PC dead, options?

[shaithis]

Your in London.....surely a shout out to fellow hexites could find you a local test-bed.......

[Pob255]

Your in London.....surely a shout out to fellow hexites could find you a local test-bed.......

. . . . . . why didn't you post this before . . . why didin't I think of it . . . Oh well, I've sent off the money now.

[Pob255]

Well I got a motherboard off mrt9888, another msi p55-gd65 with a damaged socket pin (which Yosh sold to him so I'm the 3rd hexus user to have this board)
I've done a quick test and it boots up, so it is confirmed the fault is the motherboard.

EDIT:
What's really annoying is that I cannot find out how long the warranty was, it was ether 2 years (so just out) or 3 years (still in) So I've sent scan an e-note asking.

wow scan's on the ball today they already got back to me, it's just 2 years

[Behemoth]

Might be worth reminding scan then of the sale of goods act matey and go that way

[Pob255]

Ummm under the sales of goods act I've have to prove that the fault is in the electronics and not my handling of it or the environment it's it.
That would require getting the board checked out buy an accredited electronics person and the mains in my flat checked out by a qualified electrician.
Which would probably cost more than the board is worth.

Oh and I've got more problems, while it seems to boot, I'm not getting any screen output.
Going to have to take the otherhalf's pc a part, when I can get at it, to test my card in her pc and her card in mine.

[Pob255]

Well the graphics card is ok, but I'm still not getting monitor output.

I'm thinking one of three things,
- the cpu onboard pci-e controller died and took the motherboard with it.
- the motherboard died and took the cpu onboard pci-e controller with it.
- A fault with this spare motherboard, well I know it's missing a pin on the cpu socket, but both Yosh and mrt9888 say it works, apart from two of the ram slots.
(Which I can confirm, but it seems to boot fine on the other 2 slots, well I think it does as I don't have screen output.)

[Pob255]

so back to my original question, where do I go from here?

is it worth me spending £160ish on a new i5 760?
or £80ish on an i3 540? (I'm not sure I really made full use of a quad core)
Or jump ship and go AMD a 870 around £65 + ether an athlonII x3 around £60 or a phenomII x4 around £90

[Noxvayl]

Personally I wouldn't jump ship. BUT that all depends on your future plans...

Do you use your old components for your other-half's PC?
Do you have an HTPC you often give old components?
Are you more likely to do incremental upgrades than platform jumps?

Some games require 4 cores to get the most out of them and most games support quad CPU's. Going forward I don't think you should be getting less than 4 cores. I don't think the platform you have right now has much value for use in another PC that doesn't require as much performance as your gaming rig so if you'd like to upgrade going to a P67 board and an i5 would probably be the best option for you to use now as a gaming machine and in the future as a media/work/general use machine.

If you don't recycle parts then I'd just get a replacement motherboard, and possibly CPU, to get your system running again. It is still a great machine and should last another 18 months at least.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

so back to my original question, where do I go from here?

is it worth me spending £160ish on a new i5 760?
or £80ish on an i3 540? (I'm not sure I really made full use of a quad core)
Or jump ship and go AMD a 870 around £65 + ether an athlonII x3 around £60 or a phenomII x4 around £90

It depends on what the main uses of your PC are Pob. A Phenom II X4 955BE for around £80 is still going to be better overall than a Core i3 540 for gaming and video encoding. The Core i3 540 is meant to be decent for overclocking,but so are the recent Phenom II X4 CPUs. OTH,the Core i3 540 will consume less power and be easier to cool when overclocked.

Bagnaj97 bought an Athlon II X3 recently and overclocked his to around 4GHZ and another mate has one unlocked recently to an Athlon II X4 and it can run at around 3.5GHZ(tried it on old heatsink but needs a better cooler to use the modified CPU). They both have 970 motherboards which cost around £80.

The other alternative is to get a Core i3 2100 like what I am using ATM. It cannot be overclocked though but is much faster than the previous generation Core i3 CPUs. It will be faster than a Phenom II X4 955BE in lightly threaded games and competitive in games which are more heavily threaded. However for video encoding and rendering it will be slower.

However,if you want to have an overclocking capable motherboard you are still looking at around £84 to £100 for a better P67 based motherboard. Even the H67 motherboards are not that much cheaper if you want to have four RAM slots.

Another factor is that your RAM ideally needs to run at not more than 1.58V IIRC.

[Pob255]

I'd like to go SB but I don't think I can afford it.
£168 for an i5 2500k + A good z68 motherboard will be around £125.
Which is why I'm considering a lower spec AMD system as it's much cheaper.

I do recycle parts and often keep old bits for emergency spares.
The only bit's I'm looking to replace are the faulty parts, so I'm not going to be recycling anything.

EDIT: I don't do video encoding, mainly gaming, a bit of basic image editing and the odd spot of 3d modeling.
my current ram is 1.5v, it should be ok but I've not be able to check it yet.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'd like to go SB but I don't think I can afford it.
£168 for an i5 2500k + A good z68 motherboard will be around £125.
Which is why I'm considering a lower spec AMD system as it's much cheaper.

I do recycle parts and often keep old bits for emergency spares.
The only bit's I'm looking to replace are the faulty parts, so I'm not going to be recycling anything.

EDIT: I don't do video encoding, mainly gaming, a bit of basic image editing and the odd spot of 3d modeling.
my current ram is 1.5v, it should be ok but I've not be able to check it yet.

I would get either a Core i3 2100 or a Phenom II X4 955BE. Rendering will be much faster on a Phenom II X4 955BE,although since most current games are based on legacy engines,the Core i3 2100 is probably faster in many games and it will be better for image editing.

However,for games based on newer engines like Frostbite 2.0 I suspect a Phenom II X4 will still be quite competitive:

http://www.techspot.com/review/448-b...nce/page7.html

Bagnaj97 has this motherboard:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx

Another mate has this one:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...e-20-(x16)-atx

The latter one has a UEFI BIOS.

Both seem great for the price.

[Pob255]

Yes I was thinking about this one
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...e-20-(x16)-atx
But it's all a matter of cost, I could match it up with a cheap athlon cpu for now.
But then again I could just get a cheap socket 1156 i3, this newer motherboard I got has just got a damaged pin, it should be ok, what's putting me off is that my motherboard of the same model only lasted 2 years.

I wish I knew what happened to cause this

[Pob255]

OK I can spend around £200 on new bits.

scan's currently got an offer on the BD FX6100be + Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 for £216 which is tempting but I'm not really sure (it's only about £10 off getting them separately)
esp over something like the PhenomII X4 955 which is £90

or an i3 2100 and motherboard

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OK I can spend around £200 on new bits.

scan's currently got an offer on the BD FX6100be + Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 for £216 which is tempting but I'm not really sure (it's only about £10 off getting them separately)
esp over something like the PhenomII X4 955 which is £90

or an i3 2100 and motherboard

I have heard some noise about the northbridge on the Gigabyte motherboard running a tad hot. Both the 970 based motherboards I mentioned are pretty decent.

If you need SLI and Crossfire on a socket 1155 motherboard,this MSI motherboard has both:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-p...e-20-(x16)-atx

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems Aria are doing some good deals on AMD CPUs and motherboards ATM.

This MSI 990FX based motherboard is under £100:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=44728

Edit!!

On second thoughts the 990X from Gigabyte looks better IMHO.

It seems Dabs have the Phenom II X6 1075T for around £120:

http://www.dabs.com/category/compone...?q=phenom%20x6

With this motherboard the total price will be around £200:

http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-m5...ml?q=amd%20970

[Pob255]

Well after my msi motherboard died for no obsious reason I'm not really sure I want to go that route again.
Which it why I've been looking at Asus and gigabyte