Posts by Bradley Ortiz

crimsonstag84 said:Depends on where you're located so you can skip the shipping costs... there are plenty of decent used GPUs out there, especially now that new releases are driving down the prices on older cards.

Or maybe this:

As for graphics, I’d grab a GTX 660 or an HD 7850 for around $550--$200 regardless of any bottlenecking. If not those, I see there's a GTX 470 with solid coolers available for $133, which is about 40% slower than the other two.

I'm basically commuting between Chicago and Indianapolis, so I could pick it up in either state if I can find a better deal.
I was thinking about getting a GTX 670... would that be overkill for this CPU?

Timothy Kim60 said:Since you mentioned that $33 is worth its weight in gold—maybe look at this or this instead (mostly for a 5-year-old rig).

You could also just use the link to grab this or this (the new silver version)

They're decent power supplies without breaking the bank. You'll be fine with 90% of GPUs out there, barring the absolute power hogs.

$17 Going back and forth here... which of these is actually the best if I just want some peace of mind?
By the way, what GPU would you suggest for an Athlon II X4 840 so I don't hit a massive bottleneck? It’s running a Freezer 13, so I could probably push an overclock if that actually helps anything.

It’s pretty ironic. I tore this thing open the second it arrived and didn't even bother checking the power supply... I bought it three years ago, so it's a bit late to be looking for a replacement or anything now. My bad for not noticing right away.
Since I'm already sinking money into this, I might as well grab a new PSU too.
What do you guys suggest? Which GPU and which power supply should I go with?

crimsonstag84 said:Yikes... 10A on the 12V rail(!!!)

It’s a miracle that thing can even run just that 3870K. You're probably running on integrated graphics, right?

Yeah... :/
You think a 7850 or a gtx 660 wouldn't kill it?

Timothy Kim60 said:Which power supply are we talking about specifically? You’ll have to pull up the page to actually check.

It's a BlueBerry PSB420, 420W.
Honestly, it caught me off guard. I just double-checked my receipt from when I bought it, and it clearly says I paid for a Corsair 500W...

Jeffrey Allen92 said:BEST BUY PC BUNDLE
1 x AMD Athlon ii x4 840 Processor, 3.1GHz/3.8GHz, FM2+
1 x KINGSTON ValueRAM DDR3 (8GB,1600MHz(PC3-12800)) CL11, Retail
1 x Retail 1 x HDD Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB, 7200rpm
1 x 300W PSU, LC Power Silver Shield Pro-Line, 80+ Silver
1 x LC POWER Pro-935W White Arrow Case, MIDI, USB 3.0, white, no PSU included
1 x LITE ON DVDRW 24x SATA, black, bulk
1 x ASRock FM2A88M-HD+ R3.0 Motherboard
Total: $798

What GPU would you guys pair with this build?

If I were you, I’d bump that power supply up to 450-500W. The price difference is basically peanuts, and you’ll actually have some breathing room later when you try to upgrade...
As for the GPU, I'd probably go with an r7 260x.

crimsonstag84 said:An overclocked 3870K is going to struggle to keep up with an HD 7850, so just grab the 😉

What kind of motherboard and power supply are you running? You might actually hit close to 4GHz if your components aren't total junk.

What's your budget for the HD 7850? I've seen them go for less than $233, and there are some GTX 660s out there for around 550-$200.

Power supply is 450w... so I'm not even 100% sure about that either.
The A75M-HVS is the motherboard with the FM1 socket... this is basically the strongest processor that can fit in it, which is why I'm looking for the best possible GPU to pair with it. My next move will be a whole new PC anyway.
So, what's your recommendation? Nvidia works too...

Hey everyone...
I'm looking at picking up a new GPU (maybe a 7850, 7870, 7950, or 7970)
I haven't decided on one yet because I'm worried my 3870k is going to bottleneck the card. I'd love to hear your
thoughts... do you think this CPU can actually handle a 7850, or should I just take the plunge and grab a 7970?
For context, it's an AMD quad-core running at 3.0 GHz with 4MB of L3 cache.
I've got a Freezer 13 cooler on it too, so I'm thinking I could probably overclock it to 3.5 if needed.
What's the consensus? The price gap between the 7850 and the 7970 is less than $150, and since I'm currently between jobs right now$33 that money might as well be gold to me.

Hey, I couldn't get the boot working, so I just followed this guide:
The steps are pretty straightforward. All you really need to do is grab a .dmg file
and burn it to a disk using TransMac.
After that, you just run through the standard installation process, kind of like how you'd install Windows.
If anyone's interested, feel free to give it a shot.
I managed to get OS X Lion running, and honestly, the sound, graphics, and networking are all solid... everything works fine.

Hey, I grabbed a 4.7 GB DVD
I burned OS X Snow Leopard onto the disc, set
the BIOS to boot from the DVD first.
The DVD boots fine, then I get two choices
Press enter to boot from DVD and Press (F8) for more options
When I hit enter, I just see a white screen with the Apple logo
and a progress bar that looks like the installation is starting.
Then the disc stops spinning, but the clock just keeps spinning and spinning... I waited about 10 minutes, but nothing happens.
Anyone figured out a fix for this?

Benjamin King2, thanks for the link 🙂
The only problem is I don't have an 8 GB flash drive on me, haha...
So, I guess I'll just install it via DVD 😁
I don't think there's much of a difference between Intel 2000 and HD 3000
so Mountain Lion should run just fine.
I'll give it a shot tomorrow and let you guys know if it actually works 🙂

Found a tutorial on YouTube that looks promising, so I'm going to give it a shot...
I'll let you guys know if it actually works. 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGtvDHTMm9Y

Hey everyone. I'm looking to get Mountain Lion running on my Dell Inspiron 15.
I've never actually touched an OS X before, so if anyone knows how Mountain Lion would perform on this setup, let me know:

CPU: Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz B815 sandy bridge
RAM: 2GB 1067 MHz
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 2000
Currently running Windows 8 Professional, which handles everything just fine without any lag at all.