Ebuyer refunded my card on Saturday, Amazon delivered the RAM todayWill have to borrow a USB DVD drive and try and get this system up and running tomorrow evening. The motherboard looks a bit out of place in my Antec Fusion case, will take pictures when it's all together. Thanks to Jake for the CPU cooler, installed no trouble.
Well I made a booboo. I didn't read the rather large small print about needing Windows 8 Pro to qualify for the free Media Centre upgrade£24.99 gets me a Pro upgrade from any previous Windows version back to XP, or £49.99 gets me the Pro pack to upgrade my Windows 8 normal version! I wanted a completely legit clean install on this machine but they aren't making it cheap or easy. Think I'll drag out an old MSDN-AA licence and pay the £25, I should be able to move my Windows 8 normal key to a new machine in the future.
At least all the hardware is running well, no dead ram or other silliness. Looking a bit lost in my chunky Antec Fusion case!
Well, so, erm, yeah. It went popRaised an RMA request for the motherboard (for a refund), fingers crossed nothing else was taken with it.
So I've ordered the MSI board, from Scan (against my better judgement but I need this sorted before the end of the month to get media centre). Hopefully this one will be ok...
Needless to say, not a happy bunny at the moment.
Scan order has been authorised and picked, despite them having the wrong invoice address (second time this has happened but never mind). Had to call Ebuyer, but they have authorised the return for a refund and sent me a label. This might just work out ok...
My MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 motherboard is here. The black and white colour scheme almost works as well as the straight black of the Asrock board, except for the blue ports and the yellow battery wrapThe bluetooth and wifi look like they're just cheap usb devices, and the wifi has a non-standard aerial adapter which is a shame. At least it will save me running a network cable round the room or using another power-line adapter to keep things neat.
Fingers crossed everything else still works and I may have a functioning PC by the end of the day...
That ASRock mini-ITX motherboard seems to have had a lot of issues,which is sad as usually their motherboards are not that bad!! It looks like it not only overvolted the CPU but the VRMs seem ti run hot too. The MSI appears to use a 5 phase VRM instead of the 4 phase VRM in the ASRock though.
Yeah I got worried when comments like that popped up on the forum but crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. It does seem like an odd one, ASRock don't drop the ball often. Fingers crossed they'll push out a V2 with it fixed.
They have launched an A85 based one which has a 6 phase VRM with additional cooling:
http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware/...3-0-ports.html
It might be worth seeing if there are any small heatsinks that can be stuck onto the VRM section,although they would need to not touch any parts which conduct electricity.
I wonder when/if we'll see it in this country? Took long enough to get the MSI board in stock anywhere and the Zotac board still seems to be vapourware.
I have a media center pack key if you like ? If it will activate on a none pro windows 8, Its a new key I havent used it.Originally Posted by jimbouk
Well I made a booboo. I didn't read the rather large small print about needing Windows 8 Pro to qualify for the free Media Centre upgrade
At least all the hardware is running well, no dead ram or other silliness. Looking a bit lost in my chunky Antec Fusion case!
No it won't activate on a non-pro version of Windows 8, I've tried. Maybe once month has ended you will be able to buy Media Centre for standard Windows 8 online (maybe you can buy it now via the "Add features" but I haven't looked that hard).
On build news, I'm all up and running! I liked the Windows 8 install via USB key, I managed a nice clean install as well (great idea coming from Vista...). My Media Centre pack is activated, I left it downloading/installing. I only had a minor panic when I forgot to plug power into the hard drive and thought it was dead...
The motherboard, well, I can't say I'd recommend it. Sadly saying that means I can't recommend any FM2 mini-ITX motherboard that are available at the moment! The layout is just a bit odd, headers for USB, audio and power buttons/LEDs are scattered far and wide meaning the cables only just reached to some of them.
Then there's the BIOS. Yes, well done, you can use a mouse in it. No, that doesn't mean it should be poorly arranged and difficult to use (double clicking needed to open menu items, lacking help text, I still don't know how to disable my unused SATA ports). Really poor compared to the ASRock board (but it hasn't exploded yet).
But yeah, it's all working
TV card arrived from Amazon, I needed a couple of cables and noticed they had the TBS Dual DVB-T2 PCIe TV Tuner Card (TBS6280) cheaper than elsewhere. Still sat in a box in a drawer, fingers crossed it will work well with Windows 8.
Just put in an order with QuietPC for the case, PSU, remote, internal USB3 cable, thermal paste and a case fan. I'll have to do a proper build log and review once I have all the bits
Oh will it never end? My build thread was meant to be a nice clean summary of the process so I'm back here to rant!
I'm on my second Streacom 150W PSU with the same symptoms, the CPU fan spins when the power button is pressed by the systems doesn't boot. With a normal PSU it's fine. With a 65W CPU and just a motherboard, 2 sticks of 1.5V ram, TV card and a 2.5" hdd I can't be pulling more that the full load.
Video with a Streacom PSU: streacom_psu.m4v
Video with a normal PSU: normal_psu.m4v
I've contacted QuietPC and will see what they say, hopefully I can upgrade to the proper picoPSU without any difficulty, although they said they had tested the second Streacom one before sending it out to me
I've got a Pico PSU 160W, with a 200W power brick which seems to be powering my system OK so far.
Its powering: AMD A-10 5700, 2x4GB Crucial RAM, Asrock mobo, 1 x SSD, 1 x 2.5" HDD, 1xSlot load ODD, TBS DVB-S2 TV Card.
Hope that helps!
Cheers Robster. QuietPC have been excellent with their customer support and have upgraded me to a 160W picoPSU at no cost. Still waiting to get everything up and running but will update when I do.
Well to cut a long story short, I have a working media PC! Not that I've had time to do more than turn it on and off again...
I've working with the 160W picoPSU and a 120W power brick from ebay. I didn't have much luck with the 150W ones supplied as the latest one just went pop, so I gambled £20 on a quick fix and it worked
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