The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Oman7,
I agree with you. Every time I let someone use my computer, I get the same comments about how smooth and quiet it runs! If I stick in a DVD, they are in awe of the picture quality of my movies. Some people have audibly Gasped! I guess it's the 512MB of memory vs the 128MB of my old 7600GT, or something. The 9500GT with 512 GDDR3 Rocks at everything and is the perfect match to get the best out of my S-PVA/MVA monitor.

Like you, I wouldn't mind building an Intel at all, especially when given a chance to play with a completely new platform. I still wouldn't get rid of the one I have though. Not until after I drop a PII-940 or better in it and play some more! x3 720 first and then a x4 940 or better next. That will keep me busy having fun, for a while!

Russ

 

Couple things.
Creaky, your right to not allow auto updates. Microsoft has officially annoyed me. Lets just say that a particular program fix, that used to run on vista fine, no longer works on windows 7. BS!!! They can make all the excuses in the world. I ain't buying it. While I'll still buy the OS, I won't buy their excuses LOL! They're sell outs. Thats what I think about it. The administrator crud is really making me nuts!!! I wish everything would automatically run AS ADMINISTRATOR. Im the only friggin person using my computer!!! I'll look for a fix now.

Sam, your tactic for disabling and re-enabling the LAN adapters did not work. At least if the following is what you meant:
My machine hasn't had any problems in a few weeks. But my brother also runs windows 7...

 

Oman7,
I would think that a System Restore to a date previous to the upgrade or upgrades causing the problem will work. I have done that before for that very reason, so I know it will work!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Net user administrator /active:yes

right click CMD and run as admin, paste that and restart, then you will see the REAL admin

 

The i5 750 has no HT. In my mind, that's almost a good thing. By not including it, look at how much cheaper the CPU is, and it outperforms the much more expensive i7 920 in games.
The coolers for the i5 are slowly improving - you can get basic midrange level coolers from various manufacturers now, and Thermalright are now producing coolers for the i5 based off the Ultra-120A (not the extreme) but with pushpins rather than a backplate. Not sure I approve, but it's still a far better cooler than the others that are currently out there. I believe Noctua have adjusted their NH-U12 to work with i5s as well, so the cooler range is almost covered for i5s now.
To say that the basic i5 boards are featureless is complete nonsense, unlike with AM2+ or 775 there are no featureless motherboards, since i5 takes the middle ground between exclusively high end (i7) and mainstream (775/AM2+) so while there are expensive boards and reasonable boards, there are no cheap bad ones. Yes, the cheapest i5 boards don't offer much beyond your average board, but that's because they are average midrange boards, and are priced accordingly. I can get a decent enough P55 board from Gigabyte like the US3L for less than a P5Q-E or P5Q Pro, less than the TPower I45 as well. That's not bad.
As you've seen, you can pretax a system for as little as $385 for the CPU, board and RAM. Foxconn boards like that are reasonably basic, and while I wouldn't perhaps choose the cheapest RAM, I would have no concerns using basic RAM from a better brand and producing a basic i5 system with it, that's a lot of performance for that much money.
The P55M-UD2 you have there is a good example of what I'm on about - it's the cheapest Gigabyte board in the UK, and yet it's had the i5 750 at a 50% overclock to 4Ghz. It's still got two 16x PCIe ports, 10 rear USBs and an eSATA, along with the usual optical audio out and so on. Stuff like this in a MicroATX format is pretty high-grade specifications. The ability to run dual graphics in a microATX system is very powerful, never mind the fact that it overclocks well to boot, and is the cheapest board on offer.

Shaff: I modified the Win7 taskbar to look more like Vistas. It's an option somewhere, but I forget where it was.

Omega: If you encode WMVs, you want a Phenom II (assuming you won't overclock, else then the Phenom still loses to the i5), but other than that, the i5s and i7s are in a league of their own still at the moment.
Russ: I don't think DVD quality has anything to do with video memory, it's more likely to be with the image optimisations of the newer cards. The old geforce 7 series was still the tail end of nvidia's 'sacrifice image quality for performance' era. Only the GTX200 series (not the 250 though obviously) and above truly rids us of that - and that is one of the reasons I think why it was so even between nvidia and ATI in the 2008 generation stuff.

Omega again: I'm always an administrator. I forget how I did it, but I've never been told 'you need to run this as administrator' - everything runs as administrator for me. The main things that bug me about Win7 are that it's blatantly Vista service pack 3 - and they've given it a new name solely due to how many people refused to buy Vista. Any of the problems they solved are negated by the fact that everything has been moved around needlessly and is more difficult to find - it's like Vista is a supermarket with a pretty shoddy image. It gets taken over and changes its name so lots of people go there, but they moved everything around - and because you always used to shop there, it bugs you!

 

Sam,
Maybe Featureless was a poor word to use. While the low priced boards are a little sparse in what they offer, it doesn't take a lot of money, invested in a better motherboard and a litle bit more for some good memory to have a very good system. I think the extra $61 it costs to do my choice would be well worth the money for what you would get in return. I like the P55-UD3R as a good choice for me. It gives me 6 Internal Sata ports and two fixed Externals. Optical and Coaxial S/PDIF. Ten rear USB ports and headers on the board for 4 more. Better voltage regulation with heatsinks for the voltage regulation VRMs. Nice MB for $139! Pre-tax pricing is OK for comparison, but we still have to shell out the tax. That's why I include Pre and Taxed prices. Like I said, the extra $61 buys a lot! I am impressed with the value you can get for your Dollar for a very nice build!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

True, when you consider what say the US3L offers compared to the UD4, it doesn't seem like much extra to get more stuff on it, but then again, that does rather go against the whole argument of cheap PCs that many people are pushing these days. It isn't much more to step up from a dual core to a quad core for example, or get a better graphics card etc. Add them all together though, and the price skyrockets without warning!

 

im taking a kind to this new bar, i think its the constant crashing and lack of cod4 in the beta which put me off. im more happy this time

esp as the RTM is fully activated

PS yes the UD2 can do crossfire, but no SlI, though at that price its obvious why, also its second PCIE slot runs at 4x while the top runs 16x, while in dual mode, (the 4x being from the PCH, so slow), and the slot spaceing for dual slot cards in CF wouldnt work in a uATX case.

i think the best board for uATX P55 is the GA-P55M-UD4

SLi and CF and propper spacing for 8x8x dual cards.

(but me being me id buy the maximus III Gene mainly due to 2 things, first im a fanboy, secondly due to the clear cmos ont he back. my case is one where the PSU is over the mobo, with a few cm clearance. id have to take apart the whole build for the clear cmos. thats why im sure DFI but a clear cmos jumper on the back of this board. and why ill choose the maximus III gene, for its clear cmos button on fthe back, ofc unless the DFI uATX has a cmos clear on the back, and is cheaper.

 

Reasons like that are why I never use beta versions of OSes.
As for the board, enjoy paying £30 for an Asus badge and the privilege of RMAing your motherboard three times as often ;-)

 

thats not fact for the RMAing, and personally to me with worth it

 

Nor is it a fact with nvidia chipsets, but everyone agrees it's generally true. Anyway, not going to start an argument about it. Let's just say that me and Killerbug do our best to steer people in the right direction in the other threads that show up

 

id like to see who everyone is. im sure soph isnt one of them....

 

No, read that post again...

 

tis not generally true though, it is without, but not generally.

 

Sorry what? :S

 

DD-WRT is a linux based firmware(Please correct me if im wrong)...While I'd like to give linux the time of day, now is far from the time. Im trying to concentrate on a second job, that will rip me away from my computers...Boo hoo

The NIC is simply erratic in windows 7 here. Its NOT something I know how to fix. My guess would be, it needs a more dedicated driver from gigabyte?

Thanks for the clarification about the processors sam

 

Sam,
I've never considered the Building thread a thread for cheap PCs. Maybe cheap with the expense of the new i5/i7 rigs because you have to buy MB, memory and CPU, all at once. I would actually prefer to spend $60 over the base price for a motherboard and get the UD4P. 12 Phase Power regulation and does both CrossFire and Sli, something I would like to play around with. Actually I would probably still get the P55-UD3R for just $30 more. Add another $30 for higher speed, lower latency memory, and I think you've gotten good value for your money, and it's not an unreasonable amount to spend for something better than entry level. To me this thread is all about value, and assembling good components to achieve that end, which is why I would probably go with the P55-UD3R, rather than spend $30 more for the P55-UD4P. I just feel that a little better MB and 1333 memory would give you a much better machine!

I do have a question about the Boards that support both CrossFire and SLI. Is the extra heat sink because of having SLI? If not, what's it for?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

DD-WRT is linux based, but so are many things you may not realise. Linux-based does not mean Linux. DD-WRT is to all intents and purposes itself. The stock Linksys firmware for my WRT54GL router looks almost identical to that of the non-linksys WRT54G -

the interface need not have anything to do with what the OS is. Difference is, the Linksys-based WRT54G(L) is good, the VxWorks original WRT54G is crap.
So far, I don't really know anyone who's had good fortune with NICs in Windows 7 - be it the Realtek chipset Gigabytes use, the Marvell from Asus/DFI or the nForce LAN adapter.

Russ: Perhaps not, but you have to admit that arguing in favour of value setups rather than outright performance setups such as the X2 550 is as good a definition as any as 'cheap PC builds are welcome here'. You can make whatever arguments you like about i5 and i7 needing a new CPU, Mainboard and RAM, but remember - a lot of people making the upgrade have older versions of AM2 or 775 that will only support the old X2 dual cores, or the old P4s and Celerons, no duals or quads at all - in such an instance, you need a new motherboard regardless. Considering a lot of AMDs have gone to DDR3 as well, needing to do CPU, M/B and RAM as a trio is very common - always has been, always will be. You can't criticise i5, i7 or AM3 for that.

The extra heatsink is utterly redundant - it doesn't cool anything. It exists because there's room for it, and serves to be extra cooling power for the voltage regulation and the southbridge.