intel quad spec

[GregHess]

What speed ram do I need? most motherboards say 800mhz ram, but the cpu fsb is 1066, but then you can also buy ram up to 1066mhz, is it worth buying anything faster than 800?

Divide the FSB by 2, thats the ram speed you need. (533). Anything faster then that is just for overclocking really. You can still adjust ram dividers to make use of faster ram without overclocking, but the benefit isn't very large. (Though might be more important in a quad system, not enough data).

Are there any issues with filling up all 4 ram slots like there is/was on the athlon 64 machines?

Depends on the motherboard. Most boards require you populate dimm slots in a particular order prior to reaching 4 full slots.

Is onboard raid5 any good or would i be sorely dissapointed without a seperate raid card?
Don't know, I just raid 1, which most onboard controllers are fine for.

what spec psu will I need for this? i havent checked over the power consumption recently, Ill be moving over my gf 7900gtx to this machine.

The manufacturer of the psu is more important then the actual wattage. Stick to FSP, seasonic, PC power and cooling, etc. I've spec'd EPS FSP 600 watt psu's for all the core2duo systems I've built, which are all running minor overclocks (2.4@3.0 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/2.4@3.0)). Since the core2quadro is an extreme series processor, you would best be advised to at least purchase a 500 watt EPS psu, as the extreme processors require two P4 power plugs, or 1 EPS plug.

[lots]

With RAID 5, and performance in mind, you probably would want a hardware solution.. like an actual drop in card. The only issue here is you probably want to pick up a PCIe RAID controller. If you drop in a PCI card, you may as well just use onboard, as you'll be bottle necked by the PCI bus anyway :P Though I suppose you can do the math and figure out the peak speed of your RAID 5 array, and then go from there... In most cases an actual hardware solution for RAID is best.

I havn't heard of any issues filling up all RAM slots on recent AMD and Intel platforms, so I guess its good there? Also, Intel have had a better track record in this dept...

And I highly suggest you avoid the MSI board :) Recently I've seen a whole range of products from MSI that just plain failed.. from motherboards to video cards.. I suppsoe I agree with MadMax on MSI now :P

Never heard of Akasa...

[mattmos]

Prob agree with lots and greg, msi isn't the best quality motherboard, my old one had a fair few issues - I'm kinda looking around and the best choice seems to be a 975x or 680i asus, or abit if you're on a budget.

you can get the quad cheaper (but only slightly) and full retail at www.yoyotech.co.uk (http://www.yoyotech.co.uk) - they are an ok outfit, though I normally walk in there as they're based on tottenham court road, they have prices better than or comparable to internet retail on some items.

[okmijun]

Until you go to extremly high OC, INTEL 975XBX is best mobo
No trix, no bugs, everything work just fine.
Real plug n play.

[GregHess]

I agree with okmijun. That's the board I use in every core2duo system I've built so far. Utterly rock solid.

However, I'd change the recommendation to the 2nd revision (BX2) of the board, which has recently become available.

Intel D975XBX2

Same board as the BX, but better voltage and bios tweaking.

[RPG2006]

It's a real minefield at the moment it seems, more so than with the amd setups last year. A lot of products being sold as being able to do things they can't.

I've been considering the quad core myself, and the best motherboard for this chip right now seems to be the Asus P5B deluxe. Alot of the others seems to have bios issues, with a lot of impatient users waiting for bios updates.

I have Geil ram in my current setup. Possibly the same spec you are looking at. Like other brands of ram they are configured differently in the SPD to the labels. This throws off boards like the Asus P5W DH, in which you will struggle to even get it to run spec 800mhz. I needed +.1v over the max to even get it to run default, let aknown OC.

Read this http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17612714&page=2&pp=30

I would most likely consider Gskill 6400 HZ's (The black ones).

I know I'm always posting links to this forum, but on this page alone there are 3 threads on Kentsfields. Might be of interest.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59&page=2&order=desc

Hope this helps.

RPG

ps. Don't know too much about INTEL 975XBX. Maybe worth looking into. They have a second revision Bad AXE 2 out I believe. All I know is that the P5B deluxe does seem to be the tried and tested board with the quad cores. That's what I'll be getting next anyway:)

[Srek]

Intel D975XBX2
I use both, the BX and BX2 with dual and quad core CPUs and they work fine with everything i throw at them.
Cheers
Björn

[Randybob]

I would get the maximum speed RAM the motherboard is rated for. If it's DDR2 800, go with that. If it's DDR2 667, use that. Differences are minor, however. Also, note that the fully-buffered DIMMs you see in the newest Xeons are slower than both of them so either 667 or 800 memory in a quad core will be faster than a dual Xeon. Don't worry about timings or any of that, those are strictly for overclocking. So are speeds such as DDR2 1066. If a motheboard can't use the extra speed at stock speed (and none can) then you have to overclock it to get the advertised speed.

You definitely want a seperate RAID card if you want decent RAID 5 performance. They'll cost you at least $200 extra but will be worth it as software RAID 5 is slow enough to negate much of what you would gain in terms of performance.

I would get as big a power supply as I could afford if I were you, 600 watts at least. You're starting out with a quad core processor and seven drives. You generally want your starting components to draw no more than 60% of what the PSU is rated for. This helps ensure both reliability and it gives you headroom for upgrading. Those graphics cards aren't going to be sucking up any less power any time soon. You also want a good quality brand with a good warranty.

Your case looks decent, also consider the Cooler Master Stacker or the Thermaltake Armor for more 5.25" drive bays and future upgradability.

[imashination]

You definitely want a seperate RAID card if you want decent RAID 5 performance. They'll cost you at least $200 extra but will be worth it as software RAID 5 is slow enough to negate much of what you would gain in terms of performance.

Well on the raid, the onboard raid is a hardware raid, a software raid is suicide. I dont need amazing speeds, so long as the raid 5 is as fast as a regular single harddrive then thats plenty for me.

[lots]

Funny thing those "on board" controllers. In most cases consumer based on board raid controllers are pretty crappy. Often times software RAID performs nearly as well, if not better. Granted I dont know exactly which on board RAID controller we're talking about here, but a stand alone RAID card will definately outperform most anything that you'd find on a standard consumer board (in most cases).

Thoguh I hear Intel's onboard RAID is pretty decent on most consumer boards...

[Randybob]

Well on the raid, the onboard raid is a hardware raid, a software raid is suicide. I dont need amazing speeds, so long as the raid 5 is as fast as a regular single harddrive then thats plenty for me.
I hear you, but before you make up your mind, you may want to take a look at these tests for onboard RAID controllers. The Intel BX/BX2 uses the same Southbridge chip as some of these motherboards - the ICH7R, which is tested, and in charge of RAID functionality.

http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2860&p=23

Our test scripts showed excellent read speeds from our native chipset based controllers but write speeds were sometimes up to 55% less than our HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 dedicated hardware controller we will be reviewing in the near future.

[imashination]

Excellent link thanks. From what I can see, there arent any significant differences between any of them, and that the raid 5 speed is higher than a single drive, which is all I need.

Basically I want redundancy for when a drive fails, but a straightforward raid 1 is a waste, raid 5 seems an ideal choice

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