PC hardware sales and good deals (RETAIL or ONLINE sales NOT personal sales) ....

Here's a top of the line AMD Phenom 9950 Black Edition - OEM for $159.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103285

Add this MB if you don't have one for $99.99 and together they are &259.88.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138128

Buy it as a combo with the Phenom 9950 - retail boxed with cooler and it's only $238! Just scroll down the page! Nice computer for the wife or kids, for cheap! Oh! The MB supports the 9950!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Nice deals there Russ!! I have the 780 version of that mobo and picked it up for $70! I like it and it's rather feature rich if you ask me.

I might look at that deal for my wife's boss. He really like the little AMD build I put together for him the other day and that's only another $80 or so for a Quad. I like it!!! It's not an Intel Q9650 but it's about 1/3 the price. hehehe.

.....gm

 

Nice looking board, and AMD Phenoms are now almost worth buying at that mega low price... hehe. The 9950 is finally actually above the entry level Core 2 Quad, though not by much, but the lower price makes it a reasonable deal. The downside of course, is that in only a year the prices are even due to the greatly increased power consumption - you need a bad boy heatsink to cool a CPU like that - it uses more power than two core 2 duos put together... even the E8500s!
I worked out in this country it'd set you back about 40 quid more every year to use that over an Intel - over the life of the system that's rather expensive...

Also - some electrolytic caps on that board, and it's a Biostar - how do we guarantee they're not going to bulge or burst later on? :S

 

Biostar makes very good P45 boards now, right?

 

yes boozer.

also sam, most of us, id like to think would want to OC aswell?

intel>amd OCing?

 

Unquestionably. Pre-Athlon 64, a good overclock might be 5-10%. When the A64s came out, 20% was pretty doable for many. Sadly that's where have remained ever since. Core 2 Duos as we know are capable of nearly 100%, and Core 2 Quads at least 40% is pretty much a given, with the possible exception of the Q9550 C1.

 

sammorris,

The wattage consumption should be 1/2 for you as you're on 230v. It would have to be half the wattage of 120v in terms of power consumption. The actual watts drawn by the computer from the PSU would remain the same because it's low voltage. We found no real change in electric bills to speak of after building OxiMoron!

As far as the caps bursting, I haven't seen evidence of that over the last 3 years. Every BioStar G-Force or T-Force MB I've built is still running fine! That's a lot of motherboards without problems! LOL!!

BTW, The caps are all solid state! They are not electrolytic!
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/t-series/introduction.php?S_ID=374

My preference would be the 125w Phenom 9850 Black edition, rather than the 9950! It will overclock about as high and runs much cooler!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122

4gigs for 71$ with shipping, so far the rams performing beautifully, memtest86 is happy

-tripplite

 

That's good ram. I used 8 gigs of that stuff and had a Quad core overclocked to 3.4Ghz while using them. I think I picked them up for 75, so the price has gone down a BIT. lol

 

What? half the amps, but double the volts, same watts! (Alright not quite, the higher voltage means PSUs run more efficient, but it's only 4% or so difference) Using a watt meter, I could really see what a profound effect upping the vcore on my CPU had, it was dozens of watts, and that was just a dual. Not looking forward to measuring my quad.

 

sammorris,

You need to study Ohm's Law! I'll make this simple, if you double the voltage you drop the load by half! A 115v motor that draws 15 amps will only draw 7.5 amps running at 230v. The watts I was refering to were the computer load on the PSU. I was speaking of the low voltage, not the PSU load on the mains!

Russ

 

define load?

 

A few good deals from the EGG!!!

link to Optical Drives

....gm

 

spamual,

The actual load is the wattage divided by the voltage, or Current! This is what we pay for. They figure out how many Kilowatts we use at what voltage and get billed accordingly. The Electric Companies here still manage to charge more for 230v service, even though you are saving energy! You guys in England save more than we do in total energy costs. Your voltage is 230v to begin with! It costs 1 amp of current to light 2 60 watt bulbs. Here the same pair of bulbs costs 2 amps! That's 120 watts wasted! Our Government drag's it's feet saying how much it would cost to convert every house to 230v because of all the old 2 wire circuits. The Ground and the neutral line go to the exact same place in the box! Simply put a proper size jumper between the neutral and the ground lead of the wall outlet, and you have a perfectly safe ground! Then again, those guys in Washington DC can't continue to make the big bucks if people are using less energy now can they?

Here's a copy of OHMs LAW for you. I've had this card in my wallet for the past 35 years or so! Handy! It explains it all better than I can


Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ, I love how you capitalized LAW. It doesn't QUITE work that way. What happens to resistance when temperature increases? I think you know what. So that little card is not always accurate. That card assumes it's room temp.

 

abuzar1,

But it is accurate if you use the formulas in the R section. With a simple temperature to wattage converter chart you can figure out anything you need to know! I don't think OHM's Law assumes anything!

Take a look here and you can see that Ohm's Law today still applies in every way as when it was published in 1827! See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm's_law Scroll down to Temperature Effects. You can calculate all this stuff with Ohm's Law! Pretty interesting reading!

Best,
Russ

 

Russ, a Power supply is NOT a standard load. Plug a 110V PSU into a 230V socket and it will draw twice the load for a split second before going BOOOOM! PC PSUs are Switching, i.e. they determine the AC input voltage and select the appropriate level of step down to 12V, 19 or 9. Thus, the "load" will be the same, there or there abouts.


100V, 180W = 1.8A
240V, 180W = 0.75A, and that's great, but it's still 180 watts!

 

sammorris,

Yes, but it cost you the price of 1.8A at 100v vs 0.75A at 240v. With US 120v it would be 1.5A, or twice the 240v. We pay for "current", or Amperes in the US, and the usage is calculated in kw hours!

I understand what you say about the switching PSUs. Most here are dual voltage 120v/230v. I never intended to just plug mine into a 220 outlet, besides the plugs are different!

The load is not the same, it's controlled by demand from a minimum wattage. When you are using less power, say idling, it doesn't draw the same load on the mains as playing a very demanding game does. That's just common sense. If you put more load on the PSU, it will put more load on the mains! Remember, it's still all the same electricity, from the same source, and you can only draw what your demands are! In fact it's been like that since the early 60s when Solid State power supply's replaced transformers and tubes. Transformers used lots of power and made a lot of heat! Today, the heat remains, but using only a fraction of the current (Amps) needed before! The better the PSU removes that heat, the lower the energy cost as well! Just like CPUs, when things get hot, it takes more power to make things work right, so it places a higher demand on the mains! Cool things off a bit and the demand and load both drop!

Regards,
Russ

 

Yes, but you pay for Kilowatt hours in the US, the same as here. Since the wattage used is the same, so is the bill, near enough.
The only slight difference is that PSUs are more efficient at a higher input voltage, for instance, the Corsair HX 520 / 620W PSUs run at around 82% efficiency from 100-120V, nudging 83% at 120V. At 246V input, which is the typical voltage at our student house in York, they run at 86% efficiency. On a high end gaming PC that draws 400W DC, that will save you 20-25W, assuming the PC uses half as much power at idle and is on at idle for 10 hours a day and gaming for 4 hours, over the course of a year that's a saving of 75 units, or £11 in this country. While nice to have, it's hardly a huge benefit, considering this is a higher usage scenario than the vast majority of users.
Interestingly enough, at a load of 360W, that PSU will 'use' as much power as a Core 2 Duo CPU if it's on a US outlet...

 

sammorris,

The worst part is we will pay twice as much for it. Our electric meters here are controlled by the load. We pay for Kilowatt Hours too, but the control of those is turned over to the current side of things. The higher the Amperage draw through the meter, the faster the meter spins and the higher the kw hours. Damn things have more gears than a clock! Lot's more!

Russ