After an evening of tinkering I seem to be the owner of a PC with no working motherboard. While the two external hdd light up the mouse and keyboard are lifeless as are the screens. I get no bios and no beeps. It's an old PC (core 2 duo) so a replacement isn't really an option.
I was planning on building a new rig this autumn but it looks like that's not an option either now.
I need to replace the PC ASAP within a day or two, so I'm looking to grab a middle of the road desktop from Amazon or Overclockers etc. No screen, keyboard etc required. It needs to be able to play games at a reasonable level, but doesn't need to be state of the art. An ssd would be nice but is not crucial. I'd like to keep the price to £600 to £700 if possible but will spend what's needed. Mid range is where I'm going hopefully.
Any advice on a decent prebuilt that could be sat under my desk by Thursday /Friday would be very welcome.
Thanks.
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Sorry to hear that :(, unfortunately I'm not up-to-date with pre builds so I'm not much use other than looking here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2473 (not used their configurator before)
But out of interest, have you tried running your current PC on bare minimum components (minimal RAM, no hdd, CD, usb, sound cards etc) and ruled out a PSU? seen any blown caps on the MB?
I've pulled everything, swapped monitors and graphic cards. What worries me is that neither my mouse nor keyboard light up, and while the monitors know they're connected I see nothing but a blank screen. I'm getting no beeps or errors and trying to boot into the bios doesn't work. Neither does booting from my rescue disk or a linux boot disk. It seems power is going out to the usb devices but no data. It's a bit of an odd set of symptoms. Sadly though I don't have the time to start fault finding my way through all the possibilities. So I'm working on the assumption that it's the mobo or cpu that's gone. The PC is five years old and a non standard Dell XPS, so replacing components is a bit of a non starter. So I'm cutting my losses and going for a new rig. I'll check out the link , thanks.
Novatech bundles but don't know if it is possible in that time span
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overclockers do and express build service, and from the price you listed, you can get a half decent rig for that, all the extras ssd, graphics and other goodies add up, but you can also buy bundles off them too, take a look
this is a half decent system, and fits well into your price range (yes there some REALLY ones on offer also..)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-247-OE&tool=3
cheapo option
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-344-OE
Novatech, I didn't think about them, Cheers seems I could even drive down and collect it. Thinking about this for £629.00
Novatech Black NTI78 - Intel Core i5 4430 - 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Memory - 1TB SATA Hard Drive -120GB SSD- GTX650TI 1GB Graphics - Gaming Case & 500w PSU
I (https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/pcs/nti78.html) guess I'm trying to work out what the cpu and gpu sweet spots are.
if you can squeeze to a 2gb 660 or 660 ti that would do you a better service than the 650
It's not something as painfully obvious as a blown power supply, is it? Have you got a spare you can borrow from somewhere to test?
The 650 GPUs are to be avoided - it's worth spending the extra to get a 660 or a 670.
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-x51-r2/pd
May take a bit longer than a couple of days though.
I think there is a store in Reading mate which might be closer
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Quote from: smite;375570http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-x51-r2/pd
May take a bit longer than a couple of days though.
gtx 645 aint worth the money
this has a 7770 card for £650, but if you configure and swap in a 2 gig 660 its £717
http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/weekly_sales_II
j (http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/weekly_sales_II)ust for the box
Thanks for the info everyone. Thanks to the generosity of Mr TeaLeaf I'm now working from a very acceptable loaner laptop which should be fine for my work. So I can now sit back and relax a little and be a little more choosy about what to get. I need a balance between gaming and image editing so CPU and RAM have a slightly higher priority than the GPU than would be the case is a pure gaming machine. But I'm getting a handle on the CPU, GPU and RAM options. So thanks for the speedy advice, I should be ordering something in a day or two. :D
Id suggest you go for something non prebuilt, they come at a high price. The pricetag itself might not look to bad, but companies like dell's motherboards are absolutely rubbish.
buy the bits, build it yourself = result is win
Thanks but while the immediate panic is over I still need to get something ordered within the next day or two and be up and running by the weekend or very early next week. My master plan was to build it myself but time means I really need to grab something 'off the shelf'. It won't be exactly what I would have picked and I know I'll pay more but this is more a work machine that I play games on rather than just a games machine. So I sadly don't have the luxury of time.
Quote from: Tutonic;375569It's not something as painfully obvious as a blown power supply, is it? Have you got a spare you can borrow from somewhere to test?
The 650 GPUs are to be avoided - it's worth spending the extra to get a 660 or a 670.
Nope I get power to everything. I just never get to post. It all lights up, hard drives spin, fans light up and spin, mobo lights up, monitors come on. But there's no Bios, no beeps nothing. I can't boot from the DVD drive or usb either. It's like the PC never starts to boot. I've checked the HDD and it's fine and can be read by another machine. I will drop it off at my local shop but I've checked every connection and swapped out most of the cabling so I'm assuming it's going to me mobo or CPU.
Quote from: smilodon;375600Nope I get power to everything. I just never get to post. It all lights up, hard drives spin, fans light up and spin, mobo lights up, monitors come on. But there's no Bios, no beeps nothing. I can't boot from the DVD drive or usb either. It's like the PC never starts to boot. I've checked the HDD and it's fine and can be read by another machine. I will drop it off at my local shop but I've checked every connection and swapped out most of the cabling so I'm assuming it's going to me mobo or CPU.
Could still be a 12v rail or something that's gone bang - it's very easy to check if you have a PSU tester and it could save you a large chunk of cash :)
Another test is to push down on the cpu or even better reseat it
i get excatly the same thing on my back up pc smilo at a guess i'd say a transister or something on the mb has failed.
I am getting it checked tomorrow morning by a local pc shop. I have no psu tester but they are pretty decent and trustworthy so I should get an honest verdict. To be honest I should really get a new pc anyway so I'm thinking about getting one regardless and then adding an ssd and second gpu a bit later.
Update and something to consider:
The PC is up and running. It took a little while for the local shop to check it out but everything is now back up and running. So thanks Tut, Toby etc for suggesting I make sure it's not a terminal problem. The actual issue was that one of the two GTX 260 graphic cards had failed. it seems that on my PC at least, when two cards are in SLi mode and one fails it brings down the entire PC and nothing works, not even bios. As soon as the dead card was removed the Pc burst into life. So that's something to think about for anyone running SLi.
This means I now have time to source and buy individual components rather than have to grab a pre built. While my PC appears to be running OK on a single ancient card I'm thinking about making a new GPU my first purchase. I'm sure the old Core Two Duo Extreme CPU is the major bottlenexk but I can buy a new GPU and drop it into this PC. Then when I have the other components I can move it across to the new computer.
I'm planning on getting a 650 Ti 2048mb card as I've been led to believe it's a nice middle of the road card, and it's under £100. I am wondering if it's going to be worth stepping up to the next level?
Tom's Hardware rates both the MSI HD 7870 Black Knight 2048MB and the MSI GeForce GTX 660 Black Knight 2048MB cards as very good but they both go for about £155.00. I'm not sure if it's worth the extra 50% price hike? I'm probably going to go for the 650 card. Any thoughts gratefully welcome.
Personally, I'd spend the extra £50 and get a 660.
I am with Tut it will last you that bit longer mate.
Cheers. My only concern is that according to the comparison charts I'm reading I will see a frame rate increase of about half a dozen fps i.e. 62fps rather than 56fps. I hope to be corrected but..... in Arma three for example I'll be paying about £8 a frame per second. And I'm pretty sure I'm not able to see that tiny increase in any meaningful way on the screen. So what exactly does my extra £50 buy me? Just a longer time period till it's considered slow and obsolete?
Quote from: Tutonic;375601Could still be a 12v rail or something that's gone bang - it's very easy to check if you have a PSU tester and it could save you a large chunk of cash :)
I didn't even realise those existed. I will definitely buy one at some point. <£10 and you don't have to pull apart a spare PC to swap the PSU to test. Bargain.
As for a tiny increase in FPS, 62fps rather than 56fps is 11%. That's just in that game, with those drivers. There will be games and drivers at some point that really show a big difference between cards. Benchmarks are generally run at launch, and 20% improvements happen fairly regularly with cards during their lifespan.
Yup, when I was fixing Desktops for a living I swore by them. The number of Dell's we had with cheap PSU's that popped a rail was worryingly high.
In theory, the 650 performance will tail off much quicker as you ramp up the details compared to a 660. So it depends really, if you're not bothered about eye candy and just want frames per second then the 650 is probably better value for money.
If you're partial to a bit of AA and other shiney-ness, the 660 should perform much better under those conditions.
All in theory, of course :)
Thanks, I'm following the guides on Tom's Hardware and it seems that while the 650 2 Gb is the sweet spot for mid range cards, they are recommending the HD 7870 over the 660 as it's a bit faster and has just had a price drop. The confusion continues :D
I might just flip a coin and be done with it. All these cards are going to be a massive upgrade over what I have right now. Thanks again.
I've had some fairly horrible experiences with ATI/AMD drivers in the past, which has put me off their cards. I'm sure we have plenty of members here who run them fine, but it's worth considering.
ATI has worked fine for me for the last four years. To each his own however..
Quote from: Tutonic;375954I've had some fairly horrible experiences with ATI/AMD drivers in the past, which has put me off their cards. I'm sure we have plenty of members here who run them fine, but it's worth considering.
Yeah, I've used them on and off over the years, and have gradually sided with Nvidia, more so recently.
Update :the PC went belly up again. Seems this time it's the motherboard. When the pc is standing upright then it's knackered. Either if won't boot at all or it just boots to a blue screen and no HDD found. But when it's on its side it boots fine.I would guess that the mobo is broken, dry joint, cracked etc, that I'm assuming I'm living on borrowed time and that the new build is now a priority.
However I'd be fascinated to hear about any other reason why physical position might be causing problems.
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Check your cpu is seated and the cooler is installed correctly
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I had similar issues with my old core 2 rig. I think the motherboard or PSU or both struggled to give the ram the voltage it required. No beeps, no post, just a few LEDs blinking and the fans whirring away. Booting with a single sick of ram would eventually get me to the BIOS where I could bump the ram voltage up, and then it's be fine for a few days/weeks/months before deciding to reset the voltage back to default. Then one day it refused to boot with the single stick of ram for several days and I gave up and bought a laptop...
snap.....michaels (paddy from minecrafft aka my son) got my old q6600 and after moving house we found out that it wouldn't boot...the fans ran at max speed and no hard drive activity, but on its side it ran. So after it randomly not booting up for a few days i removed all plugs from the mobo and removed all the ram and cards. I just left the CPU and its watercooling block connected. then i air cleaned it ,put it all back together and haven't had any issues since. Think it got rattled in the move even though i had air bags in the case with all the cards (the non static ones).
I would go with a strip and rebuild and see what happens
Cheers. It does seem to be totally dependent on orientation.
The only things I can replace to fix stuff are HDD's, GPUs and power supplies. Everything else is very obsolete. I'll check everything is seated properly and hope keeping the pc on its side will keep me up and running.
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Quote from: smilodon;377635Cheers. It does seem to be totally dependent on orientation.
The only things I can replace to fix stuff are HDD's, GPUs and power supplies. Everything else is very obsolete. I'll check everything is seated properly and hope keeping the pc on its side will keep me up and running.
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I still have the parts from my core 2 rig lying unused if you want to try them? Only the q6600 CPU is gone - "lost" in the post on the way to Duval - *##%@! post office :-(
P.s. for orientation check any pcie slots or other connections under load. I used to have a case that sometimes twisted just so and flexed the motherboard causing the graphics card to slip out just enough to prevent it from booting up
I have a couple of desktops which you're welcome to use for the time being if that would help.
Not sure on the spec but can check on Monday. One was my old gaming machine and not that old - that may be of use.
Let's talk. I need to catch up with you anyway for work as have a project or two that need shooting.
Thanks I'll call you Monday.
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Resurrecting this thread as I'm about to spend money and I didn't want to hijack da_Ricci's own thread on PC upgrades.
I've narrowed it down to the following and would appreciate any comments or suggestions. I'm not sure whether I'm better off going Ivybridge or Haswell. Plus I can get myself an overclocked version which I'm not sure is worth the effort? So I'm looking at the following (16GB Ram for my Photoshop and Lightroom work)
Intel Core i5 4670K Haswell overclocked to 4.2GHz,
16 GB 1600MHz DDR3,
Akasa Nero 3 V2 Cooler,
Corsair 600W PSU,
Radeon R9 270x 2048 GPU or Nvidia GTX 660 2048 GPU
Intel Core i5 3570K 3.40GHz @ 4.40GHz
16 GB 1600MHz DDR3,
K2 Mount Doom Cooler,
Corsair 600W PSU,
Radeon R9 270x 2048 GPU or Nvidia GTX 660 2048 GPU
The price difference is marginal (£35 more for the Haswell) so I'm only wondering if there is any significant difference between the Ivybridge 4.4GHz and the Haswell 4.2Ghz and whether there's much between the Nvidia and AMD GPU's. I'm inclined to go with the Haswell only as it's a newer CPU and so I assume it will take a bit longer for the Z87 chipset to become obsolete over the older Z77?
Thanks.
i would save the money on the cpu and go with the i5 3570 as a few websites are saying that the extra cost aint worth it as the performance is very similar. With those savings try and get a 760 nvidia instead, just my 2p's
I agree with Sulks. Putting that extra money into a more powerful GPU will be better for you gaming wise, imo.
Go for a GTX 770 if you can squeeze it in.
Sent from my Galaxy S3 LTE.
Cheers, I'm just a bit conscious of the chipset as I want to make this as future proof as possible.
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Haswell, i5 4670K and a GTX770 imo. The 4670K and the 3570 are the same price so go with the newer haswell 4670K which has the more future-proof chipset & socket (no point going for the older 1155 socket & chipset, especially as you miss out on some of the Haswell power features if you go older instead of haswell). After the recent price cuts the GTX770 is well worth it and is a pretty cheap way to go to SLI in the near future when budget allows (if needed).
Couldn't quite stretch to a 770 and have seriously broken my budget getting a 760 but finally bought
Intel Core i5 4670K Haswell overclocked to 4.2GHz,
16 GB 1600MHz DDR3,
Akasa Nero 3 V2 Cooler,
Corsair 600W PSU,
Nvidia GTX 760 2048 GPU
A lean time this Xmas I think :)
Gratz Smilo :thumbsup:
You might have a leaner xmas, but you'll enjoy it and your work will go very much quicker as a result!
Which mobo did you go with in the end?
Quote from: smilodon;378660Couldn't quite stretch to a 770 and have seriously broken my budget getting a 760 but finally bought
Intel Core i5 4670K Haswell overclocked to 4.2GHz,
16 GB 1600MHz DDR3,
Akasa Nero 3 V2 Cooler,
Corsair 600W PSU,
Nvidia GTX 760 2048 GPU
A lean time this Xmas I think :)
It is a seriously nice system though...
Nice rig Smilo. See you back online soon then :thumb:
Nice mate hope to see you on Arma soon
Quote from: TeaLeaf;378668Which mobo did you go with in the end?
Gigabyte - D3HP I think.
The new PC is finally up and running and it's going like a dream. I've sorted out all the photography stuff and now just need to start downloading the Steam games etc. Very pleased with Overclockers, great live tracking service and they even threw some bags of sweets into the box as well. Must be Xmas :D