[OT] Buying a new computer

[Cursed Shadow]

I'm so glad DJ went with this case:
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/p...r4-black-pearl

It really is an amazing case, check it out, not too expensive either.

DJ, how are you finding the case, can you hear it running?
I barely hear mine at all unless I push it to Ultra.

[Dropout]

I'm so glad DJ went with this case:
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/p...r4-black-pearl

It really is an amazing case, check it out, not too expensive either.

DJ, how are you finding the case, can you hear it running?
I barely hear mine at all unless I push it to Ultra.

Thats actually not a bad looking case..
Personally Im using: http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-a71f/
The only thing I dont like about mine is the size (The thing is huge..). Uh and it wasent exactly cheap either.

[Dribble Joy]

DJ, how are you finding the case, can you hear it running?
I barely hear mine at all unless I push it to Ultra.

Since it's about a foot from my face, yes. Though it's hardly intrusive. It's mainly the GFX fans I can hear I think, since dropping it to the lowest fan speed doesn't lower the sound.

I don't know if you can see it in the pic, but I turned the drive bays 90 degrees so that there's better flow from the front fan into the case.

[Dribble Joy]

Had this thing for a little while and so far only one real issue:

Every so often the display drops by a few pixels for a split second. This glitching doesn't seem to be tied to what I am doing with the comp at the time so I don't think it's the GFX.

Any ideas?

[Divide]

If I am interpreting your issue correctly, the entire displayed image is lowered by, say, 10px and then returned? That sounds like a problem with the display or cabling.

[Dribble Joy]

If I am interpreting your issue correctly, the entire displayed image is lowered by, say, 10px and then returned? That sounds like a problem with the display or cabling.

Spot on. I'll have a gander at the connection.

As far as I can see, everything is screwed in correctly, though the monitor didn't come with an DVI cable, only a VGA. Either the monitor or the GFX card came with an DVI-to-VGA adapter. I'm going to get a new cable in the new month (this purchase pretty much destituted me for Feb), probably HDMI (unless that's worse than DVI?).

[Drachenpaladin]

I'm going to get a new cable in the new month (this purchase pretty much destituted me for Feb), probably HDMI (unless that's worse than DVI?).

Silly boy

VGA<DVI<HDMI

[Divide]

HDMI is sexy because it carries audio and just snaps in with no screwing. Chances are you'll have to fix overscan issues if you use HDMI, but that can be done through the driver control panel pretty easily.

[Cursed Shadow]

Spot on. I'll have a gander at the connection.

As far as I can see, everything is screwed in correctly, though the monitor didn't come with an DVI cable, only a VGA. Either the monitor or the GFX card came with an DVI-to-VGA adapter. I'm going to get a new cable in the new month (this purchase pretty much destituted me for Feb), probably HDMI (unless that's worse than DVI?).

I will accept a large amount of flak for this.

DJ, you can get a 1M HDMI cable from Poundland.
It won't be perfect (no gold plated connectors, braided casing), but it'll do the job.

[Dribble Joy]

Bumpity bump bump bump.

I'm still running on the 120gb ssd, and obviously by now it's getting kinda full (ok, so I had to delete stuff to do some recent work, but whatever).

I'm in a quandary though over what main hdd to get though.

A decent sized (2TB+) ssd is silly money, but do I need one? What about hybrid drives?

Quick browse found this and this.

[Drachenpaladin]

That depends on you philosophy of maintaining things I guess. I got a 120GB SSD as a sys drive and I don't need more, there is only the OS and one or two progs installed there. Still 24 GB free.
Anything else gets on the the 3 TB drive. But even a 1 TB drive is plenty of space tbh. Unless you maybe plan to go balls out on video stuff and even then i'd recommend streaming instead...

[Torg]

imho you dont need a SSD for plain storage. pics, vids, files. get a stupid HD and be happy. i just noticed you linked green WDs. i used those for a while until i read that they try to stop and park and pause as much as possible in order to save as much energy as possible - which wears down the hardware noticably faster. so i moved on to blue WDs: faster, still zero noise.

[Dribble Joy]

What about WD black?

[Torg]

What about WD black?

afaik thats the fast type, for servers. needs more energy, does more noise, too, so i went with the blue ones.