Help - PC build in Seattle under $500

Yeah.

Thanks, crimsonstag84,

Honestly, the people on Craigslist just aren't all playing with a full deck... They can't decide if they actually want to sell or what... You've got one guy who doesn't even know where his steering wheel adapter is, and then another who says he can't meet today or tomorrow because the steering wheel is buried in some box in his attic and he "doesn't have the time" to go looking for it... 🤦🤦

So, would something like this work as an alternative? click

It’s basically the same steering wheel, just with blue rubber. Feel free to grab it if you want.

Hey everyone, I could use some advice—do you think this monitor would actually play nice with my current setup?

Monitor

x ASUS M5A97 R2, AM3, AM3+, AMD 970, SB950, BUS 5200 MHz, DDR3
x AMD FX-Series X8 8320 3.5GHz Processor, 16MB, 125W, AM3+, FD8320FRHK
x 8GB DDR3 Crucial (1x8GB), 1600MHz CL11
x EVGA 500W Power Supply, HyperX, PPA5005003, 12cm fan
x NZXT H210 Midi Tower, ATX, mATX,
x TOSHIBA 500GB Hard Drive, 7200rpm, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB, DT01ACA050
x Sapphire R9 280 3GB OC Dual-X, 3GB GDDR5 384bit, 28nm
x ZALMAN CNPS 5X Performa, socket 775/1155/1156/AM2/AM2/AM3

Do you think it would work?

A monitor is a monitor—you just plug it in via VGA or DVI (though I’d definitely go with DVI if you can) to get an image on the screen, and that's pretty much it...

Hey guys, I'm stuck—which one of these two monitors should I go with?
CLICK

CLICK

Both come with a 3-year warranty, so that's a plus!!

Ronald Bishop58 said:Which one of these two monitors should I go with?
CLICK

CLICK

Both come with a 3-year warranty!!

Go with the second one. It’s an IPS panel, so you get better colors and wider viewing angles.

Robert Rodriguez2 said:the other one has an IPS panel—which basically means you get way better color accuracy and much better viewing angles, among other things.

Thanks man!!

Just pulled the trigger and ordered it today. Honestly, once I spotted that other 24'' option, I had a brief moment of panic where I thought I’d totally messed up my choice. 🙂

Ronald Bishop58 said:Thanks man!!

Just pulled the trigger and ordered it today. Honestly, when I saw that other 24'' one, I thought I'd messed up. 🙂

No worries 🙂

Ronald Bishop58 said:Thanks man!!

Just pulled the trigger on it today. I honestly thought I messed up when I saw that other 24'' one. 🙂

Honestly, those inches don't mean much—it's just a few centimeters difference. I’d take a 20" IPS over a 24" non-IPS any day.

Thanks man!

So, I’ve got a bit of a specific one for you guys...

I just installed Virtual DJ, and now I’m running into a weird issue... Basically, I can hear the master output, but I can't hear the track I have queued up—it's just not playing through my headphones...

Does anyone know what kind of hardware or add-on I should pick up so I can actually hear the track I'm prepping before it hits the speakers? If you catch my drift?
Thanks in advance!

Hey @fadedorca66/">@@fadedorca66, @Robert Rodriguez2/">@@Robert Rodriguez2, @The New Guy ESMartic, @crimsonstag84/">@@crimsonstag84, and everyone else—can someone help me out? My PC keeps throwing "out of memory" errors after running for maybe an hour or two... I check my widget and the usage needle is basically pinned at 98-100%. Any idea what's eating everything up?
ps: it's only rocking 8 GB of RAM...

🤷

What kind of work are we talking about? If you're running a game, some heavy processing software, and a million browser tabs, I guess it’s pretty easy for that to eat up all 8GB.
Otherwise, you might be dealing with some junk, like malware or maybe a memory leak (though that seems less likely). Your first move should probably be checking Task Manager to see what's actually devouring your RAM, then run a scan with Norton.

crimsonstag84 said:What kind of workload are we talking about? If you're running a game, some heavy software, or just have a mountain of browser tabs open, hitting 8GB is totally doable.
Otherwise, you might be dealing with some junk—either actual malware or maybe a memory leak (though that's less likely). Your first move should be checking Task Manager to see what's eating your RAM and running a scan with Norton.

Thanks. Task Manager is telling me that service host : Local system (15) is hogging most of my memory. I’m not even gaming here; I’m just browsing the web with maybe 3 or 4 windows open at most. Honestly, I used to have this old single-core machine with 2 gigs of RAM where this never happened. It started happening on this rig back when I was on Windows 7, and now it's doing it on Windows 10 too. I actually wiped the whole thing and reinstalled the OS two weeks ago because of this, and yet... here we are. 🤷

Edit: Memory usage just jumped to 74%, and Task Manager says "System" is eating up over 2 GB.

EDIT 2: Ten minutes later and memory is up to 85%. Just finished a scan with Norton... 0 Threats found.

Just search for services.msc, right-click it, and select "Run as administrator."

Locate Windows Update and kill the process (assuming it’s even running). Then, check if your RAM usage settles down. It's like a broken record; there's this glitch where an update starts downloading, gets stuck on, say, 1 out of 53 files, and then just loops indefinitely, eating up all your resources day after day. I dealt with a similar headache at my office once—as soon as I killed the process in services, the memory cleared right up. I never actually found a permanent fix for it; it wasn't until I switched to a different workstation that the issue finally vanished.

Hey everyone,
I was hoping someone could help me scout out a decent CPU cooler for this build. It’s about a year and a half old now, but lately, whenever I try to play some Electronic Arts games, the whole thing starts overheating and just shuts itself down—basically, the processor is hitting temps it shouldn't be... :/

Thanks in advance!

1 x ASUS M5A97 R2, AM3, AM3+, AMD 970, SB950, BUS 5200 MHz, DDR3

1 x Processor AMD FX-Series X8 8320 3.5GHz, 16MB, 125W, AM3+, FD8320FRHK

1 x DDR3 8GB (1x8GB) Crucial, 1600MHz CL11

1 x Power Supply EVGA 500W, HyperX, PPA5005003, 12cm fan

1 x NZXT H210, Midi tower, ATX, mATX,

1 x TOSHIBA 500GB, 7200rpm, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB, DT01ACA050

1 x Sapphire R9 280 3GB OC Dual-X, 3GB GDDR5 384bit, 28nm

1 x ZALMAN CNPS 5X Performa, socket 775/1155/1156/AM2/AM2/AM3

https://www.amazon.com/cooler-master-liquid-cooler-am3/dp/B00EXAMPLE

If that one's too pricey, maybe check out its little brother, the LC-CC-95. But honestly, I’d go with the first one since you're already dealing with overheating issues.

Also, you probably should give your case a quick dusting...

Thanks!

1 x ZALMAN CNPS 5X Performa, socket 775/1155/1156/AM2/AM2/AM3

Well, you've already got a cooler installed... so if things aren't cooling right, I guess it might just be dust buildup, a bad fan, or maybe just poor airflow in the case. The LC-CC-95 isn't actually an upgrade over what you're using now.

2x -> I'd probably just mount those two on the front of the case.