Author Topic: what I think I might buy, what do you think? (Read 3915 times)

Tumor · « **Reply #15 on:** October 08, 2001, 03:59:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy:
I would avoid the WD hard drive at all costs. They are highly inconsistent in quality. IBM's IDE drivers are a bit better.
But then, I am a SCSI kind of guy and prefer a Seagate Cheetah.

..never had even a glitch with 4 WDs. Seagate is the ONLY HD I've ever had die.

Tumor

Tumor · « **Reply #16 on:** October 08, 2001, 04:01:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Defiance:
Hiya's,
Creative Labs Blaster CD 52X IDE CD-ROM $31.00 :Noooooooooooooooo it's a POS trust me

Yep...Creative is good at SOUND!!...and thats it.

Tumor

Skuzzy · « **Reply #17 on:** October 08, 2001, 04:22:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Tumor:

..never had even a glitch with 4 WDs. Seagate is the ONLY HD I've ever had die.

Tumor

Bet is an IDE Seagate too, not a SCSI Cheetah. I would not use Seagate IDE drives.
IBM seem to be ok, at least the latest generation of the drives are. WD is really inconsistent. Most of the mags I get concur as well. I know where WD sprang from, having to deal with them for many years, and they cannot help but be inconsistent. This does not mean you cannot get a good one. You can get a bad or good drive from anyone.

The Seagate Cheetah/Barracuda line sprang from the CDC line of hard drives, whereas the Seagate IDE drives are derived from the original Seagate designs. Very different if you ever set them side by side.
The WD line of drives sprang from the Tandon line of drives. Tandon had a horrible reputation for drive quality. WD has improved on that over the years, but WD still has consistency problems. Mostly due to the platters, which they buy from other manufacturers. It is not unusual for the WD drives to have a high amount of oxide deposits on the inside of the case, from normal usage. These deposits are not a problem until the drive is shocked, then they may fall loose and cause damage to a surface as the deposits wedge between the head and media. It is rare these deposits will come loose be themselves, but can happen. This has been WDs' sore spot and is what contributes to the inconsistency of the product.
If you have one die, open it up. You will see copious amounts of oxide deposits on the side walls of the case.

[ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: Skuzzy ]

-ammo- · « **Reply #18 on:** October 09, 2001, 08:20:00 PM »

update!

Ok I havent bought anything yet, but this is the corrections I have made. As before please if you see something amiss or I left out tell me I am screwing up and let me know how I should fix it.

Video cards—
·VISIONTEK XTASY 6564 AGP 64MB NVIDIA GEFORCE3 TI 200 $180

Motherboard—
·ASUS A7A266 ALiR-M1647 Socket A UDMA100 2DDR 3DIM 5PCI    $129

CPU—
·AMD Athlon Thunderbird Socket A 1.4GHz FSB266 OEM    $121

Memory—
·Micron 256MB 184pins PC2100 DDR SDRAM DIMM    $36

Case—
·ANTEC SX1040B 400W power supply   $?

Hard drive
·IBM Deskstar 60GXP IC35L040AVER07 41.17GB U/ATA100 7200rpm    $113

CDROM
·SONY CDU5211 52X IDE CD-ROM Bulk    $45

Floppy drive
·SONY 1.44MB 3 1/2 inch Floppy Drive    $18

I need advice on heat sink and fan for the processor and what works, what doesnt, where to buy...etc

Saw a demo for winXP home today, that looks like a really nice OS. Got me woindering whether I should try it. I just got a copy of Win2K and i love it. What do you think about that?

V/R

Animal · « **Reply #19 on:** October 09, 2001, 10:36:00 PM »

Ammo very nice choices.
I havent tried the new Asus board, but I used the old A7V and it worked fine until it DIED. I just bought an KG7 and its working like a charm, very stable. People sweat by it.

As for you other choices, wtg, God seems to be on your side when it comes to choosing hardware

Shamus · « **Reply #20 on:** October 10, 2001, 12:49:00 AM »

Ammo, using a Zalman cnps5000-plus here. T-Bird 1.4 @1.5 full load temps under 50c, plus a lot less noise than the delta fan equipped heatsinks. It bolts to the MB so you dont have to worry about it falling off and the bolts are spring loaded so it lines up nicely without a shim.

Shamus

bloom25 · « **Reply #21 on:** October 10, 2001, 01:51:00 AM »

I would prefer you get a MB with the new VIA KT266A chipset rather than the ALI chipset. They should be similar in price. The A7V266 may or may not have the kt266a depending on how new it is. (kt266 is the original version, kt266a features improved memory performance.)

That Abit board is also good from what I've been hearing.

Staga · « **Reply #22 on:** October 10, 2001, 02:55:00 AM »

I'm using Thermaltake Volcano Cu with shim plate between cpu and heatsink and silverpaste.
My CPU is 1,4GHz Athlon overclocked to 1,51GHz (144MHz bus) and temperatures are max 50-52Celsius. CPU runs quite cool and heatsink/fan are cheaper than some high-end cooling systems

http://www.thermaltake.com/

Tumor · « **Reply #23 on:** October 10, 2001, 05:15:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy:

Bet is an IDE Seagate too, not a SCSI Cheetah. I would not use Seagate IDE drives.
IBM seem to be ok, at least the latest generation of the drives are. WD is really inconsistent. Most of the mags I get concur as well. I know where WD sprang from, having to deal with them for many years, and they cannot help but be inconsistent. This does not mean you cannot get a good one. You can get a bad or good drive from anyone.

The Seagate Cheetah/Barracuda line sprang from the CDC line of hard drives, whereas the Seagate IDE drives are derived from the original Seagate designs. Very different if you ever set them side by side.
The WD line of drives sprang from the Tandon line of drives. Tandon had a horrible reputation for drive quality. WD has improved on that over the years, but WD still has consistency problems. Mostly due to the platters, which they buy from other manufacturers. It is not unusual for the WD drives to have a high amount of oxide deposits on the inside of the case, from normal usage. These deposits are not a problem until the drive is shocked, then they may fall loose and cause damage to a surface as the deposits wedge between the head and media. It is rare these deposits will come loose be themselves, but can happen. This has been WDs' sore spot and is what contributes to the inconsistency of the product.
If you have one die, open it up. You will see copious amounts of oxide deposits on the side walls of the case.

[ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: Skuzzy ]

Yep...was a IDE Seagate that died, but still, I've had 4 WD's, 1.3g through 30gig and not one ever so much as burped. By the way...I've also had a Maxtor die on me. So, no matter what the mag's and pro's say, I'm a die-hard WD fan. WD has been very good to my hard earned bucks...no other has come close.

Tumor

Vermillion · « **Reply #24 on:** October 10, 2001, 07:08:00 AM »

Skuzzy,

SCSI drives are nice, but in my opinon for a home system are extremely cost prohibitive.

Oh and I agree that the Cheetah/Baracuda line are my favorites too, I should in all honesty say that I did have a Baracuda die a horrible noisy death in my SGI UNIX workstation at my job, and lost a 3 week long pollution simulation run I was doing.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #25 on:** October 10, 2001, 07:48:00 AM »

Pretty true Verm. SCSI is not for everyone. I use it pretty much exclusively in all my systems,...but I am very comfortable with the interface.

I have only used a few Barracudas, and never had any troubles with them. All my servers use the Cheetah line (the 10K drives, not the 15K rpm drives) and I have never had a failure.
The oldest drives I currently have running are 2 Quantum 1GB drives. These pups have been running for 7 years. I dread the day I have to power them off, as they probably will never start up again

.
The oldest drive I have, that still works, but is not used for anything critical is a CDC Wren VII 1GB 5 1/4 drive. It is now 10 years old and still works.
Of course I do little things like put a HD cooler in with every drive, as heat is the primary cause of HD failures. The HD coolers even have washable air filters.

Anywho, glad you have good luck with the WD drives Tumor.

-ammo- · « **Reply #26 on:** October 10, 2001, 10:53:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by bloom25:
I would prefer you get a MB with the new VIA KT266A chipset rather than the ALI chipset. They should be similar in price. The A7V266 may or may not have the kt266a depending on how new it is. (kt266 is the original version, kt266a features improved memory performance.)

That Abit board is also good from what I've been hearing.

Thx bloom, could you give manufacturer/model numbers of the boards that have that feature?

Thx-

ammo

Sancho · « **Reply #27 on:** October 10, 2001, 10:58:00 AM »

Well, as long as you buying new, why not get one of the new Athlon XPs instead of the regular Athlon 1.4? $135 for the Athlon XP 1600 (1.4GHz) versus $102 for the 1.4GHz. Same clock speed of 1.4GHz, but the XP should be approximately 5-6% faster.

batdog · « **Reply #28 on:** October 10, 2001, 01:41:00 PM »

www.coolerguys.com

for fans.

bloom25 · « **Reply #29 on:** October 10, 2001, 03:20:00 PM »

I don't know the exact model ammo, but I do know that Anandtech's brand new Athlon XP article was done on a kt266a board. They listed the model and manufacturer somewhere in the article.

www.anandtech.com or find my Athlon XP post just a couple days ago and click on the anandtech link.