Official 2008 "I Need A New PC" Thread
- Thread starter Kosma
- Start date
bee
Member
x3n05 said:
i'd certainly agree with that and even the improvement in loading times isn't exactly great. the time for ssd's isn't quite here yet and the velociraptor is certainly the fastest drive right now, never tried the 300gb personally but ive heard the 150 and 74gb's under heavy seek and they sounded like a bag of spanners :s
if you pair a couple up with a proper pci raid controller with onboard memory though your good to go, these benchmarking sites always say raid has no benefit for desktop users but thats because they always benchmark with onboard software raid solutions
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
Let me PM you my username.Chiggs said:
pizzapizza64
Member
x3n05 said:
I'd love to have it!
My Steam ID is bearcatjosh
At least I think it is. I haven't logged in in a while. I'm betting it is, though.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I've never even played Half-Life anything. 
pizzapizza64
Member
x3n05 said:
I added you.
I shan't kick you, by the way!
I saw that earlier someone had problems with RAM in slots 2/4 versus 1/3. If my motherboard/BIOS has problems with that, would I probably notice it immediately? I'm about to use slots 2/4 since I heard if you get an aftermarket cooler it might block slot 1. >____> I'm using the Gigabyte ep35 ds3l motherboard.
MWS Natural
Member
Anyone have any experience building a SSF PC? I would need something small to fit in with my Home Theater setup. Was thinking of buying a bare bones PC and dropping in the necessary parts.
beat
Member
I still haven't pulled the trigger yet.
Should I get a quad core or dual? At a similar price point, the individual core's clock speeds are a lot lower on the quad, but I hear performance in Supreme Commander will be better. ... how much better would they be? It and Demigod are probably the PC games I'm most interested in.
Should I get a quad core or dual? At a similar price point, the individual core's clock speeds are a lot lower on the quad, but I hear performance in Supreme Commander will be better. ... how much better would they be? It and Demigod are probably the PC games I'm most interested in.
brain_stew
Member
Blizzard said:
Yep go with HD Audio, the AC '97 jack isn't needed. At least that's how my Gigabyte motherboard is setup.
Fallout 3 is coming and I want to buy a new PC to play it on. I have a budget of about $1300 bucks and was hoping I could get some suggestions. I already have a 24 inch LCD monitor that I want to play in at 1920x1200 with hopefully high settings.
I also live in South Korea and will be buying all my parts in Yongsan electronics district, hopefully for good prices.
I'm thinking along the lines of this:
E8400 processor
4870X2
4GB RAM
Vista
I don't need a huge amount of hard drive space, just enough for the operating system and the games I want, but obviously I'd like it to be fast. Any other suggestions on parts? I'm probably going to be building it next month, maybe mid-November at the latest.
I also live in South Korea and will be buying all my parts in Yongsan electronics district, hopefully for good prices.
I'm thinking along the lines of this:
E8400 processor
4870X2
4GB RAM
Vista
I don't need a huge amount of hard drive space, just enough for the operating system and the games I want, but obviously I'd like it to be fast. Any other suggestions on parts? I'm probably going to be building it next month, maybe mid-November at the latest.
brain_stew
Member
Cryptozoologist said:
You look to be on the right track there. A P45 motherboard from Asus or Gigabyte should be well priced and offer more than enough options for you. HDDs are really cheap nowadays, and games are starting to require some ridiculous installs so I don't think there's any reason NOT to get 500GBs or so.
So the system POSTs and everything looks fine. Monitor doesn't SEEM to have any dead or stuck pixels, which is a huge plus (I haven't looked SUPER carefully yet). Tomorrow I'll try the adventure of installing Vista and finding drivers.
I have a couple of questions, though. For one thing, the e8400 is supposed to be 3.0 GHz stock, but the BIOS reports it as something like 2.88 GHz. Is it doing some sort of power throttling, or not detecting it properly? It's listing the CPU ratio and 8 and the fine CPU something or other as +0.5.
Also, I only ran it looking at the BIOS stuff for a few minutes, but it was idling around 40 C. BUT, I had the case open. What kind of temperatures should I expect/watch out for, in order to find out if my Arctic Silver 5 job was adequate? Of course, the stock cooler is supposed to be crappy, but I'm not overclocking, so hopefully it works. (also, someone recommended another thermal compound to me...Arctic Cooling MX-2, but I doubt it'd make that much of a difference)
I have a couple of questions, though. For one thing, the e8400 is supposed to be 3.0 GHz stock, but the BIOS reports it as something like 2.88 GHz. Is it doing some sort of power throttling, or not detecting it properly? It's listing the CPU ratio and 8 and the fine CPU something or other as +0.5.
Also, I only ran it looking at the BIOS stuff for a few minutes, but it was idling around 40 C. BUT, I had the case open. What kind of temperatures should I expect/watch out for, in order to find out if my Arctic Silver 5 job was adequate? Of course, the stock cooler is supposed to be crappy, but I'm not overclocking, so hopefully it works. (also, someone recommended another thermal compound to me...Arctic Cooling MX-2, but I doubt it'd make that much of a difference)
Manp
Member
it should be 333*9=2997Blizzard said:I have a couple of questions, though. For one thing, the e8400 is supposed to be 3.0 GHz stock, but the BIOS reports it as something like 2.88 GHz. Is it doing some sort of power throttling, or not detecting it properly? It's listing the CPU ratio and 8 and the fine CPU something or other as +0.5.
power throttling is usually disabled by default and it should be 333*6=1998. at POST it should report the actual clock (3GHz).
try setting everything @ default in the bios.
40° idle with stock cooler doesn't seem wrong. room temperature? depending on the motherboard brand/model temperatures may be a bit off so take it as a grain of salt unless unless your mb model is known to report the right temperatures.
as for the thermal compound you only need a small amount of it. when removing the heatsink you should find only a small, almost transparent, layer of compound on both the cpu and the heatsink surface.
I need some more cpu overclocking advice. I bought a zalman heatsink, running the fan at max settings I am seeing temperatures in the 64-66 degrees C under the OCC test which puts the cpu at 98.75% load for 1 hour. according to the intel site e6550 are spec to go up to 72 degrees C.
my question is: is this safe?
my question is: is this safe?
Manp said:it should be 333*9=2997
power throttling is usually disabled by default and it should be 333*6=1998. at POST it should report the actual clock (3GHz).
try setting everything @ default in the bios.
Thanks. Everything is presumably already default in the BIOS (I only changed an option or two, and they weren't related to that). Do you mean I should have to manually adjust the CPU ratio to 333*9? I didn't know how much autodetection there was in the BIOS. The sad thing about the POST is that everything scrolls past so FAST once it prints the POST information, I can barely read anything.
$700 Crysis PC is now shipping, for anyone not interested in building a system:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...asp?EdpNo=4138011&csid=ITD&body=WARRANTY#tabs
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...asp?EdpNo=4138011&csid=ITD&body=WARRANTY#tabs
Manp
Member
Blizzard said:
the bios should default @333*9. not sure about your motherboard but nowadays most (all?) should detect everything automatically.
only thing you should need to do in the bios is some finetuning or OC.
by the way 2.88GHz seems a weird clock... have you tried loading failsafe settings in the bios?
what's your mb brand/model? maybe the cpu is not supported natively but it needs a bios upgrade (just guessing here).
if you have aready installed windows you can try cpuz to see frequencies. the "Pause" button should works at post btw
brain_stew
Member
otake said:
Totally, normal software won't stress your CPU nearly as much as OCCT, so you'll likely never go over 60C in normal use which is well within specification. What are you using to monitor temps? Real Temp is generally regarded as the most accurate.
Blizzard said:
Check it in CPU-Z once Windows is installed, if its still not correct then try updating the BIOS.
Failing that, just manually alter it yourself, it can't hurt to add a mild OC to it either an E8400 can easily be pushed past 4ghz.
That IS the Crysis PC. Warhead was optimized specifically around that rig, and EA/Crytek are endorsing it.Danj said:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/campaigns/campaigntemplate.asp?CampaignID=716
Manp said:the bios should default @333*9. not sure about your motherboard but nowadays most (all?) should detect everything automatically.
only thing you should need to do in the bios is some finetuning or OC.
by the way 2.88GHz seems a weird clock... have you tried loading failsafe settings in the bios?
what's your mb brand/model? maybe the cpu is not supported natively but it needs a bios upgrade (just guessing here).
if you have aready installed windows you can try cpuz to see frequencies. the "Pause" button should works at post btw
It's a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L. I'm going to try updating to the F5 BIOS which is supposed to support E0 stepping and whatnot...I'm not sure if my e8400 has E0 stepping.
And yeah, I tried googling for pausing BIOS, and discovered people mentioning online that the pause/break button would work. >_> I never new that it also tended to work on Linux boot log screens, until recently...
Oh, and yeah, I could add an overclock, but since I just have the stock cooling (combined with the space heater 4850, even with fan fix, and only two case fans) I'm trying not to make things warmer. Idle 40C already, with the case open...
Thing that is nice about the build I made was that nothing I play now or in the near future will bring it to its knees, and then when I start noticing slow down, just start overclocking it :lol
Tried the Crysis demo, just wasn't that much fun :| Might get it if I can find it under 20$, but even with everything at max on the demo it was still very playable with just a single 4870 and a q9550
Tried the Crysis demo, just wasn't that much fun :| Might get it if I can find it under 20$, but even with everything at max on the demo it was still very playable with just a single 4870 and a q9550
Does anyone know what AMD's black edition CPUs are? Also, I've noticed the prices seem to be falling on Newegg, are there more new ones coming out that may drive the prices further down or are they probably as low as they're going to go for a while?
lachesis
Member
Damn BSOD... 
My 2nd build just started working really weird. P5QL-Pro, E7200, and Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1066/ 1gbx4. I thought it might have been Anti-virus or virus causing it - but realized that it's probably the RAM itself.
When I first built the system few weeks ago, I ran a RAM Test and worked out fine. The Ram modules are from my previous build - and I was glad that I was able to re-use them. Now when I run the Memtest, it's full of errors from the get go.
I guess I'll have to figure out which stick is bad by inserting one by one. Sigh.
I bought the Ballistix Tracer DDR2-1066 back in January, (1gbx2) and bought more last July. Although I ordered the exactly same ones, the former had 2 heat-sink fans, and latter had just single sided hsf. I thought it wouldn't matter, but after doing some researching... I hear a lot of bad things regarding those single sided rams.
I'll see if I can isolate which one is defective, and try to RMA to Crucial themselves... perhaps even changing them to non-tracer versions. I'm rather getting ticked off by the whole thing - as my 2nd build was built around this RAM... Did anyone have any RMA experience with Crucial directly?
And my MB instruction says that it doesn't support RAM modules that's composed of 128mb chips - and guess what. Even though Crucial's website was saying that this RAM is compatible with my MB - but I guess it's definitely not. I might have to try to convince them to exchange them to 2x2gb sticks while sending my whole 4 sets...
I advise people to stay clear of Crucial memory - as it seems like they've dropped the ball....
My 2nd build just started working really weird. P5QL-Pro, E7200, and Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1066/ 1gbx4. I thought it might have been Anti-virus or virus causing it - but realized that it's probably the RAM itself.
When I first built the system few weeks ago, I ran a RAM Test and worked out fine. The Ram modules are from my previous build - and I was glad that I was able to re-use them. Now when I run the Memtest, it's full of errors from the get go.
I guess I'll have to figure out which stick is bad by inserting one by one. Sigh.
I bought the Ballistix Tracer DDR2-1066 back in January, (1gbx2) and bought more last July. Although I ordered the exactly same ones, the former had 2 heat-sink fans, and latter had just single sided hsf. I thought it wouldn't matter, but after doing some researching... I hear a lot of bad things regarding those single sided rams.
I'll see if I can isolate which one is defective, and try to RMA to Crucial themselves... perhaps even changing them to non-tracer versions. I'm rather getting ticked off by the whole thing - as my 2nd build was built around this RAM... Did anyone have any RMA experience with Crucial directly?
And my MB instruction says that it doesn't support RAM modules that's composed of 128mb chips - and guess what. Even though Crucial's website was saying that this RAM is compatible with my MB - but I guess it's definitely not. I might have to try to convince them to exchange them to 2x2gb sticks while sending my whole 4 sets...
I advise people to stay clear of Crucial memory - as it seems like they've dropped the ball....
Quick HDD question:
If I build a new machine with a 1TB Samsung F1 drive, and install Vista/apps/games/data all on a single big partition, will it still run nice and responsive? I've been told that if the drive is fast (like the SSF1s) then it shouldn't matter, but I'm not sure if it's best.
Either that or I'll create a partition for the OS/apps/games, or get a 320GB OS drive instead, but I'm trying to save money and keep everything simply organised.
thanks
If I build a new machine with a 1TB Samsung F1 drive, and install Vista/apps/games/data all on a single big partition, will it still run nice and responsive? I've been told that if the drive is fast (like the SSF1s) then it shouldn't matter, but I'm not sure if it's best.
Either that or I'll create a partition for the OS/apps/games, or get a 320GB OS drive instead, but I'm trying to save money and keep everything simply organised.
thanks
i think my current CPU is about to go belly up, so it looks like it's time to build a new computer. this one lasted me 5 years, but the original plan was for it to only last 2-3. the plan for this new build is again to last just 2-3 years being about to play all games released in that time frame.
my monitor is a Samsung LCD that has a res of 16x10. my budget is ~$800 including Vista
here's what I've thrown together so far on new egg:
Antec Sonata III 500 ATX Mid Tower Computer Case w/ 500W Power Supply $129 (-50 mail in rebate)
Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F 120mm Case Fan $20
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $70
ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard $140
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor $190
ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP $181 (-30 mail in rebate)
4GB kit (2GBx2), 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-6400 memory module $86 (via crucial.com)
So how'd I do? I know there is debate about a quad core vs a dual core, but the plan is for this build to be around for a few years so I figure the quad is the way to go. I also plan on throwing in another 4850 in a year or so crossfire mode.
I'm also not quite clear about which version of vista to buy, do i need the 64bit one because of the 4GB of RAM?
thanks
my monitor is a Samsung LCD that has a res of 16x10. my budget is ~$800 including Vista
here's what I've thrown together so far on new egg:
Antec Sonata III 500 ATX Mid Tower Computer Case w/ 500W Power Supply $129 (-50 mail in rebate)
Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F 120mm Case Fan $20
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $70
ASUS P5Q Pro LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard $140
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor $190
ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP $181 (-30 mail in rebate)
4GB kit (2GBx2), 240-pin DIMM, DDR2 PC2-6400 memory module $86 (via crucial.com)
So how'd I do? I know there is debate about a quad core vs a dual core, but the plan is for this build to be around for a few years so I figure the quad is the way to go. I also plan on throwing in another 4850 in a year or so crossfire mode.
I'm also not quite clear about which version of vista to buy, do i need the 64bit one because of the 4GB of RAM?
thanks
lachesis said:
No secret about that, their memory was insanely popular and now quite a few are failing. They have also switched away from the dual sided D9 chips so the new ones don't clock as well, as for RMA they have plenty of experiance so they do a good job.
semifinalist said:
Yup, the TB drives are among the fastest out there because of 334GB/platter tech.
suaveric said:
Grab a WD6400AAKS (640GB drive for $15 more, faster and more space)
Grab a 4870, no point in getting a 4850 with 8800GT's being $100 AR.
Grab 4GB (2x2GB) of RAM, I would personally go with G.Skill as they are solid and have a very short RMA return, plus their heat spreaders look nice.
Grab 64 bit Vista
Hazaro said:
the 4870 is $100 more than the card I have listed and I'm already slightly over my budget as it stands. is it really worth it for that? i'm under the impression that a 4850 right now is more than enough and in a year or so i'll be able to add another for another $100.