freeztar Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 Also, I intend to buy the machine with Windows XP, not Vista, but will that make a difference? Am I missing out by not getting Vista, or am I saving myself some hassles? One thing to keep in mind here is compatibility. If you buy/build the system with XP, everything should work fine. If you buy a Vista computer and then add XP later, you can run into problems with hardware compatibility. For example, I bought my laptop in November with Vista pre-installed (it was made to run Vista). I installed XP as soon as I got home and spent the next day or so trying to find drivers for everything and getting everything to work well. I never found an XP driver for my on-board soundcard, so it doesn't work unless I run Vista (for this reason, I made my system a double boot - ie I can choose XP or Vista at bootup). Keep this in mind when you are looking at components. You can go to the manufacturer's web site and check for drivers there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 well, if he is building a machine, i would give you over a 99/100 chance of having all the hardware supported :applause: besides, if your audio card is not supported, you just buy a creative labs one :applause: (they are the best) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeztar Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 well, if he is building a machine, i would give you over a 99/100 chance of having all the hardware supported I would certainly hope so. besides, if your audio card is not supported, you just buy a creative labs one (they are the best) :applause: :applause: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 :applause: :applause: why, were you looking for a good one? I have an Creative labs card, love every second of it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monomer Posted June 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2008 I've decided to put the system together myself (although *I* won't actually be putting it together - just picking out the components). Anyway, I've got a question about raid. It was suggested that I get two hard drives and arrange them in a raid 0 array. So I read about raid and it sounds kinda complicated and risky. My question is should I bother with raid, should I partition my hard drive instead or should I just get a nice big hard drive and lots of ram. I've decided on a quad core processor so will I have a nice fast system that can handle photoshop without the need for raid? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted June 25, 2008 Report Share Posted June 25, 2008 depends on what you are trying to accomplish: deal is that raid needs to be done right, first of all you need a raid card, and not the one built into your mobo, because that is not a true raid card, i mean a pci-ex raid card, they are a bit on the expensive side. That's when raid gets performance, or reliability boost.It's not complicated to set up, you would go into raid card firmware and create a raided drive, at that point your computer will see one drive, instead of 2 hard drives, what level you use depends on what you try to accomplish: (i swear i have written about this before)RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but it can be more then just that raid 0 - data is written across the disks in stripes, alowing for 2 simultaneous write operations to both disks. This greatly increases the speed, but as i said, really noticeable with a real hardware controllerraid 1 - what is written to one drive, is written to the other, this decreases your total space to one drive, but it provides redundancy, if one drive fails, the data is still on the other oneraid 5 - need at least 3 drives for this, but this allows for one drive to fail, the data exists on the other ones still (you can opt to have a hot spare here too)raid 10 - need at least 4 drives, combination of 2 raid 1 arrays in raid 0, providing both speed of raid 0, and redundancy of raid 1 (you loose 2 drives in translation) those are your most basic and commonly used ones, though you wont generally see 5 or 10 on machines, i can't say that i haven't.... raid is not really a need, it more of a, what you wanna do, thing :eek_big: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monomer Posted June 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2008 depends on what you are trying to accomplish: It's recommended for photoshop. Apparently it helps to have a scratch disk because it makes the process faster, and apparently photoshop likes to have a scratch disk available. So there are a lot of recommendations for a raid setup. raid is not really a need, it more of a, what you wanna do, thing :eek_big: Yeah, I don't think I really wanna do it. I think I'll take my chances with the quad core, a big hard disk and lots of ram. Thanks for your help alexander. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted June 26, 2008 Report Share Posted June 26, 2008 You dont want a big hard disk, you want a fast one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted June 26, 2008 Report Share Posted June 26, 2008 idea, get a pci-ex ram drive for the OS and get a sas or scsi 15k rpm drive, or multiple drives for the system, expensive, yes, fast, you've got no clue, install Photoshop on the ram drive, for speed of loading, etc, store files on the HDs and you're golden :thumbs_do Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeztar Posted June 26, 2008 Report Share Posted June 26, 2008 You dont want a big hard disk, you want a fast one! It's not about having a big hard disk, it's how you use it that's important. :thumbs_do (sorry, I couldn't help myself...the setup was too good to let pass) alexander 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexander Posted June 26, 2008 Report Share Posted June 26, 2008 :thumbs_doROFLCOPTERS:( i rarely give rep points, but that one is well-deserved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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