Posts by Joshua Jones11

I definitely agree that it's a bit tight, but honestly, it’s perfectly fine for a starting point. He’s actually planning to throw in another 1 TB 7400 rpm hard drive pretty soon—so the SSD will basically just handle his macOS and core programs, plus whatever games he finds himself playing most often most of the time.

Hey everyone,

I just finished putting together a budget build for my cousin—something intended for some light gaming—and I wanted to run the specs by you all. Did I miss anything obvious, or is there room to squeeze out more performance for the price?

CPU Intel Pentium Gold desktop, s. LGA1151 - $155
Gigabyte GA-A320M-H, AM4 - $143
2 X DDR4 4GB Patriot 2666MHz Signature - $107
Crucial SSD 120GB BX500, SATA3 - $81
INTER-TECH K-07 Midi Tower, ATX, PSU 500W - $85

TOTAL (including shipping + 10% cash discount): $529

Best Buy

Thanks in advance for the help! 😵

In case anyone else is running into this, I finally figured out a workaround:

Thanks to both of you—I'll give that a shot. I also noticed in the BIOS there's an option for "OS Selection" that lists Windows, Windows 7, and Android, or something along those lines. Plus, looking at the driver list, it seems like everything should run smoothly if I go ahead with the installation.

Hi everyone.

A few days ago, I picked up a new laptop (HP 15 ac128nm) that arrived without an operating system pre-installed. I went ahead and installed Windows 10 via a USB drive, and honestly, everything is running smoothly—but I’ve hit a massive wall trying to perform a clean installation of Windows 7. Every time I attempt to boot from my USB, I get stuck with this frustrating error: "Load Drivers | A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing." Just to be clear, I’ve already verified that the bootable USB works perfectly fine on every other computer I’ve tested it on, and I even tried using a different USB stick entirely, but nothing changes. Since this laptop doesn't have a built-in DVD-ROM, I actually went out and bought some adapter cables to connect an external DVD-ROM via USB; however, while the drive shows up just fine once I'm inside Windows 10, it’s completely invisible to the BIOS. I've already made sure the BIOS is updated to the latest version and I've cycled through both the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, but no luck there either.

Does anyone have any insight into what might be causing this? 😵

Well, I guess that’s that then—thanks anyway, everyone! 😵 👍 😁

My ultimate goal here is really just about squeezing out a few more FPS in Counter-Strike—it’s all about that competitive edge, right? I’m looking to upgrade my motherboard so I can finally utilize a SATA 3 port for an SSD, and I definitely need to move on from this old 8GB of DDR3 RAM... basically, I'm looking to swap the old bones for something much more modern. 😁

Hey everyone! Here’s a quick rundown of what my current rig looks like:

1. Intel Core i7-10700K @ 2.40 gHz
2. ASUS P5QPL-AM Motherboard -> LGA 775
3. ATI Radeon R7 250 1GB GDDR5
4. Kingston HyperX Fury 128 GB SSD
5. WD 320 GB HDD
6. 4 GB DDR2 RAM
7. A basic 450W power supply—nothing fancy there

I’m trying to figure out if upgrading my CPU, motherboard, and RAM to these specific parts would actually be a smart move:

1. AMD Ryzen 5 5600
2. MSI B550 Motherboard
3. Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM, 1866MHz, 8GB Black HX318C10FB/8
= $400 Newegg

Thanks in advance for any advice! Best regards👍

Thanks to everyone for the input—I’m still going to sleep on it and give this some serious thought. Best regards!

Hey everyone!

I’m looking to put together a new PC build with a budget of around $2,000—$733 though I don't need to include a graphics card in that total since I already have one sitting around (an AMD Radeon R7 250 1GB DDR5). I was leaning toward this specific processor, but I’m totally open to suggestions if you think there's a better path to take:

In terms of usage, I'll be jumping into games like CS:GO, Pro Evolution Soccer 2015, and maybe the occasional round of FIFA 15. Beyond gaming, I also need it to handle some work in AAE and Adobe Premiere from time to time.

Thanks in advance for the help! 😵

Honestly, it feels like all they teach us in school is how to use Word and Excel—it’s honestly such a shame what our education system is doing to these kids 😁 I'll get around to fixing it soon enough, but it seems like neither the stinging nor the buzzing has stopped for at least two days now... if you ask me, I think the issue lies with the armor plating, because I remember back when I was wearing my old gear, I didn't deal with any of that stinging or buzzing nonsense at all. 😵

Thanks for all the input, everyone—I’m definitely going to give a few of these suggestions a shot. 🙂

Michael Jackson10 said:You're looking at two distinct issues here. First, that "buzzing" sound could just be a low-quality, thin metal chassis with large, flat surfaces that aren't acoustically dampened. If the case is "oversized" for the components inside—meaning there's too much empty space—those flat panels can easily hit a resonance frequency with something vibrating inside, like a fan, a hard drive, or even the power supply, causing the whole thing to ring. You can usually diagnose this by pressing on different parts of the case; if the buzzing stops when you apply pressure, you've found the culprit. A fix might involve swapping out a noisy fan or using rubber grommets to mount your drives more securely...
Finding which specific fan is causing the noise is actually pretty easy—just briefly stop it with your finger to see if the sound dies down...

The second issue, however, is much more serious: getting shocked. Assuming you're certain the component installation was done correctly (because if there were an actual short circuit, you would have fried everything long ago), then you have a significantly larger problem with the electrical wiring in your house or apartment, which can genuinely be life-threatening.
It sounds like somewhere there's a ground fault; you need to call a licensed electrician to check this out immediately...

Regarding the shocks—it's only happened a couple of times, and honestly, it was only on the very edges of the case, so I feel like the house wiring is probably fine... Is it possible the issue is just that the cable running from the power button and the front USB ports is touching the bottom of the chassis?

So, I recently swapped out my case—just the chassis/shell, mind you—and after about two or three days, this strange humming noise started creeping in. I’ve checked everything, and I'm fairly certain it isn't the hard drive or any individual component (well, I *hope* it isn't), but it’s driving me crazy. The weird part is that whenever the buzzing starts up, if I just give the tower a little "tap" or shift it a couple of inches, the noise immediately dies down. 😳Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

EDIT: To make matters even more concerning, I've actually felt some electrical stinging/tingling on certain edges of the case.

David Wood2 said:In macOS, you can run a disk utility check. Just right-click the drive, go to properties, then tools—under error checking, click "check now"—and under the check disk options, make sure to select both available boxes. The system will then scan the drive during the next reboot.

Or, if you prefer a different way... 😍

You can download a little tool called "CrystalDiskInfo" from the web. Open it up, and under the "Health" tab, you can see the overall status of your drive. From there, you can also run a scan to look for issues. Keep in mind that scanning a drive can take a few hours, depending on how much data you're dealing with. When you're looking at the results, "bad sectors" will show up as red squares, while healthy areas will be green.

Just a little tip to leave you with. 😬

The first option didn't really do anything, so I'll try out that software you mentioned later—haha! You totally caught me off guard with those localized descriptions meant for people who struggle with the language; I actually know my English quite well, but since the guy before you wrote his post that way, I wasn't following him properly at all. 🙂 btw thanks for this, whether it works or not! :>

Does anyone happen to know?

Could you please write this in English? Hahaha

Just that...

Hey everyone!

So, here’s the situation—I had Windows 7 running on my machine for several years without a single hiccup, truly seamless. A few days ago, I decided it was finally time for a fresh reinstall, but now I've hit a wall. Every time I try to reboot, the computer just hangs right after the boot sequence—it stays stuck on a completely black screen with absolutely nothing showing up; it won't even get to the "Starting Windows" splash screen. To get anything done, I have to force a hard shutdown, and only then will it boot up normally. I’ve actually tried both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions (though my hardware is definitely 64-bit), but the result is the same. Interestingly, Windows XP and Windows 8 seem to run perfectly fine without any issues at all. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this specific headache? Thanks in advance!

Just finished watching the movie. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING! \m/