The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

10% really? i didnt know benches were out.

according to quite a few trusted tables for $220 you can get the I5 2600K $20 more than the non k.

 

The 2600K is a 3.4Ghz i7 with HT, at $317/£240.
The i5 2500K is probably the CPU you're thinking of, a 3.3Ghz quad core [without HT, hence i5] at $216/£165.
Stock clocks that will be 30% faster than an i5 760, but I don't know how cheap P65 boards will be at release. Something tells me they won't be as cheap as P55 boards are now. When the i5s first came out, P55 boards were all pretty pricey.

Where people really stand to gain with Sandy Bridge is the full-fat i7s being chipset-less, featuring IGPs on-CPU, and all being 95W CPUs for the first time, effectively 'i5ing' the high-end range. It's also worth pointing out though that there are no immediate Sandy Bridge 6-core or 8-core CPUs lined up. The i7 970/980X will still be filling that niche for the time being.
I've no great reason to be doubtful, but I'd still like to see a few more post-release overclocks of the Sandy Bridge CPUs before I go recommending people to go with them. Right now to beat the i5 760 on almost any current board it's going to take all K-series sandy bridge CPUs to get to a good 3.9Ghz+ to beat them even by the tiniest of margins. I can't see them going substantially further than that. There doesn't seem much point in buying them from an enthusiast's point of view. What Intel are really doing here is upping the standard for stock users with higher base clocks.
The i5 2500 Quad at 3.3Ghz but with no overclocking looks like a solid buy for a fair few at $205/£155 which should be a good 10% faster than the i7 975 in games, or a substantial 50% faster than the X4 965, and effectively matching the X6 1090T at multithreading as well.

 

Guess what I get to do this weekend. Crawling around under the house. It's not as bad as it sounds. This house is only 10yrs old. I've been under it before. I believe the ground had some form of tarp or other material covering the ground. I could be mistaken. That could be wishful thinking :S
But the best part is, the living room will be able to connect to netflix when I'm done. And in the not too distant future, a possible basic HTPC. I'm trying to find the cheapest/best HP or Dell desktop slim case for my money. Open to suggestions. It has to look preferably sharp. Black is definitely preferred. I will not buy the HEC case again. I'm unimpressed with it's airflow...

I'm also open for suggestions about the tool(preferably local, E.g. home depot), that can make the indoor RJ-45 jack possible.

 

The tools are common and cheap.

 

Are you going to actually put an outlet in your wall or just drill a hole in the floor, run cable through and attach the connector?

 

Oman7,
I don't think you could do much better than this for the money!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...e=hp_computers_desktop-_-83-147-364-_-Product

Personally I have mostly praise for the Slimlines. They run quiet and seem pretty dependable. The only pain I had with one, was finding a Fax/Modem to fit it. I wound up fabricating a new low profile mount, by removing the old one and drilling a couple of new holes, then mounting the new modem to the old low profile bracket! Wasn't exactly difficult!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I think I've got my first defective WD drive, one of the FASS drives too lol. I'm not sure exactly what the problem could be but transferring specific files to that drive will cause robocopy to freeze hard(actual error is "Error 23 - Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)") to the point I had to kill the power to system (reset) in order to terminate the process. It still might be the sata cable (I just got hosed on a shipping for really small order this morning and now I need a spare sata cable....), but I feel that the cable is fine since if I avoid the files it tends to hang on everything proceeds smoothly.

edit: are you suggesting some one "buy" a premade computer Russ (in this thread no less)? I'm shocked ;p

 

I wouldn't call them cheap. I've been shopping at Home depot, and ace hardware though...
(Need it this weekend)

Good looking case russ. I wouldn't buy the PC though.

@Deadrum33: Yes, an outlet. I've thought about a temporary running under the house too. But Supposedly my mother wants her office in the indicated area one day. So probably when I move out, she moves in LOL! Permanent solution seems like the way to go.

 

As long as you don't intend to upgrade the system with a decent dedicated card later, which is the mistake most people make, slimlines are fine.

Maw: I've had that with at least three, possibly four of my drives. Every time it has been the S-ATA cable. S-ATA cables are crap!

As for me, cable-staplers. Just trunk a cable along the ceiling. Do it right and it's hardly noticeable.

 

In an apartment I probably would staple it to the ceiling This is not my house, and jacking it in permanently won't be too much effort.

Since the GT210 has proved itself still operable, I'll run it in the future HTPC. Either that or the board I buy will have onboard HDMI. I've been looking very closely at a gigabyte board. I refuse to buy another Nvidia chipped board. They blew it in the worst way. I hope they read this too... perhaps their next generation will be worth a half a $h!t...

Never had a bad sata cable myself. At least not that I know of. It is possible that that is why my BD burner screws up at 6X :S

LOL, remember that crystal head vodka that was brought up? My local liquor store has it. I paid 10+ dollars more than I needed to. Though I did apparently get it signed by dan akroyd

 

Glad you like the vodak O-man... heres something else
Wall keystone,
http://cableorganizer.com/cablestogo/cat6-keystone/

wall plate
http://cableorganizer.com/panduit/netkey-flush-mount-communication-faceplates.html

You simply wire up the keystone (color coded to make it easy to figure which wire goes where) and pop it into the wall plate

EDIT!!! if you are going under the house, you should get a wall plate with 4 or 6 port openings for the room with the wifi/router/switch and run from that to all the rooms needing connectivity and easily network your whole house!

 

'their next generation' - referring to what? The G210 is already two generations old. They just still sell it as they haven't produced low end cards for the 4/5 generation.

 

I simply mean perhaps soon, they'll correct their shotty chips I didn't wanna believe it when people were talking badly about Nvidia chipsets. I've been victim to it twice now. Possibly 3. Never did find out what was wrong with the 3rd. That's completely unacceptable. With that kind of crap going on, Nvidia is hardly competition for ati. I haven't heard people speak poorly of AMD's chipsets. I thought companies were supposed to better themselves...

Thanks for the links Deadrum, unfortunately, I need the stuff today. So unless they have a teleporter, they're out of the question. Which is fine. The prices at Home Depot didn't seem to bad.

The idea of networking the entire house did occur to me. However, I don't see them needing that kind of potential anytime soon. I can always crawl back under there Their living room is the only immediate concern. "Network B" room will be an Arts crafts room in the not too distant future. "Network A" room (where I currently reside) will be her office. "Network C" is obviously the Living room.

I sure hope her ISP can offer her more than a 5Mb connection in the future. Or streaming HD could become problematic. It currently has trouble maintaining a 5Mb connection. July 4th my connection became highly erratic. Once it started cooling down outside, it seemed to stabilize. Really weird. Makes me wonder if there is a wiring issue underground(We do seem to have a lot of Moles). The main junctions have already been tested by the ISP

 

AMD Chipsets aren't wonderful either tbh, but they're worlds apart from nvidias at least.
The problem is, people only review stuff when it's new and it works, so long-term stuff like this is never written about in proper articles. Thus, people assume it's not true. Same goes for Asus stuff.

 

Remember when we were talking about how Energizer Lithium batteries are stupid powerful? I just tested one with my digi meter. It reads 1.8V! The ones in my camera which have been going for a long long time, are finally reading just over 1.5V. 20% more volts than rating does seem like too much LOL! I may not put them in just any device anymore.


Even my rechargeables only read 1.3v.

 

Fresh alkaline AAs typically read about 1.7V on my voltmeter. Internal resistance on lithiums is pretty low, put them in something high-current and the voltage they read will drop a bit.

 

Well I'm friggin fired! I swear, I need a gameplan before I drive to town. Have everything I need except one thing. I bought ONE where I need TWO of the following. I swear I'd lose my head if it weren't attached! And I'm not interested in driving to town 3 times in one day. Especially with gas prices on the rise again

 

Red_Maw,
Did I miss something here? I answered his request:"I'm trying to find the cheapest/best HP or Dell desktop slim case for my money."
I sent him a link for a $439 HP slimLine Athlon II 3.0GHz Dual core w/3GB DDR3-1333 Ram and a 640GB HDD. I didn't even bother with Dell! Too expensive!

Russ

 

For the record a lot of Dell stuff, especially their business grade line, is fairly high quality. It took them a long long time to produce a system that does kill itself by design though. Their latest efforts have been fairly impressive.

Also, Yay Coolit on the way!

 

No, I missed something; didn't fully read oman's post and so I missed the part where me mentioned hp/dell.