Skylake --- we have lift off................

Abarbarian

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Well when all the bits arrive that is. :lol:

I do hope I made the right choice for the mobo. I really did want them dragons on the MSI but went for this after reading Beckys posted article.

Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7-EU

Funnily enough it's awful white and not so bad red matches this which I ordered ages ago,


Raijintek Triton AIO Water Cooling

So going with the red theme I wanted the new G-skills but ordered these,


ADATA 32 gigabytes KIT DDR4 2800MHz CL17 XPG Z1

Then I came across this and though why not,

Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB M.2 SSD

Of course I need a adapter card for the above, but where to get a red one from, took some searching but eventually I found this,


PCIe M.2 controller card for 2 SSD : 1x M2 SSD B Key SATA + 1x M2 M Key PCIe

Oh nearly forgot the cpu,

Intel Core i7-6700K

As it is me birthday tomorrow I thought why not add in a small present for meself. I do backups on hdd's from a dock which is pretty slow. So I ordered this to spped things up a tad.

StarTech.com External docking station for 2.5in or 3.5in SATA III 6Gbps hard drives – eSATA or USB 3.0 with UASP

You might think that last item is a tad extravagant but the family are paying for it as a burp day presy, so that's ok then.

I'll have to go and lay down now as spending all that loot has made me feel a little weak and dizzy :lol:












 

muckshifter

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looking sweet ... I need a sit down over the price. :)

What OS. :user:
 

Abarbarian

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looking sweet ... I need a sit down over the price. :)

What OS. :user:

Windows 7 for gaming for the moment. I may have a try at Windows 10 in the spring or just wait till July'ish to make the change.
An of course Arch 64 with me favourite Window Maker WM/DE. An seeing as I will have tons of ram I'm going to have ago at running a ramdisk an possibly some Docker containers. Apparently you can run a os from a docker and it runs as a vanila install. Word is that dockers run os's much better than a virtual install.

As to price me last pc has given me faultless service since 2006 (I'll have to check that as it seems a long time ago) so I recon I deserve a upgrade. Whoooo eee I'm feeling dizzy again just thinking of all that loot disappearing. :lol:
 

Abarbarian

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Whooa Nice, glad it was your bank account ;)

Yeah a big lump of dosh.

However lets say the whole build cost £1,000 if you factor in the psu I bought ages ago with a view to this upgrade and the ssd's I have. Then if the pc lasts ten years that works out at £2 a week. Realistically I should get five years of decent use out of it which works out to £4 a week that is only the price of a couple of beers a week. For a two and a half year life span it works out at £8 a week. Hardly enough to get fish chips and peas and a pint. :cool:
 

Abarbarian

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Watch that, been a lot of reports of them cracking and leaking recently....

Ta for the warning. I had read up on how the early shippers were full of cracks. Seems to have been caused by bad packaging. I'll test mine out of the pc and that will give me a chance to sort out any air bubbles before I do a install.
I am quite nervous about water pumps in general but am hoping that problems will not occur. Listen out for loud screams when I eventually do build. :lol:
 

muckshifter

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This is the one I'm going to get ... it goes with my case. :)


actually, I just ordered it. :D
 
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Abarbarian

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Whoopeee :dance:

Samsung SM951 256GB PCIe NVMe M.2 Solid State

StarTech.com SDOCK2U33 - StarTech.com USB 3.0 Dual Hard Drive Docking Station with UASP

StarTech.com SDOCK2U33 - StarTech.com USB 3.0 Dual Hard Drive Docking Station with UASP

are all on their way. Hopefully not long to count down. :cool:
 

Abarbarian

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One of the above should read ,

Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7-EU

Whooopppeeee. :dance:
 

muckshifter

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I'm a couple hours 80ml away ... but I ain't delivering ... I got my delivery for today, but the water cooler is, in transit. :)

:user:
 

Abarbarian

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Hummphhh. I knew that my order from Alza would take extra time as they were waiting for delivery from Adata for the memory.
I fired of a e-mail to Alza yesterday afternoon asking if they could give me an eta. A reply came early this morning.

Dear customer,

we are expecting your ordered products available on 4th October.

So with a bit of luck I may get me bits by the end of next week. :nod:
 

Abarbarian

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Well as I am sat twiddling me thumbs for a while yet I set up this,

StarTech.com External docking station for 2.5in or 3.5in SATA III 6Gbps hard drives – eSATA or USB 3.0 with UASP

I can not use the UASP or USB 3.0 as my rig only has USB 2.0.

The unit is neat and tidy. Has a button/lever to press which lifts the hdd out of the connectors which seems to put less strain on the connections as it cleanly lifts the hdd. Placing the hdd into the unit is standard and it has a standard dust flap. There is a power button for each slot handily placed at the front of the unit which show a blue light when powered up (neat matches my favourite colour scheme ) and the lights flash pinky red and blue when accessing files and folders. My single slot Icy Dock has a hard to get to power button on the back of the unit so the button placing is a well thought out feature.

The drives power down when not accessing files and there is a slight start up delay when accessing the drives. You can hear some noise from the hdd's, of the two I tried one was almost silent and the other did make some clicking and whirring, nothing abnormal just a tad noisier than the other. Even at USB 2.0 you can play a video without stuttering. Files and folders max out at a constant 20 MB's when transferring between drives or the pc. That is better than the Icy Dock where the transfer rate rises and falls well below that figure. Thought the Icy Dock has good speeds when using the e-sata cable. I will post back once I have a USB 3.0 rig that can handle the USAP as they should be a great deal faster. Even as it stands I am quite happy with the speed and I can finally easily tidy up all my files and backups.

I have a 1 TB main backup (Fort Knox ) that keeps a clean copy of all files and is only accessed to update backups. I keep second backup copies on 500 GB drives where I make changes and do some fiddling before making a keeper copy. I also have a drive for os backups. The dual slot will allow me to run set up syncing software with one click and it can run in the background as I surf etc. All I have to do is place the right hdd's in the slots and power them up. I will leave the 1 TB in place permanently and power it up and down as needed only swapping out the front smaller drives. This should extend the life if the drives and save some small amount of electric.

I bought some coloured plastic shells for the hdd's cost about £1.50 ish which have some padding in them and a neat hinged lid. The drives do not rattle around in them and are great for transporting drives and keeping them dust free. Also I can use them as a temporary dust cover whilst the drives are in the unit. They do have small catches on the hinged lid which I guess will snap of or weaken a lot eventually. If they become unuseable I will use a pretty elasticated hairband to keep the lid secure as they only cost pennies. I may even buy some glittery ones for a little bling on the desktop.

Their are advantages to using a dock as opposed to installing drives to a pc.
Less heat in the pc so your pc may run a little quieter.
Easier to swap out drives.
You could have a hundred drives if you wanted to.
Longer life for the drives, provided you do not drop them of course.
Less electric.
Naturally you loose some desk space and you have to physically switch on and place the drives in the dock.
For me the advantages are well worth the £40 and I will be even happier when I can use it at its full speed.

:cool:
 

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