Any motherboard recommendations for the overclocker?

[Fox2k]

I thought I would delve into the bottomless pit of knowledge present here and ask for some opinions as to which board would be a good bet for me. I'm thinking of upgrading to a Pentium 4 system, and I'm looking for a board that allows FSB tweaking by single megahertz incrememnts, can handle a high FSB (at least 160), and runs stable at those speeds. I'm not looking for audio, video, network, raid, or any otehr special features other than high FSB endurance and a 533 bus speed. does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[EKAtBzboyz]

p4b533?

another thing to look for is pci/agp bus locking

 

[o1die]

The albatron px845pev ($89 newegg) is a basic no frills board with the Intel 845 pe chipset that should overclock very well. But personally, I'm waiting for the sis 655 or granite bay boards.

 

[halkebul]

Another vote for the albatron mobo!!! Fix it up with P4 1.8A and Mushkin or Corsair DDR400 memory and you're all ready to overclock.

 

[Fox2k]

I never heard of the albatron px845pev. I'll look into it, thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Fox2k]

I do have another question actually..
I know nothing about RAID, but id like to try it out. If i were to get a mobo ith onboard raid, would I be able to set up a raid array with any drives? I heard about using two identical drives to double the access speed, but I dont know if this is the only way raid works. also not sure if raid can be ide or scsi only. any help would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[halkebul]

Originally posted by: Fox2k
I do have another question actually..
I know nothing about RAID, but id like to try it out. If i were to get a mobo ith onboard raid, would I be able to set up a raid array with any drives? I heard about using two identical drives to double the access speed, but I dont know if this is the only way raid works. also not sure if raid can be ide or scsi only. any help would be appreciated, thanks!

You can achieve a speedy and spacious hard drive setup with a single hard drive. I recommend Western Digital "Special Edition" Hard Drives. They come in 80GB, 100GB, 120GB, 180GB and 200GB capacities. Two Western Digital Special Edition hard drives in RAID 0 will give you performance nearly identical to a U160 15,000 RPM SCSI Hard Drive but no fault-tolerance in this case. Two Hard drives in RAID 1 (pure redundancy) will give ya performance slightly slower than a single hard drive but with the benefit of fault-tolerance.

If ya should opt for onboard RAID, I highly recommend the GIGABYTE GA-8PE667 ULTRA motherboard.

RAID can be setup for both IDE and SCSI hard drives.

 

[CraigRT]

That's good advice halkebul !

 

[Fox2k]

well right now I have a 30 gig Maxtor, and an 80 gig Seagate. Is there a way to get a raid with these two drives?
I dont know how to check if these drives can handle raid, or even if I need to check if they can


thanks for the tips so far everyone

 

[halkebul]

Originally posted by: Fox2k
well right now I have a 30 gig Maxtor, and an 80 gig Seagate. Is there a way to get a raid with these two drives?
I dont know how to check if these drives can handle raid, or even if I need to check if they can


thanks for the tips so far everyone

You can combine different drives, with the smaller or slower drive being the determinant drive for the entire array. For example, one 30 GB and two 40 GB hard drives in RAID 0 will give you a total capacity of 90 GB, which is three times the capacity of the smallest hard drive. In your case the total capacity of the drive will be 60GB or 2 times the capacity of the smallest drive in the array.

The same applies to the combination of an old 40 GB hard drive with 5,400 rpm with a new model with 7,200 rpm. If you were to use two of the slower drives, the performance level would be the same. Replacing the older disk with a second and faster one would increase the performance.

 

[Fox2k]

Originally posted by: halkebul

Originally posted by: Fox2k
well right now I have a 30 gig Maxtor, and an 80 gig Seagate. Is there a way to get a raid with these two drives?
I dont know how to check if these drives can handle raid, or even if I need to check if they can


thanks for the tips so far everyone

You can combine different drives, with the smaller or slower drive being the determinant drive for the entire array. For example, one 30 GB and two 40 GB hard drives in RAID 0 will give you a total capacity of 90 GB, which is three times the capacity of the smallest hard drive. In your case the total capacity of the drive will be 60GB or 2 times the capacity of the smallest drive in the array.

The same applies to the combination of an old 40 GB hard drive with 5,400 rpm with a new model with 7,200 rpm. If you were to use two of the slower drives, the performance level would be the same. Replacing the older disk with a second and faster one would increase the performance.

wow, that's a punch in the teeth



looks like raid will have to wait, I have too many expenses right now



I've been looking through reviews of that albatron board and it looks good, i think i will go with it if I can find a distributor in canada.

 

[Jojo1971]

Try this: use your 30 gig maxtor (is it 7200 rpm?) for your operating system and programs ..then your 80 gig seagate for storage ONLY (pictures, mp3s etc..) Whatever happens make sure youve backed up your important files before trying to use RAID...coz one wrong click while youre setting it up might result to lost DATA...
It's nice to separate your OS and programs from your "collections" ...if you decide to reformat/ or do whatever to the harddrive where the OS is , then your "collections" are safe..and also its easy to transfer your STORAGE hardrive (as slave) fron one pc to another...

just my humble suggestion...

 

[halkebul]

Originally posted by: Jojo1971
Try this: use your 30 gig maxtor (is it 7200 rpm?) for your operating system and programs ..then your 80 gig seagate for storage ONLY (pictures, mp3s etc..) Whatever happens make sure youve backed up your important files before trying to use RAID...coz one wrong click while youre setting it up might result to lost DATA...
It's nice to separate your OS and programs from your "collections" ...if you decide to reformat/ or do whatever to the harddrive where the OS is , then your "collections" are safe..and also its easy to transfer your STORAGE hardrive (as slave) fron one pc to another...

just my humble suggestion...

Also the best course of action is to create a split page file. On your bootable hard drive, create a RAM + 32MB page file on your boot partition, that is the partition with boot.ini and ntldr. On the second hard drive, create a page file that is 1.5 times the size of your RAM. Set the maximum to disc space available. Place this page file on the first partition of the drive, as it is the fastest. The reason for including the page file on the boot partition is that should a crash occur, Windows XP creates a memory dump file which is stored in the swap file on the boot partition. This feature can be disabled, but is a needed option for diagnosing system errors.

 

[Fox2k]

Actually I'm running windows 2000 right now. And I do have my 80 gig as storage only. So If I understand this correctly..I can leave my configuration as it is (primary 30 for OS, 80 gig slave for files)..that way I can still keep the storage of both drives without being limited to 60 gigs total?

Right now I do have a swap file on both drives, i dont know if this is what you meanby a split page file or if I need to do something in order to get windows to recognize and use them both.