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The Computer Question Thread


aznriptide859

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I feel like such an idiot, solved it myself...I changed the letter of the XP boot drive in EasyBCD (bootloader editor) to the drive it appears on when 7 is loaded, forgetting that it sees it differently as it boots up. It's nice to have XP back! lol

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

 

I will also say that the 64bit version of Win 7 Ultimate comes with XP mode in it for them apps that need it.

 

Yeah XP mode is all very well but I want to play old games too so I need 3D acceleration which I don't believe Win7 Ultimate has? (I also don't have Ultimate)

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  • 2 months later...

I have a question for SSD owners.

 

I'm looking to get an ASUS Zenbook Prime UX32VD in the near future, however I won't have enough funds for a few-several months; ideally I would like the price to drop down a bit or for package deals to pop up. In the meantime though, I was thinking whether upgrading my current laptop's HDD to an SSD will improve it's everyday smoothness/performance.

 

I currently have an HP dm4t-1100 CTO (worst laptop I've ever owned...swear I never buy HP ever again), and it currently has a 5400RPM 500GB HDD. After 2 years of having it it's starting to slow down and get pretty hot at times. I'm thinking of doing a clean reinstall, but on an SSD this time. I had some questions before continuing.

 

1. Is it worthwhile to get an SSD in the meantime while saving for the UX32VD? It might be a few months before I have the money to get it, or it might be half a year - I'm not sure. However I'm sure adding an SSD would increase my current laptop's resell value.

2. Does an SSD draw significantly less power (i.e. will I get a noticeable increase in battery life)?

3. Is the everyday performance boost significant moving from an HDD to an SSD?

4. My biggest question is this - for those who moved from a large capacity HDD to a smaller capacity SSD, did you have trouble managing your space/data? I ask because I'm a huge hoarder, and data management is a little tricky for me. I do have 220GB out of my 500GB HDD free right now, but I do not have enough money to get a similarly large enough SSD. I would prefer to keep it cheap at 128GB, but if something's good and reasonably priced I might get a 256GB one.

 

Lastly, as a sidenote, does anyone have any good SSD brands to recommend - 128 or so GB for under $100 and 256GB or so under $180-200? I'm mostly checking for deals, and I do read Tom's Hardware a lot, so I know brands to look out for (Samsung 830, Crucial M4, OCZ Vertex Agility, Intel 300 or 500 series), but does anyone love their certain SSD based on experience?

 

Thanks for all the help :)

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azn, the SSD performance boost is phenomenal. i bought a crucial adrenaline cache drive a while back and it's the best thing i've done to my PC in ages, painfully sluggish to seriously quick in no time. i reckon an SSD is probably the most noticeable everyday upgrade you could do.

 

bear in mind i've only got a cache drive, so the end result is far slower than a standalone SSD and even then it's made a massive difference. SSDs have plummeted in price too, so running largely on proper SSDs is actually financially viable now.

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Sounds like I'll have to jump on the boat then haha. Did you experience a drastic increase/difference in your data management though? That aspect worries me the most.

 

i've only got a cache drive, same old 1TB HDD, just with an SSD and some clever software to speed everything up. i mainly chose this route for convenience, a clean install on a SSD with my old HDD for storage would have been preferable but i didnt fancy getting hold of a new copy of windows or the hassle of a clean install.

 

if storage is your concern you should look into seagate's hybrid drives (i think they're called momentus). similar principle to my setup, only in a single 2.5" format. it will never be as fast as a proper SSD, but you're far better off for storage and it's still much, much faster than a regular HDD

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With the SSD prices we are seeing now, and with the advances made with the technology this year alone, I think WD and Seagate will soon be facing a real threat when it comes to market shares.

Hopefully this will force them to lower their prices to where they were before the whole hard drive shortage.

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I've got an Adata S501 (both this and the Crucial M4 are variants of the Crucial C300, iirc.) The performance jump was very nice, especially booting up and HDD-intensive tasks. I chose a 256GB one, and I haven't had a problem with running out of space yet, though it's worth noting that I don't tend to download lots of stuff that'll fill a drive in the first place.

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HDD prices had better drop soon, Pre floods, I was getting 2TB for £50. I appreciate the floods did some severe damage, but surely HDD technology and manufacturing processes have improved so that should have an impact making manufacturing cheaper for them. They're idiots if they're keeping to the prices artificially inflated because people have no other choice to buy if they need them. I'm ready to drop a fair amount on 12TB but I won't be doing so until it can be done again for £300 or so. I'm sure others feel the same way.

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They are keeping the prices inflated because they can. Seagate and Western Digital have about 85 percent of the market between them.

 

Hard drive manufacturers have never made much money on their drives, the Thailand floods gave them the excuse to increase their margins.

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Never thought of it that way lol.

 

Then again I have 3 x 2TB drives, so I'm not complaining anytime soon (although one is almost full 0_0).

 

Speaking of which, does anyone have a multibay USB 3.0/eSATA o NAS enclosure they would recommend? Ideally I want it to fit 4 bays.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm back again with a build question. Can anyone recommend a motherboard to go with the stuff on this list?

http://www.ebuyer.com/lists/list/34649

I'm planning to SLI the graphics once the single 670 starts showing its age

I'm also undecided with CPU cooling. I'm tempted by one of the corsair hydro all in one water cooling setups but I can't help but think that for the price air will be better but maybe thats just me thinking back to the days when water cooling cost as much as the system you were putting it in.

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Can't go wrong with an Gigabyte UD series, I have the UD3 and it is good, if you are really serious about overclocking you can look at the UD5 or UD7 but you are getting diminishing marginal returns there.

 

The best thing about them is that the PCIe x16 slots are intelligently placed so that if you SLI things you don't block all your other slots.

 

I have just got an H80 and it is lovely, air might be as good but air is not as small, I have loads of room for stupidly big RAM heatsinks now, in all my DIMM slots.

It howls like a jet turbine when you first turn it on then calms right down to a quiet hum.

 

 

 

 

 

*edit*

 

I just got an e-mail saying that Scan.co.uk are offering that processor and ram with an ASUS P8Z77-V LX MoBo for 280 quid.

 

I don't do Intel so I don't know if that's any good but they do have other good bundle offers with that processor too.

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Help me Arnie's.

 

I am about to throw my computer out of the window.

 

I have a RocketRAID 640 card hooked up to 4x1Tb drives

I also have an OCZ PCIe SSD that is basically a RAID 0 array of two small drives for performance

I have a 2.5" SSD in the case too, it is the only drive directly attached to the MoBo and it has the OS on it.

 

I am on Win 7 64 bit

 

I have 2xHD6950 cards flashed to HD6970 spec in crossfire.

 

I have a Phenom 6100.

 

 

Here is the issue.

Until recently I had my RocketRAID set up as 2x 1Tb RAID1 drives, so I had two mirrored 1Tb drives.

No problems at all.

 

I decided I would like a bit more performance and more space so I used the RocketRAID 640's ORLM (Online RAID Level Miration) system to convert all four drives into a single 3Tb RAID5 array.

Still no problems.

 

I rebooted.

 

Went through the 640's BIOS self test, good - found the 3Tb array.

Went through the OCZ's BIOS self test, good - zero defects.

 

Then, nothing. At this stage it usually says Loadin Operating System and goes about it's business. Nothing.

 

I am confused.

 

Power down, pop open the 4 hot swap enclosures on the front of the case, restart.

 

RAID BIOS says there is no array, Windows starts as normal.

 

Power off, drives back in, won't boot.

Drives out, will boot.

 

Put drives back in while windows is already running, PC detects new 3Tb drive and all is good. Everything works.

Flash latest MoBo BIOS, flash latest 640 firmware, run Gigabyte's 3Tb+ software (already did this aes ago but did it again, just in case).

 

Reboot, won't start.

 

Drives out, reboot, drives back in, all is good.

 

Break array down into 2x1.5Tb partitions, reboot, nothing.

 

Drives out, restart, drives in, windows detects 2x1.5Tb drives and all is good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please, somebody tell me what I am doing wrong before my computer lands on and kills a passer-by.

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  • 5 months later...

Finally ready to update my ancient Core 2 Duo gaming rig:  

 

Keep: 1000w PSU, storage drives, optical drive

MOBO: ASRock Z77

CPU: Core i5-3570K

Cooler: CM Hyper 212 Plus

RAM: undecided

SSD: undecided

case: undecided

 

I've been using an LCD TV as a desktop monitor since my 24" high res died; I'll replace it and the aging 8800 GPU later.  The goal for now is to keep the CPU bottleneck open for the next few years, with an eye on the budget.  Any thoughts on my choices, or what size and speed of RAM and SSD to get?  

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Finally ready to update my ancient Core 2 Duo gaming rig:  

 

Keep: 1000w PSU, storage drives, optical drive

MOBO: ASRock Z77

CPU: Core i5-3570K

Cooler: CM Hyper 212 Plus

RAM: undecided

SSD: undecided

case: undecided

 

I've been using an LCD TV as a desktop monitor since my 24" high res died; I'll replace it and the aging 8800 GPU later.  The goal for now is to keep the CPU bottleneck open for the next few years, with an eye on the budget.  Any thoughts on my choices, or what size and speed of RAM and SSD to get?  

 

RAM: http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/luke-hill/patriot-viper-3-intel-extreme-masters-limited-edition-2133mhz-8gb-memory-review/

SSD: VERTEX 4 128GB

CASE: CORSAIR CARBIDE 400R

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Right just blank me if its not okay to ask, to those in the know, my laptop (emachines E642) is a little dated. It is running 64bit windows 7. Anyhoo, it has an ATi Radeon 4250HD graphics card, what upgrade options do i have? And also how hard is it to upgrade the amount of RAM?

Edit: ALSO, if youre looking it up or whatever, is it possible to up the clock speed or swap the CPU? (or am i going way too far? :P) i think the CPU is useable for the other hardware, but its lacking in the RAM/Graphics Hardware.

 

Thanks!

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