Alright, sweet. I’m seeing about 30-33 at idle... I gave Far Cry 4, Black Flag, The Witcher 3, and some modded Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim a spin. It didn't even touch 41. I'm pretty happy with that, honestly. Might play around with the voltage a little bit now, though. 😬
So, after messing around with a few restarts on my PC and the router, everything just... kind of fixed itself? I guess? It’s all working perfectly now 👍
I ended up firing up Black Flag, Ground Zeroes, and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings while I was waiting. Gotta say, things look way, way better now 😁😁😁🎉
Alright. I took it all apart, put it back together, and it’s actually running now. I think maybe I messed up those mounting screws on the motherboard. They don't even have washers or anything, so I might have gone outside the white ring area and caused a little short circuit. That's my best guess, anyway. At least the main thing is working. But... now I can't get online. I'm wondering if maybe pulling the battery and doing that massive hard reset totally fried something? It says it's connected to the network and everything looks fine, but browsers, Steam... nothing will actually connect to the web. I didn't want to start a whole new thread, but if anyone knows what's going on, let me know.
It’s probably not even a hardware issue 100% of the time. It's pretty new, and honestly, it won't even boot if I just shut this one down and leave the other two alone. That clicking sound? It sounds just like when you force-shutdown a PC. Now it’s doing that—like it's trying to restart itself but getting stuck on something. I think I'll try swapping in my old processor tomorrow. Only thing is, dealing with this Cooler Master Hyper 212 is such a massive pain in the neck to take on and off. Anyway, I’m gonna head out, grab some air, clear my head, and we'll see what happens in the morning.
P.S. Just wanted to check off a few more things. I pulled the battery, popped out the graphics card... no beeping without the card, which is weird because there should be a beep. Tried a bunch of different drive combinations too. Everything fails except for when I use the old processor. I'll tackle that tomorrow. Man, I really hope the motherboard didn't just fry out on me...
Swapped out my Intel Core i5-2500K for an Intel Core i7-3770K and now it just won't POST.
So, before I swapped the Processor, I updated the BIOS—everything was working fine then. Checked the settings too, made sure the Processor settings were on auto, all good. Then came the actual swap. Took the old one out, popped the new one in. The socket felt solid, so I don't think I messed that part up. Everything else stayed plugged in where it should be. Applied some thermal paste, mounted the cooler...
But when I try to boot it up, the hard drive acts like it's resetting constantly (it didn't die on me during those 15-20 minutes of trying). There's this weird clicking sound whenever the computer resets, I have no clue what it is. Here's a video.
I tried clearing the CMOS, moving jumpers around following the manual. Messed with the RAM too... Niente, nothing. Always the same thing. If you guys have any ideas, please... I really hope it's not the Processor... No beep codes, keyboard isn't responding. Nothing. If I can't figure it out, I'll probably just take it down to the guys at Micro Center and let them take a look.
EDIT: Been messing with it a bit more just now. Sometimes it actually boots, but other times it just flat out refuses. And without those clicking sounds.
It hasn't shown up yet. Honestly, I have zero clue what kind of case it even is. Like someone else mentioned on here, I already have the webpage pulled up anyway. I wasn't really sweating the height or anything... I just didn't realize how "chubby" the cooler was going to look, if you know what I mean. 🙂
I can probably move these cables around and just zip-tie them to the chassis... I mean, I know this case is pretty tiny, but maybe I can squeeze it all in there, right? 😵
Already placed the order, so fingers crossed everything goes smoothly. 😬
I have a quick question for you all. I'm working with a new ASUS motherboard. Everything is hooked up correctly, the PC is running fine, and I just finished a clean install of Windows XP sp3. The build is solid, everything seems perfect, but there's one thing... I don't hear that initial BEEP from the motherboard when I boot up. WHY? What could be going on here?
It hasn't made a sound since the very first time I powered it on...
From what I can tell, it uses a Phoenix Technologies BIOS, so it might not even be supposed to beep. But, I mean, who knows, maybe it should.
Phoenix Technologies BIOS beep codes
Here are some Phoenix Technologies BIOS beep codes that sometimes pop up. Just a heads up though, since so many different PC makers use this BIOS, those codes might change depending on the brand. Beep Code Descriptions 1 short DRAM refresh failure 2 short Parity circuit failure 3 short Base 64K RAM failure 4 short System timer failure 5 short Process failure 6 short BIOS error code 7 short Virtual mode exception error 8 short Display memory Read/Write test failure 9 short ROM BIOS checksum failure 10 short CMOS shutdown Read/Write error 11 short Cache Memory error 1 long, 3 short Conventional/Extended memory failure 1 long, 8 short Display/Retrace test failed
I honestly can't make up my mind. The Bourne trilogy is just top-tier, absolute peak cinema for me, but then again, Mission: Impossible 1996 is easily one of my all-time favorites. It was so ahead of its time—the action scenes didn't feel like those tired old clichés you see everywhere else. That whole sequence where they drop into the vault 🙏 ... man. Mission: Impossible 1996 is definitely my favorite action flick of all time. Even Ghost Protocol was actually great!
Either way, Mission: Impossible and Bourne are both right up there for me 😁
I'm running a Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.4GHz with an MSI R7770
Should I prioritize upgrading my GPU or the CPU first?
The processor is definitely the bottleneck, mostly when I'm playing Call of Duty, but then again, if I can grab something like this... http://www.newegg.com/p/product_info.php?id=13349 then that would be the move... but I don't want that old Phenom to absolutely choke out the performance. Of course, if I actually shell out the cash for something like that, I'd probably have to wait until summer—maybe even fall—to deal with the CPU.
Which Intel options would sit in the same ballpark as the one I linked above?
Ryan Hayes82 said:you should definitely grab the Intel Core i7-3770. it’s just a step up from the $367. honestly, don't even bother looking at the Intel Core i7-4770K because it's basically the same chip, just with a higher clock speed
hmm, okay, I see. so once I pick up a new GPU, I can just grab an aftermarket cooler for the CPU and maybe, I don't know, push it up to 4 GHz? right?
EDIT: yeah, definitely going with the 3770. I just did some digging online and it looks like a ton of people are overclocking it to 4 or even 4.2 GHz.
When it comes to gaming, this would be a massive jump for Call of Duty—which I play, like, WAY too much, especially when the squad is online. And specifically for that game, since this processor is just straight-up too weak right now. As for everything else, when I'm recording music, I use a ton of VST plugins, and the better the plugin, the more it absolutely eats up the CPU. Right now, I can maybe manage about 5 or 6 loaded tracks, but I need at least 10. That’s why I need a beefier processor and another 4 GB of RAM, which I'll probably pick up soon.
That’s exactly why I want to make that big leap with the Intel Core i7-4770K. But I was wondering how big of a jump it would actually be with an Intel Core i5-4460, because I know it only has 3 physical cores and I don't really know...
By the way, I've got my Intel Core 2 Quad pushed to 3.7 GHz and it's been fine, I guess. Only thing is it hits like 40-42°C, but whatever.
David Sanders4 said:so now I see you're running an Intel Core 2 Quad. Honestly, unless you sell that thing, you might be better off looking at something like an Intel Core i5-4460 or maybe even an Intel Core i7-4770K. I mean, if you stick with that NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780, you probably won't notice a massive jump regardless of which of those three CPUs you pick... I was mostly thinking about the loss, you know? Like, just wasting power and dealing with extra heat because of higher clock speeds, and who knows, maybe it'll just burn out eventually...
and yeah, newer games pretty much eat CPUs for breakfast. Plus, I do music production, so having a solid processor is actually a huge deal for me. I've already got my sound card sorted, so in about a week I'm heading out to grab some more RAM and a new CPU. As for the graphics card... maybe after the New Year.
David Sanders4 said:I mean, I don't think overclocking an NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 is gonna do much, and honestly, it feels like you might actually lose performance...
lose what, exactly? 🤷
I was thinking about grabbing this Intel Core i7-4770K just so I could toss in a decent NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 later on and have a more solid gaming rig. My biggest worry, though—and maybe I'm overthinking this—is that I'll end up regretting not going for a beefier CPU right out of the gate.
Do you think I could get anything for my old Intel Core 2 Quad, maybe like $167?
