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I have some old hardware lying around, including an old amd athlon 3200+ 64 for socket 939 that used to be in my current system before I upgraded my cpu, only thing I need for a "new" box is a motherboard. I was thinking about building a file server/torrent box or something to just screw around with a bit so I bought a cheap Foxconn Motherboard NF4UK8AA-8EKRS NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra S939 ATX to use with my old stuff. But looking at it I start to wonder if it might not actually be a better motherboard than what's currently in my main system, a MSI K8N NEO4-FI,nForce4 Ultra,Socket-939. The MSI have been giving me some grief over the years as the NB fan can at times be quite loud and if I stick a HD to every SATA-connector booting becomes slow/locks up. So I wonder, does anyone have any experience with Foxconn motherboards? Is the Foxconn I bought better than the MSI I already have in regards to quality/spec? Which motherboard should I keep in my more "important" system? And if I want to switch out the motherboard in my main system (Windows Vista 64-bit), will it be a pain in the rear end?
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Mar 31, 2009 23:11
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My system has been incredibly slow to respond as of late. After logging into my Windows user account, actually being able to do anything takes about two minutes. Deleting trash from the recycle bin takes a good 30 seconds sometimes; it will just freeze for a bit and then finally finish. It's not fragmentation. Are these symptoms of a hard drive starting to die? I'd really hate to format since I have the OEM system builder's version of Vista. Is it possible to successfully copy all the contents of a drive over to another much larger drive, including the operating system files? Is there any special software for doing something like that? Edit: I just ran SeaTools and when trying to run a short drive self-test it only goes for a little bit and then the progress bar never moves again.
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Apr 1, 2009 02:17
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Gambl0r the short answer is no, you shouldn't have any problems. As long as you don't forget the password for your server you can install the client software on any Windows XP/Vista machine and modify its settings and HP's version of this client software is actually pretty drat nice and it'll hold your hand through the entire setup if you're not tech savvy and don't know how to setup a Domain and user permissions and stuff like that. Madlabs, switching hardware like motherboards is easiest done when doing a flatten and re-install. Its like trying to move a drive that has your OS installed on it to another machine. All its basic drivers will be wrong and its not super easy to wipe them and start fresh as the drivers you should always install first are the motherboard ones and any devices after that. It probably can be done without doing it but I, personally, wouldn't recommend it. As for whether its a better motherboard... they're both old. nForce 4 motherboards have always had trouble with excessive heat on the northbridge and I doubt Foxconn's board will be any better than the MSI board in that regard. If noise is troubling you buy a new fan if its replaceable as fans get louder/slower (and by being slower they cool less and have to speed up also making them louder). The question is, is it worth doing a reinstall to have at best a marginally better motherboard? I would say...not to me.
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Apr 1, 2009 02:32
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Sir Nigel posted:Madlabs, switching hardware like motherboards is easiest done when doing a flatten and re-install. Its like trying to move a drive that has your OS installed on it to another machine. All its basic drivers will be wrong and its not super easy to wipe them and start fresh as the drivers you should always install first are the motherboard ones and any devices after that. It probably can be done without doing it but I, personally, wouldn't recommend it. As for whether its a better motherboard... they're both old. nForce 4 motherboards have always had trouble with excessive heat on the northbridge and I doubt Foxconn's board will be any better than the MSI board in that regard. If noise is troubling you buy a new fan if its replaceable as fans get louder/slower (and by being slower they cool less and have to speed up also making them louder). The question is, is it worth doing a reinstall to have at best a marginally better motherboard? I would say...not to me. Thanks! Yeah, if it's going to be that much work to switch out the MB then it just not worth it.
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Apr 1, 2009 12:01
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How much power do quad-cores draw while they're idle? I know the C2D's can idle pretty low but I don't know if that necessarily translates to the Core 2 Quads.
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Apr 2, 2009 02:21
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ExecuDork posted:Sorry if this has been asked and answered already, I didn't feel like reading the entire thread. Quoting myself because my lazy rear end still hasn't solved this problem. I bought 2 sticks of ram from Newegg, DDR 2700 soDIMM 1GB, which according to everything I've read is appropriate for my Acer Travelmate 2200. The problem is, I can't find the other memory slot, or if it's soldered directly to something, where my existing 256mb unit might be hiding. The empty slot (pictured above) was easy enough, and is pointed out in the nearly-useless owner's manual. Installing one new ram module into that empty slot caused critical failures - Windows XP would just about load, then reboot and drop into CHKDSK. I think I need to have 2 modules exactly the same installed - I've got the hardware, I just don't know where to stick it! Has anybody here ever taken the keyboard off of an Acer Travelmate? I'd appreciate any advice, since I've never dug that far into my computer's guts before.
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Apr 2, 2009 02:38
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ExecuDork posted:The problem is, I can't find the other memory slot
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Apr 2, 2009 07:15
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quote:How much power do quad-cores draw while they're idle? I know the C2D's can idle pretty low but I don't know if that necessarily translates to the Core 2 Quads. It's got a Q9300 and an 8800GT, with the usual standard components. Measured at the socket, the entire computer uses about 110 watts idle and 190 with 100% CPU load. Interestingly, Intel recently released quads with the same TDP as a dual core, so if you're looking for low power quads that might be right up your alley. They're significantly more expensive though.
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Apr 2, 2009 17:17
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My display has inputs for VGA and DVI. I have my PC hooked into the VGA and my Macbook hooked into the DVI. When I want to use my PC, I disconnect my Macbook. When I want to hook my Macbook up, I turn off the PC. Will the display suffer any damage if I accidentally have both sets of inputs running at the same time? edit: Wow. Looks like I can switch between the DVI and VGA inputs in the display's menu. Cool. 
a_pineapple fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Apr 11, 2009 |
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Apr 11, 2009 01:29
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I'd like to buy one of these: video card and one of these: RAM but how can I tell if my system can handle them? It's a Dell Dimension 9200 with this already in it: Intel Core Duo 1.86 Radeon X1300 256 meg 1 gig DDR2 SDRAM If those won't work, what would be comparable that would work? Let me know if you need any more info on the system.
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Apr 11, 2009 03:59
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Maytag posted:I'd like to buy one of these: Look at your power supply - you might not have enough juice in that old Dell box to get the 260 running.
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Apr 11, 2009 05:31
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Says the DC output is 375 w. L375P So power and cooling are probably a problem? What's the best card I could toss in that my comp could handle? Thanks for the help so far! Maytag fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Apr 11, 2009 |
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Apr 11, 2009 17:19
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I have the 55nm GTX260 so out of curiosity I was looking at pics of it online just to see the comparison shots of it to the 65nm version and I noticed that both versions have a smaller chip that's not the GPU on the left side of the card all by itself close to the DVI ports. I then looked up pics of the 4870 Radeon card and it does not have this chip but the GeForce 200 series cards have it so out of curiosity what the hell is it? I tried google but my google-fu isn't very good.
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Apr 11, 2009 20:06
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spasticColon posted:I have the 55nm GTX260 so out of curiosity I was looking at pics of it online just to see the comparison shots of it to the 65nm version and I noticed that both versions have a smaller chip that's not the GPU on the left side of the card all by itself close to the DVI ports. I then looked up pics of the 4870 Radeon card and it does not have this chip but the GeForce 200 series cards have it so out of curiosity what the hell is it? I tried google but my google-fu isn't very good. This? (closer) It's the display controller. They were on 8800GTX cards as well; it handles SLI, DVI/VGA/HDMI and all that stuff. In the ATI cards it's probably integrated into the GPU itself, since they have smaller dies and less transistors. Spatial fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Apr 12, 2009 |
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Apr 12, 2009 17:31
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I recently came across a better motherboard than previously owned, an MSI 7145 v2.1, and am unable to find the mobo manual to configure the LED jumpers for my case. Which MSI motherboard manual should I use in place? Is a manufacturer's LED pin jumper setup the same for all boards?
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Apr 12, 2009 18:50
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Spatial posted:This? (closer) Yeah that's it. I thought nVidia integrated that chip into the GPU like ATI but apparently not. Thanks for the info though.
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Apr 12, 2009 19:00
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Straker posted:it's definitely under the keyboard. can't find a service manual, but it should be pretty apparent how to get the keyboard off once you see what the keyboard alone looks like. just be careful not to damage the ribbon cable underneath, it's probably not excessively long. I installed the ram yesterday, it makes a HUGE difference in performance. It took me about 30 minutes of carefully prying apart things to eventually get under my keyboard and swap out the ram. Thanks for the help, I don't think I would have found it otherwise. For those who, like me, have never taken apart a laptop before, I had to partly disassemble the monitor before I could lift the panel that covered the screws that hold the keyboard down. Some parts of my computer are not held on by screws at all, rather they're held in place by plastic tabs that snap into slots. I broke a couple of those, but everything seems to be still together.
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Apr 12, 2009 19:06
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Does anyone know of a 'Molex to 4-pin Mini-DIN Power Connecter' adapter/converter? I'm wanting to have my external harddrive case power on when the PC starts.
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Apr 13, 2009 04:00
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Can anyone recommend a nice keyboard with some programmable buttons, that is also black lit?
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Apr 13, 2009 06:42
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Blue_monday posted:Can anyone recommend a nice keyboard with some programmable buttons, that is also black lit? The Logitech G11?
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Apr 13, 2009 08:45
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Kaiba posted:Does anyone know of a 'Molex to 4-pin Mini-DIN Power Connecter' adapter/converter? I'm wanting to have my external harddrive case power on when the PC starts. if you need less than 12V or 5V and not a whole lot of current on any/all of those lines, then you could also use some of something like this as an easy way to step down the voltage a little bit, but you would probably want to check with the megathread in the DIY subforum before you set your computer on fire.
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Apr 13, 2009 09:08
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Hopefully this is the right thread... Are the Lenovo desktops any good? I've been looking at the Lenovo K230, and it looks like a real workhorse. Are there hidden pitfalls I'm not seeing, or is this a good low-cost PC?
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Apr 13, 2009 20:53
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The minute you boot it up, MSCONFIG and remove every single program that they've added on startup. You will then fall in love with it. Awesome machines with processor-hungry speed-crippling software.
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Apr 13, 2009 21:18
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I need to hook a few ethernet only device to a wireless network. What type of device do I need to buy? I have a old crappy wireless router but I can't get the bridge mode to work and I have no idea if that would even work. I tried reading but I am really really bad with networking and I'm confused by now. I assume I don't need a wireless AP. What I need is something that can pull down the wireless network being sent out by my router and split that into at least 3 ethernet cables. I'm sure it's simple and I am dumb.
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Apr 13, 2009 21:44
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I got a question for you guys. My google-fu is running a little weak today and I can't seem to find the answer to this question. When you're rar'ing or unrar'ing a file what is the bottleneck? Is it CPU or is it hard drive limited? More importantly when unraring multiple large files. I tend to unrar multiple (2-4) large files (2-6GB) at once, or 10-15 small (350MB) and I notice that the jobs slow down a ton when there's more than 1 open and unrar'ing. And even when unrar'ing one file it doesn't seem to use very much CPU, maybe 11-15%. Not even enough of a CPU load to even pull my Q6600 out of its 'underclocked' state (EIST). tl;dr is hard drive read/write speed the limiting factor when unrar'ing files? or is it CPU limited in some way?
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Apr 14, 2009 00:57
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Sir Nigel posted:I got a question for you guys. My google-fu is running a little weak today and I can't seem to find the answer to this question. When you're rar'ing or unrar'ing a file what is the bottleneck? Is it CPU or is it hard drive limited? More importantly when unraring multiple large files. I tend to unrar multiple (2-4) large files (2-6GB) at once, or 10-15 small (350MB) and I notice that the jobs slow down a ton when there's more than 1 open and unrar'ing. And even when unrar'ing one file it doesn't seem to use very much CPU, maybe 11-15%. Not even enough of a CPU load to even pull my Q6600 out of its 'underclocked' state (EIST). It's almost always the hard drive these days. That's espcially true for a Q6600. The reason they're slowing down when you do more than one at a time is that the disk head has to move back and forth rapidly between two or more locations as it tries to handle multiple file operations at once, and that slows things way down.
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Apr 14, 2009 01:46
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yeah, the only trivially simple way to speed it up (aside from using good drives obviously) would be to unrar from one drive to another. check your speeds (either based on file size vs time, or watch in task manager), a good drive should be able to uncompress/copy poo poo to itself at at least 40MB/sec unless it's mostly full.
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Apr 14, 2009 02:29
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I have a year-old 640gb that is making some really loud clicking sounds BUT my SMART readouts look good. That is assuming I'm not overlooking something obvious or SpeedFan isn't loving up. Click here for the full 741x558 image. Should I drop everything and run out to buy a new hard drive? I am on a pretty tight budget, but can't afford having this drive fail.
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Apr 14, 2009 04:32
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gnrk posted:I have a year-old 640gb that is making some really loud clicking sounds BUT my SMART readouts look good. That is assuming I'm not overlooking something obvious or SpeedFan isn't loving up. If the data on it is worth more than a new drive then buy a new drive immediately and turn that drive off and copy the contents onto the new drive. Then use the old drive for non critical poo poo so if it dies then its not taking anything out that is important. A drive that size is like, what, $60? IIRC Google's report on hard drive failures mentioned something about some percentage of failures in drives gave no early warning in the SMART elements at all. I had a drive that read fine in SMART (both short and long versions).
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Apr 14, 2009 04:35
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I have a lite-on DVD-RW drive that's being wierd with the tray opening. for the thing to actually open I have to send it eject messages about 3 or 4 dozen times for it to actually come out, it just makes some clicking noises the rest of the time. wierd thing is, is that after I actually burn something the tray comes out the first time like normal every time. when I actually want to open it later on it needs a whole lot of ejects again. if there's no quick fix or something stupid i'm missing i'll just grab a new one they're like $20 or something now.
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Apr 14, 2009 09:31
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yeah, sadly, SMART reporting is almost totally impotent and useless now. most of the parameters mean nothing (or are used in such a way/have thresholds such that they mean nothing), and numbers reported for the others don't correspond to reality, instead finally starting to change a little bit once the drive has already passed some internal threshold for "hey that's a lot of write errors" or whatever you're looking at. it might be a sort of chicken and egg problem (i.e. you can't blame manufacturers for doing this if SMART inherently reports poo poo that had no bearing on drive performance/failure in the first place, or reports inaccurately), but basically manufacturers don't want laypeople constantly trying to RMA perfectly fine drives over a few SMART numbers that might not look right.
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Apr 14, 2009 09:57
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What are the names of the USB drives that look like little "chips"? We all know what a normal flash drive looks like, these look like SIM cards but they plug into full size USB ports. I think Sony makes some but I am looking for the generic name (if they have one).
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Apr 14, 2009 11:39
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b0nes posted:What are the names of the USB drives that look like little "chips"? We all know what a normal flash drive looks like, these look like SIM cards but they plug into full size USB ports. I think Sony makes some but I am looking for the generic name (if they have one). Sony MicroVault Tiny
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Apr 14, 2009 14:34
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I am going to putting my current desktop motherboard - evga 650i into my Windows Home Server box. I want to run without a video card as I see no point in wasting energy on a headless computer. Can I run the motherboard without a video card?
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Apr 15, 2009 20:11
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Does anyone have any experience with Arbico computers? Are they reputable? I like that you can easily customise your own system with them, but I'm not sure whether they're good value for money or not? http://www.arbico.co.uk/
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Apr 15, 2009 20:17
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Sir Nigel posted:The biggest problem you'll find with Cyberpower, iBuypower etc... is that the PSU's they use are TERRIBLE and they have very poor RMA/Warranty/Support services. And I mean the PSU's they use are flat out bad. Like the one Srebrenica linked uses a Sunbeam 680W PSU that newegg sells for $39.99. It'd be one thing if it was just the cheesy cases they tend to use but when they skimp on the PSU... You just can't do that. Its the one thing that can fry everything else in the case. If you buy something like an iBuypower or a Cyberpower I suggest you read the reviews on this Sunbeam PSU. All the iBuypower/Cyberpower computers use models like this one. Sunbeam, Raidmax, Rosewill etc.. they are all trash brands and they will fail and then you'll have to deal with the companies terrible support/RMA/Warranty programs. Bruegels Fuckbooks fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Apr 15, 2009 |
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Apr 15, 2009 20:53
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A guy brought in a Cyberpower build from about 1.5 years ago - his power supply was a Thermaltake 750w - dead as Dillinger, and it dying also took along with it his ram. (Thank god Mushkin honored their lifetime warranty) Cyberpower told him to screw off when he tried calling them out on using a failing power supply. Take that how you may.
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Apr 15, 2009 21:22
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Veritron posted:i'm fairly certain that you can just select power supplies that don't suck from the dropdown menu. statement regarding warranty, etc is just as true. i've bought a ton of computers from random internet companies and i've never had issues like you've described. You most certainly can. But most people don't because they don't know any better. If you customize it and get one of the Corsair PSU's then you should be alright generally speaking, but again their warranty/support is very sub-par and the default PSUs are terrible.
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Apr 16, 2009 02:20
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Blue_monday posted:Can anyone recommend a nice keyboard with some programmable buttons, that is also black lit? I'm using the Logitech G15 and it has exactly what you are looking for. My question is: What is the best way to clean a keyboard? Still have to just pop off every key and compressed-air/damp cloth clean it?
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Apr 16, 2009 09:18
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Jamuraan posted:I'm using the Logitech G15 and it has exactly what you are looking for. Serious answer: Unscrew it, remove the board and all the squishy rubber bits under each key, set aside. Put keyboard in dishwasher. Turn off heated dry cycle, run in dishwasher. Reassemble. Edit: Just looked up the G15 and I guess the LCD screen would make that difficult. I've never had a keyboard before that had a screen built in. Sniep fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Apr 16, 2009 |
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Apr 16, 2009 09:51
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