a Stupid question

[panhead74]

A friend of mine from a gaming forum suggested that I post this here and I might get some help from some knowledgeable folks:

Recently I started having troubles with my 3 year old home built computer shutting down on me. I wasn't sure of the problem, so I started with the most likely culprit: power supply. I replaced the original with an Antec Truepower 480, plugged everything in, and pushed the button. I got a blue spark, a puff of smoke and a hearty "HIYO...Oh, sh**".

The thing is dead...I mean doornail dead...as in "If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it'd be pushin' up the daisies!" dead.

I was out pricing a new m/b and processor (not sure if I also fried the video card and soundcard) and for a just little more I can get a factory built machine that's supposedly about the same as what I just blew up.

Anybody have any recommendations for a decent cheap machine? I haven't been in the market for a computer since I built the old one and I haven't really kept up on the developments. I don't have the money (or need) for a high end gamer...I'm not playing Doom, or anything, but I would like to be able to play Civ IV, RR Tycoon3 and some racing sims (Nascar Racing 2003, GTR)...I'm not really up for building another computer; I'd really rather just plug in the monitor and turn the thing on.

In the meantime, I appropriated an old machine that was sitting in the storeroom at work, so that my kids can do homework and we can access the internet. It's an old HP with a Celeron 900, onboard graphics and no AGP slot. Like I said, it's adequate (barely) for surfing the net (it's the rough equivalent of cruising the "information superhighway" in a clapped-out '62 Rambler with a straight six and a leaky radiator), but the graphics capabilities limit us to "solitaire".

I've seen a couple of eMachines, a couple of HP's, and a couple of Compaqs, but I really don't know what to look for. One guy from MicroCenter was showing me an HP with an AMD Athlon 64, 3200 and an ATI X200 (or was it eXpress 200?) video card and 512mb ram for $500 after a rebate and told me it would be comparable to the one that I just fried. I'm a little leery of HP's (don't know why).

The comparably priced eMachine 6420 has an Athlon 3400 with a GeForce 6100 and a gig of ram.

Dead computer:
Gigabyte GA-8SG667 (SiS 648 chipset);
Socket 478 P4 2.8;
512 mb pc2700 DDR333;
ATI 9700 PRO;
Audigy2 ZS platinum;
40 gig Seagate Baracuda;
300 gig Seagate Baracuda;
generic CD-ROM and floppy;
Sony double layer DVD RW.

Any thoughts?

Like I said, I'd really rather not hassle with rounding up all of the hardware and putting the whole thing together, but I don't know what to look for in CompUSA.

Thanks.

 

[zagood]

Price range would help us the most.

-z

 

[panhead74]

Under $1000 USD

 

[vanvock]

Sorry I'm not up on the OEM's, just wanted to say welcome to the forums. I've got a '57 pan, what's yours?

 

[Markbnj]

It's not a stupid question, and I can understand why you don't want to build one. I have kids too, and although I enjoyed putting mine together, I can definitely see the "plug it in and turn it on" point of view, especially if that is followed by "take the kid to basketball."

You can get quite a lot of prebuilt for <$1000 these days. There aren't that many vendors you are going to seriously consider. I like Dell, and a lot of other people here don't. We have one Compaq, but I don't care for either their build quality or the amount of crap they loaded it up with. But it was a cheapie ( < $700 ) so I guess you get what you pay for.

If I were you I would go play around on Dell's site, or Gateway. If you want to get the absolute most prebuilt for the money, keep an eye out for a computer show in your local area. These are far smaller events than they used to be, but you can still get rock bottom prices.

But I think the "peace of mind" choice is Dell, imho. Not an invitation to a flame war on Dell quality, but they are big, have a great support website where you can always access the specs and all necessary drivers, and good prices.

Good luck.

 

[Slowlearner]

Your pc was a pretty good setup, and most of the components could be reused - it would help to know what exactly was fried. You are looking in the right direction, i.e. A64s etc. So I would strongly recommend you rebuild.

Having used them at work, I know HP's with amd processors are zippy reliable pcs - I hate the inside of their cases though. That Microcenter HP is not bad. I recently neded two pcs for work quickly and so bought emachines T3302 or something for 450$ each at Office Depot and looked at them carefully, and everything looked good: foxcon mb, sata/pata connections, integrated video but had a pcie16 slot - definitely fine for office work. I have heard that emachines, now part of gateway, has improved in quality and reliability so we will have to see.

 

[panhead74]

Thanks for the replies!

I'm not sure exactly what was fried. The spark and puff of smoke came from the area of the mobo where the 20 pin psu plugs into the mobo. Since I don't have another pc, I can't test the various parts to see if I also killed them.

 

[letdown427]

You could just try buying a replacement motherboard? Maybe it was just that ones time to go? The shutting down problems may have been motherboard related somehow. If that PC was all you need/want, then you might as well just keep it! A new mobo is definately under $1000, just buy the same one again?

Although obviously there's the possibility the PSU is too much for the mobo, can't say I know if that's possible though?

Was it shutting down straight away? Or after a while? It could be a fan has died and so something was overheating maybe? something like that. Just thought I'd offer that, as everyone else has just dumped your poor trusty old pal for scrap!

If it was actually performing a windows shutdown, it could be a virus or something, it's certainly easy to call winshutdown from a program.

As always, having someone else with a pc to test bits is always helpful, but if that's too much hassle, I suppose using the time is money idea, then yeah, get a dell.