So over the weekend I'm finally doing a major upgrade on my main Desktop,
I bought all the parts, but I have a quick question:
I'm moving from a 32bit instal of Win7 on an HDD, plus a backup HDD, both 750GB. I want to keep those drives, but turn the first one into my main-ish drive and the second still as a backup, but putting in an SSD as a boot disk, with Win8(64bit obv). I can back up all the important stuff to external HDDs and dropbox and the like before transferring stuff to the new box.
What do I need to do with the HDDs to have them wiped and ready as non-boot drives on the new machine? Can I just move everything over and plug everything in, and then install Win8 on the SSD and through it wipe the two drives before using them? Or do I need to wipe them on the old computer before moving stuff over, and how do I totally wipe them then? Or do I have to do something wacky like not having them initially on the new computer, installing Win8 on the SSD, and then turning the computer off, putting the drives in, and then wiping them?
Your last option isn't wacky and a fine way to do it...You could wipe them on the old PC too which would be easier since they're all plugged in, but you'd need to do it from outside of windows to nuke the windows drive. The main thing is just install Win8 with just the SSD plugged in, then add the other HDD's after.
So over the weekend I'm finally doing a major upgrade on my main Desktop,
I bought all the parts, but I have a quick question:
I'm moving from a 32bit instal of Win7 on an HDD, plus a backup HDD, both 750GB. I want to keep those drives, but turn the first one into my main-ish drive and the second still as a backup, but putting in an SSD as a boot disk, with Win8(64bit obv). I can back up all the important stuff to external HDDs and dropbox and the like before transferring stuff to the new box.
What do I need to do with the HDDs to have them wiped and ready as non-boot drives on the new machine? Can I just move everything over and plug everything in, and then install Win8 on the SSD and through it wipe the two drives before using them? Or do I need to wipe them on the old computer before moving stuff over, and how do I totally wipe them then? Or do I have to do something wacky like not having them initially on the new computer, installing Win8 on the SSD, and then turning the computer off, putting the drives in, and then wiping them?
Build your computer with just the SSD. Install Windows 8 on the SSD. Then shut down, add your two other hard drives into the mix, boot into the BIOS to make sure it will boot from the SSD first. Then you can do whatever you want with the two old drives - wipe them, transfer stuff between, etc.
Also note you will probably want to use the SSD for SOME programs, and put your documents, music, etc on the non-backup HDD.
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
edited September 2013
How do you use a HDD for a program if you're using an SSD as your main drive
I'd like to store my music library on my HDD and I'm using iTunes
You don't really want to buy refurbished HDD's. Or refurbished anything electrical, really, but especially HDD's and doubly SSD's...
I'm going to agree with the refurb HDD/SDD but disagree on the "anything" electrical. Certain appliances that are refurbed or reconditioned aren't bad at all, both my Vitamix and Jura can attest to this.
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
So over the weekend I'm finally doing a major upgrade on my main Desktop,
I bought all the parts, but I have a quick question:
I'm moving from a 32bit instal of Win7 on an HDD, plus a backup HDD, both 750GB. I want to keep those drives, but turn the first one into my main-ish drive and the second still as a backup, but putting in an SSD as a boot disk, with Win8(64bit obv). I can back up all the important stuff to external HDDs and dropbox and the like before transferring stuff to the new box.
What do I need to do with the HDDs to have them wiped and ready as non-boot drives on the new machine? Can I just move everything over and plug everything in, and then install Win8 on the SSD and through it wipe the two drives before using them? Or do I need to wipe them on the old computer before moving stuff over, and how do I totally wipe them then? Or do I have to do something wacky like not having them initially on the new computer, installing Win8 on the SSD, and then turning the computer off, putting the drives in, and then wiping them?
Build your computer with just the SSD. Install Windows 8 on the SSD. Then shut down, add your two other hard drives into the mix, boot into the BIOS to make sure it will boot from the SSD first. Then you can do whatever you want with the two old drives - wipe them, transfer stuff between, etc.
Also note you will probably want to use the SSD for SOME programs, and put your documents, music, etc on the non-backup HDD.
Sounds good, thanks. Will do.
And with any luck, everything will be at NCIX tomorrow and I can drive by on the way back from school and get all the parts. I know at least the case, OS, and SSD are in but.... I guess there's not too much I can do without the Motherboard, RAM, and CPU.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Even Sandy Bridge dual cores are perfectly capable of cranking out great framerates on a game like Battlefield 3.
So if I were to get a new monitor, seems like I'd either want to choose a 24'' with 120-144Hz or a 27'' w/2560 x 1440 - I have a 24'' at 60hz now, not sure if I really need bigger, but if I went 27'' don't want to just go bigger with a decrease in picture quality.
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
edited September 2013
Is this a good deal? Not too clear on what the different model numbers mean (seems to be clock speed only?) so jumping from an i3-2100 to an i5 3xxx for < $100 doesn't look too bad...
edit: looking closer at pickup options etc. it looks like it's the display items, which is why it's such a significant discount. Doesn't seem like it'll be a problem, it's not like they let people actually pick the physical chip up or anything.
It may be worth a phone call to see what their warranty is for the chip. While in all likelihood you're fine, it's wise to be safe. That being said, I'm not sure if you'd even bother with warranty replacement of a $100 part. Good luck!
Is this a good deal? Not too clear on what the different model numbers mean (seems to be clock speed only?) so jumping from an i3-2100 to an i5 3xxx for < $100 doesn't look too bad...
The single major, general difference between i3's and i5's (at least with desktop chips) is:
Okay so... Maybe this isn't the proper place to ask, but I've been looking into getting myself a newer machine sometime soon. Now the thing is, I don't honestly trust myself enough to not fuck something up when putting it together which is why I wasn't sure if this was the right place to ask this.
Basically, in terms of bang for my buck, are there ANY reputable websites offering me something that isn't crap for a budget of around $800-900?
Instead, I'm going to encourage you to watch a few "build your own" videos and make an attempt to build it yourself. You will get substantially more value for your dollar, and you'll learn something to boot!
I would also encourage you to attempt to build it yourself - it really is dead easy these days. Watching a couple videos will definitely give you enough to figure it out.
However, if you REALLY don't want to go that route, NCIX.com will assemble your stuff for an extra $50. Their prices are not the best though, so you also end up paying a premium for your parts.
Yeah, the hardest parts of building a system these days are picking the parts and installing the damn heatsink. Pretty much everything else only fits one way, so as long as you hook everything up it will boot.
On the PSU discussion:
I just built a Haswell Core i7 system with a GTX 770, and under heavy gaming it pulls a whopping 250W at the wall according to my Kill-A-Watt. Running Furmark and Linpack at the same time gets me to ~290W. At idle, it's well under 100W. Unless you are doing SLI/Xfire or installing a 10-disk RAID array, you don't need more than a good quality (this is way more important) 400-500W PSU.
Yeah, the hardest parts of building a system these days are picking the parts and installing the damn heatsink. Pretty much everything else only fits one way, so as long as you hook everything up it will boot.
On the PSU discussion:
I just built a Haswell Core i7 system with a GTX 770, and under heavy gaming it pulls a whopping 250W at the wall according to my Kill-A-Watt. Running Furmark and Linpack at the same time gets me to ~290W. At idle, it's well under 100W. Unless you are doing SLI/Xfire or installing a 10-disk RAID array, you don't need more than a good quality (this is way more important) 400-500W PSU.
Not sure how you are putting a load on the CPU/GPU but I would expect that if you ran two programs designed to completely max them out then you would pull just over 300W. But yeah, power requirements have gone down A LOT in the past few years.
Okay so... Maybe this isn't the proper place to ask, but I've been looking into getting myself a newer machine sometime soon. Now the thing is, I don't honestly trust myself enough to not fuck something up when putting it together which is why I wasn't sure if this was the right place to ask this.
Basically, in terms of bang for my buck, are there ANY reputable websites offering me something that isn't crap for a budget of around $800-900?
If you go with a more reputable site for a prebuilt gaming machine (Alienware, Falcon Northwest, XoticPC etc.) you will pay a substantial premium for the service; a machine you could build yourself for $900 will be ~$1400 from one of those retailers.
If you go with a site like iBuyPower or CyberPowerPC, you will get much closer to paying what you would if you built yourself, but it comes at a cost:
1) Quality of parts
2) Quality of service.
If you are willing to accept those risks, go for it. I know people who have bought from IBP/CyberPower and been perfectly happy with them, but I've also heard horror stories of broken machines and phantom customer service.
I personally agree with the above posters -- it's more cost-effective and less risky to build a new PC yourself.
And we are all here for you when you can't figure out the non-posting motherboard. Put me down as another who thinks if you are skilled enough to type a post on this forum then you are skilled enough to build your own computer.
Yeah, the hardest parts of building a system these days are picking the parts and installing the damn heatsink. Pretty much everything else only fits one way, so as long as you hook everything up it will boot.
Since I just did this part yesterday, let me mention that installing the heatsink is so much easier these days than it was.
Push the things 'till you hear a click, rotate them, easy-peasy.
Yeah, the hardest parts of building a system these days are picking the parts and installing the damn heatsink. Pretty much everything else only fits one way, so as long as you hook everything up it will boot.
Since I just did this part yesterday, let me mention that installing the heatsink is so much easier these days than it was.
Push the things 'till you hear a click, rotate them, easy-peasy.
I remember the time I gouged the shit out of my motherboard because I had to use a screwdriver to get enough force to attach the heatsink. I think that was on one of my Athlon XP machines.
The days when you had to seriously worry about crushing your CPU die to death with your heatsink were "fun".
Yeah, the hardest parts of building a system these days are picking the parts and installing the damn heatsink. Pretty much everything else only fits one way, so as long as you hook everything up it will boot.
On the PSU discussion:
I just built a Haswell Core i7 system with a GTX 770, and under heavy gaming it pulls a whopping 250W at the wall according to my Kill-A-Watt. Running Furmark and Linpack at the same time gets me to ~290W. At idle, it's well under 100W. Unless you are doing SLI/Xfire or installing a 10-disk RAID array, you don't need more than a good quality (this is way more important) 400-500W PSU.
Not sure how you are putting a load on the CPU/GPU but I would expect that if you ran two programs designed to completely max them out then you would pull just over 300W. But yeah, power requirements have gone down A LOT in the past few years.
Yeah. Linpack + Furmark got me in the 290-320W range depending on when I looked at the meter. Nothing I've actually done with the machine has been in that ballpark, though.
a5ehren on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
Welp, I had a spinning drive go in my gaming PC, so I figured screw that noise, all Solid State from here on. Grabbed a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO. It's a ton of fun to see all that free space on a drive this fast.
Something steel/metal-looking would be fine if I was in an industrial/loft space, but as i'm in more of a conventional home, I need something that looks more natural. Hope this comes out OK.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
I have a 6950. Would I be risking a spiraling cycle of upgrades? I'm certainly OK with turning down some setting on demanding games.
Hard to say, but these charts don't give me a lot of confidence. You're looking at 75% more pixels than 1080p.
How is this for a rationalization:
Right now I have been playing SWTOR which shouldn't be too demanding and I should pick up Minecraft just so I can talk about the one things my nieces/nephews talk about and I even have a backlog of Wii/WiiU games to play including Xenoblade which is apparently a time sink.
That should hold me over until the heat death of the universe let alone until next gen cards come out and we find out more about AMD's Mantle and we learn more about SteamOS.
If all else fails there is CKII and I can hold off getting Rome II until a Steam Sale.
Thus I should go ahead and get the pretty pretty monitor.
Reasonable or too transparent?
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I have a 6950. Would I be risking a spiraling cycle of upgrades? I'm certainly OK with turning down some setting on demanding games.
Hard to say, but these charts don't give me a lot of confidence. You're looking at 75% more pixels than 1080p.
How is this for a rationalization:
Right now I have been playing SWTOR which shouldn't be too demanding and I should pick up Minecraft just so I can talk about the one things my nieces/nephews talk about and I even have a backlog of Wii/WiiU games to play including Xenoblade which is apparently a time sink.
That should hold me over until the heat death of the universe let alone until next gen cards come out and we find out more about AMD's Mantle and we learn more about SteamOS.
If all else fails there is CKII and I can hold off getting Rome II until a Steam Sale.
Thus I should go ahead and get the pretty pretty monitor.
I have a 6950. Would I be risking a spiraling cycle of upgrades? I'm certainly OK with turning down some setting on demanding games.
Hard to say, but these charts don't give me a lot of confidence. You're looking at 75% more pixels than 1080p.
How is this for a rationalization:
Right now I have been playing SWTOR which shouldn't be too demanding and I should pick up Minecraft just so I can talk about the one things my nieces/nephews talk about and I even have a backlog of Wii/WiiU games to play including Xenoblade which is apparently a time sink.
That should hold me over until the heat death of the universe let alone until next gen cards come out and we find out more about AMD's Mantle and we learn more about SteamOS.
If all else fails there is CKII and I can hold off getting Rome II until a Steam Sale.
Thus I should go ahead and get the pretty pretty monitor.
Reasonable or too transparent?
ONE OF US
ONE OF US
Do it.
I know, right. Back when I wrote the OPs this thread was all about not spending money. What's happened to me.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I have a 6950. Would I be risking a spiraling cycle of upgrades? I'm certainly OK with turning down some setting on demanding games.
Hard to say, but these charts don't give me a lot of confidence. You're looking at 75% more pixels than 1080p.
How is this for a rationalization:
Right now I have been playing SWTOR which shouldn't be too demanding and I should pick up Minecraft just so I can talk about the one things my nieces/nephews talk about and I even have a backlog of Wii/WiiU games to play including Xenoblade which is apparently a time sink.
That should hold me over until the heat death of the universe let alone until next gen cards come out and we find out more about AMD's Mantle and we learn more about SteamOS.
If all else fails there is CKII and I can hold off getting Rome II until a Steam Sale.
Thus I should go ahead and get the pretty pretty monitor.
Reasonable or too transparent?
ONE OF US
ONE OF US
Do it.
I know, right. Back when I wrote the OPs this thread was all about not spending money. What's happened to me.
Posts
I bought all the parts, but I have a quick question:
I'm moving from a 32bit instal of Win7 on an HDD, plus a backup HDD, both 750GB. I want to keep those drives, but turn the first one into my main-ish drive and the second still as a backup, but putting in an SSD as a boot disk, with Win8(64bit obv). I can back up all the important stuff to external HDDs and dropbox and the like before transferring stuff to the new box.
What do I need to do with the HDDs to have them wiped and ready as non-boot drives on the new machine? Can I just move everything over and plug everything in, and then install Win8 on the SSD and through it wipe the two drives before using them? Or do I need to wipe them on the old computer before moving stuff over, and how do I totally wipe them then? Or do I have to do something wacky like not having them initially on the new computer, installing Win8 on the SSD, and then turning the computer off, putting the drives in, and then wiping them?
Build your computer with just the SSD. Install Windows 8 on the SSD. Then shut down, add your two other hard drives into the mix, boot into the BIOS to make sure it will boot from the SSD first. Then you can do whatever you want with the two old drives - wipe them, transfer stuff between, etc.
Also note you will probably want to use the SSD for SOME programs, and put your documents, music, etc on the non-backup HDD.
I'd like to store my music library on my HDD and I'm using iTunes
maybe I just wasn't paying attention when it asked
Pretty much. I'm a big fan of Crucial's work (rocking a 480GB M500 as my OS drive) and the M4 line was great, but refurb, hell no.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I'm going to agree with the refurb HDD/SDD but disagree on the "anything" electrical. Certain appliances that are refurbed or reconditioned aren't bad at all, both my Vitamix and Jura can attest to this.
Sounds good, thanks. Will do.
And with any luck, everything will be at NCIX tomorrow and I can drive by on the way back from school and get all the parts. I know at least the case, OS, and SSD are in but.... I guess there's not too much I can do without the Motherboard, RAM, and CPU.
Heck, even Nehalem processors aren't too shabby.
edit: looking closer at pickup options etc. it looks like it's the display items, which is why it's such a significant discount. Doesn't seem like it'll be a problem, it's not like they let people actually pick the physical chip up or anything.
...right?
The single major, general difference between i3's and i5's (at least with desktop chips) is:
i3's are all dual-cores.
i5's are quad-cores.
And i7's are quad-cores with hyper-threading.
going from a 1st gen Q6600 that's been running for... what 6 years now? to an i5 Ivy bridge and going from a normal HDD to an SSD is so much better
Everything's just so fast now.
Basically, in terms of bang for my buck, are there ANY reputable websites offering me something that isn't crap for a budget of around $800-900?
However, if you REALLY don't want to go that route, NCIX.com will assemble your stuff for an extra $50. Their prices are not the best though, so you also end up paying a premium for your parts.
Here's an idea:
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/tsmvengy/saved/2sXq
This came out to $810 on NCIX. The same parts at other places come out to $795, and you could probably shop around a bit more brandwise and save some.
EDIT: Reuse your current hard drive as storage, along with your optical drive. I assume they are SATA.
What are your current specs?
On the PSU discussion:
I just built a Haswell Core i7 system with a GTX 770, and under heavy gaming it pulls a whopping 250W at the wall according to my Kill-A-Watt. Running Furmark and Linpack at the same time gets me to ~290W. At idle, it's well under 100W. Unless you are doing SLI/Xfire or installing a 10-disk RAID array, you don't need more than a good quality (this is way more important) 400-500W PSU.
Not sure how you are putting a load on the CPU/GPU but I would expect that if you ran two programs designed to completely max them out then you would pull just over 300W. But yeah, power requirements have gone down A LOT in the past few years.
@Arthil
If you go with a more reputable site for a prebuilt gaming machine (Alienware, Falcon Northwest, XoticPC etc.) you will pay a substantial premium for the service; a machine you could build yourself for $900 will be ~$1400 from one of those retailers.
If you go with a site like iBuyPower or CyberPowerPC, you will get much closer to paying what you would if you built yourself, but it comes at a cost:
1) Quality of parts
2) Quality of service.
If you are willing to accept those risks, go for it. I know people who have bought from IBP/CyberPower and been perfectly happy with them, but I've also heard horror stories of broken machines and phantom customer service.
I personally agree with the above posters -- it's more cost-effective and less risky to build a new PC yourself.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
Since I just did this part yesterday, let me mention that installing the heatsink is so much easier these days than it was.
Push the things 'till you hear a click, rotate them, easy-peasy.
I remember the time I gouged the shit out of my motherboard because I had to use a screwdriver to get enough force to attach the heatsink. I think that was on one of my Athlon XP machines.
The days when you had to seriously worry about crushing your CPU die to death with your heatsink were "fun".
Yeah. Linpack + Furmark got me in the 290-320W range depending on when I looked at the meter. Nothing I've actually done with the machine has been in that ballpark, though.
Battle.net
I have a 6950. Would I be risking a spiraling cycle of upgrades? I'm certainly OK with turning down some setting on demanding games.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Hard to say, but these charts don't give me a lot of confidence. You're looking at 75% more pixels than 1080p.
http://www.nickfalzonedesign.com/sangaku.html
Something steel/metal-looking would be fine if I was in an industrial/loft space, but as i'm in more of a conventional home, I need something that looks more natural. Hope this comes out OK.
How is this for a rationalization:
Right now I have been playing SWTOR which shouldn't be too demanding and I should pick up Minecraft just so I can talk about the one things my nieces/nephews talk about and I even have a backlog of Wii/WiiU games to play including Xenoblade which is apparently a time sink.
That should hold me over until the heat death of the universe let alone until next gen cards come out and we find out more about AMD's Mantle and we learn more about SteamOS.
If all else fails there is CKII and I can hold off getting Rome II until a Steam Sale.
Thus I should go ahead and get the pretty pretty monitor.
Reasonable or too transparent?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
ONE OF US
ONE OF US
Do it.
I know, right. Back when I wrote the OPs this thread was all about not spending money. What's happened to me.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Steamitus happened.