The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Anyone have thoughts on this little Gem? 4Tb enclosure
http://www.meritline.com/airlink-ae...?hq_e=el&hq_m=2747310&hq_l=16&hq_v=f687dbd24f
There are a couple reviews on amazon. Looks decent for the price.

 

for 25.00 dollars its hard to go wrong, it holds a large HDD for sure... I'm still up for doing a SS HDD sometime soon, just hate to reformat

 

Always be careful - just because it says 4TB doesn't guarantee it - never install a drive into a new external enclosure that's larger than 2TB if you already have data on it.

 

A reasonable and logical precaution I'm not sure I have the $25 to gamble with at the moment. But I have been considering for the near future, a 4tb drive or 2. Frankly, I think I'd rather a motherboard with full support. I think that settles it. A new motherboard is really what I'm after

 

I almost purchased it, but I already had 2 3.0 USB docking stations. From their email discount code, wasn't it about $19 or cheaper?

 

Yeah, it's $19.99 with the code, for the first 100 orders.

 

That is probably a smart move and Sam is 100% right on the warning, but it is a great deal!

My new ASUS RT-AC66U router integrated extremely well it was truly 3 simple steps to get it running and took less then 5 minutes. I did of course go back and tweak it the way I wanted it to be. The are only two things I was disappointed about, first is the WiFi is only up to 200mW transmitting power, if I had gone with the Amped it would be 700mW, and secondly the WLAN MAC is not clone-able.

One nice thing is if I use OpenWRT or DD-WRT I could clone the MACs plus expanded setup of tunneling features the ASUS-WRT doesn't provide. Originally the AC66 wasn't able to run a Linux firmware on it but that has changed recently so I may re-flash it to gain some features. However I must say the ASUS-WRT is very nice and I could live well with its features and I may even buy another one to run in either Bridged mode or better yet AP.

With my legacy WiFi adapters I get about the same coverage/beam strength as I did with the D-Link but in the bad room of the house it is more solid even though I only get 4 of 5 bars. The D-Link would fluctuate between 3 and 4 bars which would pause my laptop from time to time.

When I get new dual-band adapters with beam-forming technology things will work much better, my next purchase.

 

reformat? Why? Cloning will work also, and no need to redo all your personal settings/tweaks

 

Omega, I have to agree. A new motherboard might be in order, and would certainly have a good effect on that Thuban. It's not very high on my current to-do list, but a new motherboard would be quite welcome should a proper deal come my way. Just put a cheap SATA 1.5 controller card in my Intel box and not a single issue that I can detect. Works fine with the 1TB Green drives and transfer speeds are A-OK.

Currently waiting for my damn Gigabyte GTX760 to come back from Newegg returns. Badly damaged box and product upon arrival. That's the last time I bother with anyone other than the same UPS route and driver I've known for 10 years. Never even got a chance to test it Poor thing. Lots of sources point at SLI being a solid option for these cards though I don't know if I'll ever bother. I did happen to pop the few extra bucks for the 4GB model, so that pesky memory limit should be a thing of the past

 

As it happens, unless perhaps they're really old, motherboards and cheap controller cards typically have no issue with 3TB and above drives. Now I wouldn't want to try RAID using them of course but that's not really an issue for me.

Where you get issues is external docks and proper controller cards. Only one of four recently purchased external docks can read 3TB disks safely without risk of wiping them.

ICH9 has no issue, neither does Si3114 yet Highpoint cards do and so do most externals, even ones from reputable brands.

 

I happen to not be invested in long-term storage for just that reason, among many others. Caution to the wind as I always say I have very few things that would warrant the storage equipment that attracts those issues. You video storage guys though...



Yeah that's more data than I care to store

 

First time buying parts for a PC, do you think the cpu cooler is included here?
http://www.proshop.no/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?variantId=2371912
Thanks.

 

Yes that comes with a heat-sink/fan assembly and like Sam said it also comes with the thermal past on the heat-sink. So you will be good to go with that. You would only want to upgrade the heatsink/fan if you were going to OC your computer.

 

Does it also fit this motherboard?
http://www.proshop.no/Hovedkort/GIGABYTE-GA-Z68A-D3H-B3-(rev.-1.0)-2287051.html
I think so but I want to be really sure I won't screw anything up.

 

It will but it may require a BIOS update - not all motherboards will allow you to update the BIOS with an unsupported CPU already installed - they sometimes require an older CPU inserted first.

To be safe, buy a more up to date motherboard with the Z77 chipset.

 

Suggestions for that price or less? (I'm on a very tight budget at the moment)

 

This should do the job, is very similar to the board I use for my i5 3470.
http://www.proshop.no/Hovedkort/GIGABYTE-GA-Z77M-D3H-(rev.-1.0)-2329970.html

 

Damn another 70kr more <.< (this website is already a bit more expensive than amentio.)

Anyway thanks a lot, I'll see if I can come up with enough money

 

Here's some helpful information. I strongly recommend steering clear of External hard drives! Docks are one thing, but I won't buy another "My Book", or NAS drive. Two failed in the latest thunderstorm here. Worst storm I've seen in this area by the way! I was nearly caught in tornado conditions twice! Thankfully my all wheel drive ford explorer is a real trooper!

Seriously though, the external drives really run hotter than I like. My brothers my book lasted quite a while though, but other behaviors (E.g. Frequent idling) turns me off. And the NAS drive is dependent on proper drivers. I believe that the electrical storm caused some kind of surge, causing the control board to fail. I was only able to get 10MB/s at the end. Which allowed me to back up the data thankfully. Frequent dropouts though. I had to keep it connected to control board, because windows couldn't recognize the drive. It acknowledged it as a RAW file system. As well as multiple partitions. It wanted to format it immediately. Obviously with data on it, that's my last choice. Discovered it's a flipping Seagate drive. Not my favorite hard drive manufacturer. Oddly, it runs cool as a cucumber in my dock(Could be due to slower transfer speeds). In the NAS though, with slower speeds, it ran considerably hotter. Upwards of 50C. HOT to the touch. The only externals I'll buy now, will be the smaller laptop style drives. Given their lower rpms

 

I purchased 4 2TB drive in 2009, each was $69, and a combination of Seagates and WD's. All are still running and I only use them in 3.0 USB docking stations. None of them get hot to the touch. I also purchased a couple of 1.5 drives, also still working.

IMHO, docking stations are the "cats meow", if you don't need them everyday.