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In the Forums... |
Posted: July 29, 2000 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen The Motherboard [ Tyan Thunder 2400 (S2257) Motherboard: $ 624.00 ] (cont.) Future Trend DDR RAM boards from various manufacturers will soon arrive. That will give you one extra reason to go AMD when the time comes. But, when the time comes, we’ll upgrade *gasp* this system to a dual Slot A Thunderbird setup running on DDR memory. I can feel the power surging through me. But for now, having gig-loads of RAM and dual 1GHz Pentium III’s will just have to do. The RAM [ Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) 64x64 PC133 Micron SDRAM DIMM: $ 1,112.00 ]  1GB of RAM. What else is up our sleeves? Why do we need so much? This is a personal preference but I think 1GB of RAM is good. I find my own computer (256MB) swapping after a while of Photoshop and intense graphic use. Even 512MB takes a hit with constant application use. You want to be sure that hard drive swapping will be kept minimal. Swapping means performance degradation, which is not something the ultimate computer likes to do. Why not just throw in a full 4GB of RAM? Well, as noted above, DDR RAM is coming forward and throwing all the money onto RAM will surely be a waste. We want to be able to use everything in the system effectively. So, we’re using two sticks, each one being 512MB 133MHz SDRAM. Alternative Solution: 512MB RDRAM (which costs just as much as 1GB of the RAM we’re using). Why didn’t we use RDRAM? First of all, the obvious reason is that our motherboard doesn’t support RDRAM. If you’re looking for RDRAM support, opt for the Intel OR840 motherboard. But, it’s missing some features that the Thunder has. And besides, not much improvement has been noticed when comparing SDRAM to RDRAM. RDRAM has a lot of multi-threading capabilities though, which will enable you to do many simultaneous tasks. We have just finished setting up the brains of our computer. Next: storage subsystem. The Hard Drive Controller [ Adaptec DPT Century Ultra160 RAID SCSI: $ 869.00 ] Adaptec makes the best SCSI cards. Period. Since we are going with a separate SCSI host adapter, we can choose the Thunder 2400 model that does not integrate Ultra2 LVD SCSI. But if for some outrageous reason you feel the need to still keep the onboard SCSI, feel free. - Upgradeable up to 128MB ECC cache - Fully I2O compliant - Up to 160MB/s data transfer rate - Controls SCSI-1, SCSI-2 and SCSI-3 devices - Controls Ultra160, Ultra2, Ultra, and Fast SCSI devices - Controls up to 15 SCSI devices per channel - Low Voltage Differential (LVD) technology for up to 12 meter SCSI cable length - Integrated hardware RAID 0, 1, and 5 - 2 DIMM sockets support up to 128MB of controller cache memory (DPT or industry-standard 144-pin ECC SDRAM SO-DIMMs) - PCI 2.2 compliant - Intel i960 RN I/O processor for ultra-low host CPU utilization - Dedicated SCSI RISC processor for maximum SCSI performance - Audible disk drive failure alarm - Very high-density (VHDCI) external SCSI connector allows 4 external SCSI channels from 1 slot - Flash-upgradeable firmware and BIOS - Supports SAF-TE and SES for storage cabinet status monitoring - On-line Capacity Expansion permits drives to be added on-the-fly to existing arrays |
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