The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

True, the P5N boards were far more popular than the Striker series as they weren't so hideously overpriced. I obviously wasn't always an anti-Asus campaigner, but that was before I had actually owned their products. It's worth pointing out that besides the Maxtor Hard disk biting the dust, the PC built for my grandfather still works at 5 1/2 years old, and that's an Asus barebone, case, board and PSU [it was one of the Terminator SFF systems, not sure what PSUs they used].
This is why it annoys me so much, Asus are a company that made a reputation selling quality hardware, then all of a sudden cut massive corners. There are plenty of cases of manufacturers earning a reputation for quality and then cutting corners to sit with the middle of the pack but charge premium prices, but Asus are an unusual example of a company that does that but cuts quality so far they sit right at the very bottom, and still charge the same prices. Were it just me that was having so many problems I would indeed call into question what was going on, but the sheer number of other people I've spoken to with so many problems with Asus products tells me my experiences, while perhaps slightly more severe than average, are accurate.
You Shaff dodged the only bullet by selling me the Asus board you were going to end up with problems with, not of course that we could know it at the time. Fact is though, when it went belly up at 7 months of age, as a top-end £160 premium board, it's massively cheaper £105 replacement, apart from being vastly more reliable, was a considerably better specification, actually had comparable cooling despite there being about 5 times less of it, and owing to that it didn't buckle under its own weight.
You can call into question our refute of anything Asus any time, but you know that we wouldn't make such a big fuss if it wasn't justified.

 

Sam, So considering your good luck with WD20EARS drives(Tap on wood), You probably would think that spending 30$ more on a similar WD drive would be unwarranted? What are your thoughts on the WD20EURS drive?
WD20EURS
They appear to have additional features. E.g:

Silkstream sounds interesting

 

Hmm, these drives are completely new to me, I didn't realise they existed. They seem to be optimised for streaming a lot of stuff at once and seem to have a higher-grade hardware specification, but they're a little bit more expensive. To be honest, they sound like perfect drives for my use, as it goes, but never mind, already bought the drives now!

 

I definitely like that they're boasting "Long term Reliability". It tempts me greatly to buy 2 or more of them

 

It's probably bull, like the 'variable speed 5400-7200rpm' they advertised with the first Green drives.

 

Perhaps with the design they've explained, they can get away with stating that

"Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) - The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio video streaming applications."

 

Seems like an interesting tech. Might look into one next time I buy HDDs

It'd be funny though if it turned out to damage them long-term XD

 

Gonna have to test the WD20EARS drive today. 2 times now, it's quit streaming data in the middle of a BluRay burn. Each time was at 6X(~27,000KB/s). I really wish the damned discs weren't so expensive. They make it difficult to troubleshoot I may have found some really cheap ones today though. But you do get what you pay for...

I really hope the drive isn't quitting. I'd have to scramble to back everything up :S

 

Surely bluray burning programs have under-run protection?

 

But see, even retrying had no effect. It more or less said that the streaming ceased. Yes, bufferunderrun is a thing of the past. No worries there. But It's like the hard drive just wouldn't relinquish the data LOL! I have it running now at 4X. Last disc. Last time, it stopped at 97%. It seems to vary though. I think the first time this happened, it quit streaming the data at 50% of completion. Weird...

There have been no imperfections on the disks...

I suppose it could be the LG burners buffer...

 

Tried a different program? A program that doesn't fail on resume. Because no hard drive can do that unless the data has actually become corrupt.

 

I only use imgburn. If you do any burning at all, you know that imgburn is revered as THE best burning program there is

 

I use ImgBurn all the time, and stream off WD Green drives all the time as well, and have never had any issues. However I have never tried burning a bluray with it.

 

Oman7,
I don't understand their explanation of PWL. There is no wear on any drive surface of any mechanical hard drive, as there is no physical contact between the heads and the disk itself. All mechanical drives work this way, with the heads floating on a cushion of air very close to the surface of the disk(s) A single particle of Cigarette Smoke is large enough to physically destroy any hard drive! The explanation for PWL is just plain BS!

Russ

 

You're right, I can only assume it refers to some sort of wearing on the disk from being read so many times, but I can't fathom how that works.
WD do produce a lot of BS in their specifications, this is presumably another example.

To be brutally honest, the AV series drives are starting to sound identical to the other WD Green drives with a different sticker.

 

You guys just crushed my dreams LOL! So you think they're just making the drive look better to the big spender then. They boast longevity, and yet the 3 yr warranty remains. I guess I'll wait and see what upcoming reviews say

 

Well I mean, they seemed like a good idea at first, but Russ is right, the argument about PWL does ring the BS alarm bells.

 

Oman7,
"Preemptive Wear Leveling (PWL) - The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface common to audio video streaming applications."

This is simply a common sense issue. How can you have uneven wear on the drive surface, when there's no contact made to the drive surface by the heads or anything else, to cause uneven wear? The drive won't even unpark the heads until the drive is spinning at the proper rpm to create the cushion of air, needed to support the heads in the first place. Pull the plug while the computer is running and the heads park immediately, before the drive has a chance to spin down! The whole explanation for PWL, is totally bogus!

Russ

 

I'll have to take your word on that :S

 

Reading up on it further, i'm hearing things like microscopic particles getting through the filters and causing a delay in the generation of the air cushion, causing drive wear from the heads. Sounds to me more like a case of dead/alive than general wear, but I'm not sure, there's quite a lot to the process.