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Upgraded My Computer : : September 5, 2010 |
| Well, I've upgraded my computer. It was in need of some serious attention - it really hasn't been touched since the summer before my senior year of college. I removed my faulty GeForce2 MX220 video card (well, at least one of the outputs worked on that card) and replaced it with a refurbished GeForce 4 Ti4200 card. Now I can run the only game I play (Enemy Territory) at full resolution with all the graphic options turned up. Woohoo! Read on for more changes. Well, I had 3 hard drives (1x20GB and 2x60GB) in my computer and they had slowly failed - right down to the point of me having 1x60GB which was in the middle of giving up the ghost. Though if I slapped it some it would spin up and work for a couple days at best. I decided the best course of action would be to eliminate having HD problems in the future all together. I set up a new RAID Array (RAID 0+1) with 4x80GB Deskstar 7k250 from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. It didn't take long to set up the array (60 seconds max) and then I installed Windows 2000 Pro on it. The new array gives me incredible read speeds (nearly 100MB/sec) and fairly low write speeds (28MB/sec). But it also provides me with a backup so that I will not lose any data if I have a hard drive failure. I am sending the 3 old HD's back to HGST for replacement (to my surprise I discovered they were still under warranty). I will be using the two 60GB drives in a RAID 1 array on a computer at my house for storing remote backups of my webservers. In order to install 4 new hard drives I needed a 400Watt power supply. I purchased a dual-fan power supply and swapped it out for my current supply. I will be putting my current power supply in the backup-server. I also purchased a 3-fan HD cooler. I currently have 3 of the hard drives in a HD rack with a dedicated 80MM cooling fan and directly in front of them is the fourth - in between the HD rack and the 3-fan HD cooler. It keeps the drives at a comfortable level and gives me peace of mind that even if I lose a couple fans while I am away, my system will stay nice and cool. That's really it for upgrades. My system is now spec'd as follows: Custom Server Case (courtesy of Nick) 400Watt Dual-Fan PS Abit KX7-333R AthlonXP 2100+ 1GB DDR SDRAM 4x80GB HD in RAID 0+1 16X Slot-Load DVD 48x24x48 Lite-On CD-RW SB Live! Value Edition GeForce 4 Ti4200 Well, I have discovered that the Ti4200 video card is bad so that's going back. Probably I'll just end up with a refund as it looks like the place I bought it doesn't have any more of them. If so, I'm going to throw in a few bucks of my own and get a Gainward Ultra/750 Golden Sample. This is a bit better card and I have been very happy with the quality of my Gainward GF2 MX220 Golden Sample. We shall see what happens. |