The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Blazorthon,

I'm in the same boat. I did all this stuff years ago, but it's been so long ago, and so much has changed, it's getting hard to keep up with! The past three GigaByte motherboards I've had until the 990XA-UD4, all had two preconfigured "Purple" Sata ports, run by their own Native Sata chip, so depending on if the board had e-sata, you would have 5 or 6 ports left, for a total of 8 Sata ports. I didn't need to do a thing anymore Nice!

Once more, thanks again. I'll do some googling and see what I can find.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

You uninstalled WHAT! You mean, Shaff, that you've had enough of massacring everybody on that game? Did you ever get into the Vietnam map pack? I like BC2 more than BF3 for some reason - the look of the graphics being the main reason I guess - and the Vietnam map pack is far better than anything I've ever seen from those Dice guys. Except that nobody bought it but me - so not many still playing it. Good luck with speeding up your ssd.

Speaking more about your competitive skills, have you checked out the new Counter Strike Global Offensive? Sam likes it - I like it. Pretty nice graphics, and an inexpensive game.

Rich

 

Rich,

Check your PMs!

Russ

 

Exactly right and is why I didn't waste my time with a 60GB SSD. Plus as the drive wears you will loose space too and you would be even worst off.

Using an SSD as a Windows cache drive may help some but you would get more performance just increasing your RAM and using that instead, eliminating the hard drive cache completely.

It looks like it is time to pull the trigger on the new 8 core Vishera 4.0GHz processor since I have this new case. The new case can utilize a tall 120mm airflow cooler as well as a water rig and with multiple large slow speed PWM fans I should be able to keep the processor and a new high-end video card cool without excessive noise hopefully. With exception to the width of the case, being larger then my other cases, I really like the the Fractal Arc. Cable management is great, multiple fan support, water radiator external support, Lower mount PSU support for multiple form factors, great drive bay support with easy to use removable trays secured by a single thumb screw, and even the fan controller seems decent for a cheesy location to mount it. For a old antiquated design she is pretty darn nice, far from antiquated of course.

I plan on getting a couple of mini-atx cases, similar to what Kevin bought, as well to convert my HTPC and main PC's too and save some room as they don't need to be pushed or have hot components in them. If I can get a deal like I did on the Fractal again I may buy one more or another case similar to it at the same price point.

So hopefully by X-mas I'll have the new Vishera with one of the following mainboards:

ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional AM3+ AMD 990FX
ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 AM3+
ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ AMD 990FX

There are some cheaper boards I like too but above is my target group.

 

I bought the Micro ATX case.
HEC HTPC cases
It does a reasonable job with different fans, and a slightly underclocked Athlon 5200. The CPU fan used to Rev up due to heat(naturally). It is in an enclosed area. Can't be avoided. Never bought a mini ITX case. Looks agreeable, but Not into the slot disc drives. Keep in mind that the PSU that comes with, is very cheap. I have it on standby just in case, but they supposedly quit quickly. I replaced with a seasonic right off the bat. Strong little sucker!

 

I've been looking at both and will probably go Micro ATX too. here is the case I'm looking at and I'll get a Hudson 3 or 4 chipset FM2 motherboard for it with a A10 cpu.

IN WIN BL647.300TBL Black Steel MicroATX Slim Case Computer Case 300W Power Supply
PPC Technology for advanced thermal & acoustic

 

That's a sharp case steve. If I were in the market, I'd likely consider it.

 

hey guys long time for me since i posted here going to update my machine probably the first of the year DDR3 i7 core etc along with windows7 and making sure there are no problem/conflits using windows7 and the burning software like nero7, DVD Flick,DVD Rebuilder,anydvd CloneDVD, IMG Burn, DVD Decrypter etc...i guess its easier to ask if there are programs that don't work? I'm going to use the same case and power supply and OODs thats about it everything else is going to be replaced

 

All those are Windows 7 compatible yep; can't think of anything similar that wouldn't be now.

Assuming PSU is the one listed in your sig it should still be ample too.

 

yeah sticking with that one...way due for an update though

 

Ripper,

Win 7 and compatibility are misnomers! Windows 7 is the biggest bunch of garbage I've ever used. I bought 2 Microsoft Intelemouse 3000s, so I would be sure of compatibility with Win 7. They weren't! It took about 2 months before M$ found the problem and provided a solution! It seems to me if we aren't going to get a completely stable version, that doesn't break down in some way or another, every other day, MS should have to take it back, and give you your money back! It isn't close to a finished product, and I'm tired of being an unpaid beta tester!

Russ

 

Russ, isn't it possible, that you simply bought a mouse that slipped through the cracks? And I say again... My positive experience with windows 7 has been FAR GREATER than that of XP. NO exaggeration here

 

Agreed, the problem here is with the mouse and MS forgetting to provide support for it (Although quite how they broke it in the first place is another matter).

 

I used to buy Ford brand vehicles. I tried putting in a better radio from a different model that was supposed to work with the original wiring harness. The radio didnt work, so now i think Fords suck and they shouldn't be allowed to make cars anymore.

 

32 or 64 bit? Regardless, that may be but in terms of the software he listed I'm pretty sure it's all compatible and stable - with maybe the exception of DVD Rebuilder which needs a bit of tweaking ie run as Admin etc.

 

WindowsXP is going to lose support in the near future May of 2014 ,i think so it wouldn't make sense to upgrade my machine and still use XP..i see no other choice other than Windows7 I've worked with it some and like it so far...i milked this machine way to long and need an update bad..the DDR2 ram and small HDDs are almost stone age lol...BTW I'm going with two 1TB HDDs which brands are leading the pack?...I'm sticking with a updated Asus MB and Intel QuadCore and a updated Videocard and DDR3 ram...the ODDs(other than maybe getting a Blu-Ray drive) power supply and case are fine..should be a pretty simply upgrade actually..this big Antec 1200 case is easy to work with, plenty of room

 

I have grown to love Windows 7 Windows 8 on the other hand is a repeat to Vista. My MS keyboard and mouse [wireless] didn't work for the first 2 months till a patch came out. A couple of printers also didn't work I have not found a program yet that hasn't ran on my win7 64 bit pro also with Xp compatibility.One thing that I haven't been able to do without any problems popping up is run a dual boot system off one hard drive [XP and Win7] Now my Win XP 64 bit really sucked. Maybe if I get use to Win 8 I'll like it better. The one thing Win 8 does is load devices and programs hands off.

 

i really dont get anyones beef with vista. was a much better OS than XP.

 

You can't go by Russ's mouse problems which are by far not the end of the world and he has been able to fix the problems with a good driver if I recall correctly.

Windows 7 is great overall and you shouldn't be worried about using it but like ALL OS's there are always some issues. As to ripping movies if you use ProCoder with XP you will need to have the newest version of it to run on Seven without it crashing towards the end of encoding video.

BD Rebuilder works great if you would like to get into Blu-ray ripping and I have a easy setup I can upload for you if you wish to go that route. Also only install the codecs required by BD Rebuilder which should be all you need for everything else.

Hope that helps,
Stevo

 

I don't think so Vista was a compatibility problem waiting to happen and a bloat pig just like ME. I won't use it!