I actually mentioned this in that other thread—you don't really need to start a whole new topic just to ask what kind of budget you're working with.
Personally, I’d probably lean toward passive cooling—since you aren't really into gaming, those cards are basically silent anyway. But seriously, though, how much cash are we talking about for this GPU?
If he’s just setting this up for personal use at home, then what’s the big deal? Why would anyone bother buying software from some shady guy when you can just download it for free and legally? I mean—even Microsoft provides the direct download links themselves. All you really need is an original product key—maybe ask a friend or a neighbor who works over at a place like FedEx if they can help you snag a Windows 7 product key.
Now, if he needs it for a business... well, that's a whole different story. I wouldn't go there.
Here’s a link where you can grab the original Windows 7 files. It’s completely legit and free to download.
You'll find all the different versions there, so just pick whichever one fits your needs. Since it's an ISO file, you can just burn it onto a blank DVD and you've basically got an official Windows 7 DVD ready to go. As for getting a product key—maybe try checking eBay to see if anyone is actually selling them? Just a heads-up, though: you can't download Windows Ultimate and then try to use a product key meant for something like Windows Home Premium. That won't work—it won't activate the software.
Check out this link and look under: Windows 7 ISO download links:
Is it just the tower, or should I include the monitor too? If we're talking just the tower, it's roughly 700-$267, but with the monitor, it'll be closer to $400.
macOS was throwing an error when I tried to format my USB drive—I actually thought it would recognize the device just fine, but once you hit that format button, the error pops up. That’s why I reached out to you in the first place.
Benjamin King2 makes a good point there. It seems like drives used to be way more affordable before everything went sideways with the flooding over in China. Hopefully, things have stabilized enough now that they've finally dropped the prices back down. That's great 😬
The only way you're going to pull this off is if you jump into the BIOS first, switch the setting to IDE, wipe the drive, and then do a fresh install of macOS. Though, honestly, I'm not sure if it's even worth all that hassle if you're just using that hard drive for testing purposes anyway.
Honestly, you’d probably be much better off just formatting the drive and doing a clean install of all your drivers—it usually solves everything in one go. Plus, you should definitely grab that new graphics card Fiona linked you.
If you're looking to run SLI or CrossFire, you really need a beefy processor—otherwise, you're just staring down a massive bottleneck. And what does that leave you with? Well, I won't even get started on the fact that you'll also need an incredibly powerful, high-quality power supply to pull it all off.
If you’re holding out for the latest architecture, just hang tight and see how those prices fluctuate. But if you're just itching to get something under your belt right now, you might want to look at an i5 3570k paired with a 7950 or a GTX 670.
It’s true that the 1155 socket is getting a bit dated—but honestly, don't go thinking you'll see a massive jump in performance just by jumping to the 1150 socket. That’s just my take on it. I’m actually still rocking an even older 1156 setup with an i5 750, and so far, I haven't had any trouble running games on it, even with stock settings. So, just think about whether it's worth dropping a ton more cash on a newer socket for maybe a few percentage points of difference? If you're happy to spend the extra, though, then go for it! 👍
Honestly, a massive jump would be stepping up to the NVIDIA GTX 780 that just hit the market—though I'm not entirely sure when it'll actually land in local stores here in the States. Also, you didn't mention how much cash you're looking to drop on a new card?
It looks like you didn't format the disk or partition during your Windows installation. Honestly, the best move would be to just start the Windows installation process over again—when you hit that part where it asks about partitions, just wipe everything out, delete all the existing ones, and then resize them however you want. That should do the trick.
Jesse Brown90, I see you're just messing with us at this point 😬 Seriously, every couple of months you come back with the exact same question—we suggest a GPU, and then it's just a loop of the same thing over and over again. Look, if you’re actually happy with the performance you're getting from that current card, why not just stick with it and call it a day? Maybe take a look at that Crysis 3 video again—who knows, maybe there's some way to run the game without needing a DirectX 11 card after all.
Hey there—would you mind helping me resize this image so it stays animated? I tried messing around with MS Paint just now, but once I scaled it down to sve ispod 75 x75, it ended up looking way too tiny. Is there a better program out there for handling this? Thanks so much! 🙂