Urgent advice required. New PC

Started by smilodon, September 16, 2013, 10:46:56 PM

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smilodon

#15
September 17, 2013, 08:41:58 PM
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.
smilodon
Whatever's gone wrong it's not my fault.

Tutonic

#16
September 17, 2013, 08:51:30 PM
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 :)
Hero of the Battle Of Chalkeia
"Don\'t worry, none of this blood is mine"


BrotherTobious

#17
September 17, 2013, 09:15:11 PM
Another test is to push down on the cpu or even better reseat it
"It's hard, but not as hard as Arma!!!" Tutonic
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.." Terry Pratchett

Sneakytiger

#18
September 17, 2013, 09:25:59 PM
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.
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smilodon

#19
September 17, 2013, 10:05:11 PM
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.
smilodon
Whatever's gone wrong it's not my fault.

smilodon

#20
September 25, 2013, 11:58:01 AM
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.
smilodon
Whatever's gone wrong it's not my fault.

Tutonic

#21
September 25, 2013, 12:24:54 PM
Personally, I'd spend the extra £50 and get a 660.
Hero of the Battle Of Chalkeia
"Don\'t worry, none of this blood is mine"


BrotherTobious

#22
September 25, 2013, 12:34:23 PM
I am with Tut it will last you that bit longer mate.
"It's hard, but not as hard as Arma!!!" Tutonic
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.." Terry Pratchett

smilodon

#23
September 25, 2013, 12:46:59 PM
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?
smilodon
Whatever's gone wrong it's not my fault.

T-Bag

#24
September 25, 2013, 01:07:54 PM
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.
Juggling Hard Disks over concrete floors ends in tears 5% of the time.

Tutonic

#25
September 25, 2013, 01:29:48 PM
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.
Hero of the Battle Of Chalkeia
"Don\'t worry, none of this blood is mine"


Tutonic

#26
September 25, 2013, 01:30:57 PM
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 :)
Hero of the Battle Of Chalkeia
"Don\'t worry, none of this blood is mine"


smilodon

#27
September 25, 2013, 02:09:28 PM
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.
smilodon
Whatever's gone wrong it's not my fault.

Tutonic

#28
September 25, 2013, 02:36:35 PM
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.
Hero of the Battle Of Chalkeia
"Don\'t worry, none of this blood is mine"


Gone_Away

#29
September 25, 2013, 08:55:17 PM
ATI has worked fine for me for the last four years. To each his own however..
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