Gaming PC unwell

[Monochrome]

I think I've fried my graphics card again.

Turn on machine.

No single beep as is normal, but 3-5 short beeps.

Machine then boots into windows as can be verified by the sound and the fact that it can be shut down as normal via the keyboard.

No screen output at all during this process.

I will thus be offline for a while, as it's not a lot of fun playing on this machine, and the only warranty I have is B2B.

Besides, I should be revising anyway, exams 6-14 October.

 

[Naaman]

 Never fun when your PC goes titsup.

Presuming you've already tried taking the card out and re-seating it it may be worth having a chat with them, you may be able to just send the card back and have them test it and since they should be able to interpret the POST beeps they can easily check if it's the graphics card.

[Monochrome]

It's more than just the graphics card, so will be sending it back. Tried not only reseating the graphics card but tried a couple of other cards in it with the same results.

[Naaman]

Ewwww

[Monochrome]

Confirmed as a motherboard fault, and they don't have them in stock as they don't use them any more.

This is where it gets interesting.

They've said they'll upgrade the MB, processor and RAM at cost (rather than wait for a MB from Taiwan). I said I was going to upgrade the whole machine in a year or so, but if they'd do the PSU and graphics card too I was game.

What I'm looking at is to go from an Nvidia 7950 GTX to a 260. ATI4600 dual core to an Intel E7200 duo or possibly more. 550W PSU to 1000. 2Mb RAM to 4Mb of faster RAM.

I will talk to them about cooling, but am I doing anything silly here, and is there anything particular I should look for on the MB ? Also is quad core recommended rather than dual ?

Currently waiting for another phone call re prices, any comments welcome.

[Naaman]

I don't know the branding on the PSU, 1000 is waaaayy overkill. A 750-800W is more than enough unless they're cheap knockoffs.

Nvidia 260, well worth it it's the current gen chipset and should have it's legs for a few years

Quad core - unless you do lots of stuff in the background it's fairly pointless. Windows splits processes rather chunkily and I don't think any games utilise 4 cores, either way a current socket 775 mobo will accept a quad core later on down the line.

As for cooling.....that's komplikated. It depends on the case, the fans used and the airflow within the case. Bare minimum I'd recommend nowadays is at least a couple of 120mms

[Monochrome]

Apparently the logic behind the 1000W PSU was that if in the future I wanted to use a dual graphics card option it would be useful and it was only another £25-30.

Hopefully I will have it tomorrow, but I'll need to do some chasing as I don't have the email I was expecting to see in my inbox.

They sold me a performance cooling kit to beef that up.

Back from the games fair at Essen now, a fun but knackering experience, particularly as I had to be at the airport at 5am Sat, so opted to go touring the beer outlets of Dusseldorf all night with Kelly (the guy who founded NTF back in its WWII online days but quit CoH a long time ago) rather than sleeping.

[Naaman]

Glad to hear the news about the PC , did they tell you what the "Performance Cooling kit" consisted of?

And  good to hear you had a good time, Gaming & Beer - Huzzah 

[Monochrome]

Glad to hear the news about the PC , did they tell you what the "Performance Cooling kit" consisted of?

And  good to hear you had a good time, Gaming & Beer - Huzzah 

OCZ Vendetta Heat pipe quiet cooling, Performance updates, specialist cabling[upg £ 59.00]

This I believe, also includes new/extra fans.