The Perpetual Upgrade Thread

[Anti-Trend]

Yeah, I'd sniff around on the motherboard for bad caps, that could be a possible culprit. Also, it's probably worth weighing the rails on the PSU also to make sure it's delivering. Not that you wouldn't have taken these factors into account, but I sometimes overlook the obvious things when I'm dealing with my own hardware.

[pelvis_3]

I'll finally be taking the plunge into the PCIe market soon.
Just waiting for a little cash to stroll my way and i'll get myself
a new AM2 CPU and a nice DX10 Video Card.

[Big B]

Originally Posted by Anti-Trend

Yeah, I'd sniff around on the motherboard for bad caps, that could be a possible culprit. Also, it's probably worth weighing the rails on the PSU also to make sure it's delivering. Not that you wouldn't have taken these factors into account, but I sometimes overlook the obvious things when I'm dealing with my own hardware.

I did do voltage measurements. The 12V is reading 11.9 from a multimeter, and the caps look alright. Not to say they might not be the problem, but I dont' see any bulging units. I don't think I've ever had this system up and running for long periods of time, so that may be why I really didn't notice this stuff.

[Big B]

Well, I'm gonna pop Win2k on it and see if it's an OS problem or a motherboard problem. Literally every time, I can install the OS and there's no problems. Once I shut the system down and power back on, so much for getting back into the OS. The PSU wasn't the problem, so it's either the motherboard or the OS.

[megamaced]

Not got many plans to upgrade in the near future, except a small RAM upgrade on my eMachines box.

When the time comes to upgrade, i'll probably start from scratch and build an entirely new computer. After all, a major upgrade to an eMachines is just silly

Other then that, I can't upgrade my second computer because it's already maxed out! It was the first computer I ever built, so I made sure I fitted the best hardware that would work with the motherboard (an old ECS P6BAT-A+). It's currenty got the fastest coppermine made (1.0GHz), 384MB of SDRAM and a Geforce2 Ultra 64MB. And that's as far as it can go

[Karanislove]

Originally Posted by Mega

Not got many plans to upgrade in the near future, except a small RAM upgrade on my eMachines box.

When the time comes to upgrade, i'll probably start from scratch and build an entirely new computer. After all, a major upgrade to an eMachines is just silly

Exactly the same thought from my side as well. I have bought a 256MB of RAM recently and dont want a major upgrade for my machine. I wants to start from scratch as well. Its just money who is holding my hand otherwise I would have that new rig in my home with me.

[Anti-Trend]

Just splurged on too much new hardware, so I thought I'd share the experience...

The software RAID-1 on my primary fileserver was a paltry 120gb -- that's for my whole network as well as guest and remote users, around 30 users in all. To replace it, I bought three ~300gb Seagate SATA II drives, a Promise SATA300 TX4 PCI controller, and also beefed up the PSU to an Enermax 535watt FMA dual-12v.

CentOS 4.3 picked up the controller immediately and with no interaction on my part. I used the mdadm tool to build a software RAID-5 out of my 3 new SATA HDDs, formatted the new multi-disc array as an ext3* with the mkfs command, and mounted it to a temporary location. Since the array it was replacing was mounted at /home, I am currently in the process of copying the contents of /home to the new array, and once complete, I'll unmount the old volume and mount the new volume at /home instead. To the users and the OS itself, nothing's changed except that the /home volume is suddenly much larger and faster. Perhaps the coolest part of the whole process is the fact that the RAID-5 is still in the process of building, and yet the data is flying from the old RAID volume to the new at substantial speeds. Despite all this, the server still feel incredibly fast and responsive on the network. Sweet.

Oh, and it seems my Gigafast 10/100 switch died for some reason during my recent relocation. I replaced it with a Netgear GS108, which is an 8-port 10/100/1000 switch constructed of steel. Nice switch, I'd recommend it.

* Ordinarily I probably would have chosen XFS for my RAID, but CentOS/RHEL supports only ext3 natively. Since ext3 is arguably the most indestructible filesystem in existance right now, I can live with that I suppose.

[Big B]

Nice. That Enermax has good rails. I tested mine with a multimeter, and the 12V reads 12.24. That's a nice RAID array too.

[Anti-Trend]

Originally Posted by Big B

...That's a nice RAID array too.

Thanks, if I would have had the cash to throw down I would have gone with a hardware RAID ala 3ware, but the server's hardware is decent enough that a software RAID won't hurt performance too badly.

[max12590]

No SCSI 15K RPM drives? Haha, 900 GB of those would cost a fortune. It would be fun, though.

Well, I want to upgrade, as always, but my current rig runs BF2 maxed out except AA is at 4X instead of 6X. Since BF2 is all I play I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. I think I will get a new rig when DX10 cards are out and AMD has shown their response to Conroe.

[Anti-Trend]

Originally Posted by max12590

No SCSI 15K RPM drives? Haha, 900 GB of those would cost a fortune. It would be fun, though.

Yeah, if you want to buy them, I'll be glad to put them in my server.

Off Topic:

In truthfullness though, my server performs better than the ones at my work, so I guess I have no room to complain. Their hardware is higher-end, but mine runs Linux. Ironic, no? Free software performs much better. Less job security that way though, since you don't have to fix it every day.

[mut]

Well here's my setup, expecting the parts soon.

Intel Pentium D 805 (2.66MHz - looking to OC this baby to 3.XXGHz)
1024MB DDR2 RAM at 667MHz
ASUS P5LD Deluxe
XFX 6600GT (saving myself some cash for the DX10 cards)
Caviar SE 250Gb
Thermaltake Soprano (Black)

[Exfoliate]

The Pent D's are still good, and the 805's are supposed to overclock very well, you should have no problem hitting over 3Ghz without dealing with voltages.
I love the case too.

[max12590]

Hmm, food or SCSI 15k hard drives? I think the choice is clear, 15k RAID here I come.

[Willz]

Darn this threads been a long time, i dint even know it was here lol, anyway this is what i am thinking of upgrading to.

Intel Core 2 DUO E6300
Gigabyte GA_945PL_S3 mobo
Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz
Graphics card (Unknown, either X1900XT or wait untill DX10 GEN)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB

Everything else the same as i have now, going to take some time to save, but a rig like that would be a beast!, i go with Gigabyte because from what i have seen with my current mobo, there reliable, good with overclocking seen as Gigabyte aint that much into Overclocking.