Be Excellent To Each Other

Hmm, I'd be surprised if they were really isolated. It's more expensive to do that and what's the point?

It is the current rating of the mobo connector pins (in that standard) that's the problem?

BTW Mr %, did you order yet?

If not then please consider the following...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-Phen ... 25W-Retail

£38 more than the 955 but has six cores. They do make a difference too !

And then one of these.

EDIT. Oh fuck sake the board is out of fucking stock. I hate Scan for that.

Double edit. Another fucking scan item out of stock yet still there. Wankers.

Hmm, I'm sailing close to the wind with the wife as it is, so can't really spend any more. Cheers for the suggestion though.

Fair enough. However, can I make a suggestion as to tweeking the mobo choice?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-M4N ... s-RAID-ATX

It's £2 more than the MSI you have picked. However, it has an Nforce chipset which will be far better suited to the 460. Some of the ATI chipsets (notably that 770 one) aren't very happy with Geforce cards in them.

I have actually just ordered a Sapphire Pure Crossfire 770 specifically for Crossfire, and I have read that the 770/600b SB set isn't the most accepting of Nvidia cards. Well, it wouldn't be TBH given that the 770 is an ATI crossfire designed bridge set.

I have an Asus Crosshair 2 and it's SLI based N780a. I run a 3870x2 card in there atm (single, about to double it in a new board) and the 3870x2 doesn't bench as well in that board as it does in my 480x/600b board. Plus the Asus is nicer, better looking and has a bios about a week old that offers full X6 support.

Phenom IIX6 1035T(HDT35TWFK6DGR),2.6GHz,95W,rev.E0,SocketAM3,6-Core ALL
0504

Phenom IIX6 1055T(HDT55TFBK6DGR),2.8GHz,125W,rev.E0,SocketAM3,6-Core ALL
0605

Phenom IIX6 1055T(HDT55TWFK6DGR),2.8GHz,95W,rev.E0,SocketAM3,6-Core ALL
0504

Phenom IIX6 1090T(HDT90ZFBK6DGR),3.2GHz,125W,rev.E0,SocketAM3,6-Core ALL
0605

See? Asus are also the best company in the world right now for getting bios updates done and uploaded. The Sapphire board I have got its last in Jun of 09. Wankers. I know full well the 770 can support the X6 but they don't care that people are stuck. Mind you, won't affect me 'cos I am putting a 9950 in it..

What have you done, 73%? What. Have. You. Unleashed?

The ATI brand name is dead.

Thanks John, I'll have a look into the Asus board. I only selected the msi one because it was recommended (along with a gtx 460) by Bit-tech's buyer's guide.



Soz!

And whatever you do, don't forget the cooler. Arctic do one (Freezer Pro 7 IIRC) for about £13jibs that is excellent.

Yeah, about the cooler... to keep costs down I was just gonna use the retail one for now and upgrade it if I fancy overclocking at a later date.

Have I done wrong?

Basically: No. The retail one will work. If you get enormous hard ons by upgrading your PC constantly, your mileage may vary, thoug.

Ah, bollocks to it - ordered.

I just wish my hard ons were enormous

Cheers for all the advice JC - I'll be building this thing on Friday so I'm sure I'll be back for more when it all goes tits up.

As Mr. Dave said, aftermarket coolers are generally just for overclocking. If you're running the CPU at stock speeds and the retail boxed cooler doesn't seem to be providing sufficient cooling, the first thing you need to check is ventilation in the case, ie are the vents clear and are their any cables blocking airflow, etc.

And vacuum-clean the heatsinks.

No, but your GPU choice suggests gaming. Which will put a ton of strain on the CPU and cause it to run quite warm. This isn't a problem of course, but heat is the main cause of component failure.

£13 or so hardly breaks the bank, and the AF is a very good cooler. Far far better than the OEM one (which is a bit curry pump).

Well the main problem with the OEM AMD sink is that it is quite squat and prone to dust clumping. Which ends up jamming the fan and the sink itself is pretty small.

I don't agree that decent coolers are for overclocking though. They are there to make your CPU run cooler, even at stock speed. I have a Noctua on my 9950 and it's reduced temps by about 8c, something the CPU can only really be happy about. I've never oced it either as it's a hot sonbitch being the older 140w 65nm. It idles higher (even with the Noctua on) than my 940 maxes at under load with a 400mhz OC

For £13 it's not really worth overlooking IMO. If I was suggesting he spend £40+? yeah, furry muff.

My only reason for buying a third party cooler was noise - the stock one that came with my Q6600 sounded like a dentist's drill.

Well yes there's that too. IIRC the stock cooler comes with a 80mm fan. Eww.

Awesome sauce.



I've been so excited for the past few days I totally forgot I bought myself a brand new BFG Physx PPU for £14.

That's one expensive addiction you have sir!

any computer component that says Hi5 on the box is awesome.

It might actually work out cheap tbh.

I mean, £100 for a pair of those cards. My 5770s hit 15,500 3Dmarks in Vantage so if these go anywhere near that then they were cracking value. My 5770s cost me £260.

Physx was £14 but I only got that for Mirror's Edge as it doesn't work with Mafia 2 (Nvidia are utter wankers for blocking it out of 9.10, and Mafia's coders are even bigger wankers for forcing you to install 9.10 before it will run).

Mind you, with Mafia being so two bob bit I couldn't give a fuck tbh. Mirror's Edge pisses on it as a game.

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/10267332/ ... hotukdeals

VRY CHP

Update time.

Sapphire went back and I got an email this morning telling me it's awaiting refund. So it was fubar as I suspected.

The Asrock I ordered came (same one I have now) and of course it works......Sort of.

It runs perfectly with one 3870X2 in it. Sadly when you add the second it does this.



Basically the bottom card goes into a loop. It spins the fan, flashes the LED and then restarts going in a loop.

I tried -

Wiring up a dual PSU (incase it was a power issue) and it booted fine, see pics. (Yes I have many electronics skills. DO NOT try this at home).







So with one card running from the AUX PSU I made up and one off of my 750w it still did the same. I tried pretty much everything else I could think of (forcing the cards into PCIE 1.0 with the dip switches) but still the same. So I contacted Asrock and after a plethora load of emails back and forth we have deciphered that it's 100% the bios. Another test I did was to set up the machine in the same way I had it here, only with the Asrock in place of the Crosshair II. This config worked swimmingly in the Crosshair II and I was running the Geforce for Physx calculations.



Sadly when I put the same cards in the Asrock it does the same as fitting two 3870x2. Asrock have told me it will highly likely be that the bios for the board is just not set up to see more than two physical GPUs. They have sent a request to Taiwan to fix this, but I highly doubt they will get a coder to waste a few days just for little old me. This isn't the end of the world of course, because the board was only a meagre £30 and is great to have as a spare if the one in here (identical) should develop a problem.

I've been told by a tech at Asus that if I want it to work without any problems I need to obtain a 790FX chipsetted board because some of these (the elite ones) have 4 PCIE slots allowing you to run a quadfire configuration as single cards, thus, will run a quadfire configuration as two 3870x2 cards. So today I was poking around and I found this.



Which is one of those elite boards I mentioned. It's capable of running three Radeons in Crossfire with full 16x bandwidth over all three cards. Adding a fourth reduces just the fourth lane to 8x. It's basically the best 790FX board that supports DDR2. I went off to look for one.. Fucking oucho. £190.

However, after many hours of searching I found an open box one on DABS for £73 delivered. I know why it's open box too, because every one that bought them said that DABS had listed them as the model with the WIFI card but they were just the Deluxe model. So hopefully it's actually in stock and will arrive.

For a laugh I ran an experiment. If you don't connect any power to the cards and just plug them in the fans go into panic and automatically rise to 100%.

Please make sure your speakers are not turned up high. This is LOUD.



Thing is it's about to get louder, because I am going to use the 8800 Ultra in there aswell (running from the AUX PSU) for Physx as it kicks the shit out of the PCI one I have.

Will also be fitting the Noctua I won (when it comes from Austria) which looks like this.



Those are dual 140mm fans. It's about the size of a breeze block. This thing will be loud, proud, and will absolutely obliterate benchmarks.

Also.

I spoke to my psychiatrist about all of this when I was there last week. He said that what I do with computers is absolutely excellent for my mental health. Basically he advised me to find something to get my teeth stuck into that will keep my brain busy. It doesn't put me in debt or financial difficulty and TBH I think that's why I enjoy it so much, because it helps to pass the days away without having time to think.

Well that's awesome sir, as long as you're sure your bank balance can deal with it. No way mine could! I just wish my missus could equally find something to get her teeth into to help with her depression.

I had occasion to fit a modern CPU for the first time in a few years the other day.

Fucking modern retention mechanisms are so easy it's cheating. No more levering down tiny clips with huge force delivered through screwdrivers hovering millimetres away from motherboard traces. No more early-socketed-Athlons with their exposed CPU dies. My arsehole didn't pucker once as I simply screwed four spring-loaded machine screws into the board.

Uhh, why? It's not exciting, it's just using a second PSU for a different rail. I've done it quite a few times. As long as you don't somehow manage to get them on different earth levels via some sort of crazy fucked household wiring you'd be fine.

(Zio)

It's not really that expensive. I know it looks it, but over the last 7 weeks I have spent a total of £170. I know people who spend £40+ a week on DVDs/books/Blu rays etc.

I mean you need to consider I buy nothing else

My clothes usually come from Tesco and the ilk (their clothes are well decent now) and I always get clearout trainers now (£25 tops).

So yeah, I'm well within my limits and I have no debt, no credit cards nothing.

It's hard being motivated to do anything when you're depressed, I know that first hand. However I use my manic phase (which I still get even with the meds only it's tamer) to kick my ass into gear.

Mum and co (loads of her mates) went off to Turkey for 2.5 wks 2.5 wks ago (she got back last night) and I was fucking dreading it tbh. I hate being alone when the depression comes. That's basically why I bought the new shit, to keep my mind occupied. Worked really fucking well too. I've lost lots of sleep but I've been so busy with it that I actually forgot to eat two days (not back to back haha).

First CPU I changed was from a 486 SX25 to a a DX66 (I think - many years ago now obv.) and I remember thinking that the entire motherboard was going to explode the amount of pressure I had to put on the fucker.

Then 20 minutes fucking about with jumpers to get the right clock speed.

It was at that point the ghost of Christmas Future appeared and said "Get a 360".

Did Chinny appear as the Ghost of Christmas past earlier in the evening?

I'm going on an electronics course soon, so I can learn the skills I need to use one of these:

Nah he was the Ghost of Christmas Present telling me I should get a GX4000.

*shudders*

Because the entire PSU was dewired and rewired. Look at it, there are only the two PCIE connectors (that I made) and the pulse wire to switch it on.

Tadaaaa !

Get a Pexbox.

http://originpc.com/thebigo-features.asp

Edit. On second thoughts, don't get a Pexbox.

MSRP: $16,999.00

I am after a wide screen monitor for home... (did not want to start a new thread)

I am thinking somethign like this

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-s ... 7-pdt.html

As it supports both DVI and VGA so I can switch between them work laptop and home PC...

What do you chaps think?

Link brokey.

However given it has Samsung in the name of the link I would imagine it's not cheap. So, if money is important without sacrificing ports try this

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalo ... 8wIwADgA#p

I've got one, absolutely amazing VFM. Great contrast, brillant refresh rates (ed, response times) and has been super

my GF has a handspree tv... bloody aweful..

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/samsung-s ... 7-pdt.html

it is only £169

Their TVs are awful. Their monitors however are not. It's slightly bigger than the Samsung (but that 1" makes all the difference as I have a 22" just over from mine) and it makes my Acer look utter poo. I mean that in the literal sense too. The Acer has a nasty brown hue to the picture.

You know how fussy I am and you know I am a gamer. I would not endorse a pile of shit monitor.

Here's what you need, JC. A gaming-spec PC, jam-packed with LEDs, and it's got a built in 360 slim. That's cool.

http://gizmodo.com/5631816/origins-big- ... -hellbeast

Gaywood and I were going to get one of those each, but then we realised they didn't offer it with Win7 Ultimate, and cancelled our orders.

Can you not get it no-OS, and just put it on there?

I'm not installing one OS (after dropping the price of a car on the PC).

Pfshht. First job on buying a PC is reinstalling the OS anyway.

Coffey Feex

I am really put off by the TV, the picture is aweful compared to my samsung TV..

Or £149 at Lambdatek.

http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop ... ID=B446669

You're quick today !

Yeah, I don't follow links without some sort of indication what they are pointing to. Life's too short.

BTW Origin are Alienware. Hence the similarities. The only person not there from the original company is Nelson Gonzalez.

And unsurprisingly they are handing Dell their asses again