Rendering and Gaming machine.

[graldensblud]

Well now i'm uncertain.

I'm gonna build a new desktop PC. I'm a student of architecture, running 3DS Max/Photoshop/CAD, doing 3d rendering, and well into gaming (half-life2, Dawn of War, etc etc).

I plan to build a new desktop PC, my first (but i'm okay with computers). I want it to be silent, but when needed it needs to be able to convincingly render and be lightning fast on games. When i say silent, i mean i want to be able to sleep with it on (tho not when its maxed out!)

My cunning plan for this was to have 2 Hard disks - a 36Gb raptor (fast) and a Seagate Barracuda (cos its quiet). Then i was going to do the unusual thing of putting my OS onto the slower 'cuda, along with my music and basic software, and photoshop, so it runs quietly. And then i would have put my games, Cad software, and photoshop's scratch-discs onto the raptor drive. So that i'd have the performance i needed but only the noise when it was truly necessary. I was feeling smug at having thought of doing this.

Now however, i've just read reviews saying that the 36Gb Raptor, whilst nice and all, isn't worth having cos its never getting FDBearings, and is much louder that the bigger version. I already knew it was slightly slower that its bigger brother, but the noise thing ended the idea. And I can't see that i need 74Gb worth of raptor, given the cost that'll mean (my budget for PC unit is around £900ish).

That has sort of left me dead in the water for "clever ideas" regarding drives. If i want to pair up drives in that way (fast&loud with slower&silent), what would people suggest. Or is it hardly worth it now?

Generally, i'd value suggestions as to the best way to proceed given what i want from my machine. If i end up with just one 160Gb Hdd because nothing else is worth the extra expense, then so be it. I just wonder if there is still a clever-er option.

Oh and first post, so hi everyone!

[Drake]

Raptors are hardly worth it period. You won't miss that extra 2-3 seconds shaved off your load times.

The only benefit I see is when working with large (1GB+) files in photoshop/cad/etc.

Personally I wouldn't get a raptor unless it's the 74GB version, and truthfully I think two larger hard drives would be beneficial in the long run.

[DougLite]

Welcome.

I am inclined to agree that a Raptor doesn't fit into a system that will be a game system and do at lest some workstation tasks in a budget of £900 - Isn't that somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500-$1800 (USD)?

If you want silent hard drives, you need to look at Samsung's offerings. The new SpinPoint P120s are available from some German dealers (and are supposed to hit general channel availability Real Soon Now), they post some incredible synthetic performance numbers (I haven't seen any application level tests though), and it at least looks they preserve the SP P80's heritage of silent operation. If Seagate makes quiet drives, Samsung is silent. There's that big of a difference. I can hear my 7200.7 in my SFF, I can hear my FDB WD in my HTPC, but I can't hear either of my 120GB Samsung drives in the same HTPC. The new P120 addresses the biggest weakness of the Samsung drives, by raising the capacity bar from 160GB to 250.

The 36GB Raptor is not worth it. It is inferior to its bigger brother in every way. With that said, the 73GB version will speed up everything you do, and you won't look back if you make frequent saves and loads in your workstation work. Two 7200RPM drives in RAID-0 will also work well for you here if you need more capacity. RAID-0 won't do much for your gaming storage though, and it increases the performance of backups.

If you don't mind, post what all else you want to buy with this system besides hard drives, and we'll see what we can find room for. You may also want to look at the Hitachi T7K250, but I really can't tell until we know how much room there is in the budget.

[ferrisnox]

I would just say that, In your situation and my own I have found that a Raptor 740GD while it didn't speed up my renders, or give me more fps is games affected my performance in other ways. Rendering is fine, but when you goto edit your rendered frames/movie... a very fast hd helps alot with nonlinear video editing. Also things are "snappier"... While I use Maya I noticed in big scenes the hd helped out with texture thrashing in the Work Area. If you do get a raptor make sure you get another disk for storage. I went with a samsung because they are so quiet and cheap.

[killerD]

Raptors make a big difference in games, I've witnessed the difference first hand. Less hiccups for games that load areas on the fly, and especially MMRPGs which tap into virtual memory constantly for loading masses of characters.

[graldensblud]

Douglite:

£900 is US$1600 at the current exchange rate, but thats flexible if its worthwhile.

I'm not going to be doing this until later in the summer, so this is preliminary , especially before i see what hardware gets released in quarter 2.

this is where i'm headed on spec:

AMD64 Venice core 3500, akasa cooler
1Gb ram minimum (£70, tho 2Gb is only £140)
i reckon on £300 for a graphics card (probably ATI cos they tend to be cooler)
Asus A8N-E motherboard (£72), but my thoughts on mobo change almost daily...
£100 for case and PSU - tending to the Coolermaster Centurion 531 and Akasa Paxpower 400W or the Zalman ZM400B-APS
Sound and removable drives are already dealt with already.

that lot totals out at £800 inc VAT (with the 2Gb ram). On top of which: HDD, smaller stuff like fans.

So in terms of budget flexibility: if i only do the 1Gb ram option, there is what, £200 odd to play with at a maximum. (without some budget stretching)


FYI i get my uk prices from microdirect.co.uk unless they don't sell something.

Other info:
the games i play are either RTS (so processor intensive) or FPS, mostly, rather than serious RPG.

[BillR]

I work a lot in Photo Shop and Bryce 3D and some of the files are huge so I do use a 74Gig Raptor just to speed things up a bit, I might also add it’s not loud at all. I do all my storage on a second drive, I’m a big WD fan myself (no flames please) and most of my 32 drives are a few years old, run 24/7 with no failures.

Let me throw a fly into the ointment at this point if I may. I know you are budget oriented as we all are however some food for thought. For most of my render and photo work I use a dual CPU machine because most of the programs are SMP ready, it makes the work go much faster. AMD is about to release the new dual core version of the Venice and San Diego processors at the end of THIS month. In other words a dually on a single socket motherboard.

If you can wait and do the budget you will have a much longer-term machine that will do much more work for you with lower cost in the long run.

Just some thoughts.

[graldensblud]

The X2s? They are looking very tasty from a performance front, but i was waiting for thermal data and prices really - i know they are being aimed quite high-up the market. Also, i want to see how the clock throttling works with them (from a noise point of view).

Then again, i hadn't truly considered that (of course) having one will possibly extend the life of the machine. I was weighing up the cost of the CPU (probable) for gains when rendering, against day-in-day-out gains from (perhaps) clever HDD setups and things. The thing i will say is i don't see myself needing more than 150-200Gb storage total.

Can i ask BillR: what are you doing on the raptor? photoshop scratch discs? the programme .EXEs themselves? not file-saves obviously-you say they are elsewhere.

[BillR]

The X2s? They are looking very tasty from a performance front, but i was waiting for thermal data and prices really - i know they are being aimed quite high-up the market. Also, i want to see how the clock throttling works with them (from a noise point of view).

Then again, i hadn't truly considered that (of course) having one will possibly extend the life of the machine. I was weighing up the cost of the CPU (probable) for gains when rendering, against day-in-day-out gains from (perhaps) clever HDD setups and things. The thing i will say is i don't see myself needing more than 150-200Gb storage total.

Can i ask BillR: what are you doing on the raptor? photoshop scratch discs? the programme .EXEs themselves? not file-saves obviously-you say they are elsewhere.


The programs are installed there (C drive) and after some experimentation I also create the scratch disk there as well, that’s why I think the 10k rpm drive has the advantage. I tried the scratch disk on my second drive and did notice a bit of “lag” when working large files.

The thermal issues with the X2 CPU’s appear to be non existent, The XP-90 HSF with a thermal take “Silent CAT 92mm” fan is all but dead quiet. 52 CFM of airflow at 21db. That’s pretty quiet.

CPU price wise I was quite surprised at Monarch’s initial pre-order pricing. Just not too bad at all:

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=M&Category_Code=amddc

Might just be worth the wait, or at least a second thought :)

[DougLite]

On MicroDirect, WD740GD runs £128. After buying fans and the like that only leaves £60, and that's not going to buy much of a 7200RPM drive. £300 on a video card puts you in X850XT territory - perhaps cutting that to an X800 XL will allow more room for storage spending, although that's not a good idea if you game on a large display that benefits from resolutions of 1600x1200 and up.

If you stick to the £300 video card budget, it looks like there isn't going to be room for a Raptor, pick up two of the biggest 7200 drives you can afford, either 16MB Maxtor or Hitachi. Read the sticky (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=873523) to learn about strengths and weaknesses from each maker. Good luck!