General computer talk/advice

I say it depends. I have a 5 1/2 year old seagate that was a very high capacity for its time (1.3TB) and was actually recalled, but it is still alive with only a very few, steady sector reallocations.

 

I have seen an innumerable amount of failed Seagate drives, to list a few:

The 320GB Seagate I had in a Mac, failed to boot, clicked a lot.
The 160GB Server Seagate I had as my boot drive in my computer, threw up end-to-end errors and bluescreened
and a 1TB Seagate fail as a replacement for the drive above, it was DOA, replaced with SSD.

Additionally most public computers use seagates here, and they're constantly out of order, stuck in a bootloop or bluescreening. I don't trust seagates.

 

I have a ~2.5 year old Seagate 500GB. Bought it brand new for a good price and it's been a good drive to me. (Was my main drive, then it was part of a shitty RAID 0 setup, and now it's my game drive. Has just over 8k hours.)

I also have a WD Caviar Green 500GB drive that used to be in a external drive enclosure that I got used. I use it for media and backups. It has 37k hours (Just over 4 years of being powered on.) and is pretty damn slow. The enclosure had two of these drives and they always ran hot. It did have a working fan in it, but for some reason it never turned on other than for a couple seconds at the initial startup.

Just for comparison the SSD I got in ~August last year has 1700 hours on it and a power on count of about 1000. (Seagate is at ~2800 and WD is at ~1000.)

The only drives I've had fail on me were some crappy laptop IDE drive I used in a laptop I gave to my brother and the 160GB that was in my old netbook. That one didn't exactly fail, it broke after I smashed the thing onto the ground while it was on. I kinda miss that netbook even though it was so shitty. I shoulda fixed it up instead of harvesting the mobo and sticking it on the back of a monitor as a server. (Broken screen, HDD, RAM cover, plastic bits, etc.)

 

You don't. You get windows install DVD or USB and boot directly off of that, you don't install it from a ready installed OS, ideally you dont install linux from an already installed OS either.

 

i did, 'twas the only way to get windows 7 to install on a GPT drive, or at least it is on my pc

 

Ubuntu can install itself from windows of what i remember ( faster than going editing partition.

But yea windows from ubuntu seem like a strange and complicated idea ahah

 

Ubuntu can, but windows can also interrupt and hence bugger up the install process. It is not recommended to do it that way unless you simply don't have knowledge to do it any other way. You can't argue with the ease of that method at least.

 

what?

no i'm talking about install windows from an already installed OS (said os in my case being windows 8.1)

 

I noticed over the weekend that my total available RAM dropped from 3.5GB to 3.2GB. I have 4GB installed (4 1GB sticks) and am running 32-bit Win8.1 on a Pentium D (64-bit processor). I understand well enough why it would only have 3.5GB available, but I want to know why it dropped.

 

Integrated graphics may be using some.

 

Just found a sim card slot on bottom of my laptop. its a lenovo x201 convertible laptop.
my question,
is it worth buying a $13.00 wireless card that i could use with my laptop? i have a verizon sim, and it seems to work with them.

 

If you find yourself without wifi a lot then it may be worth getting a phone sim for your laptop if not then there is little point to getting mobile internet.

 

My motherboard doesn't have integrated graphics. I just upgraded from the 8800GT to a GTX 650.

 

My PC put 2gb of RAM to my 560TI when i had that as my primary graphics card. Not entirely sure why but it is just a thing that windows does. Should note that if using the RAM as VRam it will run pretty slow.

 

Today I got a CPU from an old PC my school was throwing away. There was no RAM, no hard drives, no PSU. Just the case, mobo (which was dead) and CPU. Since the case was worthless (shitty HP mATX) and the board was dead I just took the CPU.

Anyway, it's a Pentium D 945, 3.4 GHz. Not too bad, but NetBurst based so not great either. I don't have a second LGA 775 board to go with it though, I'll have to find one somewhere. There was no cooler either, but I do have the stock cooler from my 4690K. Should fit in an LGA 775 board when I do get one.

Also, the motherboard on that PC was really odd. The DIMMS were placed on the top, mounted horizontally rather than vertically, and the CPU socket was tilted 45*. Also the SATA ports were all the way back for some reason, really weird since the drive cages were in the front. Never seen anything like it, I've seen strange shaped boards on 'slim' PCs but this was a standard mATX.

 

GIMME GIMME

Actually, the Miracle Machine's mobo is very similar, by the sounds of it. Only difference is mine is a modified ATX and the SATA ports are in logical positions. However, the floppy connector is in the most illogical place imaginable, the bottom of the board. Underneath the graphics card and the oversized CPU heatsink/fan combo.

 

so i got bored:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant


CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($159.99 @ Micro Center)
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC MATE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($86.75 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill NS Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($51.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.59 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card ($150.00 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($36.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/RSBS DVD/CD Writer ($13.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($86.98 @ OutletPC)
Keyboard: Logitech Wireless Combo MK270 Wireless Standard Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($19.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $690.26
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-29 19:17 EDT-0400

assuming about an $850 budget, this will probably end up being the build my siblings get as well, i tihnk this is the best one i've made so far if it were to end up being the build my siblings go for

 

Assuming a $850 budget you can easily get a GTX 960 or R9 280X in there.

- - - Updated - - -

I still can't figure out why you're not using your G630. It's a Sandy Bridge CPU, will be a billion times better than the D 820.

 

or i can just overclock the 280, boom, instant 280x

as for $850 budget and not using it all, because cali we have sales tax D:

 

I've gotten it ready for use, just need more DDR3 RAM. It only has 2GB atm. Going to order some soon. Probably by the weekend.