Right now, my best guess is either a failing power supply or just a massive buildup of dust. If I were in your shoes, I'd pop the case open—if you have some canned air handy, give everything a really thorough cleaning. Once that's done, fire it up and just let it run for a bit. If the same issue keeps popping up after the cleanup, maybe see if a buddy can lend you a spare PSU to test? That way you'll know for sure if yours is shot before you go out and buy a new one. By the way, you might want to grab a tool like CPU-Z to keep an eye on those temperatures... http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html If you want, grab a screenshot of the readings so we can take a look together.
192.168.0.1 — once you're there, just use "admin" as the password and hit enter. That should drop you right into your router's settings menu, where you can easily tweak your Wi-Fi name and password. Just head over to the "Wireless" section in the bottom right, then click on "Primary Network" on the left side to find the configuration settings. Go ahead and update the SSID and the password, and then see if your laptop manages to reconnect to the internet okay.
Do you happen to have any benchmarks handy? I was checking out YouTube, but it looks like Tech of Tomorrow hasn't posted anything yet—just the motherboard reviews. It seems like Linus Tech Tips is in the same boat...
If I were in your shoes, I’d probably lean toward the Z97 boards and those Haswell refresh processors. Since the Z97 chipset is expected to support the latest Broadwell CPUs—at least according to the rumors floating around about Intel's roadmap for the next six months—you'd actually be able to drop one of those newer chips into a Z97 board later on. It's really just about keeping your options open for the future, you know? 🙂
I’ve honestly never heard of anything like that before—so I really can't say if what you're looking for even exists... The only thing I can suggest—and feel free to tell me if this sounds crazy—is to just disconnect the front panel power button from the motherboard entirely. Just let it sit there and do nothing. Then, whenever you actually want to boot the PC back up, you can just manually bridge the power pins on the motherboard to trigger it. I know, I know, it's a bit of a "duct tape and prayer" kind of solution, but it’s the only thing popping into my head right now.
Honestly, you don't have much choice but to troubleshoot this thing component by component to pin down where the failure is. Of course—to actually do that, you’re going to need some spare parts on hand. Maybe ask a friend or a neighbor if they can lend you a stick of RAM or a different power supply for a bit?
Personally, I wouldn't mess around with that... especially if it's an older unit. At the end of the day, the power supply is such a critical component because it feeds everything else in the build—if it fails again, it could easily take the rest of your hardware down with it.
I’d personally go for the GTX 750 Ti—or even just the standard GTX 750—paired with 4 GB of RAM, and you'll have a pretty decent little setup there. 🙂 That said, I suspect you might run into some trouble with your processor acting as a bottleneck—it probably won't be able to keep up with the graphics card. Maybe try overclocking it? As for the power supply, though, I wouldn't sweat it... if it handled an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT back in the day, it should have no problem powering a card that uses about half the electricity. 🙂
Well, it really all comes down to what you're actually doing with the rig—if you're looking to tackle modern titles at full 1080p, I'd probably suggest swapping out the processor, the motherboard, the RAM, and the graphics card altogether..
If I didn't already have an SSD and was working with a tight budget, I'd probably just stick with a Samsung SSD for now—mostly because everyone seems to agree they're the best bang for your buck...
If you can swing it for $11, I’d say go for it—you'll end up with a 120GB SSD. It honestly feels like a waste to settle for $13 just to save a little, especially since you'd be getting a 60GB drive instead... which is basically half the space.
Since your drive is SATA, you can definitely repurpose it for some newer builds... As for the power supply, I’d really recommend swapping it out if you're planning on dropping in a beefier graphics card...
Honestly, the OS isn't even the biggest headache here. You can actually grab whatever version of Windows 7 you're looking for from this site—it’s totally legal and free. Just make sure you go through the registration process first; you'll get a 30-day trial period, and after that, you'll just need to enter a product key to activate it as a "full version." Of course, if you don't have a key handy, a quick search on Google will show you how to handle the activation... then you're all set.
Personally, I’d put my money toward a new motherboard, a processor, and some RAM... If you sell off those old components, you could probably scrape together enough extra cash to pick up a decent new graphics card. By the way—what kind of power supply are you running right now?