Dodgy Motherboard

[Juan]

Ok, so I've been offline months now thanks to what seems to be a powersurge having fried my PC.

Thanks to shitty luck I am about to have the option of a 4th motherboard to get back up and running again. But I have a dilemma...

I bought one of these; http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentatio ... 1045&lid=1 for £95.

It has a dodgy DIMM port that screws it when it's booting or running, thankfully identified by my handy local Aria iFix jokers (Different story - I'll post the email for laughs) and I am about to RMA it where the seller is offering to refurb it and return it to me, but I know I could get the £100 (Including my postage) refunded if I want.

I am looking at alternatives as I don't fancy the idea of having to use a component I know was dodgy from the start, having been burnt by Grade B's before.

Since I bought it from a Chester based firm, via Amazon, the price for the Sapphire board has gone up by £50, and I am reluctant to go for cheaper boards knowing that the mobo is arguably the one component not to scrimp a few quid on. Can anyone find a nice socket 1366 Intel mobo with 6 DIMM ports for roughly that price instead? Or has anyone had items repaired under warranty previously and able to offer experiences to reassure me?

Love you long time.

[ash]

I RMAd a maxtor hard drive once, got a different one back (I think) xD never had any problems with it after that.

Not sure if it was a refurb drive or a brand new one though, soz.

[Juan]

Not repairable or replacable apparently. More expensive option it is! Alas.

[FragZero]

Plan B - Sandy Bridge!

[Heeuge]

Sadly, because the 1366 boards are now End of Life, any that are left can command a price premium. Because the CPU you have won't fit in any of the other configurations you're up shit creek with a faulty paddle.

Your options are:
¤ Fork out at least £125 for another 1366 board.
¤ Follow Frag's suggestion & move to a more mainstream solution.
¤ RRAAAAAMMMPAAAAAGE!

The cheapest outright is to get a replacement board for as cheap as you can. I've used gigabyte boards for years without issues (other peoples' experiences may vary).
If you decide to up sticks and relocate in the direction of SandyBridge you can reuse everything except your CPU in the new board - selling that on Ebay will help recoup the outlay of board+CPU.....

That 2nd option doesn't have to cost as much as you'd expect. As a quick example (and by no means would be the ultimate performance option), Scan have a CPU & board combo for the price of the 1366 board I linked to up there. ^

[Juan]

Gigabyte board it was. Aria had one on a web only deal at a smidge over £100. Jumped, bought, installed, sorted.

It's nice to have a working PC again after so long.

I don't think I'll ever try a home build again, but who knows. Closer to the time I have to I'll probably be far too tempted...

[ash]

tbh my current pc I bought from Dell, slightly customised, was quite nice. But after having it for a year or two, it constantly over heats (generally the graphics card) and it doesn't have any room to allow me to add more fans.

I've cleared it out of dust but in 2 weeks it all comes back again anyway And even when I have just cleaned it out, it over-heats if I play sc2. It only becomes usable in sc2 if I turn on the ATi over-clocking section and turn the fan speed up to 70%.

Its kinda stupid.

The general PC is quite nice for performance but the whole heat thing is really annoying. I have to have the side of the case open as well when I use it, which just makes the dust problem worse.

I think its really hard to win the 'DIY' vs 'Vendor' battle.

[Septih]

Never really looked into it myself, but I'm sure there are places that offer to build computers for you, dunno how much it adds to the price though.

[Roper]

I was half tempted to get one pre-built last time, but when I started comparing I really seemed to be able to get a fair bit more for my money building it myself still. I guess if a build ever went wrong it might put me off, but otherwise its kinda fun.

[Juan]

I spoke too soon. It crashes when I load games.

[Heeuge]

Did you load all drivers manually when you booted up or did windows sort them all out for you?

Check device manager to see if there are any yellow ! triangles indicating drivers are missing / incorrect (start > run > devmgmt.msc). Windows updates should find & fill in the gaps but it might be worth checking Gigabyte's site for their own latest version just in case.

Though Win 7 is better than XP at handling major hardware changes (I'm guessing you didn't get too many BSoD) there may be little incompatibilities with the default drivers - do you have a spare HDD you can build windows onto and test without destroying your current build?

If all your drivers are up to date and correct then it's time to check other hardware for faults. Can you reproduce the crash following specific steps such as loading the game / 3mins of actual game time. It could be something overheating (dust buildup over fans/vents?) or the PSU failing to provide the increased load requested by VGA card etc when firing a game up. If you don't have spares to test with, I'm sure Ian must do.

Does your CPU/motherboard have onboard VGA? If it does, try using that rather than the discrete VGA. You'll not get very high FPS but if it doesn't crash, it'll isolate the VGA / PSU as potential issue points.

Check event viewer (start > run > Eventvwr.msc > Windows Logs > System/Application) to see if there are any other hints. BSoD should be logged there.

[ash]

I was half tempted to get one pre-built last time, but when I started comparing I really seemed to be able to get a fair bit more for my money building it myself still. I guess if a build ever went wrong it might put me off, but otherwise its kinda fun.

main reason I went for this pre-build was because of the price, was a proper bargain, mostly due to heeuge's expertise in random sale offers and vouchers. I think I saved £250 off the price when I bought it. Was worth 1k, got it for about 750ish. Was when i7s were relatively new too, so its pretty tasty on that front.

[Roper]

Ah yeah that makes sense, I guess if you can find a decent offer like that its definitely worth it. And eliminates that scary moment when you put everything together and press the power button for the first time.

It also depends if you need an OS as the retail prices are stupid in my opinion compared to what companies like Dell must pay, and bumps up the price of your build.

[ash]

Yah but that depends if you are that bothered about the OS

Mine came with vista, and was formatted within 2 weeks.

I didn't buy from dell for their returns policy Just did it purely because it was cheaper for the better performance than building myself.

Currently I'm built with my totally legit copy of XP (cough cough)

Tried a 'legit' copy of Win7 too but due to my shitty wireless I dropped it after a few months cos it gave me lag in games. Unfortunate, because I kinda liked it.

[Juan]

Looks like it may be my GFX card. I have an N560GTX-ti that crashes in games, and a Radeon HD6770 that doesn't.

The drivers for both are less than a month old, but the 560 will crash with any of the last 3 driver releases.

Never rains.