Description

Full Album: http://imgur.com/a/Mj5Xx

This build is mainly for my GIS work which is very process and memory heavy. I work with a lot of rasters that require time to generate and processing power. Above all, it requires a quite a bit of RAM. When I'm not utilizing all my RAM, I make a RAMDISK and work off of that (16GB) so my GIS operations are carried out in a flash.

I also have the operating system installed on the two SSDs running a RAID0 configuration.

Comments

  • 84 months ago
  • 3 points

Honestly, for what you want, rolling with a 7970 would've been great. They've got tremendous GPGPU compute capabilities as far as I know.

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

I was thinking about that, but honestly, it would have been overkill. That's why I got the higher end 7800 series. GIS is not really GPU intensive, but I do play a few games here and there so the 7870 handles that without issue. I plan to crossfire this in the near future. As soon as the cards dip below 200 bucks, I'll pull the trigger on it.

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

I'd have just gone with the 7850. You can already get them below $200 for dual-fan configs, and they can be overclocked to, and run as good if not better than the 7870s. That's the ONLY reason I bought one over a 7870 and I didn't regret it a bit... so I bought a second.

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Yeah, that was definitely an option. I got the top of the line in the series because I figured at a future date I could overclock it to run more or less like a 7950. And if I have two of them, it'll be even sweeter!

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

More power to ya!

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  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

Some people have told me that putting SSD's in RAID0 make them slightly slower, but the speeds are almost the same. Unless you have a raid controller. If you're going for double the speed, you might as well go for a bigger SSD size, since it offers less price per gigabyte.

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

Typically RAID0 is all around faster, though speeds of SSD's tends to improve upon the size of the SSD within the same model.

One example I can see an improved performance in a RAID0 SSD setup is in the loadscreen in the game League of Legends. My SSD the Samsung 830 128GB drive is fairly fast but compared to a RAID0 of my same drive its nearly half the speed. The Raid0 nearly doubles the speed performance but there are drawbacks to a RAID setup which should be noted and its recommended because of these drawbacks that there should be a frequent backup of the drives.

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Great point. My RAID drive (programs and appdata) get backed up every Monday to a mechanical drive. My music, pictures, videos, etc. (basically, anything in the My Documents/User folder) is linked to mechanical drives as well. So, I have a folder with all of my 120GB of Music and podcasts on a mechanical drive that I linked to the default "Music" folder in windows. This way, things like iTunes doesn't get confused and make duplicate directories. So far, so good. Hopefully this RAID0 doesn't fail! figures crossed

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Well, I have them on the Intel Raid controller. The first time around when I did it, there were some issues. I would get disk errors every day or so. But then I reformatted both drives, reinstalled the firmware on the controller and disks and now it works like a beauty!

Here are some benchmarks: RAID0 Drive: http://i.imgur.com/ORz8S.png

OCZ Agility 4 (Single drive configuration): http://i.imgur.com/2s6jR.png

RAMDISK (made one with my remaining RAM to act as a scratch space): http://i.imgur.com/8wDXV.png

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  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

Great build I really enjoyed looking through your pictures, thank you for sharing them. You did a wonderful job with your cables! ~ IamApropos

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Thanks, man! Appreciate the kind words! Really happy with this build!

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  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

How does the Silver look on the case? Like is it shiny or is it gunmetal grey?

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

It's brilliant. Well, I love it. It's gunmetal grey. Kind of like a matte finish. Very slick. Great case, lots of space.

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

Thanks, I'm now looking into this one since the White one is taking to long and the store doesn't know when it will come.

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Yeah, the white one is nice but it doesn't really suit my decor. Don't worry, you're going to love this!

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

Alright I just got the white one! :D I have a question how did you hide the pass through cable for the 3.0 USB? It would be helpful to know. I have some ideas but I want one that would make my case look clean without buying an adapter? BTW thanks for all your help so far! :D

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Ah, nice! You're going to love it. Okay, so what I did for the USB3 is route it just above the first PCI Express slot. Refer to this picture: http://i.imgur.com/QFIM5.jpg

The window was dusty so that's why it looks grainy as ****.

Anyway, it sits pretty flush with the PCIE slot and you can't really see it unless you're actually looking for it. Another possible way is to route it through the side panel, bring it back into the case from the top where you route the 8 pin CPU power cable. You can route that further down along the motherboard (above the input/output slots and bring it outside through the expansion slot opening.

Continue this thread
  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Great workmanship .. looks sweet and I'll bet it runs well. What GIS package do you use?

  • 84 months ago
  • 1 point

Thanks! I use ArcGIS. I use a lot of the Spatial Analyst extension for raster building/generation. I also do a lot of geoprocessing scripts. This machine helps out tremendously.

  • 84 months ago
  • 2 points

I am familiar with the ESRI stuff. I have no doubt it works well on your box. Enjoy.

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