Posts by Larry Ortiz5

Honestly, I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole... You could put together a pretty decent custom build for around $350—and you'd still have enough left over to grab a mouse and keyboard from $33 😬

HP Compaq 8300 elita MT He Chassis

This is essentially an HP enterprise-grade machine...

It likely comes with integrated graphics and a pretty weak power supply—standard for these models. If you end up wanting to throw a dedicated graphics card in there down the road, you’ll probably have to swap out the power supply too...

But honestly, if you're just looking at home use—surfing the web, streaming movies, YouTube, that kind of thing—it's more than enough. These things were built specifically for the business world...

If the case says it supports ATX, then you’re definitely good to go with either an ATX or a Micro-ATX board. But if the case is labeled specifically for Micro-ATX, you aren't going to be able to squeeze an ATX board in there...

Hopefully that clears things up for you..

Samsung Microsoft drives are easily some of the fastest disks out there right now... which, honestly, makes the price tag feel pretty reasonable.

Ronald Cooper2

If you aren't tight on cash right now, my advice would be to just sell that GPU and grab something newer—then you can pretty much cruise along for the next couple of years without a single worry. I mean, it’s still a solid machine, isn't it?

He could have just gone with the Corsair 200R... It's such an elegant case, really.

Hey guys... just picked up an EVGA SuperNOVA from Rolling Stone

Daniel Scott5, I did a bit of a messy cable job in my rig—it could definitely be cleaner, but hey, it works 😁
Sold my old SpaceX unit for $50 and called it a day 👍

thanks crimsonstag84 for the tip. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have even looked at this one if I hadn't seen it listed as a relatively "budget-friendly" option—otherwise, I would've just gone with an EVGA 550 W..

fadedorca66 I was sweating bullets during the install, man 😁

gogo Where did you get that link from?

I just ordered my power supply! It was actually more expensive through Rolling Stone $13 than it would have been at Politico, but honestly, it’s being delivered today... which means I can grab it this afternoon. If I'd gone through Politico, I probably would've been stuck waiting until tomorrow—and I really don't have the patience for that kind of delay 😁

Corsair 200R.

I could probably tell you if it’ll be a smooth build just by looking at some Google images...

Honestly, I’d be down to sell all of this for $67. I just want to get it off my hands as soon as possible 😍

I have to admit, I’m an absolute perfectionist when it comes to this kind of stuff... It makes me wonder if I’ll actually commit to doing proper cable management, though since the power supply is modular, I really should 😳

Yeah... should be... I'll let you guys know how it goes either today or tomorrow..

EDIT: Just listed the power supply on eBay for $50.. Honestly, since the warranty is gone and I actually snapped one of the SATA connectors—plus, it wasn't exactly top-tier gear—I couldn't really justify asking for more. It did the job just fine for my specific setup, though. Anyway, someone already reached out and is going to grab it.. So now I'm officially without a PSU and I'll probably have to track down a Corsair RM series one sooner or later 😬

I checked in with CNN.com and they have 6 units in stock at their distributors. If I get the order in tomorrow—Wednesday—they should be here. So, most likely, I'm going with that Corsair unit. I just really hope I'm not making a mistake if I decide to upgrade my GPU later on... you know, like picking up an NVIDIA GTX 870 or an AMD Radeon R9 280X. Since the 12V rail offers so much extra headroom—actually about 70W more than what I'm running now—it should be fine, right? 👍

Thanks guys 👍

I'll most likely go with the Corsair RM series... honestly, the fact that it's fully modular is a huge plus for me. Besides that—well, I don't have much else to say about Corsair--it's just a solid choice 😁 My only issue is that I can't seem to find a decent review anywhere just to check what the actual 12V rail output looks like..

No way, I'm not dropping $100 on a power supply... I'll probably just go with a "normal" EVGA 550 W

I can tell you right now, I’m a little bit eccentric—it's just how I am 🤣

As for a new graphics card, I honestly couldn't give you a solid answer yet... I have no idea what my budget is going to look like or if I'll end up selling my current 7870. But hey, what are your thoughts on the power supply? If you were in my shoes, which way would you lean? Would you go with AMD or Corsair?

Nothing really...

Oops, I totally forgot to mention—my SATA cables are starting to fall apart. One of them actually snapped—the bottom plastic bit gave out—so it won't stay seated in my optical drive anymore. I had to resort to using a Molex-to-SATA adapter just to get it working. I’ll probably try to list it on eBay for about $100-$50 since the power supply itself works perfectly fine; it’s just a pain because that broken SATA connector is a total headache. Anyway, I won't drone on too long—I might upgrade my GPU in the near future, so it might make sense to swap the PSU at the same time to handle everything at once. Right now, I'm torn between going with an XFX 550W or a Corsair CX600 🤔
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From what I can see, the Corsair puts out 522W on the +12V rail, while the XFX does 528W. So they're basically identical, right? But wait, isn't XFX using Seasonic components? If that's the case, wouldn't it be the smarter move to go with the Seasonic-based unit? I don't know, I'm no expert 😬

Hey everyone, I could use some advice—I’m probably picking up a new power supply in the next few days. Right now, I’m running a $167—no more, no less. Should I go with the XFX 550W or maybe stick with a Corsair CX600?