Hardware Discussion Thread

freeze4real · 30-08-2012 11:24AM

Monotype wrote: »

You shouldn't do it because fans are designed for one or the other. You can damage/destroy a motherboard if you do it.

I'm not sure what you mean.

ok thanks, i meant I have the speedfan software on my pc and it doesnt detect the120mm molex fans that's running.

Monotype · 30-08-2012 11:29AM

It can't detect the fan because it's only connected to the power supply unit. The software has no access to that and the PSU doesn't know it's a fan as it's just sending power to it.
Speedfan can only work if you connect the small 3 pin cable to the motherboard. The motherboard will power it and you may be able to configure it with speedfan.

Edit: I should mention that it can sometimes be 4 pins, but we're talking about the small connector here, not the molex one. If it's 4 pin, and there's a free 4 pin connector on the board, you usually have even more power over speed.

Skylinehead · 30-08-2012 11:30AM

freeze4real wrote: »

ok thanks, i meant I have the speedfan software on my pc and it doesnt detect the120mm molex fans that's running.

It won't be able to detect Molex fans, as they're basically just plugged into power and left to do their own thing. Fans need to be plugged into a mobo to be controlled by software.

freeze4real · 30-08-2012 11:32AM

OH yea, thats basic common sense.

I also have an 80mm 3pin fan conected to my mobo and it doesnt dtect it either.

Procrastastudy · 30-08-2012 11:35AM

freeze4real wrote: »

OH yea, thats basic common sense.

I also have an 80mm 3pin fan conected to my mobo and it doesnt dtect it either.

Ones that can be controlled by the Mobo are 4 pin

Monotype · 30-08-2012 11:44AM

^^ You can control 3 pin ones too.

I'd double check the software. Speedfan can be difficult to get right. You basically have to open up the case and look at which fan is changing in speed when you make a change. Look up and follow tutorials to make sure that you're using it right as it's not all obvious.

If all else fails, I can tell you how to mod a fan to work at 5V instead of 12V, but try everything else first.

gooch2k9 · 30-08-2012 08:04PM

Monotype wrote: »

They're usually a slightly cheaper brand. They've been around for quite a while and are a somewhat major brand. I haven't heard anything outright bad about them.
Just have a look into their warranty to see if they have a European headquarters that you could RMA to if you the cards fails and compare cooling or try to find reviews describing noise and effectiveness of cooling.

N64 wrote: »

Club3D are a european graphics card company. They are based in Amsterdam, and use the same exact card PCB's as powercolor branded cards do.

Yeah, the only info I could find(wasn't long at it) was that they were a European brand couldn't find much else. I see the prices on the 7870s have dropped over the past few days so theres only a tenner between the Asus and Club3D now instead of thirty. Honestly though I'm confused which brand to go with, there are three or four from Sapphire alone on HWVS. If anyones got any advice on which one to go with, best I could get for 250/260?

N64 · 30-08-2012 08:17PM

Right so I recently got a netbook from powercity. I noticed a clicking noise coming from the hard drive when it was doing nothing on the desktop (although it could have been from indexing the hard drive as someone mentioned)

I had a look at the hard drive health on HDtune and it is giving this status:

(ignore internet explorer btw, I had to do a reformat since I was sending it back to the store :P)

My dad brought it back to the store and he called me up to explain to the manager what exactly was wrong with it. I explained that I heard clicking noises coming from it, which is a clear symptom of a failing hard drive and also told her about how I ran the hard disk drive utlily and it came back with errors .
She must have no clue what any of that meant or she just wanted to fob us off since she told my dad its not our problem and referred us to samsung customer support (even though they are legally responsible for sorting this out)

I would not mind so much of this however I am in 6th year and have no time for this bollox (I use my netbook to do homework/take notes down in class)

What do you guys make of the report by HDtune? I also ran "disk checkup" and it gave the same reading.

Procrastastudy · 30-08-2012 08:27PM

N64 did you break a mirror or something recently - you have some really bad luck.

-( i )- Wicker · 31-08-2012 12:23PM

I'm looking to pick up a 3.5" 7200rpm hard drive. I've seen 1tb for around €90 and 2tb for around €110 (think it was elara or pixmania). Just wondering if anyone knows of any better deals? Buying in ireland.

Eboggles · 31-08-2012 06:40PM

Nobody's put up HD7990 reviews yet? Oh well...

techPowerUp!

Hardware Heaven

HD7990 sometimes beats GTX 690, loses a lot though, totally dependent on the game.

However, it's louder than the GTX 690, and is triple slot.

The fact that it's the same price though makes the GTX 690 a better buy unless you're an extreme OCer.

Procrastastudy · 31-08-2012 06:47PM

-( i )- Wicker wrote: »

I'm looking to pick up a 3.5" 7200rpm hard drive. I've seen 1tb for around €90 and 2tb for around €110 (think it was elara or pixmania). Just wondering if anyone knows of any better deals? Buying in ireland.

Pixamania are French.

Monotype · 31-08-2012 07:06PM

They're actually owned by the Dixon group (PC World, Curry's etc) who are British!

Only other major Irish* place that sells drives would be komplett.
http://www.komplett.ie/Komplett/catalog/zkb_01opsl/11_hdd/07_inthd35/default.aspx

Just be aware of what generation of drive you are buying as they are not very well labelled. For example the new 1TB Blue from Western Digital is WD10EZEX while the latest from Seagate is marked as 7200.14 or ST1000DM003 - or sometimes they're not marked at all and you have to guess which is which. There's quite a considerable speed difference between some of the generations.

*Not actually Irish, but employs people here and physical presence.

---

Edit: Actually, memoryc are more competitive than I thought for HDDs:
http://www.memoryc.com/storage/internalharddrives.html#Capacity=1TB&Form_Factor=Desktop+HDD&page=0

Seagate 7200.14 is €89.79, which isn't bad for a local price but the WD Blue is a whopping €145. The WD has another year warranty but a warranty isn't worth an extra 50%!

Procrastastudy · 31-08-2012 07:07PM

Monotype wrote: »

They're actually owned by the Dixon group (PC World, Curry's etc) who are British!

Aye bit the stuff is shipped from France isnt it?

Monotype · 31-08-2012 07:14PM

AFAIK, yes. Declan, the managing director of PC World in Ireland who frequents boards said at some stage a while back that it was a slow process integrating pixmania as part their group. That must have been a year ago at this stage. Maybe the French are dragging their heels as they don't want to be assimilated.

sink · 31-08-2012 07:15PM

Anyone got any recommendations for a router and two wireless access points? Looking to build a mixed LAN/WLAN over 3 buildings about 100m apart. I already have a Ethernet going from the central building where the ADSL comes in, to the two outer buildings. I'm looking for a ADSL router with 802.11n 300mbps and a few gigabit ethernet ports, and two 802.11n 300mbps wireless access points. There are going to to be 20-30 devices on the network between printers, smartphones laptops, game consoles, smart tv's etc with more likely in the future. I'm thinking about the Billion BiPAC 7800N router and two Billion BiPac 3100SN wireless access points. Would they do the trick?

I'm not that knowledgeable about networking, I know the basics (e.g how to configure a NAT or set up static IP's etc) but wouldn't have a clue about bandwidth management or VPN tunneling so I wouldn't be able to cope with a Cisco professional grade router.

Headshot · 31-08-2012 07:15PM

The french are they are probably camping out some where.........

Procrastastudy · 31-08-2012 07:16PM

Buying Irish Hard Drives?

Bloody hell imaging tools are hard to use!

N64 · 31-08-2012 10:48PM

You are all probobly going to laugh at this but...

I managed to get a replacement netbook today from Powercity (in fairness to them, the staff couldn't have been more helpful) The netbook completes its windows install (and the shi*t they preload it with) and whats the first thing I hear once I get to the windows desktop? The very same clicking noise! :mad:

Already knowing what the result would be, I open up HDTune and sure enough, the same "calibration error" is popping up! Although the value is lower, this could be because its only been on for a few hours, where the other netbook was on for a period of time over 3 days.

I almost feel like crying at this stage.

:P

Headshot · 31-08-2012 11:03PM

have you walked under any ladder or has a black cat crossed in front of your vehicle?

N64 · 31-08-2012 11:21PM

Headshot wrote: »

have you walked under any ladder or has a black cat crossed in front of your vehicle?

Nope :P

I suppose I will have to go down to the same branch of power city and ask for a refund. Although they were nice, I doubt without the RMA clearance from samsung, they would have not accepted it but its worth a shot to bring It back I guess

Serephucus · 31-08-2012 11:44PM

If it means anything, my laptop gives me the same error. CRC is at 12 as it stands. That's after about a month of use. It's an NP700Z5C from Samsung. Haven't noticed anything bad at all from it as of yet.

N64 · 01-09-2012 12:45AM

I would not be so concerned about it, but on the netbook I just turned in, it had something like 53 errors (and that was only after the time I used it within the four days)

On the replacement netbook I have, its reporting 3 but yet its only been on for a few hours and it seems to be going up!

Wikipedia reports that the error is about:

This attribute indicates the count that recalibration was requested (under the condition that the first attempt was unsuccessful). An increase of this attribute value is a sign of problems in the hard disk mechanical subsystem.

Opinicus · 01-09-2012 12:51AM

-( i )- Wicker wrote: »

I'm looking to pick up a 3.5" 7200rpm hard drive. I've seen 1tb for around €90 and 2tb for around €110 (think it was elara or pixmania). Just wondering if anyone knows of any better deals? Buying in ireland.

Recently bought a Seagate 2TB drive from memoryc.ie for €115.
Very fast delivery and they accept Laser and Paypal.

-( i )- Wicker · 01-09-2012 12:58PM

Procrastastudy wrote: »

Pixamania are French.

I didn't mean I only want to buy irish, only that i'm trying to get the best deal buying from Ireland, i.e. shipping costs to be accounted for when quoting the price

Best I've found is €87.18 from elara inc. shipping

Monotype · 01-09-2012 03:39PM

You can get the new blue drive for €92.67 from dabs.
http://www.dabs.ie/products/western-digital-1tb-blue-sata-6gb-s-7200rpm-64mb-3-5--hard-drive-8757.html

Or the new seagate.
http://www.dabs.ie/products/seagate-1tb-barracuda-sata-6gb-s-64mb-7200rpm-hard-drive-7XD5.html?q=1tb&src=16

Delivery is free if you order a bit more somewhere around the €100 mark.

Eboggles · 01-09-2012 05:16PM

Was going to post this in bargain alerts, but just wanted to make sure it isn't a typo...

HD7770 V2 @ HWVS for €89

That's a pretty good aftermarket cooler as well!? Just a placeholder or are the HD7770s going to drop?

deconduo · 01-09-2012 05:22PM

Eboggles wrote: »

Was going to post this in bargain alerts, but just wanted to make sure it isn't a typo...

HD7770 V2 @ HWVS for €89

That's a pretty good aftermarket cooler as well!? Just a placeholder or are the HD7770s going to drop?

It will probably go up in price when it gets in stock.

Monotype · 03-09-2012 12:04PM

TeaBag, you were right: new Intel CPUs.

http://www.techpowerup.com/171595/Intel-Releases-More-Desktop-and-Mobile-Processors.html

Nothing very interesting there apart from the Pentium G550T at $42. Maybe it might get a lower price here than the celerons 530 or 540.

It's a pain in the hole that Intel are adding sandy bridge CPUs under the 3XXX naming scheme. Can't they keep any way consistent for even two generations?

Tea_Bag · 03-09-2012 03:37PM

Monotype wrote: »

TeaBag, you were right: new Intel CPUs.

http://www.techpowerup.com/171595/Intel-Releases-More-Desktop-and-Mobile-Processors.html

Nothing very interesting there apart from the Pentium G550T at $42. Maybe it might get a lower price here than the celerons 530 or 540.

It's a pain in the hole that Intel are adding sandy bridge CPUs under the 3XXX naming scheme. Can't they keep any way consistent for even two generations?

just after noticing the i7 3940XM and 3840QM price difference. are Intel having a laugh?

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