The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Oh yeah nothing quite beats the flexibility of multiple drives. I can game from one drive while another does work at the same time

 

Yes I agree, I wish I had the space in my HP which I'm still using, so far it keeps on running like that rabbit, I wanted to install another drive but it doesn't have the room because of that external insert slot that takes so much space, I do have the Extrenal Personel Media Drive made for this PC but I really wanted an internal drive besides the PMD is only 150 and it's almost filled.

Sooner or later this HP is gonna quit sometime just hope not to soon cause of finaces, but can't wait to do another build when the time is right and do like you guys, insert at least three of them, especially when they are selling for a pretty cheap price.

I like the one Russ got, I would have liked that one or the 650, anyway, hey Russ, just watched the weather, possible 14 inches coming over the weekend in the Philly area, YUK! aren't you glad your in the Sunshine State.

 

Oh yah! Gotta love CPU's. Multi tasking freaks That's one area where they blow a human out of the water. One thing I can't see computers beating us at, is storage space. I don't think even a Geopbyte could amount...Lets just say I believe one single brain cell is more vast than we realize.

More on topic...I can't see using any less than 2 HDD's. And my main machine really does need at least 3 drives. And i'm about to give it a fourth.

I have yet to figure out what's wrong with my mothers computer(Her old one). It's slow about some of the simplest things. Clicking on a link for instance. It won't register for a full second sometimes.

 

Fred.
LOL! Last week we were freezing our ball bearings off! It was down in the mid 30s, and we had snow! Brrrrrrrrrr!

You get that headset yet?

Happy Holidays,
Russ

 

It's been snowing here actually this week, and the temperature hit -2ºC (28ºF) overnight. Ugh.
Glad you like the WD5001AALS Russ, though I must admit, if it's anything like the 1TB version, it could certainly be a lot quieter. The WD1001 isn't terrible, but it's still among the noisier of my drives for seeks.

 

Sam,
This one doesn't seem to be noisy at all. It's just as quiet as my two Seagates. Fairly quick too!

Russ

 

My brothers AALS isn't noisy either. I rarely hear the WD1001FALS. It really does depend on ones case, vibration dampeners, environment, etc.

Well...it happened again. USB port shutdown loop. It has been fine with flash drives for quite some time. Went to plug a Camera in today, and right when the Cord made contact to the port, Boom. Computer acted as though a power failure occurred, and remained in a restart loop. So once again...PSU is the fault here? I suppose its a good a guess as any. I really should be running a better name brand. OCZ is ok, but Corsair, Zalman, and PC power and cooling are obviously better Heck, even my thermaltake never did anything like this! Infact that thermaltake is going back in my secondary so my mothers new computer can use my Corsair 400W. It needs the 8Pin cpu connection. My thermaltake revision is apparently before that. Newegg shows it having it, but mine was bought before they made that revision. Mine only has a 4pin cpu connector...
Thermaltake 430W

 

Hey Russ is this the one that came with that case you got now?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171046

 

Will,
Almost exact. The one I got was Black. I sold it and replaced it with the 500w. No reason, except I wanted a 500w! LOL!!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171031

Between it and my motherboard, there's no appreciable Vdroop at all, the voltage correction is so fast! The PSU is about as quiet as you can get! Not the fanciest in the world, but it won't burn the house down either!

Happy Holidays,
Russ

 

Hey russ, you ever seen a Motherboard that required a Graphics card to tell the Mobo that it needs to switch to onboard? I have my mothers new computer setup, and yet there is no video signal. I'm about to check the ram just be sure, but I really doubt it being G-Skills track record. I have the monitor ran to a DVI port Onboard. I thought that onboard graphics were default! They sure as hell should be! And since the board is brand new, shorting the Cmos shouldn't have an effect...I really hope the Northbridge isn't screwed already. This will totally ruin Gigabytes track record with me...

Checking ram now.

Well...I checked one of the sticks by itself. I'll check the other tomorrow. Needless to say, there is no change. I even tried plugging my 8600GT into the PCI-e port. Unless the board doesn't like Nvidia. Which is possible. My secondary board lists multiple ati cards that are NOT supported. Which is unusual, given it's an AMD board. So far it's looking like a dead Gigabyte board though it does power the cpu fan, and system fan...

There's nothing wrong with the PSU by the way. Extremely unlikely!

Don't know if this would apply, but what the heck! Im not occupying the PS/2 port. Would that have an effect? Both the Mouse and Keyboard are USB. I guess I can try that too in the morning. What's really funny is that the PS/2 port is both.
Something like this:

 

Usually when you have this problem it means a straight up dead board. Check everything to be sure. It could be a million different things after all. Does the board give any diagnostic beeps? Like even a single beep to signal a good startup?

Seriously though. Last time I had this problem it was simply a dead board. Everything would "turn on". Like all the case fans would spin up and all the lights came on, but no video signal.

 

Aha good point Creaky faulty RAM would do it as well. I'll mention, though, that I've seen far more faulty boards than RAM. Even OCZ has a pretty clean track record with me. Sadly enough the brand I've seen the most dead sticks with is my favorite of all time, Mushkin

HAHA LOL be thankful you don't live here then! It's been snowing several days in a row and we had a really heavy blizzard last week. Average daily temp is about 0-20*F and it was 10 below zero last night. Do you have any idea how much shoveling and snow blowing I've done? Thankfully the weather finally cleared up last night though

 

To get your computer to stop the re-boot loop, which should allow you to see why MS is failing, follow these steps.

1.Navigate to the Control Panel in Windows XP by left-clicking on Start, followed by Settings and then choosing Control Panel.
2. In the Control Panel window, open System.
Note: In Microsoft Windows XP, depending on how your operating system is setup, you may not see the System icon. To correct this, click on the link on the left-hand side of the Control Panel window that says Switch to Classic View.
3. In the System Properties window, click on the Advanced tab.
4. Locate the Startup and Recovery area and click on the Settings button.
5. In the Startup and Recovery window, locate and uncheck the check box next to Automatically restart.
6. Click OK in the Startup and Recovery window.
7. Click OK in the System Properties window.

HTH

 

Given the rating the WD1001FALS scores at silentpcreview, mine isn't any more noisy than expected. The WD1001FALS just scores relatively poorly on the noise count, besting only large Seagate drives for seek noise. It's worth noting that once I turn my gaming PC's case fans up to high speed, I can't hear it behind them (but then I can't hear myself think either ). It all comes down to the ambient noise level created by the rest of the components. It's still an improvement on the WD360GD it replaced, though, and the performance is almost indistinguishable.
Omega: USB shutdown, the PSU is not the first thing I would suspect. USB uses the 5V rail, and very little uses this rail, so you'd hardly be stressing it much. It's almost certainly a motherboard fault.
On the topic of Coolermaster PSUs, the extreme power units may well be quiet, but I would strongly recommend nobody buys one of the 'iGreen' units. They are ridiculously loud. I had to replace a PSU in my housemate's PC from an iGreen 430W to a Corsair VX 450W. Because he had a Thermaltake case and I could clearly hear noisy 120mm fans I presumed he had loud case fans - not so. The system noise was cut more than in half by switching out that PSU, the case fans were nowhere near as big an impact as I thought. Turns out that at idle the 120mm fan runs around 1800rpm and load around 1900rpm. The PC will be using roughly 110W at idle, and maybe 200-220 at load. That's an absurd fan speed to use, and I have to say, is typical of a lot of Coolermaster units.
Omega again: Sounds like a no-POST scenario. Either something's not plugged in properly (this includes drives, so check them thoroughly), the CPU is dead (unlikely), the PSU or RAM are faulty, or it's a dead board.
Lots of gigabytes use the combined PS/2 port, and no, not using it is never an issue.

 

Oman7,
you'll have to enlighten me on what motherboard you are talking about. If it's a newer board with OBG, it's probably HD Graphics and will have both VGA and DVI. There are a couple of places in the bios setup that need attention for it to work properly.. If it has both VGA and DVI, do either of them work at all?

BTW! Just about every Laptop on the planet uses a PS/2 connection like that. I had one on my Dell C-610, and that was pretty old.

Russ

 

I have one of those still in the box.I picked up from Micro Center.I'll use it on a customer build when one comes around lol.I found myself liking the Modular PSU's cause of it's easy wire management you only connect the wires you need. I Don't care what anybody saids.I can't hear my Silent Pro 135mm fan spining at all it holding it's name Silent only fan that loud to me is my 1 side panel 140mm Xion blue led cause it cranks up to maxs of 1560rpm's with the turn of Fan Controller but...I only run it at 1000rpm in unstress mode the cpu cause it can blows some air and the top side twins pulling air out AeroCool Streamliner-Black 140mm Blue led.I bought

Hey Russ I know you had to modify your case for your Arctic Cooler

 

The SilentPro is thankfully one of the few Coolermaster PSUs that actually is quiet, managing 14dB @ 150W, 18dB @ 200W, 25dB @ 250W and 30dB @ 400W.
By comparison the Zalman I use works out at roughly 14dB up to 400W and 22dB ish @ 500W.
The Nexus PSU I use due to it being the (now) #2 quietest PSU out there (recently beaten by a very expensive Seasonic offering) is 11dB @ 150W, 16dB@ 200W, 18dB@ 250-300W and 19dB @ maximum output.
Meanwhile, taking a retro look at Coolermaster PSUs, an early RealPower unit (the RS-450):
18dB@ 100W, already 25dB by 150W, over 30dB @ 200W, reaching 40dB by 300W.

 

I've tried both the VGA and DVI port on the board. Here are the items of relevance. This is not good. This is my mothers first experience with both Gigabyte and newegg. I've spoken extremely highly of both. Silly me, I forgot to knock on wood!
MOTHERBOARD
G-SKILL RAM
Athlon II X 4 620 Propus 2.6Ghz