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The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition
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Senior Member
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2. November 2012 @ 17:14 |
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Enterprise drives aren't just about serving large populations, they are more about serving data 24/7 and the ones optimized for video perform much better in that area of course. Sure you can run a desktop drive 24/7 but it isn't designed for that type of use and will have issues much earlier than a RAID type drive or other special drives. Also Green drives will lag at times when using as a server and are not the best to use in RAID setups of course.
WD HGST's new 4T drive is impressive I demo'd one that a rep had but like Sam said the price is too steep on new drives. From what I've seen 2T drives seem to be the best deal at the moment.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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2. November 2012 @ 17:22 |
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I didn't really intend to compare consumer-grade 5400rpm drives to enterprise drives, I was more referring to comparisons between them and high performance 7200rpm+ alternatives.
The price/GB is actually basically the same between 2TB and 3TB drives, so either currently represent the best value, so go with whatever's most suitable from a cost/infrastructure perspective. I've started buying more 3TB drives in favour of 2TBs now at last. The defective drive slowed my uptake of them initially, and one of the newer batch makes far more noise than the others so I suspect it may fail prematurely (on the other hand, I've had unusually noisy drives last a full 5 years without incident before), am still deciding whether I want such a drive in a live or backup role. So far drive 604 (yup, coded by numbers as well as names now to understand what goes where, there's so many!) which was the first, is still operational as a general backup drive, and although 700 failed after a week, its replacement 850 is still going strong so far. These three were of the original 4x750GB variety.
861,862 and 863 (862 is the noisy one) are the newer 3x1TB platter drives.
(Also, FYI I don't own 800 hard drives, think of it as 8.6.3 by purpose)
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 2. November 2012 @ 17:22
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AfterDawn Addict
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2. November 2012 @ 22:16 |
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Sam,
A very strange thing happened to my 6 core. The motherboard bios went south, big time! No smoke, flames, or bad smells but it just stopped posting. You get to the end of the boot screen and rarely boots up! This morning after a couple of days of testing, I call GigaByte to request an RMA for the MB, and it suddenly starts to work properly again. Now it will boot up cold, but if you go into the setup and make changes, it reverts back to it's stock settings, because you have to pull the power cord from the PSU, and wait about 8 minutes for all the juice to drain out of it. Then it will post! The good part is that it happened before I changed cases, so I won't have to be doing it all over again for a second time. It would be a dull life if nothing ever went wrong!
Best Regards,
Russ
GigaByte 990FXA-UD5 - AMD FX-8320 @4.0GHz @1.312v - Corsair H-60 liquid CPU Cooler - 4x4 GB GSkill RipJaws DDR3/1866 Cas8, 8-9-9-24 - Corsair 400-R Case - OCZ FATAL1TY 550 watt Modular PSU - Intel 330 120GB SATA III SSD - WD Black 500GB SATA III - WD black 1 TB Sata III - WD Black 500GB SATA II - 2 Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-Burner - Sony 420W 5.1 PL-II Suround Sound - GigaByte GTX550/1GB 970 Mhz Video - Asus VE247H 23.6" HDMI 1080p Monitor
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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2. November 2012 @ 23:53 |
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No problems with mine yet :S
*touch wood*
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 2. November 2012 @ 23:53
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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3. November 2012 @ 06:38 |
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Originally posted by theonejrs:
Sam,
A very strange thing happened to my 6 core. The motherboard bios went south, big time! No smoke, flames, or bad smells but it just stopped posting. You get to the end of the boot screen and rarely boots up! This morning after a couple of days of testing, I call GigaByte to request an RMA for the MB, and it suddenly starts to work properly again. Now it will boot up cold, but if you go into the setup and make changes, it reverts back to it's stock settings, because you have to pull the power cord from the PSU, and wait about 8 minutes for all the juice to drain out of it. Then it will post! The good part is that it happened before I changed cases, so I won't have to be doing it all over again for a second time. It would be a dull life if nothing ever went wrong!
Best Regards,
Russ
faulty BIOS chips are actually a known issue with those high-end AMD boards, I think it was this thread I posted a warning about that to someone else who was considering buying a specific models, there were numerous complaints about it.
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AfterDawn Addict
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3. November 2012 @ 07:48 |
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Originally posted by omegaman7:
No problems with mine yet :S
*touch wood*
Oman7,
I usually don't get upset with Gigabyte. They have been very good to me, over the years, but when I call to discuss a problem I'm having, and the tech starts spoon feeding me BS, I do draw the line! his conversational English, was non-existent, and he didn't understand the context of my words! In spite of all of this, he then diagnosis's my video card as the problem, and my brain went "Huh!!" I mean how could it be the video card if it won't post or load the drivers that makes the card work??
Yesterday around lunch time, it started working right again, and I had no problem installing Win7, back onto the Intel 330 SSD, and it ran great for the rest of the day. When I went to shut it down last night, it started doing a mandatory 89 part upgrade, that you can't turn off. If you do, it will only start right back up where you left off and continues loading the software. It took me over 3 hours to get it all done with all the delays getting it to post and re-boot. The 7-8 minute wait so it would continue to load the updates, after each reset was annoying as hell. Over an hour of waiting time in a roughly 3 hour job, is not my idea of having a good time!
I'm going to start taking mine apart later today. I'm going to pre-wire everything before I install the motherboard.
Best Regards,
Russ
GigaByte 990FXA-UD5 - AMD FX-8320 @4.0GHz @1.312v - Corsair H-60 liquid CPU Cooler - 4x4 GB GSkill RipJaws DDR3/1866 Cas8, 8-9-9-24 - Corsair 400-R Case - OCZ FATAL1TY 550 watt Modular PSU - Intel 330 120GB SATA III SSD - WD Black 500GB SATA III - WD black 1 TB Sata III - WD Black 500GB SATA II - 2 Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-Burner - Sony 420W 5.1 PL-II Suround Sound - GigaByte GTX550/1GB 970 Mhz Video - Asus VE247H 23.6" HDMI 1080p Monitor
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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3. November 2012 @ 07:55 |
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Well to be fair, it's if anything more common for graphics cards to fail in such a way that it stops the system POSTing than it is for them to cause the system to crash when running, so I can understand where he's coming from there. Still though, the fact that it goes wrong whenever you change any BIOS settings should be obvious enough where the problem lies...
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AfterDawn Addict
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3. November 2012 @ 10:31 |
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Originally posted by sammorris:
Well to be fair, it's if anything more common for graphics cards to fail in such a way that it stops the system POSTing than it is for them to cause the system to crash when running, so I can understand where he's coming from there. Still though, the fact that it goes wrong whenever you change any BIOS settings should be obvious enough where the problem lies...
Sam,
It's funny when you go into the setup and check the settings, they are set for 3.825GHz, but if you run CPU-ID to check, it's only running at 3.2GHz, and the memory is running at 1333MHz, instead of 1600MHz, with timings of 9-9-9-26. Normal is 7-8-8-24. You can no longer change any of the settings, but it always comes up as 3.2GHz.
EDIT:
I know this is off topic, but this is so amazing, I don't think anyone will mind!
http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/201...ter?cmpid=Email
Enjoy,
Russ
GigaByte 990FXA-UD5 - AMD FX-8320 @4.0GHz @1.312v - Corsair H-60 liquid CPU Cooler - 4x4 GB GSkill RipJaws DDR3/1866 Cas8, 8-9-9-24 - Corsair 400-R Case - OCZ FATAL1TY 550 watt Modular PSU - Intel 330 120GB SATA III SSD - WD Black 500GB SATA III - WD black 1 TB Sata III - WD Black 500GB SATA II - 2 Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-Burner - Sony 420W 5.1 PL-II Suround Sound - GigaByte GTX550/1GB 970 Mhz Video - Asus VE247H 23.6" HDMI 1080p Monitor
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 3. November 2012 @ 19:12
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harvardguy
Member
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7. November 2012 @ 16:21 |
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I have to agree - video card problems can produce strange symptoms.
I had an old ati 9800 with a huge after-market heat sink that Mo, my pc builder, and I had laboriously added to it, more as a lark than anything else, when we noticed that the 9800 ran VERY hot with the stock hsf. When I moved up to my x850xtpe I shelved the card, and then, for some reason, about 5 years ago I moved it to my business machine and I decided that the enormous heat sink we had added should allow it to work passively, so I removed the two noisy 80mm fans we had screwed on. My thinking was that I never went out of 2d mode, and beside that, I had on-board video that would suit my non-gaming needs, so I wasn't too concerned about the health of the 9800 card.
Things were okay for about a year, but then one of my drives would suddenly not activate from time to time. It was the strangest thing.
I was running dual boot, one drive for w98, the other for xp. I started leaving the side panel loose so I could pull and reseat the ide ribbon cable whenever the one drive refused to start. That always worked.
Finally some random BSODs alerted me to a possible video problem. It then dawned on me that the likely culprit of all the strange goings on was the 9800. It couldn't survive without those fans. Sure enough, binning it completely cured my pata connection problems.
Rich
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Senior Member
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7. November 2012 @ 22:33 |
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Absolutely it could be the video card that was creating the problem and if I was the tech helping Russ it would have been one of the first things on my list however Sam is right onabout the BIOS ruling out the video card even if Russ buys those crappy cards... LOL Just pulling your chain Russ of course.
Stevo
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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8. November 2012 @ 01:12 |
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I've had a sound card prevent a PC from posting. Or was it a blue stop screen... any how, faulty cards can cause some nasty problems. It's pretty much the board protecting itself. That's how I look at it anyway.
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Senior Member
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8. November 2012 @ 01:37 |
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A sound card shorting out the bus could cause posting problems but with a video card there are many more problems since the system is totally based on your graphics card. No sound card no problem, no video card big problem, basically put.
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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8. November 2012 @ 01:47 |
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Exactly. It does make troubleshooting easy. Pull the sound card, and it will be fine then LOL! If one has onboard video though... *cringes* LOL!
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! |
AfterDawn Addict
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8. November 2012 @ 02:14 |
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Originally posted by harvardguy:
I have to agree - video card problems can produce strange symptoms.
I had an old ati 9800 with a huge after-market heat sink that Mo, my pc builder, and I had laboriously added to it, more as a lark than anything else, when we noticed that the 9800 ran VERY hot with the stock hsf. When I moved up to my x850xtpe I shelved the card, and then, for some reason, about 5 years ago I moved it to my business machine and I decided that the enormous heat sink we had added should allow it to work passively, so I removed the two noisy 80mm fans we had screwed on. My thinking was that I never went out of 2d mode, and beside that, I had on-board video that would suit my non-gaming needs, so I wasn't too concerned about the health of the 9800 card.
Things were okay for about a year, but then one of my drives would suddenly not activate from time to time. It was the strangest thing.
I was running dual boot, one drive for w98, the other for xp. I started leaving the side panel loose so I could pull and reseat the ide ribbon cable whenever the one drive refused to start. That always worked.
Finally some random BSODs alerted me to a possible video problem. It then dawned on me that the likely culprit of all the strange goings on was the 9800. It couldn't survive without those fans. Sure enough, binning it completely cured my pata connection problems.
Rich
Rich,
Replace the IDE cable. They all do that when they go belly up! It only worked because you made a connection when you plugged it back in again. They are well known for high resistance connection problems, caused mostly by vibration. The crimp connectors slowly cut through the wires, due to that. I always use 80 pin cables, if possible.
Best Regards,
Russ
PS Here's a couple of songs from Jackie's new album, "Songs From the Silver Screen".
Music of the Night on The View
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d65VQZ2iKuQ
Reflection on Fox and Friends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=e...pTBhGLV2r0&NR=1
Such an amazing voice!
Enjoy,
Russ
GigaByte 990FXA-UD5 - AMD FX-8320 @4.0GHz @1.312v - Corsair H-60 liquid CPU Cooler - 4x4 GB GSkill RipJaws DDR3/1866 Cas8, 8-9-9-24 - Corsair 400-R Case - OCZ FATAL1TY 550 watt Modular PSU - Intel 330 120GB SATA III SSD - WD Black 500GB SATA III - WD black 1 TB Sata III - WD Black 500GB SATA II - 2 Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-Burner - Sony 420W 5.1 PL-II Suround Sound - GigaByte GTX550/1GB 970 Mhz Video - Asus VE247H 23.6" HDMI 1080p Monitor
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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8. November 2012 @ 02:17 |
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Not sure If I've ever had an IDE related issue. Though I've heard of them. I've only ever had a few IDE drives. I've owned probably 600%+ more Sata drives :D Never had a Sata cable related issue. Though I've heard of those too. Cables are definitely the first thing to eliminate, as a cause!
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! |
Senior Member
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8. November 2012 @ 02:37 |
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IDE cables don't normally go bad unless they have been abused by pulling them off wrong where the IDC pulls apart or is stressed. There certainly isn't enough vibration in a PC to cause wire cutoffs, again it would be miss-use.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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8. November 2012 @ 02:51 |
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Even plugging an IDE drive into the board without plugging its power in will often stop a PC from posting - fortunately this does not seem true of SATA in my experience.
I'll also agree with Stevo here that SATA cables go wrong an order of magnitude more often than IDE cables.
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AfterDawn Addict
7 product reviews
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8. November 2012 @ 02:58 |
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Unplugging an IDE drive without powering down, can be catastrophic to the IDE channel! Never done it myself, but my brother did. He won't make that mistake again ;) I believe my troubles with cables have been zero, because I treat them very well. Not suggesting that those with troubles are brutal... but perhaps they received a very fragile cable, and they weren't gentle LOL!
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! |
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8. November 2012 @ 03:30 |
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I have also found SATA cables to be fairly fragile. Is common to see broken insulation at ends if bent and have had several seemingly fine cables simply refuse to work. IDE cables on the other hand, I could pull one out of a junkyard and use it forever.
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GHz(20 x 200) 1.5v 3000NB 2000HT, Corsair Hydro H110 w/ 4 x 140mm 1500RPM fans Push/Pull, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5, 8GB(2 x 4GB) G.Skill RipJaws DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz CL9 1.55v, Gigabyte GTX760 OC 4GB(1170/1700), Corsair 750HX
Detailed PC Specs: http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/blog_entry.cfm/11388 |
AfterDawn Addict
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8. November 2012 @ 03:32 |
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Originally posted by Estuansis:
I have also found SATA cables to be fairly fragile. Is common to see broken insulation at ends if bent and have had several seemingly fine cables simply refuse to work. IDE cables on the other hand, I could pull one out of a junkyard and use it forever.
I could say the same thing about sata :p
Not that I ever would ;)
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 8. November 2012 @ 03:32
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AfterDawn Addict
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8. November 2012 @ 03:42 |
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Actually prefer the orange/blue SATA cables that Gigabyte supplies. Have had good luck with them.
IDE cables basically any brand, any age, though I do try to use 80 pin cables for various reasons. AFAIK unless compatibility problems arise, 80 pin cables are better in every way.
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 4GHz(20 x 200) 1.5v 3000NB 2000HT, Corsair Hydro H110 w/ 4 x 140mm 1500RPM fans Push/Pull, Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5, 8GB(2 x 4GB) G.Skill RipJaws DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz CL9 1.55v, Gigabyte GTX760 OC 4GB(1170/1700), Corsair 750HX
Detailed PC Specs: http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/blog_entry.cfm/11388
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 8. November 2012 @ 03:47
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AfterDawn Addict
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10. November 2012 @ 15:25 |
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I just got the RMA from Gigabyte for my 990XA-UD3. They will replace it! I'm glad he finally saw things my way! LOL!!
I bit the bullet, and bought an FX-8320 Viscera 3.5GHz (4.0 Turbo) 8 core to play with.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113285
I also bought a pair of Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive. Bare Drive only for $79.99 each w/free shipping. A 5 year warranty, 1TB, Enterprise drive for $80! Are you kidding me? I just bought 2 500GB FAEX drives a couple of weeks ago for $73 each.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
They're my first 1TB drives!
I can't wait to see how well it runs my 3D rotational programs. The current software can use up to 12 cores.
Russ
GigaByte 990FXA-UD5 - AMD FX-8320 @4.0GHz @1.312v - Corsair H-60 liquid CPU Cooler - 4x4 GB GSkill RipJaws DDR3/1866 Cas8, 8-9-9-24 - Corsair 400-R Case - OCZ FATAL1TY 550 watt Modular PSU - Intel 330 120GB SATA III SSD - WD Black 500GB SATA III - WD black 1 TB Sata III - WD Black 500GB SATA II - 2 Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-Burner - Sony 420W 5.1 PL-II Suround Sound - GigaByte GTX550/1GB 970 Mhz Video - Asus VE247H 23.6" HDMI 1080p Monitor
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Senior Member
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11. November 2012 @ 22:23 |
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I thought Sam jinkz'd my SSD in my main computer as I got a unrecoverable BSOD 0x74 error. I rebuilt the whole system and shortly after I was all done I started to get a 0xF4 error that I could recover from temporarily but it would keep coming back. So I pulled out the SSD and threw in a 250G 2.5in drive and low and behold right after installing Office 2010 the system started acting goofy again, so know I've wiped out Office's folder completely and I'm starting all over again from scratch.
On the flip side I just bought a new laptop for my daughter. I got an A6 3420 1.5GHz Quad Core Acer which has two SATA bays just like my i5 2430 2.4GHz Acer. I wish I would have bought the same processor or higher AMD as this new notebook, since this one doesn't lag like my Intel and runs just as fast for the most part as the Intel, ADOBE seemed to install a bit slower but then they are streamlined for Intel so I would expect that. I will try to generate some numbers before I give it to her for her birthday as it would be interesting to see how it compares with some stuff. So far I like it much better but I do need to put it through some tests.
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12. November 2012 @ 04:49 |
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Rather than lose time waiting for the new MB, I'm going to finish the new PIIx6 965BE as my FX-8320. Newegg screwed up my order, and sent 2 FX-8320, and an extra 1TB WD black. I normally wouldn't mind, but then they had to spoil it by charging me for them1 LOL!! I've already installed the latest BIOS flash in the motherboard, so the 8320 is a drop in.
I almost bought an 8150 Zambiezi, but talked to my doctor friends first. They said to buy the FX-8320 instead, it's worth the extra $20, as it's much faster than the 8150! I'll find out in a few days! The case is just as I thought it would be, and cools super well!
Best Regards,
Russ
GigaByte 990FXA-UD5 - AMD FX-8320 @4.0GHz @1.312v - Corsair H-60 liquid CPU Cooler - 4x4 GB GSkill RipJaws DDR3/1866 Cas8, 8-9-9-24 - Corsair 400-R Case - OCZ FATAL1TY 550 watt Modular PSU - Intel 330 120GB SATA III SSD - WD Black 500GB SATA III - WD black 1 TB Sata III - WD Black 500GB SATA II - 2 Asus DRW-24B1ST DVD-Burner - Sony 420W 5.1 PL-II Suround Sound - GigaByte GTX550/1GB 970 Mhz Video - Asus VE247H 23.6" HDMI 1080p Monitor
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 12. November 2012 @ 04:54
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AfterDawn Addict
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12. November 2012 @ 04:58 |
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And I thought I'd be the first to jump on the FX bandwagon :p
To delete, or not to delete. THAT is the question! |
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