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What's your latest tech purchase?

Picked up a 2TB Blue 3D
  • 1TB SN750 for OS
  • 1TB Blue 3D for PS, raws and music
  • 2TB Blue 3D for Steam and Epic
  • 2TB SN850X for DCS and other large files
Not sure what is happening to the Blues. The Amazon page suggests that it is being replaced with the DRAMless SA510 (big yikes), but it doesn't look like the SA510 has any 2TB/4TB SKU......yet. The SA510 has its own sticker, but there is a new sticker for the Blue 3D too (at least the 2TB).

Blue 3D disappeared from the branding, but at least the product number still checks out as being Blue 3D.

Well, at least the shift to DRAMless SATA came with a clear branding change, I guess, so it's not ADATA-level bait and switch


View attachment 282643
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DRAM cache seems to be slowly dissapearing from consumer drives. I wonder why.
 
DRAM cache seems to be slowly dissapearing from consumer drives. I wonder why.

Think they're just trying to kill off SATA. SA510 is basically a Green in Blue's clothing, regional varieties of MX500 can now be found with QLC, some BX500 have QLC (and even the TLC versions sucked).

I'm not SATA's biggest fan, but beyond 2 NVMes I still have no choice. Can't get this kind of deal ($160cad for 2TB, $310cad for 4TB) on NVMes...

The Blue 3D has always been a reliable workhorse. Sad to see these garbaggio Greens and DRAMless imposters taking over the affordable end of the market. They can have the 250/500/1TB capacities, don't touch my freakin 2TB drives please.

For posterity:
  • Blue 3D: WDxxxT2B0A
  • SA510: WDxxxT3B0A
The WD website confirms that the Blue 3D lineup lives on, at least for now, in only the largest capacities:

 
Not sure what is happening to the Blues.
Every capacity upgrade will drop the TBW (roughly halving it) in each size segment - so a 1TB will have the TBW of the next gens 2TB
(They use chips with double the density whenever they can - so a 1TB vs a 1TB would have half the chips, half the life. If its just more layers on the same chip number TLC/QLC, the change isn't as large)

NVME budget drives are going DRAMless and it's not a huge issue since they have HBM (and it's improving steadily)
Second link on it - Anandtech

DRAMless on SATA, i'm not keen on. Without a buffer those random writes are gunna get really poor, and in theory it could hurt their lifespan without something to buffer up the small writes.

DRAM cache seems to be slowly dissapearing from consumer drives. I wonder why.
HBM solved the issue on NVME - it uses system DRAM instead, and with modern DDR4 and DDR5 systems that little bit of HBM cache is MASSIVELY faster than the internal LPDDR3/4 was

As for SATA SSD's? Probably because they're now the budget segment. NVME has existed for a very very long time now, and even cheap SSD's can saturate the SATA III interface easily in basic read/write.




The HMB TL;DR summary is that the DRAM cache was so small it was only ever really used to buffer the file tables anyway, having them in system ram the OS is aware of sped things up even more.
Write buffering seems to be relegated to the OS, and you just hope they do it well.

This is of course from an NVME drive, but as you can see working with a smaller amount of data at a time going HBM/cache free was faster - if they view these as budget drives for smaller writes at a time, they'd possibly be genuinely better off without the DRAM.
(It's not like you can remove the DRAM from an SSD to test, but you can disable HBM to test as a somewhat valid comparison)

Interestingly this drive only used 38MB of DRAM - but look at the performance gain when dealing with huge amounts of files, since it meant there was no delay in knowing where they had to be written to the drive

If you think of the average joe out there, they genuinely would write less than 2GB at a time in almost all circumstances
1675746800375.png



The most interesting part of that anandtech article is that the difference between HBM on and off is there, but FAR smaller than the difference between the 240GB and 480GB model - getting the smallest size of ANY SSD series means you're getting the least amount of flash memory and performance and endurance are GARBAGE. If you're after small sizes, get a last gen drive where it's not the baby of that product stack
1675747044783.png
 
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I bought a Displayport to HDMI cable on Shopee (the Southeast Asian analogue to Amazon, Newegg etc, those two sites aren't really a thing here) so I can connect my monitor which only has HDMI and D-Sub ports to my graphics card that has 3 DP and 1 HDMI port (you know, just in case the HDMI port craps itself again).

Thing is, the seller claims to be from East Malaysia (where I live), but I checked my order, it's delivering from West Malaysia (separated from where I am by a sea, look it up in a map). I feel so misled right now. Shame on them. At least the thing's on its way to me right now.
Just got it today. Aaaand the display output cuts off after the BIOS screen, when Windows is loading. Had to revert to my good old HDMI-HDMI cable. Why did I buy a monitor with no DP connection??
 
New 1TB NVME couldn't resist at this price

1675764144153.png
 
I bought a TP Link 5 port switch, a 4xUSB to 2x motherboard panel header on PCI bracket, and a TI Inspire CXII CAS.
 
Just got it today. Aaaand the display output cuts off after the BIOS screen, when Windows is loading. Had to revert to my good old HDMI-HDMI cable. Why did I buy a monitor with no DP connection??

Did you add an exhaust fan yet?

Sorry about the cable stuff, but HDMI is good enough really.
 
Just got it today. Aaaand the display output cuts off after the BIOS screen, when Windows is loading. Had to revert to my good old HDMI-HDMI cable. Why did I buy a monitor with no DP connection??

How closely did you look at pin out?

If refund is not likely you could also try gently sliding back the connectors to see look at cable termination.
 
Swapped my old Samsung Galaxy S8 for this (phone not in the picture 'cause I'm holding it!). Perfect for my rather small hands and much faster compared to my old S8 to boot. Battery seems to last forever as well.
P_20230207_192212.jpg
 
IMG_0511.JPG
IMG_0513.JPG

Got a few bits mor my PC:

1. RTX4080 PNY Verto
2. Returned the Non-RGB Phanteks G500A and replaced it with the RGB version.
3. New CPU Cooler DeepCool LS520 SE 240mm ARGB AIO - quite impressive this one
4. New PSU Corsair RMx SHIFT Series 1000W ATX 3.0 80+ Gold

Using some of the old parts I had and also bought a few new ones to build another PC (to be sold), the parts I bought are:

1. NZXT H5 Flow Black
2. MSI Suprim X RTX 4070 Ti
3. AMD R9 7900X
4. GSkill Trident Z5 Neo 32GB DDR5 6000Mhz C36
5. Aorus X670 Elite AX
 
I finally received my motherboard for my AMD Ryzen 7700 and memory

IMG_8356.jpg IMG_8358.jpg

Only thing that bugged me was I am using onboard graphics now and I had to run whql-amd-software-adrenalin-edition-22.11.2-win10-win11-dec8.exe again because graphics got detected even in the unpacked version on C:\AMD the drivers wasn't found.

I also have problems with bios update the computer turns off when I click on read bios and then reboots nothing happens so maybe I should try bios flashback not sure yet :confused:

*EDIT* Wrote to Asus technical support this morning because after EZ Flasher 3 read the bios file on the same USB I used in the past for my ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero this new motherboard just reboots with a black screen. I have waited first 5mins, second time 10mins then I hold down the power button to my computer turns off and then starting it up the board memory trains not for long and then it boots into Windows 11 even ran Aida64 stress test yesterday all core with boost max 45c on my Noctua NH-D15 chromax black with only the middle fan installed :rolleyes:
 
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View attachment 282784View attachment 282785
Got a few bits mor my PC:

1. RTX4080 PNY Verto
2. Returned the Non-RGB Phanteks G500A and replaced it with the RGB version.
3. New CPU Cooler DeepCool LS520 SE 240mm ARGB AIO - quite impressive this one
4. New PSU Corsair RMx SHIFT Series 1000W ATX 3.0 80+ Gold

Using some of the old parts I had and also bought a few new ones to build another PC (to be sold), the parts I bought are:

1. NZXT H5 Flow Black
2. MSI Suprim X RTX 4070 Ti
3. AMD R9 7900X
4. GSkill Trident Z5 Neo 32GB DDR5 6000Mhz C36
5. Aorus X670 Elite AX
Party at Liviu Cojocarus house!

 
yeah
glad you are enjoying yours
its got a gpu thats enough to play some games
but also is not a obnoxious gaming pc
but also has great battery night *With gpu off*
its a really great system
 
Just got it today. Aaaand the display output cuts off after the BIOS screen, when Windows is loading. Had to revert to my good old HDMI-HDMI cable. Why did I buy a monitor with no DP connection??
Try it out in windows as part of a multimonitor setup (even with the same display twice) to see whats going on there - even really bad ones should just limit you to 1080p and not give no signal
 
View attachment 282784
Got a few bits mor my PC:

1. RTX4080 PNY Verto
2. Returned the Non-RGB Phanteks G500A and replaced it with the RGB version.
3. New CPU Cooler DeepCool LS520 SE 240mm ARGB AIO - quite impressive this one
4. New PSU Corsair RMx SHIFT Series 1000W ATX 3.0 80+ Gold

Using some of the old parts I had and also bought a few new ones to build another PC (to be sold), the parts I bought are:

1. NZXT H5 Flow Black
2. MSI Suprim X RTX 4070 Ti
3. AMD R9 7900X
4. GSkill Trident Z5 Neo 32GB DDR5 6000Mhz C36
5. Aorus X670 Elite AX
Show us the cable infested side of your build. How does it look in the G500A?
 
Returned the Air VaporMax Plus shoes, too tight and uncomfortable, also they didn't have larger size anymore.....

I called with nike about the return of the shoes, got a 20% Off code and ordered these:

Nike Invincible 3 ZoomX technology :D

Screenshot_20230208_140156.png


Walking on these should be like:

Screenshot_20230208_140752.png
 
First Results:
13700K 5.5 Ghz P 4.4 Ghz E and 4.9 Ghz Ring NH D15
R23 ~305W Power Consumption (105°C Temp Limit in Bios)

Stock:
CPU Hits 105°C on 4-5 Cores within 3 Seconds and throttles down to 4.8 GHz at the end (~30k Points)
Contact Frame:
CPU hits high 80s in the same time, ends up at 95-98°C Max while still running at 5.5 Ghz all core. (mid. 32k Points)
Stock settings with Stock Powerlimit (253W) is around 10°C Cooler.
IMG20230208154452.jpg
 
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Okay, I should've seen that coming. :roll:

Here's my build in the G500A
2HCMkM7.jpg

look-a-like!
WUyMDLa.jpg
Did not have enough time to do a better cable management job… the result is
EEAFC7AF-8FB8-4A14-B8B9-913B0F8F912A.jpeg
 
You can use cut up pieces of spare cable ties to bunch the bundles closer together to look neater, as long as they dont get so bunchy they cause side panel issues

1/4 of a reusable cable tie could hold the little fan ones together, with zero risk of them getting damaged like a hard tie can do
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Bought myself a graphite Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 512GB, bundled with their Buds 2 Pro.
Expensive? Hella sure, but they offered me for my current Galaxy Note 10 almost what I paid for it some years ago.

Pics when it does arrive.
 
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