Last Change: 04/Nov/2010 Whoami: Ian Mapleson http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/ My video P55/i7 PC Specs (initially built May 2010, referred as the 'VPC'): Coolermaster Centurion Plus 534 case, Thermaltake Toughpower 750W PSU Scythe SFF21F intake and exhaust fans (1600rpm) Asrock P55 Deluxe mbd (3 x PCIe) Core i7 870 CPU (new overlock pending) Thermalright U120 Extreme Rev C cooler + Scythe Kaze-Jyuni 1900rpm fan 4GB DDR3/2000 RAM (GSkill Ripjaw) + Antec Spot Cooler 2 x Gigabyte 8800GT Zalman (512MB) SLI LSI SAS3442E-R PCI Express SAS/SATA RAID card (4 int. + 4 ext. SAS/SATA ports) System disk: 2 x Seagate ST3450857SS 450GB 15000rpm SAS in RAID0 System backup: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 HDS103SJ SATA2, cloning via XXClone Data Internal: 4 x 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 SATA2 HDS103SJ (video archive) Data External: LG 22X DVDRW IDE ******************************************************************** CHANGELOG: 04/Nov/2010: I've built the separate gaming PC (GPC), though during construction I decided the Antec would be the better case for the gaming system due to the heat output from the gfx (better cooling than the Centurion). Here's the GPC: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/mysystemsummary4.txt I've not changed the graphics yet in the VPC. Will do that later, replace with something simple like a Quadro FX1500 or something. 25/Oct/2010: I've decided to split my PC usage across two different builds, one for video encoding, another for gaming. The current config is setup for both, which is rather wasteful of resources/power when it's only being used for one of these tasks at a time. Thus, I'm building a 2nd i7 P55 system, this time with an i7 870, hoping to get 4.2GHz. The gaming system will just have a simple 2-disk RAID0 stripe for the system drive (perhaps an SSD in the future) with good gaming gfx (dual GTX 460), while the video encoding system will have lots of drives but with simple gfx for lower power usage (probably an FX1500 I already have). The parts have all been delivered, just need to find some spare moments to build the 2nd system and move everything around (same mbd as before, but using an Antec 300 case since the Centurion 534 is no longer available). I'll also move the PSUs around - the Thermaltake 750W will be in the video system, while the gaming system will have a Thermaltake 1kW. Same CPU cooler. Will split the DDR3/2K RAM; 4GB GSkill remains in the gaming rig, 4GB Kingston moved to the video system. However, both systems will have a PCIe LSI SAS RAID card and use 2 x SAS RAID0 for the system partition. 10/Oct/2010: Still fiddling with a new storage setup using two 450GB 15K SAS as a system drive (LSI SAS 3041E PCIe RAID card) and adding three more 1TB Samsungs. Not yet finished. Also want to do some benchmarking with two Quadro FX 5500 1GB cards in SLI before upgrading to 2 x GTX 460 1GB. Lack of time the proverbial pain... An SSD for the system disk would be great, but I also needs lots of space, so two fast SAS drives in RAID0 is a good compromise. Not yet run benchmarks, but I expect some decent results. Already tops the sequential I/O table on my disk benchmarks page: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/diskdata.html though I've not yet run the access time test on the SAS drives. ********************************************************************