A few build Q's (yet again)

Deadwing · 03-08-2004 12:17pm #1

Okay, so first off im sorry for adding yet another "Help me build my pctm" threads, but i just had a couple of questions, nothing too taxing im sure

So first off im building this bad boy primarily for gaming, so im going down the 64bit route. 64bit mobo, cpu etc etc. I was thinking this mobo, with one of these cpus. Any opinions on these?

My main question tho is concerning SATA HDD's. Obviously i want this thing to be as fast as possible, and after reading a few reviews about raid, figured raid is really only necessary for fault tolerance and performance boost isnt really all that much in the gaming aspect of things. So i was wondering if anyone could tell me anything about SATA? You can use an sata hdd without having to put it in a raid array, yes? Are they much faster than standard ide drives?
Any help appreciated, thanks

Woden · 03-08-2004 12:21pm

you can use s-ata drives with out putting them in raid alright but they aren't any faster than a standard ide drive. they do have use thinner cables which may help your air flow through the case.

the one thing s-ata does have going for it though is that you can get western digital raptors which run at 10000rpm and are like lower end scsi drives

data

Deadwing · 03-08-2004 12:44pm

Thanks data, i also noticed sata drives seem to be cheaper than ide drives, as you can get 120gb sata drives like this one for 90 quid. its only 7200rpm but even thats good enough.

Woden · 03-08-2004 12:48pm

typically the s-ata version is a bit dearer than the ide version, for example the equivalent ide version of that WD 120gb jobbie is about 10euro cheaper

most drives are 7200rpm though so thats cool

the raptors are nice but quick expensive

data

MiCr0 · 03-08-2004 1:26pm

can you mix and match ide and s-ata?
i've got 2 ide hard drives and would like to add more - and my mobo supports s-ata

Woden · 03-08-2004 1:30pm

yeah you can mix and match no bother though i don't know if you can raid a mixed ide and sata set up

i doubt you can for some reason

Redrocket · 03-08-2004 2:42pm

you should be able to put any hard drives in sata or ide with no problems, its when youre raiding them that they need to be matched

BloodBath · 03-08-2004 3:23pm

My main question tho is concerning SATA HDD's. Obviously i want this thing to be as fast as possible, and after reading a few reviews about raid, figured raid is really only necessary for fault tolerance and performance boost isnt really all that much in the gaming aspect of things.

That's not really true. It will half your loading times which is pretty significant for some games which might normally take a minute or so to load.

BloodBath

A few build Q's (yet again)

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