Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[InnerGoat]

You can wash almost all of them if you open the thing up. I did that with an old Logitech and it took 6 years of blood and sweat off it

[Amit]

I cleaned my 6 year old Microsoft Basic Keyboard 1.0 last weekend. So easy. I spilled soup in there early last year, so it had crusted over a lot and some keys stuck. So I was reading this thread and decided I needed to clean that shit out. I don't use it anymore, but if I ever need to use it again, I'd rather not have it be disgusting. I flipped the keys off using a small flat screw driver, soaked the keys in lukewarm dish washing soap + water overnight. Strained them out, washed them two more times to make sure not of the gunk is still on them. Laid them out with the hollow section facing down to let the water come out. Let them dry for a day. To clean the inside surface of the board itself, I had to take it apart, but it was just a few simple screws to release on the back and the thing comes right off. Had to use an aluminum dishwashing scrubber to get all that crazy shit off. It was disgusting. I gagged a few times. By the end, though, everything looked brand new again. I should have done this right after the soup fell on the keyboard, but whatevs.

[Cortexian]

I'm sure I posted this before, but this is fucking awesome:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01...cloud-storage/

67 Terabytes (1.5TB single drives) for $7,867
90 Terabytes (2TB single 5,900rpm drives) for $5,617 - I would likely build this, I came up with this price based on the 2TB drives I've been using priced at their normal price of $70 each.

[Warsaw]

Cost savings are likely through the lower RPM, that's the only way I can see 67 TB costing more than 90 TB. Had I a need for such large storage, I would probably do the same thing; lower RPM means less wear which further translates to longer life.

[Cortexian]

Yeah, those 1.5TB drives are 7,200rpm ones. They use them because they're a backup solution company so they need the performance. For a home user that just wants to store petabytes of movies it's not needed.

[Cortexian]

So I recently tried updating to the F6 BIOS from F5 on my P67A-UD7-B3, the update went fine except whatever changes they made didn't agree with my setup. If I enabled the XHD RAID (which I need to do because my boot drive is two drives in RAID-0) the BIOS couldn't seem to find a boot drive and Windows would never load. If I stuck the Windows install CD in and tried repairs it couldn't find any problems, and if I tried a custom install it said it couldn't install to the RAID-0 because the system couldn't boot from it.

Anyway, I flashed back to F5 and now I'm getting different issues. I can boot to Windows fine but my BIOS is acting really weird. If I restart my PC it will actually shut off for a few seconds (like it does when you finish a BIOS flash). It automatically starts again and proceeds to boot with some weird non-default BIOS settings.

The same issue happens if I shut down the PC. When I manually start it, it starts and then shuts down for a few seconds before proceeding to boot and give me weird BIOS settings.

If I change the BIOS settings and save, the system restarts normally without shutting down and starting again, and proceeds to Windows. However it is VERY unstable, even at default BIOS settings. I've tried overclocking, underclocking, and manually inputting values similar to what this CPU should be running at (3.3GHz).



EDIT: Just flashed the BIOS again to F5 and it's not doing the weird start or shutting down when restarting. Playing with BIOS again now, was able set my memories XMP profile (1866MHz) which also set my CPU multiplier to 37. So running 3.7GHz stable now (just ran IntelBurnTest). Going to start upping it again.

EDIT EDIT: Just got 4.4GHz stable. I'll work on getting that extra 200MHz again tomorrow.

EDIT EDIT: Stable at 4.6GHz again, yay!

[ThePlague]

What's your opinion on this mobo?

I have a Phenom II x4 and two 6870's. I'm looking for something under 100 that I can crossfire at x8x8, and something that all of my parts are compatible with. If I do get this i'll probably also get a CPU cooler to OC more.

[Warsaw]

I had that exact mobo. It's absolutely rock solid, I can't find any fault with it. It will what you want it to do and more.

[ThePlague]

Did you crossfire with it? And will I be able to overclock nicely?

[Warsaw]

I didn't get that far. Computer blew up before I could purchase a second HD5770, taking my first 5770 and everything else down with it. Was not the fault of the motherboard, was an unkeyed plug being plugged in backwards (FFFFFFFFFFF-). You can overclock splendidly though.