brain_stew
Member
Minsc said:
Be sure to stability test with something other than just Prime95, I'd recommend OCCT.
-
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Official "I need a new PC!!" 2009 Edition
- Thread starter VictimOfGrief
- Start date
Be sure to stability test with something other than just Prime95, I'd recommend OCCT.
Okay GAF, help me out please.
I'm a complete noob on the PC front, but next month I'm going to buy a new PC. But, I was just wondering, what do you need to have a decent gaming PC? I'm thinking of getting games like Dead Space (2), Left4Dead 2 and Bioshock 2. What kind of processor is needed, all stuff to run a game. And what will it cost me of course. (In Euro's)
I'm a complete noob on the PC front, but next month I'm going to buy a new PC. But, I was just wondering, what do you need to have a decent gaming PC? I'm thinking of getting games like Dead Space (2), Left4Dead 2 and Bioshock 2. What kind of processor is needed, all stuff to run a game. And what will it cost me of course. (In Euro's)
Is there a NYC-North Jersey area gaffer that can help me test out the parts in my pc. It won't turn on. I got the power supply replaced already and gigabyte says they tested the motherboard. I don't know what works or not and I'm trying to avoid paying diagnostic price when all they're going to tell me is that I have to buy a new part
Struct09 said:
Buy an EVGA motherboard such as this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3188055&cm_re=EVGA_p55-_-13-188-055-_-Product. There are issues with the sockets in most 1156 motherboards burning out after extreme overclocking (and possibly mild overclocking after an extended period of time. From everything I've seen, the EVGA boards are your best bet to avoid the issue.
Dash said:
Thanks for the recommendation.
This may seem like a stupid question, but which one of the slots in the picture(s) is a PCI Express x1? I have a Happauge 2250 I'd want to use with it, and on my current motherboard it has a little PCI Express slot that it goes into. I don't see the same on that EVGA.
BravoSuperStar
Member
Struct09 said:
Its above the first x16 slot. You can also plug a PCI Express x1 device into a x16 slot and it will work ok if you aren't going SLI/CF.
The Last Wizard
Member
does the xbox 360 wired controller work with all pc games?
MoFuzz
Member
NightHawk17 said:
Almost all Games For Windows titles will support it out of the box with no hassle, even rumble support.
Older games or non GfW might require some fiddling with Xpadder or something similar.
Off the top of my head, Dead Space, Crysis incl. Warhead, Batman: AA, RE 5, Braid, Bionic Commando Rearmed & 2009, All Valve games from HL2 onwards, and a crap load others all work perfectly.
Might wanna use something else for 2D games though. 360 Dpad is bunk.
TouchMyBox
Member
HomerSimpson-Man said:
well, a athlon II... Athlon = Phenom with the l3 cache disabled. Surprisingly, the lack of cache didn't take the toll on gaming I thought it would, but according to benchmarks, unlocking the cache does net you another ~10% and in some cases 20% in performance. If money isn't too tight it would probably be worth it to spend the extra money on the phenom so you know you'll be getting a good chip, and since your using your old mobo, i'm not sure if it supports unlocking. My going for the athlon was more out of curiosity as to what I could get for the money rather than trying to get a good upgrade for my rig. But yeah, if you're looking to upgrade without breaking the bank, it's a fantastic chip.
Ahhhh I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should return my motherboard. I can't do a triple channel set up for RAM, but I can still use 6 gigs. On one hand, I really should have all the features I paid for (not to mention future upgrade possibilities). On the other hand, it's such a pain in the ass taking the machine apart and figuring out where to put all the pieces in the mean time. How much of a difference does a triple channel have compared to a dual channel one, anyway? I don't know that it would make that significant an improvement. But then again, I can't OC my RAM without having all the sticks in the same channel or my PC won't boot.
Just need to rant.
Just need to rant.
JRW
Member
x3n05 said:
Yea believe me I went back and forth trying to decide if I should go i5 or i7 860 etc. After looking at oodles of benchmarks I finally decided since I do a lot of encoding I'd benefit from triple channel, plus I have a good chance in getting a D0 step i7 920 which supposedly OC to 4ghz rather easily.
TouchMyBox said:
Ok I figured that was the best route ill just have to do some cleaning / moving / deleting lol, Thanks.
UPS tracking shows this Thursday delivery, cant wait
SuicideUZI
Member
Struct09 said:
I would be careful of overclocking a core i5, I dont know all of the details but I heard stories about something with people having issues overclocking them because they have less pins than the i7 but use the same voltage or something along those lines.
It may be safe, just giving you a heads up
EphemeralDream
Member
I have Windows 7 coming in the mail soon but I'm messing around with XP on my new rig in the meantime. I think I've gotten the drivers all working for the most part but hd audio has been a huge pain in the ass. This is on SP3, but it just won't install properly and seems to conflict with Windows' native UAA support or whatever.
Anyone have problems with this?
Anyone have problems with this?
SundaySounds
Banned
MrPliskin said:
Can I ask why?
wolfmat
Confirmed Asshole
So my PC is getting on my nerves. It's just too noisy.
I could of course replace fans and shit, but an alternative solution I came up with is putting the box into the next room and buying some extension cables.
The distance to be bridged would be about 8 meters. I have a USB mouse, would buy a USB keyboard, have 3 audio connections, 2 monitors (1x DVI, 1x D-Sub).
Network is solved (I have a hub for this).
The relevant cables I can find at my local retailers are all pretty expensive. To be honest, I was surprised they had all of them there. But when I sum it all up, I end up at something like 100.
So what I want to know is this:
Where can I get extension cables online that are cheap, long and good? (EU stores only plz)
Does a cable length of 8m introduce serious lag on USB or on monitor connections?
Is it cheaper to replace CPU and GPU fans and the PSU? If yes, with what?
GPU: GF8800GT
CPU Socket: AM2+
TIA
I could of course replace fans and shit, but an alternative solution I came up with is putting the box into the next room and buying some extension cables.
The distance to be bridged would be about 8 meters. I have a USB mouse, would buy a USB keyboard, have 3 audio connections, 2 monitors (1x DVI, 1x D-Sub).
Network is solved (I have a hub for this).
The relevant cables I can find at my local retailers are all pretty expensive. To be honest, I was surprised they had all of them there. But when I sum it all up, I end up at something like 100.
So what I want to know is this:
Where can I get extension cables online that are cheap, long and good? (EU stores only plz)
Does a cable length of 8m introduce serious lag on USB or on monitor connections?
Is it cheaper to replace CPU and GPU fans and the PSU? If yes, with what?
GPU: GF8800GT
CPU Socket: AM2+
TIA
darkpaladinmfc
Member
Help please?darkpaladinmfc said:
brain_stew
Member
Make sure you get a USB repeater, not just an ordinary extension cable.
If you don't mind waiting for (free) delivery from Hong Kong then I doubt you'll find anywhere much cheaper than www.dealextreme.com, somnething like this should do the trick:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5873
If you don't mind waiting for (free) delivery from Hong Kong then I doubt you'll find anywhere much cheaper than www.dealextreme.com, somnething like this should do the trick:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5873
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htmMrPliskin said:
SundaySounds
Banned
MrPliskin said:
If you've got it plugged in just go to "my computer", right click on the drive and select format.
MWS Natural
Member
MWS Natural said:
I guess not too many people are raiding their SSD's lol...
So I am thinking about building a pc. Why are ram prices so high right now? Will they drop down after the holidays because then I may just buy 2 gigs now and 2 later if the prices will go down. Should I really just put the whole plan on hold as it seems video card and ram prices are inflated right now. I am going for something around the $650 CAD pc so the prices make a real difference in that range.
A few weeks ago my computer started giving me randomly different beeps during the POST.
Sometimes it's a singe 'beep'. Sometimes it's 'beep, beep, boop', sometimes it's 'beep, beep'.
Weird thing is, there is are no differences whatsoever aside from the POST beeps.
Any ideas?
It's an ECS 780GM-A mobo.
Other specs
Athlon x2 6000+
HD 4770
4 GB RAM
Vista 32
Sometimes it's a singe 'beep'. Sometimes it's 'beep, beep, boop', sometimes it's 'beep, beep'.
Weird thing is, there is are no differences whatsoever aside from the POST beeps.
Any ideas?
It's an ECS 780GM-A mobo.
Other specs
Athlon x2 6000+
HD 4770
4 GB RAM
Vista 32
TouchMyBox
Member
Shambles said:
At least support exFAT, FAT32 is completely useless.
SundaySounds
Banned
kamspy said:
Are you noticing any problems?
It's time I got a USB saturn pad mostly for indie 2D games.
If I got this one would it work plug and play with Windows 7?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Genuine-Original-SEGA-Saturn-SS-USB-Control-PS3-Black_W0QQitemZ260519720198QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVideo_Games_Accessories?hash=item3ca82f7506
If I got this one would it work plug and play with Windows 7?
http://cgi.ebay.com/Genuine-Original-SEGA-Saturn-SS-USB-Control-PS3-Black_W0QQitemZ260519720198QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVideo_Games_Accessories?hash=item3ca82f7506
SundaySounds said:
Nope. Nothing but the beeps.
I know way back in the golden years post beeps were used to diagnose stuff. I remember having sheets of paper with definitions for the different sequences of beeps. Bout the same time I was using big cardboard decoder wheels for cd-keys(best DRM ever).
BravoSuperStar
Member
kamspy said:
Does your bios have an event log? Sometimes you'll get beeps if it thinks there is something important to check there...
Thanks. I decided on this official white one so I can live out my Segata Sanshiro fantasies.Milpool said:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370302875902&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
Minsc said:
Eh, I never think the "removal" of choices and / or options is a "good thing". NTFS is fantastic, however, it's not widely supported. If NTFS were an adopted industry standard and I could use it on my MAC, PS3, and other electronic devices, then I'd use it in a heartbeat, because it is absolutely superior.
Unfortunately for me though, it's not, so I have to reformat this beast of a hard drive
Minsc
Gold Member
MrPliskin said:Eh, I never think the "removal" of choices and / or options is a "good thing". NTFS is fantastic, however, it's not widely supported. If NTFS were an adopted industry standard and I could use it on my MAC, PS3, and other electronic devices, then I'd use it in a heartbeat, because it is absolutely superior.
Unfortunately for me though, it's not, so I have to reformat this beast of a hard drive
I think that the removal of FAT32 will force NTFS to become a new standard, so in a way it is a good thing. Simply by default, it will have to become supported, since your average windows 7 user has no other choice really.
I mean people buying usb thumb drives and formatting them on their machines will get annoyed if their NTFS format doesn't work on devices, so devices will need to be able to read the file system. Many do, such as my car's navigator and my WD TV media player. Shame about the PS3.
NTFS should work perfectly on your Mac as long as the Mac isn't outdated I thought though.
Gully State
Member
nm..
Posting this here as well cause not everyone reads the tech support thread :
So I was playing WoW today and my monitors went off suddenly ( music stopped as well ), I noticed that my graphics card fan sped up to about 100%. I could tell by the amount of noise it was making, I did a physical shut down and tried to restart my computer. I ran into a problem though, my monitors aren't displaying anything even though my computer is still running and booting up the OS fine. I can tell because it'll play the W7 login sound and my hard drive is definitely booting up the OS just nothing is being displayed on my monitors ( their in sleep mode for some reason despite my computer being turned on ).
So I've come to the conclusion that my graphics card is messed up and not sending any display information to my monitors or something else is going on with the system. Another thing is that my graphics card fan is spinning at 100% whenever I turn my computer on, before it would do this for about 2 seconds then lower itself once the BIOS screen came up. I'm thinking it's a hardware problem and I have to send the card back to manufacturer, hopefully not :/
I cleaned out pretty much most of the dust that was in my computer ( been a while ), there was a faint burning smell right as my monitors went down the first time which is kinda what prompted me to shut down ASAP. I wasn't running anything too graphical intensive so overheating is out of the question.
I'm using this : http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-436.shtml
Edit: this is my PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171032
So I was playing WoW today and my monitors went off suddenly ( music stopped as well ), I noticed that my graphics card fan sped up to about 100%. I could tell by the amount of noise it was making, I did a physical shut down and tried to restart my computer. I ran into a problem though, my monitors aren't displaying anything even though my computer is still running and booting up the OS fine. I can tell because it'll play the W7 login sound and my hard drive is definitely booting up the OS just nothing is being displayed on my monitors ( their in sleep mode for some reason despite my computer being turned on ).
So I've come to the conclusion that my graphics card is messed up and not sending any display information to my monitors or something else is going on with the system. Another thing is that my graphics card fan is spinning at 100% whenever I turn my computer on, before it would do this for about 2 seconds then lower itself once the BIOS screen came up. I'm thinking it's a hardware problem and I have to send the card back to manufacturer, hopefully not :/
I cleaned out pretty much most of the dust that was in my computer ( been a while ), there was a faint burning smell right as my monitors went down the first time which is kinda what prompted me to shut down ASAP. I wasn't running anything too graphical intensive so overheating is out of the question.
I'm using this : http://www.hisdigital.com/un/product2-436.shtml
Edit: this is my PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171032
Gully State
Member
Well, I guess I'm a little bit soured on my experience with crossfiring videocards. I learned a lot about what the potential obstacles (which in the end are my fault) but it's brought me to a crossroad of spending more money to fix the situation.
About 3 weeks ago, I saw a deal for an open box 4850 for $77 on newegg. This was shortly after I had purchased a brand new 1080p monitor. I quickly pulled the trigger as I've read that a crossfired 4850's performance is surprisingly good for 1080p at under $200 and since I was already running a 4850 already, I figured it would be a no brainer upgrade. Anyways the card arrives, and initially things are okay as I run through some of my usual games (Borderlands, Torchlight, TF2, L4D, Crysis) and it seemed to run fine. The only issue I saw was that the temperature was a little on the high side with the new card (which was the card on top). I assumed it was the stock cooler so I ordered an Accelero S1 Rev2 to rectify that after my PC locked up while running the character creating for DA:Origins (I figured it was a temp issue as the new card ran 20C higher than the old card- didn't realize that card placement in Crossfire affects temperature- again stupid me). Well, after installing it last night and finally running furkmark stress test to stress it, I got the dreaded red light on the new card and the system locked up at 100% gpu load. Shocked by this development, I did temperature logs and decided to run Borderlands again, after about 30 min of play, sure enough the system locked. It seems that once the GPU runs at 100% load for an extend amount of time, the PC would crash and I'd get a red light on the new card.
So from what I can see, I've got a few options
1) sell one of the 4850's and go back to single card.
2) sell both of them and upgrade
3) get a bigger power supply? (I believe the red light means that the card isn't getting adequate juice? I figure I would be in the clear with that though since I'm running a Zalman 600W that's pretty well rated)
4) Try something else?
Things I've learned
1) Crossfire is deceptively a pain
2) Temperature of the upper card will be higher than that of the lower card due to heat generation.
3) Crossfiring require more power than usual?
4) Buyer beware with open box items- you can only return them within x amount of days and there's no exchange for a new one or are they under manufacturer's warranty.
Anyways, it's days like these where I can empathize with those people that have completely spurned PC gaming in favor of the console.
About 3 weeks ago, I saw a deal for an open box 4850 for $77 on newegg. This was shortly after I had purchased a brand new 1080p monitor. I quickly pulled the trigger as I've read that a crossfired 4850's performance is surprisingly good for 1080p at under $200 and since I was already running a 4850 already, I figured it would be a no brainer upgrade. Anyways the card arrives, and initially things are okay as I run through some of my usual games (Borderlands, Torchlight, TF2, L4D, Crysis) and it seemed to run fine. The only issue I saw was that the temperature was a little on the high side with the new card (which was the card on top). I assumed it was the stock cooler so I ordered an Accelero S1 Rev2 to rectify that after my PC locked up while running the character creating for DA:Origins (I figured it was a temp issue as the new card ran 20C higher than the old card- didn't realize that card placement in Crossfire affects temperature- again stupid me). Well, after installing it last night and finally running furkmark stress test to stress it, I got the dreaded red light on the new card and the system locked up at 100% gpu load. Shocked by this development, I did temperature logs and decided to run Borderlands again, after about 30 min of play, sure enough the system locked. It seems that once the GPU runs at 100% load for an extend amount of time, the PC would crash and I'd get a red light on the new card.
So from what I can see, I've got a few options
1) sell one of the 4850's and go back to single card.
2) sell both of them and upgrade
3) get a bigger power supply? (I believe the red light means that the card isn't getting adequate juice? I figure I would be in the clear with that though since I'm running a Zalman 600W that's pretty well rated)
4) Try something else?
Things I've learned
1) Crossfire is deceptively a pain
2) Temperature of the upper card will be higher than that of the lower card due to heat generation.
3) Crossfiring require more power than usual?
4) Buyer beware with open box items- you can only return them within x amount of days and there's no exchange for a new one or are they under manufacturer's warranty.
Anyways, it's days like these where I can empathize with those people that have completely spurned PC gaming in favor of the console.
SundaySounds
Banned
Last night my Power supply started to make a faint burning smell. I turned it off for the night and blew some compressed air in it this morning, thinking it was just some dust that was burning. But I've been running the computer for an hour or so after that and the smell is back. what should I do?
Don't know if this has been posted or not but thought it was awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TggHtINGIyc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TggHtINGIyc
TouchMyBox
Member
MrPliskin said:
But the sad thing is that NTFS is already considered to be horrible by today's standards, yet it's still going down it's journey to become an industry standard.
Macs can read from NTFS and can write to it if you install NTFS-3G.MrPliskin said:Eh, I never think the "removal" of choices and / or options is a "good thing". NTFS is fantastic, however, it's not widely supported. If NTFS were an adopted industry standard and I could use it on my MAC, PS3, and other electronic devices, then I'd use it in a heartbeat, because it is absolutely superior.
Unfortunately for me though, it's not, so I have to reformat this beast of a hard drive