dbmnk wrote:PSU: Corsair HX520W as recommended for these cases.

off-topic question: Why to use 520W PSU for 50-100W system? I'd go with PicoPSU or similar

Question for both failed and not-failed Samsung HDD owners: are you set your HDD "turn off" (spin down) after 10-20-40 minutes idle or not? From what I've read, some Samsung drives do not like frequent spinups. This may cause platter vibrations (during spinup), which may bring drive heads into direc...

Do you need dual DVI? 1280x1024 resolution actually doesn't need DVI output; starting from 1600 pixels DVI is preferred. If you need dual DVI anyway, then Radeon X1300 is good and not expensive card. If you can go with VGA+DVI combo, then any passive ATI HD2400 card would be sufficient; Vista and HD...

About socket 939 - we (in our tiny company) have bought two Opterons (170 and 180) - both have TDP of 35W (internal reading; specification says something about 89 or 110W). Not so bad, although they are expensive - you can get cheap Intel E21xx CPU and P35 motherboard at almost same price.

From xbitlabs gigabyte ds3r review : Intel P35 chipset offers relatively small set of FSB:MEM dividers including 1:1, 5:6, 4:5, 2:3, 5:8, 3:5 and 1:2. About RAM brand - I don't know. But my co-worker bought the almost cheapiest one, available here - A-DATA 2x1GB DDRII Over Clock Extreme Edition DDR2...

DS3L has ICH9 as well. I'd buy DS3L, unless I had use for RAID, eSATA, more than 4xSATA, 2xPCI-Ex16 or IEE1394. And I'd buy DDR800/CL4 - just to know that my system is potentially 0.5-1% faster than some other system :) P35 chipset has fixed RAM dividers set, thereby you cannot use any DDR or FSB fr...

Interesting - where is written that AMD/ATI 690G/V does not support simultaneous VGA and SVideo? It has one internal DAC for VGA and Xillian encoder (does that include DAC?) for SVideo (or not?). Looking at Gigabytes GA-MA69VM-S2 manual, page 72 - there's even one CCC image, displaying analog monito...

Maybe BIOS reset (Clear CMOS) and some longer power off cycle (detach power cord for at least 10 minutes) will help?

"Power on after power fails" is normal to set "Off" (unless you will run 24/7 server).

First Clear CMOS - read motherboard manual, how to do that. Then disconnect card reader . Start PC and check BIOS that it recognizes your DVD device and that CD/DVD appears first in Boot Order. Try windows setup. IMHO for this motherboard special SATA drivers are not needed (I've installed XP on nFo...

Hardware reviews (like this one ) state about 4300-4400 3DMarks (06) for Asus 8600GT - thereby your score is pretty normal. If you tinker with CPU/RAM overclocking I think you can get 3DMark06 score up to 4700-5000 points. You can use cpu-z to read actual RAM speed and timing values - they may be a ...

Some vendors recommend: Clear CMOS before first time booting up new motherboard. This is the first thing to do. If this doesn't help, follow advices, given above - boot with one stick of RAM, try different video. You may even try "full cycle": * remove/disconnect everything (RAM, video, HDD) except ...

P. G. Signal:
Power Good Signal. With this signal, the power supply tells to motherboard that it is powered up and ready to serve. This delay should match the specifications on the motherboard that is being used.
--
Search google with "power good" PG value - you find some information

HDDStatus mixes up positive and negative values and short and long integers or smtg. Sentence "your hard disk has 65535 pending sectors" means actually something alike "we forgot that unsigned 2byte integer is limited to 65535 and we forgot that RAW values are not standardized and we could'nt imagin...

Standard PCI throughput is 133MB/s, Gigabit theoretical throughput can be about 125MB/s - thereby no bottleneck. In practice GBE throughput is usually much less (30-100MB/s, rarely up to 114MB/s) and depends largely on cable quality and network chip; with good PCI card you may get better speeds than...

For some SATA1 mobos you even don't need set SATA1 mode, HDD will communicate with controller and set SATA1 mode automatically. But for VIA VT8237 controller it is usually needed and your mobo is likely VIA one - thereby yes, you need set SATA1 mode with jumper and that's all. There are no Master/Sl...

All depends on your disk usage pattern. If you're using disk-intensive tasks then it is much faster to use more disks - reading from one, writing to another (like me - I'm capturing TV with near-lossloss codec, then I'm processing it; I can't imagine to use same disk for processing source an target ...

Why do you need patches at all? If your pc is firewalled (like mine), then there has been only one really needed patch for some last years - vulnerability in image library (cannot provide MSKB article number atm), allowing your pc to become overtaken just by rendering some badly crafted image (gif)...

for Re-Allocated Sector Count (in Speedfan): Value: 200 Worst: 200 Threshold: 140 Raw: 000000000000 No problems here. Raw value is zero, Value attribute is at maximum (means as good as possible). If spin-up time's value is 185 (of 200) and threshold is 21, then IMHO you shouldn't worry about that a...

There's at least one SMART attribute what usually doesn't lie - Reallocated Sector Count (sometimes corresponded with Reallocation Event Count). If its raw data is zero, then you are usually safe (unless some other attribute FAILs). If its raw data is above zero and increases at least once in week, ...

Well, I'd avoid any RAID in your case. To maximize performance I'd use disks as follows: (1) 80GB#1: Boot, OS, ProgramFiles + storage (once written, often read files) (2) 80GB#2: 2GB page file, fixed size, at start of disk + storage (once written, never or rarely read files) (3) 160GB partition 1, a...

I don't think that PicoPSU takes more power to itself or is less efficient. I think it is ACDC brick, which consumes about 12W. Your old PSU consumes 6W itself, thereby we can assume that brick consumes 6W more. Looking at your previous threads you estimated old PSU efficiency about 65%, what makes ...

::: the outlets in my apartment don't have a working ground. ::: How bad is this? Will it cause my PSU / other stuff to go bad quicker? Or since it didn't explode right away am I pretty much ok? Grounding doesn't affect PSU and other equipment reliability and lifetime (under normal circumstances) a...

No Windows consumer OS can handle more than 2 cores or 3 gigs of ram, anyway. Sure it can. All 32bit OSes can natively handle max 4GB minus PCI address space (includes video memory), which makes about 3.0-3.5GB. Using PAE (Physical Address Extension) they can handle more, but this slows entire syst...

Hardware looks well (can't comment cooler though), but why Vista?

Quotes from GB 7600GT cluboverclocker review : The memory that is used is Hynix. /---/ The main numbers that I'm concerned with are the -14 at the end. That signifies the speed of the memory and the 14 means 700MHz. That is what the memory comes clocked to so overclocking headroom will be at a minim...

Looking at some benchmarks, I think that Abit has BIOS problems (again) - their memory speed is abnormally low.

Remembering their previous fiasco (AB9 BIOS woes) I'd not buy another Abit Intel board - at least not before I have seen massive positive feedback on internet.

From three monitors above, I'd prefer VP930B. We've got two of these in our office (choosen after careful reserach on internet), very good monitors. Thanks to their technology (M-VA) these monitors have excellent looking angle, color quality (true 8bit) and high contrast (although in absolutely dark...

Don't forget Nec (Optiarc) - they are IMHO most reliable burners. Not very quiet (esp in writing mode), not always able to read nonstandard disks, not always able to overburn - but their firmware is often updated and I have yet to hear of any big problems with them. Many of my friends use Nec writer...

SATA CD/DVD pro's: - nicer cabling - future compatibility (newer mobos don't have many IDE connectors) SATA con's: - boot problems on some motherboards - other problems on older mobos (no or bad support for all ATAPI commands) Otherwise they are identical. Speed-wise SATA interface could be faster, ...