My first time build, would welcome comments before I purchase hardware!

[Cratzky]

What are you talking about? Any HDD is fast enough to play 1080p movies from. I would also opt for the Samsung 830 SSD because its more reliable than OCZ SSD's and its one of the fastest Sata3 SSD's on the market.

Tell that to my WD Green drive which even has 64mb cache... It can stutter sometimes, and when u try rewind or similar, it just stutters to hell , sometimes hard enough to cause VLC to crash, the search speed on the WD green is abyssmal, i cant describe how much i hate this drive, worst purchase ive done so far. Its only good for 1 thing, and 1 thing only: Storage.
And no, there is nothing wrong with the drive, i've tested it and checked the smart values.
My old Samsung F3 that died on me was waaaaaay faster.

 

[Fourstaff]

Tell that to my WD Green drive which even has 64mb cache... It can stutter sometimes, and when u try rewind or similar, it just stutters to hell , sometimes hard enough to cause VLC to crash, the search speed on the WD green is abyssmal, i cant describe how much i hate this drive, worst purchase ive done so far. Its only good for 1 thing, and 1 thing only: Storage.
And no, there is nothing wrong with the drive, i've tested it and checked the smart values.
My old Samsung F3 that died on me was waaaaaay faster.

I played 1080p off my external USB 2.0 fine, and that is magnitude slower than the WD Greens. I don't know what you did to make your HDD hate you so much, maybe its the problem with too aggressive power saving profile.

 

[Cratzky]

I played 1080p off my external USB 2.0 fine, and that is magnitude slower than the WD Greens. I don't know what you did to make your HDD hate you so much, maybe its the problem with too aggressive power saving profile.

Strange, i honestly dont know...

The read/write speeds according to the benchmarks is fine (around 100mb/sec), the seek time is horrible, and the smart attributes report the drive as OK, and its not old. Its been like this since i got it, and its the same still.

But as soon as i try play a game from the drive, lets say starcraft2 for example, the loading time is extremely slow, 9/10 times, i am the slowest loader.

And in BF3, its even worse, 1/3rd of the map in Rush mode is done before i even get in....

Or when i play a real heavy video file that is atleast 5gigs big, i dont know if its VLC or the drive that is causing it, but it can stutter sometimes in the video, which causes the image to become disorted, but it fixes itself after a few seconds when it resyncs.

I was forced to buy this drive when my old Samsung F3 500gb died on me, and this is no doubt the slowest disk ive tried in many years.

I heard several possibilities why this is happening, many theories are because the drive forces itself down from 7200rpm to 5400rpm to save power (its a green drive after all). Maybe thats why benchmarks show good results, but the drive just feels super slow when it scores the same scores as my F3 did, but in reality, its just much slower for some reason... It behaves like a slow laptop, if i buy a new mechanical some day, its goin to be the new barracuda 7200 or wd black, nothing else

 

[eidairaman1]

if you plan to overclock a k model is fine, but if not and it sounds like you will use this for a HTPC, a non K Model will save you more even if its a 2400

 

[Dent1]

Cratzky,

Your hard disk is obviously faulty. I think your intentions are honourable but your advice is dangerous.

Any hard drive post year 2000 can playback full HD movie content without issue.

I've ran 1080p movies on a old 2003 model Western Digital with 8MB of cache no problems. My current Samsung Ecogreen only has 32MB cache and only 5200RPM and I've never experienced stutter, as a matter of fact I'm always one of the first to load in BF3.

Generally speaking, an average SATA II/IIII mechanical HDD read throughput is about 80-100MB/sec, whereas a blue-ray drive read speed at 8x is only 36MB/Sec. So looking at the scenario logically a HDD should have no issue with playback if a much slower blu-ray drive doesn't.

To the OP, I would avoid buying an SSD if you are just playing movies, 720p movie rip from Pirate Bay will be at least 4GB per file, and you'll literally fill up an SSD in a few months. If this rig is a movie dump you want the biggest hard drive possible which unfortunately happen to be mechanical still. If it's just for the OS, fair enough.

 

[Huddo93]

Hi again Mrmotivator,

Just looking at your response above, if this is more of a home theater build for watching movies then I don't understand why people keep advising you to buy a graphics card!

The only reason I could think of you needing a graphics card, would be if you were watching 3D movies which then would require you to have a 3D (120Hz) monitor though.

And on the issue of sound quality, still look at grabbing a sound card if your worried if you do end up not getting the graphics card. I'm not to sure if in movies you would be able to tell the difference between on board (motherboard) or using the 7.1 out of the graphics card or even using a sound card.

Also, if you are watching movies then the green drive will be fine

Adding to the i5 3570k release date, it will start hitting shelves tomorrow or the day after. I know stores in Australia will be putting them up for sale in 2 days because today is a public holiday in Australia.

 

[mrmotivator]

Hi again Mrmotivator,

Just looking at your response above, if this is more of a home theater build for watching movies then I don't understand why people keep advising you to buy a graphics card!

The only reason I could think of you needing a graphics card, would be if you were watching 3D movies which then would require you to have a 3D (120Hz) monitor though.

And on the issue of sound quality, still look at grabbing a sound card if your worried if you do end up not getting the graphics card. I'm not to sure if in movies you would be able to tell the difference between on board (motherboard) or using the 7.1 out of the graphics card or even using a sound card.

Also, if you are watching movies then the green drive will be fine

Adding to the i5 3570k release date, it will start hitting shelves tomorrow or the day after. I know stores in Australia will be putting them up for sale in 2 days because today is a public holiday in Australia.

Hey thanks Huddo93, I should have mentioned I plan to play quite. Few 3d movies as I just bought a cheap lg 3D flat screen. I take it this means I defo need a graphics card or can I struggle without?

 

[mrmotivator]

Oh and as far as the i5 3570k processor os concearned you think its worth waiting for, I don't think there put on the uk for a while and I have heard mixed reviews??

 

[Dent1]

Hey thanks Huddo93, I should have mentioned I plan to play quite. Few 3d movies as I just bought a cheap lg 3D flat screen. I take it this means I defo need a graphics card or can I struggle without?

I think Huddo was exaggerating to emphasize his point.

You do not need a dedicated video card for movie playback.

The overall build seems over the top, I don't see why you dont just drop in a $65 AMD A4-3300 Llano, it's more than enough for playing movies and it's an APU so it'll perform better than an integrated video card in general.

Oh and as far as the i5 3570k processor os concearned you think its worth waiting for, I don't think there put on the uk for a while and I have heard mixed reviews??

The reviews are not mixed. Ivy is clearly a faster than Ivy Bridge. It's a little bit hotter, but it's expected with integrated GPU. That said using i5 for movie playback is over the top.

 

[Fourstaff]

The overall build seems over the top, I don't see why you dont just drop in a $65 AMD A4-3300 Llano, it's more than enough for playing movies and it's an APU so it'll perform better than an integrated video card in general.

The reviews are not mixed. Ivy is clearly a faster than Ivy Bridge. It's a little bit hotter, but it's expected with integrated GPU. That said using i5 for movie playback is over the top.

If you missed some of his posts he mentioned that he will be doing some encoding. Whether its going to be worth $500 difference I don't know.

 

[mrmotivator]

Will think about it long and hard, depends if i can wait for the i5 3570k processor to come out in the uk

Has any one any ideas on the Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB SATAII 64MB Cache 3.5-inch Internal Hard Drive, i need lots and lots of cheap space???

I already have over 5TB´s on external drives and want to get it all onto the pc and will need more space over the next year. I have upto ten sata slots in my case and the motherboard takes nine i think.

Thanks,

 

[Fourstaff]

I have played around with the Caviar Green 2TB, it seems fine to me. I used it as external storage for a few weeks only though, so your experience might differ a bit. How much pron do you have to need 10 SATA slots? :S You can get one of those PCIe boards which gives out 4 Sata slots, but if you have that many I suggest you build an external server to store those.

 

[mrmotivator]

I have played around with the Caviar Green 2TB, it seems fine to me. I used it as external storage for a few weeks only though, so your experience might differ a bit. How much pron do you have to need 10 SATA slots? :S You can get one of those PCIe boards which gives out 4 Sata slots, but if you have that many I suggest you build an external server to store those.

Haha no just lots of full bluray rips etc, ap you don't think it's a good idea to have the multiple 2 or even 3 to drives on my main pc? What's the difference between that and a server? Excuse my ignorance on this subject lol

 

[Dent1]

Will think about it long and hard, depends if i can wait for the i5 3570k processor to come out in the uk

Your component choice should be based on your intent. A lot of the advice given to you at the start of this thread was aimed at you building a gaming rig or some great encoding hub. Be honest with yourself. How much encoding will you be doing? If it's a serious amount perhaps you should wait for the i5 Ivy Bridge.

If encoding is relegated once per week for a short period, with movie playback being priority I would recommend scrapping the entire build for an AMD. You can literally get an AMD Llano, a decent motherboard and 8GBs of ram for about £100 all in. It'll still be adequate for casual encoding and overkill for movie playback. Whilst saving you a few hundred pounds too.