Hardware Discussion Thread

Serephucus · 14-10-2011 10:55AM

Well, it's easy, you just multiply what the wall readout tells you by ~.8-.9, or whatever your PSU's efficiency is. You'll only be out by about 20W or so at most.

marco_polo · 14-10-2011 01:08PM

deejer wrote: »

Ya thats why I am wondering is it possible to measure power draw from the other side of the PSU if you know what I mean...........

Without specialist measuring gadgets all you can really do is take the wall system measurements at both idle and with the individual component fully loaded and subtract the difference, aside from efficency you would also need to estimate the contribution of that component to the idle total (Using the internetz). It is mostly educated guesswork TBH.

deejer · 14-10-2011 01:12PM

marco_polo wrote: »

is mostly educated guesswork TBH.

Theres the problem I guess

Monotype · 14-10-2011 05:04PM

If it's just your power bill that you're thinking about, get a €10 power socket. It's actually low most of the time as all components aren't usually running at maximum at the same time.

Tea_Bag · 17-11-2011 02:25PM

not sure where to post this.

Anyone know where I can get cheap DDR2 PC ram from? a friend needs 4x1gb sticks of the cheapest possible ram, but looking on adverts its hardly cheap. Obviously EOL is the factor but there must be cheaper somewhere?

also, most people are selling 2gb or 512mb sticks and compatibility etc across different brands/ speeds etc makes me want to avoid.

help?

Serephucus · 17-11-2011 02:27PM

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/1GB-PC2-5300-667Mhz-DDR2-SODIMM-200PIN-128X64-Best-RAM-/160427095188?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item255a333494

~€25 for 4GB. Dunno if that's any good to you.

Tea_Bag · 17-11-2011 02:31PM

Serephucus wrote: »

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/1GB-PC2-5300-667Mhz-DDR2-SODIMM-200PIN-128X64-Best-RAM-/160427095188?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item255a333494

~€25 for 4GB. Dunno if that's any good to you.

Its laptop ram, but a great start. Ill take a look at eBay now thanks.

Serephucus · 17-11-2011 03:59PM

Balls, sorry. I dunno where I got it from, but I thought you were looking for laptop RAM.

This is being bid for, but the cheapest I've seen so far:
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/4GB-4X-1GB-CRUCIAL-240-pin-DIMM-DDR2-PC2-5300-memory-module-CT12864AA667-/280770659555?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_MemoryRAM_JN&hash=item415f3c44e3

deejer · 22-11-2011 11:18AM

Got to say its gas the amount of hard drives have appeared on adverts in the last month. Everyone selling of anything they have trying to cash in on the price increase

Monotype · 22-11-2011 11:51AM

I wonder if anyone would want 80GB hard drives...

After taking a look, there's a few there and they're not selling!

deejer · 22-11-2011 12:25PM

what are going like hot cakes are these one. There was a lad selling 500gb ones for the last month also and he seemed to have a never ending supply of them.

anyone know where these drives might be coming from and what kind of reliability you could expect.

Monotype · 22-11-2011 12:35PM

Wow, 100 drives. They're server drives, so probably cleaned out from somewhere doing a large space upgrade.
Although I wouldn't have encouraged people to buy older drives like that previously, it's excellent for someone on a tight budget to cover them for 6 months until they can replace it.

For reliability, I'd say it would be reasonably good. The raid edition ones often use slightly better parts and hence have longer warranties. Warranties are probably expired now. Western Digital is a good brand so you're not buy old maxtors or something. Given that they were probably in a server, they could have been running all day so that would increase wear and tear. I've found that hard drives generally seem to die early on or after a good few years. I'd say they'd be safe enough but as always, back up any crucial information.

deejer · 22-11-2011 12:41PM

Well I have bought 6 F3's in the last year and 2 of them have died on me. No way i am spending Eur100 on one to do the same.

I am ok for space at the moment but thinking they could be handy if things are still the same in 3mths time, especially for backup.

Serephucus · 22-11-2011 12:49PM

deejer wrote: »

Well I have bought 6 F3's in the last year and 2 of them have died on me. No way i am spending Eur100 on one to do the same.

I am ok for space at the moment but thinking they could be handy if things are still the same in 3mths time, especially for backup.

That's interesting. I've had two F1s for almost four years and they're still perfect. The two F4s are just about a year old, and still good as well. I'd have bought 3TB drives if Samsung made them.

deejer · 22-11-2011 01:09PM

ya and they were in different pc's

I still think they are good drives. I was even going to get an F4 until things went pear shaped.

Hal Emmerich · 22-11-2011 08:55PM

Why are/were so many HDDs being made in Thailand?

Don't have all your eggs in one basket and all that.

They should have made them here.

asif2011 · 22-11-2011 09:03PM

In fairness I think only 25% of world production is in Thailand, but that loss is enough to effect the supply and demand on prices... The same thing is happening to food prices worldwide and there has been less coverage...

Ryan451 · 28-11-2011 07:17PM

I'm buying an SSD this week or next and was wondering if I should go with the Crucial M4 64GB or the OCZ Vertex 3 60GB which seems to have a higher read and write speed.

Which would you guys recommend?

Brian · 28-11-2011 07:21PM

Anyone know of a place in town with 120 Hz monitors on display? All the computer stores I went in to down in Cork only sold laptops

Jonathan · 28-11-2011 07:34PM

Baza210 wrote: »

Anyone know of a place in town with 120 Hz monitors on display? All the computer stores I went in to down in Cork only sold laptops

Which town is this now?

Unregistered. · 28-11-2011 07:38PM

Ryan451 wrote: »

I'm buying an SSD this week or next and was wondering if I should go with the Crucial M4 64GB or the OCZ Vertex 3 60GB which seems to have a higher read and write speed.

Which would you guys recommend?

Have a look at Anandtech Bench

Brian · 28-11-2011 07:53PM

Jonathan wrote: »

Which town is this now?

The one that isn't Cork...

Tea_Bag · 28-11-2011 09:28PM

Ryan451 wrote: »

I'm buying an SSD this week or next and was wondering if I should go with the Crucial M4 64GB or the OCZ Vertex 3 60GB which seems to have a higher read and write speed.

Which would you guys recommend?

don't bother looking at the specs. between the two, the M4 wins hands down. the problems associated with OCZ this Gen makes it a pretty foolish decision. speed isn't everything, and it's seldom you'd actually see the difference between the two. hell I can't tell the difference between an M4 and an Intel x25m G2, and the m4 has around twice the sequential read speeds iirc.

on a side note, HWVS is stocking the M4 at the same price as the ForceGT. this is a little bit of a harder decision. the ForceGT employs the more problematic SF2000 controller but you get almost enterprise grade IOPS iirc. I *might* be in the market for a new SSD and I'm not sure which is a better buy between them. OCZ is a definite no go though.

ShadowHearth · 28-11-2011 09:59PM

So what's so scary with OCZ?

I talked to friend who is pure pc fanatic and he is using them and recommends it.

Unregistered. · 28-11-2011 10:03PM

ShadowHearth wrote: »

So what's so scary with OCZ?

I talked to friend who is pure pc fanatic and he is using them and recommends it.

Firmware issues with the sandforce controller they're using in their Vertex 3 line.

ShadowHearth · 28-11-2011 10:36PM

Unregistered. wrote: »

Firmware issues with the sandforce controller they're using in their Vertex 3 line.

Which ****s up hdds in what way?

Monotype · 28-11-2011 10:44PM

In a way that you can't use them. There was a huuuuuuge load of problems with them. Any PC hardware forum was riddled with people posting about problems with them. Apparently it's been mostly fixed in recent firmware versions.

Also firmware upgrades a while ago gave the M4 a boost in speeds, so that should be noted in while reading older reviews. I'd say the price increases on the M4 is most likely because everyone was going for those instead of/after having problems with OCZ and the other sandforce drives.

ShadowHearth · 28-11-2011 10:52PM

Monotype wrote: »

In a way that you can't use them. There was a huuuuuuge load of problems with them. Any PC hardware forum was riddled with people posting about problems with them. Apparently it's been mostly fixed in recent firmware versions.

Also firmware upgrades a while ago gave the M4 a boost in speeds, so that should be noted in while reading older reviews. I'd say the price increases on the M4 is most likely because everyone was going for those instead of/after having problems with OCZ and the other sandforce drives.

Firmware is updated now? Any tips how to see is it updated version or still from old warehouse?

Monotype · 28-11-2011 11:01PM

If you had the drive itself, I'm sure that you could check with their software.

If you were buying somewhere, you could check if a serial/model number corresponds with any update although most online places wouldn't go into this much detail. OCZ don't like to advertise differences anyway. In a revision of the 60GB vertex 2, the new drive was 55GB but they still sold it as 60GB. Corsair had the decency at least to rename theirs F55 from F60. They also recalled their Force 3 drives when they knew something was wrong while OCZ denied any problems. Not a company I'd be in a hurry to trust unless they had something very good on offer.

ShadowHearth · 28-11-2011 11:08PM

Thank you

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