Time to Buy a New Computer. Want fast and reliable.

thanks guys! i'll cross emachines off my list.
 
Ah finally someone caught it.

I bought a used Dell tower for my mom. PS blew a month later, not blaming dell for that as it was old. took it apart to realize the PS is this huge long drawer that the case sits on. Dell PS? $246! no problem we'll shoe horn a regular PS in there....uuuh no. Dell decided in their infinite greedy wisdom that their motherboard will use a different pin/size. so nothing but a dell PS will bolt up. oh u wanna replace the mobo as well? tahts nice. $400. I wanted to puke.

so... $50 AMD athlon II CPU, $50 mobo, an $80 case with power supply and $50 4gb of ram and we had the basics of a brand new system.

and the fact that the warentee is a year old...i dont wanna sit there and shake in my boots hoping that when the system craps out it happens before one year.

stanz said:
Red_Liner740 said:
good luck when something breaks down on that Dell.

One word, Proprietary components.

Oh Power Supply blew? Wanna replace it? Sorry, DELL PS only, no third party will interface with it. Price? oh about 3 times a third party performance PS would cost you.

Motherboards done? Sorry, DELL ONLY! The tower/motherboards combo will only mate with each other...and again, u dont wanna know what the cost of replacement is.

I think that's two words.

I have replaced Dell parts with generic, I do it all the time for my church. It may take a bit of work, but it can be done.

Now the SFF machines are a different story, for ALL manufacturers, that's why I don't use them at church.

I have even replaced the motherboards with other brands. Three "Dell" PCs at the church use Asus motherboards. Once you figure out the Dell connectors it's no big deal.
 
DAND214 said:
Build one today and replace it tomorrow. That is what is happing in computers today!
Dan
still using my 13 year old webtv. maybe i should keep it. but webtv is down to 400k users from 2 million, so i have to be ready when Microsoft shuts it off(they bought it 10yrs ago as it was a threat)
no hard drive, totally cloud. 10 yrs ahead of its time.
and only cost $99 new.
 
marty said:
julesa said:
Cycles is just referring to processor clock speed. Try this:

Load Fail Safe Defaults
Save and Exit Setup

If that keeps your system stable for a while, you might eventually want to read up on Toms Hardware and overclockers.com (not to mention Reading The Fine Manual that came with your board) for some tips on how to tweak the settings of your specific hardware to improve performance while keeping stability.

"Load optimized defaults" will probably return your settings to the way they were set when you first built the system.

If that doesn't help, you could try opening a ticket with your motherboard vendor:
http://www.gigabyte.us/support-downloads/technical-support.aspx?ck=2
Load Fail Safe Defaults is the way its always been. I never changed anything. Will continue learning about "processor clock speed".
Thanks for the help!
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Edit / Correction...... BIOS might have been set to Load Optimized Defaults? Just changed it to Load Fail-Safe Defaults as you recommend. Sorry about that.
Demons are back. Everything was great for about 3 weeks. Today Windows Fax and Scan will not open :cry:
 
Today Internet Explorer will not start. Tried downloading newest version. Get a error message when I try to install. Now the sound is gone.

Using Mozilla Firefox now.

I like this big monster home made computer mostly because the big fans are really quiet. Also this computer is amazingly fast.

Reinstall windows and everything is great for about a month. Then the demons come back and stuff stops working. Different problem every time.
 
Its been about 2 months since I reinstalled windows. Beautiful summer day in Buffalo NY. 76 degrees in my house. Computer runs all the time. We don't have AC. Looked at BIOS

Current CPU Temperature 47C
Current MCH Temperature 47C

47C is 117F is 117 Fahrenheit too hot for a computer to be?

Also noticed that monitor blinks for a split second every few minutes. Yesterday Internet Radio was also having a hiccup for a split second every few minutes. Today sound is gone.
 
UPDATE!
Reinstalled Windows 7 last night. Today in the morning I see - [BOOTMGR is missing] This problem is deep. Same thing happened about a year ago.

Reinstall Windows again. Get to the point where it says:
Where do you want to install Windows?
Disk 0 Partition 1: Storage Disk
Total Size - 931.5 GB
Free Space - 744.4 GB

My computer has 2 hard drives:
Corsair Reactor Series CSSD-R120GB2-BRKT 2.5" 120GB USB 2.0 & SATAII Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
For the operating system.
and
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
For storage.

It is not finding the Solid State Drive. It used to be in the Disk 0 position. I am guessing that the Solid State Drive is broke. Going to Newegg to look for a new one.
 
Looks like I am not the only one having problems with Corsair Reactor Series Solid State Drives

Problem with Corsair CSSD-R120GB2
http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=88149

R60 disappears from BIOS (8 SSD with the same problem)
http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=88053

Reactor 120 not showing in bios
http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=87462

Going to go look for the receipt. Join the Corsair forum. Call Corsair.
 
The Corsair company sent me a new solid state hard drive. Three year warranty.
Replaced Corsair Reactor Series CSSD-R120GB2-BRKT
With Corsair Force Series CSSD-F115GB2-BRKT-A

After about one month, files on old 120GB solid state drive would get randomly corrupted. Files on 1TB storage drive are fine. Reinstalling Windows fixes everything.

Installed new hard drive, Installed Windows 7, Service Pack 1, and latest drivers. Computer is working great. Will demons come back? Time will tell. Will keep my fingers crossed for the next few months.
 
Got the $199 acer chromebook at walmart 3 months ago.
I'm happy with it, but i'd like one without a fan, annoying on movies.
Fan even runs slow on pandora.
So, in a year or 2, if they come out with a silent chromebook, i'll buy it and keep this as a spare.
 
I've got a Dell Inspiron 15r with Ubuntu loaded, a machine I love. Had for two years and then it wouldn't boot. In retrospect, here's what I think happened - the cheap fan died and then with over-heating took out the hard drive. Its a Western Digital, a decent dive that had not exhibited any problems before. Rather than buy a new machine (which I thought about and explored), I decided to repair my machine, myself. You wonder how I manged with a dead HD? I had a backup & restore plan for the eventuality, which worked flawlessly, allowing me to boot to a USB drive, and I had everything backed up with a frequent sync. Didn't loose even a bit of data in the process!

Found the fan online for a pittance and bought that. Then explored drive replacement with an upgrade. Spent some research time on this decision and finally went with a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD). A few notes:
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
  • while the price of SSDs has continued to decline in 2012,[8] SSDs are still about 7 to 8 times more expensive per unit of storage than HDDs.
  • Hybrid drives or solid state hybrid drives (SSHD)[9][10] combine the features of SSDs and HDDs in the same unit, containing a large hard disk drive and an SSD cache to improve performance of frequently accessed data.
  • Solid-state hybrid drive (SSHD) refers to products that incorporate NAND flash memory into a hard drive, resulting in a single, integrated device. SSHD is a more precise term than the more general term hybrid drive, which has previously been used to describe SSHD devices and non-integrated combinations of solid-state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD).
  • The fundamental design principle behind SSHDs is to identify data elements that are most directly associated with performance (frequently accessed data, boot data, etc.) and store these data elements in the NAND flash memory. This has been shown to be effective in delivering significantly improved performance over the standard HDD.
  • Seagate is the inventor & leader of the technology pack
  • http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/laptop-solid-state-hybrid-drive/
  • http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Laptop...X003-750GB-and-DELL-Inspiron-N5110/m-p/197307 -- This drive is backward compatible to SATA II (3GB/sec); I already buy one and all is perfect! The speed is amazing, especially boot speed - oh my gosh, it's flying! On this laptop there is and USB3 and I have and external USB3 hard-drive and now the copy speed is around 95-100 MB/s... Before was not more than 32-35... The old, 3 years, laptop is like a new one with this baby!
But working to replace the fan and drive on a Dell Inspiron is a bit of a trick. Here's the wonder of youtube:
How-To-Tutorial: Dell Inspiron 15R M501R N5010 M5010 Cooling Fan and Dell Inspiron n5010 Hard Drive Removal.

Watching the vids and taking notes made the replacement operation a cinch - just took some time. Also gave me the opportunity to blow out the dust from the keyboard. My "new" machine is now even more awesome. Boot speeds are truly phenomenal with the SSHD.

Oh, so don't diss your machine's fan! It's there for a reason.
 
Here we are 10 years later. Corsair Reactor Series CSSD-R120GB2-BRKT was defiantly infected with demons. Random problems occurred about once a month. Could only repair by reinstalling Windows.

Computer has been working great for about ten years now. Until...... About a week ago, storage drive [Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive] disappeared.

SURPRISE! Just looked. It's back :D Will back up some recent stuff and I will be back.
 
My PC is almost 2 yrs old now. Thinking about building my next one. Have not built a PC in 17 yrs now or wrote a line of code. So what's popular today. Used todo Lynux but Ubuntu has caught my eye. So what's, what?
 
ZeroEm said:
My PC is almost 2 yrs old now. Thinking about building my next one. Have not built a PC in 17 yrs now or wrote a line of code. So what's popular today. Used todo Lynux but Ubuntu has caught my eye. So what's, what?

We need to know what you will be using your PC for, and whats the price you want to spend.
Ryzen is the way to go, the value cpu used to be 2600 but that was years ago.
In most cases you wouldnt need to spend much money because the new stuff today is powerful enough that you wouldnt reach the peak for most office use cases. A used computer would be the way to go, a used Dell for example would be super cheap because everyone wants the new stuff. You could spend easily half of a base model Ryzen build on a used Dell.

This guy would know a thing or two about Ryzen.
Viewing profile - Overclocker - https://endless-sphere.com/forums/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=37112

edit - yeah I figure I should look into this a little more. My go to is PCPARTSPICKER website
Its a great site to look at prices for new components whether in Canada or USA.
https://pcpartpicker.com/
Click on System Builder top left.
AMD Ryzen 5 2600 is $150 and $20 more for the 2600X which is probably just a better fan and better binned (quality) cpu
The 3600 is $175 and 200MHz more, speed is of no concern because you can just overclock.

Motherboard - MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX is $125 which is great value, or was like a year or two ago. Things might have changed.

RAM - You'd need about 2x8GB of ram. I just pick the cheapest cost thats the correct speed, 3200.
 
Currently i7 -8700 @ 3.2 GHz, 16 GB memory, 2.23GB SSD boot, 931GB HDD storage, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and the onboard UHD Graphics 630.

Have not gamed on line in a while but play sid meier's civilization 6, use graphic programs, Blender but have not learn it yet, Have not programed in 17 yrs but may play with it again and internet like ES, weather.
Back in the Day built my own dual processor systems to use but now everyone had multi processor's in most if not all. But as I said have not kept up and was wondering what everyone is using, i'm in no hurry have an old ATX system in a Tower Case that I would build up. New board processors, PS and ect .......
 
ZeroEm said:
Currently i7 -8700 @ 3.2 GHz, 16 GB memory, 2.23GB SSD boot, 931GB HDD storage, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and the onboard UHD Graphics 630.

Have not gamed on line in a while but play sid meier's civilization 6, use graphic programs, Blender but have not learn it yet, Have not programed in 17 yrs but may play with it again and internet like ES, weather.
Back in the Day built my own dual processor systems to use but now everyone had multi processor's in most if not all. But as I said have not kept up and was wondering what everyone is using, i'm in no hurry have an old ATX system in a Tower Case that I would build up. New board processors, PS and ect .......

Your current i7-8700 is good, no need to buy a complete new system. If anything upgrade what you already have. 16gb is good, if you can find some more ram at a value I'd upgrade your ram, and maybe a SSD hd. Make sure the ram is the same speed, and closest match, and hopefully its not a 4x4GB and hope that its 2x8gb so you can install another 2x8gb.

Sid Meiers Civ 6 doesnt look graphic intensive at all. Their system requirements for the game is minimal - VIDEO CARD: 1 GB & AMD 5570 or nVidia 450 or Intel Integrated Graphics 530.

If you want you can reinstall the o/s, I do that every few years but I dont have a lot on my pc.

My system is a few years old, and I play the same games as you, low graphic demand games.
 
Back in the old days, I would reinstall my OS but had a copy of it, drivers and updates. Now I know it will up date being on line and don't think drivers would be an issue. What about MS and windows being registered and a copy of Windows 10. How have you been doing it.

I know my system is not out of date yet but wanted to build one more pc with a different OS.
 
I use an official Windows 10 download that has not been registered, and no problems at all. A clean install of an o/s will help sometimes with a sluggish system, but that involves reinstalling all the programs you use and the drivers which could be quite a lot of work for some. All my drivers all work from the automatic install during install.

It'd sure be nice to lean away from Microsoft and use Linux, but I use Steam gaming and its all ms downloads. Sure I could use a virtual machine to play that. Internet doesnt matter what you use. Word processing doesnt matter, unless you are in business and have to use MS Office.
 
Yes, Steam gaming i'm using it also. Have been locked in to MS for most of my computer life. Companies and people used them so if you did computer work you had to know it also.

In the old days two years was a long time and you needed to update to keep up. Did not know how fast it was going today.
I use a computer but don't keep up on the latest anymore. When I bought this game machine, took time to read up and see where the processors were. Looked like AMD was leading Intel again.

Current system was quick two years ago but now notice it is not as quick but think it is software not hardware. A reinstall would bring it back to it's chipper self.

In the old days, had copies of DOS and several windows versions, tried to skip the worst ones. kept copies of all the drivers and programs and set up all night doing it on them slow systems. My first DVD drive was in 1997 I think and cost $500.00 first laptop was $1700 in 1999. Did not do games then, Business programs, databases and OS. Worked with PBX systems, routers and cat5 networks with many routers, :shock:
 
Fiber optics is quite expensive and its not in all area's. Besides that, the pinch point is from the termination box of your house where the public infrastructure stops and your home infrastructure begins. If your house is not setup for fiber optics then it can be a waste. I havent looked into it because its not my concern. But going from fibre to copper even if its cat 5e or cat 6, thats your pinch point, and if your in an older house you maybe on even slower category 5 cable wiring for the home network. Even if your wireless, it'd be copper wiring from home router to the wall, and copper wiring from the wall outlet to the house termination box.
Like driving the AutoBahn in Germany with no speed limit signs and all of a sudden hitting a 15mph playground zone.
I dont think internet speed is of really any concern for the vast majority of people living in big cities whether it be telephone line or tv cable for internet, and that is only from your home to your neighborhoods internet hub (telephone exchange building in your neighborhood, or tv cable), where its trunkated, probably to fibre to the cities hub, then on the main thoroughfares of global internet laneways. Also, what applications require fast internet speeds. Unless your first post is to promote somthing, I dont dare click the link. Faster internet can get quite expensive, I know some businesses require a ultra fast connection internet speed.

Aside from fiber optics, another thing that effects internet speed is whether your on tv cable or telephone line internet is how many users are on the local string (sorry I dont know the network jargon).

As for computers themselves, I like the line up for AMD. I am a fan of Tomahawk motherboards though it has been dethroned as the best value by the ASUS Gaming Pro TUF. Though when I look at prices, the TUF wifi is quite a bit more expensive $100 more. Yes, there are lots of TUF branded models, and wifi option usually adds $50. So we can safely assume the non wifi version of TUF would be $50 more. Though to the casual consumer, the o/c'ing ability of a mobo is a non issue, the VRM's ampacity and durability is a non issue. But I dont mind paying $100+ for a decent mobo. I just wish there was a good yt channel out there to find the best value ram and explain all the ram dyes.


edit
Telephone copper line can only hold (duplex) so many homes in a neighborhood vs coaxial tv cable to the community central hub to be converted to fiber otpics. Fiber costs a lot of money.

Now they have even faster home/business routers, I remember 1G being the top dog, then 10G, not is 100G and 1000G. There is no doubt you are paying a super high premium on the fastness.


<moderator deleted quoted spam>
 
Dell outlet for lease returns has great deals.. and i support Dell machines for a living and see them as the 'honda' of computers.. ie value oriented, reliable, and you can expect them to be well engineered.

I use dell machines for work and a very powerful micro sized custom build for play & video editing/compressing.
 
I agree with neptronix. Computers from Dell outlet (refurbished) are a good way to go. Until I started to build my own I always bought from Dell's outlet. Dell uses good industry standard components that usually can be upgraded as time goes on. For laptops I tend to like used Levono thinkpads. Just add some memory and a SSD and you'll end up with a excellent machine.
 
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