The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

I guess I was paranoid and hadnt ranted on anything lately, I've been putting together my daughters swingset/tree house/slide/rock climbing wall combo for the last few days and with my wife bitchin about it not being done yet and we shouldve just paid the $500 extra to have the "professionals" do it I was a little stressed when I typed ...I just received notice that my account was charged after I resubmit the information and I feel silly for jumping the gun.
So it turns into me asking if any regulars have experience with SSD's... also I will say that I plan to make this a primary disc for Win 7RC and see how well it handles my home server needs until I learn what the new stuff can and cant do then format it and put the drive in a HTPC I plan later on. OCZ forums are very helpful but again anyone here have experience?

 

They are too slow really. Normal desktop SSDs seem to be doing better now, but they're just incredibly expensive. The best approach is of course to use several in a proper RAID array, so you get speed and redundancy, but honestly, the prospect of £780 worth of SSDs and a proper RAID card on top just for 120GB of storage isn't that appealing...

 

Hey Sam,
Do the usb ports screw with you, or the reset button on the HAF 932? Cause every once in a while, when im fooling in that area, the computer will restart. I went to plug something into the a usb port, barely nudged a flashdrive below it, and I mean LIGHTLY! Right when I touched the port, it restarted. TWICE!! Im now wondering if the HAF's ports, are what blew my 16Gb Kingston flashdrive. So it sounds like there may be loose connections in that area there. I wonder if anyone else has had this trouble. I'll have to run some searches later. If it blew my flash drive, im gonna be complaining about it. I loved that drive darnit!

 

All the front USB ports are dodgy, I can only plug USB sticks into them. iphones don't sync properly, my little gameoptics screen strobes and makes the hardware found & removed sounds every 2 seconds. I was suspecting my Mobo, but given you also have this issue, I think I know what to suspect.

 

Ok. Thanks for the info. I probably wont use the front too much anymore. At least not til I can take it apart, and find the problem, if I can. I never have problems with my external hub(walmart bought). Im probably gonna try and hold out on anything usb related til 3.0 is released. Though, im gonna need a replacement 16gb drive. It was a handy little devil. >

 

Oman7,
Interesting! I've had difficulty running things that draw a lot of power on the front USB ports, yet they always work fine on the rear ones as long as they aren't on a break out panel plugged into the MB! I can {for some reason) use my wireless 108G adapter without problems. I have a 32MB Flash drive and it acts flaky plugged into the front USB ports, in fact any drive over 4GB gives problems. I think it's the resistance of the additional wiring that causes it!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Sorry, I'm not buying that. USB cables aren't that thin inside, and a flash drive draws all of 600-700mA. A wire that runs in a molex connector will happily pass 5-6A.

 

HDDs are much different as they absolutely require the most power USB has to offer. Most drives either require external power or two USB connnectors. It shouldn't happen with flash drives.

 

My HP pavilion and MSI barebone never had problems with their front connectors. This one is MOST Unusual. I barely touched the port today, and the computer rebooted! How unusual is that. Its almost like it was shocked by static electricity.
Hmmm...every attempt to recreate the occurrence has failed now. Figures! When one tries to find a problem, there wont be one. But when I stop looking, it will present itself again LOL!

Oh, and another time, I set something on top of the tower, and it rebooted. Like a vibration caused it. Because I dont believe I hit the reset button. Perhaps thats the problem, a loose reset connection!

 

the fron usbs slots worked when i used the board...

 

You had my board?

 

sam bought his board off me.

 

Finally good to be back, can no way type all the things that have been going on, after getting back from the UK in April I finally got my 4th hip revision done yuck, just so glad it's over, I'm in big time pain but should go away in another week.

I must say being in the UK again was another great experiance, if anybody remembers way back on this thread I meantioned how suprised I was at how much bigger the cost's of PC's and parts were, Creaky did comment and complain about those costs also, I can understand the frustration, but I must admit you guys on many most other things have it way better than us here in the states, if you were to weigh all the things out you guys are way better than us. But that would another story and another thread, maybe I should start one An American's View of the UK LOL, that would probably be intersting.

Anyway, I was also suprised that even in a small town like Peterbourough you guys had these electronic stores, like our Bestbuys but smaller, hardly any build PC's for sale but a huge amount of parts, if I was there I would see no need to even order from sites like newegg or probably sites that you have have yourselves unless you can get much better deals of course, but I saw in those stores was every available part for builds right down to screws and nuts, sure we have some parts for builds at our so called bestbuys but no where near to do a complete build, either way I was impressed.

I was unfortunate not to have a set of wheels while there but did get around some, I visited one of my friends friend that was a so called computer whiz, he was not home, I saw one of his builds, I was shocked I never saw anything like it, it was huge, If I was to open the damn thing up and stick a rod in it I would be able to hang shirts in it, I took pic's of it and was gonna send them over when I got home thinking I was gonna make an impression on the boys at AD, but it was to no avail, I do keep in touch with Russ all the time, after explaining to him what I saw it was just what you guys call a full tower, oh well blew my high, if thats what full towers look like I was still shocked, I actually never saw one and never thought they were that big, anyway it was a Thermalake Kandolf if that makes any sense, it's what it said on the case.

Forgive me on getting off subject a little bit but to get on it, have read about some of you guys have trouble with front port USB's, I think I have been lucky, with that build of mine I of course ordered one, I have never had any problems at all, I have all kinds of sticks, between my kids and myself we have 4, 8, 16 and 32gb's sticks, we have used all with no problems, am keeping my fingers crossed, other than all that, glad to be back.

 

You lucky dog!!! Thats one of the places I HAVE to see before I meet my maker LOL! Its comparable to my Home state, for green landscape. I chatted a while back, with a woman on WinMX, and she sent me some pics of the UK. Ive been in awe ever since!

No worries, I always get to the bottom of things LOL! I will find the problem associated with my spontaneous restarts. Whoops! I don't believe in spontaneous! LOL!!!

 

meh the UK aint all that its chalked up to be

 

LOL, maybe not for you UK Homies, but for us from the states as for myself I yiked it big time. And omegaman7, Ihope some day you do get the opportunity, there are no better schools films or books that can give any better knowledge than actually bieng there.

 

Guaranteed! I plan on doing some traveling before I go. France(paris), Hawaii, UK, Australia, etc.

So what kind of case, would an avid builder recommend for an HTPC. And when I say HTPC, im talking a small desktop-like case. Should look somewhat appealing.