Building a PC

[Daniel]

I'm building a new PC tomorrow night and was wondering if anyone on here would be interested in a picture guide of how to build a PC as it really is simple if you know what to do and you can save a lot of money. If someone's interested I'll see if I can rope Caroline in to taking photos, if not then screw all of you :p

[CaptainRaiden]

*Raises hand* That would be very helpful Daniel, if it's not too much trouble. I can add cards on the motherboard, connect the USB ports etc. but it's the initial setup, power connections from the PSU to the motherboard, placing the processor chip etc. that I'm a noob at. Also, installing the heat sink, because I plan to run two Nvidia cards in SLI configuration in the future and possibly an i7 extreme processor. Things are bound to get hot in there. :D

I'm sure these are easy enough, because they are built to be easily installed, but a guide is always welcome, especially as I plan to assemble my next super PC myself. ;)

[Daniel]

Well she's purring along nicely :) Took me about 2 hours or so. Hopefully I'll get to set up the windows home server tomorrow and do a writeup and upload some pictures.

[billiaml]

Well she's purring along nicely :) Took me about 2 hours or so. Hopefully I'll get to set up the windows home server tomorrow and do a writeup and upload some pictures.

Good job :up:

[Daniel]

Another day gone by and I haven't posted pics :p

Here are some of the bits that went into making the PC

http://oi52.tinypic.com/20idpmv.jpg

Going clockwise from the back, the big box is the case, the box that says thermalright on it is an aftermarket CPU cooler, the bubble wrap contains 2 x 2TB hard drives which have gone in my old PC tonight to turn it into a home server, the next box is RAM, the little light blue box contains the CPU and the CPU stock cooler and the box that says Gigabyte on it is the motherboard.

Set up my home server tonight and other than having an issue with a faulty hard drive which I'd thought was dodgy months ago it's going as expected. It's backing Caroline's PC up as we speak and I'm guessing by the time I wake up mine should be done, who knows! :) Windows Home Server is possibly one of the simplest things I've EVER set up. Connecting the PC's was even easier, you just burn off a CD and put it in the drive of the PC you wanted to connect to the server and ran the disk, put in the password for the server and it does everything for you automatically. There's even a console to access the server with from the client PC's so rather than having to connect in remotely and possibly screw your server up, you have a limited console which means that you can't do anything other than manage backups, user accounts and windows updates for the server.

If you've got a few PC's around the house I suspect this may be a VERY VERY useful thing because no one wants to lose photos, music and various bits of data.

[rah]

Nice, what CPU do you have? Are you going to run a graphics card as well?

I use a NAS for my backups and for playing stuff through my networked BR player.

[Daniel]

Nice, what CPU do you have? Are you going to run a graphics card as well?

I use a NAS for my backups and for playing stuff through my networked BR player.

The CPU is an Intel Core I5-2500K which was released only just this week. I could have gone for a more expensive one but it was £80 more for very little increase in performance.

The graphics card I've put in is out of my old PC. It's an ATI HD4870 512MB card which I've had since April 2009 so is getting on a little I'll probably replace later this year or early next year. Just don't quite feel the need to replace it just yet :)

I'm going to get an SSD around March time as some much quicker SSD drives are schedules to come out then. Currently the PC is held back by the hard drive I've got in there and also the fact that I've only got 2GB of RAM in at the moment. Must get around to ordering that RAM......

I was tempted to get a NAS but the idea of Windows Home Server always appealed to me as you always get left over with a spare PC when you upgrade and rather than selling it on cheaply or giving it away this seems a good use for it.

The server's just finished the backup on Caroline's PC and now it's doing mine. Only 3% finished, after about 10 minutes so it's going to take a while!!!!

[Valve Bounce]

Hi Daniel,

I had posted in somebody else thread about what computer to buy a few months ago. This is what I posted:

OK!! It's the ACER 5745G
it has 4 GB memory
i7 CPU
500 GB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium
BluRay player

and the price is AUD$999.97 at Costco

You can check out the specs and reviews with Google.

http://apcmag.com/notebookhunter/dea...for-139600.htm

Sorry I missed out on this deal - it is not available at Costco anymore. :(
__________________

[GridGirl]

I use a NAS for my backups and for playing stuff through my networked BR player.

The other half used to have a server but we got a NAS drive not long after we bought our house and left the server where it was.

We also had a really boring conversation about possibly buying another NAS last Sunday when we were walking round the gardens of a National Trust property. I think I'll just leave this kind of thing to people who know what they are talking about. The conversation was ruining a good walk. :p

[billiaml]

Oh baby, talk nerdy to me.

[schmenke]

I'm curious Daniel, how much does it cost to procure all the bits individually and build a PC versus purchasing a complete one? How much do you actually save?

[Mark]

Used to be you'd save tonnes. But these days not so much. What you do get is a choice of each component you have and can be sure of the quality of each of them as you've specced it yourself.

[Daniel]

I'm curious Daniel, how much does it cost to procure all the bits individually and build a PC versus purchasing a complete one? How much do you actually save?

Well I personally don't save anything to be perfectly honest if we're comparing cost on its own I end up paying more! But for my money I get better components which have a better warranty, better performance, are far quieter and are also more reliable.


Here for instance is the stock CPU cooler next to the aftermarket one I purchased.
http://oi52.tinypic.com/2q188eu.jpg

Guess which one will dissipate heat better and be quieter? You never notice just how noisy computers are till you experience just how quiet a quiet one is.

If you were building purely with cost I think you could build one for the same price as a Dell give or take a few dollars/pounds :)

Like Mark says, you get a choice of components and you know the quality of them whereas Dell or HP can sometimes put in the components which they feel will give the best balance between cost and lasting the warranty period.

You

[Rollo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

My Blackberry's not working...

[Roamy]

pretty nice Daniel but please leave your favorite out of the instructions

C colon enter :) :) :)

[Mark]

Putting a PC together is easy, the difficult bit is when your maintaining a PC you haven't seen before, now, exactly which screws are holding that drive bay in?!

[MrJan]

Well I personally don't save anything to be perfectly honest if we're comparing cost on its own I end up paying more! But for my money I get better components which have a better warranty, better performance, are far quieter and are also more reliable.

What about if you were to make a like for like system?

The hardware stuff sort of makes sense to me, I've even gone to the drastic steps of upgrading the RAM in my PC in the last few days. Where I fall down is when you stop just plugging bits together and start to try and use the thing. For example you then have to install an OS and software, that **** would grind me down.

[Mark]

What about if you were to make a like for like system?

You'd still probably lose out as the likes of Dell buys components in bulk.

[Daniel]

For a like for like system it depends. For a very low end machine a Dell will be cheaper most if not all of the time. For a mid range machine it'll probably be neck and neck and for a like for like gaming machine a home built machine will usually be cheaper as Dell doesn't sell as many of those sorts of machines so their discounts aren't so low plus they charge through the nose for them.

Installing the os is dead simple and you can just leave the pc to do it's thing and just come back every 5 minutes to see what it's up to.

[Mark]

Yep, installing an OS these days is crazy simple. Only takes about an hour for a Windows 7 install and then you're ready to go, and most of that is just it installing stuff.

[airshifter]

This thread reminded me that I've been putting off my semi annual cleaning out of the computers. :) Amazing how much dust gets in a system in a few months.

I've built about half my PCs. I got a couple with what we wanted at a great deal so just payed the price, and then had a friend with a PC shop that built a couple. His discounts were so much greater that he could do the work for what I would pay in parts. My current PC I built, and went for the quiet route. With the larger cooler and good case flow it's almost silent.



Daniel is probably moving more air through that PC case than moves through the engine in his Fiat!

[wedge]

I was going to build a new PC but ended up buying a decent mid-range HP in the sales for £350. Supports up to 16gig RAM! All it really needs is an ATI HD graphics card which you can buy really cheap 2nd hand. Within the next year or so it'll need a new PSU and a Blue Ray drive.

[gloomyDAY]

Can you list all of the components and price? I just want to make some comparisons.

We're lucky in The States because of Black Friday and Tech Monday. You can buy quality products at dirt cheap prices.
The only downside is that you have to wait a year if you miss out on all the shopping.

[Sleeper]

I'm thinking of building my first computer soon, I'm looking at getting an AMD Phenom II processor/motherboard bundle for about £300, a good buy or a lemon?

[veeten]

I'm thinking of building my first computer soon, I'm looking at getting an AMD Phenom II processor/motherboard bundle for about £300, a good buy or a lemon?

Good choice. Best to go with an ASUS motherboard, as they have a prety good number of useful features and drivers that don't fail on you. Go for the ones that have AM2+/AM3 sockets, which allow for the whole line of Athlon/Phenom processors, including their 6-core units.

[glauistean]

That's a nice gesture,Daniel. A friend built one for me about ten years ago when it really made a difference. It was the best computer I have owned.

[Dave B]

Daniel, is your processor affected by this?
http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/31/intel-recalls-sandy-bridge-chip?cat=technology&type=article

[Daniel]

Daniel, is your processor affected by this?
http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/31/intel-recalls-sandy-bridge-chip?cat=technology&type=article

:facepalm:

Well it looks like the home server might be coming out of retirement sometime soon to be pushed back into PC duties whilst its younger brother goes off for a recall :p b*****d problem is the motherboard too so so it's going to mean essentially rebuilding the PC which I'm not particularly happy about at all!

Ho hum!

[Dave B]

Oh. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[Daniel]

Not your fault! :D Tis just life isn't it?

[airshifter]

Daniel, is your processor affected by this?
http://m.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/31/intel-recalls-sandy-bridge-chip?cat=technology&type=article

That really bites. With so much new tech going into the Sandy Bridge chips, it's a shame they had an issue. Years ago I knew someone that had one of the Pentiums with the math problem. It's shocking that a company the size of Intel gets bit like this now and then.

[Dave B]

As I'm giving bad news, I'd better check Daniel's not using Yahoo Mail on his Windows 7 phone...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12333795

[GridGirl]

All these companies...they're almost as bad as Apple. ;) :p

[Dave B]

Almost, yes :p

[Daniel]

As I'm giving bad news, I'd better check Daniel's not using Yahoo Mail on his Windows 7 phone...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12333795

Thankfully not using Yahoo :D

[veeten]

just got the email from Microsoft, WHS 2011 Release Candidate is now up and they have sent me an invite to download and test it. :D

it's good to be a Beta. :)

[CNR]

Hi Daniel,

I had posted in somebody else thread about what computer to buy a few months ago. This is what I posted:

OK!! It's the ACER 5745G
it has 4 GB memory
i7 CPU
500 GB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium
BluRay player

and the price is AUD$999.97 at Costco

You can check out the specs and reviews with Google.

http://apcmag.com/notebookhunter/dea...for-139600.htm

Sorry I missed out on this deal - it is not available at Costco anymore. :(
__________________

just for youcheck mwave.com.au

[markabilly]

I added a 60gb SSD to my HP laptop for about $120. see it below. price is higher. Incredible increase in speed

use an external drive for most storage and functions

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231375

the downside of the drive is something that i have heard but not verified is that the drive will slow down over time due to some memory issue or something.

[Dave B]

60GB? Is it the 90s? :eek:

[markabilly]

60GB? Is it the 90s? :eek:

Dude, your time spacing is warped....In the very late 90's, 2 GB was considered more than max.

around 1986 to 1990 , remember debating over whether to spend an extra $400 to upgrade the HD from 5mb to 7mb when buying a computer....yeah a HD that could barely hold one photo.... but did not, as the salesman coyly admitted, you will never ever use the extra space


SSD is Solid State Drive...no disk like a conventional HD.
Was going to get a 500GB SSD , but did not have the $1600

the 120GB drives are going down in price, as when I bought my 60GB, they were running around $300 plus


but it is very fast when you get a proper SSD (some are not so good) and mount it with the sata connection in place of the conventional HD. Speeds up the entire system


Unless you are a serious gamer, 30GB is about all you need for programs, and that leaves the other 30GB for storage of the stuff you use all the time, plus use a conventional HD for the rest

Have a friend who did it with his older laptop primarily to avoid having data lost when traveling, (as they are far more shock resistant than a conventional), and he just bought a brand new Toshiba with the latest "Sandy Bridge" intell chip and conventional HD....says the old laptop, still out runs his new one, and he will be putting a 120GB SSD in place on the new one to even the playing field

[Dave B]

but it is very fast when you get a proper SSD (some are not so good) and mount it with the sata connection in place of the conventional HD. Speeds up the entire system

Can't think it would speed it up all that much compared to putting a decent amount of RAM in, but I'm open to the suggestion.

Have a friend who did it with his older laptop primarily to avoid having data lost when traveling, (as they are far more shock resistant than a conventional), and he just bought a brand new Toshiba with the latest "Sandy Bridge" intell chip and conventional HD....says the old laptop, still out runs his new one, and he will be putting a 120GB SSD in place on the new one to even the playing field
I hope your friend has seen the link I posted earlier in the thread about the faults with the Sandy Bridge chip.

[markabilly]

Can't think it would speed it up all that much compared to putting a decent amount of RAM in, but I'm open to the suggestion.

I hope your friend has seen the link I posted earlier in the thread about the faults with the Sandy Bridge chip.

Dam...I will have to tell him. He just bought it from Office max i think about three weeks ago. He told me how he was amazed about the SSD (which i think is like a mere 32 GB on his computer) on his old computer and how the SSD had made a huge difference on his old, such that the old one was still overall clearly faster. I was thinking about buyin the new toshiba he got(about 900 plus or so on sale) as I have an i-3 older HP that does have 6GB of on board memory but boots slower than I thought it should and sometimes takes forever to pull up Word and Excell. So I made the change to the SSD about two weeks ago, and it is night and day.

He said spend 60 for labor and 130 for the new SSD card, go external HD as back up, and you will be happier.
if you are like daniel (and gee I really hate saying anything nice about him) do your own installation and save $60.

me i am pretty ignorant about computer building, so I just bailed on the task

So I saved about $900 based on his advice. Not advocating any particular brand, but the one i linked to is what I have, and it is incredibly amazing. Boots up any program in the blink of an eye, finds files and opens like amazing. It is like having all your programs and files loaded on your ram. For far less money, it was like having a brand new computer.

I have heard that over time, there is some rumor that the SSD loses some of its speed. Not sure if this is anything but urban legend. Could not find anything over the net about this.

The other thing i did sometime back was to buy this padlock ageis, external drive, 500 GB, that has an e-sata connection. It is like 256k encrypted, and if lost, it is impossible for someone to get the data. Using the e-sata drive, it is also very fast, even with the encryption. Indeed, I would say close to equal to my old on board HD disk drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822161085&cm_re=padlock-_-22-161-085-_-Product

Cost was $130 for that.

I remember that just several years ago, an external HD with 100 GB was at 200 dollars and not portable as you needed a wall plug to make it run......

my prediction is that soon, at least for laptops, the old disk drives will be replaced by these SSD cards




And now based on your advice I will be telling him to save about $300 before he buys the larger SSD for his new puter.....and he should be looking for some type of recall or whatever

[Daniel]

Can't think it would speed it up all that much compared to putting a decent amount of RAM in, but I'm open to the suggestion.

I hope your friend has seen the link I posted earlier in the thread about the faults with the Sandy Bridge chip.


Can't think it would speed it up all that much compared to putting a decent amount of RAM in, but I'm open to the suggestion.

I hope your friend has seen the link I posted earlier in the thread about the faults with the Sandy Bridge chip.

SSD's speed up systems stupid amounts. When I turn my PC on and it's booting into windows, the HDD LED is solidly lit till it gets into windows which mean the processor and RAM are there waiting to do their thing but the hard drive is slowing things down.

Md_npjJ3-v4


I did consider buying an SSD when I bought my PC, but there are some much faster ones only a couple of months away so I thought the wait was worth it. My current OS hard drive was about the fastest hard drive you could buy at the time when I bought it back at the start of 2004, but now it's very much mainstream and an SSD will really make a difference to this PC.

Tbh a laptop based on the Cougar Point chipset will most likely be alright.

[airshifter]

I did consider buying an SSD when I bought my PC, but there are some much faster ones only a couple of months away so I thought the wait was worth it. My current OS hard drive was about the fastest hard drive you could buy at the time when I bought it back at the start of 2004, but now it's very much mainstream and an SSD will really make a difference to this PC.



There will always be "bigger, faster, better, more bang for the buck" just around the corner when dealing with PCs. I wish I could get back just half the money I spent staying cutting edge when I really could justify it. These days I just buy when I feel like it's actually a worthy value.

Right now for a desktop system I don't see SSDs being that great of a value. If I was that impatient at boot time I'd just boot once a day and leave the system in sleep mode all the time. The same goes for apps and such. On that embedded video they open and close 14 apps to make the speed point, but a lot of people probably don't open and close 14 different apps in a week, much less in one quick computer session. If they do, it's over hours spent at a system often. Twenty or 30 seconds checking email real quick seems big, losing 30 second over a few hours isn't really a big deal for most people IMHO.

[markabilly]

There will always be "bigger, faster, better, more bang for the buck" just around the corner when dealing with PCs. I wish I could get back just half the money I spent staying cutting edge when I really could justify it. These days I just buy when I feel like it's actually a worthy value.

Right now for a desktop system I don't see SSDs being that great of a value. If I was that impatient at boot time I'd just boot once a day and leave the system in sleep mode all the time. The same goes for apps and such. On that embedded video they open and close 14 apps to make the speed point, but a lot of people probably don't open and close 14 different apps in a week, much less in one quick computer session. If they do, it's over hours spent at a system often. Twenty or 30 seconds checking email real quick seems big, losing 30 second over a few hours isn't really a big deal for most people IMHO.

I do not know about a desktop, but on the old laptop, opening and closing individual files in a program is just so much faster with the SSD.
I use photoshop a lot, and watching the program operate on 6gb of ram, it was fast, once it was open, but now it is just so much faster overall and saving changes of the photos onto the SSD blows away the old disc. After a session, I then back up or move the file (photos) storage onto the external HD, unless I plan on using it in the near future.

Compared to buying a new computer, the choice was about $1,000 for the sandy bridge (that appearently has some serious potential issues) or $130 for the SSD plus the 60 installation fee I paid. Looks like I got comparable performance or more with the SSD for $800 less

I imagine that in six months, buying a fast SSD of 120GB or more for about the same price of $130, will be easy to do.

There are some issues from reading about these things in that some perform far better than others, so one needs to be careful.

[Mark]

Eventually for consumer applications SSD will replace hard drive technology, of that I don't have any doubt. When that will happen I don't know, but I'd expect in 10 years time if you go into PC World then the majority of machines on offer will have SSD's and not standard hard drives.

On the server side of things individual servers will have SSD scratch disks, which will cut down on maintenance and heat.

Down the line what I predict we'll see is SSD replacing spinning disks in almost every application with the exception of large disk arrays in data centres, where the cost per GB is always going to outstrip that of SSD, at least for the forseeable future.

[Daniel]

Eventually for consumer applications SSD will replace hard drive technology, of that I don't have any doubt. When that will happen I don't know, but I'd expect in 10 years time if you go into PC World then the majority of machines on offer will have SSD's and not standard hard drives.

On the server side of things individual servers will have SSD scratch disks, which will cut down on maintenance and heat.

Down the line what I predict we'll see is SSD replacing spinning disks in almost every application with the exception of large disk arrays in data centres, where the cost per GB is always going to outstrip that of SSD, at least for the forseeable future.

I very much doubt that SSD's will ever completely take over within the next 10 years.

The demand for storage continues to grow and price drops due to moving towards smaller processes is still lagging behind.

I've got a 750gb hard drive in my PC and it would cost a ridiculous amount of money to replace it with an SSD and tbh it'd be pointless because I don't need to fast reads and writes when it comes to some photo that I took at Rally Australia in 2002. There will always be a place for magnetic storage IMHO. You will however find that hybrid drives (where a normal magnetic storage drive has a few gig of flash storage on it) will become mainstream. A true SSD IMHO will quite possibly never become mainstream.

[Daniel]

I do not know about a desktop, but on the old laptop, opening and closing individual files in a program is just so much faster with the SSD.
I use photoshop a lot, and watching the program operate on 6gb of ram, it was fast, once it was open, but now it is just so much faster overall and saving changes of the photos onto the SSD blows away the old disc. After a session, I then back up or move the file (photos) storage onto the external HD, unless I plan on using it in the near future.

Compared to buying a new computer, the choice was about $1,000 for the sandy bridge (that appearently has some serious potential issues) or $130 for the SSD plus the 60 installation fee I paid. Looks like I got comparable performance or more with the SSD for $800 less

I imagine that in six months, buying a fast SSD of 120GB or more for about the same price of $130, will be easy to do.

There are some issues from reading about these things in that some perform far better than others, so one needs to be careful.

In terms of performance, with computers they're a lot like cars. You could have a Ferrari but if you put cheap rubbishy tyres and brakes on it you won't be able to get the best performance out of the engine and the suspension. By the same token putting F1 tyres on a little hatchback still isn't going to make it an amazingly quick car :)

In terms of HDD heavy tasks I would say your PC would probably quicker than mine, but in CPU/RAM/Graphically intensive use my PC is probably much faster ;)

[airshifter]

In terms of performance, with computers they're a lot like cars. You could have a Ferrari but if you put cheap rubbishy tyres and brakes on it you won't be able to get the best performance out of the engine and the suspension. By the same token putting F1 tyres on a little hatchback still isn't going to make it an amazingly quick car :)

In terms of HDD heavy tasks I would say your PC would probably quicker than mine, but in CPU/RAM/Graphically intensive use my PC is probably much faster ;)

Yours would also win in the speed of recall! :laugh: (Just joking, at least they are fixing it)

I agree that hybrid drives should become more common, and don't think SSD will become mainstream for quite some time. As time marches on at some point it will be cost effective though. I remember paying $40-45 a megabyte for memory back in the day.

I think Roamys example is one where SSD will have a better market though. By nature the more power hungry processors will often not go into laptops, thus the drive gives a better performance improvement and doesn't kill batteries. On a desktop system more money in the processor will often provide better bang for the buck.

[Daniel]

Yours would also win in the speed of recall! :laugh: (Just joking, at least they are fixing it

Yup :) **** happens, as long as they fix it I'm happy.



I agree that hybrid drives should become more common, and don't think SSD will become mainstream for quite some time. As time marches on at some point it will be cost effective though. I remember paying $40-45 a megabyte for memory back in the day.

I think Roamys example is one where SSD will have a better market though. By nature the more power hungry processors will often not go into laptops, thus the drive gives a better performance improvement and doesn't kill batteries. On a desktop system more money in the processor will often provide better bang for the buck.

I still don't think SSD's will really become commonplace though. Whilst they do have advantages in terms of battery life, they will be nature always be more expensive than magnetic storage.

These days you can get a 1tb laptop hard drive for £90 or so, you'll struggle to get much more than a 60gb SSD for that price. Even if the price does halve every 2 years or something it'll be a while before there is price parity especially considering the fact that magnetic storage goes down in price as well :)

[markabilly]

Yup :) **** happens, as long as they fix it I'm happy.




I still don't think SSD's will really become commonplace though. Whilst they do have advantages in terms of battery life, they will be nature always be more expensive than magnetic storage.

These days you can get a 1tb laptop hard drive for £90 or so, you'll struggle to get much more than a 60gb SSD for that price. Even if the price does halve every 2 years or something it'll be a while before there is price parity especially considering the fact that magnetic storage goes down in price as well :)

I remember almost spending twice that to upgrade from 5mb to 7mb---that right, 2mb, not 2 gb
but an honest salesman said, you will never need it....

The other thing is my HP does not have a slot to download CF cards from the camera, so I have been using an adapter that plugs into a USB connection. It would take ten to fifteen minutes to download 5 to 8 gbs to the old hardrive......now it takes about 2 minutes or less to put the photos on the SSD using the same old adapter. I will actually pull up the file where the photos are being loaded and watch through the icons, the system puting 5 or more photos that are 12 to 18mb in size like about every second or so (before it was more like one photo about every two seconds or so)( I actually think it would be much faster, except the old 2.0 USB connection is keeping that "slow")

But I think that daniel is right about the processing...once a file is up in photoshop, making all the changes and so forth, I do not not notice any difference except when it is time to save and replace on the hd, where it is a bit faster with the ssd

[markabilly]

as to prices, they are bouncing around a bit...when I bought the card, it was on sale for $119, down from $159. Then when I posted the link, it was for sale at $129.
Now it is $139 with a "regular price" of $149

[Daniel]

as to prices, they are bouncing around a bit...when I bought the card, it was on sale for $119, down from $159. Then when I posted the link, it was for sale at $129.
Now it is $139 with a "regular price" of $149

BTW markabilly, SSD's generally aren't cards. http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&q=pci-e+ssd&wrapid=tlif129761059408910&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=10856285421498417927&ei=ZPdXTf_aOMe4hAeQ8YjBDA&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ8wIwAA# that's a card, but the one you got is just a normal hard drive type ssd :)

[markabilly]

BTW markabilly, SSD's generally aren't cards. http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&q=pci-e+ssd&wrapid=tlif129761059408910&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=10856285421498417927&ei=ZPdXTf_aOMe4hAeQ8YjBDA&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ8wIwAA# that's a card, but the one you got is just a normal hard drive type ssd :)

I am not all that up on names...what is different is that it does not have the platter that spins around; hence, what i think of as a drive. It does remind many of the "cards" that are used in cameras. I have always called the things in camera usage a card, although it may have other names more technically correct. At one point, there were little hd type platters in CF that operated the same as the conventional platter HD in computers. Because if one dropped them, they tended to break, so they did not hang around very long

"solid state drive"

[airshifter]

I still don't think SSD's will really become commonplace though. Whilst they do have advantages in terms of battery life, they will be nature always be more expensive than magnetic storage.

These days you can get a 1tb laptop hard drive for £90 or so, you'll struggle to get much more than a 60gb SSD for that price. Even if the price does halve every 2 years or something it'll be a while before there is price parity especially considering the fact that magnetic storage goes down in price as well :)

I doubt they will ever equal out in price, but the SSD prices will drop over a few years to the point they consumer will spend it IMHO. I remember paying $350 or so for a 425 meg hard drive in the mid 90's. At the time everyone thought that we would never see consumers buying drives rated in gigabytes of storage.

As for the laptops, agree on the power issue, though my point was more the fact that the processor power will remain somewhat limited due to batteries, thus the SSD having more effect. If your desktop had only 1/3 or 1/4 the processor capability of your SB, then the extra money for SSD might not have seemed so much.

[Sleeper]

I'm hoping one of you really smart people here can help me out. I've just built my first PC but its not working out too well as nothing happens wehn I turn it on. I know I'm getting power a the light in the mouse turns on, but thats at. Anyone got any suggestions as to what I can do?

[Daniel]

What are the specs of the machine? Is it making any beep noises when you power it up? Do the fans spin up?

[Sleeper]

Its an AMD Phenom II processor/motherboard/RAM bundle, pre built and tested with the usual HDD and DVD drive and a graphics chip instead of card. I get no lights, beeps or fans when I press the on switch.

[Daniel]

Its an AMD Phenom II processor/motherboard/RAM bundle, pre built and tested with the usual HDD and DVD drive and a graphics chip instead of card. I get no lights, beeps or fans when I press the on switch.

Really sorry for not replying earlier, completely slipper my mind. Sounds like probably a dead motherboard or PSU. Are you sure the front panel connectors are connected up right? Have you tried to boot up without a graphics card (if you've got one), without ram and with nothing else other than the power switch connected?

[edv]

Hope you solved your problems, sleeper.
I've just built another HTPC based on AM3 socket/PhenomII X555. MicroATX Gigabyte MoBo. DDR3. Onboard ATI HD4250 graphics. Works like a charm.

BUT A QUESTION FOR DANIEL, OUR RESIDENT PC GURU:

I've started using an eSATA external HDD for backups (as opposed to USB2) because of the faster transfer speeds.
eSATA is hot-swappable, but is a pain in the arse because you have to tell the PC (Vista x64) to search for new hardware in order to recognise the external HDD.

The problem is this: How to detach the eSATA drive while the PC is running? There is no 'safe to remove hardware' feature for eSATA as there is for USB. Short of putting the PC to sleep and then detaching the drive, how can you 'hot-detach' it without fear of interrupting a read/write?

[Daniel]

Hope you solved your problems, sleeper.
I've just built another HTPC based on AM3 socket/PhenomII X555. MicroATX Gigabyte MoBo. DDR3. Onboard ATI HD4250 graphics. Works like a charm.

BUT A QUESTION FOR DANIEL, OUR RESIDENT PC GURU:

I've started using an eSATA external HDD for backups (as opposed to USB2) because of the faster transfer speeds.
eSATA is hot-swappable, but is a pain in the arse because you have to tell the PC (Vista x64) to search for new hardware in order to recognise the external HDD.

The problem is this: How to detach the eSATA drive while the PC is running? There is no 'safe to remove hardware' feature for eSATA as there is for USB. Short of putting the PC to sleep and then detaching the drive, how can you 'hot-detach' it without fear of interrupting a read/write?

Yet another question I haven't replied to!!!!!!

I've actually been hotplugging drives since 2004 with no ill effects. I have had some hard drives die, but that was due to heat back in Australia.

Personally I think eSATA drives should be hotswappable, otherwise what's the point?

This post makes the most sense to me, I remember when SATA came, one of the things that was mentioned was that the connectors were specifically designed for hot swapping.

http://gamers-underground.com/tech-chat/14300-sata-hot-swappable-2.html#post330287

This indicates that you should see whether the controller supports hot swapping.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/206783-14-sata-swap


And here -> http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/HotSwap.shtml is a utility which apparently put an icon in the taskbar which allows you to "eject" non-OS drives.

My thoughts are that as long as the backup is finished and nothing is trying to access the drive (anti-virus, spyware scanning software etc etc) that you could just yank the power or data cable regardless of having ejected it and it'd be fine. But of course someone losing data is a serious thing and if you want to be 110% sure then shutting the PC down isn't such a bad idea.

[ioan]

My thoughts are that as long as the backup is finished and nothing is trying to access the drive (anti-virus, spyware scanning software etc etc) that you could just yank the power or data cable regardless of having ejected it and it'd be fine.

Are the read/write heads of the drive parked or not when no process is accessing the drive anymore?
If they are not than you better not pull the cables cause that will put the physical integrity of the HDD in danger.

Now we only need to know if the heads are parked or not before a disconnection order is sent to the drive.

[donKey jote]

to find out, shake it hard after you pull it out :erm: :p : :arrows: :andrea:

[Daniel]

to find out, shake it hard after you pull it out :erm: :p : :arrows: :andrea:

I agree :p

Reply to my message on facebook Donks :P

[CNR]

Hope you solved your problems, sleeper.
I've just built another HTPC based on AM3 socket/PhenomII X555. MicroATX Gigabyte MoBo. DDR3. Onboard ATI HD4250 graphics. Works like a charm.

BUT A QUESTION FOR DANIEL, OUR RESIDENT PC GURU:

I've started using an eSATA external HDD for backups (as opposed to USB2) because of the faster transfer speeds.
eSATA is hot-swappable, but is a pain in the arse because you have to tell the PC (Vista x64) to search for new hardware in order to recognise the external HDD.

The problem is this: How to detach the eSATA drive while the PC is running? There is no 'safe to remove hardware' feature for eSATA as there is for USB. Short of putting the PC to sleep and then detaching the drive, how can you 'hot-detach' it without fear of interrupting a read/write?

PhenomII X555 is a good cpu BUT it may be better then you think
http://www.triple3online.com/four-cores-at-the-price-of-two-unlock-amd-phenom-ii-x2-555-black-edition/

The hot swap feature will be a controller option. Not all eSATA drives are hot swappable. For some motherboards and controllers, an eSATA drive looks and appears just like an internal SATA drive. The OS will have some participation with this also. It is best to err as if the drive is a non-removable drive to prevent unintended data loss.

[edv]

Thanks for the tips.
I do not want to load yet another agent, so I'll just use the 'Sleep' feature when detaching eSATA drives.

Thunderbolt, I was fully aware of the unlocking/clocking capabilities of the X555, but my application (HTPC) demands both power and low heat (fan noise). The X555 offers a decent compromise, given my other components.

[Daniel]

IE9 is out today and I'm using it at the moment and it seems a bit quicker.

[donKey jote]

I'm not cos I'm still on XP :p

[penagate]

The problem is this: How to detach the eSATA drive while the PC is running? There is no 'safe to remove hardware' feature for eSATA as there is for USB. Short of putting the PC to sleep and then detaching the drive, how can you 'hot-detach' it without fear of interrupting a read/write?

In Windows:
Start -> Run ->

fsutil volume dismount X:
where X is the drive letter of your eSATA drive.

Also accessible from Disk Management (right-click on Computer, go to Manage, go to Disk Management) — you can right-click on the volume in the diagram and unmount it from there.

[penagate]

I remember when SATA came, one of the things that was mentioned was that the connectors were specifically designed for hot swapping.

Yes, but the controller must be in AHCI mode to enable hot-swapping. In IDE mode (the default on most chipsets) the OS will not pick up the change. (Windows sometimes freezes, too.)

Some controllers behave differently, of course.

[Mark]

Been dealing with Windows a bit recently myself mostly due to soundcards. A particular problem whereby a line in is visible to Windows and other applications but select it in Skype and you just get silence! We've had to replace the internal sound with a USB sound card and that does work.