ratdude's main rig mayhem

[kc8adu]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

some of the corsair and ocz stuff is targeted at tweakers and overclockers.you set up the stuff manually. this stuff is not jedec compliant by its nature and its target market.i have seen some where the spd only told you brand and model!

[yyonline]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Since we're talking about laptops, are there any laptops out there that let you tweak memory timings? I certainly haven't seen any, but I usually see pretty mainstream laptops. I occasionally see a custom one, but they're a pain to deal with in their own ways...mostly because it's impossible to find replacement parts for them.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

fast foward time!

the main rig in the thread is now 95% complete (for now)

I made a trip to fry's on the way back from a college visit... and it bought for it:

$15 (after rebate) asus dvd rw dl SATA drive. has some nice features but many are windoze only (like e-hammer- takes a cd-r or a dvd-r and makes it permantly unreadable).

review at:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=3

$54- WD blue 7200rpm 320gb drive 16mb... i think it is doing sata 3gb/s...

$15- sony internal card reader- bezel don't match but i stopped caring. oddly, the back is not closed; PCBONEZ might shoot me down for that... if it was him who was nutz about that...

$25- 1gb 533 corsair ddr2. identical to my existing chip other than being much newer and a different label design (same model no.). activated dual channel and gave me enough ram for x64.

no luck on the fan... 90mm pwm fans are common on cpu coolers but are a PITA to find by themselves... i tossid in a spare 3 pin for now... the fan pulses, but in the basement, the furnace blower masks the noise.

good choices and prices?

[kikkoman]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

good choices and prices?

way to much for the HDD.
that is, buying a 320gb disk isn't economical these days. you pay almost double per GB compared to a 1TB drive.
some might say "but i don't need that kind of space" , but... wrong.
and - unless you're absolutely sure you've got a winner - a longer warranty is worth it. WD Caviar blue & greens only have 2 years, i'd be surprised if they did much longer than that.
Caviar Blacks have at least 3 yrs (or 5? can't check right now, their site seems to be down). it's a good investment.
as to who is the best HDD manufacturer right now... i guess only time will tell.
if you plan on sticking with that rig for a few years, you might want to buy some more of that RAM soon, it won't get cheaper.

although, to be honest, your core system is too old for economical investments. look at the DDR3 prices atm... DIRT CHEAP. maybe you're better off buying RAM for your NEXT system right now.

[backtrack]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Excellent choice on choosing WD for your harddisk upgrade.
I would check that part off on the list for good. I had a WD and it lasted for years and no problems. Time definitely tolled. A 320gb disk would cut defrag times if you use winda that is. Obviously with any linux os you don't have to worry about defraging.

I think 1gb memory is almost the bare minimum for the x64 instruction set. Barely.. Especially if you are using kde or gnome. 1gb is perfect if you only run a couple processes at a time.
$25 for a new corsair stick is a nice buy.

Sucks for the asus optical you just bought. $15 is quite logical. The extra features, I know, most consumer grade crapola they sell in local stores is winda friendly only.

[c_hegge]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Arctic cooling make 92mm pwm case fans. If you were in Aus, I'd send you the stock fan from my CM TX3 as I replaced it with the pair of AVCs.

[Wizard]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

WD black have longer warranty period and faster. Blue is slight slower and tend to bit of power management.

I had ASUS burners, they were terrible on mounting time. (blink, blink blink blink wait wait finally see contents of the disc.) Go with LG.

Cheers, Wizard

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

i heard disks bigger than 500gb were prone to early failure.

the drive seems to perform well...

[Phaihn]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

the Dvd cd combo drive in my old computer was a liteon and it lasted for 7 years it still works but i started having issues with it that when i burned a disk thaat what i burned i couldnt see.

[Scenic]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

$54- WD blue 7200rpm 320gb drive 16mb... i think it is doing sata 3gb/s...

over here, you could get a 1TB HDD for less than that.
buying small HDDs is pretty much the worst thing you can do (price per gigabyte)

but now that you have it... could you post the complete model number?
like "WD3200AAKS-75L9A0" for example. says it on the sticker pretty much dead center or in HDTune..

depending on the stuff behind the dash, you can tell if it's a single-platter drive (faster, quieter, cooler) or if they ripped you off twice by selling you the old model with 2 platters for waaaaay too much..

edit:

i heard disks bigger than 500gb were prone to early failure.

my 1st gen WD Caviar Green 1TB in my main PC is well over a year old. no problems whatsoever. According to HDTune (SMART data) it has been powered up for 316 days total

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

here is a readout of a read speed test on the drive:

[Scenic]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

lucky. it's one of the newer ones. single 334GB platter, 2 heads. should run cool and be pretty quick..

edit: and you still have warranty till feb 17th 2014
if you email WD a proof of purchase, the warranty can be updated.
(they calculate the warranty from the manufacturing date by default)

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

Good choice on the HDD, sounds like it should be pretty reliable and cool running with the single platter. That Sony cardreader was a good choice too, mine has yet to give me any trouble in the last ~1.5 years. Reads SDHC cards no problem.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

now that i have an opengl issue fixed, it runs TORCS like a dream. 91 FPS average.

doubling the ram and the bandwidth (dual channel) made all the difference.

folding@home to come soon.

[ratdude747]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

folding is running!

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

I have the same WD drive and have been using it for, um... is it been 4 years already? Think so. Flawless is all i can say. I'll be buying another one for RAID 0.

[Scenic]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

depending on what's on the label after "WD3200AAKS-" you can sort of determine the platter/head configuration

RAID0 with an old 2 platter and a new singleplatter.. hm.. the 2 platter would slow it down quite a bit. (if it is a 2 platter drive.. which i think it is judging by the age)

http://www.hardware-wiki.org/wiki/We...tal_WD3200AAKS
P = Platter
K = Köpfe = Heads

the ones listed under "Unbekannte Konfigurationen:" are the one's that are known to exist, but the platter/head config is unknown

for other WD HDDs
http://www.hardware-wiki.org/wiki/Western_Digital_HDD

edit: my 3200AAKS-75L9A0 is also a singleplatter one

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

00VYA0 - two platter it seems.

[kecosero]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

what caps do what on a imac g5 logic board

[ncovert]

Re: ratdude's main rig mayhem

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

I only like Hitachi (not IBM) and Western Digital.
Maxtor bought out Seagate, so they are cheap crap now!