Home Office PC upgrade

honosuseri · 3 Jul 2012 at 00:45

If you are scavenging old HDDs and a optical drive check that they are sata. Most modern mobos have completely dropped the IDE connector

DaveUK666 · 6 Jul 2012 at 10:32

So from various sources I have on there way:

Intel i3-2120 Sandybridge
OCZ Agility 3 120GB
ASRock Z77 Pro4-MW
Windows 7 (I've been convinced it's worth it

)

Saw a 500W branded PSU with 3mins left on ebay, a quick google for reviews all looked good, bought it...then checked out the specs/reviews in detail and realised was about 5 year old and only has one SATA connection...

You win some, you loose some. However cheap/second hand build is looking good so far, waiting for things to arrive!

doyll · 6 Jul 2012 at 10:47

So get cheap molex to sata adapter.
Or find a dead PSU, cut the sata leads off and splice it into the molex lead on hdd

DaveUK666 · 6 Jul 2012 at 11:04

doyll said:
So get cheap molex to sata adapter.
Or find a dead PSU, cut the sata leads off and splice it into the molex lead on hdd

Had not even thought about either of those...to google!

*edit* It's a OCz SteathXstream 500W, very cheap for two molex-SATA adapters so as long as no one has any horror stories about that PSU I'll do that.

DaveUK666 · 7 Jul 2012 at 11:10

So just checked and the PSU only has a 4 pin motherboard connection not an 8 pin(although it does have a 20+4). As far as I've read it should be fine with just the 4-pin, especially since not over clocking, but just wanted the opinions of greater minds than mine!

doyll · 7 Jul 2012 at 11:21

Does PSU have 2 molex cable sets? If so you you can get a molex to 4pin EPS motherboard adapter.

DaveUK666 · 8 Jul 2012 at 16:56

doyll said:
Does PSU have 2 molex cable sets? If so you you can get a molex to 4pin EPS motherboard adapter.

Thanks doyll. I've checked and shouldn't make any difference, motherboard says it can use a 4pin and it's a low watt CPU so not too bothered.
I'm now having fun attempting to work out how an old 4pin USB1 multicard reader will connect to the USB2 headers on the motherboard... Might have been easier to buy everything new

doyll · 8 Jul 2012 at 17:05

motherboard manual should give you the pin out so you can match them up.

Cromulent · 8 Jul 2012 at 17:13

stulid said:
I wouldn't touch a an OCZ Agility3 with a bargepole.

They aren't that bad. I can't say I've had any problems at all with mine. Why do you say you'd avoid them?

DaveUK666 · 8 Jul 2012 at 18:39

Cromulent said:
They aren't that bad. I can't say I've had any problems at all with mine. Why do you say you'd avoid them?

From what I can find there were issues but the newer firmware does appear to have corrected them (I hope!).

Hopefully everything will be here by the end of this week, so expect more confusion and questions from me.

DaveUK666 · 19 Jul 2012 at 21:38

So finally built and working, thanks for all the help guys!

dww · 20 Jul 2012 at 01:17

Just to add a note about the OCZ Agility 3. I was happy with mine when I first got it, but not for long; months of crashes often every few days, despite updating the firmware several times. However the most recent firmware upgrade finally fixed it, and I haven't had problems since. So while I would never buy one again, you should be OK with yours. Just check that it has firmware version 2.22; if earlier than that update it. You can find how on OCZ's web site.

The other thing is that you should set your BIOS to use AHCI instead of IDE for the SSD drive. This is essential if you use Windows 7 as it provides proper support for SSD features such as TRIM. Vista supports AHCI too but not TRIM as it doesn't know about SSDs. However AHCI still gives better performance than IDE.