The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Indeed, it's fast approaching a full year since I've spent anything on any of my PCs. They're performing OK, but disk space is starting to get a little tight

 

LOL! And Disk space is very expensive right now too. I see the WD1001FALS are at 129. Weren't they over 200 not long ago? Eh, they still need to come down a lot.
I wish you a speedy recovery WD My 13Tb will have to suffice for now.

 

I actually saw a 2TB drive for $89 on sale, one day only of course, just the other day. Had I felt comfortable buying it at that time I would have but money was tight at that moment. This might mean that we will see drives come back down soon, at least I hope so as I too could use some new drives.

Obviously I too will spend on leading edge technology which is why I have two SSD's now even though they are still expensive and reliability can be suspect as well. I also think that helps support that I'm not cheap but frugal and intelligent about how I spend my dollars. With that said I would buy Intel(s) if I had a large amount of disposable expenditures but really that would not change my way of looking at it though.

 

The WD1001FALS is an end of line product, so its pricing is going to be a bit erratic. You really need to compare it to the WD1002FAEX which is its successor. Mine was £70 at the end of 2009, which at current exchange rates pre-tax is $95. Given the massive increase in base cost of hard drives (the essential requirements, regardless of size), it's not unsurprising to find the smaller types of hard drives (mad as it is that 1TB is small these days!) really suffering during the supply problems.
By contrast the 3TB drives are pretty much back as they were before the thailand flooding.

 

I wish I didn't sell my Black drives. I'd like to experiment with a few things. My green drives behave substantially different. I believe because the head unloading.

 

The head unloading only applies when the drives have been idle for a few seconds. It shouldn't affect continuous I/O performance in any way. Don't forget though, they do use a reduced spindle speed, so that will have a significant effect on performance.

 

They're the only drives that cause a particular stutter during blu-ray playback. But it's only at the start of playback. I can live with that. You're probably right about the spindle speed effecting overall performance. Naturally They are after all storage drives. I guess one should not expect 'black drive' like performance from a green drive
Man, it's gonna be years before a 1 - 3Tb SSD is trustworthy, and affordable. I suppose I will see the day though. Probably a new technology too, that will have us drooling.

 

I play high-bitrate stuff off caviar green drives all the time and have done for three years, never seen any issues like that. What player is this?

 

TMT5. The very first couple seconds. I believe TMT3 did it as well. However, I believe only the 3Tb drives do it. I have some kind of weird lag issue going on at the moment. Can't test further at the moment. Ever since I pulled the GTX 260, it's like the CPU is taking on more of day to day tasks, that the 260 obviously used to handle. I really can't wait for the 570... AND the CPU cooler. I can't use any more than 3 cores for extended periods of time, for fear of over heat :S

 

Have you tried using something other than TMT? I mean, I can't say I have experience with the 3TB drives, but I fail to see why they'd be any different in behaviour to the 1.0/1.5/2.0TB versions unless there's some sort of bug with GPT I'm not familiar with.

 

I don't like PDVD. And I like the way TMT5 is configured. But perhaps this is worth looking into. Wednesday night, all will be well on my desk LOL! *touch wood* :S

 

I don't like PowerDVD either. Media Player Classic Homecinema, VideoLAN, MPlayer and GOMPlayer seem to all get good reviews, though I haven't tried the latter. As far as I know they are all adept at playing native DVD and Bluray content, as well as rips.

 

Which was my point way-way back! Funny....

I've given up on PowerDVD too and use TMT and a few others now.

 

Sorry, wrong forum.

 

Regarding GTX 570, and XIGMATEK Aegir SD128264 Mega Killer!

Oh man! My computer is running really well now! The GTX 570 seems to aid the overall windows 7 experience. The lag I was getting before is non existent! And I think I just blew the tuniq tower out of the water. I haven't overclocked yet. But I just ran prime 95 with 3 120mm fans @ 1350rpms for about 10 minutes. It hovered between 36 and 37C! The Tuniq was over 40 I believe. And I haven't even pushed the fans yet. By the way... It smoked the Coolit Eco too There's something to be said about a large heatsink. This one is roughly the same size as the Tuniq. But the copper heat pipes obviously make an impact. I won't sell this one, EVER!

I have it in a push/pull configuration. Could I do any less? Fit quite nicely in the HAF932. I must admit... It was certainly the most complex cooler I've installed. With the Tuniq, I didn't need to remove the backplate. With this one, It came with its own unique backplate. I guess I understand why. The fan/s were rather tricky to install. I've never used the rubber dampening deals before. I would connect one side, and while connecting the remaining side, the other side would come undone LOL! It was kind of fun though.

Man I still can't get over it! Smooth smooth smooth!

I see now why the temporary cooler I was using was heating up so quick. Pics in the morning

 

To be completely honest, sometimes all you need is a good lick of thermal paste

 

Also stands to be said some thermal goops simply dry out over time. Have personally found ASceramique cures hard instead of drying which is part of its cooling power. It doesn't simply dry up or deteriorate like some TIMs. Kinda plugging my favorite product here lol but tbh all the problems people have with TIM application I have never seen. If I were to replace my TIM right now it wouldn't make a lick of difference. This application is nearing a year old now.

 

As you can see, the CPU was not getting the coverage it probably should have. Which is why I wouldn't allow 4 cores to run for very long. 60+ Celsius was very likely. The heatsink in the picture, is 90% fins. Not a whole lot of base coverage.

I'm pretty sure the base plate of the mega killer is larger than even the Tuniq. I imagine Estuansis would have lapped it. I eyed the contact surface, and it was far from perfectly flat. I could see large gaps between the copper pipes, and the aluminum. I elected to simply add a tiny bit extra thermal paste. The same stuff I used on the temporary cooler. Arctic 5. And actually, I think the mega killer is a fair amount larger than the tuniq Certainly with the push pull. Even the northbridge seems to be benefiting. It's cooler than it's been in a while.

 

Hmm seems to me that the surface of either the CPU or the cooler was not entirely true. All four corners coverage is not essential at all but it shouldn't be biased to one side like that. Remember the actual die is a small square under the heat spreader. As far as that cooler goes the actual coverage was there, but the pressure was not even.

When my TIM spreads it creates almost a circle touching all four sides but not the corners. It is always uniformly thin and airpocket-free as well.

Starting with the dot in the center method I generally spread a small circle out in the middle of the CPU, much like peanut butter on bread, and let the cooler spread it for coverage. I think essential to my strategy though is the initial spreading. I don't squash the dot and let it spread itself. It's hard to explain without pics, but I don't simply mash the dot down, nor do I fully spread it by hand, I only make it even so it spreads evenly in all directions. This is somewhat essential for lapped CPUs as well because they have less imperfections for the TIM to spread into. This increases the margin of error for the direction of the spread when applying pressure.

Also, the amount of TIM I use is more akin to the size of 2 BBs. Think like a good sized pea.

 

True true. And the majority of the CPU heat is likely produced in the center of the CPU Ahh, I was very careful about air pockets with the mega killer. I made a good guess on how much, and I very carefully pushed, while slightly rocking/twisting to apply the compound. It felt really good