I'm going to be building a new PC soon and am torn between a I5 2500k and an I7 2600k. Obviously the 2600k is a little faster but is it worth the extra money? It will just be a gaming PC. Also, what else is coming out for cpus? I know AMD just released their new ones but they seem pretty underwhelming.
Definitely the 2500K. The 2600k offers very little (and at times no) improvements over 2500k when gaming and if you include the price difference in the equation then it's a no-brainer. As for the upcoming stuff, the new super high-end CPUs from Intel are coming out soon, but the dollar to performance ratio will almost definitely still favor the current stuff and the refresh of the current CPU lineup is still half a year or so off.
Another thing I forgot to ask, is my current 500 watt power supply enough for a 2500k and current generation video card? It's only a few months old so I'd like to reuse it if possible. I was looking at this combo here. And a GeForce GTX 560 TI or Radeon 6950.
Beware of power supply calculators. They don't measure actual usage, they assume all devices in your system running at max load all at once. That is, in reality, pretty much never actually happening.
Noooo shit. I remember when my buddy was happy that he finally bought a big-ass RAID card and had 8 drives set up. But he didn't realize that there were "start-up delay" settings on them for a reason. Tried booting the thing about 10 times with no luck, and ended up fucking the drives as a result.
Well I just dropped about $1100 on a new PC. I ended up going a little higher end than what I had initially planned, I just have a hard time not buying closer to top of the line so it lasts a little longer before I have to buy again. 2600k processor Gigabyte motherboard OC'ed GTX 570 This case 650W power supply since my current one is a 4 pin for motherboard power 8 gigs of G.Skill Ripsaw DDR3 750g caviar black western digital HD Coolermaster cooler I also had to buy a new dvd/rw drive since my current once isn't sata.
Nice setup, though I probably would have stuck with the 2500k - though I'd say the 2600k is more likely to out-overclock my chip (current bar is 4.2 ghz) I might make a "how to overclock" thread if there's interest in it.
My portable hard drive is now giving me the "USB device has stopped working" message. This is a 1tb Iomega drive with a full backup of all my photos, tv/movies, porn, and documents. In short, I need it to work long enough to transfer it to a new drive. This is what I'm dealing with: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041RSHY4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1/185-5711517-3655418?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_r=14QBQH7AYXS6VM444WFG&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1278548962&pf_rd_i=B001D7REJ4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041R ... B001D7REJ4</a> My questions: 1. How can I un-fuck this drive? I think the problem is in the cable connection port to the drive. I can feel the hard drive spinning and the single LED lights up when it's connected. Any suggestions for copying the contents to a new location? 2. Any recommendations for getting a replacement in Indonesia? Can anyone point out a reputable computer retailer that will ship internationally? FYI, this is like the 8th portable hard drive I've had this problem with. Western Digital and Toshiba drives have lasted far longer than any of the other ones.
Odds are pretty good it's a controller or other non-actual-disk issue. There are places that will recover shit like that for you pretty inexpensively (hundred bucks or so). Basically, bring them the fucked drive and a new one and they'll attach a controller to the old one and move the data onto the new drive. Drives start to fail as soon as they start up, so anything that's important should never be trusted to a single drive backup. Try to mirror that stuff or keep a second copy somewhere.
Take the drive apart. If what is inside is something that has a regular drive, and then a little adapter to convert it to USB, then buy something like this: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812232002</a> Frequently, as Nett said, it's just the USB controller that has failed. MOST external drives are just regular internal SATA drives with adapters to convert them to USB. So you can use the above item to plug it directly into your computer - and those things are super useful anyway, if you ever suspect a bad hard drive any time. The reason I recommend taking it apart first is because Western Digital wanted to cut a quarter inch off their drive size, and started packaging drives that had actual USB headers right on the drive itself. Which kinda blows, because I can't reuse the drive for anything.
^^This. If a C-note really isn't an issue, then by all means take it in, but this is very easy to do yourself.
While I am all for digging into shit myself, and have no problem potentially fucking things up to the point of slag, when it comes to digital shit like photos, etc., that are the only copy of said digital photos, I'm not one to propose the risk of losing that shit FOREVER to others who aren't technically skilled or have ever done that before. It's one thing if you're trying to recover your 9 TB of midget tranny porn, but when it comes to the only copy of pics of your dead mom, I'd be tempted to trust the pros who do shit like that for a living. $100 well spent, IMO. There's a risk involved, and I tend to fall on the safe side of things for shit. Typical "don't try this shit at home" CYA stuff.
Hey guys, I just built a new PC but I'm having some trouble with the heatsink. The fan for whatever reason doesn't spin all the time, it seems that whenever I have the monitor unplugged, or I have no video card plugged in the fan will run, otherwise the fan does nothing. Everything should be plugged in correctly as the fan does run sometimes. I thought it could have been a power supply issue but I used the power supply calculator on newegg at it came out at around 325W, for reference my power supply is 500W. I don't know what to try next, so any help is appreciated. Specs Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 Motherboard: regular motherboard. Forget the exact specs Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 7900 Series Memory: 4x 1GB DDR-3 Ramm Optical Drive: DVD-RW Hard Drive: 7200rpm 3.5" 250GB hard drive. Thanks
Do you have another fan to try? Have you gone into bios and manually configured the fan to always run instead of auto? If there are no bios options, try fan control software once you get to windows.
Is the fan being powered off the little 3 or 4 pin header on the motherboard itself? If so, are you sure it's the correct header? Some motherboards have more than one fan controller - the correct one will probably say CPU under it. Have you checked the temperatures to see if it's actually getting hot? Does the fan turn on if you put some load on the CPU? Is this the stock heatsink that came with your processor? Have you gone into the BIOS to see if there are controls for fan speeds? Some BIOS settings allow you to ramp up the speed that correlates with certain temperatures. These may be set wrong. I mean, the quick-and-dirty solution is to plug the fan (or a new fan) into one of the power cables coming out of the power supply - that just makes the fan run all the time instead of controlling the speed as temperatures go up. So if you just want to get it running, you could do that. Otherwise we'll have to do some troubleshooting.
Could someone please message me with a program to recover deleted files from an external hard drive. Just deleted what I thought was a copy but turned out to be the entire 1tb of movies from the drive.
Whats the best version of Windows 7 to buy? I have a cracked copy but I don't believe I can upgrade to Service Pack 2 with it. Once I get my new computer going I am going to want SP2 for DX11. I'd like a copy that I can install on another computer if I delete it from the first computer. I am kind of confused over all the different versions available.