My new DAW based on P4C800-E, suggestions please!

Hello overclockers!

I´m planning to build my new Digital Audio Workstation.
Anyone have any suggestions on this setup?

Asus P4C800-E
2x Corsair Value PC3200 512MB
P4 2.6C (800MHz)
Gainward Geforce 4 Ti4600 128Mb AGP4X
2x TFT Samsung 172V 17"
Western Digital Raptor 36Gb S-ATA (System disc)
1-2 Western Digital 120GB 8mb S-ATA (Audio/storage)


Hopefully this setup will o/c around 3200 ?

Is the ram good enough? The point here is that I allready have one stick of 512Mb Corsair... haven´t heard anything on the value series... or should i go for TwinX Corsair PC3700? (Do I have to? $$$!)

Is the P4 2.4C a better overclocker?

I also looked att MSI 865PE Neo2 but is this board really that good that it seems att Tom´s Hardware survey? (Even without the Dynamic overclocking thing)

It´s very important for me to get a stable system so I´m not looking for any crazy overclocking... =)

Any suggestions really appreciated!

Regards,
Andreas

P4P800 better?

Hello,

After some research on the web i saw that P4P800 is a better board is this true?

Regards,
Andreas

I personally just got a p4c800-e, 2.4c, zalman 7000a-alcu, and 2x512 buffalo pc3700 and its right now stable at 3.2ghz. Running on 5:4. I am very happy with what I got and it was all from Newegg except the newer zalman was from svc. I am thinking of going for the raid SATA raptor drives.

I am upgrading from an unlocked XP1600+ and this is just amazingly faster.

I must concur, 2.4C @ 3.125 and this blows away my OC'd Athlon 2200 system. Very impressed once I got used to having a locked processor.

Hey,

thanks for the replies, maybe the 2.4C is a better o/c for the money? I can always buy 1gig of extra ram...

Do you guys think that ordinary DDR400, corsair PC3200 value select will manage a 3.06Ghz overclock on a P4 2.4C?

Is the 5:4 underclocking the memory to 400Mhz right?

Maybe the P4C800-E is better to go with after all, some difference it has to be... maybe the components on the canterwood have better quality...

Best regards,
Andreas

The P4C800-E is a better board than the P4P800. You should really look into better memory though. The Corsair 3200's are o/c'd 2700 and don't work well on the new Intel 875/865 boards. Even Corsair is recommending using their 3500/3700 line of memory modules for the intel boards. The Buffalo 3700's are excellent for the money but I don't know if it's available to you in Sweden and don't expect 233mhz from them. Twinmos is also a good brand. The 865's seem to have problems with a lot of memory modules when run at 5:4 (320) mem ratio and the latest bios don't help much.

The 2.4c and 2.6c are both great overclockers. If you can afford the 2.6c, go for that. You'll have a much better chance to get to 3.2ghz (5:4 with DDR400 memory) w/o selling a kidney for good memory.

The Maxtor SATA drives seem to be better performers (not including Raptors) overall. Mine are quiet and in Raid0, I'm getting ~92mb/s read and write. You won't notice much of an increase in speed with SATA drives when you use it as a single drive so you might be better off with a regular IDE drive for a storage drive. I'm assuming you're putting the Raptors on the ICH5R controller for best performance. The Promise controller will be slower for the SATA drives b/c it'll share the bandwidth with the PCI bus whereas the ICH5R sits directly on the southbridge, bypassing the PCI bus.

-Bobby

Hello Bobby!

Thanks for the fast reply!

The thing is that I have 1 stick on 512MB corsair memory, and my budget is not that much.

Anyway, if the corsair will work on the P4C800-E will I be able to use the 5:4 ratio so i dont have to overclock the memory and keep it below 400Mhz I should be fine right?

One stick Corsair Valuie 512Mb is $122.

One pair of Corsair TWINX1024-3700 1024MB Platinum is $371.

The Maxtor S-ATA/150 120GB 7200RPM 8MB
DiamondMax Plus 9, 8 MB cache is only $132.

Is this the right model to choose?

Thanks again for you help!

Regards,
Andreas

If you're on a budget, forget Corsairs. Their lower end modules just suck and you'll be miserable with them on a P4C800. You shouldn't worry too much about buying "Dual Channel" packs as it's mostly marketing bs. I did notice some DC packs are the same or cheaper than buying the sticks separately (not Cor$air). Those are the only DC packs I'd buy. Twinmos PC3200's have CH-5 chips although many o/c'ers talk bad about CH-5, they're not that bad for intel boards. They're fairly cheap and perform well, especially for the price. It's hard to recommend memory for someone in Sweden since I don't know what brands are available to you and how much they cost. If you list a few brands/modules and prices I can offer my suggestions better.

Personally, I think Raptors are a waste of money especially for someone on a budget. You'd be better off with 2-120gb SATA drives (those Maxtors are the ones I'm talking about, but I have the 80gb versions) on the ICH5R in Raid0, then just a regular IDE drive (120gb or larger) for storage. Put the OS on the Raid0 and work off that, then store them on the IDE drive.

Of course, if money is no object, my recommendations would be totally different

-Bobby

Okey,

The company I will buy from also have an english webshop.
Maybe you can look what they offer at:

http://www.komplett.co.uk/

... and tell me what you would have buyed. (i.e. motherboard, ram, hd´s etc.)

Choose freely but try to keep the prices down a bit .. =)

They have a lot of memory. If the corsair that I have is not preferable I will put in in my other computer.

Thanks alot!

Regards,
Andreas

Well, you could go with a P4P800 Deluxe to save a few bucks but the P4C800-E is a great choice.

From the memory choices, I would go with these Twinmos. I don't have any experience with the Twister series but the PC3200 with CH-5 IC is $91 and seems to be a great choice for you.

-Bobby

Hi again! =)

Is it not a waste of money buying 2 sticks of 512MB Twinmos DDR PC3200. When I cant use my older ram. Is it not better to go for example Corsairs PC3700 right away instead of having like 3 pieces of older PC3200?

What´s the advantages of the Winbond CH-5 Chip?

Damn I hate doing the wrong choices all the time. ;-)

I can for an example cut costs by buying hardiscs later or something. All I want is a stable 3.2Ghz with at least 1gig of ram.

Western Digital drives have 3years warranty.

The raptor have 5 years!

Corsair got lifetime warranty, twinmos 1y.

That is also something to keep in mind.

Help me to do the right choices there will ya!

My current to buy list:
P4C800-E Mobo
P4C 2.6Ghz Intel (running hopefully 3250)
2 sticks of Corsair PC3700 512MB. (1:1, FSB 250)
1 Wd 36.7 Raptor for system
1 Maxtor/Wd 120GB S-ATA for storage.

What I allready have:

1stick of corsair 512MB PC3200 Value Select (vaste)

To put in new computer:
Western Digital 120GB Special Edition ATA
Gainward Geforce 4 Ti4600 128MB AGP 4X, Dual DVI.
Enermax 450W whisper series
Fulltower Chieftec.
Terratec DMX 6fire soundcard.

Whatya think?

Or is the memory a waste of money? I will not o/c this baby until it will explode. My wish is a bus speed of 1000Mhz. (250FSB)

The memory either 1:1 with PC3700 or 4:5 if It´s possible to keep my corsair PC3200.

Looking forward to your reply!

Best regards,
Andreas

The Twinmos CH-5 will do more than PC3200 (ddr400) speeds but if you get a 2.6c and run it at 5:4, you can easily get 3.2ghz very stable. CH-5 IC's are know to o/c well but with more relaxed timings but tight timings aren't as important on Intel boards as they are with AMD boards. I doubt you'll be able to get Corsair 3700's to run at 250 fsb 1:1.

If you have good air flow over any hard drive you get, drive failure isn't really an issue. Put a 80mm fan in front of your drives and you should be fine. All Maxtor 8mb cache drives larger than 120gb have 3 yr warranties. 2 SATA drives on the ICH5R will be only marginally slower than 2 Raptor drives (115mb/s vs 90mb/s). You won't notice it in real world use although some will argue this point.

Do a search on the stuff you're looking to buy and read everything you can. Then make a decision based on that.

-Bobby

AgentXTC,

I have corsair DDR500 (PC4000) which is running on a 1:1 memory ratio at FSB of 260 MHz. So essentially i have DDR520. I usually buy Corsair and have hand no problems thus far. I even had DDR333 (PC2700) up to DDR380 a 15% overclock on memory alone (on a AMD system) But if i had the cash to spend on Memory i would be buying OCZ technology Gold series RAM. OCZ Gold series sticks have been running up to 290 MHZ equivalently to DDR580. So if your looking to get max performance (memory ratio 1:1) on your P4C800E get the OCZ tech memory.

just my .5 cents. (dont know enough for 2 cents)

Hello Bobby & confused,

Pretend that I will not o/c the memory over 200Mhz (My Corsair Value Select PC3200).
Is it then possible for me to o/c the P4 just on the bus settings?

Bobby I understand your opinion on memory, but if I´m just up for o/c the CPU and the bus, shouldnt I be able to use my older DDR´s then?

Like:
P4C 2.6Ghz = Fixed multiplier 13
Increase the FSB to 250.
Use the 4:5 memory ratio = 200Mhz (DDR400)

I´m running my 1stick corsair memory today at 205Mhz, so I really dont think they are so unstable as you telled me. And the incompability is not a problem cause if they dont work I will send them back to my supplyer.

Is it really true that Corsair Value select is o/c´ed PC2700?

Regards,
Andreas

Recent batches of Corsair memory isn't as good as it used to be. I have XMS3200C2 (v2.2 wouldn't work at DDR400 w/2.85v, rma'd and got v1.2) and they use BH-6 IC's and won't go more than DDR402. 6ns IC's belong in 2700 memory, not 3200.

-Bobby

Okey, I got your point!

To cut costs, how is the P4P800 compared to P4C800?

Is the promise raid better than VIA on the different motherboards?

I allready have one Western Digital 120Gb ATA.

And I am going either for 1 raptor and larger S-ATA i.e Maxtor 120Gb, or 2 Maxtors striped. What you think?

Is P4P good enough for my setup? Is the difference that big?

I also saw the motherboard review at Tom´s hardware that MSI 865PE were best in test. (even when Dynamic overclocking were off). Is that any mobo to consider?

Regards,
Andreas

Well, I have the P4P800 Deluxe and I like it alot. I don't think you can go wrong with either P4P or the P4C.

1 raptor isn't going to be better or faster than 2-120gb striped drives.

MSI has reliability issues from what I've read.

-Bobby

Raid Question...

Bobby,

Thanks for your your advices!

I finally ended up with a P4C800-E, it will arrive next week.

I am wondering about the Promise raid, is it a big difference running 2 ATA 133 raid 0 compared to 2 SATA raid 0 on the IC5HR ? I see that the ATA raid only have one port?

On the board I see 2 ordinary ATA ports + 1 ATA 133 promise is it possible to run 2 hard discs on the promise and have the two ordinary ones for CD´s / DVD-R etc?

Do you have any suggestions?

I heard something of running raid-0, you should connect the HD´s on different channels...



Best regards,
Andreas

Andreas,

Great choice . Looks like you have 2 IDE ports on the ICH5R as well as 2 Sata ports. You're better off putting them on the ICH5R rather than the Promise controller.

South Bridge:
-2 x UltraDMA 100
-2 x Serial ATA, RAID 0 (Microsoft Windows XP only)
Promise 20378 RAID controller:
-1 x UltraDMA 133 support two hard drives
-2 x Serial ATA -RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, Multiple RAID

There's not much difference running 2 ATA133 Raid0 over 2 SATA Raid0.

Optimally, you should have the drives on their own channel when running Raid0 but you won't get too much of a performance hit when you put them both on one cable. Don't worry too much about it.

-Bobby

Hello!

Thanks!

I can not see on the motherboard layout that I have 2 IDE ports on the ICH5R? Or is the normal primary and secondary IDE ports on ICH5R?

And what about raid-0 on the ICH5R? It looks like you must use S-ATA and run windows xp to get it to work?

So if i am going to use Raid-0 i have to use both HD´s on one ATA133 port on the promise?

This is really confusing... hehe..

Regards,
Andreas