technology The Glorious PC master race thread

[Azure Envy 1,092]

Protip: Don't click random links, especially if it says something shady-looking like screen-pictures in the URL.

 

Or if they call you a cocksucker for not replying to their repeated friend requests.

[VulpineTaco 525]

Or if they call you a cocksucker for not replying to their repeated friend requests.

Oh, he called me a cocksucker post-hack.

[FoxyCryptid 4,330]

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3237702

 

Ran a Firestrike benchmark and says my system is running within what their database says is correct(it was reading as questionable before I did a whole bunch of AVG and Advanced System Care scans and repairs)

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

If anyone is in the market for 12 TB of storage and has $400 burning a hole in their pocket...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?sdtid=7367090&SID=de79b16c75b348caa6c5649ed2d4b0b9&AID=10440897&PID=1225267&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-cables-_-na-_-na&ItemList=Combo.2008778&cm_sp=

 

Haha, yeah, I saw that. xD

 

I'd rather have a 1TB SSD. Just waiting for that to go on sale for <$400.

[Azure Envy 1,092]

Haha, yeah, I saw that. xD

 

I'd rather have a 1TB SSD. Just waiting for that to go on sale for <$400.

 

960 GB Ultra II was on sale for around $370 about a week ago, so I definitely think we'll see some decent deals on big SSDs come Black Friday, Week... month, whatever it is now.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3237702

 

Ran a Firestrike benchmark and says my system is running within what their database says is correct(it was reading as questionable before I did a whole bunch of AVG and Advanced System Care scans and repairs)

 

Nice, looks like you're right where you should be.

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

960 GB Ultra II was on sale for around $370 about a week ago, so I definitely think we'll see some decent deals on big SSDs come Black Friday, Week... month, whatever it is now.

 

Yep, I'm just waiting for it. If that happens...

 

 

It seems absurd to spend so much money on storage, but getting a high capacity SSD is probably the best upgrade I can do at the moment.

 

The next best thing would probably be investing in a modular power supply with more power to supply. My 550 watt limit was what prevented me from getting a 7970 instead of a 7950. It's also what's keeping me from spending the $300 on that 220 watt AMD CPU...

Edited November 15, 2014 by Regulus

[Azure Envy 1,092]

It seems absurd to spend so much money on storage, but getting a high capacity SSD is probably the best upgrade I can do at the moment.

 

For what it's worth, I spent $350 on a 256 GB a little over two years ago, so the same amount on a TB-class drive today seems like an absolute steal.

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

For what it's worth, I spent $350 on a 256 GB a little over two years ago, so the same amount on a TB-class drive today seems like an absolute steal.

 

For what it's worth, I spent like $350 on a 160GB Intel 320 series drive almost exactly 2 years ago. It certainly wasn't a steal, but I wanted to make sure my drive would last, and 160 seemed like a fair amount of storage at the time. The 256's were too expensive, and the 128's didn't seem like enough capacity.

 

Now? It'd be great if I could put everything on a SSD. xD

 

It still seems like a waste for a gaming PC, but honestly... most of the time I spend on my PC isn't gaming. That's probably only 20-30% of the time, at most. I mostly use my computer for schoolwork, general entertainment, and internet browsing... and if anything doesn't load in less than two seconds, I get pissed off.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Regulus

[Azure Envy 1,092]

For what it's worth, I spent like $350 on a 160GB Intel 320 series drive almost exactly 2 years ago. It certainly wasn't a steal, but I wanted to make sure my drive would last, and 160 seemed like a fair amount of storage at the time. The 256's were too expensive, and the 128's didn't seem like enough capacity.

 

Now? It'd be great if I could put everything on a SSD. xD

 

Mine was a Plextor M3. It was front page on Slickdeals. 160 GB for $350 was more around the current pricing so you better believe I jumped on a 256 from a reputable manufacturer for that price.

 

And you totally could, it just all comes down to money... like most things in life. :okiedokielokie:

 

But I still don't think I'd get SSDs just for bulk file storage. Reliable as they are, I'd rather have several copies across cheap mechanicals.

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

But I still don't think I'd get SSDs just for bulk file storage. Reliable as they are, I'd rather have several copies across cheap mechanicals.

 

I use cloud storage for anything important. All files that I absolutely need are synched with my desktop, laptop, phone, and cloud. Data reliability isn't a concern for me. For bulk files that I don't want to lose but are too big to fit on the cloud, I keep those on a backup, portable HDD.

 

And besides, if I get a SSD for file storage, I can still keep the HDDs I have now as storage backups.

 

Before anyone mentions it, I'm not terribly concerned about privacy, either. I know what's on the cloud isn't all as secure as I'd like to think it is, but I really, honestly don't care if anyone hacks into my account and reads my files. I doubt the NSA would really want to look through a bunch of TPS reports and a thousand images of ponies.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Regulus

[Azure Envy 1,092]

I use cloud storage for anything important. All files that I absolutely need are synched with my desktop, laptop, phone, and cloud. Data reliability isn't a concern for me. For bulk files that I don't want to lose but are too big to fit on the cloud, I keep those on a backup, portable HDD.

 

And besides, if I get a SSD for file storage, I can still keep the HDDs I have now as storage backups.

 

Don't think I have anything quite that important kicking around, but good advice regardless. I buy the biggest and cheapest HDDs available at the time (not like there are many choices anymore...) and make sure to keep them backed up.

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

Don't think I have anything quite that important kicking around, but good advice regardless. I buy the biggest and cheapest HDDs available at the time (not like there are many choices anymore...) and make sure to keep them backed up.

 

I completely understand. I had a drive fail on me once (it was a 2 year old Seagate), and since then, I've always been sure that I have every file stored in at least two locations. I've also never bought another Seagate again. LOL.

 

The WD I have now has been running for 4.5 years or so with no problems yet... aside from the fact that it's almost at its maximum capacity and running slow as a result.  I bet it's because all the files are fragmented and such. Anything added is put on the edge of the disk, which increases seek time.

 

What I really need to do is a system re-installation, but I don't want to do that until I have a new SSD. Setting up the 160GB SSD to store files on the disk instead was a pain, and I don't want to deal with all those registry edits all over again. Anyway, that's my reasoning.

[Azure Envy 1,092]

I completely understand. I had a drive fail on me once (it was a 2 year old Seagate), and since then, I've always been sure that I have every file stored in at least two locations. I've also never bought another Seagate again. LOL.

 

The WD I have now has been running for 4.5 years or so with no problems yet... aside from the fact that it's almost at its maximum capacity and running slow as a result.  I bet it's because all the files are fragmented and such. Anything added is put on the edge of the disk, which increases seek time.

 

What I really need to do is a system re-installation, but I don't want to do that until I have a new SSD. Setting up the 160GB SSD to store files on the disk instead was a pain, and I don't want to deal with all those registry edits all over again. Anyway, that's my reasoning.

 

Over the years I've had four hard drive failures, a 1 TB Black, 1 TB Green and a 1.5 TB Green. I had to RMA the Black replacement again due to a bad sector. There was also another 200 GB Seagate but it was kicking around in a drawer for the better part of a year without any protection so nothing too surprising there.

 

I primarily buy Seagates and Toshibas these days but again generally because they're on sale or something. I'd still buy a WD given the right price, but am definitely somewhat leery of Green drives since I actually have yet another 1.5 TB that spontaneously stopped reporting SMART data, then started again. Not gonna mess with that one... -_-

 

Haven't reinstalled in over 2 years... so lazy... Still runs great though it still identifies itself as 8.1 Media Center after I forcibly ripped MC out. No way to uninstall it apparently...

[FoxyCryptid 4,330]

I've had ONE HDD failure and it was a laptop drive(and the motherboard in that one is shot or at least has bad memory slots, so I think it may have just fried and taken the drive with it somehow)

[long gone 8,929]

Am I extremely lucky in that the only thing computer-related that's failed on me is the power cable for an old HP desktop?

 

Not the supply. The cable. Oh well, the PC was on its way out anyway, we bought it in 2001 and that happened in 2006. Had a Pentium III 933MHz, 128MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive, and originally shipped with Windows Me but all of us hated it and we upgraded it to Windows XP after that came out.

[FoxyCryptid 4,330]

Am I extremely lucky in that the only thing computer-related that's failed on me is the power cable for an old HP desktop?

 

Not the supply. The cable.

 

Yes, I used to go through store-bought PCs at such a rate I was buying a new one about every year. It's one of the reasons I broke down and build a proper gaming rig, I knew it would last longer. 

[long gone 8,929]

Yes, I used to go through store-bought PCs at such a rate I was buying a new one about every year. It's one of the reasons I broke down and build a proper gaming rig, I knew it would last longer. 

That is my primary motivation for wanting to build a proper PC too. It's not easy to expand a laptop either.

[Azure Envy 1,092]

Maybe.

 

Just my opinion, but when you're selling 1 TB drives for $50, there's simply no room left to engineer quality anymore. Buy a bunch, because something's gonna break. Don't wanna be that guy who copies everything to a single 6 TB drive...

[FoxyCryptid 4,330]

Ran it with a 130Mhz OC and got these results:

 

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3238500

Maybe.

 

Just my opinion, but when you're selling 1 TB drives for $50, there's simply no room left to engineer quality anymore. Buy a bunch, because something's gonna break. Don't wanna be that guy who copies everything to a single 6 TB drive...

 

I'm using this thing out of my old Lenovo that was already over a year old as my primary and it's still working fine :b

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st1000dm003

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

All this talk about drive failures has reminded me that my router supports a network drive. Since I'm bored this weekend and have no life, I'm trying to connect my portable USB drive to that... and I already did with no problems. I also set up a VPN, which doesn't work with my Android phone. It does, however, work if I use my phone as a mobile hotspot, and then connect my laptop to the VPN through that hotspot. Weird.

 

The network drive works, but for some reason I'm noticing horrendous transfer speeds from my desktop to my laptop when they're both connected on LAN. Like, I can't transfer anything any faster than 3MB/s, and the bottleneck should be the WiFi download bandwidth, which is like 30Mbits/s. I guess that's not too much a difference, but I thought it'd be faster than this since I bought the new router a month or two ago.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Regulus

[long gone 8,929]

The resemblance is uncanny.

 

[Azure Envy 1,092]

All this talk about drive failures has reminded me that my router supports a network drive. Since I'm bored this weekend and have no life, I'm trying to connect my portable USB drive to that... and I already did with no problems. I also set up a VPN, which doesn't work with my Android phone. It does, however, work if I use my phone as a mobile hotspot, and then connect my laptop to the VPN through that hotspot. Weird.

 

The network drive works, but for some reason I'm noticing horrendous transfer speeds from my desktop to my laptop when they're both connected on LAN. Like, I can't transfer anything any faster than 3MB/s, and the bottleneck should be the WiFi download bandwidth, which is like 30Mbits/s. I guess that's not too much a difference, but I thought it'd be faster than this since I bought the new router a month or two ago.

 

You're just being limited by the slow CPU in the router. I've got the same thing and it doesn't go much faster than an average USB 3.0 stick (~15MB/s) and this is on a $180 router.

[long gone 8,929]

You're just being limited by the slow CPU in the router. I've got the same thing and it doesn't go much faster than an average USB 3.0 stick (~15MB/s) and this is on a $180 router.

Glorious 802.11ac router with a 1.2GHz dual-core processor master race.

[Admiral Regulus 2,769]

You're just being limited by the slow CPU in the router. I've got the same thing and it doesn't go much faster than an average USB 3.0 stick (~15MB/s) and this is on a $180 router.

 

That's odd. USB 2.0 is rated for 480Mbits/s, which is 47.5 MB/s. USB 3.0 is supposed to be like 10x faster than that, even.

 

I think I figured out what the problem is in my case. It's the WiFi that's the bottleneck, here. From my router to desktop, transfer speeds are ~10MB/s. That's a wired connection. From router to laptop via 2.4 GHz WiFi, transfer speeds are 3MB/s. This is about equal to the 20Mbit/s download speed I get over WiFi, even though I have internet bandwidth of ~85Mbit/s on my desktop's wired connection. Using the 5GHz band on my router and phone, that's nearly doubled to around 40Mbits. The hard disk itself is capable of transferring at around 30 MB/s, and it's a USB 2.0.

 

The point is, I think the wireless routers aren't listing their true speeds. My router is technically labeled as a "gigabit" router, but I believe that may be from modem to router, and not from router to each individual computer. The total throughput over both bands is probably 1Gbit/s, when it's connected to the maximum number of devices.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Regulus

[Azure Envy 1,092]

Glorious 802.11ac router with a 1.2GHz dual-core processor master race.

 

What kind of speeds do you get off an attached drive?

That's odd. USB 2.0 is rated for 480Mbits/s, which is 47.5 MB/s. USB 3.0 is supposed to be like 10x faster than that, even.

 

I think I figured out what the problem is in my case. It's the WiFi that's the bottleneck, here. From my router to desktop, transfer speeds are ~10MB/s. That's a wired connection. From router to laptop via 2.4 GHz WiFi, transfer speeds are 3MB/s. This is about equal to the 20Mbit/s download speed I get over WiFi, even though I have internet bandwidth of ~85Mbit/s on my desktop's wired connection. Using the 5GHz band on my router and phone, that's nearly doubled to around 40Mbits. The hard disk itself is capable of transferring at around 30 MB/s, and it's a USB 2.0.

 

The point is, I think the wireless routers aren't listing their true speeds. My router is technically labeled as a "gigabit" router, but I believe that may be from modem to router, and not from router to each individual computer. The total throughput over both bands is probably 1Gbit/s, when it's connected to the maximum number of devices.

 

I don't doubt that to be the case with a majority of consumer routers. Many routers aren't capable of saturating a 1Gbit fiber link.

 

Then again, most of us don't have that 'problem' :okiedokielokie: