I am an INTEL convert, Please help!

[castcore]

I have come over from INtel. I just got my new 1GHZ Athlon Retail and a ABIT KT7A Raid.(374 SHipped!, Not bad huh?) Now I need to know a few things.

1) Since the CPU is Retail, I assume there will be a casing I need to rip off right? If so, how do I do it? I got a PAL 6035 coming in as well.

2) I would need a conductive paint pen? IF so aht is the best one to get?

3) Any other overall advice will be great. I am thinking about getting 2 ATA 100 20 GB drives and making it a raid boot drive. That possible?

[Cyoor]

3) Any other overall advice will be great. I am thinking about getting 2 ATA 100 20 GB drives and making it a raid boot drive. That possible?

Why 2 20GB and not 1 40GB?

[Mykex]

1: SocketA = No case just a chip,kinda like a cellery.

2: Or you can use rear window defogger repair kit and of course there is the pencil. Rumors of some retail 1gig+ CPUs comming factory unlocked abound ... you may get lucky.

3: Sounds like a real fast raid setup!

[castcore]

2 20 gb ata 100 will be faster then 1 single 40 gb ata 100 in a RAid setup right??

[Tachyon]

For disk intensive programs such as AutoCAD and Photoshop yes, for loading Windoze, gameplay, etc....unfortunately no :)

[castcore]

I see but it won't be slower right? What I am trying to say is, if I am going to setup a raid. Should I just do 1 40gb or 2 20 gb?

[Tachyon]

It won't be slower and your benchmarks will be awesome. It would be more cost effective to go with a single larger drive. :)

[Tachyon]

Oops...you can't set a single drive up in a RAID configuration tho :)

[castcore]

Yeah that is why I figured. Single 40gb is definitely cheaper. But since I got the K7Ta with raid, I figured I might as well set it up. and use the raid.

Anotehr thing, what is a good l case to get for my setup?

[Tachyon]

If you need drives, go with the IBM Deskstar....simply the best! :)

[fireball888877777]

get an inwin q500 i just got one and it is the buest case i have ever owend! all the sharp edges are rounded and it has good ventalation optones.

[Banshax]

WTF gives a pigs ass what case you have. Reread the topic. This isn`t a topic about: brag about your case"

damn, amd cpu`s coming in cases? LOL
i`m leaving this thread asap.

[castcore]

What about a Fong Kai case? Those get high reviews. The Fong Kai 603? Anyone have any thoughts on that?

[tony]

You do realize that by using two 20gb hdd in a raid you DO NOT have 40gb? You simply have two 20gb hdd that act like one real fast 20gb hard drive. once again YOU CAN NOT STORE 40GB OF INFO ON 2 20GB HDD'S IN A RAID CONFIGURATION!!!!

[castcore]

I was told it would be 40GB. As far as I understand , am I wrong? pleae someone confirm.

[RoarcDaMtBiker]

i'm not an expert but here is my $0.02

Well, I've only been exposed to Raid 0 and 1 so I'll talk about those.

RAID 0 (Striped Set w/o Parity) - Will give you a 20+20=40gig virtual drive. It's a configuration mostly for performance and if you loose one drive you lose all you data from both because your raid controller writes (splits) data to both drives at once to, in theory, give you 2x the transfer rate.

RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring) - Will give you 2 identical disks ( 100% data redundancy) and depending on your controller ( mirror aware or not??) will allow you to break the mirror and continue using the remaning good drive if the other fails...or if not then you replace the drive copy your files from the other drive to restore the mirror and off you go. You get 20 gig of redundent storage.

unfortunatly it gets a little too complex for me to explain from there...like raid 5 or raid 10 (1+0)...do a few searches...there is alot of stuff out there and read up because setting up a raid may be easy but getting it to run fast, or stable, is another story.

[tony]

woah, my bad very sorry obviously i was confused. please disregard my previous post

[castcore]

So if I am starting a new T bird system with ABit KT7a Raid board. And I have 2 brand new ATA 100 20 gig drive that I want to set up with Raid 0, is that hard? Will I be able to use it as my boot drive?

[RoarcDaMtBiker]

I don't have that much time on my hands...got class... I haven't tried using the ABit KT7a Raid or the High Point controller it's using but I have heard it's easy to set up...read the manual. I think you can boot off RAID 0, I know you can with a promise but not to sure about high point. Most people i know use 32 cluster with 64 stripe ( think that right) and swear it's the fastest setup. I personally woulden't reccomend using a RAID 0 for any critical data storage, the setup is more suited towards video/graphic artists who have a hard copy and move large chunks of data, but if you insist...backup often. Another config you may want to consider is a 3 drive configuration, w/ 1 boot drive and 2 drives on RAID 0. This will allow you to boot off a seperate drive and also ghost an image of the RAIDed drives onto the boot for an easy backup. I've actually been considering the exact setup I just mentioned on a ABit KT7a Raid w/ Thunderbird 1.2, but might go SCSI instead w/o RAID. Also, some info you might find useful...I have heard many complaints about not being able to use all of the PCI slots if using the RAID feature on your card because the IRQ settings get messed up for some reason, some people have this problem some don't. If you have a soundblaster card you will have to disable dos emulation, and I've read some people still have problems after that...good luck

P.S. Use IBM drives (75GXP) if you use raid because they tend to RAID better...my choice in drives if I go IDE RAID in my new system