help decide between specs pls..urgent order

backtothefuture · 21 Aug 2011 at 07:10

hmm, general consensus is that the F3 drive is very noisy...

re: the seagates, apparently they have a high failure rate....checked out a few Amazon reviews

tigerstyle · 21 Aug 2011 at 07:35

backtothefuture said:
hmm, general consensus is that the F3 drive is very noisy...

Not heard that from the reviews I've read. Samsung seems to be a strong favourite!

Marine-RX179 · 21 Aug 2011 at 07:46

backtothefuture said:
hmm, general consensus is that the F3 drive is very noisy...

re: the seagates, apparently they have a high failure rate....checked out a few Amazon reviews

I think HDD noise is a bit of hit or miss no matter what model/brand you get. My Samsung F3 is quiet. But yea...personally I'd avoid Seagate...way too many horror stories as much as I would like to ignore them :/

olivier renault · 21 Aug 2011 at 10:10

Not heard much on the Seagate 7200.12. No more than the F3. The 7200.11 however, another story.

backtothefuture · 22 Aug 2011 at 05:02

done and dusted, order placed

backtothefuture · 3 Sep 2011 at 15:15

well, finally got the new build up and running today!..managed to cut about three fingers while fiddling with the heatsink, as is expected..

all seems ok except:

1. The Lepa PSU won't fit fully in the case; the modular connectors push against the internals...hence got it sticking out from the back slightly and can't screw it in!

2. On first boot the mobo was giving me a temp reading of 50C idle for the CPU...not sure if thats a bit hot!...heatsink is on ok, all four ends screwed in firmly and am using Diamond Carat 7 thermal compound..

3. Windows Exp Index has given my primary HDD a rating of 5.9!...these are the WD blacks!...is that normal?

Surveyor · 3 Sep 2011 at 15:34

1.

2. See what the temperatures are when you've installed Windows. There are no energy saving feature enabled in the BIOS.

3. 5.9 is the maximum score for a single HDD. Some HDD RAID configurations (not RAID 1) may score in the low 6's. SSD's score up to 7.9.

Just out of curiosity why did you go for the WD Black over the Samsung F3?

Jony27 · 3 Sep 2011 at 15:36

pics would be nice, and post a pic of the PSU so we can see what the problem is.

backtothefuture · 3 Sep 2011 at 19:13

will post pics but don't know where to host them!

Jony27 · 3 Sep 2011 at 19:15

photobucket/imageshack and the likes.

backtothefuture · 4 Sep 2011 at 06:28

Surveyor said:
1.

2. See what the temperatures are when you've installed Windows. There are no energy saving feature enabled in the BIOS.

Just out of curiosity why did you go for the WD Black over the Samsung F3?

ok, according to the MSI Control Panel software (under windows), its giving readings of around 62C for all 4 cores @3.3gh otherwise 53C for all 4 cores at 1.6Ghz... not sure what monkey business is going on there!

re: Blacks vs F3s, the user comments on the OC website were pretty positive for the Blacks, and some cursory research on the F3s seemed to point to noise issues... I thought might as well try the Blacks since I had been eyeing them for a couple of years now and was waiting for an 'excuse' ..

backtothefuture · 4 Sep 2011 at 07:40

Ok here are some pics:

can see the PSU sticking out

PSU from the inside of case...rear molex won't allow it to go back any further!

snapshot of whole build

backtothefuture · 4 Sep 2011 at 09:03

on the point of the high CPU temps, I just want to clarify the fan's orientation on the HS... per the manual (leaflet) with the cooler there were arrows indicating direction of airflow towards the heatsink (which makes sense)...

so that would imply the 'clean' side of the fan facing the heatsink and the one with the wires sticking out (i.e. exhaust) facing away from the heatsink...

however per a youtube video showing the above heatsink, the clean side of the fan shows as facing away from the HS!...

note sure if I got the fan orientation wrong??

tigerstyle · 4 Sep 2011 at 10:31

Sounds like your fan is on back to front, needs to blow 'through' the heatsink.
The arrows on the side should make fan orientation obvious though!

backtothefuture · 4 Sep 2011 at 12:28

indeed, I believe that is the case!... do you reckon that should drop temps by 10 degrees or so?

can't wait to try it when I get home!

olivier renault · 4 Sep 2011 at 13:06

Your airflow must suffer from that cable management. Looks tricky to get right with that case though. And where is the case intake fan? Do you have one pumping air into the higher part of the case? You should get 15-20C better with that setup.

If you used the MSI 'oc guru', it tends to use a lot of voltage into the CPU. Although it should go down to reasonable level at idle.

backtothefuture · 4 Sep 2011 at 16:01

the air intake fan is at the bottom front of the case which intakes over the HDD...there is no fan pumping air into the higher part of the case...

I just changed the orientation of the CPU fan and temps are better by 10C ... ie now I get around 50C idle... still not convinced that is good enough..eg. how hot will CPU get when I play Crysis 2??

is there a decent stress test software I can use?

cheers

olivier renault · 4 Sep 2011 at 16:55

prime95.

You need airflow coming in the other part of the case.

beejjacobs · 4 Sep 2011 at 17:02

Yeah that does sound a bit high for idle temps! I'd suggest trying to tidy the cabling, especially with a modular PSU it should be easier. Even small changes can make a difference, especially around where the fans are sucking air from or blowing air to.

backtothefuture · 5 Sep 2011 at 01:58

not much I can do with the cables...am already using the bare minimum for the modular PSU... I reset the heatsink and used some Arctic Silver 5, got temps a couple of degrees lower... can't really go any lower than approx 48 idle, I think I am now limited by lack of airflow in top half of case... there are no fan inlets there, only an exhaust at the back...ideally there should have been an inlet at the top of the case!