The Great "Beat the Amber Hardware Issues to Death" Thread (split)

[Aridas]

speaking of which, two hard drives could technically be better cause of RAID-ish-ness (if anyone chooses to take that path, I don't really know a single bit about it), right?

[Cvstos]

Everyone's going around yelling at me, saying what I'm building is too high-end and too expensive, yet most of those stats are WAY beyond my initial configuration XD  *feels somewhat vindicated*  That's an awesome computer, Amber.  Have fun with it!

If she RAID 0s the two HDDs she'll have 320GB of unformatted space to play with, though I would've just gotten a 300GB or 320GB single HDD, as they aren't expensive.  Also, putting them in a RAID 0 array means that if one fails, all data on both HDDs is lost.  Now, if she's going to play it safe, she'll RAID 1 the two together.  It'll only give her 160GB of space, but if one drive fails and the other still works, she'll not lose any data.

Some nForce 5 boards allow you to eat your cake and still have it.  You need four drives, but...

-HDD1
|
0 --------------------------------
|                                      |||
-HDD2                              |||
                                       1
-HDD3                             |||
|                                      |||
0----------------------------------
|
-HDD4

In other words, you have two RAID 0 arrays set up between four drives.  One of those arrays is backing up the other array.  Expensive, but fast and with redundant safety!

[xHaZxMaTx]

Jeez, that eats my computer fro breakfast, lunch, AND dinner!

[Gornemant]

 
nice one 

[Vidar]

Does anyonw know is RAID 5 is available on desktop computers? That would be a great solution of Amber to play with. 5 320 GB harddisks, and 1280 GB of free diskspace 
(1 HD holds a parity bit for the other four, so if 1 drive fails, everything can still be restored. If 2 HD's fail at the same time, your screwed.)

That should make up for all the pr0n Amer lost.

[Cvstos]

Most nForce 5 570 and 590 support RAID 5.

[Netami]

Cool specs, you should have fun with it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Woot! Amber beatdowns all the geeks! :-)

[Gornemant]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! 
does it make coffee too? 

[Nex]

Those specs look awesome for a new computer! That puppy will last you quite a long time.

[rt]

ahh that beast is going to make amber quite happy i would say, has the cpu and ram photoshop needs, and eek an 'extreeme' video card, yeh that should play baulder's gate. Looks like with good usa prices very affordable too

@Cvstos: iirc a previous post said the raid was going to be set up for mirroring for the data safetey. One big drive is just asking to loose all your data (imo)

[Sid]

Just to add to the general "ZOMG" chorus:
I don't think I could reach that power level if I somehow fused all computers in the house together

does it make coffee too? 

It will not only make coffee, but it will also ask if she wants sugar and/or milk with it

[Gornemant]

It will not only make coffee, but it will also ask if she wants sugar and/or milk with it

D:

what about fresh cool beer? 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Only for Amber. You're out of luck, Gornepants. :-)

[Damaris]

You know what I think is interesting, it's getting to the point where you can have attachments that cool beer and cook poptarts in your computer.  I think that is very cool, although I do not personally spend enough time in front of mine to ever need it.

[Sid]

You know what I think is interesting, it's getting to the point where you can have attachments that cool beer and cook poptarts in your computer.  I think that is very cool, although I do not personally spend enough time in front of mine to ever need it.

I'd be happy if I could BUY a poptart here (to all you Germans and neighbors: am I missing something or are they really not widely available here?). But yes, the wonders of USB (and case-modders and tinkerers with FAR too much free time) have led to a bizarre variety of stuff you can hook up to the computer, from cup warmers to massage pads. And there are even USB shirts that have integrated fans to cool you. 

[Gornemant]

Sid, I doubt most people around even _know_ what a poptart is X3
aaah, the wonders of USB devices.... tea cup heater 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

 ... isn't that your average intel CPU? :-)

[Gornemant]

yes, but it's no fun if it's not USB

[Vidar]

I'd be happy if I could BUY a poptart here (to all you Germans and neighbors: am I missing something or are they really not widely available here?).

I had some poptarts about a year ago: they were dissapointing. They were ridiculously over-sweetened. The chocolate ones didn't taste all that chocolately. Weak and with a mealy mouthfeel.
Don't go out of your way to find them.

You might want to make your own http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_32305,00.html

The recipe lists only 2 fillings, but you can make all kinds of filling for these. Your only limit is your imagination, unless you are lazy.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

the USB does the blinky lights around the cup frame. :-)

[Rowne]

I have to agree with Vidar here.  I don't know whether this is true of European pop tarts only but I tried some myself not so long ago and they were distinctly meh.  The part I disliked about it though is that some of them would go as hard as a brick.  Seriously, with the way some pop tarts were overbaked, you could likely brain someone with them if you used them as throwing weapons.

As for USB devices, I'll never get tired of the ingenuity there.  I've seen some utterly amazing and crazy (and wrong) things done with USB gadgets.  I think my favourite of the lot thus far though is the fingerprint reader, nothing says "I'm a geek!" more than having your passwords handled by your thumb.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Since when is brain a verb?

Pop-Tarts are ok, but they are a little too sweet.  They came out with these Pop-Tarts sticks things that are supposed to be portable and ready-to-go...  I thought that was the whole point of regular Pop-Tarts.

Anyway, back on topic:
I havn't seen half this USB stuff you guys are talking about, where do you find it?

[Gornemant]

I think http://www.thinkgeek.com/ has quite a selection of totally useless (and therefor a must have?) geek stuff 

[Tapewolf]

Since when is brain a verb?

Since at least 1983.
2 v.t. dash out brains of, strike hard on head.
-- OED (7th edition)

[Sid]

The poptart news make me go =(
I thought that something so widespread would be tastier.

Anyway, back on topic:
I havn't seen half this USB stuff you guys are talking about, where do you find it?

Yeah, ThinkGeek has tons of stuff to show that you have no life and/or that you have a silly sense of humor (I seriously want to order stuff there sometime soon). Some of the tech/gadget news sites also show off silly stuff like that every now and then. Gizmodo for example pointed me to the USB Shirt: Clicky here

[Gornemant]

I soooo need that http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/7485/ 

but since the tanks aren't USB, here's something fun too http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/search.do?productCode=MISLAU

[Ramsey]

Bash the computer with a rock. Solves all problems.

[Nex]

By destroying it and forcing you to get a new top-of-the-line computer... in one way it solves it, but makes a whole new set of problems

[ShadesFox]

Those are some shiny specs on that computer.  Though a 500w PSU may be a bit too beefy for what is actually needed.  Oh well, never hurts to over shoot.

Still, might I recomend a RAID 1 setup?  You will only get 160gigs from those two hard disks, but you will still have all the data if one does. 

Bash the computer with a rock. Solves all problems.

If only that were true.  Unfortunately, I have a squid proxy that says otherwise.  Maybe I need to upgrade rocks.

EDIT:

Does anyonw know is RAID 5 is available on desktop computers? That would be a great solution of Amber to play with. 5 320 GB harddisks, and 1280 GB of free diskspace 
(1 HD holds a parity bit for the other four, so if 1 drive fails, everything can still be restored. If 2 HD's fail at the same time, your screwed.)

That should make up for all the pr0n Amer lost.

I've got a RAID 5 with 4 80gig disks.  Though it is a Linux file server (serving up windows shares) so I'm not sure if there is a WinXP solution for RAID 5.  I think it has a volume manager somewhere but I don't believe it does redundency.