A good air fan could cost you almost as much -- only reason I suggest water nowadays is that the price for the closed loop (ie non-custom) kits are almost as low as a good air fan. And much less hassle (IMO).
I think I'm gonna go for the Corsair 120mm fans over the Cm 200.
I guess the AF models are better for exhaust use but would the difference between the quiet and performance models be noticeable
So i was casually using my PC, and i went to change tabs on chrome when suddenly I saw a black screen, and then white. The computer would not respond to anything but the reset switch.
Is this just a random blip or could it be due to a fault in a part (especially the GPU)
So I'm still owed an Xmas prezzie from my parents. Up to £100 I think. Not sure really what to get / what's with getting.
And I might just buy some extra thinks if they're beneficial.
Computer related options :
Fans
New heatsibk
Keyboard
Mouse
SSD
Gagety things
Kindle (dunno if it would make me read more)
Tablet (like a nex 7)
Or I could ask for money to offset the cost of my new rig.....?
I thought a tablet would be nice when I CBA to go on my PC, and will be quiter for when I'm studying and I just need to read an e-book...
But I'm also thinking if I get an SSD and put the OS on it, everything will be much quicker, and the HDD might be quieter... so I could have my computer on while I'm studying.
I could find a £60 120GB SSD, and get a Kindle, for less than £159.......
If I were to be getting a new phone next Easter ( I think a NExus 4 ) I dunno if a Nexus 7 be still needed, or if it would bridge the gap between phone and PC...
The more the better IMO. You'll want to put certain programs to load faster over the SSD, not just the OS. Something like a game or two, or some of your most used programs.
Think of it this way, you'll be unlikely to regret having extra room, but there is always the possibility of regretting that you didn't buy enough room for your needs.
My SSD is currently sitting at 226GB free of 476GB (so 250GB used).
Another thing to note is SSDs reserve a portion of the drive for wear leveling. So my 512GB SSD is really a 476GB SSD.
Yeah, I guess... 120GB it is then. Hopefully I can get one for < £70.
Also, I looked at the £69 Kindle, and it looks like I'd prefer the Touch(no longer sold) or the Paperwhite - £109.
But with that cheaper SSD I could still get both for around the same price as a Nexus. Although I must just leave the Kindle and just a SSD and some case fans.
Still need a new k/b and mouse, but ( damn you Amazon ) they put their prices up, and I'm waiting for them to goo down in price :/
Edit: Found some nice looking SSD's, but I'll post them in the SSD thread...
Edit : Question : I only have one 3 pin fan socket available on my motherboard. If I want to add another 2 fans, can anything be done?
Last edited by Mehta23; December 28th, 2012 at 07:41 AM.
Edit : Question : I only have one 3 pin fan socket available on my motherboard. If I want to add another 2 fans, can anything be done?
You can run fans right off the PSU with some kinda of cable adapter -- though I don't know if they make them now or not (I would think they do, I just havent looked). You just wouldn't have any speed control.
I have a few fans running that way now with a molex -> 3 pin adapter
I can hear a clicking sound coming from my PC. I think it's from the PSU. Last time I heard it ( two days ago) I took it out, dusted it, and everything was fine. But it's come back. Something I should be worried about?
I opened up the case, and tapped the top of the PSU three times. And now the clicking has gone?
I see earlier you had an issue with your GTX 670? Was this resolved? If not, please send me a PM or email webmaster@evga.com so I can help get you sorted out. I am in the US, but I communicate daily with our Europe team. The above goes for anyone with an issue with an EVGA product. Please specify in your email (if that is what you opt to do) that you were referred by me from AF.
Only problem is it'll cost £50 just to ship it to evga in Germany. It's why I've had to go down the horrible and painful route of trying an RMA with Scan.
While I can't promise anything, I can certainly try to help and see what we can do about helping with the shipping costs should there still be an issue. Please email or PM me if you still need assistance.
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Thanks again./ Now I'm really glad I returned my MSI PE cards and got a EVGA card instead!
Just a little FYI, that I didn't know. When I tried to index my folders, I may have accidentally indexed everything. The Windows Help and Support thing says that indexing too much actually makes things slower, which may be the reason my PC is sometimes slow ( and why the Windows Experience Index is low - 5.9)
Right. I decided to do a quick memtest, and a quick Tessy stress test.
They seemed fine.
Right now, I am folding, and to my amazement, my card isn't making that loud, high pitched sound! All I can hear are the fans and the air being pushed out.
EVGA Precision shows the card at 1175Mhz, with 96% power.
Edit: I guess I spoke too soon. It turns out I can hear the noise, but it's not very loud. Although the fans do sound like a washing machinel :P
But still, if this is how my card is going to perform, I am more than happy. Of course, I'l have to sort out the instability and BOSD's....
I love my Razers (first the Habu, now the Imperator) as their shape fits my hand very comfortably, and I can adjust the sensitivity perfectly either for precision photo work or gaming.
I'm looking for a backup drive. Just for windows backups and somewhere to store my photos.
500gb sound like enough,?
How large is your photo collection likely to be, and how many backups do you plan on storing simultaneously? I'd also strongly suggest a remote backup solution such as a NAS box or external hard disk rather than another internal drive, for added security. A serious problem with your PC could nuke an internal backup drive.
But I can often hear a sort of clicking sound from my PC, I think from the PSU. Last time I tried taking it out and clearing it out, but obviously it didnt do anything. I also found that giving a short sharp tap stopped it temporarily.
windows backups... They're at least 32GB. Only need one every few months...
And what happens to your data if you suffer a drive failure between backups?
I'd strongly recommend monthly full backups, with (as a minimum) weekly incremental ones to backup any changes between them. If you are using your PC for school/college work, or for business, you might even want to make it a weekly/daily set. It really depends on (a) how important the data is to you and (b) how much inconvenience you'd suffer if you lost it.
Might change to monthly backups.. And instant backups of pictures... Once on hdd from the sd, and then another onto the external. Maybe again on the cloud...
Quite a lot of the data is games. As long as I had my save game data saved, I wouldn't mind having to re download everything.
Pictures... Kinda need them to be backed up securely.
I have 50GB on box... But I recall something about it wouldn't let me bulk upload pictures....Any ideas if this is the same now?
instant backups of pictures... Once on hdd from the sd, and then another onto the external. Maybe again on the cloud...
My own are imported from camera memory card to PC, where I do all the post-processing in Lightroom. I use SyncToy, scheduled hourly, to mirror the local library and associated database to my NAS box next door, and a daily cron job on that mirrors everything onto an external drive. This is rotated regularly with an identical drive left at an offsite location. The Lightroom database, containing all my adjustments, is also backed up daily to two separate cloud services.... yeah, I'm paranoid.
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You can also use something like CrashPlan, Google Drive, Dropbox.
I have Crashplan set to backup to my NAS and to "the cloud" - though I pay for some of the cloud stuff, it's pretty cheap. You can also backup to a friend's computer using crashplan for free.
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I feel slightly stupid and at risk of losing valuable data now :-\
My reward - if i get good marks in my recent exams - is an external HDD. Until then it looks like I'll have to use the cloud.
By all means do keep your data backed up one way or another! If you can save some key files to optical media (like DVD-RW) or inexpensive flash drives. Do that first, because backing up to a "cloud" will take a long time. It took me about a month to get my first full backup of the 170GiB of files that I consider important enough to use physical diversity backups for. Most people have more than a GiB or two of files, if you include stuff like music, photos and videos, that are irreplaceable and should be backed up not only to a separate drive, but to a separate location. So if, God forbid, your house burns down, you'll have your most treasured digital stuff. Or if you have a laptop, tablet or some other portable that can get stolen or damaged beyond repair, you'd want a copy of everything safe at home.
I keep my files synced between two computers at home, and back up to a remote computer that I have an account on, and a "cloud" service. I use the "free" music/photo/etc. file sharing services to share, but not for backup! If you read the fine print, you'll find that what you get back from many of these "free" sites will not be the same quality as what you put in. Don't risk your valuable media files by using a "free" website alone!
I'm a TiVo user, and when I travel I save a bunch of my TiVo videos in unencrypted MPEG2 format to a 500GB portable USB drive and/or onto my laptop. That worked so well that I bought a larger 2TB USB drive that can hold all of my latest backups, and a whole lot of movies and TV shows. My mother is getting to the age that she's having falls and other problems, so if the phone rings, I can grab the big 2TB USB drive and just go, knowing that I have enough video to pass my time for quite a while.
Something that you might consider doing is getting an external drive enclosure with a bare SATA HD instead of one of the pre-made USB drives with "no user serviceable parts inside". Doing it this way can save you some money, and gives you the ability to swap drives. So if you can only afford 1TB now, you can buy a larger drive for it later, and use the original HD to keep your most important files in a safe deposit box, for example.
This may seem to be a lot of work, but as more and more of our precious things become digital files, they should be protected with the same care that other possessions are kept.
I did think about just getting another hdd, and then putting that in my rig for backups and removing it otherwise.
I like the idea of the enclosure thingy. I'll have a look for one.
IMHO it's well worth looking into. I've had several over the years, and my current one has USB and IEEE-1394b (a.k.a. "FireWire 800") connectors. I use the fast IEEE-1394 interface on my computers at home, and still have the USB option for computers without IEEE-1394 ports. Using the 1934b interface, it's as fast as my internal drives. And I can use it to examine what's on my growing collection of 1 and 2TB HDs without having to shut down and open up my computer, or having to hunt for a SATA cable.
Another thing that I like about a DIY external HD is that I can buy a better performing 7200 RPM HD instead of having to use the often cheap and slow 5400 RPM drives in pre-made USB drives.
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Also - WD500GB usb 4 for £40? Or a Sammy 1tb usb 4 £60
USB 4? I'm not aware of anything more than USB 3.0.
My rule is that there's no such thing as too much storage capacity. I have a small USB powered 500GB USB drive that I use with my laptop. Not having a separate power cord makes it more convenient when I'm in a hotel room with a limited number of outlets.
I'm not a big WD fan. Back in the mid to late '90s they had a big reliability problem. I noticed that Seagate SCSI drives were the only brand used in the data centers that I worked in, and have been happy buying Seagate ever since. I did buy a cheap 1TB WD USB drive, and was disappointed with its performance. The Seagate 2TB USB drive that I replaced it with is far from the best Seagate product that I've owned, but is good enough.
I have zero first-hand experience with other brands. Everything I own with a HD came with either a Seagate or WD drive. I can't find any reason to not recommend Samsung drives, so I'd probably go with it since it's 200% the capacity for only 150% of the price.
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I was told that WD are fairly reliable, and nowadays Sea gate isn't so much...
Yeah, I've read the "reviews" on the retailers' websites. Zealotry doesn't impress me.
The earthquake that destroyed their factories in Thailand did put a crimp on their supply chain. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Seagate drives are any worse than they were before. Even if there are some batches of lesser quality while the new factories get things sorted, I'm happy to return them under warranty.
Since the quake I've taken delivery on 5 2TB and 8 3TB Seagate drives, and so far the only difference I can see is that they're all made in Communist China now.
After many years of enduring the shrill whine of lots of little fans (the 40mm fans in 1RU servers, Cisco routers etc. are the loudest IME), I started buying computer cases that had large, slow-turning 120mm or larger case fans to cut down on the racket.
For the CPU I've been buying fans like the MASSCOOL 8WA743 92mm Long Life CPU Cooler which has an axial flow design like the Hyper 212. The Masscool lives up to its name; it's massive, which is no problem for me and the 4RU rack mount cases that I use. Your Cooler Master pick is nice because it can be installed to blow out towards a vent or exhaust fan. I like that a lot better than top mounted fans where the hot air gets thrown all over the place. You also have the option to replace the fan with one that's quieter or more powerful as needed. All in all I'd say it's a pretty good choice.
If I were to replace to fan, would something like a Corsair SP do the trick? Would a AF be ok?
I was thinking of getting a AF twin pack for the top of the case. I could replace the rear exhaust and then the one of the CPU cooler :-P
Or both :-P
Last edited by Mehta23; January 27th, 2013 at 05:09 PM.
The closest I've come to buying boutique name-brand PC fans was when I got some 80mm case fans (back when that was the norm) from PC Power & Cooling that they claimed were especially quiet. I honestly don't know if they made any difference at all.
The big name brands just buy their fans from some OEM in China and slap their labels on them, so I just buy the no-name fans that meet my spec. I kept the fan that came pre-installed in the case that I use for the computer in my bedroom (where I want silence) because it was a lot quieter than the "upgraded" one I bought. This "free" fan has been doing fine for 10 years now.
With all the choices and all the big names selling stuff that's far from the core products that made their names, just to make more money, this is one area where I'm fine with getting what's cheapest.
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