Bargain Alerts/Adverts Discussion Thread

pcadvice

Monotype wrote: »

Well the Samsung 830 128GB has gone down by €2 since yesterday!
http://www.dabs.ie/products/samsung-128gb-830-series-sata-6gb-s-2-5--ssd-laptop-kit---free-norton-ghost-15-7SR9.html?src=2

Looks like they're still going down. I think we could still expect more drop if Samsung considers OCZ to be worthy competition.

just saw that on dabs, does it make any difference that it says laptop kit?

would the norton ghost be on the ssd or seperate disc?

Zith

Drive is the exact same, only the extras in the box are different. Laptop = SATA->USB adaptor. desktop = 2.5->3.5 mounting adaptor, screws and SATA cable.

Bloodwing

Has anyone ordered one of the samsung SSDs from Dabs? The tracking number they've given me isn't the standard 13 digit Royal Mail/ Parcel Force number so the site won't accept it. The dabs e-mail says it shipped with royal mail.

Nollog

Neilos wrote: »

Has anyone ordered one of the samsung SSDs from Dabs? The tracking number they've given me isn't the standard 13 digit Royal Mail/ Parcel Force number so the site won't accept it. The dabs e-mail says it shipped with royal mail.

I ordered a dvd drive from dabs a few days ago. My email said Royal Mail deliveries can't be tracked.

Zith

pcadvice wrote: »

would the norton ghost be on the ssd or seperate disc?

On disk, not on SSD.

N64

Dabs ship with parcelforce (a subsidiary of Royal mail) . Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours for the tracking code to show up on the website from dispatch. Once the packages hit Ireland, they will be delivered by anpost. Delivery usually takes 3 working days.

Bloodwing

N64 wrote: »

Dabs ship with parcelforce (a subsidiary of Royal mail) . Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours for the tracking code to show up on the website from dispatch. Once the packages hit Ireland, they will be delivered by anpost. Delivery usually takes 3 working days.

That's the way it's always been for me with Dabs but with the SSD they have sent it with "royal mail letters". They've given me a reference number but it can't be tracked apparently. They must be trying to save on postage costs seen as the SSDs are so cheap!!

N64

Neilos wrote: »

That's the way it's always been for me with Dabs but with the SSD they have sent it with "royal mail letters". They've given me a reference number but it can't be tracked apparently. They must be trying to save on postage costs seen as the SSDs are so cheap!!

I ordered something recently and it came to about €105 and it was shipped with parcelforce. Perhaps since the SSD package is so small they used the cheaper shipping method?

Bloodwing

N64 wrote: »

I ordered something recently and it came to about €105 and it was shipped with parcelforce. Perhaps since the SSD package is so small they used the cheaper shipping method?

I'd say that's exactly what it is. It's just a pity there's no tracking on it but hopefully it'll fit through the letterbox seen as I'm guaranteed not to be at home when it arrives.

Nollog

i keep posting replies in the other thread. x.x force of habit or something.

Nertballs wrote: »

6950 for only 175! aftermarket cooler an all!
http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/11984339/art/sapphire-technology/radeon-hd-6950-oc-2-gb-gd.html?srcid=10264

"A Dual BIOS feature allows enthusiasts to experiment with alternative BIOS settings and performance can be further enhanced with the SAPPHIRE overclocking tool, TriXX"
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=1041&lid=1&pid=1530&leg=0

Does flashing 6950 to 6970 still work?

N64

/\/ollog wrote: »

i keep posting replies in the other thread. x.x force of habit or something.



"A Dual BIOS feature allows enthusiasts to experiment with alternative BIOS settings and performance can be further enhanced with the SAPPHIRE overclocking tool, TriXX"
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=1041&lid=1&pid=1530&leg=0

Does flashing 6950 to 6970 still work?

It may work but its unlikely. Only the very first couple of batches of 6950 had disabled 6970 cores. Unless its old stock, its likely that the cores have been physically removed from the card.

The 7850 on pixmania for €219 probably a better deal due to decreased power consumption, marginal performance increase and better overclocking potential.

deconduo

N64 wrote: »

It may work but its unlikely. Only the very first couple of batches of 6950 had disabled 6970 cores. Unless its old stock, its likely that the cores have been physically removed from the card.

The 7850 on pixmania for €219 probably a better deal due to decreased power consumption, marginal performance increase and better overclocking potential.

That particular sapphire card (along with the MSI TF III) is one of the ones where flashing it still has a pretty decent chance of working. It doesn't have the extra cores lasered off like most of the newer 6950s.

farna_boy

Does anyone know if scan.co.uk will post to Ireland? I think I have tried to find out before by setting up an account but they keep asking for a postcode for Ireland but I don't know what this is supposed to be.

Fluffy88

Yes they do post here.
Just put any random number in the postcode.

Once you have your address entered the postcode doesn't matter.

savemejebus

farna_boy wrote: »

Does anyone know if scan.co.uk will post to Ireland? I think I have tried to find out before by setting up an account but they keep asking for a postcode for Ireland but I don't know what this is supposed to be.

Their support told me to put roiroi

Rsaeire

savemejebus wrote: »

Their support told me to put roiroi

If you're in Dublin, you can put in your postcode twice, e.g. D10 D10.

I've bought from Scan several times in the past and have never had any issues. If you happen to be a member on AVForums, you'll get a discount on shipping to Ireland too.

Ballyv24

Email from Dabs with 128GB SSD for €76.28

http://www.dabs.ie/products/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v200-sata-6gb-s-2-5--solid-state-drive-7V53.html?src=2

Looks like a great price?

farna_boy

Rsaeire wrote: »

If you're in Dublin, you can put in your postcode twice, e.g. D10 D10.

I've bought from Scan several times in the past and have never had any issues. If you happen to be a member on AVForums, you'll get a discount on shipping to Ireland too.

Cool. Saw a Sandisk 120GB Ultra SSD for £62 on scan. All in it comes to €93. Not sure how much of a bargain that is though.

Skylinehead

farna_boy wrote: »

Cool. Saw a Sandisk 120GB Ultra SSD for £62 on scan. All in it comes to €93. Not sure how much of a bargain that is though.

SATA II, don't bother. I'd spend the extra tenner on a Samsung 830.

CarefulNow

Ballyv24 wrote: »

Email from Dabs with 128GB SSD for €76.28

http://www.dabs.ie/products/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v200-sata-6gb-s-2-5--solid-state-drive-7V53.html?src=2

Looks like a great price?

Brilliant price, but I had quick search there and it seems to have bad write speeds.
But they have released a firmware update which seems to solve this.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6488&p=2

So tempting

Rsaeire

To be honest, Crucial and Intel SSDs are the most reliable drives available so my advice would be to look for one of them at the cheapest price and buy. I have 2 Crucial drives and one Intel and can't recommend them enough.

aN.Droid

Rsaeire wrote: »

To be honest, Crucial and Intel SSDs are the most reliable drives available so my advice would be to look for one of them at the cheapest price and buy. I have 2 Crucial drives and one Intel and can't recommend them enough.

You can throw samsung into the mix there the 830 series is amazing.

C14N

Monotype wrote: »

Well the Samsung 830 128GB has gone down by €2 since yesterday!
http://www.dabs.ie/products/samsung-128gb-830-series-sata-6gb-s-2-5--ssd-laptop-kit---free-norton-ghost-15-7SR9.html?src=2

Looks like they're still going down. I think we could still expect more drop if Samsung considers OCZ to be worthy competition.

Are these Samsung drives significantly better than the competition from OCZ? I'm looking at getting a 120GB to replace my 60GB and this is about €15 more expensive than the Agility but is it worth it?

aN.Droid

C14N wrote: »

Are these Samsung drives significantly better than the competition from OCZ? I'm looking at getting a 120GB to replace my 60GB and this is about €15 more expensive than the Agility but is it worth it?

Yes it is, if you have sata3. The 830's are topping most benchmarks out now.

Monotype

Yeah, I'd go for the Samsung 830 over any OCZ drive, funds permitted. I haven't seen any good reviews of the Vertex 4 so we'll see how that goes.

Edit: Is it the Agility 4 that you're looking at?

Samsung is better than the Agility 3 because:
1) Reliability (not as big a deal now because the serious bugs were patched out)
2) Samsung 830 is faster in most situations (OCZ scores are inflated and only do really well with compressed data
3) The Agility uses asynchronous NAND and slows down when it fills up.

Now we don't know a whole lot about the Agility 4. The drive is made by OCZ themselves rather than using Sandforce internals as in the '3' series.
Reliability was fairly poor in the Sandforce drives, but as I said, it was patched. Reliability has also been week in OCZ's other drives that they made themselves, possibly not as bad as the Sandforce situation. They've mostly been using their own drives in their lower end budget products and since the Agility and Vertex are their front line, higher end products, perhaps they are confident that performance and reliability will hold up.

I'd wait for more reviews before investing in the Agility and Vertex 4.

Completionist

eamonnq wrote: »

Still coming up as 107.46 for me ??

Showing up for me at the reduced price, I am not signed into my account so I don't think it is an offer for specific accounts.

Chosen

Rsaeire wrote: »

To be honest, Crucial and Intel SSDs are the most reliable drives available so my advice would be to look for one of them at the cheapest price and buy. I have 2 Crucial drives and one Intel and can't recommend them enough.

To be honest, both Crucial and Intel had firmware issues with the M4 and 330 lines respectively. The issue in Crucial's case resulted in data loss and in Intel's case the drive was just bricked. This might be somewhat acceptable for Crucial, but not for Intel, with the size of the R&D and Quality teams they are supposed to have.

On the other hand, Samsung have been an OEM provider for SSDs for Apple, Dell, HP etc. for the last 4-5 years. They haven't had a single issue with their drives getting bricked, or losing their data. They cannot afford to allow beta testing to be done by the customer, because their customers are Apple and Dell, not Joe Public.
The failure rate on the Samsung PM800 and 830 series is as close to 0 as possible and this is the benchmark to top.

Now, don't get me wrong, the M4 and the Vertex 4 are fantastic drives. Intel has not produced anything remarkable in the last 2 years, they are just rebadging drives just like Corsair, Plextor and soon MSI.

So at the same time Crucial are concentrating on performance and they are releasing firmware updates that offer more of it, Intel dropped the development of their own controllers back in the X25-M days, while Samsung do not need to release firmware updates; their drives are already scoring best in 80-90% of the benchmarks, they have the best garbage collection by a mile and the best track record in reliability.
The 830's only disadvantage up to 2 months ago, was price: it was consistently priced 20-30% higher than other SSDs in the same league. Now that disadvantage is reduced to the other extreme, where the 830 is in some cases the cheapest SSD as well as the best.

eamonnq

Completionist wrote: »

Showing up for me at the reduced price, I am not signed into my account so I don't think it is an offer for specific accounts.

Got it showing at that 81.99 price (long story), but when I add it to my basket it then comes up at 107.46

Probably means that I am not meant to have one!!

Fnz

Clicked on a link from an old dabs email to get the reduced price to appear but, as with eamonnq's case, reverted to full price at time of checkout.

freeze4real

Hi all were can I get 8GB ddr3 ram for less than 35e.