What kind of PC to build

[Mastercam Mike]

Can anyone help me out? I want to build a PC that will be used for MastercamX2 Mr2. My problem is I don’t know what type of CPU to get Quad EE or Core 2 Duo. A Quad EE with 1333 FSB appeals to me. Memory is another issue DDR2 800 or 1067. Windows Vista or XP, 32 or 64 bit OS? I don’t want to spend a small fortune for something that will save me only 2 minutes on a big file. Last does Mastercam run on a true 64 bit platform or is it dropped back to a 32 bit platform? Thank you, in advance for your help.

[Guest]

Mike,

 

Welcome to the Forum

 

 

 

This might be a good thread for you to dig through

Linky

 

Stay away from Vista.

 

Mastercam will run on 64 bit but does not take advantage, yet, of the multi-core processors.

 

The 32 bit flavor of Win XP Pro would probably be the best bet for you at the moment

 

I don't know what you're looking to spend but I built a good quad core system for under $1800

[Mastercam Mike]

Thanks John, I was looking at the QX9750 CPU, 4 gig of ram, raid 10, Abit IP35 Pro MB, and a Gforce 8800 GTS video card with 640 mb ram. I am running Vista Home Premium 32 bit, E6600 CPU with 2 gig of ram, raid 10, Asus P5B Deluxe MB and Gforce 8800 GTS video card with 640 mb ram. This system runs flawlessly. But I would like to take advantage of 4 gigs of ram. A 32 bit OS will only see 3 gig of ram that is why I asked about the 64 bit OS.

[cadcam]

I was wondering mike what is Raid 10 as I know of Raid 5 and down.

[Guest]

RAID 10 is a combination of Raid 0 & raid 1

 

4 drives to "generally" run

 

2 striped and 2 paritys

 

if one drive goes down it automatically goes to a RAID 1 set up

[iowajim62]

Jay,

Not mike but here ya go.

RAID 10 is implemented as a striped array whose segments are RAID 1 arrays

 

RAID 10 has the same fault tolerance as RAID level 1

 

 

RAID 10 has the same overhead for fault-tolerance as mirroring alone

 

 

High I/O rates are achieved by striping RAID 1 segments

 

 

Under certain circumstances, RAID 10 array can sustain multiple simultaneous drive failures

 

 

Excellent solution for sites that would have otherwise gone with RAID 1 but need some additional performance boost.

 

This form of RAID was originally called RAID 1+0, and is now commonly referred to as RAID 10. This is basically a bunch of RAID 1 drives linked together with RAID 0. Hence you get the speed benefits of RAID 0 with the redundancy benefits of RAID 1. The only problem is that you use a lot of drives to do it. Like RAID 1, you only get half of the space that you've paid for. Of course it may be worth it if you can rest easier at night. RAID 10 is generally a bit faster than RAID 5

[Mastercam Mike]

A raid 10 is 4 hard drive. A raid 10 is used on servers you can remove one drive and not lose any data. Two are a raid 1 and two are a raid 0. I have lost to many hard drive in a raid 1. When you lose a drive all your data went to buffer heaven. With a raid 10 you will not lose your data. The only thing is it can verry costly if you want to use 10000 RPM os SCSI drives. I use SATA 3 7200 RPM drives. Tey are about $60 a drive.