The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Sam,
The reason I said it was intriguing is because it could be just a run of good luck, but then again, Hitachi may just have something real good. Time will tell, that's for sure. I remember way back when WD brought out the first 340MB drive. It was better than any other drive made at the time. It's only real flaw, if you could call it that was it sounded like a cat scratching quietly in a litter box when it read and wrote! Every one I ever saw made that noise! I think Creaky's been around long enough to remember those, and if he does, it will probably put a smile on his face!

Russ

 

I own all 3, Seagate, WD, Samsung. All 1Tera or up, the Seagate run HOT, the WD run warm, the Samsung run cool. All are to the touch, everest reads them the same way. Hot to Cooler

 

Interesting, because that's how I'd describe the seek noise of current Samsung drives. A lot quieter than that WD I'm sure, but the seek noise of their drives is completely different to others, a lot softer.

 

For the record I love my Samsung HD501LJ. It is quiet and fast and checks out with great scores on the SMART readings. Currently using it as the boot drive for my network file server and it has been strong since day one about 3 years ago. Around 79MB/s average read.

Also loving my Seagate 7200.12s with he 32MB cache. Very very quiet drives and great performance. They're about as fast as one of my friend's WD FALS drives. AFAIK a 500GB HDD matching speed with a 1TB Caviar Black is a good thing. 85MB/s average read and 83MB/s average write makes them the fastest drives I own.

 

Little Help Please : I just reinstalled ATI CATALYST, so as to watch on my TV.
My problem is : When I set it up it's black screen on one or the other
When on my Computer it has a picture in it but not on the TV , but the player shows up
Vice versa when picture is on TV, Black screen on Computer
I have it setup to CLONE AND AUTODETECT TV.

 

Windows 7? Surely not. Which OS?

 

You say black screen 'but the player shows up' - Can you clarify please?

 

WinXP
The player opens, but where the movie is supposed to be playing it is just BLACK ON ONE OR THE OTHER. The movie shows in one but not the other

 

Windows 7 is better with graphics and what not. But XP probably isn't the sole culprit. Perhaps a driver issue, or hardware. Doubt it's hardware though. Sam would know ati better than I

 

Here's an EconoQuad build for you. $417.48, delivered. I sell them for between $550 and $575! I've built 10 so far this year!



Very competent computer! Throw in another $50 and you can use a Phenom IIx4 955BE/C3, instead of the 630 Propus. The motherboard has lots of adjustments for overclocking. I have a Freezer 64 for Oxi, but at stock speed all you really need is the stock cooler.

Russ

 

Not bad russ. I gather that case comes with a PSU

 

i have a friend with this Pc a Compaq Presario SR5130NX and its running vista. the on board video card is broken and they need a new one. here's the catch there psu is only 250 watts so they will need a card that will support that psu. the system has a PCI Express x16 slot. they are not a pc gamer. the only they really use the computer for is browsing the web,checking emails and a little flash based gaming.

computer specs
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us〈=en&docname=c01048297&dlc=en#N820

 

The second screen is not getting driver acceleration. ATI cards are usually meant to sense this automatically. The monitors are set as one extended desktop right?
I can, for instance, drag a movie from one monitor to the other and after a momentary pause it carries on with the other screen.
Which player are you using? It's conceivable that the player doesn't support playback on secondary screens.

Russ: Not bad choices, the X4 630 goes in all my low-end specs these days, though usually I tend to specify DDR3 boards as DDR2 is typically just as expensive over here, and proper AM3 boards with DDR2 don't exist in proper ATX format, limiting for many users, even those with low budgets.
Caviar Blue hard drive is identical to the 250GB WD2500AAJS I used to use for my OS. They are slow as hell unfortunately, but very quiet and reliable.
CM Elite case isn't the nicest case in the world, but it suffices on a budget. No idea if the PSU is trustworthy though, I tend to use a mid-budget case and a Corsair 400W CX PSU. I don't do bottom-budget builds, for me it's easier for people to buy a Dell off the shelf. They'll get more than 250GB of disk space for that money.


Redice: If nothing but flash, buy a basic card like an HD4350. If you want more power, you can go up to an HD5670 on a 250W PSU. They're reasonably competent cards, comparing with the midrange 8800s of yesteryear.

 

Use VLC and Media Player Classic
Most Assuredly they do

 

Media Player Classic certainly does, can't speak for VLC. No luck with either player?
What happens if you play on one screen then drag the window to the other?

 

ok thanks

 

Where do i find the option to dragg the video
Unless I open ATI, WHERE DO i FIND THE SECOND SCREEN ( tv )

 

That wasn't my point, just drag the window with the mouse cursor off the edge of the screen and see if it appears on the second screen. If the image on the second monitor is totally blank, it probably hasn't even been detected (or your PC may be sending it a resolution it can't accept)

 

Hey Russ, those spec's on that PC you recommended, it's almost identical as the PC I built a little over a year ago, I can't comment on the many as you guys build I am no where close to that, but I will say it's a great running PC, I can also say better than any of the shelf product $900 or under I don't care which brand.

I do have a different HDD, other than that almost the same, can't go wrong with that build especially at that price, my kids use almost 24hr. a day, it stays cool, quite and fast.

 

Oman7,
It comes with a 420w, based on the newer designed Cooler Masters. Not the greatest PSU in the world, but decent enough, and they seem to be reliable, and they won't burn your house down!

Russ