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"I need a new PC!" 2010 Edition

brain_stew said:
Could you come back and either post a picture of it, or list what it says under either "12v" "12v1" or "12v2" itll probably be xa where x is a number. While I can be pretty it'll take a decent GPU considering it already has a dedicated card, its always best to be sure.
According to the PSU it is 350 watts and there are two 12v ratings, the 12v+ rating is 10A and the 12v- rating is 0.8A.

brain_stew said:
Whilst you're looking inside, let me know how many RAM slots it has.
To be honest I'm not 100% certain, in the section of the motherboard where the RAM is currently there are 4 slots, but the RAM has only been inserted in slot 1 and 3 which makes it look like the 2nd and 4th slots are something different. They all appear to be the same though.


In response to some of the other things you mentioned, I don't intend to stay on 1024x768 it's just that's my best option since I can't afford a monitor for at least another year. I'd rather skip the 5670 if it'll struggle at higher resolutions as I can't afford to waste £70 for a short term improvement. The 5770 however is way too expensive, in a year or two that would probably be fine but not in my current situation.

For the CPU, so long as I won't risk wrecking the PC when trying to overclock it then I would like a bit more info about that. I was worried that I'd need a brand new CPU to get an improvement out of this PC, so if I can just do a minor adjustment to get 2.6-3ghz that'd be great. As for the cooling, I've only got the basic CPU fan and a standard case fan so any overclocking would have to take that into account.

Finally, thanks for the offer of the 4850, but as tempting as it sounds I'm afraid I will probably pass on it. I've had some very bad experiences with second hand PC parts in the past so I prefer to stay on the side of caution and only buy everything brand new, that way I've got a guarentee that it'll work for at least a year.
 
projekt84 said:
Question, what would be a better choice.

I'm stuck between these two options:

- core i3-530
- Decent motherboard
- decent case

all for $220, with a $13 mail in rebate

OR

- AMD Phenom II X4 945 95W
- slightly better motherboard (negligible difference than other one tho)
- no case

$218, with $10 mail in rebate.

the i3 has a better chance for upgrades down the road, i guess.

Upgrade wise you've got that the complete opposite way around, AM3 has more future life tahn socket 1156. Get the quad.
 
brain_stew said:
Upgrade wise you've got that the complete opposite way around, AM3 has more future life tahn socket 1156. Get the quad.

Cool. Thanks.

Tigerdirect has 15% bing cashback so I'm going to see if I can hit this up today/tomorrow!
 
brain_stew said:
The reason you can't have upgrade options is because none of Intel's platform's have any definite mainstream upgrade path, its just the way it is with Intel hardware.

Ideally, i7-860, 5850, would be the way to go but since you seem to be struggling budget wise, and since AMD platform's do have upgrade potential it may be the right option for you. You'll sacrifice power in the here and now but it'll be cheaper and you'll have a better potential for future upgrades, so its not a terrible option perhaps.

If that was the case, I'd say a 770 board + 955 BE offer a good combination at a low cost.

Hm. So for my budget, should I perhaps look at a pair of alternative builds:

Power Build
  • I7-860 CPU
  • ATI 5850
  • Asus 22" monitor
  • WD Caviar Blue 500GB HDD (with my current 500GB as a secondary)
  • Windows Pro 7

£825 - still need a mobo (any suggestions?) and (maybe) RAM

Upgrade Build
  • AMD965 / MA770 mobo (should also take my 3GB of DDR2 from my current PC)
  • ATI 5850
  • Asus 22" monitor
  • WD Caviar Blue 500GB HDD (with my current 500GB as a secondary)
  • Windows Pro 7

£805

Not sure what I else I can cannibalise from my current PC (would have to check), but I think I might still be looking for:
  • DVD burner
  • Wireless card
  • Sound card
  • A decent-sized case
Can't think of anything else off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's something I've overlooked. Any suggestions for other components?

Thanks again for the advice :-)
 
No need to buy a full version of W7, just get an OEM copy, that'll knock nearly £100 off your budget.

The 965 is overpriced, just get the 955, its the same chip, multiplier unlocked and everything, if you want the extra speed of the 965 its a case of changing one setting in the BIOS and you have it.

Caviar Blue's aren't too fast, get a Samsung F3, much quicker.

You don't want to be bringing over your DDR2 RAM if you want upgrade options, need a DDR3 AM3 motherboard. I've actually heard some good things about this MSI board, and if you're trying to penny pinch its a decent option:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165438

There's 23" 1080p monitors available for less than £150 last time I checked so I'd probably have a closer look there as well.

Get your 5850 from Novatech.co.uk, only £220.
 
Since you don't game, and you said Photoshop, no games, and nothing about video editting/encoding so you could probably move the i7-860 to a i5-750 and Radeon 5770 or even 5670 if you really want to push it. I think the option to game is nice though so I'd go with 5770 minimum. That'll let you stay under 800 with motherboard and RAM I think. The Gigabyte P55A-UD3 is what I usually recommend for a cheap LGA1156 board. 4GB of DDR3 RAM from G.SKILL, Corsair, Patriot, Mushkin, etc. should be good for RAM.
 
Finally got to order some parts today for my upcoming build:
- Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Case
- ASUS P7P55-E Motherboard
- Intel X25-V Solid State Drive
- WD 1TB Caviar Black Hard Disc Drive
- Noctua 120mm LGA 1156 CPU Cooler
- DVD Burner

Already have:
- Intel i7-860 CPU
- Windows 7 Home Premium (edit: 64-bit)

On the horizon:
- XFX ATI Radeon 5850HD
- XFX 650W XXX Edition PSU
- 4GB Corsair RAM

Will add later:
- Blu Ray Drive

Can't wait to finally build it! =)
 
brain_stew said:
No need to buy a full version of W7, just get an OEM copy, that'll knock nearly £100 off your budget.

Does this seem reasonable?

The 965 is overpriced, just get the 955, its the same chip, multiplier unlocked and everything, if you want the extra speed of the 965 its a case of changing one setting in the BIOS and you have it.

Cool - so this then?

Caviar Blue's aren't too fast, get a Samsung F3, much quicker.

I'd gone for that as I've got one as my current secondary drive and I've been happy with it, but it might be best to have something larger and faster as a primary - how about this?

You don't want to be bringing over your DDR2 RAM if you want upgrade options, need a DDR3 AM3 motherboard. I've actually heard some good things about this MSI board, and if you're trying to penny pinch its a decent option

Looks reasonable, and I'm not averse to buying fresh RAM - Firestorm's suggestion of 4GB G.Skill DDR3 looks OK.

There's 23" 1080p monitors available for less than £150 last time I checked so I'd probably have a closer look there as well.

Mm. What do you know about this Sammy - clicky?

Firestorm - I do game, and ideally I'd like this to be a good solid base for at least a couple of years of gaming before I need to look at upgrading. I'd also like to have enough grunt for PCSX and Dolphin but looking at required specs I might need to be patient there...
 
Just found out my tax return is going to be significantly larger than I anticipated. I'm juggling around a few ideas of what to do with some of it and one of those includes building another computer. I only really get back in touch with what's what in hardware right around the time I decide to build.

The specs of the PC I built about 2 years ago off the top of my head (On work PC atm):

Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale8400 @ 3.0 Ghz
4 gigs of Ram (can't remember the speed)
Nvidia 8800 GTS G92

Other stuff that's slightly less pertinent to my question for the moment. I actually have 2.

The first question - If I were to give myself a budget of $1,000 - 1,200, how much of a performance boost should I be able to expect? I haven't done any overclocking and am kinda scared to (lol) so my question is under the assumption that everything is at stock speeds. Not sure if there are good benchmark comparisons between my build and more current ones, but a general ballpark % improvement would be helpful.

Most of the games I play aren't really too demanding, but I get some tearing and some slight stuttering from time to time when playing The Witcher on the highest setting. Some current and future releases (Dragon Age, ME2, Bioshock 2) I'd like to be able to play at higher settings with smoother performance too.

Under normal circumstances I'd be content in keeping this PC as my main rig for another year or so (prefer building a new computer every 3 years, rather than getting myself into a habit of upgrading frequently) but my work PC has been showing its age and reducing my productivity and it's doubtful the company will upgrade it. My tax-return-impulse-buying rationalization for building a new PC is that I'd take my current home one and bring that to work.

My work PC specs:
Core 2 Duo E2180 - 2Ghz
7600 GT
3 gigs of Ram (32 bit OS)
Dell Optiplex 330 with basically little room for upgrading

The second question - would it be better for me to build a new computer with that $1,000-1,200 budget, or would it make more sense for me to build a work PC on a $500-600 budget and wait to build a new home PC in a year or so?
 
Just canceled my $1600 ibuypower.com pc order.
Too many damn horror stories with that place.

Now I will buy my parts as soon as they fall off my credit card.

Short story you guys shall soon be annoyed by me a lot. :lol
 
Get a Q9550/Q9400 and 5850 for your primary rig, and give the E8400 and 8800GTS to your secondary rig, job done for ~$500. Anything spent above that is a waste imo.
 
I asked this on another forum but wanted to hear what GAF has to say.

I want to get a PC to game and do video editing with, preferably one with an i7 processor. Would I be a tool to buy one off Alienware for $1300? I would rather not build it - building the same system would cost $1000 in parts and run the risk of me breaking something. (I don't have the time to sit down and do it plus I am very "static-shocky", once fried a mobo with my fingertip while wearing a grounding-strap). Their systems look terribly tacky and I would be embarrassed if anyone ever saw it. But I really don't trust myself and trust ibuypower.com's site even less. =/
 
brain_stew said:
Get a Q9550/Q9400 and 5850 for your primary rig, and give the E8400 and 8800GTS to your secondary rig, job done for ~$500. Anything spent above that is a waste imo.

I recommend the same.

If he really wants to up the work productivity beyond that, an SSD is the only thing that would really help (unless he's using multithreaded software and wants improvements in that regard). I don't think many organizations would want you to replace the hard drive, though I suppose it depends on the type of work involved and what kind of bureaucracy is involved.

IPoopStandingUp said:
I asked this on another forum but wanted to hear what GAF has to say.

I want to get a PC to game and do video editing with, preferably one with an i7 processor. Would I be a tool to buy one off Alienware for $1300? I would rather not build it - building the same system would cost $1000 in parts and run the risk of me breaking something. (I don't have the time to sit down and do it plus I am very "static-shocky", once fried a mobo with my fingertip while wearing a grounding-strap). Their systems look terribly tacky and I would be embarrassed if anyone ever saw it. But I really don't trust myself and trust ibuypower.com's site even less. =/

Are you in a decently sized town? Find a local computer shop and have them build one for you. Just make sure to keep up with the prices to make sure you don't get gouged...a few shops really take advantage of people, while some others are great. Any local shop with an online store should be decent.
 
IPoopStandingUp said:
I asked this on another forum but wanted to hear what GAF has to say.

I want to get a PC to game and do video editing with, preferably one with an i7 processor. Would I be a tool to buy one off Alienware for $1300? I would rather not build it - building the same system would cost $1000 in parts and run the risk of me breaking something. (I don't have the time to sit down and do it plus I am very "static-shocky", once fried a mobo with my fingertip while wearing a grounding-strap). Their systems look terribly tacky and I would be embarrassed if anyone ever saw it. But I really don't trust myself and trust ibuypower.com's site even less. =/

If you really don't want to build it yourself, piece together a custom rig on ncixus.com and pay nthe $50 assembly fee. Buying from Alienware means proprietary parts and being locked out of certain upgrades and OCing.
 
Any network experts out there? Here's my issue, I have my printer hooked to a PC running Vista ultimate 64bit and have other XP, and Win7 PCs that print to it. The Vista PC also has several file shares that are accessible from all the PCs. This has been setup and working fine for over a year until Vista SP2. Now the XP PCs can no longer access the printer are see any of the file shares on the Vista PC, but the Win7 one can. I back off SP2 and everything is working fine again. Is there some network settings I need to change after Vista SP2 to allow XP clients to see shares?

Edit - I think I found a workaround for the problem. I noticed I was getting the following errors in the system event log since after SP2 went in:

"The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the server reached the configured limit for nonpaged pool allocations."

After googling that error I followed the steps here to increase the MaxMpxCt value in the registry. No idea why this would only be needed after SP2 though.
 
brain_stew said:
Get a Q9550/Q9400 and 5850 for your primary rig, and give the E8400 and 8800GTS to your secondary rig, job done for ~$500. Anything spent above that is a waste imo.

I thought about upgrading the work PC, but it only has a 280 Watt PSU that I think is struggling to work with the 7600GT as is. Thought about upgrading the PSU in it too, but since it's not my computer I don't want to invest a ton in it (already put in 2 gigs of RAM and the 7600GT a couple years ago).

I'm pretty much stuck either accepting my slow work PC, building either a new home rig, or putting together a new office rig. If I could get comparable performance as my current primary for close to $500-600 that might be a good option to take to work.
 
turnbuckle said:
I thought about upgrading the work PC, but it only has a 280 Watt PSU that I think is struggling to work with the 7600GT as is. Thought about upgrading the PSU in it too, but since it's not my computer I don't want to invest a ton in it (already put in 2 gigs of RAM and the 7600GT a couple years ago).

I'm pretty much stuck either accepting my slow work PC, building either a new home rig, or putting together a new office rig. If I could get comparable performance as my current primary for close to $500-600 that might be a good option to take to work.

You can do that pretty easily tbh, AMD offer a 2.8ghz quad (the X4 630) for $100 today and I'd use that as the base for the machine. Does your work machine need anything better than the current 7600gt?
 
Is there any big things coming in the next 6 months that are worth waiting for? It seems like things are on sale again and feels like a good idea to build a new one now. And does anyone know the +12V needed for 2 5850s in crossfire. I see they say 40 amps for a single but not sure what I need if I go for crossfire.
 
brain_stew said:
You can do that pretty easily tbh, AMD offer a 2.8ghz quad (the X4 630) for $100 today and I'd use that as the base for the machine. Does your work machine need anything better than the current 7600gt?

Yeah, my computer's performance suffered its first blow when I went to a dual monitor setup. Now that I'm running a 26 monitor and a 22 off of it, I'm thinking that's part of my problem. I don't need anything amazing, but an upgrade from the 7600GT would be nice. I'll probably give my current work PC to one of the new hires since the PC she's on is utter shit :P
 
turnbuckle said:
Yeah, my computer's performance suffered its first blow when I went to a dual monitor setup. Now that I'm running a 26 monitor and a 22 off of it, I'm thinking that's part of my problem. I don't need anything amazing, but an upgrade from the 7600GT would be nice. I'll probably give my current work PC to one of the new hires since the PC she's on is utter shit :P

5670 is probably a good fit then, the fact that it has three outputs may be a nice feature considering you're already using two displays. Its cheap, has every modern feature in the book and hardly uses any power.
 
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
Is there any big things coming in the next 6 months that are worth waiting for? It seems like things are on sale again and feels like a good idea to build a new one now. And does anyone know the +12V needed for 2 5850s in crossfire. I see they say 40 amps for a single but not sure what I need if I go for crossfire.

I'd avoid multi GPUs if possible. With that sort of cash, a GTX 480 is probably going to be a perfect fit.
 
evil solrac v3.0 said:
for overclocking all i really did was change the FSB, but do i have mess with the voltage as well?

If the OC isn't stable or you can't boot, you need to up voltage. Usually it is CPU or NB that needs voltage.
 
brain_stew said:
If you really don't want to build it yourself, piece together a custom rig on ncixus.com and pay nthe $50 assembly fee. Buying from Alienware means proprietary parts and being locked out of certain upgrades and OCing.
Thanks for the advice so far. I don't plan on doing many upgrades. The most I've ever bothered to upgrade a comp is swapping a video card or adding a stick of memory.

How does this look?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0031U1J2E/?tag=neogaf0e-20

The ATI 5850 looks appealing and I can get that system for about $1100.

My city is also filled with so many scammers, mostly made up of dollar stores and places where you can pick up Wii knockoffs that finding a shop here is slightly dangerous. I could find a shop in NY but carrying those parts with me on the commute would be a hassle.
 
Need some advice.

Running a E6750 Core2Duo @ 3.6ghz.
4GB DDRII 800 Ram
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 Motherboard running PCIE1version.
Radeon 5850

Was thinking of upgrading to a Phenom x4 with the new AMD 890 Chipset when released with 4 GB DDR3 Ram.

With the above setup that im currently running would it be better to get a Quad Core 9550 on the current system, OC Past 3GHZ, then upgrade next year? With AMD's Bulldozer on the horizon see how that turns out.

Machine will mainly be used for Gaming for Battlefield Bad Company 2, AVP, Bioshock 2 and future DX11 Titles. Hope to get 60frames or close to it.

Cheers,
 
brain_stew said:
I'd avoid multi GPUs if possible. With that sort of cash, a GTX 480 is probably going to be a perfect fit.

Eh, I'm kind of partial to multi gpu and never had a problem with them.

So I was checking a little more and unless it changed nvidia is still aiming for end of february. Is intel supposed to have any new chips come out soon or was the i5, i3 and stuff from a couple months ago it for a while? Also, is it expected for usb 3.0 boards to come down in price soon? They still seem to have a somewhat hefty premium which makes me want to wait.
 
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
Eh, I'm kind of partial to multi gpu and never had a problem with them.

So I was checking a little more and unless it changed nvidia is still aiming for end of february. Is intel supposed to have any new chips come out soon or was the i5, i3 and stuff from a couple months ago it for a while? Also, is it expected for usb 3.0 boards to come down in price soon? They still seem to have a somewhat hefty premium which makes me want to wait.

Yea, but why buy a multi-gpu setup now if a single 480 will deliver similar performance, and you can add another for double that performance down the road? Not to mention 3DVision.

Fermi is probably worth waiting for on the GPU side, I don't see much overpowering an overclocked Core i7 on the CPU side in the next 6 months. Even AMD's 6-core CPUs may not have all that much of a lead over a 4GHz i7, if any. Intel's Core i9 line will obviously top it, but at a very, very high price.
 
Minsc said:
Yea, but why buy a multi-gpu setup now if a single 480 will deliver similar performance, and you can add another for double that performance down the road? Not to mention 3DVision.

Ya, and if its worth it I'll look into it. I don't know about this time but most of the time in the past once you get towards the top there is a lot of waste compared to performance increase. For example, when I got my 2 8800GTs to run in sli it was cheaper and gave a pretty big chunk more than a single 8800GTX so there was a pretty bad price-> performance difference so I opted for a multi gpu solution of 2 8800GT and never had a problem. If there is a huge gap in price for minimal gain then I'll most likely do a dual gpu. It's not necessarily that I'll do it off the bat since I didn't with my other machine either but I just want a range so when I'm looking at power supplies I'm not at too low of a +12V rating to do it if I chose to. That seems to be the biggest stopper for gpus than wattage so I just want cushion or an idea for what an sli or crossfire of current cards demands so I have that option.

Minsc said:
Fermi is probably worth waiting for on the GPU side, I don't see much overpowering an overclocked Core i7 on the CPU side in the next 6 months. Even AMD's 6-core CPUs may not have all that much of a lead over a 4GHz i7, if any. Intel's Core i9 line will obviously top it, but at a very, very high price.

Is there a rumor of when the i9s might come out? I'm still debating whether to wait until summer to build it like all the other times start looking at deals I've seen. Seeing the i7 for $200 and decent power supplies on sale for $50 and stuff is making me itchy again for building a new one.
 
Got my current rig together, still holding on to my 8800GT for a bit longer until tax returns.

Been playing around with overclocking my Phenom II X2 720.

Got it to around 3.65Ghz from a stock 2.8Ghz. Not bad, not bad at all. Damn fine $99 chip, this little guy.

I have a new Antec p183 case, switched out the stock heatsink fan for a much bigger one (like 3-4 times bigger), and used thermal compound MX-2.

Been running Prime95, even as I type this, for already over 3 hours and using Core Temps, thus far with full load CPU stress test, it has only maxed out to 29 degrees Celsius at the highest.
 
IPoopStandingUp said:
Thanks for the advice so far. I don't plan on doing many upgrades. The most I've ever bothered to upgrade a comp is swapping a video card or adding a stick of memory.

How does this look?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0031U1J2E/?tag=neogaf0e-20

The ATI 5850 looks appealing and I can get that system for about $1100.

My city is also filled with so many scammers, mostly made up of dollar stores and places where you can pick up Wii knockoffs that finding a shop here is slightly dangerous. I could find a shop in NY but carrying those parts with me on the commute would be a hassle.

Spec-wise it's nice. Just unsure about the build quality, airflow, and PSU. It looks like there's side panel cooling though...assuming it actually has an intake there it shouldn't be too bad. I'm sure you could do much worse.
 
golem said:
Hi guys,

I need a new case, my current CoolerMaster Stacker 830 is just too freakin huge. Any good suggestions for a modern, reasonably stylish mid tower?

I was looking at the Silverstone TJ10.. has anyone ever had one of their HTPC or normal PC cases?
http://www.xoxide.com/silverstone-tj10-silver-window-case.html


I'm not familiar with that brand but of all the cases I've owned over the years I like my Antec Sonata the best. Easy to work in and nice and quiet and sleek and stylish in my opinion. I picked it up when it was on sale at Fry's and currently using it for my HTPC.
 
larvi said:
I'm not familiar with that brand but of all the cases I've owned over the years I like my Antec Sonata the best. Easy to work in and nice and quiet and sleek and stylish in my opinion. I picked it up when it was on sale at Fry's and currently using it for my HTPC.
I like the Sonata, but I'm a little worried if it can cool my 8800GTX decently, that sucker runs hot!
 
golem said:
I like the Sonata, but I'm a little worried if it can cool my 8800GTX decently, that sucker runs hot!

The Sonata isn't great for airflow. I wouldn't recommend it to someone interested in cooling performance as it can't fit the better 120mm coolers (PSU is in the way).

Coolermaster CM 690 is great for the money. It's a fairly big mid-tower though:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137&cm_re=cm_690-_-11-119-137-_-Product

Antec P183 is supposed to be pretty much the quietest case around:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129061&Tpk=antec p183

Personally, I've been eyeing this baby...looks like an incredibly good case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160
Comes with 3x 230mm fans and 1x 140mm fan. That's going to be some amazing airflow.
 
Get the Antec P183. Mine is coming in tomorrow. Very stylish, not flamboyant with a million LED's flashing everywhere. And it has separated compartments, so it gets even cooler. Going from a windowed LED case to this, is a god send. I'm over the flashy nonsense.

p183.jpg
 
Smash88 said:
Get the Antec P183. Mine is coming in tomorrow. Very stylish, not flamboyant with a million LED's flashing everywhere. And it has separated compartments, so it gets even cooler. Going from a windowed LED case to this, is a god send. I'm over the flashy nonsense.

p183.jpg

Good choice, this is what I got and I love the more simplistic sleek minimalist design of it.
 
I'm using a P182, not as cool as the P183 obviously, but still an awesome case. :D

I can keep the fans on low and still OC my CPU and GPU. The side panels and overall sound dampening are just tops. Definitely recommended.
 
Smash88 said:
Get the Antec P183. Mine is coming in tomorrow. Very stylish, not flamboyant with a million LED's flashing everywhere. And it has separated compartments, so it gets even cooler. Going from a windowed LED case to this, is a god send. I'm over the flashy nonsense.

p183.jpg

Ek :(

I hate that case, it's supposed to be minimalistic, but it's got all these weird shaped holes and shit everywhere which makes it look UGGGGLY to me.

If you want minimilistic... you can't go past this:

a71f-lian_main.jpg
 
It's not so much that I (we) are haters, it's that when I first built my computer, I was like, "ZOMG GOTTA HAVE MYSELF FOG LIGHTS AND BLUE LED's OUT THE BUTT"...after 2 years of blue LED's in my face as I sleep, I'm done. You can only have so much, and it wears off, honestly in the long run its not worth it.

EDIT: Go ahead get a Lian Li and pay $200+ on one case, when a lot of other cases that are half the price can do the same thing, if not better. I don't understand GAF's obsession with Lian Li cases.

I'm looking at the case you posted above, and it has more weird shaped holes than the Antec P183, hell it looks like someone shot it up with a tommy gun. :lol
 
Smash88 said:
It's not so much that I (we) are haters, it's that when I first built my computer, I was like, "ZOMG GOTTA HAVE MYSELF FOG LIGHTS AND BLUE LED's OUT THE BUTT"...after 2 years of blue LED's in my face as I sleep, I'm done. You can only have so much, and it wears off, honestly int he long run its not worth it.

Ditto.
 
Smash88 said:
It's not so much that I (we) are haters, it's that when I first built my computer, I was like, "ZOMG GOTTA HAVE MYSELF FOG LIGHTS AND BLUE LED's OUT THE BUTT"...after 2 years of blue LED's in my face as I sleep, I'm done. You can only have so much, and it wears off, honestly in the long run its not worth it.

EDIT: Go ahead get a Lian Li and pay $300+ on one case, when a lot of other cases that are half the price can do the same thing, if not better. I don't understand GAF's obsession with Lian Li cases.

Hahaha. I do understand what you're a saying. I'm sure I'm just going through a phase at the moment. The LED craze will wear off eventually.

"ZOMG GOTTA HAVE MYSELF FOG LIGHTS AND BLUE LED's OUT THE BUTT"

^^^LMFAO^^^
 
brain_stew said:
5670 is probably a good fit then, the fact that it has three outputs may be a nice feature considering you're already using two displays. Its cheap, has every modern feature in the book and hardly uses any power.

To be clear, you're suggesting a 5670 for a new build, or are you saying I should take out the 7600GT and replace it the 5670?

Thanks for your help :D
 
That Lian Li looks cool but I hate cases that you have to open the whole door to just turn it on.

Yeah I was into the LEDs and glowy bits for a while... my 830 has the window on top for my Raptor X lol
 
I really think the Coolermaster HAF 932 seems like an amazing case.

3292208812_3be21bb35c.jpg


Love their tool-less design. Very easy to swap HDDs and PCI components.

The airflow in this thing must be insane, with 3x 230mm fans and 1x 140mm fan. The fans are rated at 75cfm @ 19dbA...nice.

cooler_master_haf_932_computex.jpg


Red LED at the front...but I find their front LEDs very unobnoxious as they're low intensite and the front grate stops the light from reaching you where you're sitting.

BTW, the open back-plate area is awesome. If you've ever installed a back-plate HSF, you know how much that would help.
 
Hey gaf I did something very stupid. I mixed ram (one was 1.8v OCZ, the other, also an OCZ, was 1.9v-2.1v) and fried my mobo. After being pissed at myself for a good hour, I went to RFD and started looking for new computer parts. While I'm quite ready to make the upgrade jump (finally!) I do have two questions for those wise out there ! :P

Firstly, I know the mobo is most likely busted because when I turn the computer on it restarts after a few seconds and keeps restarting. The whole time, the screen stays black. Sometimes it reaches the mobo splash screen, but after it just hangs there. I tried everything, reseting CMOS through battery switch, unplugging and replugging all the hardware, but nothing works. My question is, how likely is it that the other components are not busted? Like my video card, HDD, Ram and DVD drive. I want to move over some of these components to my new build and would be mad PO'd if I couldnt. I guess I should double check they work at a friend's house?

Secondly, the components I plan on getting are: 4gb of DDR3-1600 ram, an Intel i5 750 and a gigabyte P55A-UD3. These would go along with my 8800GT (unless its busted :X). My question is, would this computer be capable of running the latest games at 1080p at max settings? Specifically, would it run Bad Company 2 at that? Also, being that I got into the whole gamecube emulation scene recently, could it run Wind Waker on the Dolphin at 30fps or more with all the bells and whistles (AA, AF ect...)?

Thanks in advance gaf!
 
bizatch said:
Hey gaf (lol just realized its something naughty backwards
fag
) I did something very stupid. I mixed ram (one was 1.8v OCZ, the other, also an OCZ, was 1.9v-2.1v) and fried my mobo. After being pissed at myself for a good hour, I went to RFD and started looking for new computer parts. While I'm quite ready to make the upgrade jump (finally!) I do have two questions for those wise out there ! :P

1) I know the mobo is most likely busted because when I turn the computer on it restarts after a few seconds and the screen stays black. Sometimes it reaches the mobo splash screen but hangs. I tried everything, reseting CMOS through battery switch, unplugging and replugging all the hardware, but nothing works. My question is, how likely is it that the other components are not busted? Like my video card, HDD, Ram and DVD drive. I guess I should double check at a friend's house?

2) The components I plan on getting are: 4gb of DDR3-1600 ram, an Intel i5 750 and a gigabyte P55A-UD3. These would go along with my 8800GT (unless its busted :X). My question is, would this computer be capable of running the latest games at 1080p at max settings? Specifically, would it run Bad Company 2 at that? Secondly, being that I got into the whole gamecube emulation scene recently, could it run Wind Waker on the Dolphin at 30fps or more with all the bells and whistles (AA, AF ect...)?

Thanks in advance fag, I mean, gaf :lol !

You can't fry a mobo with different rated RAM voltages. You can fry RAM (though unlikely...it'll probably just be unstable), but that's about it.

edit: or can you? maybe i'm unfamiliar with certain motherboard designs.

The only components I know of that doesn't like high RAM voltages are i7 processors.
 
TheExodu5 said:
You can't fry a mobo with different rated RAM voltages. You can fry RAM (though unlikely...it'll probably just be unstable), but that's about it.

edit: or can you? maybe i'm unfamiliar with certain motherboard designs.

The only components I know of that doesn't like high RAM voltages are i7 processors.

Well, this is what happened (and a reason why I was really pissed off). I was looking to start slowly upgrading my build. The first thing I was going to get was 2 more gb of ram to make it to a total of 4gb. I hopped on kijiji (aka craigslist lol) and found a good deal for some OCZ ram. Not really researching anything I buy it off the dude (was brand new) and drive home all ready to play some vidgamez. I pop the ram into my mobo and turn on the comp...black screen...computer resets after 2 seconds...black screen....reset...to infinity. I get worried, did this dude sell my broked ram? So I take out the new ram and attempt to start the computer with my old ram. Same shit. I then proceed to try anything to fix this. Nothing works, and Im mad pissed. Call my friends, look online and it all leads me to believe that my mobo is busted (another thing is that when the screen isn't black, which happens sometimes, it shows 512mb of ram despite me having a gig in there at the very least). So im guessing that the ram connector got fucked and now it cant properly read the ram.
 
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