Hardware Discussion Thread

Deano12345 wrote: »

Dont suppose anyone here is running 32GB of Ram on Sandy ? I wanna try overclocking the 2 kits I have arriving tomorrow and theres contradictions everywhere about VCCIO and DRAM voltage. Ram is Corsair Platinums and the board is a Z68 V-Pro BTW !

the memory controller on Sandy is a bit slack, a problem that was addressed in ivy. I don't think you're going to get much of an OC.

I've 16gb (4*4) and I couldn't get 2133Mhz no matter how hard I pushed. that was with my 2500K. I haven't tried since getting my 3570K though.

why do you want to OC anyway though? it has almost zero benefit to 95% of applications. I guess you're doing large scale video editing seeing as you're getting 32gb, but isn't stability more important than shaving a few seconds off your run time?

Just ordered my new Cherry G80-3000 keyboard. Reviews seem fairly good.

Fairly expensive at about £75 delivered but it seems you could easily spend £150 so I suppose it'll be decent value if I get a good bit of use from it.

Squeaky the Squirrel wrote: »

USB 3.0 getting a speed boost to 10 Gbps

It'd be nice to have an actually universal USB.

Any way down the line everything will work with USB? Monitors would be the key one.

Is it purely a question of speed or is there some other factor that governs what sort of connection monitors require?

Gbear wrote: »

...

Is it purely a question of speed or is there some other factor that governs what sort of connection monitors require?

A big concern for things like monitors would be the latency/overhead and signal quality/loss. I'm not much of a guru so I don't know if USB would be a suitable interface but there is other things to consider than the transfer rate.

I guess I could google this and give a better answer but I'm lazy

RE small USB monitors (This is actually very nice):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS6TmigpMOs

well im not much of a reviewer and im not sure if this belongs in the HW discussion thread..

setup:
Akasa FC6 6 channel fan controller. (30W per channel, 0v->12v)
Asrock z77 extreme6
8gb ram
pentium G2120
corsair A70 heatsink (passive!)
AX750 (fan off)
HD6450 passive

the SP120 Quiet Editions (SPQE) comes in a very nice package, looks fantastic with the interchangeable colour rings, a resistor cable to slow them down more (which i left off for the testing) etc etc, but you all already know that. the Gentle typhoons (GT) looks bland, grey, industrial and well to be blunt just plain ugly.:o

the nitty gritty is that the SPQE runs at 1450rpm, and the GT model i have are the 1850rpm's. i cant really compare rpm vs rpm without a lot of hassle going through speedfan via the mobo, so i just did % of total power from 0v to 12v.

i also dont have a tachometer so i used my face as a judge, and put them right against my ear for sound

@~10% (~1.2v) , they both sound the same. its hard to tell which is pushing more air cause theyre both pushing very little.

@~20%, a noticeable click, though soft, can be heard from the SP's. this is common with cheaper fans when they're under powered on a fan controller. GT takes the edge on air, slightly. rpm advantage i figure. no clicks from GT even at 5%.

@~40% clicking more apparent on SP. soft "whirr" from the GT and SP. GT definitely push more air.

@60%, clicking dies, but is replaced with a noticeable "clunking" sound every few revolutions on the SP. to make sure its not a faulty fan i tried my second SP with the same result, what that means i dont know. both faulty, or both normal. GT noise almost indistinguishable from 40%.

@80% clunking still there, but less apparent as air noise "whirring" is getting fairly loud. GT pushing much more air, and much more directed. its an unfair comparison cause the AF (as opposed to SP) series fan is meant to be a the a rad fan iirc so would be better with the whole static pressure thing.

EDIT: AF is high air flow and low pressure, SP is high pressure. bit disappointed in SP's now. i thought i was doing an unfair comparison cause i thought the AF was actually the high pressure ones, thinking i was comparing GT vs SP as apple vs oranges w/r/t static pressure.

@100%, the GT hasn't actually gotten much louder than around 60-70%. bit of a squeal off the SP's, and clunking has died. id guestimate that the GT's are pushing ~50% more air at this point. rpm advantage for sure. GT's quieter than SP at this point though.

overall, its an easy victory for the GT's.
they were quieter and pushed more air at every level.
I have to stress that moving my ear away from the SP's even 50cm's and the squeal is almost inaudible. im doing a very unrealistic test with no real dBA meter or tachometer.

results will vary person to person guaranteed.

ive become very sensitive to noise as of late for some reason, but to complicate it further, "loudness" is measured in a logarithmic scale, meaning your ear perceives a change in 3db as a doubling in loudness.

its an interesting conclusion because corsair claims 23 dBA and skythe says the 1850s are 28 dBA.

ive had the HTPC running the SP's for a few days now, and none of the housemates have commented on noise, so id say the average person will not notice any difference. for that reason, id have no problem recommending the SP's to people, and will advise them over the GT's for the aesthetics alone, and theyre around E2 cheaper.

for myself though on my personal rig, and anyone using water cooling, the GT's push much more air at the same noise level. in particular, the SP's dont like low voltages nearly as well as GT's. (though theyre much better than standard coolermaster fans at handling it)

any questions/suggestions etc welcome.

I have some 1150rpm GTs in my system at the moment along with some Corsair SP120s, too.

If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that the SPs are definitely much louder than the GTs; even if I were to run them at about 1150rpm I'd still say that they'd produce a good bit more noise.

I'm phasing the GTs out though, for one reason: Looks. The SP120s (IMO) are absolutely beautiful, and the GTs don't go well at all with the black/red colour scheme I'm going for in my 400r.

On a similar note, does anyone here have AF120s or AF140s? Are they any quieter?

Agreed. (And yes, confusion avoided)

I think the most impressive point is that it's (almost) completely cooled by a single 120 rad. those fans must spin up an awful lot..

Actually just as there's a bit of discussion about noise/fans etc already.... just how loud is everyones system running? I know mine is stupidly loud.

Not measuring this as an exact science - just with the iPhone decibel app.. 1ft from the side mesh on the 500r, it's about 54dB average...

at idle?!

just downloaded a sound meter app on my DesireHD. ive no idea how accurate it is, but apparently its calibrated with a dba meter..

its saying about 24dBA about 20cm away from my PC. thats idling though.

using a stock intel cooler for the moment, single GT1850 running very slow, and the hail mary of GPU quietness, the GTX690.

EDIT: to be fair, at idle, ive found the loudest fan in a PC is the PSU. the AX1200 was definitely my loudest fan, by a considerable margin. im using an AX750 in this rig, and tbh im not sure the fan is even on yet. it only power's up around 220W draw, and im yet to game :P

just called "sound meter" by smart tools. first hit when looking up decibel meter in the playstore.

Cool. Well, it measures my server at around the 40dB mark. I'd the damn hard drives. One of them is resonating in the case, and I haven't had time to track down which one. It'll be the first thing I do after getting my watercooling going after the exams though (Next Friday can't come soon enough) On top of that, the fans in the case really aren't that great (I expected more from Fractal here) particularly the fan that came with the True Spirit 120.

I think I'm just spoiled from the GTs...