Page 1 of 2

Victory!!!

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:41 am
by dolphinius_rex
Hopefully most of you have not noticed... but I have been in a serious battle with my main PC for the last several weeks. It's been up and down, and virus ridden for the whole time, and it only got worse when I threw a massive hardware upgrade at it. However, with much battling and cursing, I believe I have reached a compromise with it.

The result?

I now have 2 fully functional machines usable for recording DVDRs! it's broken down like so:

Athalon XP 1700+
512MB RAM
Seagate 80GB SATA HDD running OS
BenQ DW1620 (for testing)
LiteON SOHW-832s (for testing)
Plextor Premium (for testing)
LG 4163B (for reviewing)

Athalon 64 3000+
512MB RAM
Seagate 200GB SATA HDD running OS
Plextor PX-712a (for testing)
BenQ DW1620 (for testing)
NEC 3500a (for...looking at?)
Empty slot (tower case sucks, filling this would break a capacitor on my MB!)

So now I'll be able to break up my testing between the two systems, and be able to run multiple tests at the same time, thus reducing the overall amount of time it takes to test each disc. For those interested, that second system listed WAS an Athalon Thunderbird 850, running 384MB of Ram, with some slow as hell IBM POS HDD running the OS :o

They aren't top of the line systems by any means, but they certainly get the job done, and I'm very proud of them :D

So just give me another day or two to finish loading software and configuring various crap on my new install, and I'll finish up the remaining work to be done on the LG 4163B review. I know you've all been dying to see it :wink:

One more thing.... anyone NOT running their OS off of an SATA drive, doesn't know what they're missing!!!! :D :D :D

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:40 pm
by Spazmogen
What kind and wattage of power supply are you running in each system?


I'm just curious.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 12:55 pm
by LoneWolf
Spazmogen wrote:What kind and wattage of power supply are you running in each system?

I'm just curious.

To answer your question (though from my system, not Dolph's) look at the specs in my sig below, which are somewhat similar regarding his Athlon 64 at least.

I'm running on an Enermax Noisetaker AX 470w PSU, ATX 1.3 compliant. It's got dual 12v rails (15A on rail 1, 16A on rail two I believe, could be other way around). It's a solid supply and I've been very happy with it. I've become really picky about PSU's in my primary box, and Enermax has done very well for me. A good one is going to set you back $80-120 depending on what you want.

Other good mid-level power supplies include the Fortron Blue Storm, and the Seasonic Tornado series. The Antec Neo isn't bad either.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 4:20 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Spazmogen wrote:What kind and wattage of power supply are you running in each system?


I'm just curious.


I don't recall for my slower system, but my new Athalon 64 is running on a "Sparkle 300W PSU". I'm tempted to call it "Mr. Sparkle" :wink:

I'm planning on adding another 300W PSU for running my burners on as soon as I get my new Tower case (so that I can HOLD 2 PSU's)

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 5:32 pm
by Ian
Mr. Sparkle!!!

Image

PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 10:40 pm
by dolphinius_rex
hrm, somethings wrong with the system again.... not sure what now though :cry:

Re: Victory!!!

PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 5:51 am
by dodecahedron
dolphinius_rex wrote:I know you've all been dying to see it :wink:

wink or no wink, i know i'm dying to see it! :D

dolphinius_rex wrote:hrm, somethings wrong with the system again.... not sure what now though :cry:

good luck!

PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:42 am
by Jim
Antec makes decent power supplies. I'm using a TRUE380 to power my 3.2 Prescott, 4 DVD/CD-ROM burners, and 6 IDE hard drives, and 1 SATA Raptor. I monitor its usage through my Belkin UPS and it's handling everything fine.

PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:09 pm
by dolphinius_rex
argh! My system started working again.... although it's only booted once since it decided to randomely freeze (with an error on the screen saying the HDD was not responding...). I'm just grabbing the Nero Demo quickly to backup the e-mails I've already received, and then I'll try a reboot with a scandisc test on the HDD.

Why is this NEVER easy??

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 12:43 am
by aviationwiz
I don't think a 300 watter from a no-name company is enough juice. Try and get like an Antec TruePower 430 Watt at least.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:23 am
by dolphinius_rex
aviationwiz wrote:I don't think a 300 watter from a no-name company is enough juice. Try and get like an Antec TruePower 430 Watt at least.


You might be surprised! This "no name" brand has some excellent customer reviews, from people who abuse it far more then me (power gamers with OC'd machines).

Do not underestimate Mr. Sparkle! :lol:

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:48 am
by aviationwiz
Well, I'd still say a 300W just isn't enough.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:35 am
by dolphinius_rex
aviationwiz wrote:Well, I'd still say a 300W just isn't enough.


Well, I'm still having problems even when I ONLY have the HDD and the motherboard and CPU plugged in. I took out all the burners, and STILL it's giving me the same problem when booting.

I think maybe the power WAS an issue, but after I took stuff out to reduce the power consumption, it messed other things up in windows, and now I need to fix those.

ARGH!!!

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:44 am
by dodecahedron
i think that in the meantime, till you iron everything out, you should edit the topic of the thread to Defeat!!!

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:31 am
by wicked1
antec trucontrol 550 man. Power everything fine and you can get a better OC.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:31 am
by Spazmogen
If you know that power is NOT the issue, then I suggest starting with the basics.

Replace your SATA cable and make sure that both ends are fully connected...

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 11:28 am
by cfitz
dodecahedron wrote:i think that in the meantime, till you iron everything out, you should edit the topic of the thread to Defeat!!!

LOL. Not nice, but true. :wink:

cfitz

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:37 pm
by aviationwiz
Good one dodeca, :lol:

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:36 pm
by dolphinius_rex
ok.... I formatted C: and reinstalled windows again, and everything seems to be going smoothly. I think I'll keep it to 1 DVD burner, and 2 HDD's for a limited amount of time, until I get all my data recovered from my previous HDD. Then I'll drop the second HDD, and keep the DVD Burner installed. When I can get my second PSU installed to run the other peripherals, I'll add the other DVD Burners back :)

Back to Vicotry! ....for now :roll:

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 4:36 pm
by dodecahedron
:o
no ill intentions, i just meant it as a joke. :D
but i can see now that it might appear snide or condescending, sorry if it came off that way.

i wish the dolphin the best of luck with his battle against the machine!

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 8:32 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Things are continuing to go well. I've got the second HDD with important data back in the system, and only one DVD Burner. I've copied most of the important stuff now, and soon I'll take the second HDD out for good. I've got more of my programs installed now then I did before, so i've actually made some progress from where I was on Friday.... and on top of that, the bootup is still going smoothly.

From what I can guess now, I think there was too much drain on the PSU with 2 HDDs and 3 dvd burners, and it caused the HDD to not get enough power, causing the system to freeze. Somewhere in the bootup, the boot sector got screwed up, but continued to work partially. So now that I've fixed the software problems, everything should be fine as long I don't overload the PSU again... until I can get the second PSU installed that is! :wink:

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:45 pm
by aviationwiz
As I said before... not enough power, :lol:

PostPosted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 10:42 pm
by Ian
Better upgrade and get a Flux Capacitor

PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:17 am
by dolphinius_rex
aviationwiz wrote:As I said before... not enough power, :lol:


I know there's a Home Improvement joke sitting here somewhere :P

PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 2:17 am
by dolphinius_rex
Ian wrote:Better upgrade and get a Flux Capacitor


Hrm... I always wanted a time traveling computer! :D