"I need a New PC!" 2011 Thread of reading the OP. Seriously. [Part 2]

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hey guys,
wondering if you can help. Installed a new HDD (my 4th!) now everytime I boot up I get an option of which operating system I would like to boot up into. There's only 1 which is Windows 7 but this option screen never came up before.

Did I click a wrong box in the admin tools?
 
Ok so my brother has my old PC and wants to play battlefield 3 and other newer games on it (skyrim, guild wars2)and run it at 1680x1050 at 60fps. Right now it can play battlefield on low but definitely is not smooth and kind of sucks.

Anyway, i'm wondering if this build is salvageable with some upgrades or should I tell him to let me build him another one. I personally think it might still be salvageable with maybe a gpu/ram/psu/overclock upgrades but i'd like others opinions please. Will the motherboard take newer video cards and memory without problems. Is anything able to be overclocked easily? Thanks!

And thanks chaosblade but any more suggestions?



Right now the PC is: (from my old newegg order history)


Case: Antec Sonata Elite Black

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard

GPU: HIS H489F1GP Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

PSU: Antec TruePower New TP-650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ940XCGIBOX

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPQ

Monitor: Acer X223Wbd Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor

Drives: Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B - OEM

HDD: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s in a RAID 0 Configuration
 
New GPU that he could, in the long term, keep for a newer build could very well be enough. I'm in a similar situation with a 4890.
Otherwise: OC the CPU, since it's a Black Edition it'll be easy. Don't know how far his usually goes, but he should probably be looking at a better fan if he's still using the stock one. As far as memory, you can only get DDR2 for that board so if you find another 4GB set for cheap (which could be difficult, as it's being phased out) go for it, though I don't think it's a must.
Long term he should be looking at a new mobo and CPU with 8GB DDR3.
 
dwebo said:
According to this image from the performance thread OP, you should be getting ~25-30fps @ 1680x1050 on max(?). Not sure what low settings would translate to, but I'd imagine it should be a fair bit better than "not smooth and kind of sucks".

http://www.abload.de/img/battlefield3-final-gpuoklf.png
What? His video card is not even on the list. A ATI 4890 is about equal to GTX275. Also, the 2600K@4.5GHz, used in the benching, blows away his cpu
 
I'd advise never to buy Gigabyte due to their shitty support. Finally got an RMA request submitted last night, and I have to wait 2 business days before I even get a response. If I call in, they just say they can't do anything over the phone and I have to wait for my RMA number.

Ridiculous.

I'll likely be without a working PC for a few weeks with that kind of response. I think I'm just going to go buy a new motherboard tonight and sell the RMA I get.
 
Babalu. said:
Ok so my brother has my old PC and wants to play battlefield 3 and other newer games on it (skyrim, guild wars2)and run it at 1680x1050 at 60fps. Right now it can play battlefield on low but definitely is not smooth and kind of sucks.

Anyway, i'm wondering if this build is salvageable with some upgrades or should I tell him to let me build him another one. I personally think it might still be salvageable with maybe a gpu/ram/psu/overclock upgrades but i'd like others opinions please. Will the motherboard take newer video cards and memory without problems. Is anything able to be overclocked easily? Thanks!

And thanks chaosblade but any more suggestions?



Right now the PC is: (from my old newegg order history)


Case: Antec Sonata Elite Black

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard

GPU: HIS H489F1GP Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16

PSU: Antec TruePower New TP-650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ940XCGIBOX

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPQ

Monitor: Acer X223Wbd Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor

Drives: Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B - OEM

HDD: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s in a RAID 0 Configuration


Overclock that processor and the only upgrade i would do is a new gpu.

Honestly though, I'm surprised you aren't getting better performance with a 4890, I'm sure you can tweak some more settings or might be a driver issue since the 4890 isn't a slouch imo. I'm guessing if things were working out right, you should be able to run bf3 with a mix of medium/high settings at a pretty smooth framerate.

As for an upgrade to get bf3 running better, I'd say look for an AMD 6950, but if that's too much something like a 560ti would do.
 
knitoe said:
What? His video card is not even on the list. Also, the 2600K@4.5GHz, used in the benching, blows away his cpu
I was assuming a 4890 is roughly between a 450/460. And obviously that cpu is a lot better, but as long as his 3ghz quad-core can pump over 30fps (I'm assuming that also), he'll be limited by the gpu.
 
AwesomeSauce said:
Overclock that processor and the only upgrade i would do is a new gpu.

Honestly though, I'm surprised you aren't getting better performance with a 4890, I'm sure you can tweak some more settings or might be a driver issue since the 4890 isn't a slouch imo. I'm guessing if things were working out right, you should be able to run bf3 with a mix of medium/high settings at a pretty smooth framerate.

As for an upgrade to get bf3 running better, I'd say look for an AMD 6950, but if that's too much something like a 560ti would do.

6950 is only slighty better than 560ti, not considering that most games are more nvidia friendly.
 
2 questions:

1) Yesterday for the first time, I saw these flickering white dots appear on my screen. I was watching a youtube video, and they appeared slowly on the video. Then, they showed up on top of everything like the desktop.

I was 100% sure this was a characteristic of a GPU failure... but then I turned on my 2nd monitor and duplicated my desktop. The white dots were there on my first monitor, but not there on my 2nd one.

So... uh... I'm not sure anymore. Probably a sign of GPU failure none the less... I guess maybe VRAM dying... but not the RAM that was rendering on my 2nd monitor? I don't know how these things work, so... I'll keep an eye out for these again.

Temperature of the card was hovering at 42 degrees, so that was all good.

2) My PC is liquid cooled. How often should I replace the fluid? What's a good brand, since I'm not too sure what's in my PC now...
 
I just installed a side fan on a rosewill challenger case and I was wondering if the air should go in the case or out the case. It seems like most people say to go in when I googled it but if I have the case on the ground will more dust get in.
 
sam27368 said:
Hey guys,
wondering if you can help. Installed a new HDD (my 4th!) now everytime I boot up I get an option of which operating system I would like to boot up into. There's only 1 which is Windows 7 but this option screen never came up before.

Did I click a wrong box in the admin tools?

Go to Control Panel->System->Advance->Advance System Settings->Advanced->Startup and Recovery. There should be an Edit button. Delete the line for the one that isn't your default OS you boot. If there's no Edit button, then play around with the settings I guess.
 
I'm attempting to reinstall Windows 7 on my girlfriends laptop, her hard drive failed so I put in one of my old ones to install onto. I don't know if I will get banned for this or not, but I downloaded a W7 .iso to install onto my USB jump drive, to then install Windows from onto her laptop. (She has a W7 cdkey that I would then use to activate Windows that came with the laptop, but she just doesn't know where her installation CD is that came with the computer...) Does anybody have experience installing Windows this way using Unetbootin? I get stuck in a 'automatic boot in 10 seconds...' loop when trying to install W7...
 
InertiaXr said:
I'm attempting to reinstall Windows 7 on my girlfriends laptop, her hard drive failed so I put in one of my old ones to install onto. I don't know if I will get banned for this or not, but I downloaded a W7 .iso to install onto my USB jump drive, to then install Windows from onto her laptop. (She has a W7 cdkey that I would then use to activate Windows that came with the laptop, but she just doesn't know where her installation CD is that came with the computer...) Does anybody have experience installing Windows this way using Unetbootin? I get stuck in a 'automatic boot in 10 seconds...' loop when trying to install W7...
Is that supported in unetbootin? I've only used it for ubuntu in the past. Anyway, probably easier just to use Microsoft's Windows 7 usb install tool: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

Also, guess it could be the .iso you downloaded. Here are their official links to W7 home premium, with SP1.
32-bit: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-24208.iso
64-bit: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-24209.iso
 
dwebo said:
Is that supported in unetbootin? I've only used it for ubuntu in the past. Anyway, probably easier just to use Microsoft's Windows 7 usb install tool: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool

Also, guess it could be the .iso you downloaded. Here are their official links to W7 home premium, with SP1.
32-bit: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-24208.iso
64-bit: http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-24209.iso

Excellent, thank you. I will try that official Windows tool, and if that doesn't work then re-download the .iso. Since it's a laptop I hope it hasn't locked out booting from a USB device, but Google seems to indicate that that might be a possibility...

Edit:

Installing Windows now, thanks a lot.
 
Ice Raven said:
So my 500w psu just fried while playing bf3 for 3 hours.
2600k stock speed
Gtx 580
Corsair 500w psi
12gb ram

Are the components safe? Or it did it fry everything?
I first heard a popping sound while playing. I thought something fell. And then another sound. And that's when I smelled something burning. I immediately shut down my computer. Removed the side case and realized the smell is coming from the psu.
so is my computer completely screwed? Or did the psu the only damaged component?

Also need recommendations on a good psu. I plan on OC the 580 and 2600k.
just an update.
so i bought a corsair tx650 to see if the problem was solved.
it didn't. i installed it and lights show up on the motherboard. i turn on the computer and only the fans would spin for a couple of seconds before going idle again.
i then bought a new mobo today. installed it and did the exact same thing.
i did an isolation test on the mobo by itself and it still does it.
halp!
 
lol gais my 570 is running out of memory playing on Ultra everything except shadows. Crazy thing is, it runs smooth as hell. 45-60 fps average. I havent received any driver crashes until today, though. (Was warm as heck today). Should I scale down or wut? I mean it runs smooth as butter..


Ice Raven said:
just an update.
so i bought a corsair tx650 to see if the problem was solved.
it didn't. i installed it and lights show up on the motherboard. i turn on the computer and only the fans would spin for a couple of seconds before going idle again.
i then bought a new mobo today. installed it and did the exact same thing.
i did an isolation test on the mobo by itself and it still does it.
halp!

Sounds like the motherboard my friend. I had the EXACT same situation happen to me and the MB was shorted out.
 
So pricing out my roommates PC a few weeks ago really got the itch going in me to buy one (and he still hasn't gotten around to buying one yet!). Just came in today, been spending the evening downloading a few critical pieces of software (Steam plus some of the heavier hitting parts of the library like Crysis, Witcher 2, etc. And Starcraft 2, because, well, it's Starcraft 2...). I am super pumped right now, but really want Steam to hurry up and download some shit so I can test this bad boy out!

i5 2500K
GTX 560Ti
P8P67 mobo
8Gigs Ram
Win 7
1TB HD (and another 1TB from an old external once I get a sata cable)
BR-reader/DVD-RW
600W PSU
Antec 300 Case

Picked up an HP2509b monitor as well to go with it. Only thing I need now is some speakers, since iPod headphones just really don't do this thing justice.
 
iSurvivedTheOutage said:
lol gais my 570 is running out of memory playing on Ultra everything except shadows. Crazy thing is, it runs smooth as hell. 45-60 fps average. I havent received any driver crashes until today, though. (Was warm as heck today). Should I scale down or wut? I mean it runs smooth as butter..




Sounds like the motherboard my friend. I had the EXACT same situation happen to me and the MB was shorted out.
I just bought a new mobo. Wtf mang.
 
iSurvivedTheOutage said:
lol gais my 570 is running out of memory playing on Ultra everything except shadows. Crazy thing is, it runs smooth as hell. 45-60 fps average. I havent received any driver crashes until today, though. (Was warm as heck today). Should I scale down or wut? I mean it runs smooth as butter..
What resolution?
 
I imagine people are quite knowledgeable of core i5 750's overclocking by now.
Can I ask a couple of things in here or am I out of place?

I know nothing about memory voltages and what latency settings work best, for one. I'd rather not change them if not required... Unless you guys can\want help me out.
I know most of you will probably scoff at my newbieness
in OCing so I understand it'll be pretty difficult to get some answers, especially since I can see how the most direct answer is "Study! Experiment by yourself! Don't rely only on other's knowledge! A bad OC at best will shorten your PC's life and at worst it'll fuck it up!"

I know that, but strangely my HD 5850 lately seems to be bottlenecked by the stock settings of my i5 in some games and video editing, so I just want to boost it a bit without having to study for weeks/months/years to get the most out of OC... if you can look past all of that above and still want to give me a couple of much appreciated tips:

___________
Build:

i5 750
Gygabyte p55a UD3
4GB 1333 DDR3 unbuffered CL 9-9-9-24
heatsink Scythe Shuriken revB
(lp, I also had a CM Hyper 212+ but it couldn't fit)
___________

Main problem with all the "easy to follow" guides out there is that memory is always @1666Mhz.
But when building my pc with Hazaro's help I remember reading exactly this:

Speed and latency for RAM (e.g. 1333 9-9-9-24 vs 1666 8-8-8-24) is not a big deal. In many cases it is just 1-4% difference. 1333Mhz DDR3 is perfectly fine for most. Save your money unless a sale is on.

So, with my VERY limited know-how, and provided memtest and Prime95's results mean my OC is stable,
to achieve a respectable OC can I:

~
BCLK: 170
Memory: X8
Turboboost OFF


Resulting in constant 3.4Ghz and RAM@1360Mhz. Can I do this without messing with voltages?

~
Or maybe:

BCLK: 160
Memory: X8
Turboboost: ON


Would be better as far as performances go? Iirc Anandtech reported that on stock voltages a 160 base clock value was the one giving the best performances with turbo boost on.
Other than those, can I just leaver everything else as it was ie Auto or Enabled? I've read that Gigabyte puts higher-than-needed voltage values when set to Auto, but I dunno if this should be a concern.

-
I'm obviously taking full responsability as far as getting my pc fried with you guys' tips (hopefully not, lol).
One last thing, maybe it's relevant maybe not:
This computer DOES NOT run 24x7 but a couple of hours per day, at the most.

*Any* help will be greatly appreciated. A lot.
Thanks!

edit: bolded to make the important bits stand out, sorry for the wall of text
 
ok, im a complete moron.
there's a SECOND power connector on the mobo.
all is well. i feel much better now. i can rest.
i would've cried myself to sleep if i didn't play bf3 tonight.
 
AMD Llano A6-3650
MSI A75MA-G55 FM1 motherboard
8GB 1600 Mhz RAM
GeForce GTX 570
Enermax Liberty 500w PSU scavenged from my old PC
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 90GB
SATA 640GB RPM HDD
Some random SATA DVD-RW I have lying around
Re-use my Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi I also just sitting around
Antec 300 case

Total cost to do this build will be $300~ if I re-use my power supply and DVD-RW.

Should I do it? Am I missing anything? Should I sell the GTX 570 that I'm getting for $80~ and buy like a 6870 or 6950 2GB? I don't even know if that PSU can handle the power draw of a GTX 570, which uses so much more power than a 6870 or 6950 2GB.
 
Hi guys.. i have 2x 24" running at 1920x1200 each.. want to run new games at high/ultra etc..

current drafted build is:

CPU Intel i5-2500k
CPU cooler Coolermaster Universal Hyper 212+
Mobo Asus P8Z68-V
RAM G.skill ripjaws x 1600 (2x4gb)
HDD Samsung f3 1tb
SSD Crucial m4 128gb
GPU 580??
Case Coolermaster HAF RC-912A
PSU Corsair HX-750
OS MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

All of the parts i can source from MSY/PCCG.. however MSY don't have any graphics cards, which GTX580 do you recommend from PCCG?

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_1170

thanks
 
ombz said:
I just installed a side fan on a rosewill challenger case and I was wondering if the air should go in the case or out the case. It seems like most people say to go in when I googled it but if I have the case on the ground will more dust get in.
Side fans should be intake unless you have a specific reason to make it exhaust.
 
GAF, would you pay $80 for these? Gonna sell it to a friend. Might even drop to $70; I just want to get rid of it.

Athlon X2 5000+ (2.6GHz)
Palit 9600GT Sonic DDR3 256MB (factory OC) (free Tomb Raider game)
2GB Kingston DDR2 800
Asrock N68PV-GS
550W HEC
Saxon midtower casing with temp monitor (2004 old)
Lite-on DVD RW

The casing and DVD drive are throwaways. They'll be take it or leave it. Why? The casing is old and a bit rusty. The DVD drive is very old and requires a few presses to eject.

Obviously no more warranty. They're about 3 years old.

No HDD, I'll prolly just throw in my old 20GB just to demo Windows then run a few games via external. >___>
 
Ok this isn't exactly a question about building a PC but it is related. My little cousin came over with his PC the other day and asked me to take a look what was wrong. He said it wouldn't boot at all and kept hitting blue screen. So first thing I did was take out the hard drive to run it on my PC to see if that was working. Turns out, the hard drive he had was super old. It was a 40gb capacity from the early 2000's I'm guessing. Probably 2003. The case and the hard drive bay was such a bitch to get open too. As you're probably guessing, I couldn't connect it to my new PC that I built over the summer. Different type of connections. Now, I'm not too keen on what the names of the connections are or type of HDD it was but I'm going to take a guess. The HDD's currently on the market are SATA and his old one I believe was ATA. I couldn't connect it with my SATA cable or even the ribbon cable that came with my MOBO. His ribbon cable on his old PC had like 8 more pins or something. So he's trying to salvage the hard drive and take everything from it and move it his laptop. Poor kid has a bunch of shit he doesn't want to lose. Are there devices that can hold an old HDD like that and can connect to a PC with USB or something like that?

Thanks
 
Tashi0106 said:
Ok this isn't exactly a question about building a PC but it is related. My little cousin came over with his PC the other day and asked me to take a look what was wrong. He said it wouldn't boot at all and kept hitting blue screen. So first thing I did was take out the hard drive to run it on my PC to see if that was working. Turns out, the hard drive he had was super old. It was a 40gb capacity from the early 2000's I'm guessing. Probably 2003. The case and the hard drive bay was such a bitch to get open too. As you're probably guessing, I couldn't connect it to my new PC that I built over the summer. Different type of connections. Now, I'm not too keen on what the names of the connections are or type of HDD it was but I'm going to take a guess. The HDD's currently on the market are SATA and his old one I believe was ATA. I couldn't connect it with my SATA cable or even the ribbon cable that came with my MOBO. His ribbon cable on his old PC had like 8 more pins or something. So he's trying to salvage the hard drive and take everything from it and move it his laptop. Poor kid has a bunch of shit he doesn't want to lose. Are there devices that can hold an old HDD like that and can connect to a PC with USB or something like that?

Thanks

Yes. You can get IDE to USB converters, or a combo IDE/SATA to USB that can come in pretty handy:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
 
Yo... anyone figured out where this framerate limiter option is in the latest nvidia drivers?
 
Hey Hazaro/Exodus/regulars of this topic, is there a more specific thread where I should ask questions related to my "how to overclock i5 750" post above?
 
I think one of my Lightning 580s died. My machine hard locked and I restarted and now the control panel isn't recognizing SLI. I go into MSI Afterburner and it only shows 1 card, and so does BF3. The lights are on on both cards. I restarted machine and it sounds like a card is running at full blast and it won't stop. I check afterburner and the fan is set at 36% for the card showing up and no way it's making noise like this with 36%.

Man fuck..wtf is going on

Edit: Shut it down 2x and brought it back up and it's still doing it. No SLI in the control panel and fans sound like they're running at 80% or something. Could the PCI slot be fucked or something?

:/
 
^^Sorry to hear that, I was just about to ask if you ever solved the heat issues you were having.
Try booting with only one card and then the other to see if they still behave oddly.
 
Smokey said:
I think one of my Lightning 580s died. My machine hard locked and I restarted and now the control panel isn't recognizing SLI. I go into MSI Afterburner and it only shows 1 card, and so does BF3. The lights are on on both cards. I restarted machine and it sounds like a card is running at full blast and it won't stop. I check afterburner and the fan is set at 36% for the card showing up and no way it's making noise like this with 36%.

Man fuck..wtf is going on

Edit: Shut it down 2x and brought it back up and it's still doing it. No SLI in the control panel and fans sound like they're running at 80% or something. Could the PCI slot be fucked or something?

:/

Disconnect power to both cards. Remove both cards, re-insert both cards. Re-attach power cables and then boot up computer. If it is still faulty, swap cards to see if it is still an issue.

Also test each card individually to ensure it is the card dying and not the PCI slot going bad.

Am sad at the news though Smokey. Hope you can figure it out.
 
Smokey said:
I think one of my Lightning 580s died. My machine hard locked and I restarted and now the control panel isn't recognizing SLI. I go into MSI Afterburner and it only shows 1 card, and so does BF3. The lights are on on both cards. I restarted machine and it sounds like a card is running at full blast and it won't stop. I check afterburner and the fan is set at 36% for the card showing up and no way it's making noise like this with 36%.

Man fuck..wtf is going on

Edit: Shut it down 2x and brought it back up and it's still doing it. No SLI in the control panel and fans sound like they're running at 80% or something. Could the PCI slot be fucked or something?

:/

Welcome to PC gaming. :|

I've had issues of my own this past week that are driving me nuts.
 
I'm finally ready to build my first super leet gaming PC (tired of this crappy laptop) and I've got the cash set aside to do it.

I think I'm going to follow something that resembles the enthusiast build.
Definitely the build to go for if I don't want to upgrade till at least 2015, no?
 
commonfate said:
I'm finally ready to build my first super leet gaming PC (tired of this crappy laptop) and I've got the cash set aside to do it.

I think I'm going to follow something that resembles the enthusiast build.
Definitely the build to go for if I don't want to upgrade till at least 2015, no?
Above $1,000 is mostly excess + a slight GPU bump. If you really don't want to upgrade you can drop a lot of money on socket 2011 which is coming next year, but really a 1155 computer with a possible Ivy Bridge upgrade down the line is a very nice PC.
 
Dear "I make bank so I can afford 8 GTX580s" GAF

Anyone willing to part with a GTX570 for cheap (er than Newegg's $329) I'm willing to do morally questionable things.

But no seriously, anyone got one for sell? I don't want to settle for a 560Ti. =(

I'm tempted to start cooking crystal meth
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom