Need tech advice on abit kt7a raid board

[damnlimey]

I've just been given an abit kt7a raid board along with a 800mhz athlon .
Rather than spend hours or days searching the net for advice I thought I'd throw it
out to the techs at FR first.My questions are:

Is there an appreciable speed advantage to using the raid technology and 2 drives?(stripping?)
What video card should I get?
Are there any heatsink/fan choices that work better than others?(dual fans?)
What type of memory ,I know this board supports pc133 but is it DDR compatible.

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks.

[damnlimey]

Thanks,more good solid info,posting to FR has probably saved me days of research,
soooo,one more question .You mentioned overclocking,
which way do you recommend,how difficult is it to do and how reliable has it been for you?

[tjg]

Overclocking your CPU simply means you get it to run faster than it's rated speed. I built my current set up for overclocking. I had a 300Mhz celeron and overclocked it to 500+Mghz. You accomplish this a number of ways including increasing the core voltage and or the speed of the front side bus. Overclocking is also possible on your video card.

It used to be a lot more usefull than it is now. I don't recommend it unless you want to fool around with it for entertainment sake. Or unless, like me, you are a die hard computer-hardware-geek-wannabe. If that's the case, overclocking your CPU is mandatory.

[peabers]

You mentioned overclocking, which way do you recommend,how difficult is it to do and how reliable has it been for you?

I use Asus mother boards, but the Abits also use what is called jumperless settings. You set the CPU clock and memory bus speeds through the bios. There's several newsgroups and web sites that specialise in how to do it. You can ask board specific questions, and get replies within hours. One such site is Overclockers.Com.

I've overclocked both Pentium and AMD chips, and the AMDs are by far the best performers. You can realise performance gains of 33% quite easily. I've had my T-bird 800 running at 1 GHz rock solid stable for over a year, and a 1 GHz T-bird running at 1.33 GHz for nine months.

The two biggest enemies in overclocking are heat (hence the need for a good heatsink/fan) and flakey cheap memory modules.

Finally, you'll need a good motherboard monitor. Most of the ones that come with the motherboard are inaccurate. MBM, which can be downloaded here, is probably the best. It's also free.

[RadioAstronomer]

Ultimate Gaming Machine :)

Case:
Lian PC-68 with front USB out.

Monitor:
Sony CDP-G520 21”.

Power Supply:
Enermax 468W with two cooling fans.

Motherboard:
ABIT TH7II-RAID (I850 chipset) Dual channel RD-RAM.

CPU:
Pentium-4 2.0GHz Micro PGA (socket 478). (with stock INTEL CPU cooler and fan)

RAM:
Four 512Meg RDRAM-800 memory sticks. (2Gbytes RAM).

Video Card:
Geforce3 Titanium 500.

Sound Card/System:
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinium with both optical and Firewire I/O linked to a DENON Surround sound processor (with optical in) and 5 speakers with an additional subwoofer.

USB Card:
USB 2.0 four port USB card.

SCSI Card:
160 Ultra wide 4 port SCSI card.

Hard Drive:
Two Western Digital WD-1200 7200 rpm 8Meg cache 120Gbyte hard drives. (stripe 0)

DVD:
Pioneer DVD-106S 16X DVD.

CD-RW:
Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40A.

Floppy Drive / Drive “B”:
Generic 1.44 and an LS-120 (120Mbyte floppy).

Ethernet Card:
Netgear 10/100 ethernet card.

Mouse:
Logitech optical wheel mouse.

Game Pad:
Logitech Wingman Rumble Pad.

Joystick:
Logitech Extreme Digital 3D Joystick.

Keyboard:
Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro.

[damnlimey]

Re noisy fans.

"How to Quiet Down Your Computer"
Matt Sigman - 12/6/01

---

I recently built a 1.4Ghz Athlon XP based system that I intended to overclock substantially. I purchased a Golden Gate (all copper) with a 26CFM fan. I hoped that this would provide sufficient cooling but still be relatively quiet.

When I started it up the first time, to my disappointment, it sounded like somebody was mowing their lawn in there. Not good! I tried to cover up the sound by placing the computer under the desk, to no avail. So I decided to install a simple potentiometer (also called a variable resistor or rheostat) to limit the speed (and therefore noise) of the CPU fan. It is a simple project and I am extremely pleased at the results. Here is how I did it...

First I needed to calculate what value potentiometer I need to purchase, so I used Ohm's law which states:

Ohms = Volts / Current

I knew that the fan was running at 12v and drawing about 300 milliamps, so by plugging the numbers in (12 / .3) I got 40 ohms. That is the current resistance the fan is experiencing. This now gives us a base to start with. Referring back to Ohm's law, you can see that doubling the resistance halves the current (and therefore speed) of the fan.

My fan was running at about 5700 RPMs and I thought that I should set 2500-3000 RPMs as my target speed. If we used a 50 ohm resistor for example, the highest resistance (which yields the lowest speed) would be 40 + 50 = 90 ohms of total resistance.

We can determine that the current at 90 ohms (The maximum resistance possible) would be 12 / 90 or 113mA. 113mA is only 38% (113mA / 300mA) as much current, so at that setting the fan would be spinning at about 2166 RPM (5700 * .38). And guess what? That speed is perfect because it covers the speed range I wanted but doesn't allow the fan to be completely stopped. That means my new range of adjustability is about 2100 RPM to 5700 RPM, which would allow excellent flexibility and includes my goal of 2500-3000 RPM.

I went out to my local electronics store and bought the 50 ohm linear taper potentiometer as well as a knob (to make it look more professional.)

IMPORTANT: You must purchase one rated at 3 Watts minimum.

Five watts is the best bet, to be safe. Any less and you will fry it, causing it to stop conducting current and thereby stopping your CPU fan entirely. Any potentiometer that is in the 30-70 ohm range would work well too. Don't go higher than 100 ohms though, because that won't provide accurate control and it would be very easy to cut off all power, causing your fan to stop.

There are three tabs on the potentiometer. For our purposes, we will only be using two of them. I spliced into the middle red wire (+12v) from the CPU fan and connected it to one terminal on the potentiometer. I then connected another wire from the center tab of the potentiometer into the wire leading to the motherboard. Here's a diagram to help clarify things:

Note: It doesn't matter if you choose reverse the connection, because this isn't a diode so it doesn't care which direction the current is flowing.

Now that the potentiometer has been connected, it needs a nice mounting spot. I chose to mount mine in an easily accessible spot, on the front of the case directly below the power button.

First I removed the front panel to expose the sheet metal up front. Then I drilled a 5/16" mounting hole (specified on the potentiometer packaging) into the sheet metal, making sure I wasn't going to hit anything inside the case!

Next, I put the plastic bezel back on the case and stuck a pencil through the hole and marked on the plastic bezel where I should drill a hole. I took off the panel one last time, then I drilled the hole in the appropriate spot.

Next, I inserted the potentiometer (already connected) and screwed it down. I put the plastic bezel back on, made sure everything fit properly, then I put the knob on the end of the potentiometer and screwed it on. Viola! Done at last!

Test everything out and make sure that it works properly. I installed Motherboard Monitor and set the fan alarm to go off at 1500RPM (in case something fails, I don't want to have a fried processor!)

Here is what the final product looked like:

The noise difference is incredible! There is no more high-pitched noise and it's probably only half as loud. Interestingly enough, I only noticed a slight increase in temperature. Before the modification the CPU was hovering around 38*C idle, now it's usually around 42*C. Not too bad...definitely a worthwhile trade in my book, and all for under $10.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Matt Sigman

[damnlimey]

Don't know if this is do-able or helpful with 4 fans but it might be worth a shot

[peabers]

RA,

You bragging bastard!! LOL!

[moonhawk]

Thanks for the answers...

And yes, I did take those myself. And more, which I haven't gotten around to posting yet.

Photography is not(yet) an occupation that supports me, but I'm working in that direction. (Maybe by retirement age.)

;^)

[RadioAstronomer]

Liked the machine eh! :) LOL!!!!

[tjg]

Thanks for the article. I haven't seen that one. I'm going to try this in conjuction with some high quality, panasonic panaflo fans. Might yeild very quiet results.

I noticed in researching this subject that Europeans are a lot more interested in the subject of quite computers than are americans. Swedes in particular. I'm guessing that envirmental regulations have something to do with it.

[peabers]

I've got the same CD-RW drive as you, but it's been rebadged as an Iomega. I'm having problems with it though. It shipped with Nero 5.5, and when I put a CD-RW in, it locks up. I can write and read, but when I try to eject the CD-RW it reboots Windows 2000 Pro. I have to use Nero's eject function as the button on the drive is rendered useless.

It's definitely a Nero problem, because I installed the software on another workstation with an Acer CD-RW. The eject button on the Acer is likewise rendered useless, but the software eject works.

Did you have any problems with your Plextor?

[Revolting cat!]

I concur with a poster above expressing reservations about cheap cases. But you don't have to overpay. One of the best cases is Inwin A500 which goes for less than $50.

Whenever I build a machine I go the the usual places like Anandtech.com, Tom's Hardware, motherboard.org, and then I also google on say "reviews computer cases" and other components. It's a lot of research work initially, but it really pays off. (Then of course you get to experience all those disappointments when you can't find anybody locally selling your first choice of a component.)

[RadioAstronomer]

I gave up on Nero, I now use easy CD creator. Works great! :)

[peabers]

I have always used Easy CD Creator and Direct CD with minimal fuss (there was a minor issue with Win2K that was patched). It's just that some of the pinheads in the cdrom usenet groups are always raving about Nero.

The only problem with my older version of ECDC is it probably won't support 24 x write. The new version has some major issues in Win2K.

[RadioAstronomer]

It gets real frustrating to get everything working together like it should. I personaly found Nero to be user unfriendly and I trashed it, no matter what the news groupies say. :) As far as greater than 24x, there should be drivers that fix that on the web. I will look into it and freep you with what I find out. I have not even thought of porting over to Xp yet.

[peabers]

I'm sticking with Win2K for the time being. I won't consider XP until SP1 is released.

[RadioAstronomer]

Amen to that!! :)

[peabers]

I'm sticking with Win2K for the time being. I won't consider XP until SP1 is released.

It's here

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks!!!

[damnlimey]

Thanks to all who gave advice and offered suggestions on building my new computer,
I had very few problems,all easily solved, mainly by visiting links suggested by freeper techies.
I am now up and running on my new pooter and compared to the old one it screams
(800 Athlon and a gig of ram compared to 200 pII 48 megs of ram.)
I'm a very happy Freeper,thanks again and I would strongly suggest building your own to anyone who's never tried it