Computer sort of 'dies' - Help appreciated

cyneLic

cyneLic

cyneLic

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8 Dec 2010
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The thread has changed into a more, budget build rather than repairing my old system. (If a mod could potentially change the title to - "£650 Gaming Budget Build", would be appreciated rather than creating a new thread.)

I have a budget of £650~ with a HDD/RAM and CPU Cooler available to use for a new system build. I have been looking at the following mainly, if anyone has any suggestions/advice to which I should purchase and why please post.

Intel Build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Arctic White £65.52
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £49.99
Total : £648.90 (includes shipping : £17.85).



AMD Build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £113.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £110.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £61.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £29.99
Total : £628.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).




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Mainly irrelevant information below due to a change of topic
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Hey all, I seem to be having this issue with my PC at the moment which usually occurs while playing games, but can also happen when I'm not.. it's quite random. The PC will kind of just lose power for a split second and then restart, however it does not boot back into windows as my monitors just remain with a black screen. I then have to hard restart the PC, and it then boots as normal. When it does turn off and tries to boot, a red light on the mobo is on when it initially tries to reboot.

I originally thought that it might have been a temperature problem. So I downloaded both Core Temp & GPU-Z to find out my temps, not sure if they're too abnormal.

CPU Idle - 37c
CPU After 20 minutes of Prime95 - 58c (no crash)
GPU Idle - 55c
GPU After 15 minutes of Rust (min settings) - 69c (crashed)

Current Spec:
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz (Socket AM3)
Kingston HyperX Blu 16GB
Asus M4A87TD Evo AMD 870
Zalman Z7 Plus Midi Tower Case - Black
WIN POWER ATX-750
Titan TTC-NK85TZ/V2 Fenrir CPU Cooler
Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
Nvida GTS 250

I was also thinking of upgrading and replacing the faulty(?) parts, or just building a new system with the newer parts the RAM / HDD. I have a budget of roughly £600~

Thanks for the help, it's much appreciated.
 
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first things first, test with another psu, win power are cheap and nasty, and may not be supplying enough power to your gfx, it may say 750w but it will more than likely be less than that, even if its not faulty, the temps dont look too bad tbh
 
kiel367 said:
first things first, test with another psu, win power are cheap and nasty, and may not be supplying enough power to your gfx, it may say 750w but it will more than likely be less than that, even if its not faulty, the temps dont look too bad tbh
Click to expand...

Yeah, I figured that would be one of the next steps. But I'm starting to lean towards just building a new system with the HDD/RAM from the current spec.

Do you think that it would be worth to repair the system, for example get a new PSU for this system which may or may not fix the issue and then get a new GPU/CPU to upgrade the system granted that its not a problem with the MOBO or just build another system? Think my current is pretty outdated now, it's been awhile.
 
to be honest that system is getting a touch dated now, but i suppose its all dependant on your budget, if you can, borrow a psu to test and see whats goin on before you decide what to do, if tht fixes it, then its the cheapest option obviously, but again its all on budget, the gfx isnt very good nowadays and something better can be picked up cheap enough now, main thing to think about really is, is it doing everything you want right now? or is it struggling to keep up?
 
Purgatory said:
It is the PSU causing this. Read the Amazon reviews of it, people described exactly the problem you're having.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks. I've not had chance to check the reviews I only just found out the type/name of the PSU a couple of minutes prior to posting this thread.

kiel367 said:
to be honest that system is getting a touch dated now, but i suppose its all dependant on your budget, if you can, borrow a psu to test and see whats goin on before you decide what to do, if tht fixes it, then its the cheapest option obviously, but again its all on budget, the gfx isnt very good nowadays and something better can be picked up cheap enough now, main thing to think about really is, is it doing everything you want right now? or is it struggling to keep up?
Click to expand...

I've gone from running games in high/very high to low/medium with games like Rust really struggling to hit 60FPS, seem to be getting a constant 24FPS which is pretty rough to play on.

In your opinion is anything in the current spec worth saving for another build, apart from the RAM/HDD? (Budget of roughly £600-£650~)
 
You can keep the CPU cooler, case, hdd and RAM. RAM seems a bit overkill, so you can sell 8gb of it if your only gaming and add that to the budget if you wanted.

What do you play mainly?

What resolution?

Would you want to change the case?

If it was my money:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £113.99
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £49.99
Total : £675.95 (includes shipping : ).



Board has a great sound chip, card has plenty of grunt and you'l appreciate the 240gb SSD over 120gb if you play more than a few modern games, the PSU is solid and gold efficiency too. Over budget a fair amount though. You can save a fair amount by going for a 120gb SSD, i know plenty of peeps who manage 120gb primary drives just fine.
 
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Avenged7Fold said:
You can keep the CPU cooler, case, hdd and RAM. RAM seems a bit overkill, so you can sell 8gb of it if your only gaming and add that to the budget if you wanted.

What do you play mainly?
Click to expand...

I play a range of games at the moment including: CSGO, Rust, BF3, and a few others, but these seem the most demanding games.

The resolution of my main monitor is 1600x1024 and the second 1280x1024.

I could clean off the CPU cooler, possibly buy a new fan for it since it's been running for around 4~ years and think it's starting to squeal just a tad and keep it to save £20~.

The case is fairly knackered so I'm gonna look for a new one, nothing fancy. Just a cheap, decent case which does it's job.

I'll have a look into maybe selling a stick of 8GB RAM, see if it's worth the hassle or not, depending on how much they're going for now.

Thanks for advice.

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YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £49.99
1 x SanDisk Pulse 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDP-064G-G25) £41.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £29.99
Total : £655.36 (includes shipping : £17.85).



What about something like the above, I can't really push for a bigger SSD at the moment so not sure whether it would be worth picking up a 64GB, might be better leaving the SSD out for now and picking a 240GB one up in a few months.

Would an AMD build be any cheaper to save cost to potentially get the larger SSD without sacrificing much performance/£?
 
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If Arma 3 wasn't on your game list, i would have recommended a fx8320 build.

TBH at 1600x1024, the build i speced above is a little overkill but the grunt will give great results for quite a while. If i was looking for a new case and had no interest in Crossfire or SLI, would snap up a Parvum or Prodigy matx for a tiny power build but thats because i love their look.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
If Arma 3 wasn't on your game list, i would have recommended a fx8320 build.

TBH at 1600x1024, the build i speced above is a little overkill but the grunt will give great results for quite a while. If i was looking for a new case and had no interest in Crossfire or SLI, would snap up a Parvum or Prodigy matx for a tiny power build but thats because i love their look.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna remove Arma 3, it was just a game I was looking at getting a couple of week back, but don't think I'm going to purchase it.

If that makes a FX8320 build suitable for the other games, could you please post it?

I have no interest currently in Crossfire/SLI at the moment. Just want a system which will last a couple of years, then I'll look at upgrading properly to a better system overall with maybe Crossfire/SLI.
 
Well, its essentially the same but with a better PSU and a top end graphics card. Super overkill for your resolution GPU wise. I wouldn't bother getting a 290 if you don't plan on getting a new screen.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £113.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £110.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £61.99
Total : £681.95 (includes shipping : ).



The amount you saved on the Mobo/CPU i put straight on the GPU but the 280x is arguable more than enough at your resolution.
 
Intel Build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Arctic White £65.52
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £49.99
Total : £648.90 (includes shipping : £17.85).



AMD Build:

I don't see myself getting a new screen any time soon, so I decided to take the 290 out, put the 280 back in which then allowed me to keep the SSD and get a new case. Not sold on the case I've chosen at the moment, but it'll do for now. Will have another look through the cases tomorrow.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £113.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £110.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £61.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £29.99
Total : £628.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).



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I most likely won't be changing screens any time soon and when I do I will most likely upgrade into SLI/Crossfire at the same time, in around a year or so. Looking at these two at the moment, if anyone has any suggestions/other builds I may want to look at.
 
Afternoon, does anyone else have any suggestions? I'm going to make a purchase by end the of the night.

Would the i5 without an SSD be better for now, then later upgrade to an SSD in a couple of months? Or is it just better just to get the SSD with the 8320 from the get go?
 
case is pretty much down to your own style of what you like the look of, tbh if i had the money for a 280x id jump at it and save some money up for a 1080 screen or more, 1080 screens can be picked up pretty cheap now
 
kiel367 said:
case is pretty much down to your own style of what you like the look of, tbh if i had the money for a 280x id jump at it and save some money up for a 1080 screen or more, 1080 screens can be picked up pretty cheap now
Click to expand...

Thanks for your input. I'll wait until tonight before I order in case anyone else has any suggestions/advice.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £113.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £110.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £61.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Alpha Gaming Case - Black £32.99
2 x Arctic F12 PWM Case Fan - 120mm £4.39 (£8.78)
Total : £639.82 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Leaning on purchasing this as it would allow me to get the SSD with the cost difference between the Intel / AMD builds.

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YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G) £113.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £110.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £61.99
1 x BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - White/Black £49.99
Total : £648.94 (includes shipping : £12.50).



Apparently the card wouldn't have fitted the old case, so I've swapped it out.
 
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Avenged7Fold said:
A very decent upgrade there. I would check if the cases can accommodate your current cooler.
Click to expand...

Hey Avenged, I've changed my mind again.

I'm going to go for this Intel build below, then at a later date purchase an SSD.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280X TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £221.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Arctic White £65.52
1 x NZXT Hale Power 90+ 550W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £49.99
Total : £648.90 (includes shipping : £17.85).



Would you mind having a quick check over to make sure that everything is compatible and will fit? Mainly worried about the GPU in the case.

Current cooler is a Titan TTC-NK85TZ/V2 Fenrir CPU Cooler
 
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