I got the Linux kernel working right. I was configuring the wrong driver. I went, "DUH!" when I finally realized what I was doing wrong. Can't believe it took me so long to figure that out, oh well.

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

Yea, hehe, somtimes those little oversights will really get ya

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.

Not actually an entirely unfounded assumption to make... I used to have an Athlon XP board that didn't work if you *did* plug in the four-pin 12v wires to the mobo. Ran it for years without ever plugging it in...

It *is* mandatory these days, though

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.

All these auxilliary power connectors in systems these days are kind of a pain. Some motherboards require an "EPS" 8 pin connector and some use the ATX 4 pin connector. Some power supplies come with only a 4 pin connector and some come with an 8 pin connector, but may also include an 8 pin to 4 pin adapter. Some even come with a split 8 pin connector where one half can be used on a 4 pin motherboard. There's also the PCIe auxilliary power connector. Video cards may or may not require that 6 pin connector. Some really high-end cards need two. Power supplies may or may not come with them, but a good modern one will usually provide at least one. Whatever the case, there's lots of opportunity for oversight. Used to be a lot easier to shop for a power supply.

When it comes to wires in the case, a handful of zip-ties always does the trick for me.

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.

that's what mine's like. the two halfs of the 8-pin snap-clip together. the 20+4 pin connector is the same way, for older 20-pin mobos.

and don't get me started on the PCIe power connectors. my card has a 4-pin molex connector. my PSU came with two 6-pin modular connectors, and an 8-pin PCIe connector for "newer cards" (according to the PSU manual anyway... i'm not sure they actually are any cards using the 8-pin just yet, but it could theoretically replace the 2x6-pin configurations on the higher-end 8800s) -- plus, this 8-pin deal is built into the PSU (not modular) so i can't remove it. it says it's compatable with 6-pin cards, though. using that wire bundle (instead of leaving it to dangle at the bottom of the case in my case's "cave of ugly solitude") is half my motivation for wanting to upgrade my VGA!

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?

Which OS? It doesn't seem to be common knowledge, but XP can do software RAID0.

One thing to keep in mind is this: A RAID setup using the motherboard's onboard controller is not portable (unless maybe the new board uses the exact same controller). So if you change the motherboard, say goodbye to your RAID array. This may or may not be a big deal depending on how much data you have to back up and how much of a pain it would be to reformat your drives.

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.

good to know about built-in controllers. i was just browsing parts, and it seems like there are 2 types of part marketed as SATA controllers: cards with extra SATA ports and maybe software RAID support, and cards with SATA ports that are real hardware RAID controllers.

the better controllers are more like $100, but it'd hopefully be a lasting investment (if i get one). also, they wiring might line up better with my drives, and SATA wires are a pain i've learned.



i sure as heck didn't know that! how much of a tax is it on CPU usage? at least it's something to play around with in the short term. RAID0 was exactly what i was looking at. also this actually sorta reminds me of something else i was wondering about...

is windows file transfer wizard any good? i was thinking about installing my old HDD in and seeing if i could pull some of my old stuff directly off my old HDD. any way i can do that with programs, by any chance in heck? i don't want to pay for DVD decoding software if there's a way to pull it off my old HDD, at least not until i've got a sound card and can avoid paying for the Dolby sound stuff.

putting that aside, could i install the old HDD and set that one and the new one up in a RAID0? it's a 160GB vs. 145 i think, would the extra space be unuseable? it'd still be fun to give it a try (something to mess with until i can spend more money :LOL yeah, this is going to be an expensive hobby... but so much fun!)

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.

I've never looked into an actual RAID add-on card so I have no comment on that, but my understanding is that software RAID does not perform as well as hardware RAID due to CPU overhead. I don't know exactly the difference performance-wise, if any, but with the availablity of inexpensive chipsets incorporating hardware RAID, I wouldn't bother with it. Also keep in mind there are various levels of RAID that offer different features. The main thing I would be interested in is the improved I/O performance that comes with a basic RAID stripe. It just seems more logical to do that at the hardware level.

One note, you can't just switch controller modes with an existing installation of Windows XP. It won't boot. Generally, you're talking a clean installation to go from SATA mode to AHCI or RAID.

Don't what to tell you about the transfer wizard. For a clean install, I restore my data from backup and reload my applications from the original install media. Then I manually reconfigure most of my Windows and application settings. Some I store in registry exports or .ini files so that saves me a little time. You should be able to hook up your old disk and grab files that way, but I would be careful about transferring anything from the Program Files or Windows directories. If the old drive is PATA, and it's too much of a pain to access a port, I have a little PATA to SATA converter I got for like 10 bucks or something. I use that when I need to hook up an old drive for one reason or another.

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.

I didn't know that. I assumed the chipset handled that function as a true hardware RAID implementation. In any case, CPU overhead or not, I know you can get a huge increase in disk I/O with a simple 2 disk array using the chipset's RAID. The same may be true using any other implementation, but if I do it, it will be via the chipset. That's a known quantity for me and it's really the least trouble. For Vista, it's just a matter of one setting in the BIOS, a little more hassle with XP because of the driver disk requirement. And, you can remove that requirement by slipstreaming the drivers if you're willing to re-build the XP installation disk (which isn't terribly hard to do when you know how).

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.

That's good to know if I ever decide to take the plunge, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen any time soon. I'm just happy to have a system I can call fast.

Speaking of fans, I installed a better HSF today, much nicer. That Core 2 sure is a cool running thing. Let's see, it's 70F in my office right now and my CPU is sitting at a whopping 79F. I loaded up both cores and it barely broke 110F. Gotta love that. Your PSU fan probably shut down because it didn't have anything to do

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

Nothing costly, it's basically just a stock one with a nice mounting system and a better fan WWW Link. It does provide a little more cooling.

Since my last post, I found a program called Orthos Prime that provides a slick front end to Prime95's torture test, WWW Link. Unlike Prime95, it can initiate 2 threads to fully load both cores. It's pretty handy. With my updated cooler, it got my CPU up to about 120F using the hottest test on both cores. I'm good with that.

Oh, I got my 8800GTS transferred over to the the new system last night, scored 10,500 on 3DMark06, very pleased. IIRC, my Athlon system only scored around 8000 with that card.

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.

Yea, I think it's actually pretty enjoyable building your own systems, however, when you have problems, it can get ugly. But, like I said at the beginning of the thread, that doesn't happen often. You just have to be ready and willing to deal with it if it does. It's also way too easy to get caught up in the "gotta have the latest" trap. To be honest, I wouldn't normally have built another system so soon, but I was highly dissapointed with the last one. I acheived only a small increase in performance. However, this build was very successful. I got a HUGE performance increase and really didn't spend that much money, relatively speaking. Wish I could have skipped the last one. After that experience, I'm not too fond of nVidia chipsets and I probably won't be buying an ASUS motherboard any time soon, what a dog. I really like this Gigabyte P31 board. It seems like it's well designed and really tuned to put out. I'm sure the same can be said for the Gigabyte P35 board. Been using the new system for a couple days now, it's noticably faster and very stable.

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?

Parity is just a bit flag that marks a nibble/byte/word for an even or odd number of ones. In RAID5, It allows a failed drive to be restored on the fly since the controller can figure out the missing part of the stripe. It's mainly used on "mission critical" systems so a disk failure doesn't result in downtime, but it also provides error checking. One of the disks is dedicated to storing it so yea, the actual storage capacity would be minus one.