My new workstation build

firebug88 said:
Wait I thought you have 12 drives?
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I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. Let me explain.

The RAID array is 8 drives, but the case only has room for 7. Therefore one of the drives will sit in the hot-swap bay, which can be seen in the pics from the previous update - one cable jumps from the hot-swap SATA bundle to the RAID SATA-bundle. This leaves 4 open bays in the hot-swap.

Of those 4 open bays #2-5:
2.) WD 640GB system drive
3.) Hitachi 1 TB (new)
4.) Hitachi 1 TB (from old computer)
5.) empty right now

Thus, total space is calculated as follows

New box: 4.886TB RAID + 2*931 + 598 = 7.346TB

Old box: 4.450TB - 931GB = 3.519TB

Total: 7.346 + 3.519 = 10.865TB
 
Did you try running the Areca in PCI-E x16 slot #1?

I had some issues when I tried to run my Areca 1210 in slot #2... it wouldnt recognize. I had to run it in slot 1 and my vid card in slot 2 then all was well in the world.
 
mj007 said:
Did you try running the Areca in PCI-E x16 slot #1?
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Yep, tried that too - but still no luck.:mad:

I just RMA'ed the card - Newegg's customer service (as most everyone here will tell you) really is top notch. I also just ordered a new one, so we'll have a definitive diagnosis next week.
 
UPDATE

So I just got the new ARC-1220 in and I think I found the problem.

No matter what I put in the top PCIe 16x slot (PCIe16_1) it will not work. I have tried 3 GPU's in the top PCIe 16x slot and none would display anything - however all 3 worked fine in the bottom PCIe 16x slot.

Same thing with the RAID card: doesnt show up in the top slot but will work fine in the bottom slot (PCIe16_2).

I have tried tweaking the BIOS and looking for a setting/jumper to remedy the problem but nothing seems to work. I also flashed from the most recent BIOS (0401 which I was using) back to 0219, which was also unsuccessful.

Nothing seems to work.

Any thoughts?
 
stain. said:
bad slot?
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Thats what I figured. I posted a few inquiries looking for something I missed. I just RMA'ed the board back to Newegg and they overnighted me a new one at no cost - damn I love them.

The new ARC-1220 works great - assuming I can get a functioning motherboard, I can finally wrap this build up.
 
I join the previous statement ;)

Keep up the great work!
Please share some more pictures of your finalized (and cable managed) system.

On a side note: Newegg's customer service is indeed remarkable!
 
Good build, looks like you are going to have lots and lots of space :D

Keep us updated.
 
Thanks for the kind posts. I'm going to try and test and finish this build up on monday.

I've set up the 5 monitors and some new speakers so things are starting to come together. I will of course be sure to post some final pics hopefully on Monday evening.
 
Wow, quite amazing! I'm looking forward to seeing the completion of this build. That monitor setup is going to be off the hook!

Subscribed!
 
Your monitor setup is going to be more CRAZY than my 2x3007WFP-HC!!

Keep us updated with your result!!
 
stunning said:
Hey OP, going with any type of fancy lights?
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Not to step on the toes of anyone who likes the fluorescent light setups but it always reminded me of people that put neons under their car :eek: So to answer your question: probably not.

Everything is black on black except for the large TRUE120 (kind of wish I had gotten the black version discussed here), NB heatsink, and the blue accents on the RAM, fan controller, and the cabling - it looks monolithic and mean, which is what I was going for :p

That said, maybe down the line I'll put some blue UV lights in as most of my cabling is blue UV-reactive - just no plans to do it right now.
 
SoCo said:
Do you have the new board and have the RAID up and running?
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Indeed I do - but in my exuberance I had too many celebratory pints and forgot to take the promised pics ... as well as woke up this morning at my computer :eek:. After 2 RMA's and several weeks worth of work I dont know what I would have done if it didnt work. I'll post as soon as I get home this afternoon.

Rebuilding the computer after taking out the old mobo took about 2 hours as I made some further changes to the fan setup. The RAID array took about 1.5-2 hours to build and after that it was a breeze to setup in Vista x64 - a pleasant surprise. Last night I dumped about 2 TB of data on it from two separate hard drives (one of which was a 750 I was using prior to this build) simultaneously and got sustained write speeds of between 70 and 80 MB/s for each drive:D

Now that I have all the data copied over from the last 750 I can format it and drop it into the RAID array for 8x750 which should make it even faster. Words cant describe how happy I am to have one partition for all of my data now rather than having it scattered across 10 different drives.

I'm still working out the kinks on the monitor setup because of Nvidia's criminal lack (and in marked contrast AMD's embrace) of multi-monitor support when using SLI. Kyle has ranted many times in review articles about this and I couldn't agree more. It is total crap that the green team hasn't fixed this yet. But the 5 monitors are setup and functioning nonetheless.
 
As promised:

i24731_DSC00304.JPG


i24734_DSC00307.JPG


i24737_DSC00310.JPG


i24738_DSC00311.JPG


i24739_DSC00312.JPG


1.) Please excuse the mess, getting ready to move:)
2.) The side monitors will not work with the nVidia pci-e 1x card I bought b/c of the SLI on the GX2. Solution: just ordered the same card from ATI which should get around nvidia's crap multimonitor support.
3.) I'm going to run some benchmarks tonight on the RAID 5 as well as 3DM06 with the CPU at 3.6. Will post the results shortly.
 
What speakers are those that have that curved shape to them, and maybe a mahogany type color?
 
Quick update:

Found a good deal on a raptor 150 and used another raptor 150 from the old rig for RAID 0. Subjectively I find system responsiveness, boot up time, and app installation/level load times all improved over using the single 640. Read and write times are improved moderately but access times are more significantly reduced. Some of this perceived snappiness could be due to a fresh vista installation - I suspect its probably a combination of the two.

Still working on the monitor setup; I will most likely just run all 4 from the XP box and just say forget using 3 monitors on the vista box.

More to follow.
 
Where did you get the deal on the Raptor 150? I've been looking around recently. I think the maintenance guy in my apartment stole my previous one. :confused:
 
Yes, it's so hard to find a good deal on raptors these days, please share.
 
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