, cuz it is not gonna be cheap. Transcend currently has an 8GB 1.8" IDE NAND SSD which you can get for about .5 grand here (http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/ItemDetail.asp?ItemID=TS8GIFD18).
XS Janus
06-10-2006, 04:25 AM
Janus, you seem to know a little about the raptors...
1) how much sound do they produce compared to the regular 7.2k discs? i'm a silence watercooler and would hate it to get a whining component in my case.
2) what would you put on the 74G raptor: win + progs; and a slower disc for data (movies/pics/mp3)?
1. I still own the one of the first 36gb series and in my past quiet setup. What was audible but only when the case was open, was its slightly higher pitched noise due to the fast spinning. The seek noise is audible, especially if your case resonates. The old model didn't use fluid bearings and was always refered to as Loud. The 74gb uses those and is a lot quieter they say and the newer 74gb (ADHD) is probably even better as I hope he has only one plate while the older one had two of them (150gb has two)
To avoid that, I mounted the drive in a 5.25 bay. But I did so by using elastic rope that I pulled through the usual screw holes and crossed them on the other side.:cool:
What this did was enable me to navigate the drive in between them -> and cause it to be suspended in air with none of the vibrations transferring to the case and still the drive was held very firmly in place;) :woot:
2. I am using it as boot disk and for all my install programs. I have moved the "My Documents" location to D:\ disk. That way I can easily reformat my drive only by baking up the "Desktop" folder and Outlook .pst ;) I use also a 3rd drive which is older and not that big for an occasional backup of the D: drive's un-replacable data :toast: If you guys know any tricks on moving "desktop" as well I'm all ears:D
Before the Raptor I used some normal hdd and did some of my own tests like installing SP2, UT2004 Demo, unraring, FarCry level loads, PShop actions and copying a custom made folder with lots of different file sizes.
Usual stuff one does on a daily basis and the results more than justified the premium:woot: Was 15-35% compare to a normal drive if i recall correctly
Can't wait for upgrade as thei wer constantly developing and one can expect a simmilar jump in performance now and will certainly do those kind of tests again:fact:
P.S. g.l.amour: Are you the same guy that did the waterblock tutorial on Madshrimps quite a while back??
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g.l.amour
06-10-2006, 08:57 AM
thx for all the info about the raptors guys
@janus, yes i am. i still have that block disassembled because with the thin plexi layers i kept getting minor leakage. right now i'm using an ancient maze2 block (with dual heatercores its more than apt to cool any cpu). at the time i made that block it was just the beginning of cathar posting on procooling the initial results of performance for his white water block. if you wanted jet impringement you almost had to do it yourself; right now you can choose jet blocks from almost any mfgr.
i had alot of fun making those blocks,but being reasonable one is better off and cheaper to just buy one (although aesthetically i don't like the universal mounting plates on the newer wb-models).
XS Janus
06-10-2006, 11:07 AM
Thanks for your answer. I am just looking into this kind of stuff I love self made quality stuff, and if I run into some problems, tool vise or other, can I PM you?
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g.l.amour
06-10-2006, 11:17 AM
as stated in the article on madshrimps, if you are into it for the fun and honour of making it yourself then by all means go ahead. you will see the performance won't be far off from the best performing waterblocks (if you go all the way and implement jet impringement).
using brass for the top and pure copper for the base also allows for custom pimp look.
this is the one i liked most (aesthetically) with the 2 colors. it didn't perform like a champ, but thats due to the design.
if u got designs you think you can make/questions about machining and tools, best post them in the watercooling section (but realise i didn't use any fancy equipment), and pm me the link, then we can discuss the design.
MentholMoose
06-10-2006, 08:12 PM
If you guys know any tricks on moving "desktop" as well I'm all ears:D
I believe you can do it with Tweak UI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx). Check out the "Special Folders" section under "My Computer".
XS Janus
06-11-2006, 02:51 AM
Thanks guys I'll see how it all goes!
Sorry for the thread hijack!
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g.l.amour
06-11-2006, 03:26 AM
i'm sorry for the hijack here as well ...
i know i definitely wont get a raptor. first its a waste of money imo. its louder. and it saves you like 2or 3 seconds from boot time on xp. but i know im getting a aerocool engine3t case because i can get it for 40 bucks and it has incredible airflow. if anyone wants to help me build please add me to your buddy list on aim and as im building maybe you can help me.
thanks a lot guys. i appreciate the help.
g.l.amour
06-12-2006, 05:26 AM
wouldn't the raptor speed up the loading of game levels once booted?
yeh it does but from what i heard its not worth the big price difference
Tasselhof
06-12-2006, 09:13 AM
For raptor's price - you can purchase 2 rather fast 7200 rpm hdd's and put them on raid 0 - it will be faster, cheaper and bigger :)
For raptor's price - you can purchase 2 rather fast 7200 rpm hdd's and put them on raid 0 - it will be faster, cheaper and bigger :)
that is soooo true. although it wouldnt be that much cheaper. i was thinking of doing like 2 160gb in raid 0, that is once i learn how to do it.
[XC]Atomicpineapple
06-12-2006, 11:18 AM
RAID 0 is easy to do usually, mobo manual describes how to do it. Usually set onboard SAT controller to RAID mode, exit BIOS and when PC reboots hit something like shift+F2 to enter the RAID controller BIOS, select RAID type and drives you want in the array. Exit and reboot, RAID array is done!
ok thanks for the info on the raid. and may i ask where you got the rev 304 board from atomicpineapple
[XC]Atomicpineapple
06-12-2006, 12:59 PM
a UK shop, www.lambda-tek.com
Pandamonia
06-12-2006, 01:17 PM
my 2 raptors in raid-0 are awsome, ive never seen booting and level loading so fast!!!
definatly worth it
g.l.amour
06-12-2006, 02:08 PM
yer, but i had some :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty experiences with raid 0 in the past (disks seeming to die faster) + needing a fscking floppy at windows install, cmon wtf do they still make us need floppy drives.
but you got a point, i should consider getting rid of all my ide hdd's, too bad for my dvdrw on ide, it would be nice to get rid of all those clumsy cables.
my 2 raptors in raid-0 are awsome, ive never seen booting and level loading so fast!!!
definatly worth it
I had a setup earlier this year with 2 Raptor 150GB in Raid-0 (which is considerably faster than 74GB Raptors in benchmarks), was NOT worth it. When working with big files it didnt improve much over my 2 WD 250GB/16MB in Raid-0, the improvement when reading/writing lots of smaller files was not as i expected, and the low access times from benchmarks was not really much to be happy about for real world usage. I would consider 2 WD 400GB/16MB for a fast Raid-0 setup, will cost the same as 2 Raptor 74GB and give around 5 times more storage. Compare Raptor 74GB and WD 400GB HERE (http://storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_3.html) and the next pages there. I heard the new Raptor74 ADFD is improved over the GD but platter density and RPM is still the same i think, so how much better can it be? Still not as good as the 150GB ADFD i bet.
XS Janus
06-13-2006, 11:49 AM
RAID 0 is just a e-penis, no real benefits for even a power user
The ADFD 74gb should have double density and only one platter and 16MB cache. That would explain its better and//or same performance do the 150gb model
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RAID 0 is just a e-penis, no real benefits for even a power user
Define power user? Is a power user one who loads and writes lots of small files? I think that doesnt cover many socalled powerusers, but if it did they would benefit from a Raptor and not by Raid0. The added bandwidth in Raid0 is considerable when working with big file. For example, 1 hour of DV video is around 13 Gigs, you dont want to edit this into another DV file on a slower single harddrive, here Raid0 will show its muscles. (Better alternative is for sure to use a frameserver, but most people use MS MovieMaker or whatever software that came with their cam/FW-card, and they dont even know what a frameserver is so Raid0 is a good upgrade)
Also some games benefit from Raid0, for example MS FlightSim2004. Many FS2004 texture files are of a considerable size when using payware addons, its not even necessary to measure the improvement of Raid0, you'll notice it right away. In any case Rai0 will not seriously hurt performance, better to have than to not have. Raptor is also better to have than to not have but my impression was clearly that it wasnt worth it, i returned my Raptor drives after 9-10 days of testing without being impressed, my wallet however noticed a big difference =)
Edit: Thanx for clearing up about the 74GB ADFD, but with single platter it cant possible have the same bandwith as the 150GB ADFD?