Computer Hardware

[Zaranthos]

Make sure all the connections are clean on the ram and in the slots. I got a tiny piece of Styrofoam in a ram slot once and that was no fun to find and fix. If everything is clean and installed correctly you may have bad ram. Sometimes a BIOS update fixes problems with RAM.

[Mephista]

What brand of RAM are you using?  I had some stuff from Crucial that was awful and caused my computer to blue screen often until I replaced it.  Read reviews of it on newegg.com ... if people are having problems, you bought bad RAM.

[Zaranthos]

Soon I'll be building myself a new computer. For the last 8 years I've been dragging my old computer into the future a piece at a time and some of the parts are even older than that I think. Finally I'm getting a bunch of new stuff all at once. 

Antec NSK4480 Black/ Silver 0.8mm cold-rolled steel construction ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 380W Power Supply. I'll be swapping the power supply for another one I've been saving for my new computer. SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-550HT 550W ATX12V V2.3

ASUS P5QL PRO LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (this will be a second drive as I have a 500GB already)

[ToneDeafBawb]

nice! don't forget... you'll need a powerful graphics card to run KOL ;-)

[Zaranthos]

The sad part is I ran out of money before I could get the video card. I have a Cirrus Logic 1MB PCI card that should do the trick though. :-)

[ToneDeafBawb]

I'm building a system around a Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor. Anyone got any decent Mobo recomendations? Every single one I have considered has had a lot of problems from end users.

This will be for an edit suite, not gaming.

[Zaranthos]

I haven't paid much attention to i7 systems. I'm kind of hoping they shrink the die sizes and reduce the power requirements. I'm sick of the increased power supply sizes. I'm sure kids that live at home where their parents pay the electric bill don't care, but I do.

If you're relying on comments like you find on Newegg you can bet about 60% of those people are newb geeks that think they know more than they do and don't get things set up right. My motherboard had a fair amount of negative feedback and it has run rock solid. If you get the latest and greatest you're likely to suffer from BIOS bugs that will be fixed later after you pull out lots of your hair. Even more likely if you run fringe configurations like RAID. In those cases you're the guinea pig.

[killsomeone]

Vista = crap (but just my opinion)
Probably a good computer for the price. If you go with Vista double the RAM.

I agree about the vista being crap thing
Service pack one took me a week to bluescreen
I didn't even use command promp or viruses

anyways back on topic

i have had one Kingston ram stick die on me that was a week old, got it replaced

[shemienirrism]

I hate my old computer, as its slow and has all kinds of problems.  I see in the fliers I get from MicroCenter that they have a CPU/motherboard/1GBRAM bundle for about 90.  What Im considering doing is picking up one of those bundles & swapping out the CPU/mobo/RAM in my old computer for the new bundle.  My question has to do with the OS.  Since the OS resides on the HD, what problems might I encounter by simply swapping out the parts?  Or would I have to do a completely new installation?

[Zaranthos]

You might be better off doing a complete clean install when changing motherboards. With XP you can try a repair install (boot from the Windows CD) to avoid a complete fresh install. With Vista and Windows 7 you don't have that option and I don't know how well they handle radical hardware changes. In general Windows doesn't cope well with radical hardware changes so if you swap major hardware like the motherboard and try to boot it up you could have serious stability problems.

[kerowyn]

I just got a new computer (XPS studio 16) and I have two questions:

(1) I have four gigs of RAM for a 64 bit Windows 7 system. This seems like it will strain the system if I do more than browse the internet or type. What do you think would be a better RAM number. 6?

(2) I need to back up the new SATA drive with a portable external. Any suggestions on good ones? I have a tendency to kill my externals so I kinda want a hearty one.  (min 500 GB)

[Aoi]

...I'm running on 3gb...

A 500gb WD Elements (?) USB-powered drive I picked up on Black Friday last year for 35$ is doing fine for me, though I'm not particularly rough. It HAS managed to survive airplane carry-on six or seven times though, if that counts?

[Mandoline]

Any particular reason you run the 64 bit version?
I think Seven 32 bit is able to use 4Gigs of RAM, but (except gaming) it really shines on 2Gigs (which I currently have on an rather old lappy).

As for the backup, well, "portable" is not a good word here: the heavier and the clunkier, the less you will be tempted to carry it. If I had an option, I would bolt my backup storage to the fireproofed wall. Best backup idea is to have a dual disc cheap RAID-1 configuration. If you have the dough, get an external HD with ethernet, you will love it!

[Zaranthos]

Nice laptop. 4GB is enough RAM for most anything right now (unless you have Vista then you need double that ). I would skip upgrading to 6GB and upgrade right to 8GB (the max) but only if you need it and you can find a good deal at the same time. Unless you're running video editing or something that eats up a lot of RAM you probably don't need more. 64bit is the future, I'm glad you got that instead of 32bit especially when the computer can be upgraded past 4GB of RAM. 32bit can't use even 4GB so it would have been RAM going to waste. Yeah, 64bit has a little more overhead so some RAM goes to waste there but it's a fair trade with 4GB or more RAM so you still win.

For external backup of 500GB or more Aoi's advice is sound. Any external hard drive with a good long warranty is your best bet. If you're going to travel with the backup a lot you could get a solid state drive but you'd pay a lot more. As solid state drives get cheaper I'd change the laptop drive to solid state just for the speed increase and lower power consumption.

[Aoi]

My other suggestion would've been to buy a ruggedized system, but those are kind of pricey, to say the least.