The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I feel the same way Interesting, I didn't have to reactivate windows.

Might have to tone down the brightness on this monitor. I can tell already that my eyes are straining from the brightness. Hope that doesn't effect it's overall appeal.

Are component cables typically subject to interference? 2 out of 3 cables are giving me the blues. Perhaps they're simply cheaply made

 

No component cables are very good and personally I'd rather use them over HDMI. For one you don't get the handshaking nonsense that you do with HDMI or have the standards issues either. You can have problems with RCA's not contacting properly due to dirty contacts or even corrosion if it is a cheap cable(s). All cables are subject to interference so yes that can be an issue you don't want to have a noisy device, transformer, hi-voltage wire running alongside them for any length. In fact florescent lighting can affect other electronic lines and devices as they are very noisy due to their transformers.

Whenever I run Ethernet cabling in a business or home I always make sure to run at 90 degrees of the lighting if at all possible. And I never run low level wiring close to the AC wiring for any stretch either.

NewEgg has a SSD on sale with a manufacturing refund for $134.99 after MIR of $30 shipped but you have to be on their email advertising plan to get it.

OCZ Solid 3 SLD3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC

Advertisement from email program

 

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO just got 22Mb internet today. Totally impressed with the installation and service. Just downloaded an 800MB AVI in 7 minutes. Now that is fast internet!

 

Steve, my Kingston 16Gb problem is gone! The slow association by windows, the interruption to my printer. It apparently behaves with the Dell USB hub. Perhaps some kind of extender or whatever inside...

 

22Mbps internet should download 800MB in 5 1/2 minutes. It's not quite up to speed if it takes you 7 Still, a considerable improvement no less. My record for 800MB I think is about 3 minutes.

 

<---Jealous. I have to wait for the area to upgrade. We're kind of in the dark ages...

 

That makes sense as the hub could be at fault. I had a friend that was USB device crazy, he wanted all of his devices plugged in all of the time regardless of if he needed to use them or not. I told him it was smart to do so but of course he didn’t listen. He found that it caused him problems even if they were not taking serial bandwidth, being used with other active devices at the same time. One reason for his problems was Logitech/Microsoft game controllers used on the same system together, apparently Logitech's drivers can cause havoc with other devices under Windows but that wasn't the only reason he had problems.

USB Note:
You are limited to 12-15' lengths using USB and if you get beyound that you should use an active extender for best results but sometimes the passive ones work too depending.

 

Oman7,

My boot-able flash drive will not boot from the case USB ports, only the rear ones on the motherboard. I discovered that when I flashed the bios from the flash drive and it wouldn't work with the case USB ports. The drive won't even show up in the directory when you run the flash utility. Plugged in any of the rear ports on the motherboard, it works fine.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

My kingston drive does not work properly in the rear port/s either. Only with the Dell. That's why I'm so impressed by the Dell. The Dell has exceeded my expectations. Everything about it The stand, the video clarity, the heat dissipation, etc, etc.

 

My ASRock(s) wouldn't boot many removable hdd's which is why I went back to Gigabyte. At one time I found a good driver for the ASRock's but somehow miss placed it so I just gave up on them for my main platforms. My sister has one of my AM3 ASRock's and she'll never run into the problem, so it all works out I guess.

Can you provide seperate power to your Kingston that sometimes will work as I was able to get some of my drives to work that way with the ASRock solutions?

 

Steve,

I have 4 flash drives, only two of them are bootable. I have a 1GB Memorex Traveldrive which will boot from the front case USBs, and the 8GB Kingston DataTraveler 102 that will only boot from the rear (MB) USBs. All my USBs are 2.0 except for the two USB 3.0 ports on the motherboard but I guess the Kingston needs more power than the extension wire to the front ports can handle. I've got 8 USB 2.0 ports on the motherboard, so it's not a problem for me. I do have a powered hub if I need it. My computer is easy to get at without having to move it, so it's not a problem at all. The cables for the front USBs on Oxi has very short wires, being a mini tower, and it boots from both front USB ports. I have a GigaByte MA785GM-US2H motherboard in it, and do note that with the old Foxconn motherboard, it would not boot from the front USBs.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

First of all I hate this advertising crap that overlays our posts I had to block and past your post into Notepad just to read your reply Russ.

I'm surprised the Foxconn had problems I've had good luck with them but like you on some of mine I've had to use the rear USB's too. I've had much better luck with Gigabyte than some other mainboards by far the worst being ASRock as I mention over & over again, hate to be a broken record but....

Some of my drives are bootable and some are not, however either way they are just not noticed by Windows always depending on the adapter and device used. I find this more so with actual hard drives not flash cards. USB didn't use to be so fussy but it sure is becoming so. Like you have pointed out and I as well power and drivers seem to be a real problem these days. Hopefully this will settle down again and compatibility will become more solid.

I can take these same difficult devices and they work just fine on my older systems again it must get back to drivers.

Stevo

 

The service also has a speed boost feature so when I run Speakeasy it tests up to 60Mb at night. Supposedly like a 10 second boost to help small downloads and page loading. Also helps torrents get going. On Steam it will download steady at about 2MB/s which is about 16Mb so I would assume my largest bottleneck now is wherever I'm downloading from. On bit torrent I've seen about 2.5MB/s steady which is about 20Mb. The line is intended to be 18Mb but due to the smaller amount of customers in my area, I get nice some nice fat overhead

Also it is quite cheap. $120/month for phone/net/cable bundle.

 

It's recommended that I use the rear USB ports, because the HAF932 front ports are rather cheaply designed(Wiring)? I do however leave my wireless mouse dongle in the front. My mouse gets finicky if the dongle is too far away.

I don't know about bootable. Never use flash drives that way. Gigabyte boards just seem to respond to my Kingston slowly. For whatever reason, the Dell alters the code somehow(USB address), and cures the problems entirely. An MSI board I once had, responded to it quite rapidly. Almost instantly. As well as installed windows 7 the quickest I've seen. About as quick as an SSD. No joke!

I'm gonna have to do more testing with this flash drive now.

 

I run firefox with adblock and noscript and haven't seen a single ad on AD in years.

 

Yep same here. I use Flashblock and Adblock Plus and haven't seen an ad in years.

 

That depends. If you use Sky for TV here, they practically throw in internet and phone for free. It's ADSL2, so it's a max of 24Mbps but much less for most due to distance from the exchange. That's about £42/month for the phone, internet and a reasonably high-end TV package ($65 after tax).
Here I run the broadband separate to the TV and phone to get the high-speed service. The 40Mbps internet is £42/month by itself (due to the peak usage allowance I've chosen, FTTC products are very strict on peak usage), phone and TV are also with separate companies and total about £56/month, so the total cost of our services is a bit more than yours, around $150/month.

I don't normally use adblock (I use chrome, and google routinely disable adblock extensions) but the ad ads are particularly annoying. They're meant to expand when you hover over them, but they're bugged, and remain expanded all the time.

 

Yeah I've been having the same problem, I know they are annoying, but mostly if I can click them off than I'm fine, but these pop-ups you can't get rid off and I can't read the posts, now that is annoying.

 

Well consider that I also live in a dead town in the middle of nowhere down the road from a farm. You live in a major city in the cultural center of the world. Big difference

There are similar setups as you have in America but they simply aren't available in this area. They do offer faster speeds than 18Mb all the way up to their "60+" service which a few of my friends use. Around here though, 18Mb is considered impressive and quite high-end as far as basic internet packages go. Last I checked the national average was around 8Mb.

One of the few benefits is that I have no bandwidth cap, and the company are constantly updating their equipment. They raise the internet speed caps constantly and in a few months I should be sitting at a happy 25Mb at no extra charge. The installation technician assured me that my area was first on the list A few years ago this same package was 8Mb limited for the same price.

Also consider the service I was using before. 1.3Mb bandwidth, slow and glitchy cable system, all for about $140 a month, which is a massive rip-off. My current ISP is not only $20 cheaper for a vastly superior service in every way, they gave me two years of premium movie channels for free for converting over from their competitor. Now that's service ;P It's quite a bit extra to get the 60+ line... I've been tempted... but anyway considering the relative quality of the services and no bandwidth cap I might actually be getting a better deal than you Sam, reasonably good TV package and all ;P I do get some HD channels for free as well plus a fairly robust on-demand movie service.