The (new) Official PC building thread!

Theone: I missed this post earlier. Are you sure about the BIOS? It booted as F3 for a good dozen reboots, and then suddenly went back to F1...
Abuzar: I built a system with an E2160 and the cooler looks the same as the one for the Core 2 Duo. What's the difference?
Rob: There's no real reason to go AMD, and there's no real reason to go Phenom. Intel can do cheap now after some price gouging, so you may as well stick with them. The P35-DS3L for example isn't an expensive motherboard. hell if you wanted cheap, get a microATX one...
Pepp: They're cheap because they're the 831s, not the 830s. The 831 is the cut down version which doesn't allow the use of the 4-fan side panel. Yes, coolermaster said you an add one later, but to my knowledge they never made the add-on required.

 

Sam - Ah so thats the difference - doesnt really explain half the price roughly over here though does it. Id probably save the money as it says it still has space for 9 fans.

Found this whilst fiddling on the web today:-

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=10161&page=1

Now thats pretty big - but ugly!!

 

It doesn't - the 9 figure is with the adapter that doesn't exist. It's 5.

The Twelve hundred was an interesting looking case, but it's been more than 6 months since it was shown off with no confirmation that it's ever going to be released, I wouldn't get your hopes up.

 

sammorris,

You may also have a dual bios, and for whatever reason it switched back to the stored one. You'll have to look into that one!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

In the midst of a 3DMark run my PC crashed, fully. When I rebooted it, it powered off, then when it powered back on again, it shut down again. When it finally came back to life the BIOS read "CMOS Checksum Error! Restoring CMOS...." - that obviously explains why I've ended up with F1 again, but it must have happened before as this came after I noticed F1 had come back.. The stabiity problem I think is being caused by my overclock settings. For the X38-DS4 you have to set the FSB strap manually, but all told, I have no idea which strap to use...

 

You guys know which one I'd get fo sho!! linky to GREEN 831 Stacker

Pepp nice find btw!!

Sam,
Sorry you're dealing with these "issues" but I"m sure you figure it out.

Russ,
Good to hear the "Vista laptop" is running smoothly, good luck selling it.

cincyrob where you is?? NO comments on the "puter" I rigged up for ye!!

....gm

 

hey everyone,

antec 1200 review...

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=12726

`

price about £120 :O

(ill deffo be getting it, or the silverstone kublai 03 in august/sept (major build time)

oh and on the 1200 you can turn the lights of the 200mm fan off, and the front THREE fans can be adjusted speed with a knob

 

I like the Twelve Hundred more than the 900, gargantuan though it is, (and extremely noisy at high speed is an understatement). What I'd like more though, is one of these without the PSUs:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=162&products_id=21899
With an Amber light strip that would look badass. Shame it's pretty much $500 - half of which no doubt is those silly linked PSUs... Give me a pair of Corsair VXes any day...

 

those links are great GM.

the only thing in them that might change is the CPU. how are the allendale chips? here is a link for the allendale nad the E8200

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mpareItemList=N82E16819115031,N82E16819115047

 

rob look at this link for the ones that I would be considering. link

I dropped down to the E4500 because there is NO real difference between the E4600 and the E4500 from what I can tell besides the $20 you'd save. I'm betting that the E4500 or E4600 are beasts for OC'in so you've got that route too.

NOW the differences between the E8200 and E4500 (E4600) is FSB and cache!! The "wolfdale" has 6M shared and the "allendale" has 2M shared. You tell me the difference. The FSB is 800 on the E4500 and E4600 series and 1333 on the E8200. There's some differences there in the speed it's gonna run if you have the RAM and mobo to take advantage of it.

I don't know what this guy has now but the speed you can get out of the E4500 series is gonna be pretty good compared to what he has now, I'd bet. It WON'T compare to your E8400 tho, not by any stretch!!! It'll smoke my AMD X2 3800 with most apps!! lol.

For a "cheap" and "inexpensive" rig the parts that you can choose from the links I gave you are pretty good. OF course there's other places to find this stuff, especially cases, cpus, gpus, and psus!! Shopping around might save another $50 to $100 with REBATES and such...

good luck with that!!

....gm

edit: just noticed another thing to add if you get the E8200 is a cpu cooler!! so that's another $30 at least to the total!! the E4500 comes with a cpu cooler since it's Retail, so a free cpu cooler included!!

 

Well you know how far I've got the E4300, so the E4500 should be excellent.

 

Pepp,

OK, I stand corrected. I didn't know they made the stackers in those color schemes. I wasn't looking for a new case when I bought this one and the only reason I bought it was because it was on sale for $169.99 with free shipping and a $60 mail in rebate to boot. so it only cost me $110 total. I just couldn't pass that deal up.

I'm quite happy and content with my current CM mystique case and puter but I had this empty stacker setting there just begging me to fill it up. so that's what started it all.

 

OH there he goes again about his GREAT deal on that Stacker 830!! I'd have bought the same dang case if it wasn't for having the CM-690 sitting in the garage already when that deal came along. I wish I'd have done it anyway!! I could have sold the CM-690 to rob and NOT lost a frikkin dime. Can you tell I'm bitter with myself on that.... hehehe.

btw if I find the GREEN 831 Stacker for a decent price, IT's MINE!!! Mwuahahahahaahahaha!!!!

Morty how are things going?? You got around all your "snags" so far?? Hope so buddy!! Continued luck where ever you are in the process!!!

cincyrob!! sammyboy had/has the E4300 (which I thought he did) and got some good action out of it... so there you go!!!

....gm

 

gm,

the two snags I had were just little ones (even the smoothest build has one or two) and they have both been resolved. I was very pleased to find that the multi-function fan bracket cleared my TR ultra 120 extreme without any modding whatsoever. if I'd have known that, I'd never have ordered the special stacker exclusive crossflow fan.

the crossflow fan is supposed to be mountable on the mobo tray or in the multi-function fan bracket. well it won't fit on my mobo tray due to the location of the IDE and SATA connectors on this mobo and even though they sent the crossflow fan brackets to mount it in the multi-function fan bracket, the fan bracket itself doesn't have the wholes punched out where the crossflow fan should mount (does that make sense).

I emailed cooler master about getting a multi-function fan bracket with the crossflow fan mounting holes. haven't heard back yet. no biggie anyway as I will most likely just put a couple 120mm antec tricool fans in the multi-function fan bracket instead and RMA the crossflow fan.

the only other little snag was concerning the front panel audio which has also been resolved by calling asus tech support (which suprisingly I had absolutely no hold time and got right through). I was expecting a 20-30 minute hold and had my phone on speaker phone and was shocked when tech support answered after only the 1st ring.

 

Just talked to gigabyte. i had a bad componet on it??? they replaced the bad part and sent it out to me yesterday...so the middle of next week i should have it back.. i hope. just sent them a email to gigabyte services asking what was wrong with it.. ill post there reply

 

Traced my lockup problem to a graphics card fault. Now I need to track down whether it's:
a) a faulty card
b) overheating
c) a bug with crossfire.
I'm hoping b as I can solve that... I'm thinking that's the most likely as it just happened with World in conflict and artifacting occurred in progressively worse amounts until it occurred.

 

Dear customer,



The CPU socket was damage and was replace and tested. The RMA was shipped 04/10/08

well imagine that?

 

Lol well don't that beat all. IIRC that's the exact same reason Asus WOULDN'T have a mobo back off theone...

 

Rob was that due to you mounting the CPU in wrong? or was the mobo defective when you got it?

 

ZoSo the cpu, mobo, RAM, and so on worked fine for a few days. I would imagine that it would have been OFF from the start? Sorry but rob is busy at work and it makes sense that the board went WONKY during the short time he had it.

@sammy,
IIRC... had to look that up... lol. .... IITYWIMIWHTKY ...<< how bout that one... hehehe.

....gm