The (new) Official PC building thread!

No idea - but thats what he linked to.

 

greensman,

There is no real difference. Optical drives are slow, and I doubt very seriously if, given the technology and short of a major breakthrough, if there ever will be! At the rate of development with 1x coming out in the mid 80s and 20x now, We'll all be gone and it still won't really change much. I think they just want to do away with the IDE interface and standardize it all to Sata. The tiny advantage Sata optical drives have is no ribbon cable, and that's easily fixed by round IDE cables like I use in mine! If I remember rightly, the Intel chipset can only handle 6 Intel Sata ports anyway! I know I would use the 2 GigaByte ports (Purple) for opticals and leave the Intels for other things if I was to use Sata for them!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

IDE cables are so... messy. I just don't like them, especially their big plugs.

I think one standard is a good thing.

 

Sam this ones for you:-

XMS2 CAS4 @ £36.41

Think I might be getting this rather than the OCZ at that price.

Thought Id look before posting and they also have the OCZ down to just £30.54

 

abuzar1,

Actually the round cables are much neater looking, and are absolutely impossible to put in backwards, and they can't be accidentally unplugged very easy. Not so with the Sata. The little "L" notch in the power plug breaks very easily if you are not careful! Too easily. I see it all the time, and of course it ruins the drive! Why the hell they put such a flimsy power plug for Sata is beyond me! Good for my business though! LOL!!

Yes and no! How much is it going to cost to get beyond the chipset's 6 port limit? Raid on the hard drives and 3 or 4 optical drives, and you'll have to add an external PCI Sata controller card, without the IDE interface! IDE still has it's place and the need is still there for it! If there was some performance advantage, I would agree. But for optical drives there's not!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Greg: Not sure what I got, the graphics test numbers seem almost identical, but unsurprisingly the CPU test scores are double mine.

Greensman: Until I sell one of my 3870s I sit in £250 of debt. Made of money? Pff, if only...
I haven't bought the drive yet, so I'm still open to options, if IDE sits me far cheaper it's what I'll go with. It would be nice to have the option to use this drive inside a PC at one stage and not have to deal with IDE to do so. I'm trying for a S-ATA and USB only infrastructure hehe...
As for S-ATA cables I think they're a godsend versus IDE. The hotswappability of them far outweighs the connection security (I've yet to find that a problem, ever) in terms of their usefulness. Rounded cables are all well and good, but the cable is still many times the diameter...

On the graphics card front, I'm going to try reformatting as soon as I can get an ISO burned (no CD burner at the moment you see). Once I've done that I'll try a new install on a different hard disk, probably using Catalyst straight off (I like the extra features it has over the omega drivers). If I still get crap, I'm getting an 8800. If I don't, who knows the 3870 might have a future yet.

 

3870X2 down to £276

http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-091-HT

Last week it started at £300...............

 

Pepp don't be like sam. lol. BE different and get the OCZ memory. It's good memory and if it's compatible with your mobo then you're golden. They're not bad modules, you know that right??

@sammy,
The only reason I could see to get a SATA enclosure is for swapping out a HDD drive later on. I think SATA HDD's are a Godsend and won't go another way if I'm buying NEW ones. lol. Funny thing is I just purchased an IDE HDD enclosure because I have 2-3 HDD's laying around that need some use. A 160 and a 300 to be exact. I'll use the smaller HDD's for OS's and the larger ones for storage... I'm getting way to deep into this. lol.

@all in the states,
I may have a FORCED garage sale soon, so be ready for some good deals. lol. NOT really but the wifey would appreciate it.

....gm

 

From all the reviews I have read the OCZ are very good modules, but the Corsairs have gotten excellent reviews all round, one even said they were basically as good as their 8500 counterparts. Plus I like the purple (its my favourite colour )

 

greeny,

no worries buddy. I was only giving you a hard time anyway. I did however think you might comment on how comparable our weather and environmental conditions are being you live in Amarillo TX (about 230 miles from me) and how similiar it is there compared to here. dry, dusty, windy and the seasonal extremes temperature wise.

Pepp,

you can't go wrong with corsair either.

 

sammorris,

The hotswapability is a good point, but only for E-Sata, and only if your MB supports it (not all do). The round IDE cables are a hair less than 1/2" and are very easy to make neat if you plan ahead and measure your needs before you buy. The Data cables, while flat are still almost as wide (about 3/8"), very stiff, harder to route and I have accidentally dislodged mine for my hard drive while plugging in a fan. Who ever invented the plug in arrangement, should have been shot! It should have been made more secure, with a deeper plug and not so damn flimsy, especially since the cable is so stiff! It's precisely the stiffness, that makes them so easy to dislodge! Bump against one by accident and no drive until you can sort it out! it doesn't take much force either, just a nudge!

Not all motherboards have 6 Intel's. Your P5N-E only had 4 Sata ports. Our Gigabytes have 6 Intel and 2 GigaBytes. We just had someone here the other day who had 4 or 5 Opticals, so throw in a couple of hard drives and it's pretty easy to run out. With no speed advantage because of the inherent slowness of Optical drives, the IDE interface is like a freebie! Especially since it frees up Sata ports for the use of something that can take advantage of it's speed.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Oh by all means then get the Corsair. hehehe. Me likes purple too!!

@Morty,
I new you was but I had to apologize to me elder!!

Lubbock actually, RED RAIDER here.... sad day yesterday with B. Knight retiring btw...

Oh you guys out there don't know what dusty is!!!! We've already had brownouts this season due to the frikkin blowing dirt/dust/sand or whatever!!! Nasty it is and with 3 kiddies running around stirring it up and the carpet "fuzzies' I have to clean at least every 4 months or so. It's bloody awful for you Brits/UKers. lol.

.....gm

 

TBh, i prefee the FAT flat IDE cables. they EASILY press against the edge of the case and an i can route them like that. just a bit a sticky tape needed. much better then those FAT rounded cables. but sata are better then both

 

I did 2 and a quarter hours ago lol

 

I have to like purple. it's my teams color. KSU Wildcats. only team to beat the previously undefeated KU Jayhawks. back on topic..........

Shaffaaf,

I can't stand the IDE ribbon cables. I got a box full I'll give ya. only round IDE cables used inside my rigs.

 

@ Russ - you could try these SATA cables

 

greensman,

I've seen dust storms standing up on a Butte in Montana that close the highways. You can see them coming from 15-20 miles away on the interstate! LOL!! If I waited 4 months to clean up the fuzzies around here, you wouldn't be able to open the door! We don't have "dust bunnies", we have dust bunny herds! Left un-attended you get about an inch a month! LOL!! The dust itself is like fine silt and gets into everything!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Out of interest, can you buy retractable(like you could wheel it up like a power extension cable) sata cables?

 

GreGI6: To be honest, I couldn't care less about the HD3870X2, especially after reading the THG benchmark on it. So what, it's cheaper than an 8800 Ultra and about as fast. What about an 8800GTX you overclock yourself though? Might not be that much cheaper, but it'll be a damn sight more reliable, and probably cheaper to run too, not to mention make half the noise. Even if you discount my issues with the 3870s, you have to admit crossfire is far worse, be it on one PCB or separate cards.

Theone: I hotswap internal SATA drives all the time, never had any issues with doing it so far! I'm well aware of the lack of S-ATA ports on most boards, and for some it makes sense to stick with IDE for opticals. However, I run most of my hard drives in a separate fileserver, and so have plenty to spare from my original six. Not that I would have an internal optical drive when starforce is alround...

Greg: I doubt it, when you bend S-ATA cables the data can't get along the cable properly and you get errors sometimes, they're just not well-made enough for that job. Some proper cable shielding and it'd be doable, but right now, the reliability of S-ATA cables limits them to being rather loosely flattened against things.

 

hows this for a HDD? its not the 32mb cache that i had before only 16mb is that noticable?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148245