Building the most expensive PC EVAR!

[ratfish]

I want to build a high-performance PC, maxed out with the most powerfull sound card, video card, and a hard drive over 100GB. It has to have at least 2 USB ports, one LPT/parallel, one serial/COMM port, one Ethernet port, and the standard mouse and keyboard ports.

I was looking at the new Athlon XP 64bit chip for the CPU. That looks like a good main processor. I'll have a Phoenix/Award BIOS probably. I think I'll max out the RAM (up to 1GB or whatever it takes).

Oh yes, and I'll need a 17" (at least) color TFT monitor. Manufacturer recommendations on this would help. I'd also like to have a sound card that supports MIDI in and out, or if I have to install a separate MIDI card for that, besides the main sound card, I can do that. I've never worked with MIDI on a PC before.

A new Bose surround sound system, supporting Dolby 5.1 would be nice too.

After I decide on all the parts, I'll start on case modding, get a case cutter, put in a window, a cigarette lighter, a CPU clocker/temp meter, bigass fan, cold cathodes, cup holder, etc.

This is a hypothetical project, I don't have the money to pay for all this stuff, just so you know.

Mainly, I'm just looking for suggestions. What would you put in, what's good, what's bad, etc.

 

[Scared0o0Rabbit]

100GB isn't that big of a hard drive, I've got over 210GB free space in my pc lol.

 

[dhau]

Man, if you'll build a PC like you plan, don't show it to anyone, or they will decide you're a young gay computer enthusiast

 

[racketboy]

If you want expensive, see how many SCSI HDs you can fit in the box

 

[ratfish]

Originally posted by dhau@Nov 20, 2003 @ 08:06 PM

Man, if you'll build a PC like you plan, don't show it to anyone, or they will decide you're a young gay computer enthusiast

Sounds like some one has problems accepting truth. pshaw

I guess I can try to hijack a 1TB drive from a big organization.

 

[racketboy]

they won't have a 1TB drive.

Probably smaller SCSIs in a RAID config

 

[IceDigger]

Could get a couple 320gb drives

Thats the biggest consumer drives now.

 

[Scared0o0Rabbit]

Man, I remember when I was in shock cause we got an 8mb hard drive, and you didn't have to put a disk in our pc to start it anymore.

 

[racketboy]

Originally posted by Scared0o0Rabbit@Nov 21, 2003 @ 09:14 PM

Man, I remember when I was in shock cause we got an 8mb hard drive, and you didn't have to put a disk in our pc to start it anymore.

yeah that was cool.

In Jr. High we had a few PCs like that in our Computer class.

There was only like 4 of them while the rest of us had to boot from the big floppys.

We were all amazed by those machine because they had cool screensavers

 

[Scared0o0Rabbit]

Yeah this was at our house though. It was ironically enough *points at other thread* a compaq I think. It was one of those ones that was like a suitcase with the keyboard on the bottom and all that good stuff. We took out one of the 2 5 1/4 drives to put an 8MB hard drive in. That was back when I was like 4 though lol. I remember being angry cause the pc was out of the house for a few days so I couldn't play this shape game called gertrudes secret. Now that I thinka bout it, the case for some of those old games was remarkably similar to the US saturn cases lol.

 

[ratfish]

Yeah, I think I'll go for a 320GB drive, thanks IceMan.

Those Compaq "luggables" are really cool. That's the computer a dug out of my uncle's basement and gave my graqndparents to use. They then bought an iMac when my cousin started living with them, and after she went off to college, they received a PIII Dell from the same uncle who the Compaq belonged to.

I remember the earliest hard drive I ever used was at my grade school in 2nd grade. They had some Mac 512kEs and Plusses with those amazing 20MB drives.

 

[Curtis]

I've seen pictures of someone's homebuilt 1TB RAID array. Pretty nice.

 

[ExCyber]

Ah, vapor system design, one of my favorite activities.

If you don't have the money anyway and want to consider a killer storage subsystem (I'm assuming that stuff like external fibre channel and NAS doesn't count, otherwise I could kill your pocketbook and curse its descendants for all of eternity), check this out:

LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-2: $590

256MB ECC DDR ("PC1600") Module: $50

3x Fujitsu MAS3735 : $1590

Set up a RAID-5 array with this, and you've got 146GB of storage spinning at 15,000 RPM, backed by 256MB of cache on the RAID controller and a combined total of 24MB of cache on the drives. This is, of course, just for your system, apps, and current projects - rarely-used files can go on fat ATA drives connected to the mainboard.

Also, the modem to end all modems (at least as far as general-purpose RS-232 modems go). Maybe this doesn't count as part of the system, though.

 

[Krelian]

I wouldn't reccomend a single 320GB drive... the massive seek times would really bite into the systems overall performance...

Your best bet would be to RAID 0 some 80GB or 120GB SATA HDDs... or better yet some of Western Digital's Raptor SATAs (Don't they come in like 75GB now?)...

You can get video cards well over the $1000 range (like an Oxygen II) and soundcards also easily over $800... heh heh, a soundcard that costs more than an Athlon 64 FX 51... craziness...

For memory I think the white-paper specs for a single processor Athlon64 set-up can support like 16GBs... but no consumer boards have the DIMM array for that... but I think what's on the market can hit either 3.5GB or 4GB (hell my KT400 mobo can take 3.5GBs).

A premium motherboard would have at least six USBs, two Firewires, an optical, two GIGabit LAN connectors and no Parallels, Serials, or standard (PS/2) keyboard/mouse connects (technically speaking USB is now the standard for those anyway)... If you really needed the Parallel and Serial (like I needed two Serials) you could pick up a PCI card to give them to you...

For the flat-panel display I like the NEC ones myself (although there are better)... their 17" runs $400 - $500.

For speakers why not get something 7.1?

If you want to get some good ideas of what good high-end home hardware is out there you should go to Tom's Hardware Guide and do some reading in the Mainboard, Storage Device, and Graphics Card sections (start at the bottom of the pages and work your way up)...

~Krelian

P.S.: My computer is:

Abit AT7-MAX2 motherboard (KT400)

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 333FSB (Thoroughbred B)

40GB Western Digital 7200RPM IDE w/ 8MB cache [C:]

120GB x2 (240GB) Western Digital 7200RPM SATA w/ 8MB cache (Striped in RAID 0) [D:]

512MB x2 (1GB) Corsair PC2700 (DDR333) XMS Low Latency memory

LeadTek A280LE (MyVIVO) 128MB DDR GeForce4 Ti4200 8x graphics card

SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum soundcard

PCI card providing two Serial and one Parallel connects

(one Serial for my Wacom Tablet and another for an older APC VA500 UPS)

all housed in an Enermax CS-001 case with a Vantec Stealth 420W PSU

My laptop is:

Three year old Sony VAIO PCG-FX210

800MHz Duron

9GB 4200RPM HDD

512MB Kingmax TinyBGA PC100 memory

some useless ATI 8MB graphics accelerator

 

[racketboy]

why get ATA drives???? Get SCSI man! !!!

 

[ratfish]

Originally posted by ExCyber+Nov 21, 2003 @ 10:32 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ExCyber @ Nov 21, 2003 @ 10:32 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>backed by 256MB of cache on the RAID controller and a combined total of 24MB of cache on the drives [/b]

mg:

thanks for the suggestions (-ed.)

<!--QuoteBegin-ExCyber@Nov 21, 2003 @ 10:32 PM

I'm assuming that stuff like external fibre channel and NAS doesn't count, otherwise I could kill your pocketbook and curse its descendants for all of eternity)[/quote]

and yeah, I'm going with "standard" easy to find/buy stuff.

 

[Krelian]

I'd take SATA over SCSI320 mostly because of huge cost difference and because this hypothetical PC would be more a personal workstation than a server and the real working performance wouldn't between SATA and 320 would be almost uncountable in a system that wasn't exclusivley serving files en masse to a wide-band network...

Here's a little article to support me on the SATA over 320 argument (for [even extreme] home uses anyway)...

RAIDCore Unleashes SATA to Take Out SCSI

Summary:

Storage startup RAIDCore has introduced its first device, the RC4000 Serial SATA, which the company claims will render Ultra320 RAID controllers from Adaptec and LSI Logic virtually obsolete in the entry and mid-level server segment. We put all five of the adapters, each with eight hard drives, to the test. Is SCSI's day over? Our benchmarks speak for themselves: Start sounding the SCSI death knell.

Excerpts from SCSI vs. SATA Price/Performance Comparison:

Because of the higher working speed of SCSI hard drives with 15,000 rpm, high-performance RAID arrays with Ultra320 SCSI are considerably faster on I/O performance and access time than the SATA solutions tested. Starting with the fastest available SATA drives, Western Digital's WD360, alias Raptor, SATA-RAID provides cost savings of almost two-thirds - without sacrificing performance or security to the same degree.

Purely in terms of largest storage capacity, ATA is unbeatable. Specifically, for less than half the cost, SATA solutions give you a capacity in RAID 5 that is twice as large as with the maximum provision of SCSI components. This means that you get four times your money's worth in high capacity with SATA.

~Krelian

 

[racketboy]

he "hypothetically" doesn't care about price -- so that isn't an issue.

 

[ratfish]

Originally posted by racketboy@Nov 22, 2003 @ 12:45 PM

he "hypothetically" doesn't care about price -- so that isn't an issue.

heh, yeah Price is not an issue here.

Now I just need to figure out what distro of Linux to use. Then I can start with the case mods. Fuhahaha!!!

 

[ExCyber]

Krelian: I've got nothing against SATA in principle, but it's currently too much of a pseudo-standard for my tastes - I'd use ATA RAID in a real system. And that article is basically written in denial of the truth that (for good or ill) there's more to "SCSI" drives than their interface electronics; I didn't see Tom comparing warranties and/or MTBF specs...