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Computer Technical Assistance Request ^(n-1)
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So, Star, have you assembled that system yet? I'm about to start buying parts for my own new system, and I was going to use your shopping list.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
Not yet, sadly. Still pulling grass over at my parental units place to pay for it all. Fortunately, there is a LOT of grass that needs pullin. UN-fortunately there are other commitments to the cash flow that need to be allotted for as well
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
Sorry to hear that, and I hope I didn't exacerbate and disappointment or impatience.
I do want to thank you for cluing me into Fry's -- we don't have any here in NJ, and I was amazed by the prices. I tried to find the mobo from your list via MySimon, and no one in their listings had the board for less than twice what Fry's is asking. That's just amazing. Fry's also suggested an I7 2nd Gen CPU for the mobo, and I'm wondering if it's worth it. The raw numbers don't look like that much of an improvement over the CPU you chose, but I've been out of the hardware game for so long, I really don't know if there are other factors and considerations that come into play. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
As far as CPUs go, the only main thing the i7 has over the i5 besides being clocked slightly faster is having intel's dual-pipeline technology, called hyperthreading (and maybe 2 more cores, I forget). It's only really useful if you do things routinely to max out your CPU and those applications are multithreaded. (Video encoding, Photoshop, any (decent) movie making software, etc.)
Basically, unless you can through a lot of multithreaded work at it, go for the i5. Edit: Also ensure the power supply you're choosing is up to the task. It's somewhat tricky, but just remember that pretty much everytihng besides the motherboard uses the 12V power line, so those amount of amps that the PSU can deliver on that 'rail' is important to know. 
That's usually true. You have to be careful with the i5 and i7, though- I've seen dual-core i7s before, and quad-core i5s. It's always best to check the models before you decide.
In general, though, on a desktop, the i5 will be enough multitasking for the job. I'd rather have four real cores than Hyperthreading, anyway. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
Okay, then, I'll stick with Star's CPU choice, then. And I'll be overgenerous on the PS when I get to that point.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Star's PS, I failed to notice before ordering, is already 600W -- it seems to be more than sufficient for the needs of the computer he specced out, and which I'm still following.
Though Star, I should warn you -- some of the items on your shopping list are starting to become unavailable, at least at Fry's. I had to go to an outfit on the Amazon Marketplace for the DVD/Bluray drives, for instance. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Hmm. Thanks for the warning on that, I'll have to keep an eye out for equivalents. And yes, back when I spec'd it I'd gone with a generous PS for just that reason.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
Just a note and a nudge - the Core i5/i7 chips tend to be very capable overclockers when in a solid motherboard. I have had nothing but joy from my Asus P8Z68-V PRO. The excitement happens with the onboard 'AI Tuner' stuff. I set it to 'auto' and hit go, and now instead of a 3.5/3.8 'turbo', I run a locked 4.3ghz, and I still have all the thermal and voltage protections designed into the chip. I haven't even voided the warranty!
I am unfamiliar with the MSI board in question, but if its plausible, I would not hesitate to recommend that you pay the minor difference to go up to an i5-2500k, the k denoting the unlocked multiplier on the front end. It is of note that it is on my list to go from my 'conservative' 13% overclock to an agressive overclock. Thanks to the multi-stage power filtering hardware and cooling setup on the motherboard, and my (absurdly easy to setup) Corsair H100, I can plausibly expect to get 5ghz stable. 5 ghz. BRB COMPUTING EVERYTHING. "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Arrrgh. My big hand-built gaming machine (from 4 years ago) had a mobo failure last week. With the holiday weekend coming up and an insane work schedule, I opted to just buy local rather than go bargain-shopping online. So, while I probably need to upgrade my video card (GeForce 9800) again, it'll serve for the moment. I swapped out the old mobo/memory/processor for a 6-core i7, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and an ASUS Sabertooth mobo (overkill, but I want to stay ahead of the "upgrade to play games" curve for at least a few years). So far, so good. But when I tried to boot XP, as soon as I got past the "XP or Recovery Console" menu, it went straight to BSOD. Not the normal BSOD, but the "Windows has shut down to prevent damage to your hardware" one. Trying normal boot, Safe Mode, and Recovery Console all ended the same way.
So, I figured it was probably a driver issue, and using an XP boot CD in repair mode would fix things up. So (since I can't find my original CD, thanks to the basement flood last year), I obtained an XP-SP3 .iso, figuring that it would be okay, since my install key is totally legit. Problem is, once I got the CD to boot, as soon as the CD boot process got to the "Starting Windows" message, it BSOD'd again. With the "shutting down to avoid damaging hardware" message. Here's the kicker: I've booted this thing with a Linux boot CD and run it for hours with no trouble. And when running Linux, I can access the original XP boot drive and pull files from it. All the hardware checks out as far as I can tell. So WTF won't even the XP boot CD start up? The only thing I can think of is that I'm using 32bit XP on 64bit hardware. But I've never had trouble doing that before. So why now? I could just bite the bullet and buy a copy of Win7 64bit, but if my hardware has somehow developed some sort of Windows allergy.....
I did sort of the same thing recently. My i7/DDR3 upgrade can't even install XP.
I suspect you'd be smart to upgrade to 7, and look into virtualization. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours. I've been writing a bit.
Can anyone recommend a network storage solution? I have a mini-mac that's serving as a media box, it currently has a 500GB drive plugged into it.
I have Issues with this because the drive is formatted NTFS (it used to be connected to my Windows machine), and I don't have anything to back it up to so that I can reformat it. As you may or may not be aware, MacOS does not natively support writing to NTFS despite being able to read it without issues. Stupid, yes? So I'm looking into getting a new drive, formatting it EXTFS or whatever MacOS uses, and using that as the primary media drive. Size should be in the 1-2 TB range. my questions: Recommended brand? Source to order/purchase from (Best Buy? NewEgg?) NAS or just a USB drive to hang off the mini-mac? Budget right now... if I can keep this under $150, I'll be happy, but if there are no reasonable solutions there I may be willing to push higher. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Depends on what you have available.
Newegg has purpose built NAS systems for as low as 60$. http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory ... torage-NAS But if you want a decent turn key solution you'll need to spend about twice that. Getting a NAS with less than 4 drivebays is probably not a good idea. I'd recommend buying a bare NAS and drives, since NAS with drives tend to be overpriced. If you are willing to put some work in it and have an old computer lying around you can just use freenas or similar software to build your own. There are professional grade systems pre-built with freenas but they tend to be expensive (like 10 times your budget expensive). For a single user you don't need much in the way of hardware so if you have a 4-5 year old computer it should work just fine, but preferably use one that can support a lot of drives. E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?" B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell." SkyeFire Wrote:Arrrgh. My big hand-built gaming machine (from 4 years ago) had a mobo failure last week. With the holiday weekend coming up and an insane work schedule, I opted to just buy local rather than go bargain-shopping online. So, while I probably need to upgrade my video card (GeForce 9800) again, it'll serve for the moment. I swapped out the old mobo/memory/processor for a 6-core i7, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and an ASUS Sabertooth mobo (overkill, but I want to stay ahead of the "upgrade to play games" curve for at least a few years). So far, so good. But when I tried to boot XP, as soon as I got past the "XP or Recovery Console" menu, it went straight to BSOD. Not the normal BSOD, but the "Windows has shut down to prevent damage to your hardware" one. Trying normal boot, Safe Mode, and Recovery Console all ended the same way.I'll tell you what your problem is right now. It is very much likely that there are no WinXP drivers for your mobo and/or CPU. Windows and other hardware manufacturers are slowly phasing out XP support because they're moving on to bigger things. In fact, I've recently downloaded the installer for Microsoft's preview of Windows 8. No, I am not kidding. For the most part it's Windows 7 only redesigned to work most effectively with tablet PCs, but it'll also work on laptops and desktops fairly well. blackaeronaut Wrote:Yeah, I suspect you're right. I bit the bullet and ordered a Win7 Pro install ($250, arrgh!). I just have to make a just-in-case copy of the contents of the XP drive before I nuke&pave it. Aaaand, it turns out I spoke too soon about using Linux on this box. If I boot into Linux, the machine starts slowly but surely heating up, until the system craps out at a CPU temp of roughly 130C. It looks like the Great Big Multi-speed fans I paid for the original system to have aren't doing their jobs (which might actually have contributed to the death of the old mobo). So, assuming I get out of work before 10PM tonight, it looks like another trip to Micro Center to pick up new replacement fans. The new mobo actually has sockets for controlling *four* additional fans, not including the dedicated CPU fan. Mobo-controlled fans are actually new territory for me -- it'll be interesting to see what happens.SkyeFire Wrote:Here's the kicker: I've booted this thing with a Linux boot CD and run it for hours with no trouble. And when running Linux, I can access the original XP boot drive and pull files from it. All the hardware checks out as far as I can tell. So WTF won't even the XP boot CD start up?I'll tell you what your problem is right now. It is very much likely that there are no WinXP drivers for your mobo and/or CPU. Windows and other hardware manufacturers are slowly phasing out XP support because they're moving on to bigger things. In fact, I've recently downloaded the installer for Microsoft's preview of Windows 8. No, I am not kidding. For the most part it's Windows 7 only redesigned to work most effectively with tablet PCs, but it'll also work on laptops and desktops fairly well. SkyeFire Wrote:Argh... I hope you haven't bought those fans yet, because fun little bits like software controlled cooling fans aren't exactly a strong suit of Linux unless you got the right apps and drivers for it. On the off-hand chance that you haven't bought the fans just yet, first try Windows 7. Then if it does not work, then sure, throw the fans in. Also, I'd trust in the Mainboard's fan sockets. Unless I'm mistaken, it's a hard-wired control feature with a software app that enables you to set the parameters of the fans operation.blackaeronaut Wrote:I'll tell you what your problem is right now. It is very much likely that there are no WinXP drivers for your mobo and/or CPU. Windows and other hardware manufacturers are slowly phasing out XP support because they're moving on to bigger things. In fact, I've recently downloaded the installer for Microsoft's preview of Windows 8. No, I am not kidding. For the most part it's Windows 7 only redesigned to work most effectively with tablet PCs, but it'll also work on laptops and desktops fairly well.Yeah, I suspect you're right. I bit the bullet and ordered a Win7 Pro install ($250, arrgh!). I just have to make a just-in-case copy of the contents of the XP drive before I nuke&pave it. Aaaand, it turns out I spoke too soon about using Linux on this box. If I boot into Linux, the machine starts slowly but surely heating up, until the system craps out at a CPU temp of roughly 130C. It looks like the Great Big Multi-speed fans I paid for the original system to have aren't doing their jobs (which might actually have contributed to the death of the old mobo). So, assuming I get out of work before 10PM tonight, it looks like another trip to Micro Center to pick up new replacement fans. The new mobo actually has sockets for controlling *four* additional fans, not including the dedicated CPU fan. Mobo-controlled fans are actually new territory for me -- it'll be interesting to see what happens. Even if you did buy the fans, make sure you keep that receipt - DO NOT INSTALL THE NEW FANS UNTIL YOU TEST THE OLD ONES UNDER WINDOWS 7.
never had a problem with software controlled fans on my linux machine. Anyway ussuly the motherboard has the ability to ignore the software, can you just change your bios configuration to run the fans at max?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?" B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
If the BIOS supports that, then you should be able to. I have no idea what features that board's BIOS supports, though. You're gonna have to go in there and find it.
Actually, it looks like I got the wrong fans. None of the fan packaging at the store had nothing on whether they were mobo compatible, but the plugs looked similar, so I got three. And it turned out the fans had 3pin mobo connectors, but the mobo has 4pin headers. Good grief. Anyway, the fans also included hardware speed switches and molex power connectors straight to the PSU, so I just turned them all to high and hardwired them.
I'm still a bit concerned, though. I ran a long log of lm-sensors output while running a large rsync job under Linux. The temperature *still* climbed up into the high 90s (C) before stabilizing. The computer seems stable over 48hrs or so, but still it seems pretty hot for a machine that's not being strained.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1773/17/
something isn't right there, SkyeFire. In addition, do a physical check of the fan fit on the mobo headers. I know that, at least on my Asus z86 board, that four-pin header will take a three-pin fan. You just lose motherboard speed control, I think. "No can brain today. Want cheezeburger." From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
I have all my parts finally -- the last ones arrived on Monday. I was too busy the last two nights to do anything with them, but if all goes well, I'll start assembling tonight after work.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Wiredgeek Wrote:http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1773/17/ Yeah. One problem is, I don't know *what* sensor lm-sensors is reading -- my brief research implies that the Sabertooth sensors aren't fully supported under Linux.As for connecting the fans... how do I know which three pins of the four-pin header to plug onto? There wasn't any shape-keying on the mobo headers to prevent mis-plugging. Ah, well. I should finally get Win7 Pro installed tonight. Then I'll download HWMonitor and do some stress-testing.
Well, thanks to some friends who were by this weekend, I've finally assembled the system that Star originally designed (and which I tweaked a bit because of market conditions and whatnot). Joe and Scott are much more up-to-date on their hardware/system assembly skills than I am, and seemed overall approving of the selection of parts. I flubbed on my choice of replacement for the video card, not realizing that the mobo was optimized for a different chipset and could handle doubling up on a pair of video cards using that set -- which I expect was one of your longterm goals. And they felt that the mobo sound was better than the sound card, and that the cooler was redundant.
That said, the system is up and running and the difference in COH for me is like the day I went from generic "3-D" graphics to my first Nvidia card. Plus I'm zoning in seconds, and nothing is taking the forever it used to. Oh, and it's awesomely quiet. I am well pleased. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Interesting that they felt those things. (makes some notes) Looks like I'll be putting it togetehr myself before the end of the month!
Actually, hopefully by this time next week, it now looks like. Yes, the video card was picked for its Crossfire compatiblity; If they're that sure I think I'll drop the sound card in favor of new(er) peripherals like a keyboard that isnt a soda catcher and a webcam. Gonna keep the Cooler, I'm just 1980's that way and feel there is no such thing as a cold running CPU! Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
As a followup note, it looks like my thermal issues weren't as bad as the initial tests showed. It looks like Linux lmsensors running from the Live CD showed *much* higher temps than what the BIOS was reporting. And once I actually *installed* Linux and did a full update, lmsensors now shows a consistent set of temperatures down in the high 30s to mid 40s Celcius.
Actually, come to think of it, the difference is almost perfect for the original OMG!-high temps to have been a F/C conversion error. Hm.... |
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