Pulled the trigger on the new setup

[Loop2kil]

To fit the SAS setup into my budget I had to drop the video card to a 9800gt instead of the GTX260 and had to settle for 750gb hard drives instead of the 1 TB's.

Already had:
Rocketfish aluminum case
620w Corsair PSU
Zalman 9500
obligatory KB, mouse, speakers

Finally pulled the trigger and purchased:
Xeon X3350 Quad core CPU(was able to get this for $175)
Asus PQ5 Pro
Mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800(1.8v)
2 x 750 GB Samsung Spinpoints for storage
2 x 73 gb fujitsu 15k RPM SAS
LSI SAS3442E-R 8-PORT PCI-e SAS RAID CONTROLLER
EVGA 9800GT
Sony DVD burner

 

[MichaelD]

Very nice! I'm assuming you'll attach the Samsung drives directly to the motherboard?
The 15K drives are going to fly. Booting from a 15K drive is pure joy. :heart: Will you RAID0 them or mirror RAID1?

What will you do with this system and how big is your monitor?

 

[Loop2kil]

yep..sammies will be attached to the mb...and the SAS will be Raid 0. Monitor is a 20" HP LP2065, an oldie but a goodie.

 

[MichaelD]

With that monitor the 9800GT will deliver a great gaming experience (or movie watching) no problem.

If you were a big gamer with a 30" monitor, you'd have to relook your GPU purchase.

Overall, you've built a very nice system. :thumbsup: Enjoy!

p.s.
Don't forget to make a Ghost image of your OS install. RAID0 is great until a drive fails or something else goes wrong and you lose it all. Backup, backup, backup!

 

[Loop2kil]

There's generally nothing mission critical on my boot drive...but i will back up anything important like pictures, music etc on the RAID 1 array.

 

[bob4432]

did you get the max drives or the mba pr go 2.5" 15k?

 

[Loop2kil]

these are the drives I ordered

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822116057

 

[SolMiester]

Petty the Controller isnt SAS\SATA....I would put both arrays on it...Damn but those SAS are expensive eh?....$750 ea for 146Gb over here in NZ and they are only 10k's....you guys get the best pricing over there...<sniff>

edit, just noticed you got 3 and half inch drives instead of the 2 and a half drives I have in my MSA50...

Only thing that pisses me with SCSI Raid, is the boot time while the drives initialise etc.....