Posts by Alexander Moore67

Larry Ortiz5 said:I haven't been reading since the start and now I'm totally lost. What did Brian Campbell36 actually do? I see something being mentioned about $200.

He did this because he didn't want to drop a ton on a new processor at first. Once we convinced him his Sandy Bridge i5 was fine, he started asking for upgrade advice, which basically means he has money to burn and won't listen to the forum—he'll just go out and buy some factory-overclocked GTX 970 for $650. Now everyone is just debating who's the smartest...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1332?vs=1068
Here, take a look at those $200 of yours.

Brian Campbell36 said:I'm asking around to see what everyone thinks, just like I mentioned earlier that I was going to do. $667 Squeezed out every bit of performance from this GPU. Definitely a best buy. 🍿

You're just overthinking it; one wrong move and you're done.

Brian Campbell36 said:I'm struggling with giving up $200 more 🍿

I really overshot my own expectations here.
What should I prioritize for an upgrade in your opinion?
I was thinking about picking up a new CPU.😵

crimsonstag84 said:My 360W power supply could handle all of that.

If that NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 pulls 250 watts under full load, I’d love to know how your 360W unit is actually going to hold up.

Could you send over the full system specs? I'm especially interested in knowing which motherboard is being used. I have a feeling it’ll work just fine.

Larry Ortiz5 said:I don't want to tempt fate—it's been nearly two years since I picked up this 1TB WD Green, and honestly, it hasn't given me a single headache yet.

Lower speeds mean lower temps, which makes sense, but for gaming, there really isn't a difference between 5400 or 7200 RPM.

fadedorca66 said:He already gave you a recommendation:

The price at Starbucks is kind of a rip-off, so maybe just grab this more expensive one at $10 instead:

Honestly, forget those total nonsense builds; you're just paying extra for the $33 brand name and getting nothing for it.

As for the drive, I’d probably skip the green ones. They seem to have issues and I've seen plenty of them die on me. You can run games off an HDD anyway, so it's probably better to just get a decent, faster drive like the Toshiba, WD Blue, or Seagate options mentioned above...

Regarding that comment about the Green drives—honestly, I haven't seen a single one fail on me. The only ones that have died are the WD Blue ones, and I've had several go belly up while still under warranty. Blue is just garbage...

In my personal opinion, it’s actually better to pick up a Green drive when you're buying an SSD. Since you don't really need high speeds for bulk storage, the slower pace can actually help extend its lifespan. Personally, I've been running two 2TB Green drives for five years now, and Hard Disk Sentinel still shows them at 100% health.

It looks like you aren't keeping an eye on the dollar exchange rate...

The dollar jumped from $2.00 three months ago to 7.20, which means anything tied to the greenback is going to spike by about 20%.

David Rodriguez94 said:I see you all put in some real effort here—my sincere thanks to you🙏

Now, I’ve got another question for the group. Since building PCs isn't exactly my area of expertise—I'm more of a "plug it in and hope for the best" type of guy—I mentioned to a close friend before this thread even started that I needed a machine with a budget of about $2333. He sent me a list via email, and now I'm wondering if he actually knows what he's doing or if I'm about to throw money down the drain...

Intel i5 4460
Gigabyte H97M-D3H
Kingston Fury
MSI GTX 960
WD Caviar Blue 1TB
Samsung SSD 850 evo 120GB
Seasonic S12G 450W
Bitfenix Phenom M-ATX
Noctua NHL9i

$2400

The setup above with the AMD Radeon R9 290 is better.

mellowskipper91 said:I don't have any updates yet. Verizon sent me the wrong board, and I haven't been able to pick up the right one because I get one thing from the repair center and then they tell me they have no clue what's going on. We'll figure it out though; we aren't leaving until we get this ASUS sorted 🙂

Look, just forget about it. ASUS or whatever, they're all basically the same...
only the high-end boards actually use better components; everything else is pretty much identical

Thomas Wells5 said:I haven't even bothered upgrading to a new macOS yet, but honestly, I don't think that's even the core issue here. It’s just completely nonsensical—the system froze two or three times right in the BIOS. If the freezes were happening exclusively within macOS, I'd just wipe it and reinstall, but that's not what's happening. To be perfectly blunt, I just didn't have the willpower left. I've been wrestling with this rig all day long, and frankly, I'm exhausted. I ended up just swapping my old motherboard back in so I can gather some actual advice and hopefully get back to work tomorrow or the day after. We'll see if this thing is salvageable or if I should just write it off as a total loss.

In all my years of experience, I've never had macOS run fine on one motherboard and then act up on a completely different one. You really need to do a clean install.

Thomas Wells5 said:I’ve actually had a few colleagues suggest I dive into the BIOS settings and try disabling things like the LAN card or the onboard audio, just in case one of those components is causing the instability. I’ve also been weighing the idea of flashing the BIOS... honestly, at this point, I'm feeling a bit lost on what my next move should even be.

Stupid question, but if you swap out the motherboard, do you have to reinstall macOS?

Roger Mitchell4 said:I already know that shop; they're the cheapest one in the US.
What kind of pre-built bundles do they have up to 497 miles?

Pre-built rigs are usually garbage. If you've been reading this forum, you know building your own is the way to go. If an i5-4440 isn't enough for you, then grab an FX-6300 and a GPU like an AMD Radeon R7 260x. But honestly, what I suggested earlier is a solid five-year build. If you go with a weak GPU, you won't get very far in just two years.

Roger Mitchell4 said:The closest shop to me is in Mostar, and their prices are just a total disaster. An FX 6300 would probably cost me around $150 here. $267It’s like this here in America. $400 👎 .
I’d probably make the jump to an i3 too. That dual-core setup just really struggles sometimes. I know it has HT, but honestly, it still doesn't quite cut it.

Ten thousand dollars is basically overnight shipping; what are you even talking about regarding Mostar?

Gary Morris8 said:Hey there. I can't get my computer to turn on. I can't even access the BIOS or anything. Can anyone give me some advice? Thanks.

Take it to a repair shop.

Intel Core i5-4460 $453/211 miles
msi h81m-p33 v2 $127/59 miles
Chieftec 500W Power Supply $117/54 miles
Raidmax Super Viper 321WB Case $107/50 miles
GoodRam 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 $100/47 miles

Once you save up enough, just pick up a dedicated graphics card later on. Honestly, the i5 is a much better choice than the i3 right out of the gate. The integrated HD 4600 graphics on the i5 should handle some light gaming just fine to start with.

Roger Mitchell4 said:$1000,is this a fair price for an H81M-K,
an Intel Core i3-4150,
an AMD Radeon R7 260X
, 4GB of RAM
, a 250GB HDD
, some random 560W power supply
and Windows 8?

Check out some local computer shops in places like Pittsburgh, for example.