The (new) Official PC building thread!

Seagates tend to have faster response times for the same speed drives. Also I knwo many people will swear by the quality of the drives being better than WD.

 

hydro_x86---Thanks for trying to save me a few dollars. I'm pretty sure those caviars have the 16MB cache where I linked to the newer 32MB offering. Is it worth $20 a drive? I dont know, but I read it helps in moving around and crunching bigger files and I have many of my bands concert videos are 10+GB

 

hydro x86,

the plextor PX-800A is an rebadged Sony-NEC http://www.videohelp.com/dvdwriters/plextor-px-800a/2017

the plextor PX-810SA is a rebadged Pioneer http://www.videohelp.com/dvdwriters/plextor-px-810sa/2066

keep in mind, plextor drives, although rebadged now and have been for some time, do have and use plextor firmware.

 

@Deadrum33
Get the 32MB Seagate...I posted a link to an article a couple pages back comparing the (2) new drives...The seagate has fewer platters...bigger cache...It was the clear winner...

The Ribbon Cables are just more dependable...then the rounds...and I can route them more out of the way...This is why I only use Ribbon Cables in Office or Encoding Builds...

A good article on cables...probably more info then you will want to know...
http://www.dansdata.com/rcables.htm

 

That's pretty much how I feel about hard drives, I always hear that Seagate can perform a little better, but I'm one of those people who swear by the quality of Western Digital drives. Ever since April 26, 1999 anyway haha. Thats when I got hit with the Cherynobyl/CIH/Spacefiller virus. Totally overwrote my bios and first 1024 of my hard drive. No matter what I did I couldn't get this hard drive to reformat and work, same for my bios, although today I might have been able to.

I had to throw the hard drive out, I eventually got a new bios chip to replace the infected one. Even though it probably wouldn't have made one bit of difference if I had a WD drive, after that I only bought WD drives.

Ah, theres the diff, 16mb vs 32mb cache. Well it certainly makes sense that a 32mb cache would operate faster on larger files. I'd say go for it.

 

Thanks for the info Mort, I use VideoHelp all the time and I never realized it had such comprehensive info on optical drives.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just SATA?

 

Mort81,
It's funny, the $70 PX-800A supports bitsetting while the $90 PX-810SA doesn't! Just what do you get for the extra $20?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

@hydro_x86

Sata Optical's are only about (1) year old...99.9% of all computers are IDE for the Opticals...
I've got multiple M/B running...that do not have native SATA support...

 

good question Russ. I wouldn't buy either one especially since they cost 100%+ more than the the same drive they rebadged only without plextor on the front and plextor f/w. I would like to find a new plextor PX-716A/SA or even a slot load PX-716AL. they are genuine plextors. there were some bad reviews on the slot load but that was mostly due to idiots trying to load multiple dvds/cds and jamming up the load mechanism lol.

 

LOL at PC World's profit margin on the q6600,

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=440886&category_oid=

 

Newegg sells it for the equivalent of 142 pounds. Of course you cant buy it from there, but yeah PC world is ripping people off big time.

 

Phenom 9500/Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5 update:
After loading the latest BIOS and Catalyst 7.12 driver my Crossire 3DMark06 score got even worse, down to 9950. Due, no doubt to the new Gigabyte BIOS which adds the TLB erratum correction for the Phenom CPU. This causes a 10% performance hit, which it did.

As far as I'm concerned this Phenom 9500 is trash.

I have my Thermaltake Tsunami/Asus P5W-DH Deluxe/E6700 build basically just sitting around not doing anything so I decided to swap cards with the Phenom build. Out came the GeForce 7900GS and in went a single HD3870. With 7.11 driver installed I ran 3DMark06 and got a score of 11,039.
Encouraging!
This beat the Phenom/Gigabyte crossfire score by a substantial margin.
So in went the second card:



With some moderate overclocking on the video cards using the Catalyst control center, Crossfire enabled, the 3DMark06 score is 15,357! A 5000 point improvement over the last Phenom benchmark. All done in less than an hour.



I have an E6750 I could drop in there and also disable a bunch of stuff running in the background. I'm pretty sure I could get close to 16,000 with these 3870 cards.


Edit:
Well I didn't drop in the E6750.
I overclocked the E6700 to ~3.5 Ghz and swapped the PC6400 Corsair for the PC8500 Crucial Ballistix.

 

Nice scores dude!

Since you have a 3870, mind looking at this 3870 on ebay for me?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ATI-Radeon-HD...oryZ3762QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

It's dirt cheap......don't know why (even excluding VAT)

 

I have the same Sapphire cards. So far they are working great on my older Asus board. I have them both overclocked to 842/1231.

I just ran the price through a currency converter and £114.95 comes out to $228.63. I paid $249.00 for mine, so it looks like a bargain to me except for postage costs. £19.95 comes out to $39.58.

$39.58 + $228.63 = $268.16

They have them at Newegg for $244.99 + free shipping so that's £123.55.

If they add the VAT then it goes up more. Do they?

It's a matter of getting what is available for the best price in your region. It's rather interesting but pointless for me to compare what I can get at Newegg here in the states.

 

I think the tax for them is 17.5 percent, so they get screwed over a lot with that.

 

A Good Buy...on a Very Good HTCP Case...from Directron...
Black Cooler Master CM Media 280 HTPC / Desktop Computer Case, w/ VFD Display, 120mm Fan, Model: RC-280-KKN1-GP. Regular Price $189 Sale Price $119
http://www.directron.com/rc280kkn1gp.html

 

I used some UV reactive cable ties in my PC at one stage, they looke great and helped me tidy up the cables in my case, but truth be told I change things in my PC too often to tie any of the cables down...
Abuzar: Response times are pretty much identical between Seagate and WD, and both are of high build quality. I would happily recommend either to people, but given that most current WD drives are much quieter, and run cooler than the equivalent Seagates, they're usually the ones I recommend. It's also worth noting that a WD5000AAKS can attain a peak write speed of around 73MB/s. Seems pretty good to me.
Frank: Well, what can I say, it doesn't surprise me. The 3870 is certainly a decent performing card, but as for the Phenom, it just isn't worth bothering with if you get those sort of scores.
As for the ebay link, £130+VAT works out at something like £153. That's not a bad price, but it's nothing special really.

 

Generally I find it to be the opposite...at least as far as noise goes...I wouldn't say much quieter...but quieter...and I definitely have found the Seagates to be more dependable then the W/D...however...they are very comparable performance wise...It really comes down to each individual model...and there characteristics...

 

Well, I've got several old WD drives that still work fine, and I have had a couple of Seagates neither of which have gone wrong either. The idle noise of the later drives is quite similar, but the seek noise of Seagate drives is horrific for a silent PC, compared to WDs which are barely audible.

 

I have 2 32MB Seagates on my wish list, along with many SATA cables (one end with 90° connection) from 1 to 3 feet in length for this and future builds.
Hey everyone! Unrelated question about PC building---What are the most important things you have on hand to make life easier while building/ repairing a rig?
I am setting up a dedicated workbench in my basement for building/ repairing since I've started to stay really busy with that the last few years. At least a place to store all the hardware "I have around here somewhere, I just cant find at the moment" (anyone say that before?)
I have the tools and a grounded place to lay things upon, also I'll have a PSU tester with this next order. Is there anything else you builders cant live without?