Which Raid is Recommendable?

[_Sam]

Hi, I'm going to be building a rather high-ish spec PC shortly, I'm going all out on the price (well... To what I can afford anyway) and currently not including peripherals it is totalling about £2400.

 

My dilema is what way I should set up my HDD's. I am going to be getting 2, possible SSD's at 480GB for games and my OS. But I am unsure on which what way I should set up my 4 standard 2TB HDD's. Currently I do a lot of Visual Media Production as well as the odd bit of graphic design, so video files especially are important to me but speed is also as important. 

 

I know a little about the way Raid 0 and Raid 10 work, however I am just wondering if anyone knows any better arrays and how easy it is to set up as on the set up front I am absolutely clueless!

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated, cheers!

 

(New Build PC Specs)

 

- Corsair Obsidian Series 750D

- Asus Rampage IV Black Edition

- Intel i7-4820K

- 8x8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866Ghz

- Corsair RM1000 PSU

- EVGA SC GeForce GTX 780

- 2x Seagate 480GB SSD's

- 4x Seagate 2TB HDD's 7200RPM

 

(Specs are off the top of my head so there may be some mistakes?)

[Blade of Grass]

For your build, I would suggest against a 4820k and 64GB of RAM (unless you do this professionally and do work with 4k RAW video). The 4820k performs worse than the 4770k, meanwhile costing more, as well as 2011 boards costing more, so unless you plan on having alot of add-in cards (RAID, NICs etc), 1150 is the better option IMHO. You'll probably never use more than 32GB of RAM, so why buy 64GB?

 

Also, a 1000w PSU is unnecessary as I doubt your build will ever go above 600w (unless you add more things in), so a 750w PSU should be more than capable. If you're going to be dropping down to 1150, then I would suggest swapping to a 780TI with the saved money.

 

Now, to your questions:

Do you plan on using a hardware RAID card (as in, a separate RAID card, not the RAID card built into your motherboard)?

 

If you're using a hardware RAID card, it's pretty easy, but it depends on the card. And for motherboard RAID, you need to set the SATA Mode to RAID Mode, restart, and while hte computer POSTs. press Ctrl and i to get the menu to setup RAID, then just follow the onscreen instructions.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Hi, I'm going to be building a rather high-ish spec PC shortly, I'm going all out on the price (well... To what I can afford anyway) and currently not including peripherals it is totalling about £2400.

 

My dilema is what way I should set up my HDD's. I am going to be getting 2, possible SSD's at 480GB for games and my OS. But I am unsure on which what way I should set up my 4 standard 2TB HDD's. Currently I do a lot of Visual Media Production as well as the odd bit of graphic design, so video files especially are important to me but speed is also as important. 

 

I know a little about the way Raid 0 and Raid 10 work, however I am just wondering if anyone knows any better arrays and how easy it is to set up as on the set up front I am absolutely clueless!

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated, cheers!

 

(New Build PC Specs)

 

- Corsair Obsidian Series 750D

- Asus Rampage IV Black Edition

- Intel i7-4820K

- 8x8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866Ghz

- Corsair RM1000 PSU

- EVGA SC GeForce GTX 780

- 2x Seagate 480GB SSD's

- 4x Seagate 2TB HDD's 7200RPM

 

(Specs are off the top of my head so there may be some mistakes?)

What were you planning to use as the software?

 

If it is ZFS on Linux or FreeNAS then your configuration is actually very good except for the GPU (why a GPU in a NAS?). Otherwise you're probably okay with 8GB of memory and a dual-core processor.

 

For RAID I usually recommend RAID 1 or RAID 10 unless you need a lot of storage space (more than 4 drives), in which case RAID 6 is the best way to go. How much redundancy do you want?

[Unclescar]

Hi, I'm going to be building a rather high-ish spec PC shortly, I'm going all out on the price (well... To what I can afford anyway) and currently not including peripherals it is totalling about £2400.

 

My dilema is what way I should set up my HDD's. I am going to be getting 2, possible SSD's at 480GB for games and my OS. But I am unsure on which what way I should set up my 4 standard 2TB HDD's. Currently I do a lot of Visual Media Production as well as the odd bit of graphic design, so video files especially are important to me but speed is also as important. 

 

I know a little about the way Raid 0 and Raid 10 work, however I am just wondering if anyone knows any better arrays and how easy it is to set up as on the set up front I am absolutely clueless!

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated, cheers!

 

(New Build PC Specs)

 

- Corsair Obsidian Series 750D

- Asus Rampage IV Black Edition

- Intel i7-4820K

- 8x8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866Ghz

- Corsair RM1000 PSU

- EVGA SC GeForce GTX 780

- 2x Seagate 480GB SSD's

- 4x Seagate 2TB HDD's 7200RPM

 

(Specs are off the top of my head so there may be some mistakes?)

I'll comment on more than just your RAID question..

I'd snip but I'll be putting input into most of what you said. The biggest advantage that 2011 has over 1150 sockets is the 6core processors, quad channel ram, and more PCI-e lanes. I personally am using 2011 in my new build for similar reasons and uses than you, not limited by money but limited by price/performance I can justify for my needs.

If you are going to go 2011, don't use a quad core processor, use a hectacore.

(the 4930K is the best option as its a generation newer than the 3930K, has two more cores than the 4820K, and the 4960X brings very little performance for twice the cost.)

The Rampage IV Black is a sexy as hell mobo, and is the one I use, but only because it was the only one that didn't clash with my color scheme. I would much rather have gone for a p9 x79-e WS board and put the money I saved towards a few pounds of steak and/or bacon. unless you have specific reasons for going rampage black, I'd get a simpler x79 as they all have the basic features needed without all the extra frills that most people won't ever even know how to use.

That said, if you think you want to stick to a 4core cpu, then go with z97 and 1150 socket as you can get very similar overall performance for quite a bit lower cost, though keep in mind you won't get 64gb of Quad Channel RAM on z97 since it only has 4 DIMM slots, only 32gb of Dual Channel. For me that's a big one. I use my RAM often, so I went the quad channel 64gb route.

as someone stated above, the 1000w PSU is a bit more than you'll need unless you plan on adding a second graphics card. On a related note, with the tiny difference in price, a 6gb 780 is a better option. In games you won't find yourself running into a 3gb bottleneck much, especially at 1080p, but higher resolutions textures take up more VRAM, and if you ever wanted to SLI a second card later, SLI 780 6gbs will perform better longer than the 3gb versions, even more-so as textures and resolutions get bigger.

If you ended up going z97 and 1150 quad core with dual channel, the money you save with a cheaper socket can be put towards a 780ti rather than a regular 780, and if you aren't in a hurry you could either wait for the 6gb 780ti (end of this month?) or get a stand-in card that will perform tolerably til 800 series comes out.

Anyways, to your RAID question. I'm assuming you plan on putting your SSDs in RAID 0 so they run together as one ultra quick drive. That's the best option for OS and games as it doesn't need to be heavily written to often and it reads crazy fast. It'd be silly to have two SSD in a Mirror raid..

As for HDDs, you have options.

I'd go for 1, 6, or 10. I'd avoid 0 on its own, and 6 is basically a more stable version of raid 5, 5 being better for fewer smaller drives and 6 being better for more and larger drives. each has its own benefits and drawbacks.

I recommend 10 for what you want to do.

 

RAID 0 on your data is the least reliable and very much recommended against. Sure its the fastest and you keep your total capacity, but with 4 drives you get diminishing returns on the speed anyway, and one drive failing results in all data lost unless a miracle worker can recover it for you.

RAID 1 is probably the safest as it saves your data identically across multiple devices. If one device fails, not a single bit of data has been lost, however you only get half your total capacity (4tb total vs 8tb total) as half or your total capacity is a copy of the other half. You could do two sets of RAID 1, running as two seperate 2tb drives that are fully completely backed up and available at all times.

RAID 10 is a combination of the above. You get the speed benefits of RAID 0 and the safeness of RAID 1, so rather than having two seperate 2tb drives that are fully backed up, you have one 4tb drive that is always fully backed up.

RAID 6 is similar to 10, like 0 you get a speed benefit as data is striped across the drives, but like 1 you get the safeness of being able to lose a drive or two and not lose your data.

TL;DR.

For SSDs go RAID 0 for infrequent writes but heavy reads. (OS and games)

For HDDs go RAID 10 for speed benefits and data safety combined.

[GloriousPain]

4Drives are perfect for Raid10

[_Sam]

Thanks for all that advice Unclescar... Since this post I have changed a few specs, I'm going for as you mentioned the 4930K as if I drop 32 Gigs of RAM which many people have recommended to me I will have enough to save up for it. And also I am thinking of running SLI, most likely now the 780ti's and if my budget can stretch probably the 6GB versions. Thanks again for the RAID advice and I will set it up like that when my parts arrive! Cheers!