WTB: Antec PLUS860 or PLUS880

[LehighBri]

Hi there,

I'm going to be building a new system based around the Athlon XP 2200+. I need a great case to hold this in. I have an Antec SX830 now, but would like to upgrade. Which of these new cases should I get, the PLUS 860 or 880 (my main question I guess is 330W in the 860 enough to run a decent system)? Thanks!

 

[elw00dblues]

Originally posted by: LehighBriHi there,

(my main question I guess is 330W in the 860 enough to run a decent system)? Thanks!

Well, it could be enough. The real question is what other components are going to go in the case (SCSI, RAID, DVD burner, etc) that can also take up a lot of power. Another possible concern is whether you are planning to overclock, which can cause further drain on the PSU. If you list off what other components will make up this system, people will be able to give an accurate assement about power consumption.

 

[LehighBri]

Here are the components that will be in my computer:

Athlon XP 2200+
512 mb 2700 ddr ram
Gigabyte GA-7VRXP mobo
Pioneer 16x dvd-rom
Lite-on 48/12/48 cdrw
Sound Blaster Audigy
Geforce4 Ti4200
Network Card
IBM 120GXP 80gb hd

Nothing special in it really. I just wanted to potentially have enough power for a possible future upgrade. Also, do you think i should RAID two 40gb hard drives instead of getting one 80gb hd? Thanks for the help with my question(s)!

 

[amdskip]

The 330W power supply should be sufficient for your current and future needs. Just because XP's are getting faster doesn't mean they take more to power them. They take less power than say a thunderbird which helps to control temps somewhat. I would not run a raid only system. If you wanted to play with raid I would get 2 20 gig 7200 hard drives and a third 40 gig drive. Put all the files and stuff you want to save on the 40 and use the raid setup mainly for o/s and some apps that would benefit. Two 40 gig drives in raid is cool but you would be screwed if they died and you lost everything.

 

[SinnerWolf]

I'd personally opt for the 1080, but between those two definitely the 880. You can never have too much power. You should have 1 side panel case fan, one bay cooling fan for the HD's, 1 or 2 rear exhausts, 1 front intake, hopefully an 80mm fan on the HSF, etc...it all adds up fast. And that's not considering active cooling for vga, chipset, memory, etc...

Originally posted by: amdskip
. I would not run a raid only system. If you wanted to play with raid I would get 2 20 gig 7200 hard drives and a third 40 gig drive. Put all the files and stuff you want to save on the 40 and use the raid setup mainly for o/s and some apps that would benefit. Two 40 gig drives in raid is cool but you would be screwed if they died and you lost everything.

raid inherently prevents data loss. Having 2 10's, 40's, 120's, etc....the redundancy almost assures no data loss (typically 96-99.9% using MTBF stats on most HD's). You could realistically lose both hard drives at once if lightning, small arms fire, or flood are common occurances for you. You do eat up space quicker of course though.

 

[L00PY]

Originally posted by: SinnerWolf
raid inherently prevents data loss. Having 2 10's, 40's, 120's, etc....the redundancy almost assures no data loss (typically 96-99.9% using MTBF stats on most HD's). You could realistically lose both hard drives at once if lightning, small arms fire, or flood are common occurances for you. You do eat up space quicker of course though.

Not true in LehighBri's case. The PDC20276 on his board only supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. Also, since he's talking about two drives only, that rules out 0+1, 1+0 and 5 (no one uses the other flavors, right?). Finally, he's comparing the storage of 2 40's to 1 80, so he must be talking about RAID 0. There is no redundancy in just striping.

But back to the question. . . if Bri's planning on using those flakey IBM drives, I'd avoid RAID 0 like the plague. I'd just buy one big drive and in 6 months, when the machine is ancient and outdated and you're looking to overhaul everything, slap in another drive to play with a RAID setup on your backup machine. But if you're going with more reliable drives and a hard drive failure won't be too painful, you might as well have fun now and do a RAID 0 setup.

 

[elw00dblues]

Originally posted by: L00PY
Honestly though, if Bri's planning on using those flakey IBM drives, I'd avoid RAID 0 like the plague. I'd just buy one big drive and in 6 months, when the machine is ancient and outdated and you're looking to overhaul everything, slap in another drive to play with a RAID setup on your backup machine.

I am going to side with LOOPY b/c the problem with RAID is that you can lose EITHER drive and then the entire contents of both drives is lost (assuming RAID 0). Basically, you just won't see much of a performance gain with the two RAID setup vs. a single bigger drive (even better would be a Western Digital 8MB buffer drive). I am not saying that performance is the same, just that for most applications that the average power user will run, that difference isn't noticeable.

Oh, I almost forgot. The 860 should be fine in terms of power with that configuration, imo.

 

[LehighBri]

thanks for the help! i guess i got more raid answers than i needed.

i'm pretty sure i'm going to get the plus860. should be more than enough power for what i'm using. great case! thanks again!

 

[Kindjal]

Why not just upgrade the PS instead of getting a whole new case. I put a TP 330W in my SX830 - no probs.

The PLUS860 and the SX830 are almost identical.

Just curious I guess.

 

[whitelight]

Originally posted by: Kindjal
Why not just upgrade the PS instead of getting a whole new case. I put a TP 330W in my SX830 - no probs.

The PLUS860 and the SX830 are almost identical.

Just curious I guess.

he said he was building a new system, and i think his computer is currently housed in the sx830, so he needs a new case.