New guts

[Xelene]

The better halves PC has been playing up recently, rebooting randomly then failing to POST until it had a chance to cool down. It had been getting pretty noisy so gave it a good old clean, swapped the 6950 out with a 7770 I had kicking about (she only plays the Sims and hidden object things anyway). Still no good so took out half the RAM and that helped a bit.

This morning got tasked with fix my PC this weekend please so ordering online was out of the question. Took myself down to Tottenham Court Rd with a bit of research beforehand so I could haggle them down.

Came back with the following components:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77MX-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £99.98
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML16GX3M2A1600C10) £74.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro Extreme Performance CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM3/AM2+/AM2) £26.99
Total : £393.35 (includes shipping : £9.50).



Mad haggling skills got them down to slightly lower than this, would have probably gone OcUK and got the sweet deal on the Sniper but it had to be sorted right now. Picked up a MATX build as she's getting her Mahoosive FT01 case replaced with something a little smaller.

So sad to say, the trusty old i7 920 12GB UD5 build has been put out to pasture. It was far from really needing to be upgraded (and i'm secretly hoping it's a PSU issue so it can end it's days quietly serving media). Just over 3 years old and it was still bloody fast, if a little toasty

She got lucky and nicked my Samsung 256 SSD as well.

 

[Mei]

This morning got tasked with fix my PC this weekend please so ordering online was out of the question. Took myself down to Tottenham Court Rd with a bit of research beforehand so I could haggle them down.

is that computer fair still on there? not been there in a long time, there was one where you walk down and its on 3 floors

anyway build looks nice^^ im sure it will be fast, and yeh maybe the psu, annoys me theres no easy way to clean them, i guess squirt can air in there safest way

 

[Xelene]

Dunno about the fair, I rarely go down there for a specific reason, but my office is like 5 minutes away so they get me on impulse buying.

Most of the shops have become Apple resellers or mobile phone shops. It's almost so bad that the best component shop is PC World. (My Nostromo and 7770 came from the purple shirts) Shows the effect online ordering has had.

I'd normally go to the place named after a childhood toy but thought i'd pop into a place around the corner as they had some Rampage motherboards in the display (Was eyeballing a Gene - something with decent onboard sound). They wanted £130 for the motherboard - but it was a ton online so I said beat that - and then they beat it and matched everything else.

Build is in, done with Windows updates. Wanted native SATA 3 for the SSD so Z77 it was. Clocked it to 4.0 by changing one thing in the BIOS and it runs cool enough so that's good. Sure it will go faster, but it's more a point of principle for me than a race (and frankly if it pops up a warning about overclocking and defaults to stock again, then it will stay like that until I go tweaking again).

Blasted the PSU with spray air, it's a good model and running a bit noisier these days so... (BeQuiet Darkpower Pro)

 

[Xelene]

Blah, it was the PSU.

After the rebuild it was still powering down randomly, not under load or anything. Yet would run prime stable for 8 hours over clocked.

Stuck a Corsair HX-750 Gold in it to replace and it's all fine now.

Shame my BeQuiet is out of warranty so will need another PSU to stick run what is probably a perfectly fine i7 920.

Oh well upgrades are always good