Emuforums.com - View Single Post - Need advice on a harddrive and ram please

Cid Highwind · August 14th, 2006

Hey guys, I've been looking for a new Harddrive since this 30GB apart from being too small, is showing signs of age as well.

I've heard from a friend who builds a lot of computers that Western Digital seems to be a good bet, so I've been looking at the 320GB ones of WD.

The only problem that now has arisen is that I have the following mobo.

It's got SATA support, but at the same time I also see SATA2 harddrives. What's the difference, and would those SATA2 drives also work on my mobo or not?

Another thing that I wanted to upgrade is my ram, currently there's 512 megs of unknown DDR400, bought it in kenya and so far it works great. I wanted to add another 512 to it, and would like to know what would be a good brand. From what I know Kingston is a solid brand, but please correct me if I'm wrong. My motherboard does not support dual channel, so don't take that into consideration. I'm considering buying "Kingston ValueRAM 512MB DDR400" for about 40 euros.

Finally, I might as well buy myself a new PSU, just to be sure I'm not going to blow when I throw something heavy at the 7800. At this moment I'm running games like Neverwinter Nights, The new Settlers and Serious Sam 2 just fine with most things maxed out (except HDR) and 4x AA, without any stability problems. My current PSU is an MTek 400W with 20 amps on the 12v rail. So I'm kinda low in that respect, especially seeing how the box demands 26. Yet I've read reviews claiming that a solid 20 would be enough for my card.

Anyway, seeing the current one is doing just fine, I'm thinking of sticking with the brand and upgrading to their 460W PSU, which comes with 30 amps on the +12v rail. This way I can buy all three upgrades for less than 200 euros, which is still more than enough to me seeing how I also spend 220 on the videocard.

I would really like to hear the advice of some of the hardware gurus here

Btw, I also heard things about fluctuations in the PSU should not be more than 5% or something, is there a way to monitor this for my current one?

__________________

PC Specs:
CPU: Intel E4400 @ 2.66GHz
GPU: ATi HD4870 / 512MB / Core: 775 / Mem: 1025
Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3 (rev 2.1)
SPU: Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music
RAM: 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR800 @ 4-4-4-12 ~ 800MHz
HDD: 320GB Western Digital 16MB Caviar SE
PSU: Hiper Type-R 580W

Geometry Wars: 198.400
Lumines: 523.879

Rip: Cid's Bleemcast 28-08-2007

X360/Wii/PS3 belong to the current generation, update your mindset FFS

Last edited by Cid Highwind; August 14th, 2006 at 02:13.

August 14th, 2006	#1 (permalink)
Cid Highwind Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Somwhere out in space? The Land of the Free? Heaven or Hell? Posts: 11,846	Need advice on a harddrive and ram please Hey guys, I've been looking for a new Harddrive since this 30GB apart from being too small, is showing signs of age as well. I've heard from a friend who builds a lot of computers that Western Digital seems to be a good bet, so I've been looking at the 320GB ones of WD. The only problem that now has arisen is that I have the following mobo. It's got SATA support, but at the same time I also see SATA2 harddrives. What's the difference, and would those SATA2 drives also work on my mobo or not? Another thing that I wanted to upgrade is my ram, currently there's 512 megs of unknown DDR400, bought it in kenya and so far it works great. I wanted to add another 512 to it, and would like to know what would be a good brand. From what I know Kingston is a solid brand, but please correct me if I'm wrong. My motherboard does not support dual channel, so don't take that into consideration. I'm considering buying "Kingston ValueRAM 512MB DDR400" for about 40 euros. Finally, I might as well buy myself a new PSU, just to be sure I'm not going to blow when I throw something heavy at the 7800. At this moment I'm running games like Neverwinter Nights, The new Settlers and Serious Sam 2 just fine with most things maxed out (except HDR) and 4x AA, without any stability problems. My current PSU is an MTek 400W with 20 amps on the 12v rail. So I'm kinda low in that respect, especially seeing how the box demands 26. Yet I've read reviews claiming that a solid 20 would be enough for my card. Anyway, seeing the current one is doing just fine, I'm thinking of sticking with the brand and upgrading to their 460W PSU, which comes with 30 amps on the +12v rail. This way I can buy all three upgrades for less than 200 euros, which is still more than enough to me seeing how I also spend 220 on the videocard. I would really like to hear the advice of some of the hardware gurus here Btw, I also heard things about fluctuations in the PSU should not be more than 5% or something, is there a way to monitor this for my current one? __________________ PC Specs: CPU: Intel E4400 @ 2.66GHz GPU: ATi HD4870 / 512MB / Core: 775 / Mem: 1025 Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3 (rev 2.1) SPU: Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music RAM: 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR800 @ 4-4-4-12 ~ 800MHz HDD: 320GB Western Digital 16MB Caviar SE PSU: Hiper Type-R 580W Geometry Wars: 198.400 Lumines: 523.879 Rip: Cid's Bleemcast 28-08-2007 X360/Wii/PS3 belong to the current generation, update your mindset FFS Last edited by Cid Highwind; August 14th, 2006 at 02:13.