My New Q6600 Rig: Thoughts Please

[JohnVM]

[$449.99] 1 * Antec Performance One P190 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 650W+550W = Total 1200W Power Supply - Retail (NewEgg: N82E16811129028)
[$659.94] 6 * SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (NewEgg: N82E16822152052)
[$228.99] 1 * GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail (NewEgg: N82E16813128046)
[$295.00] 1 * Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad-Core Processor 2.4GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 8MB cache Retail ***Free Shipping***

Total: $1634

Already Have That Will Be Put In Too:
1 * 7800GTX
4GB DDR2
74GB Raptor HDD
1 500GB SATAII HDD
2 400GB IDE HDD


This rig is designed to be a development box for some very intensive applications (including accessing my 2TB database) -- its not a gaming rig, etc.

Any thoughts? Changes? Hate it? Love it? Let me know. If nobody talks me into something different I'm buying this at ~6AM EST.

 

[jpeyton]

Well, the good parts:

Q6600
(6) Samsung 500GB
4GB DDR2

Bad parts:

P190/PSU
DQ6
7800GTX
74GB Raptor

Sell the 7800GTX; if you're not gaming, it will only add unnecessary heat and power-draw. Any <$50 fanless video card from nVidia/ATi will do the trick, draw a lot less power, and put out a lot less heat.

74GB Raptor is a dinosaur, and it outclassed by modern 500GB drives in performance. It would only add unnecessary heat and power draw.

Get a cheaper P35 motherboard and put the extra money towards a good RAID card (I'm assuming you're going to RAID 5 your Samsungs).

 

[JohnVM]

I run a 30" apple monitor though and might be getting another one (2 30 inchers), so I use the 7800GTX to output the 2560x1600 screen res. What card would you suggest I replace it with?

What mobo/RAID card would you suggest? Yes, I am going to RAID5 them.

 

[jpeyton]

HighPoint RocketRAID 8-port SATAII; they have PCI-E and PCI-X flavors of the card.

Motherboard isn't very important; the chipset is. A P35 DS3R or P5K are good choices.

 

[JohnVM]

Thanks for the suggestions jpeyton, but I bought the config posted. Might add on additional hw (raid card) later.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

[$449.99] 1 * Antec Performance One P190 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 650W+550W = Total 1200W Power Supply - Retail

I have to ask: why? That's about 2-2½ times the power you need.

 

[JohnVM]

Probably going to load a 12-drive SATA-II RAID card + 6 more drives into this thing eventually; want to make sure I got the power for it. Also, might add a second gfx card to run a 2nd 30" apple monitor so....

 

[jpeyton]

Just seems like a bad idea trusting a 6+ drive database RAID array to a basic Intel Matrix RAID controller that's included in every Intel chipset motherboard from $60--->$250. Motherboard manufacturer's secondary RAID controllers aren't that much better.

If you want more advice, check out the Disk Storage System forum at HardForum.

 

[KingGheedora]

Originally posted by: JohnVM
[$449.99] 1 * Antec Performance One P190 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 650W+550W = Total 1200W Power Supply - Retail (NewEgg: N82E16811129028)
[$659.94] 6 * SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (NewEgg: N82E16822152052)
[$228.99] 1 * GIGABYTE GA-P35-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail (NewEgg: N82E16813128046)
[$295.00] 1 * Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad-Core Processor 2.4GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 8MB cache Retail ***Free Shipping***

Total: $1634

Already Have That Will Be Put In Too:
1 * 7800GTX
4GB DDR2
74GB Raptor HDD
1 500GB SATAII HDD
2 400GB IDE HDD


This rig is designed to be a development box for some very intensive applications (including accessing my 2TB database) -- its not a gaming rig, etc.

Any thoughts? Changes? Hate it? Love it? Let me know. If nobody talks me into something different I'm buying this at ~6AM EST.

How does this perform? What kind of database are you running? I' building a similar system for development and database work too, but with 8GB RAM (64bit OS), and I'm still not decided on the storage system. My budget for storage is about 800$.

Is there any reason you picked those drives in particular? Did you consider the seagate 7200.10? I saw deals for $60-80 on them. I realized for the amount of storage I need, I can either afford 4x 150GB raptors with no raid controller, 6x 7200rpm sata II drives possibly with a hardware raid controller, or something along those lines.

 

[JohnVM]

I chose it as the drives were cheap and the reviews I read on the spinpoint T drives were all incredibly positive. 7200.10's would also be very good I'd imagine. You saw 500GB 7200.10's for $60-$80? I did not see those -- I'd love to still get links to that infact.

This system configuration is working very well when it works, but I'm having some quirky issues atm with the raid controller. See here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2083038&enterthread=y

I'm assuming its some sort of misconfiguration at the moment.

I'd been trying to run a 30 billion row SQL database on this thing, but SQL really just can't handle that -- no fault of the system itself, just a fault of SQL. I've switched to a DB designed explicitly for timeseries data, and its working incredibly well. Once I fix this issue I'm having w/ the raid controller, I'll be happy as a clam.

I too am running x64 OS, but just stuck with 4GB RAM at the moment (just b/c that's what I already had and didn't want to buy more right now). I'll likely be moving to 8 soon.