Dubious about Samsung F1 Spinpoint

[Mikelo]

Im over halfway saving for my new Scan DAW system and I think I've finally have my selected components:

System Overview

Custom Coloured Cases: *No Custom Colour Required*
Case: Silverstone KL03B "Kublai Tower Series"
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 D0 (SLBEJ) - Socket 1366 (B) Nehalem 2.66GHz Cache 8MB 130W Retail
CPU Coolers: Thermalright TRUE Copper 120mm
Overclocking: **No Overclocking Required**
Memory: 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600MHz) 240 Pin Non-ECC Unbuffered CAS 9-9-9-24
NVIDIA Graphics: 512MB Palit 9500GT 550MHz GPU 32 Cores 800MHz GDDR2
ATI Graphics: *No ATI VGA Card Required* (NVIDIA Required)
Power Supply Unit: 650W Be Quiet Dark Power PRO BN073 Modular PSU 87% Eff
System Drives: 250 GB Seagate ST3250310NS Barracuda ES.2 7200 rpm 32MB Cache
Storage Hard drives: 1000 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 7200 rpm 32MB Cache, 2 selected
Solid State Drives: *Solid State Drive Not Required*
Floppy Drive Flash Card Readers & Writers: Akasa Multi Memory Card Reader & USB 2.0 Port
DVD Writer: Samsung SH-S223Q BEBN 22x DVD±R 8x DVD±DL DVD+RW x8 -RW x6 x12 RAM SATA L scribe, 2 selected
Blu Ray Reader Writer: *Blu Ray Not Required*
Sound Card: *No Soundcard Required*
USB 2.0 Firewire Cards: Lycom PE-101 2 Port Firewire 1394a PCI-E Controller Low Hi Profile
Acoustic Sound Proofing: AcoustiPack ULTIMATE Multi-Layered Material Kit
Internal External (USB) Wireless Adaptors: ***No Wireless Required***
Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit
Software Multimedia: *No Software Required*
Software - Application: *No Software Required*
Software - DVD Blu Ray Decoding: CyberLink PowerDVD 8 Standard Movie Audio Player & Decoder
Software - Security: *No Software Required*
TFT Monitor: *Monitor Not Required*
Keyboard & Mouse Pack: *Keyboard Not Required*
Application Specific Keyboards & Controllers : *No Keyboard Controller Required*
Professional Studio Monitors: *No Studio Monitors Required*
Extended Warranty: Standard 3XS System Warranty - 2 Years (1st Year Onsite 2nd Year Return to Base)

The only thing I'm a little worried about are the two Samsung F1 Spinpoint hard drives.
I'm reading on the net that these are pretty fast. I'm also reading though horror stories of them lasting less than a week for many people.
Can anyone at Scan re assure me that these are just a small percentage of cases??!!
I guess Pete will most likely to answer this on as its a audio pc thread plus I feel like he's my computer doctor too!!

[PeteG@Scan]

Hey, yeah I can answer this one

The was a issue with a certain revisions of the 500 gig drives which was fixed quite quickly, and it never really affected our stock as we spotted it in testing and isolated the issue. The later one's are all fine, so this maybe what people are refering too as one bad batch can quickly escalate into lots of missinformed chatter on msg boards. The terrabytes i've looked up this morning and it looks like our return rate on them is less than 0.75% which considering it's our most popular drive this year (we've done over 25,000 to date!) we've pretty confident the's no issue with them!

Returns levels in the industry run at about 3% before they are classed as a real fault, and anything under 1% is a very safe bet. Small batchs of multiple faulty units can be caused by a badly handled batch as they are shipped into the country for instance and these are then split up and shipped to different shops, what appears to be a widespread patten can end up simply being a small batch issue widely exagerated by word of mouth.

If we'd seen any issues here, rest assured I would have removed them from the specs instantly.

On a related note I did spend yesterday afternoon testing a load of terrabyte hard drives to see what would be best for a new Xeon spec i'm working on. The Seagates 7200.12 drives for only a couple of quid more offer about a 7% speed increase in testing over the F1's. Not a huge amount but certainly worth the few quid difference.

I've added them as an option on the audio range now, so if your still a bit iffy on the samsungs being your drives of choice or you simply want the extra speed I reckon they are well worth checking out.

[Mikelo]

Thanks Pete!
You are a god send!
I would be more than happy with the F1'S now you cleared things up but if Xeon's are 7% faster, thats not a bad option either!

One more question Pete,
nothing to do with hard drives as such.
Would Scan ever think about selling an installing UAD2 dsp cards?

regards,
Michael.

[PeteG@Scan]

You completely threw me with this question this morning because I was under the impression that we did sell them!!!

We set up a meeting with the distro that handle them back in march and applied for any account, but somewhere along the lines it's got delayed. I've got our purchasing team talking to them again at the moment with the aim of getting those mighty fine cards into our systems.

So yeah, we're working on it, and i reckon with a bit of pushing we'll get them before the end of the month with any luck

[Mikelo]

You completely threw me with this question this morning because I was under the impression that we did sell them!!!

We set up a meeting with the distro that handle them back in march and applied for any account, but somewhere along the lines it's got delayed. I've got our purchasing team talking to them again at the moment with the aim of getting those mighty fine cards into our systems.

So yeah, we're working on it, and i reckon with a bit of pushing we'll get them before the end of the month with any luck

Pete, if Carlsberg made people...... !!! U

[jim]

Saw this thread previously, and just thought I'd weigh in in support of the Samsungs - I've got 6 Spinpoint F1 drives, and while 2 of them arrived DOA from Scan (IIRC), I've had absolutely no problems with any of them to date.

I know it's nothing definitive, but it is quite a large sample