USB Port Problem

Okay, so are there any computer companies that you guys recommend over others? Any to absolutely stay away from? What do you think about All-in-One computers? I'm very hesitant about those, but that could be just because I've never owned one before. but they seem like they'd lack the customization capabilities of a desktop.

But HH Gregg and Newegg look like they have some decent deals going on right now. I may need to replace the graphic card on some of them, but everything else looks good (and yes, I know that this would likely void the warranty and that I need to make sure the power supply is up to snuff).

Also, most of the computers I'm finding have the Radeon cards. How bad are those issues?

Hyper,

If I can find a deal at HH Gregg, I can pick one up in-store by Friday or Saturday morning, I hope. Never been there, but consider it a slightly cheaper Best Buy. If I'm ordering off of Newegg or Amazon, I think that this weekend may be a wash. But I'll live.

Would you guys mind if I showed you some potential options, in addition to the ones that you've posted already? Good, because I'm going to do it anyways! (thanks for all the help again, all).


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883227383

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883227384 (I can deal with the stupid logo)

http://www.amazon.com/CyberpowerPC-G...1764617&sr=1-1

All I gotta say is "HH Greg sells computers?"

That store is like what the classic "appliance" stores were in the 80's. May as well goto a car lot if you want the shopping experience for free.

NeWay...

While it may cause some trouble (might have to call up MSFT's activation hotline after the change), you could simply replace the board with one that will fit your current hardware making express shipping (if any shipping is involved) more tollerable. Basically you'd reassemble the rig and immediately boot into safe mode (F8). At this point you would then want to install the motherboard specific drivers from their CD and reboot normally.

This works most the time, but since you've changed a major component it will trigger windows to think it's been migrated to a totally different PC and consider itself unactivated (requiring a 5 minute phone call to the automated MSFT activation line). I actually had to do the same thing with my backup laptop because the newer board had fried, but I had an older model/same series "parts" laptop in the closet.

Again, this is a minimalistic, simple replacement method with room to grow so keep that in mind when reading my post. Sure I could get into the window shopping mode like everybody else, but I did a similar hot-swap sort of build for my dad last year and it was rather quick & painless.

The Template: Your Current Board
At glance, it looks like your current board was an intel based Socket LGA 775, NB: Intel G31 Express Chipset, SB: Intel ICH7, Built-in VGA. Hmm, I see the RED FLAG going up as this is a Micro-ATX board which means your case could also be smaller (food for thought). *swats ctrl+B & ctrl-I fingers*

Here's a couple suggestions that you could try that should work for this simple-swap method.

ASRock: G31M-GS R2.0 EDIT: NM, it's only sold in the UK and back ordered

But, here's it's slightly lesser (4Gb RAM limit and 10/100 NIC) U.S. cousin:
G31M-S R2.0 Friday Shipping~$21, Saturday Shipping~$12 (a few dollars less than NewEgg). I've never dealt with buying PC core hardware through Amazon, but the last build I did was using an ASRock board and haven't had an issue in the year it's been up (for most of the last year or so).

EDIT: Well crap, I didn't see any Gigabyte or ASUS boards listed that stayed within the limits AND were still for sale. There are two LGA 775's listed on the MicroCenter site that someone mentioned above, but then you'd have to buy new DDR3 memory as well (making the upgrade already more than the $7 difference).

There is no point in rescuing a single core P4 socket 775 CPU.

Its much more cost effective to just bite the bullet and buy a New MB, CPU and Memory.

Even the Sandy Bridge based "celerons" are a HUGE upgrade over a P4.

Go with Nvidia graphics cards, avoiding AMD/ATI.
The brand I prefer with those is also PNY, because they're usually cheaper while being very reliable and nice.

You'll have a lot less headaches, especially with driver updates, if you go with Nvidia.


Dell is a pretty reliable pre-built computer company, but you get a bunch of junk software extra as well.
I vote for building it yourself.

Okay, related question to my search for parts/new comp: how do I tell how much power a system NEEDS? Basically, if a system has a power supply of X Watts, but the PSU is the only complaint about the system that I'm seeing, how do I tell what kind of PSU I'd need to replace it?

Basically, one of the rigs I'm looking at has a very cheap 700 W PSU, but 700 W good PSUs are a little expensive. How do I know if a 600 W PSU will be good enough to replace it?

Basically the real reason you're concerned with wattage is your graphics card.

Most systems you could get away with a 300-400W PSU otherwise.
Check to see if your video card has any minimum recommendations for PSU strength.

The other thing you're concerned with is amperage on the rails and the total wattage it supports.

Most PSUs will have an informational sticker or specs someplace to tell you this:

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

As per Hyperstrike's PSU picture, it's about the available wattage on the +12v rail that can make or break your GPU power needs.

Unfortunately, most graphics card companies aren't straight forward on how much power each graphics card requires. They'll say you need a PSU with "so much" wattage, which doesn't give a complete picture. Some PSU's have enough total wattage, but will fall short on the +12v rail. Fortunately there are some benchmarks out there that help show, in general, each cards expected consumption.

Here's a chart from 3d Geeks about "current" graphics card power consumption.

And another from Tom's Hardware.

Both of those should be fairly recent.

You can also look cards up individually at GPUReview in the compare cards section. It will list the official maximum power draw down in the Details section. Of course overclocked cards will draw a bit more.

Same here. Antec in my last 3 builds. Antec case also, on the current build.