Well Shaunna's Puter Finally Shat Itself
...despite all my best efforts to the contrary
Thursday, May 10, 2012 by starkers | Discussion: Personal Computing
As the title suggests, Shaunna's desktop PC went guts up and is in dire need of some replacement parts to get it up and running again. I've ordered the necessary parts and hopefully they'll be here later today so's I can rebuild it for her.
Yeah, it has been acting up intermittently for quite a while now, so I wasn't at all surprised that it decided to kark it yesterday.... tho I reckon it was a stubborn bastard for not dying sooner and saving me endless hours of pulling my hair out trying to fix it. Every so often it would refuse to boot and I'd have to put in the installation disc to perform a start up repair, which sometimes resolved the problem. More often than not, though, I'd have to do a complete OS install after ensuring the HDD's were still showing in the BIOS.... damned things would disappear and I'd have to jump through hoops to get them to register again.
Anyhow, to cut a long story short, the last time the HDD's went off line I couldn't bring them back so figured I'd stop wasting my time trying to fix the temperamental bastard. Now I tested the drives in an external case and they check out okay, the PSU is fine and the graphics and sound cards are okay also. I'm guessing the current CPU is probably okay as well, but it appears the mobo is pretty much shot, and thus the RAM and CPU will need to be replaced for compatibility reasons... DDR3 and such.
These are the items I ordered:
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-D3 Motherboard, AM3+, 990+SB950, DDR3, PCIe 2.0, RAID, SATA3, USB3, ATX"
CPU: AMD FX-4100 4-CORE BLACK EDITION CPU, 3.60 GHz, ,Total L2 Cache 4MB, L3 Cache 8MB, Socket AM3+, 95W
RAM: Kingston KVR1333D3N9/4G - 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz, CAS9 x4 = 16Gb
On a budget [under $300AUD] that's not bad at all, power and speed-wise, and to give it some extra grunt I'm going to pull the secondary SSD from my rig and install it in hers to house the OS [Win x64 Home Premium]. Yeah, with her Nvidia 9800GTX 1Gb GPU, Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium Xtreme Audio soundcard and 2Tb of storage, it'll be a more than capable machine that should suit her needs.
Here's hoping that Shaunna will be happy with it.
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Reply #22 Sunday, May 13, 2012 8:52 AM
I know lol, I have had the best day at home with starkers,( when he was awake) and waiting for his mum to come home from England , I am guessing she has already landed as it is 11.46pm sunday night . I was talking to Bianca and my baby boys and Mia-Rose she is growing so fast . here is a pic of them way too cute Decon, Zabia and Mia_Rose with their daddy
Reply #24 Sunday, May 13, 2012 9:51 PM
Nah, I'm putting in the bigger unit... it's newer and would have had far less wear and tear.
I have a spare, lower end rig with a 2.6Ghz dual core and a 9700GT that the 400 watter can go in. My mother has just moved back from the UK and I'll set it up for her to use when visiting. She doesn't do anything too intensive, just a bit of browsing and a handful of card-type games, so it'll suit her needs down to the ground.
Reply #25 Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:14 PM
I figured that.....just bustin' your balls........ (we are talking about PSU's ...right??)
I use to know the answer to this, but refresh my memory. Is that a step up or down?
Shit!!.....we're not in a support thread.....are we?????????
Reply #27 Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:25 PM
Well....from a geographical standpoint, it......
....on second thought, nevermind.
Reply #28 Monday, May 14, 2012 12:17 AM
Sheesh. My poor head is having flash backs of a time when 200W was normal, 250W was really adequate and 300W was screaming. I hazard to guess what is in that XT box sitting in the corner there happily running it's web cam (I even asked it to work on some graphics today because it has a program that won't run on Vista or 7) I bet it is not over 250W but maybe only 200W.
It's Monday now. What's the verdict?
Reply #30 Monday, May 14, 2012 12:33 PM
Reply #31 Monday, May 14, 2012 6:54 PM
Well it's not so much that they're incompatible, the 12v ATX on the mobo is an 8 pin but the PSU plug is only a 4 pin and doesn't seem make the connections correctly. I've used 4 pin plugs on 6 pin sockets before without issue but this setup just isn't powering properly for some reason. When I push the power button the PC starts up okay but it doesn't stay powered up. If I wiggle the 12v ATX plug around it will stay on, but as soon as I release the pressure the PC powers down again.
Oh well, with a new CPU, RAM and mobo it's probably deserving of a new PSU anyway... I'm thinking an AcBel 800W. I've had mine going on 4 years now and it hasn't missed a beat. Anyhow, it depends on availability and what else they have that comes within the budget.
*EDIT*
No AcBel PSU's in stock.... have opted for the Gigabyte 800W ODIN GT Power Supply, 140mm Fan, PCI-E(6+2) Pin, 6x SATA, Software Control, SLI-Ready, 80+ Ce... instead... and it's $10.00 cheaper.
Reply #32 Tuesday, June 5, 2012 6:58 AM
YAY!!!!!!! I am up and running with my pc and all the new parts work well I am so happy ....... THANK YOU BUBBY now time for serious wall paper making hehehehehe
Reply #33 Tuesday, June 5, 2012 7:14 AM
Glad to hear it's fixed. Good on ya, starkers! 
Vitamin k for starkers!
Reply #34 Tuesday, June 5, 2012 8:18 AM
yes me too it is so fast wow i cant believe how fast it is . rendering is like if you blink you would have missed it 
Reply #35 Tuesday, June 5, 2012 11:01 AM
My pleasure, I'm just sorry it took so long, but with various inconveniences and things no going according to plan it was unavoidable.
The thing is, it is a more than decent machine and you will enjoy using it for many years to come... 
Reply #37 Tuesday, June 5, 2012 11:30 PM
In this case, though, the novelty of new-found speed will take longer than usual to wear off... given Shaunna has been reduced to a piddling netbook for a while. And fast, I'll say it is... boots in about 27 - 28 seconds and it very zippy loading proggies, etc. In fact, it is nearly as fast as my 1100T six core.
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Reply #21 Sunday, May 13, 2012 6:06 AM
Shaunna........you are so bad....in a good way. Have a great day.