Hey is this a good gaming PC?

[Amakir]

Wow, i almost forgot that i made this topic.

[justanotherfan]

Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it. ShaneMorgan just necroposts fluff to advertise his coupons. I forget if that's against the ToS here. I forget if there were ToS here.

Core i5 is a good choice too. I haven't checked in months, but last I saw, the newer i7s (2600k IIRC) was significantly faster in benchmarks. I generally say to buy the cheapest of the high-end series, and that can certainly apply to the i5. The differences between Intel's vast array of processors are mostly artificial.

[Jonas]

Damn that's one sneaky spammer.

Deleted his signature, gonna leave his posts as they are though.

[Jane_Denton]

Why not just build your own from scratch?

[justanotherfan]

Computers? I always do. I've been getting sick of it though.

My GTX460 videocard RAM is overheating, so I'll have to change out the HSF on that, which is a pain and easy to mess up. The new HSF is sitting on a speaker behind me.

I have a new case in the other room, Fractal Designs, great case, but it's a huge deal to uninstall everything and reinstall in a new case, where things could break.

The RAM I had in one machine started getting memtest errors, so I sent it back (lifetime warranty!), and they sent me replacement RAM that gets worse memtest errors. They didn't respond to my RMA request. That's back in the box on the floor behind me.

I have a KVM and new monitor, but the monitor has a problem, and the KVM daily stops working; Belkin suggests I unplug every computer and all their inputs when this happens, and start them up again, which works (yay!). I sent in an RMA, but NCIX must have ignored/deleted it since the monitor is expensive, so the monitor is on the floor and the KVM is in the next room. Probably going to have to do a chargeback on those two.

I have a Media Player on my desk that's great (Patriot PBO Core), but it has firmware bugs that burned me out on getting it working. Forgot to do the mail-in-rebate.

I have six old HDs ready as backup drives for when I switch my main machine to linux, and they're all just sitting there for months because it's been difficult to get everything ready.

Sorry about the rant, but computer hardware is just a big pain that I haven't had time for lately. On the plus side, I got my old Macintosh working perfectly, so I can do the linux switch. Mint 11 has been great, aside from a couple upstream Ubuntu bugs.

[nerdenstein]

I liked Mint but I switched recently to xubuntu on my net book because I was told it'd run a little faster on a 1.6Ghz Atom with half a Gig of RAM. It's a little faster but not a massive amount of difference between the two OS's. I think it just needed a clean slate, it only having 8Gb hardspace and all.

I've got a couple of old machines I wanna get working for my sister to use as a gaming machine, the only thing she will need to buy is a Graphics Card I think. I'm not sure my only spare Graphics card, nVidia Geforce 5500, would run Left 4 Dead 2.
Two of the machines have got a Xeon Motherboard, one has a 2.4Ghz Processor (My old rig) and the other is a Dual Core 3.0Ghz. That was my dads old work machine.
He gave it too me too see if I could fix it (It initally wouldn't physically turn on) and because most of the software he was using for work required him to move to hardware and Win7 I believe.
Anyway, I assumed it was a duff power supply, so I replaced that. It booted, but didn't post. No beeps and nothing on the screen, through the graphics card or integrated graphics. That was a while ago.
I played around with it for quite awhile and never got it too work. Removing all the PCI cards, replacing the lithium battery, making sure the Power supply was correct output etc. I'm not sure what's wrong but an IT friend told me it could be the motherboard, fried along with the power supply. I can only assume the machine was hit with a power spike or something. I guess I'll never know.
Now, because the other Xeon board has two processor slots, I'm consider taking both 3.0Ghz processors and putting them both into the older 2.4Ghz board and just hope to god that the processors aren't knackered too.
Not that I've ever tried anything with processors, so it could be an interesting venture.

That's my little experience with Computer hardware.

[justanotherfan]

Space is definitely at a premium there. There'll be things you can uninstall in the packagemanager, but not many. My Mint 11 is at 4.8gb. Xubuntu will be easier on resources since it uses XFCE instead of GNOME. There's an XFCE version of Mint along with an LXDE version that should update to Mint 11 soon. LXDE is even lighter than XFCE, saving a few hundred more MB, but I haven't tried it.

Try reseating the RAM in your Dad's computer. If it has more than one stick, try one stick at a time. Otherwise, when the PSU goes, it can damage other hardware, especially the motherboard. A UPS and expensive high-quality PSU can seem wasteful until power protection features save equipment.

[nerdenstein]

Okay, Maybe I'll look into the Mint again, I think I prefer it too Xubuntu. I'm having touchpad issues with games in Wine on Xubuntu that I never got with Mint, for one thing.

As for my Dad's computer, thinking about it, I can't remember checking the RAM. I must have done though because it seems so obvious! I've got a couple of exams on Monday, but I'll probably have another shot at getting that machine running again sometime late next week.
Thanks for the tips.

[justanotherfan]

Cool, no problem.

I mentioned the RAM because I've had computers start with no POST beeping codes, but not booting, because the RAM was seated incorrectly or just bad. Seemed to negate the reason for beep codes, since the rest are generally "Motherboard Broken" errors.

I like Linux highly polished. Mint improves on Ubuntu, which is collected from Debian, which strictly manages quality-control. More is usable and fixed downstream. With Mint 11 (GNOME), Ubuntu is no longer default-GNOME, so I'm seeing a couple bugs from upstream that Ubuntu didn't bother to fix. Mint is hedging their bets with a "Linux Mint Debian Edition", currently barely usable.

[Amakir]

While this is still here i might as well ask if i can run this card in SLI with a 650W PSU?

[gamer0004]

Total system with two 560s under full stress consumes about 450 watts: http://guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-560-sli-review/14
So your PSU should be able to handle that. However, one should always keep a large margin for stability, reliability and endurance. If a PSU is often stressed to 100% it won't last very long. That hopefully won't be the case with your PSU. "Hopefully" because some PSUs actually deliver way fewer watts than they say (others, like Corsair PSUs, deliver more). 650 will probably be enough though.

[justanotherfan]

Well, a couple capacitors blew on an EVGA card of mine. Apparently it's super-common with the FZ72 caps they used. They're a wet capacitor made to look like a solid-state one too, which I always prefer. I'd replace the caps, but it probably fried circuits while failing anyway.

I'm in the market for a new videocard and new PSU. I'm thinking the Corsair HX750: high efficiency, big quiet fan, high-end capacitors (including solid state ones), modular, and it got top billing from HardwareSecrets' thorough review (and SPCR gave similar models top quiet reviews). The scatological performance of nvidia in Linux (and my overheating 470GTX) means I'll go with ATI, so I'm looking for a 7xxx series lifetime-warranty Radeon, midrange like nvidia x60 or x70 GTX level cards. It's for low power consumption, low heat, and high performance at a reasonable price. 7xxx should be out soon.

[Hashi]

That computer is out of date already. You need a new one asap, or you might only be able to run Battlefield 3 or other such large games in High settings, not the highest setting.

[justanotherfan]

Oh, I administrate different computers. The dead card is an EVGA 7300GT (~5 years old). The top card I have is the overheating 460GTX (not 470, my mistake). The other machines can use older hardware. That way, when a component fails, I get something new and pass my hardware along. The only reason I got the 460GTX is because another motherboard's GMA950 stopped working. All I've used it for is MSFlightSim and Gamecube/Wii games so far. I think the ATI will replace a 8800GT somewhere for Linux.

I looked into ATI; the 6950 is the current equivalent of what I buy, except it runs hotter. Higher-end AMD cards have disappeared, and AMD's next card uses a 28nm process, so it could release soon and run cooler. I'm reading revolutionary things, like it being x86-capable, so waiting seems reasonable.

[Amakir]

That computer is out of date already. You need a new one asap, or you might only be able to run Battlefield 3 or other such large games in High settings, not the highest setting.

Me do not want Battlefield 3: Revenge of the Spyware.