75ZT Community

I thought it might be nice to upgrade my PC as it has been the same since 2010 when I built it. I was lucky enough to get the processors from the US when they were released so I still feel the computer is ok in the CPU department. It runs dual Hexacore Xeon's and I see 24 cores in total, and I've only maxed them out a couple of times.

That said recently I do get a lag every now and again and not sure where the culprit is.

I have 6GB Ram per CPU, if I doubled this to 12GB per CPU am I going to notice any real world difference? Looking on Google for a 12GB kit of 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 is around £80-100 mark and needing two would be a pricey upgrade, so bang for buck would I see a difference?

My other option is a dual screen set up, but a faster PC is always good!

Re occasional lag.
I run a Mac as you know, the only time I suffer any kind of lag is when the system thinks it ought to wake up my external drive (there are no circumstances when it should, other than it's regular hourly backup). Just wondering if you may be experiencing a similar issue?

I have another raid setup. I have two 7200rpm 1tb drives that I use to dump work on and edit before saving permanent. Do you think it could be this then? Not sure how to solve that without ssd's and even then they arent at 1tb yet.

Cheers Mick

In my case I'm pretty sure it's the external box being clever and putting the drive to sleep. I should test the theory and take the drive out of the box and hook it up through my smart cable. I don't think the drive itself is bright enough to put itself to sleep (Could be wrong). I'm pretty sure the system does not do it, but does wake it in case access is required.
Now that you have mentioned it I must look into it further. I'll let you know what I find.

Just had a thought, re the waking, that must be the sophisticated search facility "Spotlight" which will require all drives to be awake. Might see if ~I can tell it not to bother with the external. Won't stop it sleeping but will stop system trying to wake it.

I wonder in my case then if its spin time on the drives initialising. I cant remember what drives I put in. Normally opt for samsung. Will have to look at faster drives.

Another thought, not for me but may help. In the Energy Saver CP there is an option to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" I don't have this checked but you may have if similar on Win.

I'll have a look when I get home, cheers Mick