Trevor's new PC..TTP-Silver Stealth

[Trevor Schell]

I decided to revamp my old PC, the TTP (Trevor's Tower of Power) Blue Zone.
This PC featured the AMD Barton 333mhz bus Athlon XP 2500+ Processor.
1 gig of ram and a GeForce 4 ti 4600 graphics card w/128mb

The New PC will be code named the Kevin Krusher.
It will also be built with quietness in mind as the TTP Blue Zone was
insanely loud.
My new PC, the TTP Silver Stealth, will include the following parts:

Case- CoolerMaster Aluminum TAC-T01 WaveMaster
Processor- AMD Barton 400mhz bus Athlon XP 3200+ Processor
Heatsink-Zalman CNPS7000A-CU Copper
Motherboard- Asus A7N8X Deluxe
Ram- Dual 512mb Corsair PC3200 DDR 400mhz Cas2 XMS w/Heat Speader
Hard Drive- Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000rpm 8mb 4.5ms HD
Video Card- BFG GeForce 6800 GT OverClocked 256mb DDR3 AGP
DVD- Pioneer 16X
SoundCard- Sound Blaster Augidy Advanced HD

I started building it tonight as I already have some of the peices.
Here are some pics..

[Trevor Schell]

Here are some parts that I had to order today in order to complete
this project..

Zalman CNPS7000A-CU HeatSink


Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA 10000RPM 8MB Hard Drive


Corsair CMX 512MB PC 3200 400mhz DDR Cas 2 ram..2 sticks

[Kevin P]

Looks like a nice little setup you got going there. Is the Dustbuster being used for part of the case cooling? Just wondering because Dustbusters tend to be noisy. :rofl:

I like the name Silver Stealth too. I need to come up with a name for my PC project (well, besides the code name Trevor Trouncer!)

I'll post a thread on mine when the parts start arriving, probably sometime next week.

[aud19]

Trev you may want to reconsider the WD's if you want quiet but looks like a beast otherwise :T :drool:

Jason

[Trevor Schell]

Jason,,
I read some info and reviews on the Raptor 74GB
It has been classified as a quiet drive due to some internal enhancements.
The loudness perception of the drive is a myth based on the performance of the 36GB Raptors when they first came to market.
The New generation of Raptors are quiet.

Kevin,,The old PC had so much dust in it, I had no chioce but to get out
the Dust Buster.. :lol:
There were giant killer sized dust bunnies everywhere.
Not good for the rug!

I got everything that I have so far installed.
This case is a nightmare for installing parts VS the Antec designs
that I am used to.
For appearance I give the CoolerMaster case a 10 out of 10.
However for use of use and installation I give it a 2 out 10.
Imagine having to take out the MB in order to add another hard drive into the case. I came very close to having to do that. :E

[Kevin P]

Wow, I'm glad I ordered an Antec case for my rig. The Coolermaster looks nice though!

So, why'd you pick the BFG GeForce 6800 GT in particular? Just wondering. I still need to choose a video card for mine. I haven't researched them yet. EDIT: Yeouch! That card is flippin' expensive!!

Also, why did you go with a sound card instead of the Asus's onboard sound? Better performance, or features?

I just plugged the tracking #s into Fedex and it looks like I have a bit of a wait for my pieces. Every vendor I've ordered from so far ships from California, and ground shipping from CA to NH takes a while. I see parts arriving between Thursday and Saturday this week. Maybe I'll pay extra for 2 day shipping for the final batch o'parts.

[Trevor Schell]

Kevin,,
The GeForce 6800 GT by BFG is OverClocked from the manufacturer.
It has a jump on the rest in terms of performance.
The Hard PC website used these cards for the Doom 3 benchmark tests
and they blew away the new ATI's.
Here is the link..

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

And

http://www.bfgtech.com/

This card has been recognized as one of the best for the $$
The Ultra version is quite a bit more money in which the only difference
is a higher clock speed.
I should be able to O/C my GT version to specs of a non BFG ultra easily.
This card is definately a Kevin Krusher.


As for the Sound card, I just pulled this one from my previous computer.
So it isn't a new purchase. Figured that since I already have it, I might as well use it.:yesnod:

[Bing Fung]

Excellent Choice in Card Trev :T The 6800GT is Great performance, and can be made an Ultra very easily with OC'ing.

As to the Raptors, Awesome, but as I said in TTP, RAID 0 and Operating Systems just isn't the way to go, not for reliability. Take the warnings of a person that has ran RAID 0 on 3 different machines... Soon or later you'll get a Broken Stripe, will lose data and have to re-install the OS. Put the OS on a single drive and then Stripe the Raptors in RAID 0 for non mission critical apps like Video Editing, Game installations. The perfomance will not be as great as the OS on the RAID stripe, but it will be way more reliable.

Looking Good Tho :T

:dothewave:

[Kevin P]

Good point on the Raid0 Bing. I wonder if the reliability has improved with the newer SATA mobos.

I might RAID mine for benchmarks, then reinstall on a single drive when I go "production" with my box. I plan on getting a hot-swap tray for the 2nd drive so I can use it for backups.

Trev, even if you don't RAID, having two Raptors will give you extra capacity. If you're a gamer or doing videos you'd probably fill a single 74 GB drive pretty fast.

[aud19]

Bing what's the difference of using a single drive and having it fail or using two drives and having one fail? :scratchhead: Either way you have to re-install the OS. At least running Raid 0 you had the bennefits of faster drive speed for running the OS and all your app's? Sure it costs more but at the price HD's are at, that's not even to big of a deal... Personally if you've got the money and want the speed I say go for it. If a drive's going to fail it's going to... Unless you go in to the higher Raids that offer both performance and redundancy gains but that's even more money, more drives, more noise and more heat.

Jason

[aarsoe]

Jason

Running a Raid 0 array will make your logical drive twice as vulnerable as a single drive - In theory..
Reason is simple - you are now dependent of two drives so the MTBF is cut in half. However in real life the story is worse than that. The MTBF of a drive relates to a drive failure and not a write failure, so the actual number is much lower, as you are have one big file were a single bit error will actually make all your data worthless.
If you need to run RAID - always use Raid 1 for OS. The data drives can then be run in either Raid 1, 5 or one of the many derivaties of them (6,7,9,10).
Which one to choose depends on the data that you are storing and what kind of controler you have.
Let me know if you want the rest of the story.. :lol:

[Gordon Moore]

Well I think what hapens is the probability of a RAID array failure increases for each drive added in the array if there is no redundacy. Plus the probability is increased if the controller isn't very good( and I believe this is the bigger issue). In fact, your right, the drive isn't probably the problem....99.99% of the time it's the controller. If you get even one hiccup with that controller I'd say dump it and get another. Problem is that in Bing's case,he wasn't using a aftermarket controller card, he's using the built-in RAID controller which obviously sounds like it wasn't up to snuff or had a real big driver issue.

The strength of of single controller is a more known and tested entity than raid controllers (for the home market).

SCSI -built for Raid'ing, well tested in the business and professional arena
IDE - usually controls 4 independant drives. Well tested virtually everywhere.
SATA - new to market

IDE/SATA Raid controller - not as common, not mass produced (though that's changing)...possibllity of a bad controller higher.

His fears are warranted with an on-board RAID controller. It's something you'd have to watch. Even if it is made by SGII or Promise.

With a single-drive controller...if that fails you can usually get your data because your hard drive is intact. If the raid controller fails then the stripe is kablooey and your data usually gets crapped out. Bing brings up a very real data corruption possiblity.

[Bing Fung]

As Anders and Gordo have stated, it's an Increased risk of failure.

Sure if your single hard drive fails, you're pooched just as you would be with a 2 drive RAID 0 array. However as stated, the extra drive increases your chance of failure by 2.

Add to that, the controller has to keep on top of where and how it's parsing the data over the 2 drives and you have added another critical failure point with broken stripes. This is were the controller does not know how to recinstruct the parsed data, or there is a pivitol bit of information that maybe corrupt, or a host of other problems. RAID 0 is just not meant for data integrity.

All the time I suffered broken stripes, nothing was wrong with the drives. Something just happened that corrupted the parsing table or the something else that just created a non bootable HD array. I have used utilities such as Restore Pro & Hipoint's RAID Restorer that can grab most of the data off a FUBAR'd RAID 0 Array, however it's never worked perfect for me.

You pays your money, you take your chances I suppose :roll:

[Trevor Schell]

Thanks Bing!! ;x(

Excellent Choice in Card Trev The 6800GT is Great performance, and can be made an Ultra very easily with OC'ing.

That was the reason I went with this card, plus it was available.
They are very difficult to come across, the BFG version that is.
My only concern was that it was a different version from what
I had previously seen posted. Howver the new design may have a better
cooling device attached which would be considered as a plus.
May be quiter from the original too, although I can't say for sure.
I picked it up at CompuSmart. They had to special order it for me.

As for Raid,,I will need a visit from BingTech in order to set that up.

Well, I am ready to finish up the wiring as everything that I have right now
is installed into the PC case and MB.
This case is not as user freindly as the Antec's that I am used to using.
I will be using my Quantum Fireball 80GB drives for now until the Raptor arrives.

[Trevor Schell]

I am up and running!! :T

The BFG Graphics card provides a nice suprise.
The dual fans are lite up in Blue,,
Something like this..


Anyways,,
I am using my dual 80 GB Quantum Fireball hard dvrives until my Raptor arrives this week.
Also I am using a couple sticks of PC-2700 memory until my PC-3200 arrives.
Lastly, the CPU fan is pretty darn loud right now as it is running
close to 5000rpm in order to keep the XP3200+ at 52C
The new Zalman, when it arrives should provide a better coolness solution
and be a lot quieter.

[Kevin P]

Cool that you're up and running already! I still have maybe 2 weeks before I can be up and running. None of my parts are expected to arrive until the end of this week, and then I have to order the final batch of parts (including CPU and videocard), so that's another few days of waiting.

Yeah, sounds like the Zalman will be a big improvement in CPU cooling. What do you have on there now? A piece of tin foil and a blow dryer? : :lol:

One question for the RAIDaholics... how's RAID 1 for read performance? I know it doesn't help in write times but with the data mirrored are onboard RAID controllers smart enough to divvy up the reads between the two drives to get extra performance when booting up, loading apps etc?

When I build my box I'll have to try three different configurations: single drive, RAID 0, and RAID 1, and see how they compare.

[Bing Fung]

I would suspect that RAID 1 would be slightly slower than having a standard single Non RAIDed drive because it has to write twice the amount of data for redundancy. There is CPU overhead associated with RAID 0 & 1 configs. RAID 0's CPU penality is overcome with the overall faster throughput, RAID 1's yields no speed gains and takes CPU cycles. How much is more dependant on the Mobo's execution of it I think.

Let me know if you need a had Trev, it would be fun to set-up. I love RAID arrays, even though there allwasy seem to burn me :twisted:

[Gordon Moore]

Actually....as far as I know Read performance is improved because either disk can be read at the same time with RAID1

[Trevor Schell]

Got the Zalman CPU heat sink and Raptor HD today.
The 1 gig of Corsair PC 3200 memory is on backorder.

[Kodaz]

RAID 0 on a workstation is a waste of time.

Storage review had this to say:

In February of 2003, we took a brief time-out from our standard, single-drive testing to formally address what we normally refuse to touch with a 12-foot pole- a RAID0 array. Why? The StorageReview Discussion community, mirroring forums around the net, burgeoned with hundreds of posts from readers seeking advice on which RAID adapter to get and which hard drives to stripe for their power rigs.
Simple theory, however, indicated that striping would not significantly help the localized (as opposed to both random and sequential), low-depth usage that dominated even highly-multitasked, single-user scenarios. The best advice, as a result, was to avoid striping. Many readers, however refused to believe.

This is a good article on what RAID can do:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html

Anadtech had this to say as well:

"If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer."

and the review is here:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101

If you want RAID for data security go ahead, but otherwise just use the drives straight off of the contorller with no RAID.

[Trevor Schell]

Here are some pics of my PC's while under construction.
When complete, I will have three working PC's each one a
result of rebuilding due to upgrading if that makes much sense.. :lol:

[Trevor Schell]

Here is a sneak peek of my Kevin Krusher..
AMD Athlon XP 7900+ :B



:rofl: :rofl:

[JOY DIVISION]

With the Zalman 7000 you have to be very carefull tilting your MB sideways, I use to have them for my P4c-800 and its a little scary when the board is tilted sideways, but they are great for cooling, Even their website there's a warning about the weight.

[Kevin P]

Wow, 755g, that cooler is one heavy one... I thought my Silent Tower was heavy, but it only clocks in at 640g.

You have to be careful transporting a system with such a heavy HSF, as any sudden G-forces could strain the motherboard or cause damage. I'm going to do up a support rig with wires in my Phantom Stalker to make my tower cooler more secure, though it's quite tight just with the mounting bolts through the mobo holes.

[JOY DIVISION]

I think they have a new Aerocool thats about 550g without the fan and the cost is around $55.00

[Trevor Schell]

I mounted the heatsink and fan with no difficulties.
Of course I had to take everything apart in order to take out the MB
and screw the heatsink brackets in from the MB underside.
Going forward though, I won't have to take everything apart
should I need to make changes.
I still have to put the rest of the parts back in, which will
have to wait for the weekend.

My PC-3200 Corsair ram arrived today also,,
so I now have all the parts I need to run the
XP3200+ and rebuild the XP2500+..

[JOY DIVISION]

It must have been easier if you have AMD's, I installed mine for Intels, it looked so easy but heck it made a noise as I was trying to level all the sides and it made a large noise 8O , I thought I cracked the board, but after that it was ok, Funny thing is I had to revove it again, since it was having issues with the Q-Fan, and it won't read the speed of the Zalmans fan.

[Trevor Schell]

The Silver Stealth PC is up and running.
Still using the original Quantum hard drives for now.
Anyways, the fan is working great.
This PC is the quietest that I have every had.
Very Nice!!:yesnod:

Right now my MB software ASUS PC Probe is indicating
my CPU fan to be running at 2343 RPM
My MB is 22C and the CPU is at 48C
I am running SETI as well with these readings.
It would be nice if the CPU temp was lower, but I will accept 48C
for now.

[Kevin P]

Hey Trev, what's your idle CPU temperature? Shut down SETI and see what your temps are.

My idle temps are under 30C due to AMD's Cool & Quiet, which drops the CPU to 1Ghz and the Vcore down to 1.1 volts when the CPU is idle.

I'm gonna toss Seti on my box soon.

P.S. Seti is installed, my CPU is holding steady at 35C. But then it's chilly today so the room is only around 65-66F (19C).

[Trevor Schell]

Shutting down Seti seems to maintain the same TEMP..
Strange that is.

I am trying to Overclock , but not having much success.
Seems I am capped at a 200mHZ bus speed. The MB won't go any higher.
I changed the multiplier from 11 to 12, yet it doesn't make a different when I check my system settings.
It still shows the AMD 3200+ @ 2.2GHZ..??
ODD!! :huh:
I also bumped up my Vcore to 1.80

[Trevor Schell]

I ran PI at 1million units.
I scored 47s

[Kevin P]

I scored 0:43 on Super Pi. Odd that your temp didn't drop when you shut down SETI. Are you sure you actually shut it down? You have to right click the SETI icon in the tray (the green radio telescope), and click Exit. Then check your Task Manager and make sure nothing else is grabbing the CPU (other than System Idle Process). Watch the temps, they should drop. If they don't, maybe your heatsink isn't making proper contact with the core. Did you use Arctic Silver or other thermal paste? You only need a really thin coat.

Also, make sure SETI is shut down when running other tests such as Super PI so it doesn't affect the results.

[Trevor Schell]

Yes,,
Shutting it down is done by the right click to exit.

As for the Thermal paste..I caked it on pretty thick.
Maybe that is a mistake.

[Kevin P]

Thermal paste should be applied sparingly, especially if the bottom of the heatsink is lapped (perfectly flat with no machine marks). 1 mm is probably the absolute thickest you want it.

What kind of paste did you use? I used Arctic Silver 5 on mine. Spread very thin, but then I lapped my sink before I mounted it.

[Gordon Moore]

Trevor the best way to apply thermal paste in a thin even fashion is to use a razor blade (and I don't mean safety razor ). It's just a bridge to allow the heat to pass from one thing to the next....if it's too thick the transfer will be too slow or not at all and act as an insulator instead, if it's too thin you might cook it away or it will be somewhat inefficient as well. Sometimes it takes more than one attempt....it's more art than science.

[Trevor Schell]

What kind of paste did you use? I used Arctic Silver 5 on mine. Spread very thin, but then I lapped my sink before I mounted it.

I am using Arctic Silver 2 Compound.
Didn't realize that they already have a Version 5 out!!
I will have to pick up some of the new stuff.

I took everything apart and started over with the application of the compound
and was a lot more conservative this time around.
Still have the same temperature of 48-49C. It doesn't seem to matter if SETI is running or not. I still get the same temp readings.
I will pick up some Arctic 5 and try to apply it the way Gord mentions!!

[Kevin P]

I wonder if your temperature sensor is working properly. What are you using to read the CPU temp? The BIOS, or a utility that came with the motherboard, or a third-party utility? Some third-party utilities aren't compatible with some mobos.

You should see a temp difference between idle and chugging.

When SETI isn't running, what is your CPU utilization in Task Manager? It should be 0-1%. If it's higher, see if something else is pigging the CPU and keeping it warm.

[Trevor Schell]

Kevin, I am using the Asus PC Probe to monitor the temps..
Is there supposed to be something that I need to connect to the CPU for temp reading?? Or does the MB automatically monitor this?
Strange thing is that when I go into the Bios, I get a reading that is approx 10C higher than what the PC Probe reads..Weird.

[Kevin P]

Trev, as a test, try turning the PC off for 30 minutes, to let the chip cool down to room temperature, then turn it on and get a temp. reading immediately. See if it's lower then. If it's still showing the same temps, then it's not reading the temp. correctly.

I found this on another forum, and it was for a MSI motherboard, but if the Asus also uses the on-chip thermal diode, maybe it has the same issue with reading temperatures:

One thing I noticed about this board and PC Alert 4: the board and PC ALert - by default - read the temperature from the on-chip diode, which can sometimes get rather disconcerting for this measure can obviously read the temps quite a bit off, and higher than normal. So far, the BIOS, PC Alert and SiSoft Sandra's Mainboard module read from the on-chip diode and would be rather high. I use an SLK-800 with a Thermaltake Case fan, and gives me a minimum of ~53C idle. However, I have noticed that when loading SiSoft's CPU Module, it seems to compensate and read a much nicer temp, that would be more appropriate for the HSF that I have. X My theory is that Sandra somehow can either compensate for the mismatch, or something else.

Here's another thread regarding temperature readings on an Asus A7V333 MB: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rema...4642~mode=flat

[Trevor Schell]

Interesting Kevin..
I shut her down for a while and turn it back on and the temp starts out low around 25C
then slowly reaches back up to 48/49C
Turning off Seti for aout 10 minutes brings the Temp down to 45C.
So I guess the Asus Probe software does work.

[Kevin P]

Interesting. I wonder if those readings are higher than the actual core temperature. The fact that it rises only 4-5 degrees under load is good, that Zalman is doing its job!

Mine shows a bigger swing between idle and load, but the 64 has the Cool and Quiet feature where it throttles down at idle to save power, so idle temps are a lot cooler. Tonight's a warm night and I'm seeing 42C CPU/29C mobo with SETI running right now.

The PC is quiet too, quieter than the Micron was.

[Trevor Schell]

This one is the quietest that I have had in the last few years.

O/C is becoming an issue as well.
Seems I can't ramp up the Multiplier, the CPU does not respond.
This means it's locked. So O/C'ing with increasing the multiplier is out of the question.
Cranking up the V-core also seems to create Blue screen shut downs.

I figured how to increase the FSB to over 200mhz, however I can not boot
up when I do this,,Even if I change it by one increment to 201mhz.
So, Overclocking seems to be something I may not be able to do right now.

The first thing though is to get this PC running stable at stock speeds.
I am having difficulty as I can experience around 2-3 blue screen restarts per day. :M
Strangely enough, this PC is almost made up of parts from my previous PC.
*Asus A7n8x Deluxe Mobo
*Audigy sound card
*Dual 80gig Quantum Fireball HD
*Pioneer 16X DVD

The new stuff is the WaveMaster Case,
*AMD XP 3200+ processor.W/Zalman fan.
*1Gig PC 3200 Corsair Ram.
*Ge-Force 6800 GT 256 meg Vid card.

So , it may be the Ram or Video card that causing me the issues, or possibly
some instability in the MB going from 166FSB to 200FSB.

Anyways, I will run the mem tester and see what that does.
I will also, check for updated drivers to see if such exist.
I will report back the results later.
Once I do get things running without crashes, then I will install the
Raptor Drive.

[Trevor Schell]

Seems the A7N8x-Deluxe Mobo rev 1.04 is the culprit.
It is unstable at the 400mhz FSB speed.
Bringing it down to 333mhz FSB speed has eliminated
the problems. The PC has been stable for 2 days now at that setting.
Unfortunately that brings the XP 3200+
processor to XP 2500+ performance.

Next step is to replace the MB with a current model.
Then I should be back in business.
Hopefully!!

[Trevor Schell]

I upgraded the MB to an Asus A7N8XE Deluxe rev2 .
I also installed the WD Raptor 10000RPM Hard Drive.
She seems to be very stable so far, and super quick.
I am sure the quickness is due to a clean HD though.

Temp readings for the CPU is at 51C and this is at idle.
That's up 3 degrees from before.

[Trevor Schell]

Nope ,,Lots of crashes.
She seems to be unstable at stock settings.
I can't overclock it if it can't run stable at stock.
Not sure what is going on.
This is Sucks!