ratdude's main rig mayhem

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I think it was a thread here on BCN talking about crappy Samsung drives. Not too long ago either.

[NxB]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

New samsung HDDs are good, the old ones were hit or miss. 1TB spinpoint was reviewed well when I bought it over seagate and wd which had higher failure rates.

I've always gotten around the floppy issue by using hiren's with dos usb support and throwing the files I need on a thumb drive. If all else fails I just burn them to the hiren's cd. Hate when bios updates come with an exe and an expandable 1.44mb image, did they think floppies would last forever.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

it has more do to do with the drivereless function of a floppy... all other drives require external drivers to make dos run. floppies have native dos support.

the ls120 is more of a compatibility with old junk thing...and a floppy cutout filler.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

i have a PSU for it now... the 950W tuniq just got the recap finished and all tests are saying it was successful... overkill but who cares? (it also is showing me why modular cables are so popular)...

my questions are:

1. is this pwm fan any good? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835186034

2. is the price increase (form $17 to $25) of getting a slightly faster sony optiarc worth it?

3. is this hard drive any good? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136113

4. any other comments?

[c_hegge]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

1. Yes

2. No

3. Yes

4. Arctic cooling fans are always good. I llike using their temperature controlled fans in PSUs. They use fluid dynamic bearings, which are even better than ball bearings and are often used in HDDs. Speaking of HDDs, WD hard disks are good. I've had them in my last few machines, no complaints so far.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

i'm confused... i see people saybg go samsung and people saying to avoid samsung like the plague. if the samsung is a shitty drive, then it is a shitty drive. thats the real question. if it is shit then I am not buying it.

[c_hegge]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I say avoid Samsung and Hitachi Deathstars. WD and Seagate are the only brands I trust.

[yyonline]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I'm working on a laptop from 2003 with a Samsung combo drive that works like new. I know the girl who owns the laptop and the drive got plenty of use. I've also seen much newer Samsung drives that are dead for no apparent reason. So in my opinion, they're inconsistent.

I like Lite-on for desktop drives, followed by LG.

I haven't been impressed by Arctic Cooling fans. I've disassembled them, and the bearings are not sealed like most fluid dynamic bearings are. They're okay for what they are, but in my experience they get noisy after a year or two.

Lately for fans I've been using Panaflo hydrowave bearing, FDB from Scythe, dual ball bearing from Vantec, and ordering a lot of Delta fans from digikey and crimping my own connectors on. After all, I see a lot of Delta fans still going strong in old OEM systems. If you plan to voltage control the fans, avoid the Panaflo. Their motors are really noisy when running less than 12V.

The WD Cavair Blue desktop drives are pretty solid. I've been using them almost exclusively in desktops for the past 2 years. Very few failures. FYI the 320GB drive is only $2 more.

[c_hegge]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I thought he was talking about HDDs. For DVD drives, Samsung (TSST) are fine. I hardly ever see them fail. In HDDs, though, I hardly ever see them NOT fail after a few years.

[yyonline]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Browsing through the thread at some of the other questions...

Don't worry too much about optical drive recording speed. I have a 20x DVD writer. I still haven't found media that records reliably at such a speed. Sure, it'll record and verify...but try playing a movie at a friends house with a walmart special dvd player that was burned at 16x...Almost guarantee it will die halfway through. Burn the same movie at 8x and you're good. I much prefer quality over speed when the time difference is minimal anyway, as it doesn't write at the max rate for the entire disc. I've had the best luck with Verbatim discs. Also Taiyo Yuden, but they're very hard to find retail.

I have 2x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint drives in my bench machine. Both are going strong after a little over a year in use with no bad sectors or other issues.

Be careful about the DDR1 Corsair laptop memory. If you're running it at 400, you're fine. If you plan to have the laptop downclock it, there may be issues. In my experience, 400Mhz Corsair will have only 400Mhz JEDEC timing info. 333 will have only 333Mhz timing info. So, if you put the 400mhz module in a laptop that wants 333, it won't know how to downclock it. Most other brands have timing info for the rated speed and all compatible lower speeds. I've had very good luck with Wintec brand memory lately, and newegg reviews are very favorable. Seems to use Samsung or Hynix chips, same as many OEMs. I also haven't had a single module fail memtest yet. I can't say the same about Corsair or any other of the big brands.

As for new Lite-On and LG...I have a one year old DVDRW by LiteOn and a one year old LG BDRW. No issues with either, and they're used very frequently.

[NxB]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Why buy a 250.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-304-_-Product

I have a HDT721010SLA360 and no issues. Deathstar is no more, they learned. Seagate had horrible failure rates for their TB offerings. The firmware bug didn't help much.

I have a feeling all of the TB+ drives have evened out now.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Browsing through the thread at some of the other questions...

Don't worry too much about optical drive recording speed. I have a 20x DVD writer. I still haven't found media that records reliably at such a speed. Sure, it'll record and verify...but try playing a movie at a friends house with a walmart special dvd player that was burned at 16x...Almost guarantee it will die halfway through. Burn the same movie at 8x and you're good. I much prefer quality over speed when the time difference is minimal anyway, as it doesn't write at the max rate for the entire disc. I've had the best luck with Verbatim discs. Also Taiyo Yuden, but they're very hard to find retail.

I have 2x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint drives in my bench machine. Both are going strong after a little over a year in use with no bad sectors or other issues.

Be careful about the DDR1 Corsair laptop memory. If you're running it at 400, you're fine. If you plan to have the laptop downclock it, there may be issues. In my experience, 400Mhz Corsair will have only 400Mhz JEDEC timing info. 333 will have only 333Mhz timing info. So, if you put the 400mhz module in a laptop that wants 333, it won't know how to downclock it. Most other brands have timing info for the rated speed and all compatible lower speeds. I've had very good luck with Wintec brand memory lately, and newegg reviews are very favorable. Seems to use Samsung or Hynix chips, same as many OEMs. I also haven't had a single module fail memtest yet. I can't say the same about Corsair or any other of the big brands.

As for new Lite-On and LG...I have a one year old DVDRW by LiteOn and a one year old LG BDRW. No issues with either, and they're used very frequently.

my laptop will run the ram at full speed. i am definitely not downclocking it... it is a 400mhz fsb pentium m donthan LV on a intel 855GM chipset... it will do 400mhz. not sure why the stock ram is 333, but i am sure it will do 400.

i saw for a buck cheaper some off brand 400mhz chips with hynix chips... it was also high density... looked like trash to me.

i will figure something out on the opticals...

[yyonline]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

my laptop will run the ram at full speed. i am definitely not downclocking it... it is a 400mhz fsb pentium m donthan LV on a intel 855GM chipset... it will do 400mhz. not sure why the stock ram is 333, but i am sure it will do 400.

855 chipset will not do DDR400.

I have a D800 with the 855PM and the original Dell bios only supports DDR266. I had to force flash it to the Precison M60 bios to unlock DDR333 support. I checked the Intel datasheets - the chipset does not support DDR400 at all.

855GM will do DDR 200/266 only.
855PM and 855GME will do DDR 200/266/333

If this is for the D600 you mentioned in other threads, that is the 855PM chipset as they have ATI video.

855 chipset is single channel only, so no need to match modules.

I have two of these in the D800/M60: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-010-_-Product

They're on the same PCB I've seen in factory installed modules...off-brand maybe, but I've had nothing but good experiences.

I just tried some 400Mhz corsair laptop memory I had lying around in the D800 - the result is that the numlock light flashes indicating a memory error. Again, that's unique to Corsair as they don't include the timing info for the slower speeds. If you're determined to get Corsair, get DDR333: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145484

D600 specs mention only DDR266, but I know from experience it will do 333. From reading, it looks like only certain revisions of D600 will do 333:
http://en.community.dell.com/support.../17408198.aspx

Flash the D600 to the latest bios before upgrading to DDR333. Some older bios revisions only supported 266. Even if it has 333 in there now, it might be downclocking it to 266 - check system info in the bios. If it is downclocked, flash the bios before swapping memory, as the Corsair DDR1 does not downclock in my experience as it doesn't have the timing info for all the modes.

[ddscentral]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I thought he was talking about HDDs. For DVD drives, Samsung (TSST) are fine. I hardly ever see them fail. In HDDs, though, I hardly ever see them NOT fail after a few years.

I have a lot of Samsung drives in sizes from 10GB to 2TB, never had any problems with them.
But I had one of the newer 500GB Seagates die on me after a month.
I guess it depends on the model.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

it is a d400.

i'm a dumbass... the bios shows 266mhz... but my research says it will do 333... and i do not think the d400 has a precision counterpart so i am stuck.

considered, how about this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231045

oddly the 333mhz is $2 more:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231037

will the 400 underclock or will i have to get the 333?

edit- it appears that the 400mhz has hynix chips but the 333 has g.skill chips... i really hope the 400 will work as g.skill sounds like noname trash...

stupid slow chipset... grr...

[yyonline]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I'm not sure, I haven't used G.SKILL memory much. I also don't have any experience with the D400 to tell you if it will downclock any memory, assuming the memory has the timing info for it. For downclocking to work reliably, the memory needs the correct timing info, and the bios needs to know how to read it.

If in doubt, get PC2100 that way you don't have to worry about downclocking issues... But if the laptop will do 333, then get PC2700 to take advantage of the extra speed.

I've found the most compatible brand for really picky laptops is Crucial, which is the retail side of Micron. Micron will very likely have all the timings, but again, no idea if the D400 cares.

I'm happy to send you a small (likely very small, but free) PC2700 stick if you just want to determine if the laptop will run at 333 before you order something.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

i might see if i can find some pc2100 ram used, see the sales forum.
the current memory is 333mhz sticks, being run at 266mhz.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

G.SKILL is major brand now.

Faster RAM will always run at slower speeds but not necessarily automatically.

Doing it automatically depends on two things and you need both.
1: The timing tables recorded in the firmware [SPD] for the speed you want.
2: The BIOS having a table that matches.

Lately laptop RAM only has data for one speed backwards [from labeled speed] stored in their SPD's.
[I think it's marketing bullshit myself...]

If the BIOS allows setting timings manually you can still get 'too fast' of RAM to run fine.
If your BIOS doesn't support manual settings then you just have to suck up buying the specified speed RAM.

Most laptop BIOS are kind of 'dumb' that way so I wouldn't count on being able to set RAM manually.
- But I don't know on yours for sure.. It -might- have it..
.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

i better get 333 or 266 then...

[yyonline]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Lately laptop RAM only has data for one speed backwards [from labeled speed] stored in their SPD's.
[I think it's marketing bullshit myself...]

I've seen the same with many brands. The Corsiar has only the data for the rated speed, and nothing as far as backward compatibility. It's worth noting that it is only the case with their DDR1 memory. DDR2 has the normal spd info, from what I've seen.