Friend's AII X4 640 rig kicked the bucket recently.

[VirtualLarry]

Or at least, he was using it, when there was a thunderstorm outside. PC turned off, he turned it on again, it turned off again, and now it won't turn on anymore.

I had given him a battery backup (new) around 6 months ago, but he was too lazy to hook it up. (And now, instead, he blames "the universe" for "his bad luck"...)

I figured I'd throw in another PSU at some point, to see how in fact dead his rig is.

His PSU is an EVGA 430W. It might still be under warranty, but I doubt that covers "thunderstorm damage".

I walked him through hooking up his "backup PC', an A6-5400K rig with 4GB DDR3. He complained it was slow for some reason. I was like, "duh?".

 

[UsandThem]

Well, he has no one to blame besides himself. Hooking up the UPS would have taken him all of two minutes.

Having lived in the midwest and now the south, I wouldn't leave my PC plugged in without a quality UPS with all the lightening storms we have. Heck, about 14 days ago we were without power for two days after a storm. Duke Energy had to fix a ton of lines that were damaged, and a few times the power came on for a few minutes here and there before going back out again. Situations like that are tough on unprotected sensitive electronics.

I find it crazy some people will spend $800 on a video card, but balk at the price of a UPS.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah, people are pretty stupid. And they'll tend to ignore when they're at fault.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Think it's worth trying to save the box? 4x4GB DDR2-800 (Hynix-branded cheaper Chinese RAM), AII X4 640, mobo is an AM2+ micro-ATX from 2007-2008.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Think it's worth trying to save the box? 4x4GB DDR2-800 (Hynix-branded cheaper Chinese RAM), AII X4 640, mobo is an AM2+ micro-ATX from 2007-2008.

Could be worth a shot, if you can find a cheap (or free) AM2+ board. Or alternatively an AM3(+) board, but that'll require new RAM. Those old X4's are still decent for basic stuff.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157581

ASRock N68C-GS4 FX 95W Socket AM3+ / AM3 / AM2+ / AM2 processors NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

That's the only AM2+ mobo new at Newegg. $49.99 + ship. Not a bad price. Only three eggs. Two DDR2 slots, and two DDR3 slots. Sort of a hybrid AM2+/AM3+ board, apparently.

Edit: Or I could just get a regular AM3+ board, since the CPU is AM3, and ditch the Chinese DDR2, and get some DDR3.

Edit: I found a Biostar TA970(+?) AM3+ mobo on my shelf.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138372

BIOSTAR TA970 Ver. 5.3 AM3+ AMD 970 + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

I told him I would give him that mobo, if he wanted to buy the DDR3 RAM to use it, with his existing X4 640 CPU and SSD and HDDs and video card. So, free $50 mobo, if he pays $60 for 16GB DDR3, or $30 for 8GB DDR3.

Edit: Newegg on ebay has some Team Dark 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1600 CAS9 1.5V kits for $49.99. I picked up a couple, in case my friend wants one of those. I'll give him a cheap option for the RAM too. If not, I'll have some spare 16GB kits of DDR3 around. Useful, I guess.

 

[bigboxes]

How far up the chain did the surge get? Have we tried just swapping out the PSU? If it got to the mobo then did it get any other parts as well? My point is where do you draw the line on costs? Also, this is a five your old CPU that was not high end back then. I'm just wondering how painful it is to use that platform. If I were him I'd take him up on that offer and use your AM3+ mobo and buy the cheap DDR3 ram. If it were me I'd scrap the whole thing and build a new rig completely.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's lightning. Very unpredictable.

You'll have to stress-test each component (motherboard, RAM, CPU, HDDs, etc.) for a bit to catch any gradual failures, then replace whatever doesn't pass.

 

[Iron Woode]

It's lightning. Very unpredictable.

You'll have to stress-test each component (motherboard, RAM, CPU, HDDs, etc.) for a bit to catch any gradual failures, then replace whatever doesn't pass.

this.

lightning took out my friend's system that I had built for him.

oddly it was using the ASRock N68C-GS FX board.

the cpu was fine as was the hdd but the motherboard became flaky so I decided to recycle it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, I've got a Q8200 Core2Quad, and 2x2GB DDR2-800 (I think Corsair? It's a name-brand at least), and a really nice Gigabyte mobo that I kind of hate to get rid of (P45 chipset), that I could hook him up with.

I also have an ancillary Skylake G4400 rig here, again with only 1x4GB DDR4-2133, that I could throw an SSD in and put Windows 10 on for him.

 

[bigboxes]

Hmm, I've got a Q8200 Core2Quad, and 2x2GB DDR2-800 (I think Corsair? It's a name-brand at least), and a really nice Gigabyte mobo that I kind of hate to get rid of (P45 chipset), that I could hook him up with.

I also have an ancillary Skylake G4400 rig here, again with only 1x4GB DDR4-2133, that I could throw an SSD in and put Windows 10 on for him.

No, your friend needs a Broadwell-E. You know that Core2Quad would melt if you open up a dozen tabs, start a 60p video somewhere, run word and an email client, then I usually have an FTP client open, files are going to different HDDs, might crack an encoder open... Real friends don't let friends Core2Quad. Not when there's a Broadwell-E waiting to be bought as a gift. Dig deep, VirtualLarry, dig deep.

 

[VirtualLarry]

No, your friend needs a Broadwell-E. You know that Core2Quad would melt if you open up a dozen tabs, start a 60p video somewhere, run word and an email client, then I usually have an FTP client open, files are going to different HDDs, might crack an encoder open... Real friends don't let friends Core2Quad. Not when there's a Broadwell-E waiting to be bought as a gift. Dig deep, VirtualLarry, dig deep.

LOL. Guess I'll have to start saving today, for 20 years down the line when Broadwell-E 10-cores hit $100 on ebay.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I replaced the PSU with a ThermalTake TR2-430 PSU, and now all is well with his PC.