Musings on a new PC

[Mercutio]

I'm not an audiophile. There's an upper bound on the amount of money I'm willing to spend (which, granted, is more than most people).

I just have good hearing.

 

[Mercutio]

Does the Scythe Ninja require motherboard removal to install?

 

[mubs]

Dunno; many of the big thingies require a back plate or their own custom retention module.

For those feeling adventurous (Groltz/DD), there's a 140mm fan available. They claim 54.7 CFM @ 19.6 dBA, which sounds borderline dubious. The Nexus 120 is 36.9 CFM @ 22.8 dBA, and the Panaflo 120 L1A is 68.9 CFM @ 30 dBA.

 

[Sol]

There are several different panaflo ranges, some are quieter than others.

 

[CougTek]

Does the Scythe Ninja require motherboard removal to install?

Yes.

 

[CougTek]

Feeling a bit ornery today, Time?

Not as much as LiamC, I'd guess, although we share a similar source of frustration.

Fortunately, Canberra is quite far from Brisbane. You two should sit at opposite corners of the pub. And your beers will be served in cartoon mugs, just in case you plan to throw it at each other.

 

[ddrueding]

Does the Scythe Ninja require motherboard removal to install?

Yes, custom steel backplate attaching to a custom plastic frame on the MB. Basically it causes the AMD to look like a P4, so the 4-point clip can work for both. Really easy.

 

[mubs]

There are several different panaflo ranges, some are quieter than others.

One series of radial fans goes: L, M, H, U, for low, medium, high and ultra speed. They get louder as the speed increases. This is the series most commonly available. The CFM / dBA numbers I quoted above are for the 120mm FBA12G12L1A.

In the last few years, quality kind went down and there was a lot of variation in quality as well. ~ 15 months ago, the Panaflo business was sold to or merged with NMB, and quality has improved since then.

 

[theSwede]

Does the Scythe Ninja require motherboard removal to install?

Yes.

Does the Scythe Ninja require motherboard removal to install?

Yes, custom steel backplate attaching to a custom plastic frame on the MB. Basically it causes the AMD to look like a P4, so the 4-point clip can work for both. Really easy.

I never had to remove my motherboard when installing the Scythe Ninja. I simply attached the plastic frame to the factory installed steel backplate on my motherboard. It took two minutes to change from the boxed heatsink to the Scythe Ninja.

 

[mubs]

Sorry if this has been asked before. Do DOS based utilities like PartitionMagic, Drive Image and Ghost (each one) work with SATA drives? Do I have to load SATA drivers on the boot floppies to access the drives? Thanks.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes they do. Ghost needs the -fNI option (Bypass onboard Disk Controller) set to properly. IIRC.

 

[Bozo]

If the BIOS recognizes the hard drive, Drive Image will.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[mubs]

Is there a reason to prefer XP Pro over XP Home? Home recognizes and uses dual cores, and the PC won't be joining a domain.

 

[Mercutio]

Pro lets you have more network connections at a time, but I doubt you have enough PCs sitting around for that to matter, either. It's actually an issue for me, which is why all my Windows machines are running some variation of Windows Server.

Well, that and I hate XP.
--

The nforce4 + Scythe Ninja + X2 4200 is seems to be doing just fine @ 2.6GHz. I had to drop the Hypertransport speed to 800MHz but I'm still at STOCK voltage.

 

[ddrueding]

The nforce4 + Scythe Ninja + X2 4200 is seems to be doing just fine @ 2.6GHz. I had to drop the Hypertransport speed to 800MHz but I'm still at STOCK voltage.

Very nice I love that cooler. I got my 2700+ (single core) up to 3Ghz, but it's not PRIME95 stable above 2.9Ghz. No games I've tried care, so I have it at 3Ghz anyway.

 

[Buck]

If I may muse along with the mubster . . . I have a customer that is interested in a new PC for different artistic type work in addition to the usual office stuff. The office end of things is easy for me, but I'd like to boost performance for their video and photographic endevours. Primarily, they've been using Windows Movie Maker and Photoshop. So, for a low-end system, this is what I have included:

CPU: Opteron 165 OSA165CDBOX
Motherboard: Tyan S2865AG2NRF
RAM: CKVR400X64C3A/512 x 2
Video: ATI Sapphire X800GTO2
HDD: supplied by customer
DVD-RW: LG GSA-4120BK
FDD: S*ny FDD Black
Keyboard/Mouse: MS Wireless Optical combo N90-00076
Monitor: supplied by customer
Speakers: supplied by customer
Case: Antec SLK1650B
UPS: APC BE750BB
Operating System: Windows XP Professional

I figured this system would not only give them plenty of power for what they're currently doing, but also stick with them as they expand their interests in video editing.

 

[Mercutio]

Thank you for spelling S*ny properly.
FWIW, your customer will undoubtedly thank you if you can come up with a copy of S*ny Screenblast. Even Nero Vision is a better editing tool than Windows Moviemaker.

 

[mubs]

Going once, going twice... XP home then?

I checked MS' website, and they don't say; for using an XP "Upgrade" version, what qualifies - a previous retail version or will a previous OEM version qualify as well? (I know which previous OSes qualify and which don't, my question pertains to the version type of the previous OS).

If I may muse along with the mubster . . .

Certainly, Buck! You don't seem to visit as often as you used to

The ATI x1xx series cards would position you better for the future than the x850. That has been mentioned several times in this thread. Sir Merc is the expert on this issue.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not the expert on that issue!

As far as my new build went... I don't know if anyone else had an issue with this, but my Gigabyte board (GA-K8N Pro) absolutely refused to install XP until I disabled all the SATA channels. I'd get a bluescreen error while it was loading the initial driver set.
AFAIK the SATA ports are native on that board, and shouldn't need drivers, but I wasn't using them anyway.

That's the weirdest thing I've seen from a Gigabyte board in a long time.

Also, just about everything you have to connect on that board is concentrated in the two square inches around the lower right corner of the board. Attaching the SATA cables, I/O headers, system fan and USB took longer than installing Windows.

 

[mubs]

I'm not the expert on that issue!

You are too!

 

[CougTek]

ATI's X1?00 series offer enhanced video image quality with the most recent Catalyst driver. The older X?00 series doesn't have the hardware to support the new quality enhancement IIRC.

 

[Santilli]

Mercutio:
What version of XP did you try and install? 64 bit or 32?
Mine wouldn't work with 64 bit, but was fine with 32.

s

 

[Mercutio]

32-bit. And it was dying at a point that I've never seen the installer die at, too, pretty much the moment the installer starts loading the integrated storage drivers.

Of course, once I got Windows up and running, the SATA ports worked fine, but I still think that's an odd behavior.

 

[ddrueding]

As far as my new build went... I don't know if anyone else had an issue with this, but my Gigabyte board (GA-K8N Pro) absolutely refused to install XP until I disabled all the SATA channels. I'd get a bluescreen error while it was loading the initial driver set.
AFAIK the SATA ports are native on that board, and shouldn't need drivers, but I wasn't using them anyway.

That's the weirdest thing I've seen from a Gigabyte board in a long time.

Also, just about everything you have to connect on that board is concentrated in the two square inches around the lower right corner of the board. Attaching the SATA cables, I/O headers, system fan and USB took longer than installing Windows.

That is indeed very interesting behavior. I've never experienced it and I only install to SATA HDDs from PATA CD-Roms. The only issue I've had loading windows in a long time was from a bad video card, and it crapped out long after the point you are menitioning.

 

[Buck]

ATI's X1?00 series offer enhanced video image quality with the most recent Catalyst driver. The older X?00 series doesn't have the hardware to support the new quality enhancement IIRC.

Aren't these enhancements basically used in games? This customer doesn't play any fancy games. This cusotmer wanted a range of quotes, and at the highend, this is what I specified:

CPU: Opteron OSA265CBBOX x 2
Motherboard: Supermicro H8DCE-O
RAM: CKVR400D2S8R3/512 x 4
Video: ATI-Sapphire X1800XL AIW
HDD: Samsung SP2504C
DVD-RW: LG GSA-4120BK
FDD: Mitsumi FDD Black
Keyboard/Mouse: MS Wireless Optical combo N90-00076
Monitor: AG Neovo F-419R12 x 2
Speakers: Altec Lansing VS4121
Case: Antec Titan 550
UPS: Opti-UPS PS1500B 1500VA 1050W 1050 Joules 8 Outlets
Operating System: Windows XP Professional

 

[Mercutio]

The AVIVO enhancements are primarily directed at improving video playback, actually. Someone interested in video editing would probably appreciate higher-quality output.

 

[mubs]

I toldja Merc was da man.

 

[mubs]

The two Hibachi T7K250 250 SATA drives arrived a day late this evening (6:50pm, courtesy UPS). I bought them from Directron, and paid $3 extra per drive for "Double-box (extra packing)". This is the way it came: bare drive in a clamshell which was put in a cardboard box barely bigger than the clamshell. One layer of foam peanuts in the packing carton, the two cardboard boxes with drives on top of that, then the floppy drive wrapped in bubble wrap, foam peanuts on top and the sides. On a scale of horrible to great packing, I'd rate them an average. I'm disappointed.

The best packing of OEM drives I've seen were with the Quantum LM drives I bought from Buy.com in late 2000 / early 2001 (I bought a total of 4 drives). Each drive was in a sealed anti-static bag, which was stowed in the cutouts in 3" thick sponge foam for the bottom and another 3" thick sponge foam for the top. This whole thing sat in a tight carboard carton, which itself was packed tight in a larger carton. If I'm right, it would have been Ingram Micro that shipped the drives for buy.com.

Retail Hibachi T7K250 seem to be non-existant; I spent quite a bit of time searching.

I'll test the drives tomorrow. Hopefully they'll be fine.

 

[mubs]

Should I spend the moolah on WXP-64? Will it have even some kind of life, with Vista looming on the horizon? I have no desire to try Vista, but if some nice apps (multimedia rip/encode, for eg.) are available on WXP-64 now or will be soon, it may be worth it.

Comments?

 

[Mercutio]

Not worth it. You lose 16-bit compatibility (a lot of older programs use 16-bit installers) and general driver availability is for shit, and you gain, um... wait, lemme think... oh yeah! Absolutely nothing.

mubs, I don't think you'd like Vista, either.

 

[mubs]

Thanks, Merc. If I bought WXP-64, it would be used in a dual-boot scenario, I wouldn't depend on it for mainstream use. I guessed support for it is lukewarm at best, and you confirmed that. Thanks.

 

[mubs]

What does "Azalia compatible" mean when referring to audio ports? I' referring to the Silverstone SST-FP32-B USB/1394/Audio 3.5" panel.

Wikipedia has nothing on it. Google indicates it's a coedc. Why is it being used to describe a piece of hardware that that relocates an audio port?

Thanks.

 

[CougTek]

Azalia is Intel's new integrated audio gear. It is suposed to be significantly better than typical AC97 audio. I think ATI's SB450 southbridge and ULi's 1575 southbridge also feature Azalia-compatible audio.

 

[mubs]

Thanks, Coug.

 

[mubs]

Do DOS based utilities like PartitionMagic, Drive Image and Ghost (each one) work with SATA drives? Do I have to load SATA drivers on the boot floppies to access the drives? Thanks.

Yes they do. Ghost needs the -fNI option (Bypass onboard Disk Controller) set to properly. IIRC.

I tried DriveImage 2002 and Partition Magic 8 today; they both work just fine as is (no additional drivers) with the drives connected to the NForce 4 onboard SATA ports. I'm a happy camper.

 

[Mercutio]

I think Azalia = matrixed 5.1 from PCM stereo sources. ProLogic II-encoding, in other words.

 

[Mercutio]

My local distributor is offering me a very nice price ($52) on some older Biostar Via socket 939 boards - the ones that can't run dual core chips.
Knowing these boards have that mild flaw, I can't decide if they're really a worthwhile purchase.

Any thoughts?

 

[CougTek]

If you resale them and your customers want to upgrade them in the future, they'll think you sold them crap.

 

[Mercutio]

Well, yeah. That's the problem.
But realistically, who upgrades a CPU these days?

 

[Buck]

Well, yeah. That's the problem.
But realistically, who upgrades a CPU these days?

Not me. I sell systems with a CPU speed that will last several years. Typically it is the other components that need an upgrade after 3 years. Regardless of any upgrade path, I still wouldn't buy Biostar.