Pc Setup - Chat Thread

[R31Nismoid]

Keep the chat here - specs in the other as its far easier to read that way

[bozodos]

I also need to rebuild my server - 5TB and its full. Need to go and blow a good $700 on drives, maybe more.

Love my Perc 5/i - can load up 8 drives all in RAID5 no drama and it moves files around very snappy

Yes hopefully we will be retiring some R710s with the right PERC cards soon, I want to see someone else use one IRL to see how it will perform, incidentally I have seen a RAID 5 with WD Greens drop both the parity and another disk recently, luckily the colleague who owned it was the paranoid type and didn't store any essential data on the array, but I think that I'd be using Reds or RE3 drives if I were to get off my arse and build a proper file server for home.

I don't really go for the whole soft RAID thing, at this point in time I find that 3tb is enough for me, and should I ever lose it all, I can rebuild 90 or so % from my workmates' storage pools. That said I've been tossing up on burning off onto dvd some of the more obscure movies / music that I have.

I like to try different setups with PC gear - I've done the whole two midrange cards in SLI thing, and will sooner or later step up to 1 680 as BF3 keeps locking up on me (haven't tried latest drivers yet though). Also might invest in one of the cheapie Korean monitors - they are the same panel as the imac 27 after all.

[R31Nismoid]

I've had greens running on the Perc 5/i for maybe 3 years now 24x7. No issues yet and there are 4 drives.

Only issue is needing a fan, can be a tad noisy unless you insulated a case or something as I'm just using old PC cases as the mounts as they have 5-6 bays each which works fine. So i really need $1400+ so i can make a back up as i have a spare Perc 5/i & 8 SAS.

[liger]

i've had a WD green die on me about 2 years back, but its the only one that has died out of the 6 WD green drives i have. so i think its pretty good for ~3.5 years of 24/7 usage

[R31Nismoid]

I've had 2 blacks running for 4 years RAID0 as well without issue.

Guess its largely pot luck. Some have problems, some don't - just like all HDD's. There is a failure rate but its low for most.

No doubt on my next build im going to have at least 1 or 2 of the 10 drives shit themselves

[bozodos]

Statistically speaking, I've seen the highest failure rates at work from Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung and WD Greens in that order. We have a wall lined up with dead Hitachi drives lol.

Nearly all of the dead Green's I've seen are from RAIDs though, I've heard that the power saving function built into them can cause havoc, but don't have any proof of that.

[R31Nismoid]

software raid or hardware?

[Aljo]

Keep the chat here - specs in the other as its far easier to read that way

Soz mate, of coarse makes sense will do from now on.

[bozodos]

Hardware, well insofar as using the Intel ICH controller

[Aljo]

Yeah I am booting and running my solid states off the Marvell controller going to switch over to Intel now.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Aljo

[boiracer]

(You should NEVER run voltages on auto when overclocking heavily. Even minor clocks manually setting things is advised as often mobo's over/under volt.)

so true, thnx heaps, no where in my hrs of reading did anyone mention not to run it at auto, ive now cranked it nicely down to 3.8ghz at 1.26v, uber stable, with icy cold temps, even in prime or OTTC or orthos im getting no more than 50 degrees

soi from what im running now, there is sooooo much room for ramping it up more, but im happy with 3.8ghz,thats what i was looking for in the first place.

on auto voltage it was always running 1.55v even at only 3.4ghz

so heres the finished product, let me know what you think

E8500 3.16ghz (stock)

clocked to 3.8ghz 400fsb x 9.5 (standard multiplier)

Vcore 1.264 (CPU-Z) 1.30625v (bios)

idles at 29-30 degrees

full load stress test 47-50 degrees

Since doing all this i did a reinstall a while ago, and never bothered OCing it again. So tonight i was bored and decided to give the old rig a bit of a boost and put all these numbers and settings back in.

So all runs well, temps are good, its stable under stress tests......but windows refuses to recognise my network card while its overclocked. I havent touched any PCI frequencies or volts

Back to stock it goes till i can figure this out.

[Leroy Peterson]

I'm in the market soon for a new SSD to run my OS. I've been running an OCZ 64gb one at the moment I picked up just as they were becoming more affordable and suffered some issues before doing a firmware update, but since then I need to reimage the system every year or so as lock-ups and failures to boot get too often to be usable. (im pretty sure the SSD is to blame, not 100% sure though)

Need to upgrade graphics card as well, GTX465's are too uncommon to SLI so will get a new one. Looking at GTX760's and a supporter of EVGA so been looking at: http://www.scorptec.com.au/computer/50789-02g-p4-2765-kr

Also want to get a new monitor (not a tv), preferably more than 100hz and 20-24" 1920x1080.

Anyone recommend any brand or products?

running an i7 920 that rarely gets a work-out with 6GB DDR3 of corsair memory

[Cowboy1600]

I've used quite a few Samsungs, OCZs, Corsairs and Sandisks in the PCs at work and at home (I have an OCZ (120gb), Samsung (250gb) and Corsair (60gb) in my home PC)

I've also rolled out about 20 sammy and sandisks at work.

The Corsair let me down about 2 weeks after I bought it, however it was an early one ($180 for 69gb - had it about 2.5 years). The OCZ has given me trouble not wanting to be detected by my mobo. The sammys and sandisks have been flawless thus far.

Most SSDs these days are fine although the Samsung, Sandisk, Crucial and Intel ones seem to be slightly better, reliability wise. Speed wise they are much of a muchness.

https://www.centrecom.com.au/samsung-840-250gb-mz-7td250bw-25-ssd - that's some good buying.

[Leroy Peterson]

goddamn thats a good price.

thanks for the info, havent really looked into problems with people SSDs

[R31Nismoid]

The OCZ Agility have had major issues, the current generation I'm not sure about but the previous 2-3 have all had problems.

I'm currently running an old OCZ as well in my Lappie, will change it shortly as all sorts of weird shit keeps happening with blue screens, windows failed to load etc - And it's all started since i put the bloody thing in 8 months ago. Was fine before that

Mate had the same issues with his Agility as well, almost identical...

Samsung / Sandisk definitely a good buy.

Have Sandisk's that have run fine for 18 months, on 24x7 on a PC... Only thing I notice with them is after long periods of inactivity (say, overnight)... Sometimes it takes 2-3 seconds for the drive to realise I'm exploring it when I go to use it the next day. Not really something that bothers me, just something I've noticed.

[Mayuri Krab]

What's the current decently priced graphics card people recommand?

Thinking of upgrading my aging Geforce 570GTX as I found it can no longer maintain stable frame rate on recent new-ish games (such as watch dog).

I'll only be gaming on a single 16:10 mointor (1680*1050), however I would like to run with graphic setting set close to max and I would like the ability to run 3 of these monitors from a single card (some thing my current GPU can't do) in the near future. Currently I'm running two of these mointors.

Rest of my system consist of Intel i7-2600K, Asus Z68 mobo, 8GB ram, whichI believe don't really need upgrading at the moment for gaming improvements.

[UNR33L]

I'm an nvidia fan. but best budget / bang for buck a radeon r9 290 the way to go for best performance / cost these days.

nvidia gtx 770 another good mid-higher end card / cost (you can always over clock these more than ATI cards as they run cooler) but yeah the 290 is a decent card for the price at the moment.

edit: if you do go ati 290 series card make sure you get one with a decent cooler (gigabyte etc) the standard 'reference' coolers are LOUD on them.

Edited September 5, 2014 by UNR33L

[Leroy Peterson]

picked up a set of AudioEngine 5+ speakers this week. really happy with them. bit bulky, but much better than monitors + amp or having to check a sub somewhere. recommend.

up top is very clear and crisp. bass is heavy but ive turned it down via equaliser.

[Mayuri Krab]

& looks like another WD green drive is about to die... f**king these must be the biggest unreliable POS ever made. Looks like simply loading up bittorrent is enough to wear the POS out fast enough to die within a year of 'moderate' usage.

My old Samsung 7.2k rpm drive which I carried over from the old Intel Core 2 era (5+ years) is still working flawlessly mean while 2 of these f**king useless garabage all kicked the bucket in about 2-3 years.

Now the issue is what drive should I get to replace these useless paper weights, maybe the WD blacks or Segate 'normal' 7.2k drives are better?

My NAS is running 3x WD 3TB red drives atm, these current experience with WD isn't giving me much confidence.

/rant

EDIT: I still got 2 more of these green drives left, lets see how long these f**kers can last...

Edited December 24, 2014 by Mayuri Krab

[niZmO_Man]

The Green drives are rubbish unless archiving, it's well documented in the Interwebs.

Get the reds . I have a black