Maximum PC

Ok this is really annoying me. After about 1 game of tribes ascend(not tried anything else yet) my screen either freezes or goes green and black lines horizontally. And the PSU makes a really high pitch tone constantly till I hit the power button and then it restarts the PC. I have reinstalled the card,reinstalled the driver completely,reseated the card. Any ideas?

Card and Power supply make and models? It sounds like your Power supply can not handle the card...

Power supply is like just a standard dell or hp style. The brand it has on it is A' Power(the ' is a lightning bolt). Its a 400W PSU with a +12v rail of 25A and I have a 9800GT(no PCIE connector but I use a 2 molex to 6-pin). Gona get this PSU most likely this week I can leave my PC on for days and nothing goes wrong but the second I use something really heavy like Unreal engine 3 games(tribes) it takes about 15-20min for it to do it. Only tried tribes with it so far. Gona try BF3 and Minecraft today(probably MOHAA to). This is gona be a really stupid question but Ima ask anyway. Would my 9800GT run on a dell PSU(not mine) thats 250W and has a 16A +12v rail?

Probably. But would it like it? No. System load will probably be near 100%

Well tried BF3 and I get the same problem. MOHAA doesn't have that problem(really old game to so didn't expect it to).

Time to build a new game machine...for sure.

Nasty

Yea I agree:) Gona put this thing in it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182131 I got a promo code for it that makes it 47.99 exactly. Can't decide whetherto put a Athlon II X4 on it to and a 6770 or refurbished 5830 before I give it to a friend. Got a Athlon II X2 240,9800GT(EVGA Akimbo 512MB) right now. Anyway on that thought anyone got a build they would suggest? 500$ is my target 700 max.

Here is the sub-forum you want to ask what to build and tell how much you have to spend:

viewforum.php?f=35

As long as this old pc is homebuilt, that psu should work. If it is OEM like Dell, I would check and see if you can use an ATX power supply in it...or you may fry everything when you plug it in.

Nasty

Its not really old but no it is custom I refuse to buy a prebuilt system unles its a laptop(a good one)or a good HP.

There are NO good OEMs out there worth a nickel for playing games on. Wrong video cards, minimal amount of ram, minimal psu....just plain junk. For the same price you can build a much better system for sure!

Nasty

Yea I agree with you completely there. I want to get a barebone notebook(MSI this summer to sometime). Yea you can build a better PC for the same money.

First check the video card components like capacitors, fan, check if there any damage like the fan is not running or capacitors broken. if there is something wrong with the components the video card won't function normally.

What about drivers? I'm having issues with newer drivers on dated GPU's lately (GTS250's which are pretty much 9800's), behave pretty much the same way, and no problems with drivers I dig out of the archive. I'm still on 275.33 on these things.

If the driver updates don't address your specific card, it usually doesn't help it any. Back support use to be better, but I shrug at it thus far.

Well, I want to assuage this statement.

• One of the benefits of an OEM is that you get at least one year of support, and you're pretty much guaranteed it works when you press the power button. The only downside if it doesn't work on first power on is you have to ship it back. But hey, that's better than building a computer, powering it on, and it doesn't work and you can't figure out why (a problem for newbies to this in any case)
• Minimal amount of RAM? I think most OEMs ship excessive amount of RAM. Besides that, the minimum these days is 2GB, and most OEMs, even on the lower end, ship with at least 4GB. Hell my laptop had 8GB standard and I'm thinking "why do I need that much RAM for a laptop?"
• The PSU I might buy, only for the fact they'll just pick something that has at least some measure of warranty. But not the wattage, I don't see them risking blown computers for the sake of saving costs, unless it's Compaq or eMachines.

And plus there are people who don't want to deal with building a machine. I understand (but I won't if you buy components and not assemble the computer yourself).

LatiosXT,

Quite frankly I think you are crazy. Everyone has to start at the beginning, being afraid to build a pc is just hogwash! This is Maximum PC for crying out loud! If you have problems you post them here and everybody tries to diagnose and fix the issue/issues.

8 gigs of ram is the sweet spot these days for gaming, so YES! the OEMs screw you on the amount of ram in their ps'c because they are trying to make a profit! This goes for everything else as well, video cards are grossly anemic in ram and speed. The psu's are right on the edge of not enough. I don't know where you are getting your information...either that or you only play Spider Solitaire and not todays games.

As far as simply sending back a pc to get it fixed under warranty...I can see you haven't been to UPS and sent something lately...the shipping costs are huge today! I sent a motherboard in for warranty service and it cost me 12 bucks for just ground, if I wanted next day air it would have cost me 90 bucks! The motherboard only weighed 3 lbs, now multiply that time what a pc weighs....

Buying a OEM to game is just lame unless you go to a boutique builder and have them build a gaming rig...right... only if you have real deep pockets.

Nasty

Well problem is fixed. Got a new PSU and stopped my CPu from overheating and BOOM problem solved. This is the PSU I got
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182131
Its a great PSU plus its Modular!

I'd like to quash that a bit though. I have some geek friends that want to get back into the game, they've been out for so long that they're a bit afraid. It really use to be a scary world to build a computer and you had to stay on top of your game to do it. Now it could be summed up as Square peg=Square hole.

"Seriously I can just...put it together?" Yup.

If you've found MPC, you can build a PC. Will there be teething issues? Low chance, so maybe. Not many want to think, so Computer=OEM. We should welcome Dell and Apple consumers with problems with open arms basically.

You're awesome BTW Nasty. I can't disagree with you or some of the other more vocal members lately. Makes me feel all rosy inside that you guys are around here still keeping it MPC! Debate is fun ;D
Welp, that's a $70 fix that will last forever. Ever thought about asking us...anything? That's impossible. *Facepalm*

Good, because if I was normal, then I wouldn't be stirring up conversations like this.


Except that's the thing. There are people out there who don't want to go through an OEM, want a custom computer, but they don't want to build it themselves. There are understandable risks involved such as ruining your brand new $300-$500 part because you bent a 50 cent pin. There was even a post where someone was speccing out parts, but didn't want to build the computer himself (and was asking if say CompUSA or similar would build it for him).


Of course they're trying to make a profit. But they do so by marking up the RAM to an asinine amount, not by gimping how much you get. For example, to upgrade an Alienware Aurora from 8GB to 16GB at the factory, it's $150. 8GB of RAM these days costs $50 on average.

Also, even 8GB is excessive. The number of games that have 64-bit executables you can count with two hands, and you don't get a performance benefit anyway. The only reason why you'd go 64-bit is to get more memory, and these games are ancient by PC standards. Windows also defaults all 32-bit programs in 64-bit versions of the OS to 2GB, unless the executable was compiled with the large address aware flag... which most games aren't. The only one I'm aware that does is Skyrim, at the behest of its customers.

So you have 2GB tops for games, 6GB for the rest of the system. And I would even claim 2GB to spare is just fine.


Uh, NVIDIA and AMD specify the GPU SKUs to a specific GPU speed, memory type, and memory speed. You would be in deep shit if you were selling a GeForce GTX 670 that didn't have 1344 cores @ 910MHz and use at least 2GB of memory specced for 256-bit GDDR5 @ 6GHz.

And if PSUs weren't enough, they'd cause system instability and would fail real fast. Besides that, the last OEM computers I touched had plenty of power to spare, and one was from Gateway, of all companies.

Also don't pull out the "I don't know where you're getting your information" card unless you aren't backing up your words yourself.


Don't use UPS then. UPS and FedEx are private couriers that actually put forth the service to make sure that your package arrives on time and is handled with care (or more less). UPS/FedEx is often times early when using 3-day ground if the sending address is within 100 miles. If I have something shipped via US Postal Service, I can expect a 3-day package to arrive within 3 days, even if it's been shipped from a 50 mile location. Hell, I've once tracked a package shipped USPS, it went from one district to another... that put the package further away.

So if you don't want to pay up the ass for shipping, use USPS. They take longer, but hell, to ship a small computer (which I plan on doing), the slowest service I can use (which would take about a week, tops) would cost me $30 to ship across the country. They also have a plus of delivering on Saturdays.

I'm going to commit a sin and memberate, but let's keep it on topic. Some of us have been elbow deep in tech and we're just summing it up for the masses in a forum. It's lose-lose, you either talk a lot to explain it and get nailed for it or we try to debate with summaries.

It's all opinion. And of course, If we weren't all crazy we would go insane. Sit down with a Chum with a bottle of rum

(I think our posts overshot each other BTW)

Any OEM that sells computers today with two gigs of ram should be shot! Win 7 64 bit USES 2 gigs of ram to just run, Win 7 32 bit uses 1 gig and can only see 3 gigs...not enough for gaming! Now you are on the swapfile/pagefile system to run your programs and the computer will be as slow as molasses as the result of running on the page-file system. Games that actually start will run choppy as hell even at lower resolutions in a 64 bit Win 7 OS. No thanks!

Yes, the OEMs do screw you on ram and in a way you agree. They put the minimum amount of ram that will get the machine limping along, then sell you an UPGRADE to increase the ram amount at a ridiculous price so the machine actually runs as it should...I hate this practice with a passion!

As far as video goes I meant that they install a low powered video card and when the machine doesn't perform, they say .... well for X amount of bucks we can UPGRADE the video card for another ridiculous price. I think they should be beaten with a baseball bat for screwing people that way! Grrrr!

Everyone that asks me what to buy for computers, I tell them build it and I would be glad to help pick out the parts as well as help build it. All you have to know how to do is read and comprehend what you read for crying out loud.

As far as 30 bucks to send a pc back...is that with insurance, because if you don't buy it and they loose or damage it, the loss is on you...shame shame. I think it will be more than 30 bucks and if you have to keep sending it back....ouch! I rather send individual parts back from a machine I built, it is a hell of a lot cheaper....and I am cheap...so my friends tell me

Nasty