New PC Advice

[R360]

Following on from the graphics card I recently purchased, only to find out it would not run in my current PC I decided I would get a new PC. I was initially looking at the Dell XPS 8100 and then noticed that the Vostro 430 is on special offer, is the below spec any good for the price?

Price is £444 (you need to add a code to get it to this price)

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.as...

Catalog Number:	202 D034303
Description	Show Details
Base	Vostro Desktop 430
Microsoft Operating System	English Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64 BIT)
Memory	6144MB (3x2048) 1333MHz DDR3 Single Channel
Keyboard	UK/Irish (QWERTY) Dell Standard Quietkey USB Keyboard Black
Monitor	Display Not Included
Video Card	Graphics: 512MB ATI RadeonTM HD 4350 (DVI, VGA,HDMI)
Hard Drive	500GB (2x250GB) 3.5inch Serial ATA No Raid (7200RPM) Hard Drive
Floppy Drives and Additional Storage Devices	No Floppy Drive
Mouse	Dell 2 Button USB Optical Mouse
Modem	No Modem
Optical Devices	16X DVD+/- RW Optical Drive for Win 7
Speakers	No Speakers
Power Cords	2 Meter Power Cord - UK
Documentation/Disks	English - Documentation Vostro Desktop
Bundle	D034303
Standard Warranty	1 Year Collect and Return
Enhanced Service Packs	1Yr Collect & Return Warranty - No Upgrade Selected
Order Information	Vostro Desktop 430 Order - UK
Processor	Intel® Core™ i7-860 (2.80GHz, 8MB)
Dell System Media Kit	Vostro 430 Resource DVD - (Diagnostics & Drivers)
Microsoft Application Software	Microsoft® Works 9.0 - English
Protect your new PC	English Trend Micro™ Internet Security (30 Day subscription) AntiVirus Software

How does/ what is Raid 0 & Raid 1? I can have the hard drives configured in either raid 0 or 1 at no additional cost?

[Mr_Yogi]

Can I ask why you wanted to upgrade the graphics card in your old PC, What will you be using the PC for?

The main thing that concerns me about that system is the unbalanced memory, resulting in single channel operation. This will kill multi-threaded performance of the i7 which is capable of running 8 threads at the same time. I assume however adding a further 2GB (1x2GB DIMM) should bring it back into balance and thus dual channel mode.

RAID is a way of joining to or more hard disks, RAID 1 is mirroring, so if you have 2 500GB hard disks as far as you are concerned you only have 500MB of hard disk space but everything is written to both hard disks, so if one goes down all your data is still preserved on the other. RAID 0 is stripped (also known as suicide RAID) as the two 500GB drives are laced together as a large 1TB array. This increases performance as the data is writen between the two drives. However the chances of loosing your data are doubled over just using a single drive.

Edited by Mr_Yogi on Monday 8th March 12:09

[130R]

Mr_Yogi said:

The main thing that concerns me about that system is the unbalanced memory, resulting in single channel operation. This will kill multi-threaded performance of the i7 which is capable of running 8 threads at the same time. I assume however adding a further 2GB (1x2GB DIMM) should bring it back into balance and thus dual channel mode.

Do you mean unbalanced because it is 3x2GB? Most systems seem to go with this configuration including the top end ones so I can't believe it is an issue? With 12GB it tends to be 6x2GB.

edit: I just noticed it says single channel RAM, I see the problem now

Edited by 130R on Monday 8th March 12:29

[R360]

Mr_Yogi said:

Can I ask why you wanted to upgrade the graphics card in your old PC, What will you be using the PC for?

The main thing that concerns me about that system is the unbalanced memory, resulting in single channel operation. This will kill multi-threaded performance of the i7 which is capable of running 8 threads at the same time. I assume however adding a further 2GB (1x2GB DIMM) should bring it back into balance and thus dual channel mode.

RAID is a way of joining to or more hard disks, RAID 1 is mirroring, so if you have 2 500GB hard disks as far as you are concerned you only have 500MB of hard disk space but everything is written to both hard disks, so if one goes down all your data is still preserved on the other. RAID 0 is stripped (also known as suicide RAID) as the two 500GB drives are laced together as a large 1TB array. This increases performance as the data is writen between the two drives. However the chances of loosing your data are doubled over just using a single drive.

Edited by Mr_Yogi on Monday 8th March 12:09

The graphics card in the old PC is playing up, the fan on the card is very noisy so i had to unplug it. Now the PC keeps crashing, probably something to do with the fan on the graphics card. I purchased a new graphics card but found out i could not use it due to the PSU in current PC not being powerful enough.
The current pc is quite old so thought i would get a new one, i recently got a new monitor which has a HD input and want to make use of that, especially for when watching dvd's on the PC.

[Jinx]

R360 said:

The graphics card in the old PC is playing up, the fan on the card is very noisy so i had to unplug it. Now the PC keeps crashing, probably something to do with the fan on the graphics card. I purchased a new graphics card but found out i could not use it due to the PSU in current PC not being powerful enough.
The current pc is quite old so thought i would get a new one, i recently got a new monitor which has a HD input and want to make use of that, especially for when watching dvd's on the PC.

The HD 4350 whilst capable for Blu ray isn't the best of cards and would be a shame to have it in a new machine. Swapping this for the new gen HD 5450 or (even better) a HD 5570 would make more sense - for very little power drain difference.
What's the spec of the old machine as I have a HD3450 gathering dust which should work in it?

[arcturus]

3 x 2GB is fine. The i7 processor can use the new triple channel memory architecture so you would expect to see memory sticks in multiples of 3.

However some tests have shown triple channel to be slower than dual channel.

Edited by arcturus on Monday 8th March 13:17

[R360]

Jinx said:

R360 said:

The graphics card in the old PC is playing up, the fan on the card is very noisy so i had to unplug it. Now the PC keeps crashing, probably something to do with the fan on the graphics card. I purchased a new graphics card but found out i could not use it due to the PSU in current PC not being powerful enough.
The current pc is quite old so thought i would get a new one, i recently got a new monitor which has a HD input and want to make use of that, especially for when watching dvd's on the PC.

The HD 4350 whilst capable for Blu ray isn't the best of cards and would be a shame to have it in a new machine. Swapping this for the new gen HD 5450 or (even better) a HD 5570 would make more sense - for very little power drain difference.
What's the spec of the old machine as I have a HD3450 gathering dust which should work in it?

My old machine is a Dell Vostro 200, Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz, 2 GB Ram. The power Supply is a standard 200watt PSU which i think is the biggest problem.

[annodomini2]

Note that price is plus VAT.

ETA: The 860 and 870 versions of the Core I7 use the 1156 socket. So you can't upgrade to the bigger processors.

And are limited to dual channel ram, there's no option for 6Gb on the list.

Edited by annodomini2 on Monday 8th March 14:08

[Jinx]

R360 said:

My old machine is a Dell Vostro 200, Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz, 2 GB Ram. The power Supply is a standard 200watt PSU which i think is the biggest problem.

The HD 3450 should work fine in that system - the following says the entire test system with an HD3450 was below 145 Watts http://www.legitreviews.com/article/652/13/
Drop me a PM and I'll drop it in the post.

[Mr_Yogi]

arcturus said:

3 x 2GB is fine. The i7 processor can use the new triple channel memory architecture so you would expect to see memory sticks in multiples of 3.

However some tests have shown triple channel to be slower than dual channel.

No it is not Tripple Channel, it is Dual Channel (i7 9xx are tripple Channel), and because it's not running two identical DIMMs or two pairs of identical DIMMs (i.e. each channel does not have exactly the same memory configuration) it is running in single channel.

For Example, 6GB is fine for the i7 9xx chips as that could be: 3x2GB DIMMs, so each of the three channels gets an identical DIMM.
However 6GB for the i7 8xx chips (which only have Dual Channel memory controllers) made up of 3x2GB DIMMs would mean one channel having 1x2GB DIMM and the other having 2x2GB DIMMs. Thus the configs are not identical and the controller cannot work in dual channel mode, cutting the bandwidth to half of what it should be (or 1/3rd of what is avaliable for the i7 9xx assuming same speed DDR3)

As a note it is possible to have 6GB in Dual Channel mode by putting a 1GB and a 2GB DIMM in each channel.

Edited by Mr_Yogi on Monday 8th March 14:32