New PC Build, looking for suggestions

[riversend]

On that drive, if you do not need it do not get it. Adding it later is easy enough if you decide it is critical for some activity. If you have a current running version of the Windows load you want to put on the new build then it is relatively easy to use a flash drive to do the install. All you need is the product key.

 

[mentalcase87]

Ok so I have ordered the system now! =)
Now on my old pc I want to make sure everything still works so I can part it out on craigslist or amazon. When it died it had initially just over heated and shut down. I could smell some burning and knew it was the PSU... Stupidly after 10 mins I figured what the hell lets see if it powers on, well it did and about 5 seconds in a bright flash and this mofo is dead! So now I would like to try and use the PSU from this system and get it booted and see if things work still.

My setup was

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-730SS 730W Modular LED Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817152036 the dead part

OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227289

AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0GHz Black Edition Quad-core Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103471

GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3HP ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128373

EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512-P3-N879-AR Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130416

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148377

 

[krnmastersgt]

Where did the bright flash come from? If you know the PSU was burning you should have immediately disconnected EVERYTHING from it and then tried testing the PSU while it was not connected to anything. As it is, you may have just gone from a faulty PSU (which a warranty might have covered) to potentially multiple dead parts.

 

[Termie]

I see you did not really need any convincing to invest in a quality PSU. You made a wise decision.

 

[mentalcase87]

Flash was from the PSU for sure and I knew it was beyond stupid. I had unplugged it all right away and it sat for at least 10 minutes. And was cool by then, I was doing something I needed to send to my email and I was already trying to figure out a pc build so I said eh f it and see if turns on and I can send it. I knew what was likely to happen. And it was 4 years old so I knew warranty was done. I don't believe if anything is broken it can harm this new PSU but I wanted to make sure and that it's compatible. I would plug it in boot os and then power it down.

 

[mentalcase87]

Also since I have never tested anything and always been lucky with my builds what test should I run once this thing is up and running to make sure everything is good to go if it boots with no issues?

 

[Termie]

Also since I have never tested anything and always been lucky with my builds what test should I run once this thing is up and running to make sure everything is good to go if it boots with no issues?

Use 3dMark11 to make sure you're in the ballpark of other systems. Your rig should score around 9000.

 

[mentalcase87]

Thanks Termie I will use that. Everyone thanks a lot for the help. I can't wait to get this thing built!

Would anyone advise me against trying to use my new PSU to try and boot the old system to check parts are ok?

And a more complicated question. 128GB is plenty of space and I should be able to put loads of software and games on it. But am curious as to what the best way to go about moving stuff back and forth is. Music, pictures, docs and so are on obvious to me. But for games and software I am not so sure. Also is my old HDD a fast enough drive? I don't want the transfer process to be slow since the SSD will fly.

 

[mentalcase87]

Nm I am just special some times lol.

 

[mfenn]

Would anyone advise me against trying to use my new PSU to try and boot the old system to check parts are ok?

Nothing is guaranteed when it comes to parts that have suffered a bad voltage spike, but it probably won't cause any harm.

And a more complicated question. 128GB is plenty of space and I should be able to put loads of software and games on it. But am curious as to what the best way to go about moving stuff back and forth is. Music, pictures, docs and so are on obvious to me. But for games and software I am not so sure. Also is my old HDD a fast enough drive? I don't want the transfer process to be slow since the SSD will fly.

Most software you will have to reinstall because they spread their files all over the system as well as the registry. Steam is an exception in that you can just copy the whole Steam folder over and it will rebuilt itself in place.

Your old HDD will never touch an SSD's speed, but it is fine by HDD standards.

 

[mentalcase87]

Ok, I just wanted to make sure that I shouldn't just buy a new secondary as well. I know the speed difference is a lot which was my reason for going ssd. Anything that doesn't have a load to it will be stored on the second. And games that I'm not playing atm. But if I decided I wanted to play it I would want to move it over. I know I can create syslinks but wasn't sure if someone made a program by now to handle it since most people grab smaller ssd.

Anyways thanks a lot for the help I really appreciate it all.

 

[riversend]

With the 128GB drive you just need to pay attention to how many games you have loaded at any given time. Most folks do not have a problem. Unless you just have to have access to 10 games at a time and all of your previous saves for the past few years you will be fine. Setting up your Windows libraries correctly for default save locations etc for media will be extremely helpful as well, but sounds like you have that wired.

 

[mentalcase87]

And my old PC lives!!! lol I got a older power supply hooked up to it, it was only rated at 300W so I couldn't hook up my graph card or all the fans but most of it lite up and the system fully booted. Checking the bios everything is there, so it looks like the PSU was a champ and saved my system. Now to get home and hook it up to the new one and double check then part this old lady off.

 

[Cerb]

And my old PC lives!!! lol I got a older power supply hooked up to it, it was only rated at 300W so I couldn't hook up my graph card or all the fans but most of it lite up and the system fully booted. Checking the bios everything is there, so it looks like the PSU was a champ and saved my system. Now to get home and hook it up to the new one and double check then part this old lady off.

Definitely run a memory test for a few passes, after the PSU going *poof*. Usually, if the motherboard is undamaged, everything is OK, but RAM tends to be one of the more common parts to die by voltage surge, and it won't necessarily make its failure known right away, in actual use.

If it all looks OK, and memtest passes, then the PSU likely sacrificed itself correctly, and the rest of the PC is fine.

 

[mentalcase87]

Cerb thanks for the input, running memtest shortly. Is there any tool that is well known for all around checks? I would like to also check the HDD since I am bringing it over to my new build. I want to know that it's running at it's best. I don't want to replace it, but I surely don't want it slowing my new build down at all. If some tool has a memtest and hdd all in one id shoot for that. I see a bunch of system health checks in a quick search but figured id ask the pros lol.

 

[Cerb]

Honestly, memtest and spending a little time gaming are probably the most telling ways to test, if it is otherwise stable. CPUs tend to be quite robust, and I've never encountered one that failed without other components also being taken out. RAM, OTOH, can fail at the drop of a hat. Voltage regulation that's damaged should cause instability when put under varied loads, which gaming would do quite nicely.

A true test-everything application would need much deeper knowledge of the hardware than anything will reasonably be able to have, so it's not really a viable option. Some repeatable errors are hard to track down, and rely on specific unexpected things going wrong, so you really can't be absolutely certain everything is perfectly fine (or, you can pay through the nose for server hardware ).

If it passes memtest, plays games, and nothing on the mobo looks bad, it's probably wasted effort worrying too much more about it.

 

[mentalcase87]

Holy cow I feel like such a noob at this point, here I am with yet another question =/ For obvious reasons I am a little paranoid about the PSU now. While it's hooked up to my old rig I notice that it is quite warm to the touch...Like it actually stings a little to keep my hand on it and I am not doing anything special, only 5 tabs in chrome and some background tasks. as of right now my cpu is min 41C and max 46C. I know this PSU is supposed to only kick the fan on at certain times but I am a little worried at this point.

It looks like the fan has finally kicked on and as expected I can feel hot air blowing out. This thing sounds quite noisy so far though. It almost sounds like a little fly is flying around the room but it's the PSU fan.

And upon looking at the reviews it seems to be a common problem... hmmm I don't know if this is something I can or can't get used to. I have the cover to my case off, but I have a transparent sided case with no fans on the holes so I can be sure ill hear it all the time.

 

[Termie]

Holy cow I feel like such a noob at this point, here I am with yet another question =/ For obvious reasons I am a little paranoid about the PSU now. While it's hooked up to my old rig I notice that it is quite warm to the touch...Like it actually stings a little to keep my hand on it and I am not doing anything special, only 5 tabs in chrome and some background tasks. as of right now my cpu is min 41C and max 46C. I know this PSU is supposed to only kick the fan on at certain times but I am a little worried at this point.

It looks like the fan has finally kicked on and as expected I can feel hot air blowing out. This thing sounds quite noisy so far though. It almost sounds like a little fly is flying around the room but it's the PSU fan.

Which PSU did you end up with? I'm not sure it has a fan that only spins on load. Make sure the fan is at least spinning at startup, otherwise something could be wrong.

Why are you concerned that it's damaged? Because you hooked it up to your old motherboard? That all worked, correct? If so, I don't think you could have damaged the PSU.

 

[mentalcase87]

The TX650 and I had already seen that the fan only turns on at load, for barely doing anything on my pc I would have to wonder why it's at "load" now.

This is quite annoying though listing to this, I get the feeling on my newer setup I will hear it all the time. I am not sure how easy returns are to newegg but I am sort of entertaining the idea.

 

[Termie]

The TX650 and I had already seen that the fan only turns on at load, for barely doing anything on my pc I would have to wonder why it's at "load" now.

This is quite annoying though listing to this, I get the feeling on my newer setup I will hear it all the time. I am not sure how easy returns are to newegg but I am sort of entertaining the idea.

Where did you read that the tx650 only runs at load? I think that's incorrect. If it's too loud for you, you'll need to buy a more expensive model.

 

[mentalcase87]

I have never done a return through newegg, is the process a pain? I assume we get stuck paying for shipping?

 

[Termie]

Yes there is a restocking fee plus the shipping, which could be $10-15.

 

[mentalcase87]

My old setup passed memtest and actually performed better with gamed this time oddly lol. But my new rig I'm having a issue with. I already have two sticks of memory in, it's screwed into the case and I don't have the cpu yet. If I plug the power in and the cpu power I can not get the mother board to at least turn on and error beep. To my knowledge they should turn on even without a cpu but you won't get anywhere at all since it has no way to compute. Is this mobo possibly dead? Or is the missing cpu why? I'm not opposed to taking it out of the case since it only takes a minute but figured I could get it going inside it.

 

[mfenn]

The mobo won't do jack without a CPU, it has no processing capability of its own.

 

[mentalcase87]

This may be a good time to consider upgrading your optical, if they are basic drives.

NewEgg has a truly awesome dual-layer capable ASUS DRW-24B1ST drive for $19.99 shipped. The drive has almost 2800 5-star reviews and burns everything but HD/Blu-ray. I've bought 3 so far and all have been excellent for me.

clickie:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827135204

Lol looks like I will need to buy this! I didn't realize that all connection types were sata now and that the mobo wouldn't have any band connectors like my old CD drive has.