New system build hard drive choices and more

AAEX and FAEX are WD model number suffixes, and the Velociraptor (VR) is a WD drive.

 

Hmmm...

So for a 2TB performance/reliability choice, what to do? WD Black or RE4? Or Seagate?

 

All I know is that it happens. Not a HUGE amount, but a few times. At least enough to warrant mentioning just in case Pimpsta ever ran into the problem.

Aside from my issue I had a couple clients complain about their PCs not being able to wake up from sleep mode, or access to their storage drive takes forever to wake up.. if it even does. As soon as I changed the power management option to keep the drive from sleeping... no problems. As long as the drive is never allowed to "sleep" it's fine. If it sleeps, say longer than 20-30 minutes, you can forget getting it to wake up. It also seems to be happening with the larger 1TB/2TB drives. Never the smaller ones.

I remember reading a Microsoft KB on a similar issue where if the drive takes longer than 10 seconds to "resume" the OS would time out the drive, and it would just up and disappear until you rebooted. The issue wasn't just with Black drives, but any large (>1TB) hard drive. From what I remember this "fix" is included with Windows 7 SP1, and as of SP1 the issue has died down considerably. Still happens occasionally, mostly with machines that are a couple years or more old, and of course it still happens with my gaming rig regardless, however, with my gaming rig I'm inclined to think it's a problem with the Marvell controller. I'm using the Microsoft supplied AHCI driver, but the issue still occurs on it.

That's my bad. I guess I should have clarified the model numbers a bit better.

Newest gen Black drives less than 1TB have the AAEX suffix on their model numbers, and drives at and above 1TB are FAEX. The key is that these drives all use 500GB platters.

Unless it's the drives that have the longer warranties, not Seagate. At least in my opinion. 1 year is ridiculous. I'd still go with the WD Black or RE4. Personally I'd go RE4 if it's really critical data we're talking about. Plus I think WD has a rebate on the 2TB RE4 drives making them just $70 more than the 2TB WD Blacks (depends on where you go though as some are doing it as an instant rebate, like NCIX, while others are doing it as a mail in).

Just a note, I didn't meant to scare you off of buying a WD Black with my comment, just to warn you that if you get that issue you'll know what to do.

Edit: BTW, RE4 drives are pretty much souped up Blacks. Same specs with better parts (key being they last longer, especially in the load/unload cycles), and TLER support, so $60-70 more might be worth it for you.

Edit 2: Bah.. totally forgot. There are also RE4 Green drives (RE4-GP), but I can't comment personally on them as I've never bought one, but given what I've read I'd just stay away from them.

 

Damn I'm tired. Keep having to edit my posts over and over because of mistakes, rambling on, or just the post just not making sense. Sorry if I'm messing things up here, guys.

 

I'm assembling now, the CPU heatsink is disgusting huge, eats up a couple DIMM slots, now the CPU heatsink is slightly touching the RAM heatsink... shouldn't be an issue right?? I will post a pic, the ram does not look like it is being pressured or tilted.

Edit 1: ok slight issue it seems to be touching the fan when I use the ASUS recommended setup of using dimm slots A1/B1/C1/D1. They said there is better compatability in this config. However, is A1/A2/C1/C2 ok? And will it enable quad channel?? This heat sink is a little lame...

Edit 2: Great, found a review warning people from buying Ripjawz with this cooler lol... any ways here is the configurations:

Recommended A1/B1/C1/D1:



Not recommended (and fits) A1/A2/C1/C2:

 

Need to check it..

 

A1/A2/C1/C2 as far as I understand will be dual-channel. The letters indicate channels, and you're only populating two.

The RAM sinks coming into contact with the heatsink should not be an issue as long as there's no pressure (check this with the board upright).

It's worth mentioning that the real-world performance drop from dual-channel as opposed to quad-channel is pretty small.

 

Crap, call me greedy or picky, I want it in quad channel.... looks like I gotta exchange the cooler?

 

alternatively you could bend or cut the offending heatsink fins off.

btw the Noctua DH-14 heatsink allows easy access to the quad channel slots on the board.. however filling all 8 slots will still be impossible.

One of the "promoted" features of these heatsinks is that they will not block excisting slots and are designed to sit higher.. however every single one i've ever gotten would only allow the dimm slots useable with low profile or generatic ram with utterly no heat spreaders that extended up beyond the edge of the dimm pcb itself.

Personally i find this to be a complete lie and disceptive, false advertising.

 

Ok well it looks like I'm gonna have to exchange it quickly in an hr or two.... D14 was on my list but it looks too big also. What else can people recommend? Stylish and does a good job. I'm using a Zalman 8700 cooler on the my Q6600 here and it's nice. Anything from Scythe? The zalman did look nice and would of done some serious cooling.

 

Another option is to send back the Ripjaws and get Vengeance Low Profile.

If you'd rather swap the cooler, the easiest memory access comes with closed loop liquid coolers like the Corsair H80.

 

I think this is will have to be done... i should of bought it before! Let me see the size of the ram and my clearance.

 

Coolermaster Hypber 212 EVO does an excellent job.... but depending on the orientation you want for it.. may effect the sticks too.

 

Ok got the system up and running... a few more questions since every system config is diff.

1. Trying to figure out how to get the eSata port to work. I recall my old one needed the marvell driver installed, which it is now and enabled in the BIOS.

2. Also, I needed a few more USB3.0 ports possibly... I noticed a bracket sometimes comes with these boards in the manul and I do have a freeUSB3.0 connector on the board. Does this mean I can order one that fits into the expansion slots and connects with a cable?

3. A lot of my motherboard's onboard components didn't detect the first time, such as ethernet and memory controllers when I first booted into windows. I used the CD to manually install a number of drivers, will I need to do this everytime I reformat? I ask because my old system didn't need this, but most of the components in it were before Win7 came out. Vista didn't need it either...

Otherwise its looking good, gonna have to remove the board for a minute to install the bluetooth adapter. Very stupid procedure. Otherwise, pretty lightning quick.

 

1) Never used eSata so can't help there.

2) As far as I know the USB header on modern boards is a standard. In fact the case your using has 2 USB 3.0 front panel ports. Some cases have the actual header which you attach directly to your board. Others have a pass-through which is a standard USB connector which you connect to a USB port on the motherboard.

3) I think it's likely that once detected they will stay detected. Sometimes a device will not be properly identified and will show up in device manager as an unknown or other device. Just make sure everything you want to use is enabled in the BIOS.

 

Hope #3 isn't an issue.... the front panel on the Obsidian actually connects using a regular USB connect through the case to the back USB3.0 ports. So it's not a standard pin connector. Anyone know if ASUS sells the expansion connections?

 

Looking on the ASUS website they don't appear to sell a USB header extension. I'm surprised a luxury board like that didn't come supplied with one.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-3-0-2..._USB_Cables_Hubs_Adapters&hash=item3a76d07ef4

I'm pretty sure something like this would be what you need.

 

You should be able to buy an extra USB3 bracket. But what on earth do you need so many high-bandwidth ports (6!) for? You realise there's no benefit for your mouse, keyboard, etc.?

Regarding reformatting, I disagree with Jac. Windows doesn't remember your devices when you reformat - it's a clean start, that's the whole point. So if they weren't covered by Windows' built in driver library this time, I don't see how they could be next time. You'll need to use the CD or downloaded drivers from the manufacturer's website each time you reformat imo. Unless something simply went wrong with the installation this time.

 

Sorry, misread 'reformat' as 'restart'.

 

Download the required driver for it, http://support.asus.com/ is a good place to start in order to find the proper driver for the components, good guide, at which point either download what asus has (which are typically older drivers, but much newer than the cd drivers) or better yet go to the actual manufacturer of the chip makers site and download their own latest version. It should be as easy and downloading, installing and plugged it in.

Most of the motherboards do not come with the USB3.0 backplate. These are special order. Also keep in mind that some of the manufacturers use a standard usb 1.1/2.0 8/9/10 pin backplate when ordering them for the USB3.0. You'll need to make sure it uses the proper USB3.0 header connector, otherwise obviously you won't be able to connect it.

This happened to every version of windows, manufacturers finally improve/change their hardware resulting in windows not having the appropriate drivers for it. I've been installing windows for quite some time now and the LAN driver is basically the only driver aside form the SATA/RAID drivers occasionally, that i slap on a usb drive and install (never use the CD...) and stick it in.

Once in, windows quite often will find numerous drivers online through windows own driver database. I usually try to avoid letting windows attempt to install these drivers. However i do let windows install the intel management interface driver, i hate the bloatware that comes with the direct download from intel or asus, unnecessary services/startups.

IMO just try to avoid using the CD.... the drivers on the cd that come with almost all the the boards are usually extremely old, some of them mostly "beta" state, barely pass WHQL, and are rushed out with the product to meet deadlines.