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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Captain Walker posted:

System specs: Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3

Fn-F7?

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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Urgh... so HMonitor is telling me my power supply's 12 V rail is giving power at 9 V (8.98 V, to be exact). Yet I'm not noticing anything wrong with the computer's operation. Is this a reporting error, or should I be RMA'ing my PSU and high-fiving all the manufacturers whose poo poo works despite this?

PSU is a Corsair 750 W, mainboard is a refurbished XFX nForce 680i LT, box is running 4 hard disks, one Radeon 4850, an E8400, a SATA DVD burner, and two expansion cards, plus a ~5 USB devices.

Other voltages seem okay.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I'm building a new computer in January and I have put together a box for real backup now, so I'm feeling adventurous, but I need advice about how to express it.

I have four hard discs: 2x 1TB WD RE3 and 2x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F2. I would like to make a big stupid RAID array. What is the best way to do that of these options:

1. RAID 0 the identical pairs, then RAID 1 those arrays
2. RAID 1 identical pairs, then RAID 0 those arrays (probably not)
3. RAID 0 the identical pairs, then diff-image the RE3 array to the Spinpoint array each night/week
4. RAID 5 them sumbitches, woo, titties
5. Don't be stupid

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Not A Gay Name posted:

Does anyone know how feasible it is to buy a vanilla Alienware M11X and at some later point upgrade the RAM myself to 4GB?

The Dell site lists the RAM as being DDR3 800. Newegg only has DDR3 down to 1066. Would the machine accept 1006 without issues? I'd expect it would just downclock the RAM to 800 or possibly actually run at 1066, but I'm not sure and can't find a lot of information. I'd hate to assume it would be fine and have the whole thing backfire.

It's not like it's cheaper to get 4GB separate as opposed to factory installed (approximately the same price really) but I'm just cheap and would rather upgrade later and have a lower entry cost.

It will downclock no problem. If that's your only concern, don't worry about it. :)

arroze posted:

By the looks of your options (other than #5) you want both speed and redundancy.

I'd go with #4, raid 5. Raid 5 will be faster than a raid 0+1 (or 1+0) and will provide you with more usable disk space. It's best to use identical drives when making a raid 5 array though, so hopefully your drive combination won't stump your controller/array.

If you're not 100% keen on requiring a single drive for everything, you also have this option:

Take your two faster drives and make a raid 0 with them, and take the other two drives and make a raid 1 out of 'em.

I mostly just don't want one drive to lie idle, and I don't really care about them because they will be replaced in the new build. Right now I have OS, data, backup and image of the first two, and an empty drive I haven't even mounted. As soon as I'm done copying a pair of images to the backup box, I'll see how well nVidia's live migration works.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Dec 3, 2010

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I've used a $20 Rosewill USB WiFi-N adapter for over a year, and it certainly hasn't held me back in anything. I do make sure to hook up any storage devices to a different root hub so it gets a whole 480 Mb/s all to itself.

Relatedly, a question: If you bridge two network connections in Windows 7, they operate at the maximum rate of the slower one. This has me doing file transfers at 300 Mb/s (the max of my WiFi connection) instead of the 1000 Mb/s that is the actual wire-based link between the computers. Is there any way around this until I put in some actual cable, other than breaking the bridge? e: oddly, the wireless is only a 150 Mb/s adapter, so why is the bridge twice that to begin with?

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Dec 15, 2010

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Samsung's website is poo poo, so I'm asking here:

I have a number of Spinpoint F4 HD204UI drives (2 TB, advanced format). I want to verify that they are advanced format. Their disk information reports 512 byte sectors for both logical and physical sector size. The Samsung partition align tool doesn't see them as advanced format drives and refuses to align anything. The Western Digital tool (for the Green EARS line and etc.) sees them as advanced format drives and says the partitions are unaligned.

This is an issue both in Windows Home Server (i.e. Server 2003) and in Linux. I can't verify that things are as they should be.

E: In fact, Samsung's US website does not mention the HD204UI at all. :wtc: It just has a lovely Global site page.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Dec 25, 2010

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Most likely candidates are a fan and a hard drive. Try starting up with the hard drives unplugged (go to BIOS or just let the machine tell you "No boot drive" and give it a bit to avoid a rapid power cycle), then power down to see if you still hear the noise.

Byolante posted:

I have an Ipad, an Iphone, a vista laptop, 3 pcs, a 360 and a DS. I live in Australia and I need a new wireless router. What should I get?

Got Linksys over there? I just got an E1000; it's simple and solid. If I weren't leaving it behind in a year for school, I'd've gone with the E2000 or E3000 for gigabit ethernet.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Dec 26, 2010

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I'm reusing a case for a desktop build in a couple weeks. One of the optical drives died and I don't want to replace it since it's no longer the case that ROM costs significantly less than R/W. I don't have the bay cover any more.

What do I put in a 5.25" hole in the front of my computer? I couldn't care less about fan bays. E: I've considered a Blu-Ray drive but writers and media are too expensive for my tastes, and a reader seems an expensive investment when I would only want Toy Story 3 for the foreseeable future.

VVVVV Well of course I could leave it, but that's not as fun.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Dec 26, 2010

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

mobby_6kl posted:

Do you have a card reader already? Mine's in the floppy slot, but there are some great 5.25" models as well. Something like this gives you the card readers for the common formats, and replicates a bunch useful ports. Or you can leave the dead drive inside, and use it as a cup holder.


I do have a card reader (actually an external one, since my bay readers died every few months like clockwork). Looks like Thermaltake used to make crazy stuff like drawers and an actual cupholder, but they're discontinued and out of stock. :( I used to have a drawer; I kept a copy of the constitution in it. Mostly for the reactions when I told people that.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Also, if the WHS box is the only box with Internet access and you're looking to share that out, that starts to get either a little complex or a lot risky, as Windows Home Server is not intended to face the Internet directly. It can be done, either through Internet Connection Sharing or through build-it-up yourself stuff like bridging connections and installing a DHCP server, but I would really, really get a nettop or something to host the internet connection and act as a router rather than trust Windows Home Server to the task.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

punk rebel ecks posted:

I want to buy an Acer Aspire 5735Z. Unfortunately it uses an Intel GMA 4500MHD.

Now grant in mind that I do not want to use this for gaming at all what so ever. However I do like to stream HD Video and have all the nice graphical effects in Windows 7 and Ubuntu turned up. Will the Intel GMA 4500MHD perform smoothly at streaming HD video and do the flashy OS effects?

I'm not sure if it'll blast Compiz at 100%, but yes to HD. Source: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/quick-reference-guide-to-intel-integrated-graphics/

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I put an SSD in one of these but whenever the drive and controller board are slid into the case, I get hangs and errors and cannot use the drive. I'm betting I'm getting a short somewhere. What's the best way to identify/fix the problem?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Generally yes, especially if you plan on overclocking. ~10% better performance per clock, and apparently overclocks ridiculously and easily.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I put an SSD in an eSATA enclosure, and whenever I slide it into the aluminum housing, I get all sorts of errors. Outside the aluminum housing and only hooked up to the bridge electronics, it works perfectly. I think the PCB is shorting against the housing. The case can be up to ~40% of the way on before I see troubles.

How should I go about slipping the case on without shorting anything? Can I place tape over the bridge PCB (Scotch or electrical or masking or whatever)? Cut up a disk glove for a thin rubber sheet? Do I need to do something fancier?

This is a repeat, but I never got an answer.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
That seems like the least likely to work project ever, yet that configuration looks like the most likely to.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
That'd set you to dual-channel instead of triple-channel. I'm not sure that would really matter for gaming, but other intensive tasks you may do (though it sounds like you don't?) might suffer a teensy bit.

Double check the manual, preferably the latest updated one from Asus, to see if the board won't crap itself or ignore 3 GB of 4 on the new DIMMs or ignore some DIMMs altogether or something, and if everything works out, then that should be fine.

e: Oh, I completely missed the voltage part. Um... Undervolting the old stuff means it likely won't run at full speed. That requires you to set a "middle ground" voltage yourself, just high enough to run the 1.65v sticks stable but hopefully not so high that it burns out the 1.5v stuff. It's doable, but whether you want to do it depends on how long you expect the RAM to last before you replace it and how comfortable you are with such tweaking.

Or you could just try clocking it all to DDR3-1333 at 1.5v. The old stuff might do that with no further tweaking.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jan 7, 2011

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Windows 7? Try Winkey+P.

e: Tapping p twice and letting go of winkey will step it through the four options.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jan 12, 2011

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I have a hard disk I think is failing, a Samsung Spinpoint F2 1TB HD103SI, a replacement for a drive damaged in shipping that I can't get a warranty repair for any longer.

When it powers on, it shudders and judders during the spin-up period, which CrystalDiskInfo reports as being ~6.2 seconds long. Otherwise, it shows now SMART indications for failure. It has twice dropped out of a RAID 10 array, and the drive won't be detected by the mainboard until after a reboot even if others will be.

I just want to check that I'm not missing anything. This is definitely a dud-to-be, right? Migrating from 4-disk RAID 10 to 3-disk RAID 5 is taking forever.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

adomorn posted:

It does pretty much everything. I run a lot of games and wouldn't mind them running better. None of the games I run are really super intensive (League of Legends, Eve Online), but again, I just wouldn't mind a slight boost in speed.

How much of a performance upgrade is an SSD and would I need more power? 300W has always made me hesitant to do much else.

It will speed up application launching time and game loading time for anything you stored on it. If you pick the right drive, you'll cut even the most optimized load times in thirds, with a much greater average cut-down.

And you probably won't be sure you notice it until you go back to a mechanical hard drive and have to wait again.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Factory Factory posted:

I have a hard disk I think is failing, a Samsung Spinpoint F2 1TB HD103SI, a replacement for a drive damaged in shipping that I can't get a warranty repair for any longer.

When it powers on, it shudders and judders during the spin-up period, which CrystalDiskInfo reports as being ~6.2 seconds long. Otherwise, it shows now SMART indications for failure. It has twice dropped out of a RAID 10 array, and the drive won't be detected by the mainboard until after a reboot even if others will be.

I just want to check that I'm not missing anything. This is definitely a dud-to-be, right? Migrating from 4-disk RAID 10 to 3-disk RAID 5 is taking forever.

Nerts, the other drive of that vintage is starting to do the same judder, same long spin-up, but nothing else yet.

I think I'm just going to decommission it. Note for future self: Green drives don't last long running practically 24/7.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Yeah, the two drives I have left are both WD RE3. If I need more space down the road I'll either get a third and migrate to RAID 5 again or just buy some all-new drives.

Two drives the same age developing motor problems probably a month or two apart in progression may just be random clustering, but it just happens that in my experience, green drives don't last me very long. Not a single one. Yet drives that aren't marketed as being aggressively power-saving have a much more "new or ~5 years" borking pattern, even if they're also 5400 RPM drives.

I guess the better way to say it is "Don't expect drives manufacturers warrant for 3 years at 8 hours a day to last that long if you drive them 24 hours a day."

EDIT: Okay... okay okay okay. What the poo poo? I just had one of the RE3s drop out of RAID 1. It reconnects if I ask the Intel Storage Manager to refresh connected devices, but what the poo poo? I'm going to HotS with this update to the latest Intel Rapid Storage manager and then see what's up.

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Jan 13, 2011

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
That's one thing, yes, but for the extra cost and the extra warranty, I bet you the build quality is different, too. Not along the lines of "RE is better than Black" but along the lines of "Cut some corners for Green."

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Replace the fans with low-noise fans?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Generally speaking, RAM is most important (to minimize disk transfers due to paging), more cores/threads on the CPU is best once RAM is sufficient as long as the storage is fast enough (i.e. capturing to a different single disk than the game is loading from), and then finally disk transfer rate (especially if your initial captures are lossless or low-compression encodes for speed).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Might be a bit harder to overclock/push timings, since you're depending on 4 DIMMs being able to be pushed hard, rather than just 2. That's pretty much it.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

BLOWTAKKKS posted:

I have two samsung f3 1 tb drives. I bought them at different times for different purposes, but now i want to put both in the same computer. Would it be a bad idea to put them into raid 0? Apparently there is a samsung f3r intended for raid, and i read somewhere that the regular f3 is not as reliable in raid.

Do RAID 1 if you have to RAID them. Protects what's on them from one drive failure, and it's pretty much the only sane way to use a pair of lying-around drives in RAID.

The big differences between the F3 and F3R are a RAID-specific error-handling algorithm TLER (read: don't handle errors yourself, let the controller take it), tighter adherence to rated seek times, and a 5-year warranty instead of a 3-year warranty (with the assumption that build quality is a bit higher so they don't have to pay out the nose with that).

Compared to the F3, the F3R is much less likely to drop out for random reasons. TLER is the biggest factor: a non-TLER drive will spend up to two minutes trying to fix a read error when it comes across a bad sector, if it can. More than about ten seconds of unresponsiveness causes a RAID controller to give up on a drive, drop it, and ask for a replacement. TLER limits recovery attempts to 8 seconds. The tighter seek times can improve random read/write performance (though don't kid yourself, it'll be crappier than a single drive in pretty much any RAID but RAID 1).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Check the TV for a PC mode, 1:1 mode, or an option to turn off overscan. Overscanning is enabled by default on TVs due to legacy effects of CRT TVs and NTSC broadcasting standards. For regular TV, that 10 pixels lost is where stuff like closed caption information exists in the signal.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

pacheco posted:

Is there an 5.25" drive bay that has swappable trays that do IDE, SATA, and laptop IDE? I realize that you'd have to buy individual trays with a different internal connector.

I'm trying to build a system where I can have as fast as possible access to a drive, instead of using USB enclosures. I know that for a laptop drive, it'd be possible to use the desktop IDE tray and use an adapter with it as well. Like these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812203012

Does this product exist or am I just full of poo poo?

A bit worthy of "There I fixed it" but this might work: http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Drive-Docking-Station-UNIDOCK2U/dp/B002UAR8JY

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Ah... If this is that demanding an application, why not just get two trays? I think your use may be a bit too specialized for premade stuff.

If you're feeling handy, you could probably manage something custom with some short cables, some receptacles for the tray connectors, a dremel, and a large standard hard disk tray with plenty of swapping room. I think you'd have to reboot to swap IDE drives, still.

Alternatively, you could do this work using a computer in a test bench case, like this one and a mainboard with both SATA and IDE (or more likely these days one with a PCI slot rather than PCI-E plus an IDE controller card).

I'm not sure anything USB will work... I did come across this thing but not only does it seem like a horrible product, it doesn't provide block-level access to disks (nor do most USB bridges, from what I can tell).

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Shaocaholica posted:

Are any of the mobo makers making dual socket Xeon boards that also support overclocking? I haven't looked into that segment of the market for a long long time and last time I checked they didn't.

As someone who once actually owned an Athlon MP system, I think that hexacore chips have neatly filled that particular market segment. Multicore in general has definitely filled a lot of the computing needs.

That said, enjoy.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
CrashFree is the poo poo that will "force" a BIOS install. Check your manual/the Asus website for detailed instructions, but it looks like the basic process, if it doesn't automatically restore a backup BIOS, is to put a copy of the BIOS file and flash utility on a FAT-formatted USB stick or burn them to a CD, and the system will boot to a basic command prompt and let you run the flash utility again.

This is entire hearsay from a Google search and you should look into it yourself.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
I don't like posting after my own posts, but I have a question:

I want to enable Wake-on-LAN on my NAS so that I can have it go to sleep but then wake up when I want to access any of the shares. It is a Windows Server 2008 R2 box based on a GA-H55N-USB3, which has a Realtek GbE controller.

Is this stupid easy, like setting up an UPS was (i.e. plug in USB cable and it gets battery management like a laptop, so it just works), so I just turn it on, tell Windows to allow wake-on-network, and that's it? Or is it more involved than that?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Those are all for video cards. You're looking for a 4+4 pin P4 connector.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

PorkFat posted:

Thanks for your links. I've been out of the loop for a long time. I haven't built a PC in about 4 or 5 years now.


It's my understanding that since smaller platters have less mass they can get up to speed faster and are used in higher RPM drives. I've just read that in several places. It could have been bullshit from the start or something that's no longer applicable.

That's generally expressed through either form-factors (e.g. 10k RPM VelociRaptors are 2.5" disks) or when you get into 15k RPM drives. Between 5400 and 7200, it's not a big enough difference that it matters. Though you do see large drives tending to be released as 5400 RPM disks, with a few months before 7200 RPM versions come out. That may be related if, for example, it has to do with the stability of storing data on a new level of density reliably at high RPM.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

warcake posted:

The time has come I feel to buy a new computer my ageing dell xps laptop is starting to struggle with recent games. However I want to build my own desktop pc but the reason I had a laptop in the first place was due to lack of space. My question is how feasible is it to use my LCD tv as a monitor and keep the tower under my bed? Would i need a hdmi out?
The computer is going to be used for DVD/blu ray if possible and games/Internet browsing.
I really don't feel like dropping £1000 on a decent laptop when i could build a kickin desktop for less.

Seriously, it's a sticky in this forum and everything.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
Should be able to fit a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ in there, though you might want to double check. Hell of a cooler for all of $30, and it comes with some silver-based thermal compound.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Shyfted One posted:

No worries. Any response is better than me just speculating to myself regarding things I honestly don't know much about.

Even with the receiver set to "Game" I can't even get a picture anymore. The TV is just black where it used to at last show my wallpaper. And my PC is already on. It's on just about all the time aside when I'm away for work. I also tried updating my drivers and the whole catalyst system they tend to promote now. Still can't get things setup.

I have no problems with my cable box or blu-ray player to receiver connections, just PC.

Have you gone to the Windows screen resolution dialog or the Catalyst Control Center create and manage desktops dialog and asked it to redetect monitors when the switch is set to Game?

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
It's a bit older, but for 1680x1050 it's still plenty beefy. Don't worry about it for at least a year.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Scionix posted:

For some reason none of the popular tech websites bench with a gtx295. I was thinking about upgrading to a GTX580 for dx11, crysis2, and BF3 (I play at 1920x1200). How much performance would I be gaining?

That, and I'm really, really tired of games not using SLi correctly :saddowns:

I know, I know, but I'm really anal about FPS and I can't max the shiny new stuff without going below 60 :shobon:

Unless you're doing stereoscopic 3D, you probably won't notice any difference. Your monitor only displays up to 60 FPS.

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Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.
What settings are you running at that it's not already at like 55 FPS? 8x AA?

Theoretically, the 580 could be up to 15% faster, but I'm having no luck finding real-world benchmarks, either. But even if the best case were true, is $500 worth paying for 15% more FPS in a single game?

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