My PC died at the wrong time

[siddharth2002]

Started playing up a bit last month, If I ran the CPU at 100% usage for about 15 mins - it would hang. Checked the CPU temperatures etc - seemed OK.
And yesterday morning it would power on but no picture on the monitor, had a spare MMX 440 so chucked it in, driver installed fine but hung up the moment I tried changing the screen resolution.
So, its either the motherboard or the power supply playing tricks hence, decided not to power it on all. It's got an on-board graphics chip just in case if I have to use it, might boot-up but got too much important stuff on my hard-drives. Powering up hard-drives atm would be pretty dangerous thing to do on a dodgy PSU. And did I say that system (C) drive is over 4 years old and started producing lot more noise lately.

So, this is my plan -
Ordered an upgrade kit - AMD 4000 X2 + Mobo + 1 GB DDR 667, got a really good deal on TradeMe. Mobo has 4 SATA + 1 IDE ports, nVidia 6100/6 Channel Audio/7 USB ports etc. So, I can fit in my highest capacity IDE 500 GB + DVD-RW from current box. And will buy a 320 GB SATA , partiton it and transfer System (20 GB) on it using imaging tools. And the rest of the partition will be able to accommodate my other 2 fairly big IDE hard-drives' content (160 + 120) GB. And I'll buy couple of cheap USB2.0 external caddies and chuck these 2 hard-drives in - good for backups, few virtual images & work related stuff.
Got a 5.1 Creative Audigy 2 LE from my dead box- an expensive piece of chippery when I bought it and still produces crisp and clear sound on all 6 channels so, I am well covered in audio department.

Now looking for a decent 400 W PSU and a shiny Case. Found a good one on Ascent.
http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=151669

So, why am I sad?
I was hoping to build the so called uber gaming box come January and hoped that my current machine will be able to hold on to its charge till then. Now, I will have to push that till May/June probably due to money spent on this break-fix. Ah well, good thing all my data is still safe so, its still not as bad I as I feel, loved my old PC though - we've been through tough times together.:onpc

 

[Kev]

Pretty much all powersupplies that come included with cases suck eggs. They do a job but generally they aren't a patch on a decent powersupply as they try to keep the cost down (cases usually dont cost much more than a powersupply on its own). Not that it should put you off using a supplied powersupply, just be prepared for the fact that at some stage it will fail or will get noisy or something. I usually run with the standard powersupply until it breaks then buy a good one.

One more thing, the case you linked to has a 450W supply, I'd consider that minimum these days, preferably go for a 500W. It's amazing how much power a PC sinks these days, wasn't that many years ago that a 150W powersupply was bitchin.

 

[siddharth2002]

Yeah, I have actually e-mailed their support asking for more details on the power supply. But looks like I might have to buy a separate PSU anyways just to make sure that the hard drives will be well protected and running on clean power. I can probably look for a less flashy case design shaving off some money - plenty available on TradeMe as I am going through them now.

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Actually i think you could have saved yourselves a bit. I think you should have gone in for a Pentium Dual core E2140 or the E4500 C2D. The reason is that these chips are really highly and easily overclockable( 100% overclock on the E2140!) and when overclocked provide similar performance to E6850(10-15% slower). These chips could have easily still resided in your gaming pc. Add this to the fact that these are so many times cheaper than the 6850, these made da bomb deal! I would recommend if you can change it do now. Opt for a G33 or G31 based mobo(if G31 then only Gigabyte GA-....-S2).

Cheers

 

[siddharth2002]

Actually i think you could have saved yourselves a bit. I think you should have gone in for a Pentium Dual core E2140 or the E4500 C2D. The reason is that these chips are really highly and easily overclockable( 100% overclock on the E2140!) and when overclocked provide similar performance to E6850(10-15% slower). These chips could have easily still resided in your gaming pc. Add this to the fact that these are so many times cheaper than the 6850, these made da bomb deal! I would recommend if you can change it do now. Opt for a G33 or G31 based mobo(if G31 then only Gigabyte GA-....-S2).

Cheers

Thanks but not right now.