$500 upgrade

[phecksel]

I am at the point of reloading XP, after a poor {emergency} MB replacement. My faultless ABIT system, assembled four years ago, had a mechanical failure. I needed to immediately get the system operational again and in the process XP "helped" me to the point that I'm operational, but desperately need to reload the system.

Since the system is four years old, thinking it may be better to start anew.

Here's what i have, and if specific part numbers are needed, please advise.

Case
Antec Quiet Tower, think there's room for 5 internal drives, 350W power supply
P4 2.8G Northwood(?) processor
MB Don't recall the mfg, but supports the P4 chip
Onboard Video
(2) 500M DDR2 chip sets, speed unknown (also have (2)500M DDR 533 sticks)
Onboard sound
Two DVD R/W, 1 with lightscribe
2 Segate 120G SATA
1 WD 80G SATA {not installed}
1 WD 400G SATA {not installed}
1 750G External USB Seagate {on autobackup}
1 3.5" floppy
XP

Primarily light usage, sytem is used to
■back up all the house computers (4)
■Light MS Office work
■Some surfing
■Photoshop and other picture work
■File and picture storage
■Occassional video work
■No gaming

Now comes the fun, I've colored the existing parts according to what I believe can be saved

Mother BoardI like the Abit IP35 Pro, but a local store (who sells ABIT), says they have had quality problems lately, which is not consistent with online reviews. They recommended a similar Gigabyte system instead.

Processor
They recommended either the Dou 6750, or similar speed AMD, {for cost save and with obvious board change}

Memory
Can I mix stick sizes, ie pick up a single 1G to go with the (2) 500M sticks, or should I just get (2) 1G sticks?

Video Card
Photographs have gone from being a hobby, to a self supporting hobby. As such, I've managed to accumulate almost 20k photos in one year. For most of my photoshop (or other similar programs) work, system is barely adequate. Video creation is painfully slow. Monitor is calibrated 17" view sonic, which may get upgraded later next year.

Sound
Onboard is sufficient

Drives
My thought is to take the two 120G drives and use them in a Raid 0 environment for programs and system only. Use the 400G for file and photo storage, which will only buy me another year or so. Use the 750G external to backup system and 400G drives. Seriously considering a separate file server unit that will handle storage only. Depending on how far this photography hobby goes, need to consider storage implications.

Case and power supply
Especially considering the number of drives and system requirements, do I need an upgraded Power Supply? Case still ok? It has plenty of physical capacity.

Like to keep the upgrade budget under $500, but would like several more years of use.

 

[rgeist554]

Go for the Gigabyte board if they think Abit if having quality issues. Gigabyte makes a great board and I doubt you will be let down by it.

CPU: Go with the 6750 if you can afford it. If not the E2180 or 2200 should be sufficient for your needs. An AMD alternative would be the 6000 or 6400+.

Memory: You can mix sizes if you don't run in dual-channel. I'd say a matched pair in dual-channel mode would work better for you though.

Video Card: On-board video probably isn't going to effect your video processing unless that's the way you're transferring video's to and from your computer. Really, encoding etc. would be effected more by a faster CPU, RAM, and HDD.

Sound: ...

Drives: Sounds like a good setup. I got a little scared when I saw RAID 0 and you said earlier that you edited photos, but I kept reading and you've got it all figured out.

Case and Power: I think you can run on a 350~400W PSU as long as you don't buy a power hungry graphics card.

 

[gannina]

Yellow and green text on a light background in no thx.

 

[mtyermom]

If you don't mind a slight overclock, the E21x0 series would provide the best value. The E6750 will be the best stock performer at a reasonable price.

 

[phecksel]

Thank you for well thought out replies.
I checked the readability of the colored text before posting, and in preview, it was on a gray background, so sorry for making it tough reading

Also forgot, I have a 160G drive, not quite sure how to use that in my mix, LOL
Video processing is pure CPU work. Too cheap to buy an expensive graphics card, LOL. Glad to hear the PS should be sufficient.

Even tho it's not in my plan, why would Raid 0 be bad with photo editing?

 

[rgeist554]

Raid 0 is fine for your OS and Apps - I didn't read all the way at first and though you were using it for storage, which would have been very bad... lol. Since if one disk fails, you lose the other as well.

 

[phecksel]

then I don't understand Raid 0. If 1 drive fails, it takes the 2nd drive our with it too? I was doing a manual psuedo raid system using the seagate disk clone software, problem was, it happened when i remembered or felt like it. What i like about the 750G drive, the backup runs constantly in the background.

How I got into this mess, when the MB failed I accidently put the "cloned" drive in as primary drive. XP was kind enough to help me and changed the drive volume. Now the system doesn't start unless I sprinkle the right herbs over the top at precisely the right moment. Four years without a system reload is a bit much...so one thing led to another!

 

[rgeist554]

The 2nd drive doesn't "fail" per-se, but it's useless w/o the first drive. Raid 0 writes between the two drives. This is how it achieves higher seek and write times.

This is just a basic example of RAID 0 would:

Data Packet: 1234 5678
Now RAID 1 will write the data over 2 disks...

Disk 1: 1 Disk 2: 2
Disk 1: 1,3 Disk 2: 2,4
Disk 1: 1,3,5 Disk 2: 2,4,6
Disk 1: 1,3,5,7 Disk 2: 2,4,6,8

Like I said, this is crude example of how RAID 0 would divide the data over 2 HDD. Together the disks can recreate the packet "1234 5678", but having only one or the other gives you only half the data.

RAID 1 (Mirroring) is much better for backup and redundancy since it creates a "mirrored" copy of data on both disks... if one fails, just the other as your primary drive and you've still got all your old data.

 

[phecksel]

thank you, I had Raid 0 & 1 mixed up