Posts by fadedorca66

Why the attitude? You’ll get used to it eventually, and he'll probably be fine too. I mean, it’s still a huge step up from Windows 7

Maybe consider picking up an SSD one of these days, just so your whole system actually runs faster...

Well, if that doesn't work, maybe try the RAM or—if it's not that—it’s probably the motherboard. Might be worth checking your warranty, though; those ECS boards usually come with a 3-year limit, so you might still be covered...

It might not be the case, but it could mean the PSU fan is on its last legs.

Maybe try borrowing a power supply from someone to see if that fixes the behavior. Or, you could just crack the thing open—if you're lucky, you might spot a blown capacitor.

Yeah, could be. Electrolytic capacitors in the power supply can degrade over time, and once they lose their capacity, you get all kinds of weird voltage fluctuations that make the whole thing act up...

What kind of power supply are we looking at here? And maybe you could try swapping out the CMOS battery?

I'd definitely steer clear of the 1060 with only 3GB of VRAM. I guess you'll just run into a wall once you hit that memory limit.

You can definitely find a better 550W power supply than that, and honestly, I'm not sure you'll even see much of a benefit from switching to water cooling... For 99% of people, decent air cooling is more than enough. But hey, you can always just return it to Amazon if it doesn't work out for you...

It’s honestly fine to just swap out the paste if it came pre-applied from the factory, since that stuff tends to dry up after a while. But once you go with a "real" brand, you probably won't need to touch it again until you have to deep clean the heatsink because temperatures are starting to creep up...

It'll be fine while you're just sitting there doing nothing, but once you actually start gaming, you might hear a little noise—though honestly, you'll probably hear the rest of your components too. 😬

Notebookcheck is pretty solid if you want to see exactly how much power things actually have:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-C....127836.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-C....146637.0.html

The specs don't really matter, but honestly, that processor is way too slow for what she's trying to do. It's basically just a low-end SoC, so it’ll be fine for browsing the web or basic stuff, but I guess more advanced tasks won't run all that smoothly.

Don't sweat the write/erase cycles on an SSD; it'll hold up just fine. You didn't mention if you're doing any video editing, but if that's in the mix, I guess a 1TB drive would be better, or maybe that combo of a 120GB SSD plus a 1TB drive I mentioned earlier.

From what I know, Photoshop and Illustrator can really push a CPU to its limit, and they use GPU acceleration too. Plus, if you're planning on editing video, having those two extra cores might actually help.

As follows:

1 x Dell Monitor 21.5'' LED, VA, 6ms, D-Sub, DVI, black
1 x Fortron Hexa+ 400W, 80+
1 x MS Helios 3 Case, black
1 x Kingston UV400 240GB SSD, 2.5” 7mm, SATA 6 Gbit/s
1 x AMD Kaveri A8-Series X4 7600 (3.8GHz,4MB,65W,FM2+) box, NVIDIA GeForce Series
1 x Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-DS2 (SFM2+,DDR3,DVI/VGA,USB3.0,SATA III) mATX
1 x Corsair 4GB DDR3L 1600 Value S
Total: $1022

It’s probably fine for what she needs, and I guess the SSD will make it feel snappy enough.

A laptop isn't a terrible choice if she actually needs portability, but if it's just going to sit on a desk 99% of the time, there's maybe not much point.

I gotta admit, I was expecting a way bigger difference than this

Nobody's actually put this thing through its paces yet, so maybe just hang tight.

Even if it says Platinum Pro 80+, that's just their branding—who knows what the actual efficiency looks like. Besides, having an 80 PLUS rating doesn't necessarily mean a power supply is high quality...

It won't work this week since there aren't any GPU drivers for the week...

It’ll work, don't sweat it.

Getting Windows is pretty easy—you can just grab a trial version online to test it out first

If the GPU isn't actually broken, I guess there’s no point in swapping it out or selling it. Might be better to just figure out how to get it running properly, otherwise you might run into the same headache with whatever replacement you pick...