These four 320G drives gave almost 900Gb of capacity.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Raid
Setting up the RAID 5 was pretty straight forward.
These four 320G drives gave almost 900Gb of capacity.
These four 320G drives gave almost 900Gb of capacity.
Spaghetti
It was looking OK until the IDE cable for the DVD drive was added, then things got a little messy ;)
Fiddly Bits
One nice touch on this motherboard are these little dongles that allow you to connect all the tiny connectors for the motherboard into a single plug that you can do outside of the case before slotting the plug into the motherboard in one go.
Graphics Card
It's the biggest one yet!
So bit in fact, it takes up two slot spaces. Wave goodbye to one PCI slot!
So bit in fact, it takes up two slot spaces. Wave goodbye to one PCI slot!
First off, a bit of case modding
I needed to bend back the CD rail slots on the case to make way for the ICYBOX.
Shame the ICY box doesn't come with grooves already.
Shame the ICY box doesn't come with grooves already.
Everything seems to be there
Not sure about the Hard Drives wrapped in bubblewrap!
Also comes with a free wireless mouse :) However, it's HP :(
Also comes with a free wireless mouse :) However, it's HP :(
Citylink finally show their faces
They finally arrive at 15:05. Right in the middle of a snow shower.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
First hardware arrives
The first bit of the hardware (I already have the OEM XP Pro disk) of the new PC arrived this morning from Overclockers.It's the Icydock 5 into 3 SATA hard drive enclosure.
It's got me thinking whether I'll have enough SATA connectors as I need four. I have two already at home but need another two. I doubt there will be any on the hard drives themselves, so I'm hoping there will be at least two arriving with the motherboard. Failing that it's off to PC world (grrrr).Still, the unit looks a nice bit of kit.
It's got me thinking whether I'll have enough SATA connectors as I need four. I have two already at home but need another two. I doubt there will be any on the hard drives themselves, so I'm hoping there will be at least two arriving with the motherboard. Failing that it's off to PC world (grrrr).Still, the unit looks a nice bit of kit.
Where it all began.
It's been at least three years since my PC was updated. The AMD 2400 with 1.5G of memory and a X800 graphics card is certainly showing it's age now :(
I originally guessed I'd just wait for Vista then get a pre-installed machine from Dell. However, once Vista had arrived, with all the included ho-ha of problems, missing drivers and the like, I decided to stick with XP for a while longer.
But I still needed something a little better.
The start was a mention on Scan.co.uk of a CPU/Memory combo with a little bit of a discount. From there I searched for a compatible Motherboard (I've always liked ASUS mobo's myself) then from there it all spiralled out of control!
Anyway, here's what I ordered:
I'd originally wanted to build a NAS storage drive to run my Showcenter. But now I'm thinking it'd be better to use this machine to do both. The noise of the new PC will dictate whether I end up doing that as whatever machine I use for the Showcenter will most likely be on 24x7.
As the Asus mobo has built in RAID (in fact two raid controllers, although only one running RAID 5) I though now was a good time to try and run a RAID 5 set-up. The 4 x 320Gb hard drives should give me about 960Gb free once it has been build. That's almost the same as I currently have over two machines!
Graphics card is not top notch, I grant you, but the high-end cards are over £300 now and that's just too much for a single component on a computer!
I originally guessed I'd just wait for Vista then get a pre-installed machine from Dell. However, once Vista had arrived, with all the included ho-ha of problems, missing drivers and the like, I decided to stick with XP for a while longer.
But I still needed something a little better.
The start was a mention on Scan.co.uk of a CPU/Memory combo with a little bit of a discount. From there I searched for a compatible Motherboard (I've always liked ASUS mobo's myself) then from there it all spiralled out of control!
Anyway, here's what I ordered:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, Socket 775 £219.00
- ASUS P5B-E iP965, S775, PCI-E (x16), Gb LAN £66.99
- 320MB Palit 8800GTS PCI-E (x16) £157.94
- 600W CoolerMaster iGreen Power SLi £53.39
- Coolermaster Centurion RC-534 Black £28.99
- 320 Gb Samsung HD321KJ Spinpoint x4 £175.00
- NEC AD-5170A Black x18 DVD±RW Dual £15.59
- Icy Dock MB-455SPF 5-Bay Internal SATA Drive Enclosure £67.99
I'd originally wanted to build a NAS storage drive to run my Showcenter. But now I'm thinking it'd be better to use this machine to do both. The noise of the new PC will dictate whether I end up doing that as whatever machine I use for the Showcenter will most likely be on 24x7.
As the Asus mobo has built in RAID (in fact two raid controllers, although only one running RAID 5) I though now was a good time to try and run a RAID 5 set-up. The 4 x 320Gb hard drives should give me about 960Gb free once it has been build. That's almost the same as I currently have over two machines!
Graphics card is not top notch, I grant you, but the high-end cards are over £300 now and that's just too much for a single component on a computer!
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