The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Sam, using semi-transparent recordable media is a bad idea. Some of my first Rips were semi-transparent. They tend to not read very well. Or atleast in the early DVD burning era.
Were you burning them at max/default speed? That's also a bad idea. Never used verbatim CD-R's. The CD-rs I have used, all read fine today. Other than a ritek batch I got one time. They had green splotches on many of the discs recording surfaces. Now that's bad. Ritek should be ashamed!

We should probably continue any more comments pertaining to recordable media, in the scan thread. I apologize. I feel somewhat responsible for the path this thread has taken.

 

On a different note, I think I'm going to get that 60GB Patriot SATA-III SSD I've been looking at for several months now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=2#scrollFullInfo

My 160GB Seagate is slowly dying, and with the current cost of HDDs having gone to the moon, I figure it is time. I have 6 SATA-III ports on my motherboard, so I might as well start using them. My current boot drive partition is only 48.8GB, and I usually have about 18GB available, so I figure a 60GB SSD should do just fine. Is there anything special I need to know when installing it? I haven't had to set up AHCI in over 4 years, so I'm a bit rusty at it. My only concern is the motherboard manual says I need a USB Floppy drive to install the required software. I'm hoping that a USB Flash drive will do the trick, because there is no floppy port on the motherboard, and I don't have a USB Floppy drive! Any suggestions?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

That's only ever necessary for AHCI RAID, so the array can be visible before windows boots. With a solo drive, none of it is necessary, plug and play, basically.

 

I bet you can use a CD to install it. It appears you will need to purchase a bracket to fit in a 3.5 slot. Also, make sure you turn off Windows defrag for that drive, since you will have Trim.

I could be wrong, but I thought Win7 installed mine with no problems.

 

Yeah, not many cases come with native 2.5" bays or the appropriate adapters. Fortunately, a lot of cases let you remove the tool-less bay brackets and find screw holes underneath, so that's often one way of attaching them (though only on one side of course).

 

Indeed. I'm strongly considering SSD myself. Instead of the Ram I've been considering.

Unfortunately, I don't think WD is gonna honor the 5yr warranty. I read on their site, that replacement drives only carry a 90 day warranty. My original 5yr isn't up til 2014. Looks like I have something to dislike about WD now The replacement drive should theoretically have the original warranty, you'd think!

I will no longer employ the velociraptors. If they do help me out, I'll sell the unopened drive on ebay. No doubt it will turn a fair price. I hope LOL!

 

This is far from true and I have NEVER stated such nonsense, it just goes to show how you don't comprehend what I've said, even when I've simplified it, and shows that your bias (preference) definitely clouds your judgement. Very sad I must say but typical of todays way of thinking.

Russ,

I just bought the "XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V REV.W with ACK-I5361 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler" for $28.96 with a rebate of $20 so I'll only pay $8.96 when all is done. It's not quite as good as the Scythe but I'm not going to OC heavily so I won't need the extra CFM for the silence it provides. That deal is up on the 14th through e-blast.

Stevo

 

I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema with the K-Lite codec pack. Have yet to find anything with near the quality, processing efficiency, or sheer features and compatibility. No file type it can't play either. I refuse to use anything else after years of switching around. Currently using 3 1TB WD Greens and some 500s.

Winamp for music as it has native FLAC support, and a beautiful library function that makes searching my music a breeze. It also has marginally superior audio quality to other media players I've tried. Not to mention it can be as simple or complex as you want it to be and has a vast archive of awesome user-made skins.

 

Jeff, You really need the K-lite codec pack? I've been under the impression, that ffdshow was generally all one needs. Shows what I know though LOL! I'm probably missing some important factor :S Although I've noticed with some players, the Haali splitter icon will popup when playing certain files. With TMT5, I think it has built in filters for just about anything.

 

FFDShow should be all you need from what I've experienced. I used to use K-Lite but now only use FFDShow. I've tried about every player out there and really don't like anyone player I've tested fully. I tried WinAmp years ago and didn't really like it but did like the skins you could use but maybe I should give it another go.

I too have seen splitter when using TMT3 or 5 if I recall correctly?

 

No. it comes up with Windows media player, but not TMT5. TMT5 seems to have its own filters/codecs. Dandy little progy I of course require Haali and ffdshow. I use them for BD-rebuilder

ffdshow is definitely a powerful little sucker!

Ugh! TMT5 looks WAYY better than Media player classic

 

I use it for the same reason as you but use TMT & Media Player 12.0.7601.17514 for music and videos. Actually at one time I did use TMT3's encoder with BD Rebuilder to get around the issues Rebuilder had with VC1 encoding at the time, but that was some time ago.

iTunes player and MP were the only two players that when set to random play for music would not repeat songs so those are the two I typically used as well as others. I would agree with Jeff that searching is problematic on some players.

 

CCCP was crap, I don't use it any more, nor do I really use any codec packs. Default MPCHC works for most things, but it doesn't have high-level WMV support. MPCHC basically can't play FLAC files, I've looked into things like foobar, but don't have a real affinity for any of them yet.

 

Mr-Movies,

I use FFDshow and Gom player. GOM Player is light on the resources, plays just about anything, and has an extensive set of controls. Sometimes you get a reversed video that's a mirror image. A quick R click on the screen and click "Mirror" on the drop down menu and it's reversed back to normal again. Very intuitive to use. I like it!

Russ

 

Foobar is really advanced and flexible. If you have specific needs chances are Foobar has a plugin for it. It has a rather steep learning curve to use fully though :S

I used GOM Player for years. I like the multi-role functionality but it lacks specific stuff I like to use often, or maybe just has the stuff placed less conveniently. Again MPC for video, Winamp for music. Both have everything I need. GOM is an excellent alternative though and iirc it had great image and audio quality.

 

does mpchc stream to tvs?

 

TVersity streams to TV's or any DLNA device which is what I use right now for my media server and so far is the best tool I've found for that. I certainly don't love it and finding what you want to play can be a pain depending but over all it works seamlessly.

FLAC is a clumsy format and no better than WMA Lossless and even MP3 variable will compete with it so I convert FLAC right off if I get one from a friend.

Russ,

It's been awhile since I've played with GOM but that is another one I should play with. Thanks for the feedback, great suggestion.... TMT is labor intensive so it is good to have other alternatives that are good.

Stevo

 

Stevo,

You're most welcome. I'm probably going to eventually get the pay version of Gom Player, which incredibly has even more controls. The right click menu that shows on the screen is simple and intuitively easy to use. I still use MP-11 for CDs though.

Russ

 

for on pc use, I use kmplayer for video, no extra codecs needed.

for music, itunes, which is funny as I don't even have an idevice.

can't stand tversity, I use serviio. Not missed a beat yet, along with homeplugs between my samsung br player and my pc