My Computer Broke!

[toblix]

I was about to start L4D2, and this happened:

[Grippage]

That guy will do anything to get out of playing that game.

[elmuerte]

Your PC RRoD'ed?

Red Ripples of Death

[toblix]

That's a new one ordered. I'll probably have the parts early next week. Although it's always a hassle transitioning to a new computer, I've been longing for this for a while, since I'll be transitioning from:

• 2 cores to 4
  
• Five 7200rpm disks to 1 SSD and one 7200rpm
  
• Windows Vista to Windows 7
  
• 32bit to 64bit
  
• A computer that's full of dust and is old to a new, clean one that's never been used
  
• A computer that doesn't work and won't boot to one that hopefully will do both.
  

I'm also doing some new things I usually don't, like keeping the old PSU and going with the stock CPU cooler. It's like I have become crazy.

[Sombre]

That's a new one ordered. I'll probably have the parts early next week. Although it's always a hassle transitioning to a new computer, I've been longing for this for a while, since I'll be transitioning from:

• 2 cores to 4
  
• Five 7200rpm disks to 1 SSD and one 7200rpm
  
• Windows Vista to Windows 7
  
• 32bit to 64bit
  
• A computer that's full of dust and is old to a new, clean one that's never been used
  
• A computer that doesn't work and won't boot to one that hopefully will do both.
  

I'm also doing some new things I usually don't, like keeping the old PSU and going with the stock CPU cooler. It's like I have become crazy.

I'm still using a single core 1.8 and 1gb Ram, with 3 50gb hard drives stuck together (literally). It's the worst thing! Also, both side panels off incase it overheats.

Edited January 21, 2010 by Sombre

[Garple]

PC gaming will never not be intimidating to me. I will continue buying mid-range, prebuilt computation-machines once every 6 to 8 years.

You guys with all your acronyms and numbers and cooling fans and cores...you're magicians, for REAL.

[Patters]

I'm still using a single core 1.8 and 1gb Ram, with 3 50gb hard drives stuck together (literally). It's the worst thing! Also, both side panels off incase it overheats.

HOW!!?????

PC gaming will never not be intimidating to me. I will continue buying mid-range, prebuilt computation-machines once every 6 to 8 years.

You guys with all your acronyms and numbers and cooling fans and cores...you're magicians, for REAL.

DUDE, seriously, next time you upgrade build your own, it's really fun, as well as simple.

[miffy495]

It can be kind of intimidating, but you end up with a far better machine. I think I may be getting out of the habit though. I still upgrade my old desktop, but that thing is getting to be more and more of a relic. My laptop on the other hand was pre-built but has become my primary gaming machine. Despite the resolution topping out at 1366x768 due to the limited monitor, it's more than capable of handling all the latest fancy looking games and making them look and play great. Ain't nothing wrong with pre-built if you get a good 'un.

[Kolzig]

I will also upgrade after 4,5 years of using my current machine. I had plans never to update again, or more likely to buy a laptop, but well... plans change.

My friend bought a quad core so I'm getting his old Core2Duo 8500. That means I have to also buy a new motherboard and I'm going for ASUS P5N-D because I have a SLI setup that I'm working on. (Although I think my older graphics card might be dying, I have had problems with shit flying in the screen during Dead Space and I got blue screen of death while trying to watch a HD trailer from Apple webpage two days ago.)

Old setup:

ASUS N7V-SLI Deluxe

AMD64 +3500 Socket 939

2GB DDR 400Mhz

GeForce 8600GT 2x1GB SLI'd

One old harddrive

New setup:

ASUS P5N-D

Intel Core2Duo E8500

2GB DDR2 800mhz

GeForce 8600GT 2x1GB SLI'd

One old harddrive

Going to cost me only about 200 euros and that's fine by me, I'm not aiming to spend a lot of money anyway.

This rig will let me experience Batman and couple of other games during my holidays in February. Nice nice nice.

[elmuerte]

My workstation is only 2 years old, and was on the low side of a high end system. So maybe at the end of this year I'm going to buy a new one. Probably another Dell. Or maybe just replace the graphics card and wait another year.

I lost interest in building my own machine from parts. But maybe if Dell doesn't sell a proper configuration I might do it again. I really dislike the rather limited configuration options Dell (and alike) provide.

[monkeyarmada]

A couple of months ago I upgraded from a really tired(5 years old?) AMD Sempron with 1 gig of ram and crappy on-board video, to my lovely i7 (clocked up to 4 GHz) 6 gig of ram and a proper video card.

The PSU smells bad, clicks and whines when I play games with the side panels on the case but other that that I can recommend self building...

S.

[Thyroid]

I'm actually getting a new PC - my first with my own money. I've saved a lot and am now getting the best thing the market has to offer, a monster so terrifying it'll cause the IGN writers to be hit by a cerebral hemorrhage. My dumb and admittedly ignorant question, though, is this: will getting a 64-bit OS affect me at all? Are there games or programs that simply need Windows 7 to be in 32-bit?

Sorry for the dumb question.

[toblix]

Some older games, sure, but there's really no question as to whether you should get a 32 or 64 bit OS at this point.

[elmuerte]

Get a 64bit OS. Old games that don't work can probably be run in a virtualized Windows XP instance using VirtualBox or VMware (which supports Direct3D/OpenGL).

Getting a 32bit OS for a new PC is only going to hurt you down the road.

[toblix]

Well, if he's getting the best the market has to offer it will hurt him right off the bat, as he'd only be able to access a small fraction of his system memory.

edit: I just used a truly American expression that sounds like it has something to do with baseball.

[Erkki]

That's a new one ordered. I'll probably have the parts early next week. Although it's always a hassle transitioning to a new computer, I've been longing for this for a while, since I'll be transitioning from:

Man, I need to get a new one soon. It needs to malfunction a bit more before I'll build a new one though, currently it's still too easy to turn it on:

1) Turn off the power from the back for 5-10 seconds

2) Turn it back on

3) Press the front power button

4) wait a bit

5) Hold the front power button for 4 seconds to turn it off

6) Turn it back on

7) Press F2 to load BIOS defaults

8) Change the date once winxp has booted.

Restarts not allowed, have to go through this every time.

[Nachimir]

The side panel is permanently off my desktop system now, as it's so old and so infrequently used that the cards often need reseating.

[schepton]

Yep, dead video card. Exactly what my last card looked like when it broke.

[toblix]

Hello. I'm posting this from my new computer.

[elmuerte]

looks good

[Erkki]

looks good

I think he is kidding.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Hows 64bit treating ya? Aren't there issues running applications and games? (I've always been tempted, but I'm afraid that everything will stop working.)

[Patters]

Hows 64bit treating ya? Aren't there issues running applications and games? (I've always been tempted, but I'm afraid that everything will stop working.)

Everything I have runs perfectly with 64 bit, it was only a problem in the windows XP-vista era.

[toblix]

I hate it when I'm used to something working fine, and then a new version breaks it. Although I'm happy with most of the changes from Vista to Windows 7, the new Windows Media Player really sucks. WMP11 would minimize to a toolbar on the taskbar, and it would stay there until told otherwise. If I doubleclicked a file, it would start playing it. The new one won't minimize to a bar, because they've replaced it with some controls in the Aero Peek window, which is fair enough. However, where they really screwed up is that the player won't stay minimized. Doubleclicking a file maximizes the WMP window, which is really stupid.

I know, I know, shut the hell up and use one of the million alternatives. I will, but it's so dumb because:

• I can't uninstall WMP, so it'll just remain a huge and useless part of the OS
  
• All the alternatives have some other horrible properties that make me regret installing them (IE toolbars, fugly GUIs, general open sourceiness, etcc)
  
• It worked perfectly before
  
• It's a minor detail in the implementation, and it should be in the options menu, but instead there's crap like Connect to the Internet (overrides other commands) and Download usage rights automatically when I play or sync a file.
  

Ugh, finding a media player on the internet is so 1990's. What is there, Winamp?

[toblix]

Overheard in the VLC player offices:

- Boss, I have fixed the last bug on my list, so we have to decide what I should start working on next. I was thinking maybe we should work a bit on not having the application look like complete shit, and maybe add support for those play/pause buttons people have been having on their keyboards for over ten years n--

- Shut the fuck up make some more of this: