Planet Descent
Community => Mess Hall => Topic started by: Canceler on June 16, 2011, 07:44:10 PM
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recently i rebooted my computer. i was going to go into the safemode administrator account to set ownership properties on a folder from an old XP install on another drive. when i booted up the computer, though, it started giving me errors like DCMI Service Initializer Terminated Unexpectedly, or something like that. looked it up (whatever it actually was), found a bunch of "how to remove rootkits" tutorials. on top of that, my CMOS had gone bad and reset itself, and the connection from the power switch to the motherboard was going out slowly.
so i decided to replace the mobo and cpu. then i had to replace the RAM because the sticks i had weren't the right kind. and since i have to start a new install of windows, purchased Windows 7 Pro Upgrade for $45 on student discount. in order to install windows 7 i need to have a DVD drive. i have that but... both my HDDs and optical drives are IDE, and my mobo only has 1 IDE slot, but 4 SATA slots... so I had to order a new SATA DVD-RW drive in order to install win7 when it comes in the mail. found out that my gpu isn't compatible with windows 7, so requested a new one for my birthday this weekend. found out the gpu i want recommends a psu of 500+, so i had to find a replacement (i'll order it when i know my bday package has been ordered). and after all this i think i'll switch out the case, too.
anyway, the hardware (as it is in the process of becoming) will be:
($60) GIGABYTE MA78LMT-S2 mATX AM3 1xPCIe 2.0x16, 1xPCIe2.0, 2xPCI
($90) AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2GHz AM3 4x512MB L2
($40) G.Skill Ripjaw 1x4GB DDR3 1333 240-pin
($20) ASUS SATA 24xDVD+R 12xDVD+RW
($45) Windows 7 x64 Professional Upgrade (download) + DVD
(***) XFX Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit PCIe2.1x16 2-slot
($60) Corsair CX600 ATX12v v2.3
(?$40?) Cooler Master Elite black ATX Mid Case
all i have put together right now is the mobo, cpu and ram (along with all the old components) and no operating system. the HDDs and optical drives are currently unconnected. i would hook up the HDDs but i'm not ready to do anything with them yet without the new SATA DVD drive or windows 7 disc. old gpu, soundcard and psu. here is a picture of the mobo/cpu/ram (pic is on my phone and i'm too lazy to reupload):
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=508833&l=ed519a8053&id=100001151486859 (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=508833&l=ed519a8053&id=100001151486859)
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Get rootkit/CMOS battery dies... Replace mobo? Wut?
Other than that, meh. Hardware looks good. I would've gone with a better PSU for all that though. And I would've gone with Nvidia, and a 965 or 970 instead of an 840, but that's all really preference.
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PSU might fall short when powering that card.
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Excellent sounding machine. Bravo to you for staying clear of the Intel/Nvidia monopolising crooks. With those two it's always advertising first, product second.
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Sounds good, any updates? What psu did you end up with?
I split off the off topic posts. Any off topic posts in this thread will be deleted.
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Your CPU is a crippled one with less on-die cache. I'd go for a 955 BE which you can overclock insanely w/o even overvolting it (I've got mine running at 3.6 GHz).
The PSU is more than powerful enough imo. You could even drive a Crossfire setup with it.
You may also want to look at a Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X instead. In many cases the Radeon 6XXX line isn't more powerful than the 5XXX line.
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At that point you might as well get a 965 or a 970 since it's only a little bit more expensive.
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Karx is right about the GPUs. Strangely a 5870 is faster than a 6870. The 5000s are supposed to be more power-efficient too.
I reckon that you could get a good bargain on a 5000 seeing as most people just equate "higher-number" to "much better product".
The 6000s are good and they have a lot of features, it's just that ATI have been stupid with the numbering so really the 6970 is the replacement to the 5870.
The reason that the numbers got screwed up is that they're being much slower about bringing out dual-gpu cards this time around.
The dual-gpu 5970 has been around forever but last time I checked (which was a few months ago) no dual-core 6000 had been released. Things might have changed but that still seems to be the reason.
It makes no sense because the previous numbering system made perfect sense to me and this one has created nothing but confusion and basically made the whole effort a laughing-stock.
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Seeing as the PSU is Corsair your good to go. If it was an unknown brand I'd take it out right away - I've had way too many bad experiences with unknown/cheap brands.
God I love my Corsair. Even the box it comes in is a work of art. ;D
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Are they generally quiet? I know they have a really good reputation for reliability and performance (and that goes for their CPU cooling systems as well) but are they normally pretty ... hush these days?
I only ask because I could fancy a new one for my desktop.
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Generally the PSU fan isn't going to be a very contributor to noise. The GPU and CPU fans will contribute far more to noise than a PSU fan.
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The Antec 300 is a very nice budget case, too.
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Generally the PSU fan isn't going to be a very contributor to noise. The GPU and CPU fans will contribute far more to noise than a PSU fan.
I was a little surprised how right that was. I recently replaced some fans on my desktop (it was becoming insanely noisy). After 8 years the bearings were maybe shot. If you unplugged certain fans and turned it on for a second you could tell what things were making more noise than others and I was surprised how little noise the terrible, old, unbranded PSU actually contributed (you're right it was really nothing).
The Antec looks nice too. It's smart and serious without being ... ridiculous. What's that German word, Karx? "uebertrieben"? I'm not sure we have a perfect translation for that.
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uebertrieben = exaggerated.
I am using the Antec 300 myself, and have built several computers for friends and relatives using it. I really like its clean, simple design. It's a great case with very good cooling. Despite its small dimensions I could even fit a Geforce GTX 570 in it.
Btw, Antec PSUs have a very good price/performance ratio.
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I don't even notice my PSU fan. In fact, the only noise out of my system is the chasis fan - everything else is relatively quiet. Still, it's better than having all that heat linger in there.
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When I notice the noise from my fans, it is time to take it out back and
thrash it blow the dust out of it.
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Well, first I took off the CPU fan, exposing the heatsink and flicked the turbo switch on the vacuum.
There wasn't a huge amount of dust. It's just the machine is very old and the manufacturer skimped on the little things.
It was beneficial in terms of temperature but did little for the noise.
I got a fractal 92mm case fan. It doesn't move all that much air (so depending on how huge and modern the rig is, it might not be suitable) but it is absolutely silent. I can guarantee that myself and it was pretty inexpensive.
Hunter's right. Having no case fan will shorten the life of your hard disks.
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When fans are starting to make noise it's usually the bearings that are worn out. So you need to replace the fans.
A case fan alone doesn't necessarily cool your hard disks - it depends on its position. The Antec 300 has a pretty good layout, with two (optional) 120mm fan bays in front of the harddisks behind a dust filter, a 120mm rear fan, 140mm top fan, and optional 120mm side fan. The built-in fans have a 3 step speed control via small switches. The PSU position is at the case's bottom. Acessing DVD/BD drives isn't hampered with a front door (which imo are totally superfluous - why does a case need something like that at all?) The case may not look spectacular, but I like its design and actually think it's pretty elegant and timeless.
Btw, Crash, the proper German word you were looking for was "überzogen".
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That certainly is a heck of a lot of fans. This case only has the one. I unplugged it for 2 days to preserve my sanity and the heat from the CPU built up inside and pushed some of the hard drives over their 60' threshold.
If there's one casefan, your HDDs are gonna get warm if you unplug it because the case fills up with the CPU heat.
Yes, I recognise that word. Now that you remind me, I remember its meaning. Seems like a long time since I spoke to anyone in German... getting very rusty.
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The case only comes with two fans - a 120mm fan in the rear, and a 140mm one in the top. If you have a gfx card with a cooler blowing hot air out of the case (like e.g. the HD 5870 Vapor-X I had recommended), you only need to add a third fan at the front to keep the HD's cool. That's how my case is setup (Antec 300, be quiet PSU 650W, Core i7 920 @ 3.6 GHz, Corsair H60 water cooler, MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozr, Creative XFi Xtreme Music, 6 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1800 MHz). I have even slapped some noise reduction material at the case's sidewalls, and I have never had temperature problems, not even when it was very hot outside and the computer was running full throttle (like e.g. when running D2X-XL with all effects cranked up). My computer also is very quiet.
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That is a truly lovely setup.
This box is huge (full ATX, even though the mainboard is only Micro-ATX (???)) and not very fast at all by today's standards but it is only connected to the big TV. So all it has to do is play its 1080p movies using the GPU and back-up files from my notebook.
The machine is very quiet after its minor refit and causes no distraction but I did think about mounting something absorbant on the side panels to make it *really* discrete.
What did you use at your end Karx?
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Yeah, it's quite nice. Btw, the GTX 570 is driving a HP ZR30w 30" S-IPS monitor @ 2560x1600 pixels. ;D That screen is fantastic (and very affordable for that type and size of monitor). You can view it from any reasonable angle, and won't notice color changes. It is also absolutely brilliant. You just can't compare TN panels to it. HP also offers very affordable 24" S-IPS monitors (1920x1200). Last time I saw them one cost around 360€ here. I had actually played with the thought of getting three of these for an EyeFinity setup instead of the 30" screen, but since I am coding far more than playing, the 30" screen was the way to go for me. I would also had to change D2X-XL's renderer for an EyeFinity setup (rendering three different views at three different view angles to cover the huge FOV provided by a 3 monitor EyeFinity setup).
be quiet offers cooling kits for computers (several sheets of rubber foam and of a kind of tarred board) which you can tailor to any case with a carpet knife. I just halve one sheet of tarred board and stick each half to one of the big side walls (because these will have the most resonance from noise inside the case).
Btw, my Linux box sports a Phenom II X4 BE 955 @ 3.6 GHz (w/o overvolting!) with a Corsair H60 watercooling on a Gigabyte AM3 board with 4 GB DDR3 @ 1.6 GHz, a Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X and a Creative Audigy 2 inside an aluminium Antec Performance One case. I was trying to sell it (for a very good price, imo, and including 22" Samsung TFT monitor, keyboard, mouse, Cambridge 2.1 speaker system and Win7 home premium retail) but people only want laptops these days ... :(
So I've got a totally overpowered Linux box sitting there which I could easily replace with my notebook (Core i7 mobile CPU, Geforce GTX 425, 6 GB Ram, 500 GB HD), and there is my old Linux box which I have put WinXP on and given to my son (and which I would like to sell for a bargain price, too) ... that's two computers too many. :-\
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That does sound extremely good. My main machine is a laptop though, although I could always wire it as a second monitor if it accepts DVI.
This notebook is actually second-hand. Two mobile 8800GTXs and an Intel X9000 for about £500 with a year's warranty (!!!). It is truly an incredible machine in the details as well. Only thing is that because it was made back in 2008 sometime, it doesn't have an HDMI port.
The desky is hooked up to a 40" Samsung. It's the current 5-series with a HD tuner and I scooped it from Amazon just after christmas for £400. I think in value-for-money terms, it's the best TV.
That eyefinity setup is an awesome thought though.
I would have bought that PC from you if I'd still been in Germany. I think the old desktop is gonna get donated to some worthy cause at some point because it only has 2 sata ports and so it's met its limit in that respect.
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I sometimes hook my notebook to my LCD TV set to play a bit Lego Pirates of the Caribbean or Lego Starwars with my son, but the image quality pales compared to every halfway useable TFT monitor.
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...Lego Pirates of the Caribbean or Lego Starwars with my son...
So you also play Lego Videogames? Man, I love Lego Starwars (specially The Complete Saga with all 6 episodes). One of my favorite videogames of the new era (not oldies :) ).
Btw, my Linux box sports a Phenom II X4 BE 955 @ 3.6 GHz (w/o overvolting!) with a Corsair H60 watercooling on a Gigabyte AM3 board with 4 GB DDR3 @ 1.6 GHz, a Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X and a Creative Audigy 2 inside an aluminium Antec Performance One case. I was trying to sell it (for a very good price, imo, and including 22" Samsung TFT monitor, keyboard, mouse, Cambridge 2.1 speaker system and Win7 home premium retail) but people only want laptops these days ... :(
That sounds like a terrific offer!
A shame I'm far away from germany and (unfortunately) broken. :/
If I had the money, I would certainly buy it!
Just for the sake of curiosity, what's the cost you're putting to that offer?
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1000 Euros. 8)
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*gasp* I knew it would be VERY expensive for me lol ;D
But seeing what you offer, it's not a bad price at all.
Hope you can find somebody interested on it and that actually got the money, hehe. :P
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You have to take into account that it is a complete system with a flawless Samsung monitor, new (!) keyboard (MS Elite 4000, not some cheap rubbish), mouse and decent speakers (it's a subwoofer setup, not some crappy, tiny desktop speakers). Plus it comes with the system builder (not retail) version of Win7 home premium, which means there are two full DVDs for installing Win7 from scratch, and not some OEM recovery disk based bullshit. The computer also has a brand new 1 TB hard disk. The entire system consists of carefully picked components. The RAM e.g. is G-Skill high speed RAM with good latencies and heat spreaders. The sound card, while not being the latest model, still is vastly superior to onboard sound. The case was a rather expensive one which I have added extra, low noise case fans to, and I am having both a solid aluminium and a windowed sidewall for it. The OS is completely setup and on top of it I have installed all software you'd need for a good start (like browsers, e-mail client, text editor, Adobe Reader, file manager, image editing programs, archiver, etc. etc.)
You know, whatever I do I try to do right. ;)
So yeah, I think that it's a good, high quality system and that 1000 € would be a fair price for that.
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You would pay more than double that if you bought all that new.
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Well, here in Germany you'd have to shell out about 1500 Euros for such a system if you had to buy all the components I've used yourself.
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Ok, that's more than $2000usd, I think you could do better than that. But, I don't know for sure.
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Most computer hardware items have the same price in Euros here they have in USD in your country. That means where those greedy bastards take 300 USD for a gfx card at your place, they take 300 Euros at mine. >:(
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I dunno if I can really say it on this forum but we get absolutely <choose a different term, please> in terms of the cost of hardware here in the UK.
The pound is nearly double (sometimes) the strength of the US dollar and for many commodities, prices are almost the same in pounds as they are in USD.