The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Oman7,

I agree with Stevo! For instance if I go along with what they show for the SB950 the PCIe slots should be x16, x16 in SLI and C/F. They are not, on my 990XA, they are x8, x8. Wiki is more often than not, inaccurate!

The x16, x16 doesn't happen until the GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+. If I was a Gamer, I would have bought it, but it's not worth the extra money to me. I had to stay withing my budgeted $200, and I needed MX-2 and Memory. The price difference was only $10, but if you don't have the $10, it becomes a moot point! LOL!! The important thing is that all my motherboard tech is now up to date, and I'm ready for Bulldozer. The only other thing I lost with this board, is the eSata, and I have the 790X Breakout Panel one that works fine, in fact I prefer it because I can hook up bare drives directly too it with no fuss. I do lose 2 Sata ports over what I have now, but I only need 5 anyway, and Russell will never expand it beyond what It is.

I went to bed early last night, and got up at 7, and it didn't take but a couple of minutes for me to function, instead of the usual hour or so it usually takes. I'm going to remove the 790X drivers and have at the new motherboard. See you in a few hours!

Beat Regards,
Russ

 

i would assume wiki is giving the default specs of the sb. As we know, mobo manufacturers like to turn off features to either sell it at a cheaper price, or include stock chips, but charge out of the arse for them

 

I purchased a ProBook4520s a while back because it was a super bargain from newegg. Used it for a few months. A few days ago i swapped out the 320GB Hitachi HD with an 1st generation Vertex 30GB SSD i had laying around. The performance difference is obvious and battery life has nearly doubled. I wont have to worry about moving the laptop from room to room while its powered on either.
A bit upset i didnt make the switch sooner...

 

Yep my 890XA is the same way. 790X chipset, SB850, PATA hookups, the works. Mine is most certainly a directly upgraded 790X-UD4P.

 

Estuansis,

My motherboard has a 990X Northbridge and a SB950 South bridge. No PATA or Floppy. I have it running at 3.5GHz, 5000 MTs, at 1.31v, at least for the next couple of days. So far it runs like a dream.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Pata and floppy are dying breeds

I'm glad it's running well Russ. You certainly beat me to the punch. I'm still a few months away from my upgrade. Lets not hex it now

 

What's your temp like sense you had to re paste the cpu any differents? and you should be able to set it back Oc'd like you had it on the 790 All and another thing Glad to see you Rock'in some G.Skill's Now. Lol congrat Russ and you Know. I wanna see some Everest Memory Latency tests on those sticks. I'll be waiting hoping not to remind. lol take care my friend

Still good to use from time to time if you have them even tho the sata tranfer rate is faster these days


I see there goin backward in burn speed with the Sony Optiarc AD-7280S-0B
16X wassup with that?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118067

 

N_3_Days,

It's hard to tell because I haven't found any reliable software that will read it yet. Everest is all over the map, and only gives you the cores, but no CPU Temp or motherboard. I did compare my Infra-Red scans from inside the case, to the ones I just made, and "Hardware Info Pro" seems to be high by 2-3C on the CPU and the MB temps. My internal readings today are very close, almost identical to the older scan, so I would say the temps are about the same.

I did a little changing with my fans, since I had to take things apart anyway. I took the 120mm 30 cfm @800 rpm fan out of the Scythe Kama Bay, and replaced it with a Silverstone FN-121 B that's 53.4 cfm @1200 rpm. I've always said that the FN-121 is the second quietest fan in my computer. You can hear a tiny bit stronger air noise, but the difference is really close. Amazingly quiet fan! Much quieter than they're 26dBA rating.

BTW, brilliant me decided to remove the fans from the Rad, and give it a good blow out. No sign of a carpet at all. All I did was waste my time as there was nothing there to clean out. If I get my calculations entered into the computer right, my Rad should still stay clean, because the dust is going out the back of the case instead of the side cover. It get's on the drapes, so I have to remember to vacuum there more often.

On the North Bridge temps, I can report that the new Passive heatsinks on the NB and the VRMs work very effectively. The SB heat sink is huge! I think it is 2
7/8" x 2 5/8". It's about time that GigaByte put some interest in something besides horozontal heatpipe heatsinks! The SB heat sink is a work of art! Air travels over, under, around and through it but it's not very tall, maybe 3/8" at it's tallest.

Performance wise, I'm as fast at 3.6GHz now as I was with the 790X and DDR2 1066. You can easily see the speed difference between Cas9 and Cas7. I thought it was wading in Fudge running at cas9! I had to manually set the timings to 7-7-7-21 and it got a lot more zippy! Since this is going to my friend Russell, the voltages are set to auto, so if he does have a problem, I'll show him how to lower the CPU multiplier. In spite of not being tweaked that much, I can't sneeze at nearly 81,000 MIPS and a memory bandwidth of almost 9000MB/s, with the CPU running at 3.6GHz. It runs right nice!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ, for what it's worth, I know it's far from me to give anybody pc advise here, but I have been using piriforms speccy, I know it might not be as accurate as some of the one's you guys use, but I have been using it for a couple of years now plus did the same with my nieghbors, it gives out 4 temps, cpu, hardrives, graphic cards and mobo temps, and it's always stable, never runs amuck, something to try till you find something better.

 

Fred,

The problem is that the motherboard manufacturers are very lax at giving companies like Everest, Sandra and Hardware Monitor Pro the specs. BTW, any software, I don't care who makes it, still has to know what to read, before they can read it. Some work, but not accurately, some find no sensors at all. Some even get the identification all mixed up. The 980X/SB950 chips haven't been out that long either.

Russ

 

Just had a fun project going today. Had a laptop sitting here for some time that would run off the charger but wouldn't charge. Inspiron 1525 built in 2008 but basically unused until now due to said issue. Try the battery in another Dell Inspiron, and it works fine. Well these laptops have a bad track record for the power board attached to the connector being flimsy, so I automatically assumed it would need a part replaced, and put it on the back burner. Probably collected dust for ~6 months.

Now just found out today that the power adapter cord had been tripped on and yanked out in the past, just in passing conversation, and it got me to thinking. Sliced the boot off the connector and lo and behold, the center wire, which charges the battery, is snapped right at the connector. A little soldering, shrink tube, and electrical tape later and the laptop is suddenly charging perfectly again. And to think I was gonna take it out and shoot it XD

Specs just for the record:

2GHz Celeron M 550 (A64 3400+ equivalent)
2GB DDR2 5300
Intel X3100(kinda makes me miss the X4500HD in my Thinkpad)
160GB HDD

If it were junk I would have chucked it but it's in otherwise fine shape and due to lack of use the battery has retained most of its factory capacity. Think I got about 3 hours out of it surfing the web and watching youtube and a little over 4 hours word processing and listening to MP3s which is fantastic for the age of the laptop and battery. Now if the battery didn't charge, the laptop isn't exactly worth enough on its own to salvage. As a working unit though, it's a lot easier to sell or trade.

My next project might be to find a suitable dual core to use in it. It only supports 800MHz FSB processors though, so I might have to dig into my stash of Merom Core Duos(ie not Core 2 Duo). I'm thinking a 1.66GHz dual core would work really nice without killing the battery too much, and make it a more useful machine. Have been doing some vintage gaming on it too. Mostly CoD1, Wolfenstein ET online, GTA Vice City etc. Have proven myself that even when badly GPU limited like Intel integrated a CPU upgrade has always helped gaming speeds. Shoot me, I like to optimize games to run on PCs they shouldn't

On another note just got to compare the X4500HD in my Thinkpad T500 and the X3100 in this Dell. Features aside the X4500 is nearly twice as fast which puts it in max settings territory for a very large number of older games. Have been playing Star Wars Republic Commando and Battlefield Vietnam maxed on the X4500 which are both usually games reserved for discrete cards or AMD/Nvidia IGPs. The X4500 also manages original-version cracked copies of Half Life 2 without much fuss maxed at 1024 x 768(ie just fine for a 15" laptop screen). The new Source 2009 updated Half Life 2 runs like poop though.

Had another interesting laptop a few months ago that I intended to buy a high-cap battery for and keep but it sold right away to an owner of the same model for parts. Was an Acer Ferrari with a 2.2GHz Turion X2 and a mobility X1600 which would have been perfect. IIRC my biggest expense would have been the proper high-capacity 9 cell battery to give it useful battery life while gaming. I think the guy I sold the laptop to used it for the power controller board and the screen which were both broken on his. His was a newer, more reliable model as well but with a weaker cooler so I think he took the cooler as well. The CPU I still have sitting here. Have a whole mess of mobile CPUs as well as P4s A64s, X2s, Core 2s, etc etc just sitting here. Really should start piecing out builds and selling. Say throw in a PSU or some RAM if something needs it and sell what I have for profit. Prolly have a dozen full modern PCs here in parts

 

Sounds like you've been having fun Jeff

Myself, I'm depositing $300+ in the bank tomorrow. I plan to purchase an LCD Tv, or a monitor. What I'm having trouble deciding, is whether to save a little more, and get the Dell U2410. I'm really feeling desperate here. I absolutely NEED a 24" or more screen. I also need it to eliminate the 13" tv I have my Wii connected too. So it needs to have a component hookup. Any thoughts appreciated. Should I save a little more, and get the Dell U2410, Or is there a good 30" 1080P LCD Tv within my price range? I watch a lot of movies and what not on my PC. I also plan to hook a BD player to my Display for testing purposes.

I'm really starting to hate my CRT montior, which replaced my 2433Bw samsung. I'm still crying about that one

 

Well if you need size, functionality, and quality, an HDTV will give you the most for your dollar. But because you need a proper monitor as well, I think it would be a no-brainer. My Dell 2407WFP and ASUS V242H 1080p get used for a little of everything. Sure is nice to have both aspect ratios in the same size ;P

 

I really should be patient, and get the Dell. I'm just so sick of the CRT. It's like a friggin heater! All I'll need to sell is a few more things. I'm just getting impatient...

Looks like I may be purchasing a used one in the morning. Depends on how the ebay seller responds. His communication will obviously say a lot

 

My sister's PC was hit by a virus and since I was working on it and it is an old 939pin system I decided to replace her old platform with an AM3+ ASRock board I had laying around and bought here a new processor and RAM for it. I didn't buy a Black CPU as the best price was on a Triple Core for $67 from NewEgg. I haven't tried to unlock a green processor before and thought that you could only unlock Black CPU's. Luckily I was able to unlock the fourth core and up my performance in Win7 from 6.9 rating to 7.3, which is very sweet.

ASRock M3A790GXH-128M
AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz AM3 95W Triple-Core Processor
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1066

 

Ad really need to fix this advert.

 

I hate when that happens

Screw used! I'm going brand spanking new. An ebay seller has them for under 500USD. This friday, I'm finally getting the U2410

 

Sure it's not refurbished? That seems quite cheap.

 

5yr dell warranty :S It's about to end, but they have 7 left. I feel lucky.
Dell U2410

 

I suppose being a US company they're just cheaper in the US, U2410s work out $565 here (before tax of course)