Sony Vaio PCV-RX403N

[monkeyville]

Well seeing as this is a new forum and i'm a relativly new member i think i'll add thread number 1. Here goes:

My house currently has two pc's, one of which is my very own and i would call my gaming rig and one that the parents use "to do online banking". Well that was the excuse to get broadband anyway This secondry machine was bought about two years ago and is a Sony Vaio Desktop PCV-RX403N which means nothing to me as i'm sure it won't to you. Therefore the specs are:

2.4Ghz P4
40gb Hard Drive
256mb DDR Ram
GeForce4 MX460 64mb
CD-RW/DVD ROM Drive
NET MD Player built in
15" TFT Sony Screen

I also think a quick pic is in order:


As you can see it looks quite good and is effective as a surfing, working and light gaming (rollar coaster 2 etc) machine but when you start to run anything intensive like photoshop or games like raven sheild, farcry etc it starts to struggle.

As far as cost was concerned i think it set the parents back about £1200 two years ago (which at the time seemed reasonable) although i got a 12.5% discount from john lewis as i work there which took it down to £1050 or there abouts. The only problems we have encountered with this computer have been the net md refusing to eject mindiscs first time and the cd drive sometimes not recognising cds when you insert them. Fairly minor problems really but problems none the less. Ohh and sonicstage is a rubbish piece of software that pretty much renders the netmd drive obsolete as its the only thing that can access it . I've never had to speak to sony help centre so i can't comment on their service skills but i've always had excellent service when my PS2 and minidisc portable broke so i guess it'd be the same.

Apart from that i suppose there only upgardability to discuss and thats fairly easy to do as it seems to use core components (except the netmd drive) and i can't see any problems upgarding apart from the fact that its nearly as packed as a shuttle. Its a surprisingly small case as can be seen in the picture below (its the one on the right if you haven't guessed ):



When i can be bothered i'll post the full hardware spec as i've never thought to run aida32 on it. Anyway thats my 2p on my first ever pc.

[Howard]

Is that optical drive proprietary? If not, you probably can replace it if it's knackered.

Also upgrading the RAM will yield a noticeable performance increase which will help with games and general applications. Reformatting will help remove all the rubbish and leave a nice tidy PC too.

[Jonny M]

Despite what it looks like, I think the only non-standard part is the power supply on the Sonys, which sometimes have DC outputs to run the speakers off of.

The boards they use tend to be Asus (I think) and are of a high quality. The CD-ROM drive can probably be easily changed, just pop the front panel off, put a new drive in and put the panel back on, retaining the cover which is over the drive and keeping it looking nice.

If you shove another stick of 256MB in, and consider replacing the MX460 with something like a Radeon 9200 for the improved 2D quality, it's a cheap swap and should make the image on the TFT look even nicer.

All that can be done without changing the case, and I'd be inclined to keep the case as they aren't bad as far as pre-built PCs go. I'd like to know if they can be bought separately.

Also consider upgrading to SonicStage 2, which I find much better. Still not perfect, but better than 1.5.

And we have another JL "partner" on the board

[monkeyville]

Yup a dedicated saturday lad at nottingham. Won branch of the year don't you know .

As far as upgrading the pc, well to be honest i don't plan on upgrading because the sony is the parents machine and they had a stress when i took the side off to have a look, never mind changing components. The cd drive is also a custom part that would need ot be totally replaced as its not just a stealthed drive. As for sonicstage well i've upgraded it at every posability and its still rubbish.

I also have the gaming machine upstairs which i built myself recently that kicks ass with all the components below:
2.8Ghz Pentium 4 Northwood Hyper Threading Processor (800FSB)
Sapphire Radeon 9800Pro 128mb
DFI Lanparty 865PE Motherboard with Gigabyte LAN and Serial ATA
1GB PC3200 DDR440 Dual Matched Twinmos Memory
120gb SATA Seagate 7200rpm 8Mb CacheHarddrive
Sony 48x24x48 CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive
Enermax 430Watt PSU
All wrapped in a Chenbro Gaming Bomb Case
2 x 17"Samsung CRT Monitor (mmm dual monitorness)
Black Microsoft Optical Mouse and Black Keyboard
and a couple of UV lights to make the motherboard glow.


So as far as a machine that i can use to play games i have that beast to play around on.

As far as some advice for people looking to buy a new pc, well contary to popular belief building your own pc isn't for the elite and technolgy geniuses. Infact the building od the actual pc is as easy as playing with lego, it all justs slots into place and the hard part is sourcing comapatable components and that requires only a little bit of research. I built the pc i have above for about the same price of the sony and its twice as good with much more room for expansion and upgrades.

[overlord_stu]

The boards they use tend to be Asus (I think) and are of a high quality.

Yep - all uk Sony Vaio desktops have Asus motherboards

[JeRiChO]

Hi peeps! wondering if you can help me! I want to upgrade my processor to a 3.06e 478pin 800mhz i have the same sony (pcv-rx403n) but when i install it my pc won't boot up can any of you help me i play i play CS:S at a professional level i used to play quake 3 & halo pc, but want to get the most out of it before i upgrade in march

[Dav0s]

you may need to flash the bios ot a more recent version with the old chip instaled.

[JeRiChO]

ok can you instruct me on how to do this i know it's dodgy to flash ur mobo but i'm up for it lol

[Dav0s]

google will tell you,

its different for each mobo, winflash may be your best bet, if you cna find out ur model number of mobo we can find u a BIOS

[JeRiChO]

ok i'll get as much info as possible

[JeRiChO]

My Motherboard is SIS-P4S533VX I Looked everywhere for the bios even on Asus' Website, Any ideas? i've never once upgraded my motherboard "sadface" all i want is for the motherboard to accept this new processor:-

"pentium 4 3.06ghz 800mhz L2 cache"

Motherboard Properties
Motherboard ID 08/20/2002-SiS651-P4S533VX
Motherboard Name Asus P4S533

Front Side Bus Properties
Bus Type Intel NetBurst
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 133 MHz (QDR)
Effective Clock 533 MHz
Bandwidth 4267 MB/s

Chipset Bus Properties
Bus Type SiS MuTIOL
Bus Width 16-bit

Motherboard Physical Info
CPU Sockets/Slots 1
Expansion Slots 6 PCI, 1 AGP
RAM Slots 3 DIMM
Integrated Devices Audio
Form Factor ATX
Motherboard Size 220 mm x 300 mm
Motherboard Chipset SiS645DX
Extra Features Q-Fan, JumperFree, Stepless Freq Selection

Motherboard Manufacturer
Company Name ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Product Information http://www.asus.com/products/mb/mbindex.htm
BIOS Download http://www.asus.com/support/download/download.aspx

I Have a radeon 9550 256mb Graphics card with 3 sets of dogy ram(768 in Total):

256 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
Micron Tech. 8VDDT3264AG-265B1
Infineon 64D32300GU6B

Again i'm looking to get more Frames out of counter strike source (atm i'm lucky to get 40, i think its mainly the processor), If any of you know any tips or tricks where i can get some serious boosts (i've already done a cfg to lower game specs,and yes i still have rubbish frames) Thanks again guys