Interesting. What games do you use them for?

My desktop computer died tonight. It had been going strong since I built the thing in 2008. The only real upgrades I ever had to make were to the video card, twice over the lifespan of the machine. I also upgraded to an SSD last year which has been great.

It froze up a couple times earlier tonight and I had to reboot. Then it threw a memory address error up. Then Windows explorer crashed and I started getting blue screens. I switched to my old hard drive and found that the windows install on there still worked fine, but I had to mess around with the BIOS to get it to recognize that there was a bootable disk. So after that I switched back to the SSD and the thing won't even boot. One of the red LED's on the motherboard is lit but the fans don't even come on any more.

My thought process went:

Windows Problem
Hard Drive Problem
Power Supply Problem
Motherboard Problem

I've been expecting to replace this thing for a couple years now. It has served me quite well for being built in 2008 but all good things must come to an end. I might do a little more troubleshooting but if the thing isn't even going to POST then... I dunno.

Here is a build that I've put together. Fortunately the fiance has an Amazon Prime membership and these parts are all eligible for 2 day shipping. I am planning on reusing my EVGA GTX 560 video card and 640 GB WD Storage Drive.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K Processor 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 BX80646I54690K
Motherboard: ASUS ATX DDR3 2600 LGA 1150 Motherboards SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK2
SSD: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-7KE256BW)
Heatsink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan
RAM: Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB Kit (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM - Blue
PSU: Rosewill CAPSTONE Series ATX 12V/EPS 12V 750W 80 Plus Gold Certified Power Supply CAPSTONE-750-M
Case: NZXT Technologies H440 Mid Tower Chassis Cases
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit, System Builder OEM DVD 1 Pack
Thermal Paste: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 3.5 Grams

All together it comes out to just under $1k.

If I pull the trigger on this tomorrow, the parts should all be here next Tuesday, or Monday if I go for $35 worth of next day shipping (which is pretty lol for all that stuff, especially the case). I have most of next week off for the holiday - so if the computer was going to die anyway, at least this is ok timing for it.

Merry Christmas to me, I guess.

I caved and setup the monitors:

dafuq is lightstrobe?

idk. he was saying something about making sure it was actually running in 144hz. which they are. But I have to go get a dp1.2 to dvi converter because the 980s only have 1 dp1.2 and i can't run them in sli @ 144 if i plug into 2 diff cards, and HDMI doesn't run 144hz...and last but not least, the monitor only comes with 1 plug and it's dp1.2

kinda a pain

Bluefox is talking about lightboost not strobe

this is exactly why I'm moving away from hardware and into software

It does look really good, though

I found out that the problem with the computer not even powering on was a problem with a switch on the back of the motherboard. There was a switch that was set to "Clear CMOS". I set that back to the proper position and the computer booted up just fine. However, about 15 minutes in to using it, and ironically halfway through a "Crisis averted" post in this tread - it blue screened again. It began booting and gave me an error I had seen before I ran in to the CMOS stuff. Something about a Boot Device Failure, put in the system disk and press Enter. I restarted several times but couldn't get past that error message. I took out the hard drive and switched it to a different SATA port and that's at least allowed me to boot for now.

I am worried that the SSD is dying, even if it's slowly and awkwardly. I'm going to start backing up my stuff and get ready to fall back on my old hard drive with my old windows install. I say old, but it's a WD Raptor 15k rpm drive so not too bad. There's no way I can reliably be part of a WoW raid team with my hard drive on the fritz like this, playing 15 minutes a time. At least I'm not going to be spending $1k on a new computer, but I might be shelling out for a new SSD, and maybe new Windows install because I'm pretty sure I've exhausted the activations on the last OEM copy I bought.

Just call Windows Activation and say you reinstalled. You have infinite installs, essentially.

In college I was first starting to get in to building computers. I did not have a legit copy of Windows, but when I changed out the CPU I had to call and give them like a 32 digit code. I told the lady that I had just changed some of the hardware and read her the code. She gave me another super long code that I put in at the prompt and poof! I was legit.

is lightboost actually better? i thought it caused input lag?

got an asus for xmas. pretty happy with it:
https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/asus-vg248qe/

that's all there is to it now, only you don't even have to talk to that lady, just a recording

Having some problems with my monitor setup. Any advice would be very welcome (copy/paste from my reddit thread)

Merry Christmas/Happy Chanukah/Merry Kwanzaa, and upcoming New Year!

I have a pretty new computer. Running dual EVGA gtx 980s. They were running fine in SLI.

I just set up dual Asus PG278Q monitors. These monitors have only one port for them, and it's a Display Port 1.2. I had each plugged into a different card and realized that SLI was turned off. So I turned it on, but one display shut off.

I figured that the issue was that I needed to have them both plugged into the same gpu, however, the 980gtx's only have 1 Display Port 1.2. So today I went to best buy to buy a Display Port to DVI converter so that I could continue to run both monitors in 144Hz while still running the GPUs in SLI.

However, the monitor that is running through the converter is not working.

Anyone have any ideas? (running Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit)

Thanks!

Sadly im stuck in the 60hz world for now, so I can't answer that.

How do you like your new monitor so far?

So now I'm wondering if I need to return the ASUS PB278Q I just received for Christmas. I don't think it runs at 144Hz or has GSynch. The PG278Q isn't much more, so maybe I should get that instead.

Any thoughts? I'm looking to pair it with my new GTX 970

I've never really had a good monitor. So for me it's a huge change. I'm used to playing on an old 19". When I unpacked the 24" I couldn't believe how big it was. It doesn't seem like a huge jump, but it is. Everything is so big and clear and smooth. I absolutely love it.

I mainly got it for CS:GO. I really notice the change when awping. Some kid was raging at me and accusing me of triggerboting last night. Been fun

Solved. I fail at life

Technically this isn't a gaming PC, mostly just a general workstation but I did briefly consider the possibility that I may spend 30-50 hours playing Starcraft 2 or some other game on this machine - how badly did I do from that perspective? Also, how much am I paying Dell to assemble this as opposed to putting this together myself?

XPS 8700, Black Chassis
4th Generation Intel Core i7-4790 processor (8M Cache, up to 4.0 GHz)
2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive + 32GB mSATA Solid State Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750Ti 2GB DDR5
16GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (4GBx4)
Intel(R) 7260AC + BT4.0 [802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.0, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz,2x2]
Dell KB213 Wired Multimedia Keyboard, US-English
Dell USB 6-Button Laser Mouse
Tray load DVD Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD)

Subtotal: $949.99
Shipping & Handling: $0.00
Sales Tax: $78.12
Total Amount: $1,028.11

Didn't have a specific budget or anything in mind but wanted to hit the sweet spot in terms of performance relative to price. Not having SSD is probably the biggest performance bottleneck overall but it seems like PC manufacturers charge an unreasonable amount to add an SSD drive (without specifying brand, model, etc, which is a big deal for SSD), so I figured I could always add it in a couple of years when falling SSD prices force spinning disk drives to go the way of tape drives.

Seems fine, the 950 is mid, will run everything fine.

Could have made a few adjustments, but if it is mainly a workstation, you're great.

dude get a 128gb SSD, it's not that expensive

Didn't even notice that 32 gb drive. Dafuq is that for?

Agree. An SSD is probably the most critical component for a general workstation. Night & day compared to a HDD.

It's just for the OS, so it boots up faster

SSDs load ERRYTHING faster. Games included.

Duh..
but in the case of most of the games, once they are loaded, they don't draw from the HDD/SSD until the next time it is time to load.

I have an SSD and yes, it is nice, but it's not necessary to game in any form.