The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

lol well i didnt think id need 120mm fans but for tthat corsair cooler i deffo do.

 

dang.. where has boozer been? i miss that little fella...lol

 

Sam,

Mainly because I never experienced anything remotely like this with all the years of IDE, and TN before that! I never had to disconnect another drive just to format a drive partition. Ever since I started using multiple hard drives, I've experienced these kind of problems. The problem magnified when I switched to S-ata Optical Drives. Then there's the Data Cables, which they are nothing but a bunch of poorly made junk. I've replaced more S-ata data cables in the last year than I have IDE and TN cables combined, in 20 years of working on computers! They may have been a pain, blocking airflow in older cases, but with my current case, it makes no difference in temperatures if the Optical drives are S-ata or IDE, as I've used both types in this case!

Russ

 

I think the approach I mentioned before with the disk partition tool is best, if you want to do anything more complex than format a drive fresh and install windows on it, do it within an OS, not the windows setup tool. It's just asking for grief IMO. Your experiences will certainly make me think twice should I ever have a drive with multiple partitions on to format. As far as S-ATA cables go, yes they're naff, but they're tidy and compact, allow transfer rates otherwise unachievable with modern HDDs, no more messing about with master/slave and losing the jumpers, and if I remember rightly, installing more than 4 IDE devices onto a system was tricky unless you had enterprise-level hardware. S-ATA just makes so much more sense for the modern PC. If only they just made a slightly better cable design

 

Here's an interesting board

http://www.pcworld.com/article/1858..._30_motherboard_with_usbif_certification.html

 

never had that problem ross, i have 2 640 GB drives, and an optical drive, ALL sata, and betweent he HDDs 5 partitions. anytimei format one, via the vista/win7 setup only that patrion get formatted.

 

Very Nice Haha the almighty Gigabyte strikes again

 

Estuansis,
The AMDs with S-ata 3 and USB 3.0 have been out for about a month. I guess the big deal is the certification! RAH!! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Likewise, the Intel versions have been out for what must have been about a month.

 

I'm sure the AMD counterparts will make certification Can't wait til I have that bad boy in my hands. Joined with Phenom II 965 and a couple SSD's and I'll be happier than a fly in $h!t for years

 

when are the SB of amd and the intel chip going to get sata 3.0 and usb 3.0 support

 

I wondered that, but don't really see it as that important. If you buy a board with that chipset, It doesn't seem like the NEC USB3 chipset is a cause for any reliability issues unlike other additional chipsets.

 

Shaff,
They've been out for about a month!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128416

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128415

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ, I think what he means is on the actual southbridge chip, not the dedicated NEC chip...

 

Oh! LOL!! I don't see that happening with either the Intel or AMD! I don't think it would be very economical at all, so it would be far more costly that way. There's only so many channels available to do the job, and it would take a complete redesign of the southbridge, to accomplish the task! The NEC chip is a simpler and less expensive solution. For some reason people think that the Intel Southbridge is better than anything else. When I had my Intel, the two Gigabyte Satas performed better than the Intel's did, by roughly 20%! I was never able to set the drives up in AHCI mode with the Intel. It just wouldn't boot, regardless of what drive you selected from the boot menu!

Russ

 

Intel's ICHs aren't great (especially not the ICH9) but they're cheap, get the job done and have universally reasonable driver support, hence their success. I wouldn't forsee USB3 retrofits to current chipsets, but I'd expect it to be factory-fit on the next generation.

 

Mmmm, mess...
After having said I'd do so for so long, finally bothered to upload the current internals of two of my PCs. The third will have to wait until it is rebuilt in a new case in a few days - it's a bit tricky to get everything back together again at the moment
Yes, the wires will be tidied up when the upgrades are done. After failed motherboards, replaced S-ATA cables, several fan changes and so on, cable management took a bit of a backseat.

RMS-VOYAGER

http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/6606/s5000710.jpg
http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/6455/s5000711.jpg
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/5118/s5000712.jpg

RMS-ALEXANDRAV3

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/5912/s5000713.jpg

 

2nd and 4th pics are corrupted somehow. Only load partially. Nice looking case. Seems somehow familiar LOL!

 

Yeah, Imageshack is awful lately. It actually took 40 minutes to upload those pictures. I'll try again.

 

OK, try now