Reminds me of the time I thought my hard drive had died . . . I had accidentally disabled onboard IDE in the bios when I meant to disable onboard LAN

heh i didn't mention anything about my little mess up... after assembling everything for the first time, my friend and i powered this machine on... no video. we swapped my old video card and my roommate's old monitor and still nothing. then we pondered this +12v ATX plug on the board, noting how my PSU lacked a matching plug and figuring it had to be optional... well, my friend had to leave, and after reading several instruction manuals, and taking almost everything apart, i found the oversight in the PSU's documentation. plug everything back in, un-clip the extra 4 pins and plug the ATX pin in, and boom, i was golden.

pretty small oversight for my first time, i'd say.

that's what i was thinking at first - that it is mandatory. what threw my friend and i was the lack of apperantly matching plugs from the PSU. then creeped along this idea that the extra 4 pins might be there for PSUs that didn't have a 24-pin main connector as a backward compatability thing. either way, it worked out and i'm just glad i didn't damage anything.

the wiring is really a mess though. i had read this when i was browsing cases, so it's no unexpected shock. i'll have to upload a pic at some point (once i dig up the software that'll let me upload pics from my phone).

i found this description with photos of one person's solution to the wiring in this case. it looks like it'd really clean things up, but i don't think i'd want to deal with swapping stuff out after doing it (might have to take apart the whole thing to do it).

my friend gave me her copy of Morrowind + expansions as a congrats gift on the new machine. she said she couldn't believe i'd never played it.

The best cable management scheme I've seen involved not using the connectors at all, but soldering the wires directly to the contacts on the back of the motherboard.

Obviously not for the average person.

anyone have any experience with RAID setups? i was thinking it'd be kind of fun to do one a few months down the road, but i just realized my mobo doesn't support RAID. there's a slightly different model that does, but it's like $50 more. this means i have to decide now if i want to exchange the mobo (and go through all that hassle), or get a RAID controller later. getting an extra card later seems like a better choice since they run at about $20. -- or am i missing something obvious?

Yea, you need the ICH9R Southbridge. Your board has the ICH9. Be aware that when you use the ICH9R in AHCI or RAID mode, you'll need to do the "F6" thing with Windows XP to load controller drivers before starting the installation. I believe Vista has those drivers built-in so it's not an issue there. In any case, hardware RAID can really soup-up your disk I/O speeds even with just a 2 disk array. It's totally worth it. Personally, I'm wary of the extra complication and expense, but have thought about going for it. ICH9R boards do jump in price, but the all the 500 and 600 series nVidia chipsets come standard with some level of RAID. I think I would hang with what you have. By the time you're ready to do it, there will probably be a new generation chipset you'll want. RAID is becoming more standard so you may not even have to pay any extra for it.

Here's an article about software raid in XP WWW Link As you can see the size of your array will be limited to the size of the smallest partition you can allocate to it, so using assymetrical drives will leave you with un-RAIDed (but presumably still usable) space on the larger drive. The array will also be limited to the speed of the slower drive, so I wouldn't bother if the old drive is 5400 rpm and the new one is 7200. With a dual core cpu I wouldn't worry about cpu usage. Running the task monitor alongside TA shows it only maxing out one core. Performance wise, the article found very little difference between hardware and software RAID0.

Not sure what you've asking re: file transfer wizard. If you install the old drive you can do whatever you like with it, including copying any or all of it to another drive. Of course if you have room for it in the system why not just leave it in for extra storage? I've got my old 80gb drive as well as my newer 500gb drive.

No such thing, unfortunately. Onboard RAID chipsets, as well as all cheap cards (that I'm aware of), are still software RAID, though handled below the OS level. It still offloads RAID processing to the CPU, with the attendant performance hit. If you want a "real" RAID controller, you're going to pay through the nose for it.

Granted the hit shouldn't be large on RAID0/1, but if you wanted to do RAID5 (which requires parity calculations), you'd definitely notice it.

that's kind of what i was gathering while browsing newegg. the commenters were calling $120 chips "entry level". like graphics cards, the bus size with these can be a major limiting factor in their performance, so PCIe is better. Craig, your MB and mind both have 3 PCIe x1 besides the single x16 for graphics card.

that would make this HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 our only and best option - and only at $110 (there are x4 cards for $350). we can also OC our PCIe busses up to 50% in the BIOS... it's hardware RAID including RAID5 and has 4 SATA ports that will point right at the front of the case. i'm guessing it's probably not "pure" hardware RAID, but it seems to have pretty high reviews.

it'd also work great in my case. the way the SATA ports are aligned on the MB annoys me. it makes 90 degree SATA wires lay across the board instead of away from it, and that's a bit of a wiring issue for me because my HDDs will sit directly next to the SATA area. with this thing, i can align them more easily, hopefully even with 6" SATA cables (that'd be great if they fit).

...crap, my PSU fan isn't working, gotta go.
edit... probably because it was cold recovering from a bad system, not used to the new one yet.

what HSF did you get? if you don't mind my asking.

that looks like a good HSF for the price.

you know, this has turned into one of the more enjoyable threads i've had here. ever since i was small, i've loved building and making things. legos were my favorite childhood toy; in grade school i wanted to be an architect; in high school and on my college applications i wanted to be an aerospace engineer. i ended up majoring in sociology, but in a way i guess you could look at that as building ideas, and i plan to continue as a writer ("story builder" )

i guess all i'm saying is that now that i'm "a big boy" and i can afford it, building computers is really fun. i keep browsing for parts in my spare time at work, and even sometimes at home when i don't feel like doing anything else. nothing wrong with window shopping. but i do have to admit a great deal of fascination with the idea of case modding. heck, i used to mod my legos. you could take a sharpie to them for custom coloration; you could take a pencil eraser to remove the stock prints. a hot screwdriver was a great way to make a lego hole anywhere. i was proudest of my arch-villain's sword in my castle sets. i took a nail file to a basic sword, serrated one side of it and made it extra pointy. and yes, the thought of a lego computer case has crossed my mind (using the 90s space sets) it gives me a chance to approach a problem on both physical/technical and aesthetic levels. i definately glad to have a fast new PC. in time, i'll spend a bit more money. in a few months, i'll spend a bit more money buying additional hardware to get the most out of this i can (sound card, upgraded VGA). then once i'm ready, i'll take everything down again, and re-build it with a plan for wire management and - depending on how i feel over the next several months - case modding. maybe the desire to put an aesthetic stamp on my PC will pass... but somehow i don't think it will.

the temptation is definately there for that 'gotta have the latest' type behavior. but it also doesn't seem too difficult to shop smart if your goal is best bang for the buck. deals and mail-in rebates aside, there are pretty obvious price jumps when you go up to the highest-end stuff available.



i've been reading up more on RAID, and i'm a bit confused with RAID5 (and maybe the idea of parity in general). do parity calculations actually compress data, or what? say we've got a RAID of 4 disks of equal size. will you end of with 3 disks worth of useable storage volume?