Im building a dream multimedia system...

[little_pob]

Any of the ones from Corsair or Enermax.

450W Corsair (min 80% efficient) - £44.16: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131052
425W Enermax (min 82% efficient) - £51.69: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144083

 

[Conrad]

Sod that...i had enough of this, i been at this pc for 4 hours just looking for a cpu cooler !!!.....im going to go for th zalman that i know will fit....

Can someone suggest the best quietest psu from the ebuyer site for about £50 max ?? baring in mind the inputs that i may need for the graphics card(s) and mobo ???

heh, we're on page 9 and we've only just got to the CPU cooler!
Good call with the zalman cooler, I've got that same one in my media PC. I run it on it's slowest setting with the supplied fan controller and don't have any cooling issues. I also have to look at the wall behind the PC to see if it's on! (I can see the light from the PSU reflecting on the paint).

Don't worry about how complex it all seems and whether you've made the wrong decision about things. You're looking at the absolute top end of quiet cooling, you can't go wrong. As oneman said, there's barely any difference between 18 and 16db. And in answer to your question, 20db is probably a good guideline figure to aim below. If something is rated 20db or above I'd tend to steer clear for media PC purposes.

Now, have you given any thought to hard drives? :Cry:

 

[little_pob]

... Now, have you given any thought to hard drives? :Cry:

He'll want SpinPoints, nice and quiet! Don't even think about anything else, even the speed advantage of WD Raptors doesn't make up for the noise they make.

digicol even posted a 500Gb one from ebuyer in the bargain room the other day: http://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/index.php?threads/179386/

Also grab the Pioneer or LG Blu-ray/HDDVD OEM combo drive whilst ebuyer still have them in stock. Less than £80 to add legit HD playback...

 

[loady]

heh, we're on page 9 and we've only just got to the CPU cooler!
Good call with the zalman cooler, I've got that same one in my media PC. I run it on it's slowest setting with the supplied fan controller and don't have any cooling issues. I also have to look at the wall behind the PC to see if it's on! (I can see the light from the PSU reflecting on the paint).

Don't worry about how complex it all seems and whether you've made the wrong decision about things. You're looking at the absolute top end of quiet cooling, you can't go wrong. As oneman said, there's barely any difference between 18 and 16db. And in answer to your question, 20db is probably a good guideline figure to aim below. If something is rated 20db or above I'd tend to steer clear for media PC purposes.

Now, have you given any thought to hard drives? :Cry:

I would have thought the dvd drive will make more noise than the hdd ??

He'll want SpinPoints, nice and quiet! Don't even think about anything else, even the speed advantage of WD Raptors doesn't make up for the noise they make.

digicol even posted a 500Gb one from ebuyer in the bargain room the other day: http://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/index.php?threads/179386/

Also grab the Pioneer or LG Blu-ray/HDDVD OEM combo drive whilst ebuyer still have them in stock. Less than £80 to add legit HD playback...

Going for the lg bluray/hd burner combo....HDD i wasnt thinking of changing...YET

 

[oneman]

He'll want SpinPoints, nice and quiet! Don't even think about anything else, even the speed advantage of WD Raptors doesn't make up for the noise they make.

digicol even posted a 500Gb one from ebuyer in the bargain room the other day: http://www.digitalworldz.co.uk/index.php?threads/179386/

Also grab the Pioneer or LG Blu-ray/HDDVD OEM combo drive whilst ebuyer still have them in stock. Less than £80 to add legit HD playback...

Not going to argue over getting samsung spinpoint. I find then even quieter then the seagates and cooler too. Aria has 500GB on superspecial for £33 + VAT or 750GB for £53 + VAT (imagine the data lost if that drive failed !). You pick up a second one on a different day and stick it an external enclosure for backing things up.

 

[Conrad]

I've got a pair of 250GB spinpoints in my media PC and, while you can hear them spin up, they're next to silent once they're going. Another vote from me.

I believe the best £/GB is with the 750s at the moment but it's worth checking around. Anyone have any experience with the Samsung F1s? I believe they're quieter than the spinpoints and at £90 for a 1TB, they've got to be decent value.

 

[loady]

Groan...i knew i was gonna mess up on something, when i saw the spin point post i added 3 500gb from ebuyer to the order i was placing...that was at 7.30pm...i put the payment through and the order has been dispatched already..then i saw the aria post with the 750gb and also spotted a 1TB drive...2 of those would have been nice....they certainly bucked thier ideas up at ebuyer so i cant grumble.

Anyway guys....thansk for all you input so far...here is the line up of what i have bought.

Case: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Zalman-HD160X...rkparms=72:12|39:1|65:12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Mobo: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142854

PSU: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144083

CPU: [ame]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0012UZTFS[/ame] ******s at amazon decided not to tell me that expiry date on card was wrong so now im going to be waiting for this when it should already be here.

RAM: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130429

GFX: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-96GTS

Cooler: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140478

Grease: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125310

Optical drive: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139994

HDD: 3 x http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454 Yes 3 of them !!!

Bluetooth: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....m=150257797465&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=005

TV: http://www.digitaldirect.co.uk/prod...ogle-Adwords&gclid=CLWv24u0_JMCFQyN1QodWnduVg
I could have driven into london and picked that tv up for £1300 and a 5 yr warranty but my neighbour whos company is in partnership with panasonic for the 2012 olympics got me 26% of the list price so i have it for £1118 delivered...not sure whether i get the 5 yr warranty though or whether its going to be the standard year

Well thats the line up and i wouldnt have got here with out all your input...watch this space for the put together, though i may create a new thread for that :Cheers:

 

[Conrad]

That is a f*cking sick machine.
There are individual parts that are "better" than some of the bits you got (you could have gone for a 64bit OS with 32GB of RAM for example) but I think in terms of quality V spec V being a bit sensible you've got a fantastic combination.

It's going to be fast, quiet, powerful and you won't be disappointed.

 

[oneman]

Good luck with the assembly, just take it slow and easy and keep the cabling tidy.

What disk configuration are planning on using for your three drives ?

BTW, I found a photo of standard cooler vs Zalman 9500

View attachment 41423

 

[oneman]

Here is a picture of my file server with eight hard disks,

View attachment 41424

 

[loady]

That is a f*cking sick machine.
There are individual parts that are "better" than some of the bits you got (you could have gone for a 64bit OS with 32GB of RAM for example) but I think in terms of quality V spec V being a bit sensible you've got a fantastic combination.

It's going to be fast, quiet, powerful and you won't be disappointed.

Lets hope so...its going to be the centre piece of my living room

Good luck with the assembly, just take it slow and easy and keep the cabling tidy.

What disk configuration are planning on using for your three drives ?

BTW, I found a photo of standard cooler vs Zalman 9500

View attachment 41423

Not sure really, i never fancied raiding as it compromises speed....i usually keep a back up of stuff that is importtant on a seperate drive. Im seriously considering backing the 3 500gb spinpoint drives and going to aria and getting 3 750gb or a couple of 1TB. Bet it will take the best part of a day to format that fekker.

The zalman cooler pictured is the one i got.

Here is a picture of my file server with eight hard disks,

View attachment 41424

Wow that must weigh a ton!!!

 

[oneman]

RAID does not comprimise speed. In fact when reading (which is what you do most of the time, for example you install a game once but play it multiple times) it is quicker as data can be pulled from multiple disks at once. Of course if you have redundancy then you will lose disk capacity.

With three disks you have the option of going RAID5 which I believe your M/B supports. So your disk capacity will be n-1 which in your case will 2 disk. If any of the three disks die, you won't lose any data.

With two disk, you will have to use disk stripe so will have the capacity of one disk.

I would also still backup to external disk as well in case OS failure, virus, accidental deletion etc.

I would not expect the format to take a day, maybe an hour or two. My hardware RAID5 controller takes around 8 hours to do a rebuild on a 2TB array (the maximum that WinXP and Vista 32-bit version supports).

The system is resonably heavy, maybe around 22 or 23kg.

 

[little_pob]

On a new drive just use quick format, it should take less than a minute (at least it did on my 1Tb spinpoint once Vista had initialised the drive correctly).

Only really need to 'full format' when you're passing drives on, even then the data could be easily recovered - security experts recommend using 'shreading' software, and to run it at least a dozen times!

 

[oneman]

The whole must be wiped 7 times (US DoD standard) is a pretty much mute point now. On drives using perpendicular recording (that is most modern drives) then there is little chance of getting anything meaningful back after a single full format.

Even on the old drives, you are looking at having to use devices like a clean room and a tunneling microscrope.

 

[loady]

hmmmmm I think I need to look into this array a bit more, my mobo does support raid five but my concern is how much space am I going to lose? And why then bother if every thing can get fried by os failure? The only data im worried about losing is kept in one folder and copied on to two different drives so even with os failure or even two disc dying I'm safe. What say you

 

[oneman]

With RAID 5 you lose one disks worth of storage regardless of how many disks are in the array. So if you have 8 disks, you have the capacity of 7 of them. If you have 3 disks (the minimum you need for RAID) then you have the capacity of 2 of them.

So 3 x 750GB disks = 1.5TB of storage.

Advantages are read speed, uptime, reduction in data loss and presenting the array as a single drive to the O/S (like my 8 x 250GB disk array appears like a single drive in windows disk manager).

As I said, a virus or O/S issue can still involve you losing all your data and migrating / recoverying RAID arrays from hardware changes can be fraught with danager.

Unless you really need it, I would stick with keeping each disk seperate and setup an nightly or weekly robocopy job to copy the critical data between the drives. Of course you will lose any updates since the last backup you made but how critical is that in a non-business environment.

 

[Conrad]

Personally, I'd RAID0 the lot of them. That'll give you maximum storage and maximum performance as data can be read from and written to the array at 3x standard drive speed. Be aware though, this gives you absolutely no redundency: if one disk fails you've lost the lot. But that might not be as bad as it sounds.

It's a risk vs reward situation.

The risk is that you lose all your data but you can take some good steps to make this much less of a risk. Firstly, you've buying quality disks from a big brand manufacturer. They're quite unlikely to fail within the first year, unless you get a bad batch. If you get a bad batch you'll probably know about it very quickly, long before you really start using the system fully. Also, if you've got important data on there, back it up to something external. Regular backup schedules should be something that's part of anyones home useage for important things. I've got about 400GB of movies on a raid 0 array, if it disappears, so what? I can get it again. Anything special that I can't get again, I take a copy of and keep offline on a cheap and cheerful NAS device (Western Digital 1TB myBookWorld). All my photos though, they're on a RAID1 array (mirrored) that's backed up nightly onto my NAS box. Only a house fire is removing those!

Also, grab yourself something like Acronis and back your system up when it's a clean install. That'll get you back to that point within half an hour should you install something that makes your machine go a bit loopy. Take incremental backups when you make changes you want to keep or each month (or however frequently you think you need to). My media PC is backed up from when I had only the apps I needed (TV, PowerDVD etc) working fully. If I now install a utility that screws my machine or get a virus I can get back to a fully working solution within the hour. Obviously put your backups on different disks to the ones youre backing up!

Personally I don't think you need to worry about RAID5, just reduce the risks until you're comfortable.

That's just me though, you might feel very differently.

 

[loady]

Ok...raid0 sounds the better option for me, however, if i use the drives a single devices, baring in mind this is a home media system, i like the idea that drives that are not being used will power down, will this feature dissapear when using raid0 ??...i have an old shit nas drive here that im just going usb my valuables to.

 

[oneman]

I have a ICH8R on my mobo and using RAID5 with samsung drives, vista has no problem spinning down the drives.

I would not expect any problems with RAID0 spinning the disk down though like mine I expect them to spin down together, not one individually.