HDD Killers

More PC Stuff

Posted on Tuesday 31 January 2006

Last Wednesday, I went shopping for PC bits. I came back with five items costing a grand total of £141.60. They were a 40GB HDD, 512MiB PC2700 (DDR333) RAM module, HP Lightscribe Dual Layer DVD Writer, ASUS Radeon 9250 128MiB graphics card and last but not least, the floppy disc drive and card reader combo that cost about £17 that they forgot to charge me for! These five items allowed me to complete black-wax and it is now all setup. Here are some pictures of the PC’s in the study.

black-wax, blue-wax and shite-wax. Actually the one on the right doesn’t have a name as it’s not on the network, doesn’t even have a network card in it. It’s my dad’s PC that he got in 1997 and it has a Pentium 166MHz processor.
black-wax, blue-wax and the other one.

This is clear-wax, my mum’s PC. It was bought in 2001 and it’s the second worst PC in the house, having said that, it’s literally more than 10 times better than the worst PC in the house with a CPU speed of 1680MHz.
clear-wax

And now I bore you with technical details, here come the spec’s, which are slightly different to the ones I hoped for last time, but still, I’m happy with them.

RED-WAX (main PC):

  • ASUS K8N-E Deluxe, Socket 754, nForce 3
  • AMD Athlon 64 “Newcastle” 3200+ 512KiB L2 cache 2200MHz, 11×200 (overclocked to 2508MHz 11×228)
  • Zalman CNPS7000cu CPU cooler
  • BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MiB
  • Geil Ultra Platinum 2 * 512MiB PC4200 DDR533 (running at PC2900 DDR360 and CAS 2.0-3-3-5)
  • Creative Audigy 2 ZS
  • Q-TEC 650W PSU
  • Lite-On 16x DVD
  • Lite-On 16x DVDRW
  • 40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 7200rpm ATA-133
  • 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA-150

BLUE-WAX (file server):

  • DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B, Socket A, nForce 2
  • AMD Athlon “Barton” 3200+ 512KiB L2 cache 2200MHz (11×200)
  • Coolermaster Jet 7+ CPU cooler
  • MSI GeForce 5200 128MiB
  • Kingston Value 3 * 256MiB PC3200 DDR400
  • Enermax 470W Noise Taker PSU
  • Lite-On 16x DVD
  • HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A
  • 40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 7200rpm ATA-133
  • 8 * 300GB Maxtor MaXLine III 7200rpm SATA-150 in RAID-5

BLACK-WAX (dad’s PC):

  • MSI KT4AV-L, Socket A, nForce 2
  • AMD Athlon “Barton” 2500+ 512KiB L2 cache 1833Mhz (11×166)
  • Coolermaster Jet 7+ CPU cooler
  • Chaintech GeForce Ti4800SE 128MiB
  • Kingston Value 1 * 512MiB PC2700 DDR333
  • WinPower 550W PSU
  • HP 16x DVDRW w/ Lightscribe
  • 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 7200rpm ATA-133

CLEAR-WAX (mum’s PC):

  • MSI MS-6385, Socket 423
  • Intel Pentium 4 “Willamette” 1.7GHz 256KiB L2 cache 1700MHz (17*100)
  • Akasa Unknown Model, socket 423, rated to 1.8GHz
  • ASUS Radeon 9250 128MiB
  • Samsung 2 * 128MiB PC800 RAMBUS400
  • Generic 300W PSU
  • LG 12x DVD
  • Matshita CDRW 8x/4x/32x
  • Western Digital Caviar 60GB 5400rpm ATA-100

Between them all that’s a total capacity of 2314.1GiB or 2.26 TiB!!! Nice.

I would also like to point out that Matshita is probably THE most comical name for a company ever.


  1.  
    Tuesday 31st January 2006 | 6:02 am
     
    Daniel's Globally Recognised Avatar

    You’re offline, and I finished that navigation thing. I’ll be at school tomorrow so here it is: http://tnd.servebeer.com/other/gew/new/BlankH.html

    I just fixed the navigation… all/most of the header images could be put into one image. There’s not really an effective image replacement techniqe being employed, so do what you wish with it.

    You can download the new folder at: http://tnd.servebeer.com/other/gew/new.zip

  2.  
    Thursday 2nd February 2006 | 2:14 am
     
    Milkman's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Hmm… I wander where the inspiration for your computer names came from! He he. I guess you’ve got one advantage over my naming scheme, that is I’m stuck with the short list of milk bottle tops that exist. You can have almost any colour of wax that you want!

    Hmm… I wander if I’ll ever finish my site. Or even get the blog online!? LOL.

    See ya round!

  3.  
    Friday 3rd February 2006 | 12:13 am
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    It shall forever be a mystery. 😉

  4.  
    Thursday 16th February 2006 | 5:31 pm
     
    David Brent's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Nice, however I have one concern for your safety.

    You are using a Q-Tec PSU in your main PC……….??!?!?! These are notorious for failing or exploding and taking several components down with it. FSP/Seasonic/Tagan/Enemax PSUs are really the reliable ones.

    Over 2 TiB of space, holy schmoly, were trying to build our collection and stuck on a total of 640GiB 🙁

  5.  
    Thursday 16th February 2006 | 5:31 pm
     
    David Brent's Globally Recognised Avatar

    PS: Google for ‘Q-Tec explode’

    😉

  6.  
    Friday 17th February 2006 | 12:46 pm
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    I’ve only have two problems with it. One of the fans died, it’s an 80mm fan, but it’s half the width of a normal fan. The other problem was that the 120mm fan in the bottom of it kept catching the fan grill and making a pinging sound (annoying), I held it stopped for a couple of second to see if it was actually htat fan making the noise and somehow that killed the 120mm fan, and also blew a fuse in the PSU.

    I replaced the 120mm fan with a coolermaster one that I’d taken off a 4for3 module, and my dad picked up some fuses at Maplins for me. Works fine.

    I’ve checked the voltages in Everest and they’re pretty awesome, the 3.3V line is dead on 3.3V, 5V line is at 4.95V and the 12V line is at 11.71V. They’re all well within the limits and they’re pretty stable.

    Having said that, I know I only paid about £25 for my PSU, and I do have my eye on a Seasonics S12 600W PSU, but for now this Q-Tec one is doing the job. I don’t think my PC is taxing it very much so fingers crossed all will be well.

  7.  
    Sunday 19th February 2006 | 4:05 pm
     
    David Brent's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Ah, nothing like a fixing session where you cause more damange than you hoped 😛

    My PSU: Seasib S12-500w ( http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=10265&GroupID=9 )

    My CPU Cooler: Zalman CNP39500 ( http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=11508&GroupID=1095 )

    I wanted a diff. CPU cooler however I had to negotiate with a lack of stock at MD.
    I refuse to shop at Maplin electronics for anything apart from hardcore electronic components not available elsewhere offline. The instore selection of computing equipment is laughable. Inlcuding a shite 40GB HD going for £90…..

  8.  
    Sunday 19th February 2006 | 4:08 pm
     
    David Brent's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Gah Seasib?! I meant Seasonic obviously 😛

  9.  
    Sunday 19th February 2006 | 8:30 pm
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    You may have benefitted from their lack of stock. That’s a fairly awesome CPU cooler. What is it you don’t like about it?

    Bah @ Maplins, bah @ microdirect. It’s like you’ve never heard of Scan or OcUK. The delivery from those two can be quite steep sometimes, but if you buy a lot of stuff all in one go, (which I sometimes do), it’s not that bad. When I want to buy stuff I usually hunt around quite a few sites, (including MD), and find that it’s always Scan or OcUK that are the cheapest.

  10.  
    Tuesday 21st February 2006 | 2:51 am
     
    David Brent's Globally Recognised Avatar

    My main issue with the CPU cooler is the noise. Boy can it purr!

    MicroDirect is a hidden gem, I compare all my upcoming purchase prices with OcUK and Scan when looking towards Micro Direct. The thing that swings my way is the fact that MD is about 15 minutes down the road so by maybe paying a few quid more on the product, I am saving on the delivery. For any big orders I tend to use OcUK just to save time and effort.

  11.  
    Tuesday 21st February 2006 | 4:15 pm
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Well since it’s a Zalman HSF, didn’t it come with a potentiometer? My CPU cooler did, (not that I use it), but it allows me to manually alter the voltage from 7V to 12V.

  12.  
    Sunday 26th February 2006 | 8:26 am
     
    David Brent's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Yup it came with potentiometer, funny, I had completely forgotten about that, just hooked it up and it does make a difference. Ill have to see how it fairs in the long run…

  13.  
    Sunday 26th February 2006 | 10:55 am
     
    David's Globally Recognised Avatar

    Be sure to keep an eye on those temps.

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