[silvershield]

I have two IDE drives right now, in RAID0 (250gb). Everyones talking about the new(er) SATA, but from my understanding, you wouldnt really notice any performance increases if the RPM is still 7200? So would I benefit anything from upgrading?

Thanks,
Alex

[bigbear]

Well yes they are faster than pata (sata 150mbps sata2 300mbps)
Whether you would notice the difference in that rig of yours is debatable
Personally I dont really think it would worth the hassle, others may have a different play on it

[crjdriver]

They are faster in theory only. FWIW I benched a sata raid0 array and an ide raid0 array in my own system. Both were within about 1mps of each other in disk speed.

So should you upgrade? In a word no unless one of your drives dies then yes go ahead.

[silvershield]

Thanks for the opinions, I didn't think it would make a big difference...One more thing, I'm thinking about upgrading my graphics card, (ATI RADEON x1300 isn't cutting it anymore), and having a 350W PSU may not be good enough? What kind of PSU should I look for? I was looking at a 500W and a 650W one...

[crjdriver]

From the parts in your sig, I would go with a 500-550W unit. With a ps the quality of the unit is MUCH more important than a wattage rating. Just stay away from the $25 500W ps and you will be fine. Good names are antec, enermax, coolmax, sparkle / fortron, and seasonic.

[silvershield]

lol, im going to be brave and ask a stupid question... I've installed motherboards before, but I installed them in systems that were going to be built, and I put in the motherboard, then PSU, then other components. I wont damage anything by opening it up, and taking out the old PSU (When i get a new one) and just connecting the new one....? My friend did that and he fried a motherboard+ram while trying to boot it up after installing new PSU...

I guess it's just better to be safe than sorry :-D

[crjdriver]

You should not have a problem changing the ps. Just be careful routing wires, cables, etc. Do not leave wires sitting on top of the cpu fan, case fan, etc.

[Compiler]

...and don't change the PSU while the system is powered up or plugged in...

Also, it'll depend on your gaming requirements and buget.

GF7600 type card will work fine with a good 350~400watt PSU...
GF7900+ 400~500watt PSU (single card) - also consider RAID 1... RAID-0 is not exactly a RAID and if you lose a drive or get errors, all your data can be mangled.



SATA II, while the RPMs is not any better, the interface of SATA drives is better than PATA... but its not worth replacing your drives. On your next system upgrade, go to SATAII with bigger 400~700GB drives

[jackdw]

Originally Posted by crjdriver

Do not leave wires sitting on top of the cpu fan, case fan, etc.

I changed case and left my sata power connector resting on my CPU fan for about an hour. Didn't notice anything until I idly glanced over at my front temp screen and noticed my CPU was at 62 degrees C!

Opened up speedfan to double check, it was right and the CPU fan was 0rpm. I had a very lucky escape, had I gone on a game than just used it for internet at the time, I'm sure my CPU would have fried.