I have an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ system and the components inside will be split up among another PC I want to build. I have cancelled other projects to have money for this project. Please tell me what you guys think about each PC. There may specific questions regarding each PC, so, please beware. Shuttle SN45GV2 Barebone AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Unlocked Multi) LSI Logic PCI-X Ultra320 Controller Seagate U320 36.6GB HDD LG 52x CD-ROM Drive Sapphire Radeon 9250 128MB/128Bit Generic 512MB DDR333 Generic 256MB DDR333 Regarding the upcoming PC above: Will I be able to fit the PCI-X U320 controller inside the Shuttle? In case, you are wondering, I have 4 U320 HDDs and 1 U320 controller at home that I got free from work. How can you do RAID using U320 HDDS, how many cables and stuff? Antec Aria Foxconn NF4K8MC-RS AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Western Digital Caviar 80GB RAID Split Western Digital Caviar 80GB RAID Split Lite-On DVD-RW 4x Sapphire Radeon X300 128MB/128Bit Rosewill PC3200 512MB Rosewill PC3200 512MB Regarding This Upcoming PC Above: Please make sure your comments do not concern the software RAID. Is there anything I should change? This is my son's account and I would like to ask a few questions about his computer as well. It is a Pentium 4 520 with alot of high-end parts. Would it be worth it for me to sell the processor, motherboard, case, and RAM and buy him an AMD Athlon 64 939 based computer? I do not like the fact that in a few months, his Abit AA8-Duramax i925X won't let him upgrade to a dual core Pentium D. I know it is lengthy, but thanx!
you can indeed use a PCI-X card in a normal PCI slot, but it will be limited to 133MB/sec bandwidth (in comparison to 1GB/sec from PCI-X) provided that there isnt anything in the way of the excess bit of the PCI connector on the card (on my motherboard i only can use 2 slots out of the 5 for my scsi card due to raised components that interfere with the connector) i dont know how you intend on fitting 4+ hard drives in a shuttle, but to RAID them you either need a U320 raid controller or do create a software array id strongy reccommend against making a software array, especialy with four U320 drives. RAID5 or RAID3 woudl be your best bet for performance and redundancy, youd be advised to have another OS drive as well, it isnt ideal having one on a RAID array You can have up to 15 drives on a single scsi cable, so you shouldnt run into a problem. it would be easiest to get a 4 disk backplane and use that for the 4 drives instead of connecting them individually to the cable (if theyre 80pin drives that is) if theyre 68pin just get a 5 device terminated cable and you will be sorted with the second system: i dont know, is there anything you should change? what it is used for? are you happy with the performance? as for your sons system, i dont think it would be worth it to sell everything and replace it with other parts as it is still a decent performing system and will still be able to do anything you throw at it When the time comes that it doesnt do something as well as you would like, then update to whatever is best suited at the time.
The second system is for my server work. I'm an Oracle/SQL DBA and I use Linux/UNIX-Solaris-FreeBSD/Windows. My son uses his computer for web design, purely uses Fedora Core 3 Linux, 3ds Max 7, CAD/AutoCAD, Maya, and web desing and the usual.
cant see any glaring problems with the second system your son's system is great the way it is, the A64 processors are fantastic for games, but for what he is doing on the system, his processor tends to come out tops
15k SCSI drives in a Shuttle! Get outa here, if its not the heat that kills them youll get cold boots from the minimal 250w psu or itll shake itself to death. You might get away with 1, but more than that i doubt.
I'll use 1 Seagate 36.6GB 15K SCSI. RAID 3 or RAID 5 seems too much. I think 1 SCSI will be fine. Will the RAID controller be able to fit inside the Shuttle. I'm not concerned about compatibility (PCI-X and PCI), but I'm mainly concerned with card length vs. Shuttle length. The card is full PCI-X length and I don't know if the Shuttle is long enough to allow for the card to fit. My other concern is whether or not the motherboard I'm buying to put in the Antec Aria is a good board feature-wise and is Foxconn a good brand?
For your SCSI system, the PCIx shouldn't present *too* much of a problem. The length of the card isn't all THAT horribly increased, more the length of the key, which makes the whole thing look bigger. However, you definitely need to tone down to that one HD or your power supply will not have the juice to spin the platter at the same time as starting your computer. Overall, this system just doesn't sound all that much like shuttle material, if you ask me. You'd be paying for a convenience that is no longer convenient, because your needs sound like a RAID array would be great for you. Perhaps it would be better served in a case that's designed for the type of thing you're building. Shuttles are great for an on-the-go, cute, small package with a single HD, a DVD drive, and its necessary components. Any more than that stresses heat, power, and space concerns. They can be high-power, but not high frills, and raid/scsi both are pretty high frills. Second system: No problems that I can see. The graphics card is a little weak for my tastes, but then again, if not used for gaming, no problems. Son's system: Just because something doesn't support dual core doesn't mean it will be useless. That system sounds like it has a bit of life left in it, and there's no use in upgrading to bleeding-edge technology if noone will make immediate use out of it. Currently less than 6% of all commercial software supports symmetric multi-processing, so these new dual-core systems will have a while before they're really used. Probably long enough to make their first run obsolete by the time they're truly supported, and you'd have to buy a new one anyways. Future value of money taken into account, I'd rather have the old system until I HAVE to upgrade to do the things I want to do.
Alright, thank you. One more question. I have 4x512MB PC1600 Registered sticks of RAM 2x512MB PC2100 Registered. Are these even worth selling since they are so low speed, oh an with ECC also?
Theres a surprising number of people who still can use ECC memory-even slower stuff, so yes, its worth selling.
