upgrade my rig with £60

[-iceblade^]

so, i have about 60 i'm recieving tomorrow from the sale of my 8800GT and i am wondering what i can do to improve my rig with it... anyone want to help me choose?

note that i cannot add 2x more sticks of ram to my PC as my motherboard does not seem to want to POST with it installed.


my spec is everything listed in the My System thing under my profile except i have a 512MB 4850 now. for those too lazy to look,

E2160 @ 3ghz
MSI Neo2 FR mobo
512mb Sapphire HD4850
2x1gb GeIL Black Dragon ram
Yuraku 22" monitor
Coolermaster Elite 330
Onboard sound
Vista Home Premium x64 and Linux Mint 5 (dual boot)

I like to game. should i just buy games instead?

[staffsMike]

I'd change the PSU as everything else looks fine.

[Pob255]

What's you ram problem? Sounds a bit odd, I've not had any problems with my neo2-fr, but I've not tried 4 sticks of memory in it yet.

[-iceblade^]

it will not POST when there is ram inserted in any of the orange slots.



when i first built it i tried dual channel (slots 1 and 3) and it wouldn't post until i put my ram in the 2 green ones. the ram itself doesn't seem faulty - ive not run memtest but it holds up with my CPU overclock, so... i had 4gb of identical ram and still the same thing - no post. i had to sell off the spare ram in the end. I'm wanting to sell off this board and quadruple my ram, and go crossfire. .

IMO it's ridiculous to not be able to add ram to a system as a drop in upgrade.

[moogle]

What's you ram problem? Sounds a bit odd, I've not had any problems with my neo2-fr, but I've not tried 4 sticks of memory in it yet.

4 sticks running fine in mine (Fr board that is)

You should RMA the board ice it shouldn't be like that, did you try the memory sticks with another board? Could be the memory not wanting to work together

[-iceblade^]

i would RMA but tbh i don't want to be without the system... not to mention it is beyond the DOA period...

never been able to get another mobo to try the ram though...

[moogle]

i would RMA but tbh i don't want to be without the system... not to mention it is beyond the DOA period...

never been able to get another mobo to try the ram though...

Ahh yeah it's a pita eh. I suppose that £60 could help buy you a temp board to use while your other is gone, but it'd have no use after the RMA too..

I would say save your £60 for future parts purchases, you never know when the prices might drop and you can use that to get a new component for your PC
I can't see anything major needing upgrading there.

[Webby]

Yeah as Mike says the only thing really worth changing is the PSU or if you wanted 4GB of RAM you could buy 2x2GB sticks and sell the current ones.

Alternatively you could invest in some decent fans (if you don't have them already) or perhaps a fan controller... a couple of water cooling blocks perhaps? but you would need a bit more free cash to finish off the loop

[-iceblade^]

i was thinking of maybe grabbing a second hand P5nE SLI for 15 and then SLIing my 8800GT with another one, but i don't know... seems stupid to me, even though i have a compelling reason to do so (nVidia drivers in linux are way better than ati's and i use linux a lot now)... not to mention i personally think the 4850 purchase was not the best one to make...

the upgrade bug is not fun to have

[Pob255]

If it's the stock cooler on your 4850 they you might want to think about replaceing that

Although I'd agree with moogle on the RMA, while realiseing that it's damb annoying not to have a motherboard
Does depend on who who bought it through as to howlong the rma will take.
could look at getting a cheap 2nd hand motherboard but generally spekaing you need to do a clean windows install for a motherboard change, which is even more hassle on top.

While I've never had any problems with ram in the orange slots, have you set the ram voltage and timeings and such manually before adding in the extra sticks?
ok this is a bit of a long shot but it could be something as simple as not booting in dual channel with the ram voltage at stock 1.8v
Unless you've tried with only one stick in one of the orange slots.

[-iceblade^]

it was bought from Novatech, and i could use Linux in the meantime, but it's still too much of an inconvenience, tbh. i tried with one stick initially in the orange slot, and then 2 later on. the first time when i was building everything i couldn't even enter the BIOS so i don't know how much voltage was being supplied but i am pretty certain it was at auto. the lowest voltage i can supply is 1.8V but that said i have no idea what value auto actually is.

the second time when i tried with 4 sticks i don't remember what i did but i am fairly certain i reverted to stock settings. the ram sticks were identical down to the serial numbers - i made sure of it. still, no dice and no post. The funny thing is in my current OC is a matter of

333mhz FSB
1.425V Vcore
2V ram.

the ram timings and all that stuff are set to auto. this oc is 8h56s stable, and hasn't crashed as a result of OC's, i'm certain of that. GeIL themselves say this ram should be given 2V for best performance and that is what i have done.

i'll try again later tomorrow though...

[shaithis]

I had to RMA a MSI P35 NEO2-FR for the same reasons, scan were nice enough to let me have a different make when RMAing it as well.

Found a number of threads where others had the same issue, obviously an MSI manufacturing defect.

[Pob255]

rats definitely sound like like an fault and rma issue. on the plus side my only experience with rma'ing to novatech was a positive one.
however that was a graphics card that developed corruption after about 2 hours of use (a bad ram chip that would get overly hot) so considering that was then a next day rma request they sorted me out with a replacement very quickly but it would of been hard for them to do anything else.
Also this was about 4 years ago I think

You could contact them and find out how long it would take and such, they were very good on the phone

[Maccer101]

How about a new case, as I'm not too fond of the CM 330, as I think the Bezel is Ugly.

You could get an Antec 300 and use the 120mm fans (I suspect you fitted a front one) out of the Coolermaster case, it would help keep that GPU and OC'd CPU nice and cool and you would have some cash left for a game. Or wait till 2009 and buy a nice 45nm chip when the prices (hopefully) start dropping.

[-iceblade^]

thanks guys. i think i'll be going ahead with an RMA. means i'll be without my PC for a bit but i can use my phone for net access, music, etc, so no biggie... hopefully i can add this lot to my order so when it comes back, MAXIMUM, RAM, to paraphrase the Crysis nanosuit dude, lol.

d'you think there'd be a way i could get them to send me a P45 mobo instead?

oh, and to the person who inquired, my Sapphire has good cooler - this one

[Bugbait]

What's wrong with his PSU? I've heard some stories on here regarding bad Hiper's but it's not like he has an unbranded piece of garbage . I'd save the money or put it towards a new motherboard.