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The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by ddp, Sep 13, 2010.

  1. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Why would you ever use a PSU that came free with a case?
     
  2. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    First off I have and have had great luck even with cheap crap PSU's. But on good cases I've had really good supplies with them. However my point that you entirely missed was for that price you should at least get a cheap supply with it, if not a decent one, whether you use it or not. I like them for backups or to use as replacement supplies for people with web machines or less requirements, they do have their uses.

    It doesn't cost much to make a PC case these days and it certainly is a waste to spend big bucks on one but then to me the case really isn't important if it meets certain functional requirements. Don't get me wrong I like a nice looking case but that is far from what is really important. I don't pay more than $60 for a PC case, a server case is another story like the one you got.
     
  3. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    I spent roughly 150USD on my HAF932. It will serve my PC upgrades for many years to come. One, I have a thing for large cases. Two, there aren't many cases that can beat it for air flow.
    I do understand wanting a spare PSU. Some though are so bad, I wouldn't trust to power a light bulb, much less PC equipment. Imagine if the PSU blew so bad, it took all the hard drives with it. No thanks :p If you've had good luck with them, more power to you. I on the other hand have had bad luck with Cheap PSU's... Seasonic, and Corsair are my most trusted. I also bought a die hard Thermaltake 430W which doesn't wanna quit LOL! Only 60% efficiency... I suppose it isn't powering a whole lot though. Some 2001 machine which shouldn't be drawing more than 200W.
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Having toasted some hard disks off a cheap PSU (very common too, not like I got unlucky), I steer well clear of them. Also, $100 is cheap for a decent case like that. Proper high quality cases are $150-$200, sometimes more, and enterprise-grade server cases are $400-$1000, so $100 for a case isn't much, especially when it's fairly solid and highly specified like that one is. I wholeheartedly agree cases are overpriced for what they are, horrendously so, but if you've got to spend to get something good then so be it.
     
  5. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    I've NEVER toasted HDD's from poor supplies and I've had some expensive poor supplies. Also I've built ten's of thousands of PC's and servers. I've had supplies completely melt down too. The only times I've screwed up a HDD in a case is when I've pulled a Kevin and connected/disconnected the power with the system live, not the PS's fault there and you only do that once. Sorry Kev that was shameful and I did it before you did so I actually pulled a Steve! LOL

    I've bought cases like that for $40 to $60 bucks and even got supplies with them. I have yet to pay more than $70 for a case and will not as they really isn't much difference between a $200 case verses a $70 dollar one with exception to windows and nonsense I certainly don't need. I can have great airflow in a $40 case and have all the HDD space I need however sometimes the thickness of metal is an issue of the really cheap cases, you wouldn't want to carry them around much loaded up.

    You are right though Sam that for $100 this case is much better then cases I've seen for twice as much, if that truly is what you are getting at. I could see ,myself buying this case even though I think it's high but I bet I can find something similar that is $60-$70 instead of $100. Maybe not with 3 nice fans setup the way they are here but something I could work into a suitable fashion.
     
  6. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Oh of course, there's a lot more to it than just paying more to get something better, I've seen my fair share (although only owned one, luckily) of high-end PSUs that were suspect. In my case, everything on the 5V rail got a fair toasting in the system (so I'm guessing the 12V rail shorted to it) which is very common for cheap PSUs once they're run beyond about 40% load.
     
  7. Blazorthon

    Blazorthon Regular member

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    I don't like spending more than around $60-70 on a case, but I wouldn't go for a PSU that isn't from a high-quality brand such as Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, and XFX and I've also heard good things about PCP&P and Enermax.

    With cases, Several great models show up in the $30-70 range. The Rosewill REDBONE U3, the Apex Vortex 3620, and the Cooler Master HAF 912 are excellent examples of very good yet cheap cases. Sure, if you spend a lot more money, you can get a somewhat better case, but will it really be worth four to ten times more than what these cases can cost?

    At least with consumer, not server cases, chances are that the answer is generally no. There are some cases that may be extremely good, but most really aren't worth that much and even when they are, you don't need to spend that much on a case unless you specifically have a need such as needing to be able to fit sixteen to forty hard drives or something similarly extreme.

    Even with PSUs, high quality brands don't need to be expensive. Look around for deals; 430-450 watt models can often be found from great brands such as Antec and the others at the start of this post at around $20-40 and up to even 750W or 850W can often be found for $40-60. Sure, you probably won't find something such as a Gold or Platinum efficiency model and maybe not even modular, but they're at these prices with 80+ and Bronze and even Silver and a few modular models are around at somewhat higher prices for those who care. You don't really need to pay much over $100, if at all, for a 750W-850W Silver or better modular PSU from a reputable brand.
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2012
  8. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    Gigabyte also makes quite good PSUs though limited in availability.
     
  9. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Sam,

    After this build, I have to agree I took my time, researched every purchase, and had it all together when I started the build. I just put it together and it's worked fine ever since. Now, I have one more computer to build for my friend Russell. I've never completely built him a new one, so I'm going to start with the Corsair 400R case, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3, Phenom IIx4 965BE, Corsair CWCH60 Hydro, 8GB GSkill Ripjaws, (2x4GB) Cas 7 1333MHz DDR3, and an Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD Burner. I have the Patriot Pyro 60GB SSD for the boot drive, now that the Intel 120GB SSD is installed in mine, and there is a 250GB WD for storage. I'm also updating my memory to 1600MHz DDR3, Cas 7, and see if it will run stock clocks (7-8-8-24), with my overclock.

    The Intel 330 series SSD installed without issue, and is very fast. Much more solidly built than any of the others I've seen. It also weighs a lot more too! It's a well made, very fast drive!

    Russ
     
  10. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Yeah it's a shame Intel switched to Sandforce rather than using their own controllers, but it has brought the continuous transfer speeds way up, and quite interesting, their SSDs still post far lower failure rates than other brands that use the same controllers. It's infuriating as it shows what's possible if other countries paid a blind bit of notice to quality. Fortunately due to the higher importance of what they do and the tolerances involved, the storage industry tend to pay a bit more attention to this than other areas of the PC hardware market, but many SSD brands, particularly OCZ have abandoned it.
    Considering how often consumer-grade motherboards and graphics cards in particular fail, it's appalling really.
    Considering my PC only has continuous speeds of about 160MB/s read and 35MB/s write, it's still incredibly fast having not been reformatted for a year, loads windows in seconds, and I still have about the fastest loading times for the game that's installed to it of my peers (some of which are other SSD users). Performance isn't really an issue with it apart from one area which is when downloader applications use C: for their temporary storage before writing it elsewhere - then 35MB/s can be a bottleneck when extracting stuff, and I would eventually like a bit more than 40GB, hence eyeing up the 120/180GB 330/520 series drives. Still, apart from that I'm in no pressure to remove it, and I'll certainly reuse it in one of the other machines afterwards, it's a good performing drive.
     
  11. Blazorthon

    Blazorthon Regular member

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    I was also disappointed to see Intel switching to SandForce initially, but they really did pull it off and the 330 series has interesting pricing. They're still not Intel's most reliable drives as far as I'm aware, but they showed that they can get failure rates on SandForce as low as one in twenty and I consider that respectable when we have one in six or one in seven failure rates from many other SandForce partners.

    If I recall correctly, the failures with SandForce based SSDs are generally caused by failures in either the firmware or the power delivery circuitry that can be designed by the partner for their own SSDs (this is also probably the cause of what can be very different power consumption characteristics between seemingly similar or identical SSDs from different companies and Intel probably did quite god at this).

    Still, I think that OCZ really stepped up with their Vertex 4 SSDs in both reliability and customer service, although Agility 4 is still kinda meh because of its performance. Agility 4, like previous Agility models, uses asynchronous NAND, but this is more of a problem for it than with previous SandForce models because SandForce's compression is a good partner to masking asynchronous issues whereas a higher quality Marvell or any other non-compressing controller is more tuned to synchronous and toggle mode NAND. I think that enabling NTFS compression might help the Agility 4 to mask its poor NAND interface a little better when working with compressible data, but I don't have an Agility 4 to test this (I'm considering buying one though, it often drops below 50 cents USD to the GB here in the USA).

    What's really got me interested now is Samsung's new 840 Pro series, or at least I'd be more interested if Samsung would drop prices a little. It really shows that OCZ isn't the only one who can work with non-SandForce controllers excellently and not only that, but Samsung is determined to not only not release a product before it is really ready (unlike OCZ that released Vertex 4 months before they had the excellent firmware that they now have and has consistently done this with prior SSDs and even other products in the past), but also that Samsung, although still a little stringent on prices, is proving that they can make an SSD completely by themselves. I don't think that any other SSD is made by a single company without the aid of others.

    I really have to agree with you, Sam, in that overall, the electronics industry as a whole seems to have let product quality and reliability drop in most places. Motherboards, graphics cards, and that's just the start of getting into it...
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2012
  12. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Sam,

    http://i1171.photobucket.com/albums/r556/theonejrs/Intel330.jpg

    As you can see, the Intel 330 is a little faster than advertised, and slightly faster than the Patriot 60GB Pyro SSD was. When it comes to Sata II or Sata III for an SSD, buy the Sata III. It's easily twice as fast as Sata II, and you'll have something to look forward to when you do upgrade to a motherboard that supports Sata III!

    I look at Intel's switch to SandForce controllers, as a brilliant move by Intel! If anything, it's vindicated SandForce, in a lot of people's eyes, as the failure rates have remained as low as they had been with the Intel controllers! Judging by the difference in weight, I would say that the SF controller is better protected, by a more stout case, as the bare drive weighs almost 4 times as much as the Patriot Pyro, and that's with the Pyro mounted to the 3.5" to 2.5" bay adapter from Mushkin, all sheet metal and light. The Intel feels solid, top and bottom, and you can't flex the drive at all. I'm guessing here, but it sure looks and feels like more "real steel" is the likely reason! :)

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     
  13. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Yeah I have to say I was dubious about Sandforce given that all those drives had such high failure rates until Intel came along - just goes to show the flaws are mostly down to the manufacturer putting the thing together. That said, that's not so much a surprise - reference manufactured graphics cards (although moreso from AMD, nvidia's aren't great) are usually far more reliable than the non-reference versions, likewise Intel's own motherboards are much better than the third party ones. It always amuses me when I see labels like 'military grade ultra reliability' on boards that statistically have the highest failure rates in the industry (high-end gaming/enthusiast boards), especially when compared to the solidity of, e.g. server grade hardware, which apart from featuring no such branding, has no special hardware on it to that end either, just the plain green circuit board and basically heatsinked components.
     
  14. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Sam,

    I did notice that while the scores were about the same for both drives with ATOS, yet the Patriot raised the bar for the primary hard drive from 7.1 for the Sata II HDD, to 7.4 for the Patriot. The Intel runs at a maximum of 7.9! It can't get any higher, yet my WEI number is still 7.4. Intel needs to sort that out a bit better! LOL!!

    Patriot SSD

    [​IMG]

    Intel 330 SSD

    [​IMG]

    As you've said many times in the past, I guess speed is not everything. That .5 difference in the primary HDD in the WEI score, proves that.

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     
  15. Blazorthon

    Blazorthon Regular member

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    Meh, WEI isn't particularly accurate, to say the least. I've had it report some parts as better than other parts that were actually superior, not inferior. Also, the WEI can vary even with identical computers.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2012
  16. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    Either is ATOS! I've got two SSD's from different mfg's the one that has higher benchmarks is more of a dog then the other, go figure!
     
  17. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    I've been hearing rumblings about hard drive prices going up again, after all these big drive sales are over. I just bought two of these drives from Newegg for $63.99. Came to just over $135, delivered. I went back the next day to buy 4 more, and they were $93.99 each! I passed!

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=2#scrollFullInfo

    Maybe there is something to that rumor, since the price increased about 50% above the sale price! WD, Enterprise drive, 64 MB cache buffer, 7200 rpm, and a 5 year warranty! What's not to like? :)

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2012
  18. sytyguy

    sytyguy Regular member

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    Wow, that is very expensive. A year or so ago I purchased two 2TB drives for $63 a piece. Plus, recently I have seen your drives for less than that. However, they are no longer on the market.
     
  19. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    500Gb? Russ... What are you doing LOL! I'd fill that badboy in a day LOL!
     
  20. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Oman7,

    I've got a 40" 1080p HDTV, not a 60" or 65" one. I'm more than happy with the quality I get in my movies.

    All I have to do is install the new 500GB drive and it's as updated as I can make it for now. I guess I'll be waiting for PileDriver! LOL!!

    Best Regards,
    Russ
     

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