Urgent advice required. New PC

[T-Bag]

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.

Yeah, I've used them on and off over the years, and have gradually sided with Nvidia, more so recently.

[smilodon]

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.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[BrotherTobious]

Check your cpu is seated and the cooler is installed correctly

Sent from my Nexus 4

[suicidal_monkey]

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...

[sulky_uk]

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

[smilodon]

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.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

[suicidal_monkey]

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.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

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 :-(

[suicidal_monkey]

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

[Penfold]

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.

[smilodon]

Thanks I'll call you Monday.

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[smilodon]

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.

[sulky_uk]

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

[Tutonic]

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.

[smilodon]

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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[TeaLeaf]

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).