Random Hardware topics

[Colif]

PCie 4x4 is the same speed as pcie 5x2 so drive performs the same regardless of slot its put in.

different channels suggest different uses for those drives, he says not to use as a games drive yet another I watched said they should be fine, just don't use in a PS5 as they don't work well with dramless drives.

 

[Zed Clampet]

PCie 4x4 is the same speed as pcie 5x2 so drive performs the same regardless of slot its put in.

different channels suggest different uses for those drives, he says not to use as a games drive yet another I watched said they should be fine, just don't use in a PS5 as they don't work well with dramless drives.

I've already been using the 4TB as a game drive and it works great.

 

[BeardyHat]

Windowshopping again. This time for a 2TB SSD. I'd like to get one for my upcoming Win 11 install, but finding one with all the features I want seems to be a bit harder than I thought. There are just so many SSD's out there, and sites like Amazon and Newegg don't do the best job of explaining all the specific details.

The details of this recap may not be accurate due to me not looking inside for a while, but I believe this is what is going on in my setup:

Currently, I have two M2 SSDs and a SATA SSD. One M2 is inside of a M2-to-SATA enclosure, due to not being able to fit in one of the M2 slots (second slot is shorter and slower Gen2, and SSD didn’t fit with no extra screw hole in mobo to mount it). So I have my fastest 2500MB/s in the M2 slot, and both SSDs connected via SATA are running at 500MB/s. Speed is not much of an issue to me, everything still loads just fine, but my main SSD has an issue: it’s DRAMless which causes downloads to be incredibly slow to it. So really I’m stuck downloading and playing games on the slower SSDs because they download games at full speed and I don’t want to move them, the DRAMless one has issues keeping up read/write speeds during downloads and copying larger files. Playing games on it isn’t an issue but downloading is.

SO, I want to replace main M2 slot with a durable SSD. It’s only Gen3, so it maxes at 3500MB/s which is fine to me. I want a 2TB SSD with good cache, good DRAM, good 3D NAND, all the bells and whistles so it doesn’t give me any issues, at a reasonable price preferably below $120. I think I can move my current main drive to the shorter slot and reduce its speed to a max 1500MB/s which is still faster than SATA, and keep both SATA drives for backups.

I know pretty much nothing about SSD's, but I picked this guy up for my new laptop just over a month ago and it's been plenty fast.

Edit: the 2Tb variant, I mean.

 

[Colif]

Ram arrived

feels like I am missing something

Doesn't feel enough... I can't as such put GPU there or I wouldn't have a PC now. Guess there really aren't that many parts.
Now just need the case, motherboard and PSU. Hopefully they get sent out today, showed as shipped yesterday but if I click link in email, its still showing as being at their store.

5k is at least PCIe4
its only meant to be up to 5150 so yours is over achieving.

they all fast, nvme get a to a point where you really can't see a difference between 5k and 10k. Can only load files so fast. Its one reason I didn't care about pcie 5 drives.

 

[Colif]

Went out to local shops for shopping and get home to find 2 boxes on the front step.
From a distance I could tell what one was

So my collection is now complete

I don't even know who it came with - courier company wise - it was meant to be Auspost but it never showed on my account.
They are not meant to leave boxes like that at all.
especially since the Case box was obvious, it wasn't even wrapped

We were only out 30 minutes. I wouldn't have gone anywhere if I knew it was coming.
Everything seems okay.

 

[Frindis]

@Colif Is that the transport box and the box with the tower is inside of it?

 

[Colif]

I hope so... I didn't buy a cardboard case

its got foam inside. On top/bottom of the case. I could feel it when I put case down.
need some padding to make sure glass isn't broken... I haven't opened the box but I didn't hear anything moving inside when I was holding it so I am assuming its fine. (damn it you made me wonder now).
Small check by opening box seems to indicate its fine. Very white.

not many unboxings actually start at the box.

I looked inside box just enough to see color was right, and then noticed code for case mentions its color.

The first few cases I owned were cheap and didn't come in boxes, but pretty sure my last 3 did. I might even have the box for one of them decaying in garage still. I am not sure about one case. It was a Lian LI case but it was 20 years ago so I don't know for sure. The IBM Aptiva would have had boxes but I forgot it existed.

 

[Colif]

Idea was to get PSU so I could see model number and order Cablemod cables to replace the stock ones.
That was idea until I got to end of the order form and saw they charge per cable. A $USD 40 ATX 12 Pin cable better look amazing.

They not bad but not OMG I must have them good.

Given conversion rate, I decided I didn't feel like adding up an entire PSU worth of cables knowing I couldn't afford it now. Might buy some next year.
I see how the stock cables for PSU look... they don't seem as bright as the case

NZXT C1000 Gold | LTT Labs

Test results and review of NZXT C1000 Gold

www.lttlabs.com

note: thought about it later, only really need custom cables for the ones you can see. Others might not be so necessary. Such as sata (MB comes with one white sata cable) and any others than don't appear at front.

Timing is when you buy your case and then watch two reviews about brand new cases that almost beat it in cooling. Lian LI Lancool 217 and Fractal Design Meshify 3 might have made my decision much harder had I waited a few more weeks.

Now I just should ignore case reviews for ... 5 years.

 

[Zed Clampet]

@Colif I meant to tell you and forgot, regarding your items being delivered, when they brought that prebuilt PC that I returned, not only did they not require a signature, but they didn't even ring the doorbell. They just stealth left it on the front porch. My wife said it was because it was too heavy to be stolen, but I doubt that. They also did the same thing with my $900 GPU, but I had an alert set to tell me when it was delivered.

 

[Colif]

Almost everything delivered to me in the last year needed a signature.

If it is sent Express post, it needs to be signed for. The latest feature they are adding is to take a photo to prove they tried to deliver something. If no one is home, they are meant to leave a card in your mailbox and take the items back to local post office, and let you collect them. Not take a photo of the boxes they left behind.

The company didn't reply to my feedback. I just thought they might like to know their couriers just leave things like that. I actually paid extra for that delivery, I paid for insurance to make sure it was delivered in one piece... while the items themselves appear okay, the means by which they showed up has me wondering.
Only stickers on the boxes were from the company who I bought off, I can't even tell who they used.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Almost everything delivered to me in the last year needed a signature.

If it is sent Express post, it needs to be signed for. The latest feature they are adding is to take a photo to prove they tried to deliver something. If no one is home, they are meant to leave a card in your mailbox and take the items back to local post office, and let you collect them. Not take a photo of the boxes they left behind.

The company didn't reply to my feedback. I just thought they might like to know their couriers just leave things like that. I actually paid extra for that delivery, I paid for insurance to make sure it was delivered in one piece... while the items themselves appear okay, the means by which they showed up has me wondering.
Only stickers on the boxes were from the company who I bought off, I can't even tell who they used.

Here, the person or company mailing the product has to select that it needs a signature to be delivered.

 

[Colif]

Here it normally depends on how much the shipping costs

I added the 4tb ssd to build tonight, figured it was $60 cheaper than normal and the supplier owed me $245 for the Lian LI fans, so I will accept a 4tb ssd for $190
No idea what I use it for but it will show up in mail next week.. probably need me to scribble a "signature" on a digital screen

 

[Colif]

My PC suddenly doesn't feel expensive

After all, this has a 9800x3d, 32gb ram, 1tb nvme and a 5090 and is about 6k more expensive than mine... its also broken

Funny how a company owned by a water cooling company can't get it to work.
Apparently the fans don't even both spinning for 8 minutes under load conditions.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Funny how a company owned by a water cooling company can't get it to work.
Apparently the fans don't even both spinning for 8 minutes

You don't need fans on that PC. Those components hardly use any electricity at all. Actually, I think the 5090 generates extra electricity and serves as a primary air conditioner for your house during the summer. Of course, you would need working fans to circulate all that cold air throughout your house.

 

[Colif]

You don't need fans on that PC. Those components hardly use any electricity at all. Actually, I think the 5090 generates extra electricity and serves as a primary air conditioner for your house during the summer. Of course, you would need working fans to circulate all that cold air throughout your house.

Apparently the fans on 5090 aren't helping a lot on this case, but then when case fans only spin at a max of 500, and take 8 minuted to start I can see its not getting a lot of help

 

[Colif]

So it turns out I needed to contact the company I was ordering from before I did to allocate the credit I have with them to a payment. So the 4tb ssd isn't as cheap as I was expecting but I will just have to live with that.
Not sure what I actually use the credit for. I don't really want anything now.

two thoughts were:

1. Get 64gb of the ram I wanted in the first place... except they don't have any at moment, but I could check the link occasionally
2. Buy Noctua NF-A14GX2 G2 140mm x 3 and use them to replace my intakes on new case, but thats only if the fans are bad. I read some reports from 6-8 months ago about people with my case getting bad fans, but nothing more recently so might have been a bad batch. The 3 Noctuas add up to $10 more than my credit. Sounds like a deal to me.

Lessons learned from current PC

1. If fans mess up, just buy Noctuas (don't mess around with other brands, I had too many fans in this PC)
2. Don't use AIO

I may resist 1 if the bottom fans mess up as I can see them... they might be Be Quiet Silent wings LX reverse instead.

Either way, my PC now cost me more than if I had put a 9950x3d in (which annoyingly are back in stock now) but it has 10tb of storage instead of just 4tb, so there is that.

Not sure what will go on the ssd. It was just bought cause I thought, a cheap one was an offer I couldn't refuse.

• 2tb drive will be windows + programs
• 4tb drive will be games
• 4tb ssd is an unknown right now. I don't really use virtual machines much anymore. Guess I could use it for those. Or maybe backups Might put Onedrive on it. Get that out of my way.

4tb drive in my sig but in reality its not here yet. I just didn't feel like waiting. PC also not here yet.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I may need some help. I'm thinking about giving the PC I just made to my wife and building a new one for myself that has two GPUs, possibly an Nvidia one for AI and an AMD one for playing games (both at the same time).

HOWEVER. after researching it, it would be a whole lot easier to just get an OP Nvidia card, like a 5080 TI or just losing my mind and getting the 5090. If the 5080 had 24 GB of VRAM as it should have, it would be the perfect solution. If the 5090 were selling for the $2000 that Nvidia said it would, it would be the perfect solution. But neither of these things exist, so my only real option looks like waiting for a 5080 TI or Super if I don't go the two GPU route.

The problem with the 2 GPU route is that one or both will be hamstrung and not run as quickly as they would if they were the only GPU, at least not on any of the motherboards that I've looked at.

Also, having that setup is more likely to cause constant headaches, and I like things simple.