Voltar

My suggestion on a sub $1000 system: AMD Athlon 64 3400+, with 1MB L2 Cache ~$380 or AMD Athlon 64 3400+, with 512KB L2 Cache ~$290 MSI K8N Neo Platinum ~$130 512MB DDR 400 x2 ~$210 Case ~$70 120GB SATA HDD x2 ~$190 DVD+-RW ~$85 Card Reader ~$20 Video Card ~$80 Mix and match with what you can save from his current system to come in under $1000. You may not need the hard drives, I just like having a mirrored set and a DVD+-RW for backups. As others have suggested earlier, if you can get the 1MB L2 Cache version of the A64 do so, helps a lot for repetitive calculations.

I'd suggest a SuperMicro case to go along with the drive cages, although that isn't a necessity. The SC942i-600 is a very nice 4U case, although it is quite loud. It has a N+1 600W power supply, very nice for a dual processor system full of drives. The SC832T also looks like a nice case that comes with 8 built-in SATA drive cages in a 3U case, although I only have experience with the SC942i.

Newegg pricing here: Tyan S2885 - ~$460 Opteron 244 - ~$470 KINGSTON KVR333X72RC25 1GB DDR400 ECC+Reg - ~$290 x 2 = ~$580 Sony DW-U14A 4x DVD+-RW - ~$150 Samsung 52x Combo DVD/CD-RW - ~$60 WD 36.7GB Raptor - ~$130 x 2 = ~$260 WD 250GB SATA 7200RPM - ~$250 x 2 = ~$500 3D Labs WildCat VP990 Pro 512MB 256-bit DDR Retail - ~$675 ?Floppy? - ~$10 6 or 7 - in - 1 reader - ~$20 Case - $??? Total without case - $3185 This leaves plenty of money for a case of your friend's choice , the second processor or an upgrade to the Opteron 246, but that also depends on what you decide for the monitor(s). I think a single proc system might also be ok, if you want to spend more on peripherals. Voltar

Go with the Samsung. They don't make the fastest drives around but they do provide a good bang for your buck.

I also have a Tyan 760MPX board. The first, very important, thing to do is to go to Tyan's site and get the latest bios version. Server boards in general and the 760MPX in particular often have a lot of conflicts because of the way their expansion slots are setup. Having the latest bios can get rid of some strange or just plain annoying conflicts, I should know. It might also be a good idea to flash your 1000MT adapter on another STABLE system. The 1000MT actually has some post issues with certain hardware and the Tyan 760MPX is one of them. You can trace that down on Intel's site but it is a bit hard to find (if you need a link let me know). Make absolutely sure you grab the right flash file for your model of network card, assuming your card doesn't miraculously have the latest firmware. If it helps any, my 760MPX is working fine with a 3WARE 8500-12 in one 64-bit slot, an Intel 1000MT 64-bit adapter in the other 64-bit slot, a Highpoint RocketRaid 1540, and Intel 1000MT 32-bit adapter. This is after updating bios and firmware on the cards and mobo.

Out of curiosity, have you tried switching from OpenGL and DirectX in your games video settings? That can help determine if you are experiencing a driver problem or some sort of system level issue.

Hence the *sigh* + was rich portion of his comment. I don't think you would put it in one case, you would have separate chassis, preferably rackmounted, for each raid array and then have them connected via gigaE to your main boxen.

Anyone know of some quality disk and system benchmarks for Linux? Preferably currently maintained or recently updated and that doesn't require any libraries a modern Linux Distro wouldn't have under a development install.

Hoyin seems to have a poor record of drive reliability. Only drives I've lost have been the bad batch of IBM Deskstars, an IBM SCSI that liked to overheat, and several Western Digital SCSI drives with the same problem.

Losing that many drives just screams out that there may be more to the drives dying *TRANSFORMERS MORE* than meets the eye. Make sure your Power Supply can handle the requirements of several hard drives, also make sure there is adequate cooling. If you can get a hold of the 120GB SATA Seagates they make for good software or hardware RAID drives, but you may need bigger. Hard drive manufacturers I prefer in order: Seagate, Samsung, Maxtor, Western Digital, and IBM/Hitachi.

I add my voice to the LSI vote. They make SCSI cards at least as well as Adaptec but never get the credit. However, that same lack of credit results in bargain adapters. I say LSI adapter with a 15k SCSI drive beats anything SATA can offer for at least a year or two. I'm still using my IBM 10k SCSI with an LSI adapter going on 3-4 years now. Just remember to mount the drive in a 5.25" bay if you can for the added cooling.

RAID 0 for the OS is not a big performance booster, a SCSI OS drive and separate page file drive would probably be better.

Haven't had much experience with the 6xxx 3ware cards, but the 7xxx and 8xxx versions are top quality. Expect performance to be slightly below a single drive, some reads can be faster under certain circumstances but never count on it.

I believe it is the two Maxtor UDMA100 Model 53073H6 30GB Hard drives that are being used for RAID, currently on the same IDE channel.

I would suggest similar, separate IDE Channels, maybe remove and reinstall the RAID driver.