The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Not sure about the model you're thinking about but amazon and newegg sell icybox enclosures/docks. Almost got one but need to confirm that it works with win7 first (just too busy).

 

As it turns out they sell the enterprise-grade IcyDock components, but not the retail-grade IcyBox stuff. Might be able to find what you're after there.
I think you'll find it's rare for an enclosure to not work with win7 these days. Win7 will read vista drivers for stuff like that.

 

Core i5 and i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs on sale in the UK.

i5 2300 2.8Ghz Quad core: £140
i5 2500 3.3Ghz Quad core: £165
i5 2500K Overclockable 3.3Ghz Quad core: £185

i7 2600 3.4Ghz Quad core: £240
i7 2600K Overclockable 3.4Ghz Quad core: £270

Gigabyte P67A-UD3 Motherboard: £100
Gigabyte P67A-UD3H Motherboard: £130
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Motherboard: £150
Gigabyte P67A-UD5 Motherboard: £220

Performance [i5 2500K]: 20-35% faster than i5 750 [0-10% faster per clock]



Some power consumption results [CPUs that use a separate northbridge include power used by the northbridge for comparison's sake]

i5 2500K: 30W idle, 85-90W load
i7 2600K: 30W idle, 90-95W load
i5 750: 30W idle, 90W load
i7 870: 35W idle, 120W load
i7 950 inc X58 North: 60W idle, 145W load
i7 980X inc X58 North: 60W idle, 150W load


X4 645 inc 890FX North: 35W idle, 95W load
X4 975 inc 890FX North: 40W idle, 115W load
X6 1055T inc 890FX North: 45W idle, 100W load
X6 1100T inc 890FX North: 45W idle, 135W load

Lastly, some i7 2600K overclocking basic info:
Initial clock speed: 100x34 = 3400Mhz
Overclocked clock speed: 103x46=4739Mhz
Voltage: 1.475V
Cooler used: Intel LGA1155 stock cooler (!)

PiFast: 21% improvement
wPrime Multithread: 22% improvement
Cinebench R11: 31% improvement (=i7 980X)

 

Ok guys quick question. I know a few of you have the. WD 2tb hdd. Is there anything speacial to it being seen in win7. Just got mine yesterday and havent instaled it yet. Anything i should know before hand?

 

I went for long/complete format(NTFS), at 4096 bytes allocation size. There were no problems. Take note, that long format will take 4 - 4.5 hours. I did this for my own piece of mind. I figure if it can survive the long format, it increases the odds of having a good non defective drive If it didn't, it would go back to western digital, with little grief.

 

Nothing to it, quickformatted all of mine. So far no problems.

 

Will all the bad reviews newegg is getting, I figured better safe than sorry

 

Yeah it's a perfectly valid strategy if you have the time, UER issues are the main cause of the non-DOA short term failures of the drives. Full formatting will spot these straight away.

 

Glad to say that after several days of intermittent stability issues I seem to be sorted.

Long story short I was getting hanging at POST and in the BIOS, as well as intermittent crashing even at stock OC settings. First I thought it was a loose connection to my IDE DVD-RW drive. After plugging it back in, the issues seemed to clear up. Then it crashed again, this time hanging on POST every time I booted up. Removed the drive completely and it booted perfectly the first time, even without a cold boot. Not only that but I'm enjoying the longest period of stability I've had in several weeks.

So anyway yeah woo bought a Sony Optiarc SATA DVD-RW from my friend for $10. Going to pick it up tomorrow.

For the record guys my current OS drive always gets flagged for a chkdsk after a format because I use killdisk. It has a few bad sectors and normally bad sectors are allocated so they go un-used. Killdisk writes the drive with all zeroes and apparently removes that allocation because after a fresh format the bad sectors are always back. If I format without killdisk, I never have the problem. Normally I'd flag the drive for replacement, but I have never had data loss or stability issues and S.M.A.R.T. gives it a 98 and 97 for health and fitness accordingly. Tell me, is my logic wrong here?

 

Not necessarily, I tend to retire bad sector drives but I used a raptor I got for £5 due to bad sectors for a good year without incident. The only other drive i had with bad sectors is now dead, as far as I can tell (2006 HD400LJ).
As for the ODD, before you write it off, try a firmware flash JIC.

 

I've used a Raptor off and on knowing it has bad sectors. I used it for network transfers and bd encoding, and transferring large files to my brothers house. It's just about retired now though. I may have yet another Velociraptor failing. SMART statistics look good, but I have this itch telling me to run some deeper tests. Just haven't gotten to it. My system has been hanging for rather large periods of time for the last month or two. I wonder if there's a device that can test Sata cable throughput. Other than an Ohms meter

 

That right there is the only reason I'd love to get SB.

 

It will be interesting to see how the bigger 6-core and 8-core LGA2011 Sandy Bridge chips do when they come out towards the end of the year.

 

ok guys what am i doing wrong? ive just put in the new WD20EARS drive. it shows up in the bios. windows7 showed it as being ready to use in the new hardware install. it shows it in the device manager, but when i click on my computer it dont show the drive at all. only 3 other drives i have installed? isnt there a WD install disc i need to add the hdd?

 

well ive found it here

 

You haven't formatted it! Go into disk management and format the drive (You have to do this with any new drive)

 

normally when windows see's a drive it ask you to format it. well at least with the last 3 i have done. it didnt give me that option. i have it now though with a little searching around i found the info needed.

and i did choose the quick format. that is all that was needed right? i remember you all saying that was fine for useing it as a storage drive.

and now i got some file transfering to do..lol

 

Quickformat is fine, full format is only necessary if you suspect a fault with the drive, and want to check the disk surface.
Typically windows will only ask you if you wish to format a new drive if it is hotplugged, with the system switched on (e.g. an external drive being connected). If it's there from before the system was powered on, it often doesn't ask.