The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Other than noise, I never had any problems with LG drives either. The noise problem was about 4-5 years ago. In all fairness to LG, I think this was more a design that LG made for eMachines, as I've never seen anything remotely like it before. I also found sources that say it's made by Hitachi. Whatever it is, it's made exclusively for use in the older eMachines and it looks like Gateways too, the ones with the curved front. It won't really fit in anything else properly as it's too wide to fit past the bay sides because the plastic is on the outside of the drive like a sleeve. That and better than half the height of the entire front moves in and out with the tray. It also won't play burned DL DVDs. They just won't address at all. It tells you that there's no disk in the drive!

Opps, I just installed the latest firmware and it now reads DLs!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

LOL I can't believe only firmware restricts stuff like that, it's absurd...

 

hey guys.i just got this older board still in the box only been used a few months from what ive been told. i would like to know if anyone has had any run ins with this board and if its worth hunting up a P4 for it?

ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE


heres a few pics of it.
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i196/Cincrob/100_4017.jpg
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i196/Cincrob/100_4018.jpg
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i196/Cincrob/100_4021.jpg
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i196/Cincrob/100_4022.jpg
http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i196/Cincrob/100_4023.jpg

 

Cincy to my understanding fatal1ty is one of the most successful professional gamers in the world at it's time that's what..I read
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Abit/AA8XE/
the board looks something like this below

it will fit this cpu here
http://www.xpcgear.com/p4550oem.html
and by the looks of it supports 1066/800MHz fsb i believe you can put any 45nm chip in it as long as it's not above 1066 fsb of a socket 775 the drives would'en be hard to find for the board thru web sites and windows updates if the board is able to fire up it's worth keeping remember one man's junk is another man's treasure...and if you don't want that treasure send it my way...lol
i'll slap some of this in it...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231018


Happy Building

 

or a small duel core if the board will take it...

there is a nice black dell case there i might get it and gut it out and build something in it..lol

 

it will take it as long as it is 1066fsb...ic it's got a led on the board for the cpu temp like my board does

 

Rob,
It's pretty old, in terms of socket 775 motherboards, at least 4 years! I've just checked with Abit, and it only supports 90nm CPUs! It does not support any of the 65nm or 45nm CPUs, which means no 800MHz P4s, Pentium Ds, C2Ds, or Quads! The last bios update available was 12/05! Looks like a P4/533 or a Celeron/533 are the only CPUs you can use in it. 4 Sata 150 and a max of 8 USB ports, and only 1 IDE for two devices.

One of my biggest gripes about both Abit and MSI is that they would bring out a new, fairly spectacular MB every once in a while, and then fail to support them for very long. I mean, what good is 1066 fsb support, if there are no compatible CPUs to run on it, as there are no 1066 90nm chips. From the looks of it, and how all the reviews I looked at tested, only a 533 fsb CPU will work in it. My reasoning there, is the 800MHz Prescots were around then, but all the reviews were done with 533s! There has to be some reason for that! Like I said, December 2005 was the last bios update!

EDIT: Mistake! LOL!!
Best Regards,
Russ

 

My WD AAKS apparently only makes a very loud pulsing noise when the OS is XP. For the past few weeks I've been running debian and win7 with the exact same setup and it was dead quiet, and then 2s after booting into XP it started to make that noise again. What do you guy's think of that? It doesn't make any sense to me no matter how I think about it.
Another strange thing, when I use a 64bit OS it only see's 3GB of ram instead of 4GB. Also noticed during post it only finds 3GB. Cpu-z reads 4GB though, any thoughts on what might be going on?

TIA

 

Mine was silent for about a year...the other WD that's older and been through a lot more is still silent and running fine so odds are it's just a defective drive. Still very odd as to what causes the problem though. In the end it'll probably just be RMA'd as soon as I have a place to put the data.

 

My brothers AAKS is a little more audible than mine. But the Velociraptor is definitely more audible than ALL the drives. Don't get me wrong though. The veloci is VERY bearable! Certainly worth enduring for that extra latency/MB per sec! I think my brothers MIGHT be defective. I was considering buying an AALS drive and turning his into a storage drive for myself. To be absolutely certain, that its defective, I have to run some more tests

 

Can't afford a veloci right now, quit teasing lol.
Thinking about getting one of these as a new OS drive, hesitant about them being so cheap though. By the way what's the difference between the Blue and SE models?

 

Red_Maw,
Apparently, a warranty! LOL!! I thought it might be one of those energy saving ones, but that's usually associated with green. I won't use them! Electric motors do not like to have their speed changed! They will usually last longer at a constant speed! It has to do with frequencies, vibration and harmonics, and what that all means to bearing life, than anything! I don't like the change in pitch either! To me, it's annoying! Nothing really bad about them, but I prefer the constant speed ones!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

LOL one dollar difference just because it doesn't have a warranty. Doesn't seem right to me that would be the only difference but I certainly am not going to try and save a dollar.
Green power doesn't matter to me, I only shut the computer down when I'll be gone for an extended period of time and never use hibernate or sleep. Supposedly hdd's last longer if they are left on and so far I only have one hdd that's lasted longer then 2 years so they need all the help they can get lol.

 

I have a few drives nearing their 3 year mark now and SMART still checks them at 97 and 98 for performance and fitness. As long as you're careful with your drives and don't let your PC go idle 24/7 it's not really an issue. My PCs are usually torrenting or folding or both when I'm not on them so they always have some drive activity. A lot of it is luck of the draw though. But if you get a good one to begin with, they usually last 5+ years. In my own experience of course.

 

My desktop gets turned off when ever I won't be using it for more then a day and it never idles thanks to folding. This would be the second AAKS to not make it past the two year mark for me, maybe I should get seagates lol.

 

Seagate has always been good to me. Some of the older large capacity drives are a bit noisy but they're mostly dependable.

 

WD is usually a quieter drive from my experience so I'll give them one more chance before getting another seagate, or until something else changes my mind. As long as there isn't data loss having a hdd go bad while it's under warranty doesn't bother me too much anymore.