I think I can handle putting it together (I think )
That's a very nice processor but a barely adequate video card. If you stick with your current monitor it could work OK. If you're upgrading then you might want a better card.
Also the powersupply seems like it might be dodgy to me.
Suggestions if I'm open to building a system myself?
I'm no expert on monitors, especially for something like photo editing. Maybe someone else could chime in with some info. All I know is that a monitor that is excellent for that kind of thing is likely to be fairly expensive. You could even ask in the TV thread.
Hmmmm, this probably has a better video card than you need, but:
CPU should be fast enough for most any kind of photoshop work. Might be too much video card for your needs but it should last a while (DX11) and cheaper cards mostly don't make sense at the goofy prices that things sell for these days.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Alright so I looked in further and saw that hdmi is better than dvi, but I've never heard of PowerColor and the cooling fan on that doesn't look sufficient, has anyone had any experience with this card?
and thanks for the post HarshLanguage
Ok, so I wasn't sure where else to post this, but I just installed a new Mobo, Processer, and Ram in to my computer and I blue screen crash on load up with the Windows 7 RC I'm running. I installed a second copy on a partition and it loads up just fine. What I'm wondering is if theres a way to get my original install to work again with out having to start fresh. I'm fine with doing so, but I'd rather not.
Alright so I looked in further and saw that hdmi is better than dvi, but I've never heard of PowerColor and the cooling fan on that doesn't look sufficient, has anyone had any experience with this card?
and thanks for the post HarshLanguage
PowerColor is a pretty well-known brand. I don't have any personal experience with them, but I haven't heard anything negative either. You'll find slightly more robust fans on the $170ish 5770s, but I haven't heard of cooling being a problem with any of them.
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
In addition to that graphics card query, I'm also going to be upgrading to Windows 7 64-Bit (expect me coming back here soon after making a bungling mistake), and I just want to make sure that all of my hardware is compatible. Do I need to worry about my hard drives not being compatible? A friend of mine has indicated that without drivers for the drive, it won't be recognized, but I feel like it should still work (but I don't want to try it without some confirmation either way).
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
You never need a driver for a specific hard drive, that's silly talk. The I/O controller yeah, and he's probably thinking about AHCI support for serial ATA, which has been natively supported in Windows since Vista.
I personally won't buy PowerColor anymore since they apparently had a batch of cards with the incorrect BIOS on the card so I played RMA for a few weeks returning it and getting yet another 'defective' one before they realized the problem. But that may very well be an isolated incident.
Xeddicus on
"For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men. Not women. Not beasts...this you can trust."
So when I built my machine awhile back I put one of these weird ole' GeForce 7950 GX2s in there. Basically it's like two 7950s slapped together onto one card.
The specs according to Nvidia's website are below.
Graphics Bus Technology PCI Express
Memory 1GB (512MB per GPU)
Memory Interface 512-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 76.8
Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec) 24
Vertices/second (Billion) 2.0
Pixels per clock (peak) 48
RAMDACs (MHz) 400
Now, this is a directx 9 card. Was thinking about upgrading, but because of the odd nature of this card, not really sure what to upgrade to that would actually be more powerful along with being direct x 10 (or maybe even 11) capable.
I used to know what I was doing. It just seems to get more and more confusing.
Other specs of the machine:
E6600
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) (two sets, so 4GB total)
Do not remember the PSU or MOBO off the top of my head, but I believe the PSU is 700W.
Any suggestions for the graphics card upgrade would be appreciated.
I guess if there is a reasonable processor upgrade still in the 775 slot I'd be game for that as well as long as it would be worth it.
I mostly use the PC for gaming, but I also do quite a bit of audio recording, editing, and mixing.
Thanks in advance.
Edit to add: Monitors:
2048 x 1152 resolution on primary
1920 x 1080 on secondary
How does hdmi look compared to DVI, is there a significant decrease in video display?
hdmi=DVI video + audio + some kind of copy protection, I think.
The video signal is exactly the same.
This is 100% correct and the converter between the two is passive.
However while the two signals are identical, they are not always treated the same.
Some TVs will display a DVI signal like it is received while doing all kinds of weird shit to HDMI.
I have a TV that I can not turn off overscan on HDMI ports (Fujitsu Siemens).
And I have seen others that insist on stupid "contrast enhancements" on the HDMI port.
So my computer is old and nearing the end of it's life span. For my first replacement, I really need a better case with good airflow and heat reduction, and preferably a quieter one as well. Any recommendations? Cheap is good, but i'm willing to go around 100 if necessary.
This is a good case and it's one sale with extra fans already installed. This is a great deal because it also has free shipping.
Just hooked this up. Tremendous case, many thanks for the suggestion.
Now, I wanna start looking at a processor upgrade and a RAM upgrade. I've already got 2 gigs of ram, with 2 slots left so I figured i'd just buy 2 more sticks of 1 gig each. They should be identical sticks to what I have already, right?
Alright I've built 3 computers in the last 6 months mostly using builds from this thread. Thanks, the one I built for myself in particular is awesome. I'm now having problems with one of them (built for my mother-in-law).
Budget Build:
AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Power Supply - Retail
HIS H577F1GDG Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 Video Card
OCZ Obsidian 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Rosewill R223-P-BK 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Random DVD-RW
So it hard freezes sometimes and other times it will just up and reboot on it's own. I can be doing something a simple as web browsing or watching something on hulu.
I've installed CPUiD's HW Monitor and also Speedfan to look at the temp readings then I tried running it through a round of 3DMark06 only to have it freeze on the last test. So I ran it again and it finished. I had HW monitor on while it did it's things. Here are the results:
I don't know what TMPIN2 is but it never changes so I imagine it's not an actual reading but instead an empty reading of nothing.
Everything seems to be cooling fine. There is not a lot installed on here software wise: Windows 7 home premium, office 2007. The majority of the crap on here is hw monitor, 3dmark, and speedfan which I downloaded just now to try and figure out the problem. The computer is a month and a half old and she's been having the problem since a couple days after I gave it to her (probably the first time she really used it for more then a couple minutes).
She had it at her place (4 hours away) and kept complaining that it would freeze on a purple screen. I could never get her to describe it accurately. I asked, "is it solid purple? no error message?" and she'd say "yes", before I could finish asking "or is it kind of purple tinted but you can see through it" , to which she'd say something like " well yeah, sorta". A lot of this was actually done through my wife so that didn't help either, even though my wife is pretty computer savy.
Also it doesn't freeze up on me nearly as much as she made it sound like, but it has frozen up/restarted on me 3-4 times in about 3 hours of use across 2 different days.
I have yet to see an error message and all but one of those times it was a hard freeze on a blank black screen unexpectedly, the other time it just rebooted out of nowhere.
Any ideas where to head from here?
Edit: the first thing I had her do was check and recheck her connections in the back. Mainly thinking the montior wasn't securely plugged into the video card. It was afterall using a DVI to VGA converter that came with the card since her monitor only has VGA. She said it was fine. Still had the problem. Couple of days later she get fed up and unplugged it all and plugged it all back in making sure it was all good, no change. I was kind of hoping bringing it to my house would solve the problem but like I said since I've been on it for an hour here it has frozen once (at the end of the first 3dmark06 attempt).
I didn't know at the time if it was freezing or the cable was just loose and turning the screen purple. Since holding the power button down for 5sec to shut it down and then powering it back up is the only way she was able to fix it everytime, that kind of blew the loose vga cable idea out of the water.
Perhaps it won't freeze/reboot on me ever again and it WAS something with her place.
I hate having a computer that is half broke. Either work or don't. Not this "well sometimes" bullshit.
Hey PC people, my cousin utterly destroyed her laptop and my aunt doesn't want to get her a new one. I mean what she did to her a laptop was a thing of utter destruction. I can't even being to describe it.
So I got the idea in my head to build out a desktop for her. She's 15, she plays for Left 4 Dead and WoW and my aunt is on a budget.
Edit: I wanna note that I want to put a Blu Ray drive on there (since everything about that PC screams hi-def) but my aunt is on a budget. I might sneak it in if she gives me the okay and pay for the difference myself. It's only about a 30 dollar difference.
My machine's up and running guys. Thanks for the suggestions and help on the parts. This thing's awesome. Running Ubuntu 9.10 right now, but Windows 7 will go on tomorrow when I have access to the install (I'm smrt and fucked up the USB-key install instructions).
My only snag was forgetting to plug in the +4 power connector the first time I tried to boot. Once I noticed I'd forgotten that though it booted right up without any issues. Yay!
I hate having a computer that is half broke. Either work or don't. Not this "well sometimes" bullshit.
Yeah, intermittent problems are a real bitch. All I can say is that the most obvious candidates might be the memory or the PSU. After that probably the next thing to check would be the motherboard.
Also, you built your mother in law a pretty sweet computer.
JustinSane07: You should get a better power supply than the one that will come with that case. Also, you could save money by going with AMD for the CPU. Even a 2 core Athlon II X2 should be enough. Maybe upgrade to a 4770 with the money saved?
Hey PC people, my cousin utterly destroyed her laptop and my aunt doesn't want to get her a new one. I mean what she did to her a laptop was a thing of utter destruction. I can't even being to describe it.
So I got the idea in my head to build out a desktop for her. She's 15, she plays for Left 4 Dead and WoW and my aunt is on a budget.
Edit: I wanna note that I want to put a Blu Ray drive on there (since everything about that PC screams hi-def) but my aunt is on a budget. I might sneak it in if she gives me the okay and pay for the difference myself. It's only about a 30 dollar difference.
An ATI 4650 would be barely adequate for a monitor with a 1280x1024 resolution and certainly isn't going to be enough for the 1920X1080 monitor you have in that list. You'll probably want an ATI 4770 or 5770 for a monitor of that resolution and that'll easily double your video card budget. Totally agree with lowlylowlycook that you should be considering an AMD processor combo which will give you more bang for your buck and leave some more cash to invest in the video card and a reliable PSU.
Do I need to wipe the entire hard drive before I install a system-builder's version of Windows 7? I'm trying to boot from the CD right now but it's not working, I suspect because I still have a windows OS on this computer. I was planning on the Windows 7 disc formatting the drive, since that's what XP did, but since the disc won't even start I'm in a bit of a pickle.
I would agree with both you guys except I'm trying to keep it to the microATX form factor. They don't live in a large place and a smaller box would fit better. That video card was the best I could do for one that's low profile and same goes for the case/psu combo.
I could, however, switch out the mobo/processor for AMD components to knock the price down.
Edit: Alright I changed it to an ASUS Athlon mobo that was a little bit more expensive but also changed the processor to a Phenom II X3 and came out to a net savings of 20 bucks.
Alright I've built 3 computers in the last 6 months mostly using builds from this thread. Thanks, the one I built for myself in particular is awesome. I'm now having problems with one of them (built for my mother-in-law).
Budget Build:
AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Power Supply - Retail
HIS H577F1GDG Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 Video Card
OCZ Obsidian 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Rosewill R223-P-BK 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Random DVD-RW
So it hard freezes sometimes and other times it will just up and reboot on it's own. I can be doing something a simple as web browsing or watching something on hulu.
I've installed CPUiD's HW Monitor and also Speedfan to look at the temp readings then I tried running it through a round of 3DMark06 only to have it freeze on the last test. So I ran it again and it finished. I had HW monitor on while it did it's things. Here are the results:
I don't know what TMPIN2 is but it never changes so I imagine it's not an actual reading but instead an empty reading of nothing.
Everything seems to be cooling fine. There is not a lot installed on here software wise: Windows 7 home premium, office 2007. The majority of the crap on here is hw monitor, 3dmark, and speedfan which I downloaded just now to try and figure out the problem. The computer is a month and a half old and she's been having the problem since a couple days after I gave it to her (probably the first time she really used it for more then a couple minutes).
She had it at her place (4 hours away) and kept complaining that it would freeze on a purple screen. I could never get her to describe it accurately. I asked, "is it solid purple? no error message?" and she'd say "yes", before I could finish asking "or is it kind of purple tinted but you can see through it" , to which she'd say something like " well yeah, sorta". A lot of this was actually done through my wife so that didn't help either, even though my wife is pretty computer savy.
Also it doesn't freeze up on me nearly as much as she made it sound like, but it has frozen up/restarted on me 3-4 times in about 3 hours of use across 2 different days.
I have yet to see an error message and all but one of those times it was a hard freeze on a blank black screen unexpectedly, the other time it just rebooted out of nowhere.
Any ideas where to head from here?
Edit: the first thing I had her do was check and recheck her connections in the back. Mainly thinking the montior wasn't securely plugged into the video card. It was afterall using a DVI to VGA converter that came with the card since her monitor only has VGA. She said it was fine. Still had the problem. Couple of days later she get fed up and unplugged it all and plugged it all back in making sure it was all good, no change. I was kind of hoping bringing it to my house would solve the problem but like I said since I've been on it for an hour here it has frozen once (at the end of the first 3dmark06 attempt).
I didn't know at the time if it was freezing or the cable was just loose and turning the screen purple. Since holding the power button down for 5sec to shut it down and then powering it back up is the only way she was able to fix it everytime, that kind of blew the loose vga cable idea out of the water.
Perhaps it won't freeze/reboot on me ever again and it WAS something with her place.
I hate having a computer that is half broke. Either work or don't. Not this "well sometimes" bullshit.
Ok, first run a memtest on it to check the memory. From there I would suggest checking the bios on the mobo and update it if availible. I would also check the mobo drivers to make sure they are all up to date.
JustinSane07: You should get a better power supply than the one that will come with that case. Also, you could save money by going with AMD for the CPU. Even a 2 core Athlon II X2 should be enough. Maybe upgrade to a 4770 with the money saved?
I would agree with both you guys except I'm trying to keep it to the microATX form factor. They don't live in a large place and a smaller box would fit better. That video card was the best I could do for one that's low profile and same goes for the case/psu combo.
mATX form factor cases should be able to fit a regular sized video card without any problems. Hell, the Antec Mini P180 I just bought can fit the largest cards on the parket with room to spare.
I'm no expert on monitors, especially for something like photo editing. Maybe someone else could chime in with some info. All I know is that a monitor that is excellent for that kind of thing is likely to be fairly expensive. You could even ask in the TV thread.
Hmmmm, this probably has a better video card than you need, but:
CPU should be fast enough for most any kind of photoshop work. Might be too much video card for your needs but it should last a while (DX11) and cheaper cards mostly don't make sense at the goofy prices that things sell for these days.
I would agree with both you guys except I'm trying to keep it to the microATX form factor. They don't live in a large place and a smaller box would fit better. That video card was the best I could do for one that's low profile and same goes for the case/psu combo.
mATX form factor cases should be able to fit a regular sized video card without any problems. Hell, the Antec Mini P180 I just bought can fit the largest cards on the parket with room to spare.
Hmm, you know what, you're right. I didn't even bother to look. The rear slots do look normal sized.
I changed around a few things but unfortunately the price is now up near $800 which is where I didn't want to go. Better video card though, and one that supports DX11.
I would agree with both you guys except I'm trying to keep it to the microATX form factor. They don't live in a large place and a smaller box would fit better. That video card was the best I could do for one that's low profile and same goes for the case/psu combo.
mATX form factor cases should be able to fit a regular sized video card without any problems. Hell, the Antec Mini P180 I just bought can fit the largest cards on the parket with room to spare.
Hmm, you know what, you're right. I didn't even bother to look. The rear slots do look normal sized.
I changed around a few things but unfortunately the price is now up near $800 which is where I didn't want to go. Better video card though, and one that supports DX11.
Yes that case definitely supports a regular video card - no need for low-profile.
If you want to save some more $$ then drop the processor down to the Athlon II X3.
How can I definitively find out if something is broken? I've got four sockets for ram, occupied by a pair of 1-gig sticks and a 2-gig. I just bought another 2-gig stick, but it seems like that last socket is damaged. I can't get it to lock in and recognize that last stick. I tried to swap in one of the sticks I know works, but it wouldn't lock in either. How can I tell if that last slot is incompatable or just damaged?
It's an nForce 680i SLI motherboard, and all the ram involved is PC2-6400, if that makes a difference.
I also can't get the speakers to work in anything other than the headphone jack, if anyone knows much about sound stuff. I'm beginning to see why people prefer buying premade computers.
How can I definitively find out if something is broken? I've got four sockets for ram, occupied by a pair of 1-gig sticks and a 2-gig. I just bought another 2-gig stick, but it seems like that last socket is damaged. I can't get it to lock in and recognize that last stick. I tried to swap in one of the sticks I know works, but it wouldn't lock in either. How can I tell if that last slot is incompatable or just damaged?
It's an nForce 680i SLI motherboard, and all the ram involved is PC2-6400, if that makes a difference.
I also can't get the speakers to work in anything other than the headphone jack, if anyone knows much about sound stuff. I'm beginning to see why people prefer buying premade computers.
Well, I don't know about that memory slot, but if your memory works in the others, 4 Gigs should give you just about the same performance as 6 for most things.
As for the audio, did you try downloading drivers for your motherboard? I assume you are using on-board. I had to flash the bios on my board because there was something wrong with the build in USB ports. You might want to look into that too.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Bummer. I'm not sure if I can return it, since I kind of cut the shit out of the package to get it out. I guess I'll just save it.
I don't know much about motherboards anyway. Would there be any problems from still using the same one?
For the sound, I've got a soundblaster x-fi card. It's got up to date drivers. I've got more sound ports on the back of my computer, but I can't really tell what they go to. When I had it open, they're right behind the graphics card, but they aren't connected to it, obviously. Maybe the motherboard. I'll give it a look.
I'm trying to use the on board sound now, I've disabled the soundblaster card. I'm not using usb plugs, though, they're speaker plugs like a headset. I still can't get anything out of them, though. Could it need me to flash the bios even if it's not usb?
edit: to anyone following the thrilling adventures of pollo's speakers, I've got them working now. I've done so much shit that I can't isolate what it was that caused them to work. One of the speakers thinks it's a subwoofer, so there are still kinks to work out before it's working right, but hey, sound comes out of them now.
edit: And now that's working. Wrong wiring. Goddam color seers. Sorry for shitting up the computer thread, if this was only slightly related.
First of all, check your motherboard manual for supported memory configuarations. It is possible that the motherboard does not support the specific 1/1/2/2 setup you are trying, but will support e.g. 2/2/1/1 or something.
Second, try relaxing the timings somewhat, as most motherboards won't handle all ram slots full with aggressive timings.
The third option is to simply run with your current 1/1/2 setup or both 2Gb sticks, as you most likely won't notice the difference between 4Gb and 6Gb. Are you running a 64-bit OS to be able to take advantage of the extra ram?
So I thought I'd give a quick little status update to my last post here.
I went ahead and grabbed a Sapphire Radeon 4770 from Amazon (Hey, I had a gift card ). I've got the thing installed and everything seems to be running well. Still, I want to run it through some tests/benchmarks just to make sure everything is working out OK. Any suggestions? I saw that the Catalyst drivers included an option to install [email protected] suppose it's capable of using the GPU for some processing? Maybe I should just install and run that for a few hours to see if anything...unfortunate happens.
BTW, I just wanted to mention that the fan on that sucker is huge and has been barely audible with the case cover back on and the computer is safely under my desk where it belongs. I'm quite pleased about this fact.
I wanna get a new video card, somewhere around 150 bucks, so I figure the 5770 would be a good choice. But which one? Looking at newegg there are like 20 different kinds and I have no idea what I should get. Haaalp
Posts
Suggestions if I'm open to building a system myself?
On monitors too?
Hmmmm, this probably has a better video card than you need, but:
AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz + MSI 770-C45 AM3 AMD 770 + 4 Gig's memory
XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 + Windows 7
Antec Sonata III case +PSU
HITACHI Deskstar P7K500 HDP725050GLA360 (0A35415) 500GB
DVD drive
Should come in just under $700 after rebate.
CPU should be fast enough for most any kind of photoshop work. Might be too much video card for your needs but it should last a while (DX11) and cheaper cards mostly don't make sense at the goofy prices that things sell for these days.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Radeon 5770. Newegg has one on sale now, free shipping plus a rebate, for a post-rebate total of $145.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
hdmi=DVI video + audio + some kind of copy protection, I think.
The video signal is exactly the same.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
and thanks for the post HarshLanguage
Edit: Nevermind, it works now... not sure why...
PowerColor is a pretty well-known brand. I don't have any personal experience with them, but I haven't heard anything negative either. You'll find slightly more robust fans on the $170ish 5770s, but I haven't heard of cooling being a problem with any of them.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Edit: This is the drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136195
The specs according to Nvidia's website are below.
Graphics Bus Technology PCI Express
Memory 1GB (512MB per GPU)
Memory Interface 512-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) 76.8
Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec) 24
Vertices/second (Billion) 2.0
Pixels per clock (peak) 48
RAMDACs (MHz) 400
Now, this is a directx 9 card. Was thinking about upgrading, but because of the odd nature of this card, not really sure what to upgrade to that would actually be more powerful along with being direct x 10 (or maybe even 11) capable.
I used to know what I was doing. It just seems to get more and more confusing.
Other specs of the machine:
E6600
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) (two sets, so 4GB total)
Do not remember the PSU or MOBO off the top of my head, but I believe the PSU is 700W.
Any suggestions for the graphics card upgrade would be appreciated.
I guess if there is a reasonable processor upgrade still in the 775 slot I'd be game for that as well as long as it would be worth it.
I mostly use the PC for gaming, but I also do quite a bit of audio recording, editing, and mixing.
Thanks in advance.
Edit to add: Monitors:
2048 x 1152 resolution on primary
1920 x 1080 on secondary
PSN : Bolthorn
Anything DX11 that is midrange or above is going to be better.
However while the two signals are identical, they are not always treated the same.
Some TVs will display a DVI signal like it is received while doing all kinds of weird shit to HDMI.
I have a TV that I can not turn off overscan on HDMI ports (Fujitsu Siemens).
And I have seen others that insist on stupid "contrast enhancements" on the HDMI port.
Just hooked this up. Tremendous case, many thanks for the suggestion.
Now, I wanna start looking at a processor upgrade and a RAM upgrade. I've already got 2 gigs of ram, with 2 slots left so I figured i'd just buy 2 more sticks of 1 gig each. They should be identical sticks to what I have already, right?
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
Budget Build:
AMD Athlon II X2 245 Regor 2.9GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor
CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Power Supply - Retail
HIS H577F1GDG Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 Video Card
OCZ Obsidian 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Rosewill R223-P-BK 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Random DVD-RW
So it hard freezes sometimes and other times it will just up and reboot on it's own. I can be doing something a simple as web browsing or watching something on hulu.
I've installed CPUiD's HW Monitor and also Speedfan to look at the temp readings then I tried running it through a round of 3DMark06 only to have it freeze on the last test. So I ran it again and it finished. I had HW monitor on while it did it's things. Here are the results:
I don't know what TMPIN2 is but it never changes so I imagine it's not an actual reading but instead an empty reading of nothing.
Everything seems to be cooling fine. There is not a lot installed on here software wise: Windows 7 home premium, office 2007. The majority of the crap on here is hw monitor, 3dmark, and speedfan which I downloaded just now to try and figure out the problem. The computer is a month and a half old and she's been having the problem since a couple days after I gave it to her (probably the first time she really used it for more then a couple minutes).
She had it at her place (4 hours away) and kept complaining that it would freeze on a purple screen. I could never get her to describe it accurately. I asked, "is it solid purple? no error message?" and she'd say "yes", before I could finish asking "or is it kind of purple tinted but you can see through it" , to which she'd say something like " well yeah, sorta". A lot of this was actually done through my wife so that didn't help either, even though my wife is pretty computer savy.
Also it doesn't freeze up on me nearly as much as she made it sound like, but it has frozen up/restarted on me 3-4 times in about 3 hours of use across 2 different days.
I have yet to see an error message and all but one of those times it was a hard freeze on a blank black screen unexpectedly, the other time it just rebooted out of nowhere.
Any ideas where to head from here?
Edit: the first thing I had her do was check and recheck her connections in the back. Mainly thinking the montior wasn't securely plugged into the video card. It was afterall using a DVI to VGA converter that came with the card since her monitor only has VGA. She said it was fine. Still had the problem. Couple of days later she get fed up and unplugged it all and plugged it all back in making sure it was all good, no change. I was kind of hoping bringing it to my house would solve the problem but like I said since I've been on it for an hour here it has frozen once (at the end of the first 3dmark06 attempt).
I didn't know at the time if it was freezing or the cable was just loose and turning the screen purple. Since holding the power button down for 5sec to shut it down and then powering it back up is the only way she was able to fix it everytime, that kind of blew the loose vga cable idea out of the water.
Perhaps it won't freeze/reboot on me ever again and it WAS something with her place.
I hate having a computer that is half broke. Either work or don't. Not this "well sometimes" bullshit.
So I got the idea in my head to build out a desktop for her. She's 15, she plays for Left 4 Dead and WoW and my aunt is on a budget.
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=10183734
What do you guys think?
Edit: I wanna note that I want to put a Blu Ray drive on there (since everything about that PC screams hi-def) but my aunt is on a budget. I might sneak it in if she gives me the okay and pay for the difference myself. It's only about a 30 dollar difference.
My only snag was forgetting to plug in the +4 power connector the first time I tried to boot. Once I noticed I'd forgotten that though it booted right up without any issues. Yay!
Yeah, intermittent problems are a real bitch. All I can say is that the most obvious candidates might be the memory or the PSU. After that probably the next thing to check would be the motherboard.
Also, you built your mother in law a pretty sweet computer.
JustinSane07: You should get a better power supply than the one that will come with that case. Also, you could save money by going with AMD for the CPU. Even a 2 core Athlon II X2 should be enough. Maybe upgrade to a 4770 with the money saved?
Maybe this:
Athlon II X2 3.0Ghz Cpu + mATX motherboard
Corsair 400W PSU + 500GB HD
XFX 4770 Video Card
4GB DDR2 RAM
Case
DVD drive
Total $505 =$20 in MiR =$485
That might be a good place to start.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
An ATI 4650 would be barely adequate for a monitor with a 1280x1024 resolution and certainly isn't going to be enough for the 1920X1080 monitor you have in that list. You'll probably want an ATI 4770 or 5770 for a monitor of that resolution and that'll easily double your video card budget. Totally agree with lowlylowlycook that you should be considering an AMD processor combo which will give you more bang for your buck and leave some more cash to invest in the video card and a reliable PSU.
I could, however, switch out the mobo/processor for AMD components to knock the price down.
Edit: Alright I changed it to an ASUS Athlon mobo that was a little bit more expensive but also changed the processor to a Phenom II X3 and came out to a net savings of 20 bucks.
Ok, first run a memtest on it to check the memory. From there I would suggest checking the bios on the mobo and update it if availible. I would also check the mobo drivers to make sure they are all up to date.
I would suggest this memory instead. That G.Skill is $82 with $7 shipping while the Corsair is $86 with free shipping & a $10 mail-in rebate.
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
mATX form factor cases should be able to fit a regular sized video card without any problems. Hell, the Antec Mini P180 I just bought can fit the largest cards on the parket with room to spare.
Is there a 1TB Hard Drive you recommend if I wanted more storage than the 500GB?
Hmm, you know what, you're right. I didn't even bother to look. The rear slots do look normal sized.
I changed around a few things but unfortunately the price is now up near $800 which is where I didn't want to go. Better video card though, and one that supports DX11.
Yes that case definitely supports a regular video card - no need for low-profile.
If you want to save some more $$ then drop the processor down to the Athlon II X3.
It's an nForce 680i SLI motherboard, and all the ram involved is PC2-6400, if that makes a difference.
I also can't get the speakers to work in anything other than the headphone jack, if anyone knows much about sound stuff. I'm beginning to see why people prefer buying premade computers.
Well, I don't know about that memory slot, but if your memory works in the others, 4 Gigs should give you just about the same performance as 6 for most things.
As for the audio, did you try downloading drivers for your motherboard? I assume you are using on-board. I had to flash the bios on my board because there was something wrong with the build in USB ports. You might want to look into that too.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I don't know much about motherboards anyway. Would there be any problems from still using the same one?
For the sound, I've got a soundblaster x-fi card. It's got up to date drivers. I've got more sound ports on the back of my computer, but I can't really tell what they go to. When I had it open, they're right behind the graphics card, but they aren't connected to it, obviously. Maybe the motherboard. I'll give it a look.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
edit: to anyone following the thrilling adventures of pollo's speakers, I've got them working now. I've done so much shit that I can't isolate what it was that caused them to work. One of the speakers thinks it's a subwoofer, so there are still kinks to work out before it's working right, but hey, sound comes out of them now.
edit: And now that's working. Wrong wiring. Goddam color seers. Sorry for shitting up the computer thread, if this was only slightly related.
Second, try relaxing the timings somewhat, as most motherboards won't handle all ram slots full with aggressive timings.
The third option is to simply run with your current 1/1/2 setup or both 2Gb sticks, as you most likely won't notice the difference between 4Gb and 6Gb. Are you running a 64-bit OS to be able to take advantage of the extra ram?
I went ahead and grabbed a Sapphire Radeon 4770 from Amazon (Hey, I had a gift card
BTW, I just wanted to mention that the fan on that sucker is huge and has been barely audible with the case cover back on and the computer is safely under my desk where it belongs. I'm quite pleased about this fact.