StarDestroyer.Net BBS

It's awesome. Every game runs beautifully with everything cranked to the max.

Only problem is one of the hard drives is probably faulty- it clicks occasionally. My friend has got to order a replacement.

Sounds sweet.

Specs?

I'm paranoid about the HD issue though. Here's what happened:

- Installed Oblivion. Started playing it through. Looked awesome.

- Got up to the bit where Uriel Septim is attacked in the catacombs by the assassins. At that point, it hard crashed. Now, this is not rare for Oblivion. However, as it was booting up, an error screen came up about the HDs, something about one of them being "BAD" and saying it should be replaced.

At that point, my friend (whom I bought the PC off) noted the sound it was making (and which it occasionaly makes as I speak)- an audible sort-of clicking sound, a bit loud for my tastes, but I don't know. The case is well ventilated so it may be just the way the HDs sound, but the error message above clinches it. I haven't reset the computer since but I'll note it next time on startup, if it appears.

Reason I'm paranoid is I don't want to "settle in" to a new PC if the HD that's the faulty one turns out to be the primary one (I think/though it's the secondary one, my games HD, because that's where I installed Oblivion).

But I dunno. Thoughts?

These are the specs:

Cooler Master Ammo Case

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600

ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe

2x1024MB RAM TWIN2X2048-6400

2x 320GB 16MB Seagate

POWERCOLOR PCIE X1950XTX 512 DDR4 2DHV Crossfire Edition

Samsung/Liteon Black Drive (whichever- DVD burner, you know)

Black 1.44M Floppy Disk Drive

Creative X-FI Xtreme Music

Logitech G15 USB Gaming Keyboard

Vympel wrote:I'm paranoid about the HD issue though. Here's what happened:

- Installed Oblivion. Started playing it through. Looked awesome.

- Got up to the bit where Uriel Septim is attacked in the catacombs by the assassins. At that point, it hard crashed. Now, this is not rare for Oblivion. However, as it was booting up, an error screen came up about the HDs, something about one of them being "BAD" and saying it should be replaced.

At that point, my friend (whom I bought the PC off) noted the sound it was making (and which it occasionaly makes as I speak)- an audible sort-of clicking sound, a bit loud for my tastes, but I don't know. The case is well ventilated so it may be just the way the HDs sound, but the error message above clinches it. I haven't reset the computer since but I'll note it next time on startup, if it appears.

Reason I'm paranoid is I don't want to "settle in" to a new PC if the HD that's the faulty one turns out to be the primary one (I think/though it's the secondary one, my games HD, because that's where I installed Oblivion).

But I dunno. Thoughts?

Replace the hard drive ASAP. It will probably completely fail soon.

Whenever a hard drive starts making new sounds, you should be alarmed. Whenever the computer's diagnostics tell you the drive is failing, you should take it seriously (because it's more often the case the computer won't be able to tell you jack shit until after the drive's already dead!).

Indeed. Clicking noises often mean the drive heads are hitting the disks. That's Bad™.

On another note, that's a sweet case if that's the one I think it is. It's what I'm planning on using for my new system.

*breaks into vympels house and steals the computer*

You make me sick.

Check the event viewer to see if there are any events associated with the hard drive. If it crashed do to HD error there should be an error in the system log.

That's a nice rig. I can't really justify that kind of machine to myself; there are too many other things that I need to spend money on.

Darth Wong wrote:That's a nice rig. I can't really justify that kind of machine to myself; there are too many other things that I need to spend money on.

You can get very good rigs at sub $2000, or even sub $1500. Then again, those only reach High, not Highest settings.

Ace Pace wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:That's a nice rig. I can't really justify that kind of machine to myself; there are too many other things that I need to spend money on.

You can get very good rigs at sub $2000, or even sub $1500. Then again, those only reach High, not Highest settings.

That's still a couple of thousand dollars that I don't really need to spend, because my existing computers can manage.

Darth Wong wrote:

Ace Pace wrote: You can get very good rigs at sub $2000, or even sub $1500. Then again, those only reach High, not Highest settings.

That's still a couple of thousand dollars that I don't really need to spend, because my existing computers can manage.

Yep. Small upgrades, mostly to the graphics card are enough.

Nice rig. Wish i had 1.5K around to spare. At the moment, I'm just waiting for the native Quad Cores. Will try to last with my current rig for a while longer.

Ace Pace wrote:Yep. Small upgrades, mostly to the graphics card are enough.

I find that a person can get a kickass system, replace the GPU after about 1 year, and then get another one a year after that without ever having to play the newest games on eyesore settings. The trick is not to spoil yourself on resolutions like 1920 x 1200. Once you've done that, you can't bring yourself to go back, and the ability to keep gaming at those resoultions as new games come out is mind-bogglingly expensive.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:Yep. Small upgrades, mostly to the graphics card are enough.

I find that a person can get a kickass system, replace the GPU after about 1 year, and then get another one a year after that without ever having to play the newest games on eyesore settings. The trick is not to spoil yourself on resolutions like 1920 x 1200. Once you've done that, you can't bring yourself to go back, and the ability to keep gaming at those resoultions as new games come out is mind-bogglingly expensive.

I suppose the solution is an inexpensive, less-than-vicious resolution monitor if you're locked into a laptop, eh? 1280x1024, or a glorious and monstrous CRT even?

BTW, I go for the naturally expensive desktop replacements because of being in the Army. Mobility [eh, I'm using that term loosely] is valuable. I also don't care for console games and interface [controller] especially in regards to FPS's.

SPC Brungardt wrote:I suppose the solution is an inexpensive, less-than-vicious resolution monitor if you're locked into a laptop, eh? 1280x1024, or a glorious and monstrous CRT even?

See, this is why I love my 21" CRT. I can crank the resolution all the way up to 1800x1440 on older games, and drop it down to 1280x960 on the newer ones, and I don't ever have to worry about dicking around with native resolutions and scaling bullshit.

...why on Earth do you have a floppy drive on that thing? I haven't touched one of those in six years, and you shouldn't either with such an Ungodly DeathBox.

Nephtys wrote:...why on Earth do you have a floppy drive on that thing? I haven't touched one of those in six years, and you shouldn't either with such an Ungodly DeathBox.

So you can install RAID drivers? *shrug* only reason I can think of.

I spoke to my friend today- his HDs make the same noises, but he doesn't think they're faulty (what are the chances?). He's of the view that the error message was a one-off (he told me he'd sometime get a similar message on bootup when he got his new HD, but he never had problems with it and it never failed).

The frequency of the noises isn't constant, if that's any indicator. For long stretches it'll do no such thing. I've never had a faulty HD, so I have no idea.

Another thing to consider is that we noted that the second HD wasn't listed when we first turned the machine on, my friend activated it himself.

Good idea about the error log, I'll check that.

I never did reset my PC after last night, so I guess I'll find out when I get home if the thing lives

If it doesn't, hopefully it's not the HD with Windows on it, else everything will have to be reinstalled, and I'm not going to be the one to do it. My friend should've tested the PC before he delivered it, so it's his job If it's the second HD, I can just turn it off and wait for the new one to be delivered.

Vympel, if I may get something else besides a Seagate. This is anedoctal evidence, but myself, and several other people I know has had a Seagate fail on them.

Vympel, I have a Seagate Barracuda 320GB 16MB 7200 RPM drive - its dead silent. I'd replace yours. As for Seagate in general, I don't think anything is wrong with the brand. Drives fail, and I've heard bad things about every major band.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:The trick is not to spoil yourself on resolutions like 1920 x 1200. Once you've done that, you can't bring yourself to go back, and the ability to keep gaming at those resoultions as new games come out is mind-bogglingly expensive.

I can testify to that! Actually, for 4:3 work, my LCD looks great at 1280x1024. But for 16:10, 1650x1080 looks good enough, but you can tell you're losing quality versus the native 1920x1200. And something like 1200x800 looks like it was rendered with a shitty AA algorithm.

Nephtys wrote:...why on Earth do you have a floppy drive on that thing? I haven't touched one of those in six years, and you shouldn't either with such an Ungodly DeathBox.

They're pretty handy when you need to flash the BIOS.

Kamakazie Sith wrote:Vympel, if I may get something else besides a Seagate. This is anedoctal evidence, but myself, and several other people I know has had a Seagate fail on them.

This is anedoctal evidence, but myself, and several other people I know...

This is anedoctal evidence

It's also worthless advice.

For every hard drive brand you can find people who swear by their reliability and quality, and people who will say that brand makes garbage drives and is rumored to sponsor terrorism.

I know there's at least one poster here who violently rejects Maxtor. I'm sure I can dig up a couple of dudes over at SH/SC who between them have had nothing but troubles with Western Digital and Hitachi/IBM. Uhh, what's left?

Seriously, unless you can post statistics showing that a given brand or drive model has inferior or superior quality control, the only things that ought to be taken into consideration when purchasing a drive are price, features, and the length of the warranty.

(To be fair, there has been an instance of a "lemon" hard drive model - the 60 and 75GXP IBM Deskstars were notorious for high failure rates, so much so that they became known as Deathstars. But that's a pretty rare occurrence.)

Uraniun235 wrote:

Nephtys wrote:...why on Earth do you have a floppy drive on that thing? I haven't touched one of those in six years, and you shouldn't either with such an Ungodly DeathBox.

They're pretty handy when you need to flash the BIOS.

Some BIOSes allow flashing from a flashdrive. The ASUS board he has I believe is one of them. I know mine does.