The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Dell cases have always been pretty tough in my experience. The internal hardware in Dells is usually quite decent as well. Never too fancy, but better than junk. A shame so many suffered capacitor plague as late model Pentium 4 boxes with SATA and PCI-e are still fine, if a bit inefficient, for office environments. I bought three refurbished from work and put in new capacitors. All three are still working fine.



Two with Pentium 4 670s which are socket 775 3.8GHz Prescotts with 2MB of L2. One with a Pentium D 945 which is a 3.4GHz Presler with 2MB of L2 per core. All three with 4GB of DDR2 533 or 667. 160GB WD Caviar SATA in all three.

Antec Earthwatts 380 and a PCI-e video card in each. Otherwise stock configuration. Quite well specced office machines for their day. The people I sold them to use them to play old RTSs and Counterstrike 1.6 and the like so they're more than adequate. When they upgrade, I get them back too

 

Oops... :S

Worst design ever LOL! (Déjà vu)

If it doesn't wanna come out, don't force it... Not mine either! Aw well. Live and learn!


I have an idea... or three!!!

 

I've ripped a few of those off through no fault of my own on Dell PowerEdge servers. Annoying, as you can't just quickly replace those...

 

Super glue :S

It appears to have resituated pretty well. Almost can't tell it happened. Though a few prongs are bent out ever so slightly. I suspect that won't bother a cable though. Just have to let the glue dry for a while. I won't attempt it for hours. Gluing around a hard drive, is nerve wrecking to say the least! I thought I had bent the prongs back enough. apparently not. Aw well.

The hard drive cage was blocking the cables. I had to pull it out enough, to get to them. For comfort, I went too far. Far enough to break the data tooth.

I haven't even began the fun part yet. The hard drive is supposedly riddled with scumware. Windows is asking for a password, in a non traditional way. And the guy didn't give me one. I suspect he doesn't usually have one...

A password program I used, seemed to think there were none, and no Administrator account. But it IS Plagued/riddled with wonderful scumware...

 

Oh it's a hard disk.
My mistake, I thought that was a bent USB header for some reason - but yeah now that I actually pay attention at what I'm looking at, I can see it's S-ATA. Yeah I've done that as well, usually on laptops though, as the drives are glued in place and the cables can't be detached until the drive is unglued, so when the adhesive strength breaks and the drive comes lunging towards you, all too often the connectors bend pretty alarmingly, and you have to hope they don't snap. Any hardware installation involving an element of luck is downright stupid...

 

I've got it in a dock. So far so good

I updated my previous post.

The S-ata cable is the shortest one I've ever seen too! Measures 13"

 

Sata connectors are a horrible design much like HDMI is too, cheap is the key to their design with some poor engineering too.

Dell was great years ago but no it is crap today with exception to some of their business solutions and even those are not fantastic....

 

Sata is horrible.

 

Very poor design.

Bought another new ac router and modem for my condo in Florida. I got a bundle deal from Newegg both for $208 delivered. I bought the new NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band Wireless Gigabit Router (R7000) which is really nice and very easy to setup for novice users in BASIC mode or very advanced for experts in ADVANCED mode. My ASUS has a few options the Nighthawk doesn't and vice-a-verse-a. Once place it is better is in it's QOS handling as it has specific scripts already setup for gaming, youtube, and Netflix among other ones.

MOTOROLA SB6141 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem 10-100-1000Base-T Ethernet (RJ-45)
The modem has great through-put and the RJ45 port is Gigabyte mode. It is small and can mount on a wall like the router which I did. Both are ope source devices and both have a WWW hostname IP to connect to them as well as the normal old net address. The one issue with the hostname connection on the modem is that if you don't have a authorized modem WAN connection the hostname link isn't active but you can still hookup with the normal IP address.

I'm now looking at getting a new 2K HDTV (they are also referenced as 4K as you know) even though they are a little spendy and there isn't much 4K content yet,

 

Speaking of routers, the Asus dual band router (RT-N66U) I turned over to dd-wrt has been up long enough that I feel comfortable calling it a success. The newest firmwares would crash it in less than a day so after rolling back to an older FW I was able to gain stability. it shows uptime of 42 days and even that reboot was to setup a different password on its VPN client settings. I Know 42 is not a big number but I've only had the thing a few months and the first few weeks were up and down for troubleshooting. I too use a prewritten script, used to connect the router to its VPN at the routers startup. If I had it to do over, I might have picked a router with a better processor to help with the encryption as the CPU meter is pegged at 100% at about 2MB speed download. The slow speed isn't alarming, I pay for basic slow service but I worry if I increase service speed will my hardware handle it.

 

It should be fine, smart move rolling back your firmware, 42 days is a good sign from what you started with so good deal there.

Although my ADSL service at home is poor I can still run Netflix and download several files without interruption of my Netflix stream, which I couldn't do at the condo before getting the new router & modem. We had the all in one Motorola modem/router that Comcast (XFINITY) offered. The radio would periodically drop out on me, which I only found out after running an analyzer on my setup. It also showed me that too many people in our complex were not aligned properly, most being on ch.3 or 11, I changed to ch.6 which had the less traffic and use close to me. I wasn't impressed with Comcast's router shutting down often, not to mention their horrible firmware and the fact that their system only worked properly under WPA2 AES WiFi settings and then of course still having the radio issues.

 

I'm surprised modern routers are maxing the CPU out at such low throughputs - presumably it's less efficient firmware or something. The WRT54GL I had with Tomato could handle 4.7MB/s (37.5Mbs) no trouble at all, but was completely flummoxed by the increased speed service I have now at 8.1MB/s (65Mbps - not double as that's the VDSL limit for my line).

Important to note is that the CPU overload condition actually reduced the speed I had, from the original 4.7 down to around the 2.9-3.1 mark max. That's a situation you really want to try and avoid if you're looking at a potential line upgrade in the future.

 

My router was cheap as hell and manages all of my wireless/wired with great speed, range, and reception. Can maintain a steady 4MB/s down which is directly in line with my connection speed(about 32Mbps). Was supplying somewhere in the 50-55 range on my friend's 60Mbps line, though it was hardly a controlled test and there were many factors at play.

 

If I turn off the VPN client, the CPU load stays at5-10%, so it doesn't seem as if the hardware is an issue, it is the extra work of encryption/de-cryption of traffic between itself and the VPN server. Also, I should probably look into a specific QOS script for my PS3 traffic, i like to play WWE 2k14 against friends online and game play stutters and lags if I'm torrenting on a different network machine. If i set my torrent up.speeds at a minimum its not an issue so...yeah

 

That would make sense as your VPN will take control of your CPU usage whether you're maxing it out or not unless you can do some load balancing or set limits to your VPN's throughput and possibly security levels. However it could still be a bug in your firmware version too, but it does sound like you got back to a stable platform. So I would see if you can change any of the parameters of your VPN tunnel, if you can that maybe the trick to load balancing.

 

I just bought the Samsung Smart HU8550 UHD 55" TV so I'll be able to connect my computers to it and have at least 3 other programs on it all at once if I want. Or I can have a huge monitor with decent resolution. I'm also looking forward to watching the 50+ UHD movies plus tons of trailers until they get the 3-layer/4-layer BD formats ironed out next year for the new UHD format. I plan on buying Samsung's external HDD loaded with 4K movies and I'm going to buy a 3D/4K Upscale player with SACD/DSD capabilities until they come out with the new Native 4K players, I still have several SACD's discs I'd like to play. My HDMI Highspeed flat cables will work with the new TV but I've ordered two 10 foot RedMere - 18Gbps Ultra Slim Series High Performance cables to go with the new TV.

I went with the Series 8 UHD TV because it was basically the exact same TV, less a camera with the TV and a higher wattage audio system. However it does have line-array drivers, more/better apps, and it isn't curved like the HU9000's. Even though you get a much better display from dead center viewing with a curved 4K/3D you loose out more viewing from side angles. I initially wanted the Series 9 F9000 (flat) or HU9000 (curved) but after digging in more I changed to the Series 8 HU8550 which also has a better picture with the upgraded quad core processor.

I've looked at several High-End players, (Dennon/Pioneer Elite/Cambridge Audio/Marantz/Panasonic/Samsung/Sony/LG/OPPO/Yamaha)which covers most of the pack. Some of these players don't have 4K upscale, SACD/DSD, or a WLAN/LAN connection and some are just far too expensive for the quality & features.

So guys I'm seriously looking at the OPPO, Sony, and Yamaha (the Yammy doesn't have 4K upscale but my TV does so no biggy there).

My TV:
UHD 4K HU8550 Series Smart TV - 55”

The other Two:
UHD 4K LED 9000 Series Smart TV - 55”
UHD 4K HU9000 Series Smart TV - 55”

Players: (any comments welcomed)
#1 OPPO BDP-103EU Universal Blu-ray Player (the 105EU is more then I want to pay)
#2 YAMAHA Blu-ray Disc™ Player BD-A1020 (no UHD Upscaling)
#3 Sony Dual core Blu-ray Disc™ player 4K upscaling BDP-S6200

HDMI Highspeed 18Gbps Cables:
RedMere - 18Gbps Ultra Slim Series High Performance (BLACK)
RedMere - 18Gbps Ultra Slim Series High Performance (BLUE)
also come in WHITE & RED, I bought different colors to be able to easily distinguish what is connected to what.

 

Rather partial to Sony, Yamaha, and Pioneer myself.

 

Me too!, that OPPO UK crap I don't know. Just kid'n of course....

The Pioneer you have to pay for a LAN adapter, it doesn't come with the player. In today's world on a high end player that should be supplied, so that is a big turn off for me.

Sony for TV's I'm all behind and if I wanted a TV with great speakers I would have bought the XBR900 but the Sammy was better overall.

However for Players I typically steer away from them as I've had more issues with Sony and their proprietary approach to things and I don't want a player that isn't capable of playing most everything I though at it, that is exactly why I went to Samsung exclusively for players. It really burns when you pay $250 or more for a premium player and a $40 Magnavox player will play the disc the expensive Sony won't. Now the Sony will play SACD's even in the lower cost Sony's but it is a give and take as WMA's are limited as well as Lossy and other formats, which is exactly my issue with Sony's.

Yamaha has never let me down so it is a no brainier with them. However I am surprised that none of the Yamies have 4K upscale yet.

The OPPO really has the most features and claims to be extremely good in video/audio reproduction. Whether that is true or not is another story, for example; Behringer use to be great gear but these days they are over priced and not as good as some other solutions that are cheaper and hands down better.

If Samsung would support SACD formats life would be good as I would just go with them but that isn't the case and I'm better suited with a Yamaha or OPPO or Pioneer or Dennon player for quality sound reproduction.

Dilemma's....

 

I don't have much to say lately. Have been gearing up to go back to school in fall. This time to a 4 year University for English.

Recently got some replacement Nintendo 64 joysticks gifted to me by a friend. The controllers are thankfully forgiving to disassemble and the swaps took all of 5 minutes a piece. Precision, material quality, and "feel" on the sticks is quite comparable to the originals. If you didn't know about the swap, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. They are still very crisp, and need a little breaking in to loosen them up. They tend to be a bit jerky until the mould marks wear off and they smooth out, much like the original sticks.

The original joysticks went floppy and lost their return, as they famously do, a long time ago. Maybe it was the entire childhood worth of abuse they received? lol. If the new ones last anywhere near as long I'll be a happy camper for some time to come. They feel good and allow me to enjoy my very favorite childhood games again. Time to start rebuilding the stolen parts of my game collection...

Time will tell on the quality of these replacement sticks. They are made from factory molds and use the reference design. I won't be using them nearly as much as I used to, and I will treat them vastly better than my young self did, so hopefully they are a permanent fix.

Thankfully still have my original Xbox with all my favorite games and the Monster component cable. My best friend has the very rare Gamecube component cable which was $100+ when he bought it(Available for me to borrow of course ). PS2 is a lot simpler as all you need is any knock off PS3 component cable.

I have a huge soft spot for the older generation consoles. Spent most of my childhood sitting in front of most of them before I discovered PC gaming and emulation