PC Recommendations

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

^^^^

Nope, no RAID necessary, especially now with the horrible nForce RAID program. Just make sure you have enough power (SATA or legacy/4-pin molex), as well as a SATA 150, SATA 3 Gb/s, or SATA 2 cable and available port. But I have to stress about the power supply, I have two, and that, along with an FX-55 SD, 4 Gb DDR-400 (that have activity lights), and twin 7800 GTX's at 525/1326 mhz I've had it with not having enough power, and got an 850 watt, but make sure (especially with 6800 Ultras), that you have at least a 575-600 watt for stability.

 

My card looks like the one on the left. My monitor , the one on the right.

Are they compatible? I've been looking into it, but my all I could figure out is my head hurt.

Just get a DVI-D cable, that way it's compatible (which they are )

 

***edit***

Also, just because it's SCSI you don't need a RAID array...

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

first, the R230 hasn't even been released yet, and we still don't have any word from ATI as to what the specs are. however, it is rumored that th R230 card is going to have a whopping 32 pixel pipelines combined with a 90 nanometer chip (a first for ATI). technically, that translates into a performance increase roughly equivalent to about 30-55% over the current ATI frontrunner, the RX850 XT.

They've had them in benchmarks for the release in Taiwan (which is a lot sooner than here), it has a 7-- mhz core (depending on the variation), and a 1400 mhz mem-clock, but you are right about the 90 nm process. But actually, isn't it the R520?

[Char Ell]

@ Killwithhonor - I checked out Cyber Power systems and decided I liked what I saw. I could get a custom case w/ temperature sensors and display, they seemed to have good components, and the price was quite reasonable. So I ordered what I wanted from them. My experience with CyberPower systems after that has been nothing but disappointing and frustrating.

 

1) THEY TOOK MY MONEY BEFORE SHIPPING MY ORDER - They charged my credit card the day after I ordered the system but didn't ship the system until 10 days later. My experience with other online merchants has been they don't actually charge my card until they ship the merchandise.

 

2) SYSTEM MALFUNCTIONS FROM THE START - I was quite giddy when I received my system this last Saturday. After about an hour of unpacking and getting everything plugged in I fired the system up. The splashscreen for the mainboard came up and then blackness. Uh-oh is right. After a few reboots I finally got the Windows XP setup screen to come up. Once Windows XP was set up and updated I installed KotOR. Oh the graphics were so sweet. I could actually see the force power effects on force push and knight speed. The GeForce 7800 GTX was rendering like I've never seen before. I turned shadows and grass on. All was good for about 10 minutes and then my system locked hard. Couldn't bring up task manager, couldn't move the mouse cursor on the screen and so my only recourse was to hit the reset button on the case. The system came up OK but locked up again after about 2 minutes of KotOR. AARRGGHH! So I installed Jedi Academy to see how that worked. The system hard locked when I was setting up my character! Not good. Then I decided to try playing a DVD movie (AotC) and after about a minute I got the BSOD. I reseated the 7800 GTX, checked everything else but couldn't get the system to work without hard freezing, sometimes even when I was just using a web browser!

 

3) CLUELESS TECH SUPPORT - So today I called their tech support. At this point I know I've got some bum h/w I just don't know what part or parts are bad. They told me to try pulling one and then the other stick of RAM to see if that fixed it. No dice. Then they had me pull the sound card. Still no good. The system kept getting worse and worse. After this my second hard drive stopped working. I don't know if it died or if the mainboard was having problems (probably the mainboard). So finally after being off and on the phone with them all morning (they don't answer the phone much so I had to keep calling back until someone would pick up) I told them I wanted to send my system back to them and have them send me a replacement. The tech told me that would take 3 weeks! I'm really not happy at this point So in exasperation I ask what else he wants me to try. He has me get into the BIOS, puts me on hold, some other tech gets on the line and asks how he can help me, I tell him I'm holding for the other tech, he talks to me about my issues for a while until the original tech comes back after a few minutes. Then the tech tells me he wants to change the BIOS settings because sometimes the BIOS resets during shipping. The tech explains that the battery on the mainboard goes out sometimes. I question why he thinks that because I never saw a message advising me that the BIOS was reset and although the time was a few hours off the date on the system was correct when I powered it up the first time. He still thinks it could be a BIOS problem so he has me go in and change the RAM clock speed from the auto setting of 666.7 MHz to 667.5 MHz! Then he says, "Now, try this for a day and if it doesn't work then we'll look into having you send your system in." It should be needless to say that the little RAM speed tweak did jack squat!

 

So I decided to cut my losses and invoke their warranty for a full refund if the system is not functioning properly within 7 days of receipt, got my RMA #, and shipped the systsem back to Cyber Power today, 4 days after I received it. This little experience required I take the day off todya and has put me in the hole for US$110 for shipping. That is a smaller price to pay and less headache than having to deal with that company any further. Once I get the proper credit back to my card and this is all straightened out I'll build my own system.

[stingerhs]

sounds like they gave you crappy hard disks and possibly didn't bother to give you a power supply that could handle the GeForce. as far as the tech support goes, he might have been thinking that the memory wasn't writing fast enough and could have been causing a massive leak in the memory. hey, i've heard of worse off-beat suggestions, but all you really needed to do would have been to find the CMOS reset button on the mainboard to reset the BIOS to the factory specs. why they didn't bother to suggest that is beyond my understanding.

 

anyways, i think you can understand why i highly prefer building my own system: you know exactly what you're getting, and the warranty on individual parts is usually going to benefit you more than to simply return your entire machine which is what most manufacturers do to compensate for ****ty tech support.

 

oh well, good luck with the build.

[Char Ell]

There was nothing wrong with the BIOS settings. I had already reset the BIOS before I even called tech support. And I had a 600W power supply so there should have been no problem w/ power It just came down to something was wrong with the h/w. I suspect it was the mainboard or the PNY GeForce 7800GTX. Does 120-125 degrees Fahrenheit sound like a normal temperature for a 7800GTX GPU? That was about what the card was running when I wasn't playing any games. The few minutes of game time I got in got the temp up to mid 130's.

 

Thanks for the advice on the parts. I got most of what you recommended only I didn't get it on my own of course. So now I'll just buy my own parts and do my own assembly.

[vanir]

Well personally I start to panic at about 105-110F (but alarms/shutdown are usually set at 140F).

 

I agree the whole overpowered system issue is a big financial hole. Considering I built a perfectly capable system for around US$750 (AU$1000), I can play TSL and my other fave game IL2:FB/AEP with most of the graphics settings turned up on 1024x768 with no troubles and very rare FPS losses, all the Force power effects looking smooth, etc.

My sound is on board sis virtual-surround driving 2.1 that can still shake windows at 30 yards and make your skin feel funny with the bass when I pump it, my video/cpu overclocked to a (wow) 2.6G/405MHz and my huuuuuge 768m ram still means I have to shut down all services before I start switching games on, but it runs anything I've tried on it, ya know?

Keeping in mind I pay like $1.25 for every US dollar, my cool looking aluminium case with funky "soft touch" features and plenty of fans cost me $135

My motherboard-chipset (GE M2 Pro, yeah cheap but hey, it works), Celeron 2.4 CPU (hence I can only clock it to a whopping 2.6), a 256m DDR all cost $250 as a package.

upgrading to 768m ram another $100.

A 400MHz/256m ATI 9600Pro $250

And the colour monitor somebody left on a junk pile in the next street and has kept me going for the last year with a perfect record. My 40G HDD cost $30, my CD-RW/DVD-R combo drive $80 and my powersupply came with the case but it's a new one geared for a P4 setup so has little troubles with mine.

XP Home edition cost me $135 and Nortons $80.

 

Let's see, that's a total of AU$1060 which amounts to <US$800 and I can play TSL fine with 2 anis/x4 aa and all the bells and whistles. I just switch off soft shaders and grass but have the detail up high and all the rest.

My other game like I said IL2 comes up fantastic, I just don't turn the water up full detail for weather effects on the waves but get awesome flight sim action.

 

My other uses as a dvd player/bedroom entertainment system (where I spend 98% of my spare time), it's more than enough.

 

ahem, not saying you shouldn't go out and spend nearly AU$3500 immediately, just well, you could get buy a car for stock racing with that or a boat.

[SITHSLAYER133]

the best one isnt one brought from the store its the one built by the major nerd not being mean but they no the ****

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

There was nothing wrong with the BIOS settings. I had already reset the BIOS before I even called tech support. And I had a 600W power supply so there should have been no problem w/ power It just came down to something was wrong with the h/w. I suspect it was the mainboard or the PNY GeForce 7800GTX. Does 120-125 degrees Fahrenheit sound like a normal temperature for a 7800GTX GPU? That was about what the card was running when I wasn't playing any games. The few minutes of game time I got in got the temp up to mid 130's.

 

Thanks for the advice on the parts. I got most of what you recommended only I didn't get it on my own of course. So now I'll just buy my own parts and do my own assembly.

Unfortunately, wattage isn't enough, for any card above a 6800 GT I recommend 500+ watts, and at least 36 amps on the +12v rail for system stability. For that I recommend a the new Thermaltake PSU's, $180 retail, 680 watts, 38 amp +12v, and it's cool looking if you have a case window. Also the GPU temp you have is slightly above normal(I have an XFX 7800 GTX, only it's in SLI), but it's nothing to be concerned about, for instance, mine is currently at 42 C/107.6 F, but I don't have a stock heatsink. Anyways, as for system instability, the PSU should solve that(make sure the amperage is as high as you can get), and if that fails, try getting a WD Raptor, they're made for high-end servers so from that and personal experience I can say they're reliable, plus the OEM comes well-packaged(from newegg anyways). But I cannot say it enough, GET A HIGH AMPERAGE PSU.

[stingerhs]

yep, jmac got the point. Watts is merely a measure of power, not the measure of current that the system actually needs. still, you should be okay with the power supply i reccommended.

 

and are you sure the readings were in Fahrenheit?? the computer industry uses Centigrade for temp readings, in which case overheating definately would have been the culprit on your system.

 

generally, if it gets above 100C, then you should consider improving the cooling systems. if it gets above 120C, usually the heat diodes implanted into the chips are going to start going off which would have been causing the crashes. if you had the chips getting into the 130C range, my guess is that you probably blew out one of the heat diodes which would have seriously hindered system stability, not to mention made the GPU just about useless since it could get inaccurate temp readings.

 

my guess is that either the case wasn't rated for the type of heat put out by hardware or the cooling system on the GeForce wasn't doing the job. that means one of two things: either Cyber Power ****ed you over with a poorly designed case or PNY didn't design the cooling system to properly handle the heat generated by the GPU. either way: you were pretty much screwed over from the start. personally, i'd raise hell with the PR folks @ Cyber Power for having to pay $110 to ship their piece of crap back to them. it either wasn't designed properly, or they didn't put in the necessary research to deturmine that PNY didn't design the cooling system properly. either way, Cyber Power is at fault and you really shouldn't have to pay for their mistakes.

 

but thats just my two pennies.

[Palpatine_dc]

I also have a Geforce 7800 GTX installed and when running normal it has a av. t° of 40°-45° Celcius. There is a threshhold that stands at 115° C (default setting). Check your t°, if it's C you should really check your cooling.

 

My last system also had a lot of random chrashes and it turned out that 3 pins of my ATX connector melted. As a result I had to throw away my Mainboard and power supply.

 

Hope it helps

[Char Ell]

'Tis good to know that a high wattage PSU doesn't necessarily cover my future 7800 GTX vid card's power requirements. I'll make sure to look at the amp rating as well.

 

I do find it kind of strange that jmac recommends such a high wattage PSU. Most of the PSU's I've seen advertised as SLI ready are in the 550W-600W range, but of course I wasn't paying attention to the amp rating at the time.

 

As far as the GPU temp goes the numbers I gaver were definitely Fahrenheit. I think I may have put the temperature probe in the wrong place though. I don't know where Cyber Power originally placed it because I pulled the 7800 GTX and reseated it before I realized that it had a temp probe attached to it. I didn't see any tape or tape marks to indicate where it was attached so I slipped it in between the card and the heat sink on the bottom of the card. It probably should have been taped to the other side of the heat sink instead of between the card and the heat sink.

 

Anyway, anybody have anything to say, one way or the other, about MSI motherboards?

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

MSI is a pretty good company, I personally like my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium, you don't have to switch the SLI chip around. Also, those numbers were definitely in Fahrenheit, mine's 43 C, with a core slow-down/shut-down at 125 C. Also, you don't need that much wattage for running your system, but it will be more stable, the PSU I recommended will definitely work with your system too, I have one with a similar setup.

[stingerhs]

well, i think i'm gonna head out to ask a couple of guys with even more tech knowledge than me to see what their opinion is on the wattage requirements on a PSU for a system with a GeForce 7800. i say its best to clear out the confusion about how much power the card really needs before you go spend $200+ for a beefy PSU.

 

be back later.

 

Edit: well, that took me less than 5min.

 

okay, straight from Nvidia's FAQ sheet for the GeForce 7800 GTX:

Q: What power supply does it require?

Current recommendations are 350W for single, 500W for SLI.

that should clear up the confusion just a tad.

 

citation: http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7800_faq.html

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

^^^^

Those are just to run it, I'd recommend more though. My system uses a lot of power, but 550 watts was enough for my 6800 GT setup... That being said, don't underestimate how much of a power-hog the 6800 Ultra and 7800-series cards are.

[stingerhs]

very true. but a 400W PSU would probably be just fine for most applications if you use that card.

[ChAiNz.2da]

yup, I'm running a 520 Watt PSU pumping out a little over 38amps.. but it runs my 2 SLI 6800 Ultras, Floppy Drive, 2 internal SATA's, internal ZIP drive and my 2 DVD burners without a hitch...

 

Though I would suggest a "non" generic PSU. Don't buy a store brand PSU unless it includes certain 'protections' (and a warranty wouldn't hurt ).

 

Unbeknowst to alot of users, most power you get from your wall outlets aren't a "steady" stream... meaning, it's not officially a regulated event. Power companies have a range that they are required to stay in, but not a particular constant...

 

This means surges, brown-outs and spikes are going to be a killer for your machine (moreso than usual)...

 

Spend a few dimes more for a brand name PSU, particulary look for protections against over temperature, voltage, current & short circuit protection... and fans! (plural)

 

I use Master Power or Mad Dog brands mostly when I build a system.. but there's others that are just as good (if not better)... I like those 2 mainly because they have "smart cable" capability where you only use the power connectors you need. You simply plug in the connector that you need into the main unit. They also have thermostats that only run the fans when necessary (over 40° Celsius)

 

No clutter, no mess & especially easy on your Utilities bill

[TheOssusKeeper]

hehe, chainz has a pimped out pc...

 

i've got 450w ps in my pc...

[RedHawke]

To add to what ChAiNz stated above about Power Supplies...

 

Always, and I do mean always! Use a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) with your PC! Remember to protect your Power Supply and PC from those little variances in power.

 

Those power surge protector strips aren't enough, I thought they were once upon a time, and I had to learn an expensive lesson about what ChAiNz described above about Power Companies, you can still get a fried PC if you have a power outage just using those surge strips...

 

Also never just plug your PC directly into the wall that's just basically "assisted suicide" to your poor PC.

[ChAiNz.2da]

Also never just plug your PC directly into the wall that's just basically "assisted suicide" to your poor PC.

I couldn't agree more with RedHawke's suggestions...UPS's are lifesavers (err.. system savers)

 

and that quote just made the All-time classics RH!

[RedHawke]

and that quote just made the All-time classics RH!

 

Hello, Dr. Kavorkian we got an AS/400 that needs your help!