Fried Computer

My logic board died. Since it's at least a $700 repair at most places (the part itself is more than $500), then it's a new computer for me. Won't get it for a month at least (likely). I have an old one that will be fine for browsing and for Starcraft (wo-ho-ho) that I can get at home once I'm done with finals in a week or so.

Great timing that my computer die right before finals. But, today was my last day of actual school, so I'm a man of mixed emotions right now.

haha my computer died on me to looks like i have a starcraft buddie now lol

i want starcraft ='''(

Love I am leaving you a PM in the forums. Check it asap

Oh the suspence , what could it be ?!?!?!?

Dont worry about it,Fallen. It does not cocern you.

Checked and replied; I do not have access to a teamspeak ready computer, and will not have such access for at least another week.

Updating time.

With the help of my friend and neighbor, bT*Magnus, I am nearly ready to order all the parts for a new machine. I've put in a bit of research alone, and consulted a few friends, but I figured it's best that this gets one last go over to make sure everything will fit together alright. So, PLEASE contact me ASAP if you notice any incompatibilities or problems.

This is probably the final build:

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0 GHz (donated by bT*Magnus)

Motherboard: MSI 790XT-G45 AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X1950 XTX (donated by bT*Magnus)

Hard Drive: Western Digital 640GB 7200 RPM SATA

Ram: 4 GB DDR2 of a brand I don't know, but they are functional/compatible (donated by bT*Magnus)

CD/DVD: Lite-On 18X DVD/48X CD-ROM

Case: APEVIA X-SUPRA Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2 SLI

Here's the wish list of things I need to buy: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=19063248

I already have a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

Total is $299.95 + $12.79 shipping after rebates. Magnus is essentially giving me about $350 in parts, so this would not be possible without him.

I have no reason to believe XP won't run this setup, so I will likely be starting with that unless I can get my parents to outright buy 7 for me, which I may be able to do, but for now I'd be perfectly fine running XP. Upgrades will be much easier to handle with a more powerful than necessary power supply and with a motherboard compatible with AM3 processors, although I can't imagine myself possibly needing a more powerful processor anytime soon.

The only thing I'm slightly worried about is that the PSU only has 1 12 volt rail, where most others in this range have two (although I note that second most have only one, even fewer have three, four, etc.). I have a feeling that the extra rails would be necessary only in a system requiring more than one graphics card, which I never intend to need. Tell me if you know better!

According to the graphics card specification that power supply should be fine. You are right though if you ever want crossfire it may not work. I assume he is providing RAM and board in which case I guess he checked that if you have trouble with it most motherboard manufacturing sites provide lists of compatible RAM. Everything looks like it should work together to me enjoy building it man and we will see you back soon.

All is well so far.

The only cable we (Magnus and I) truly forgot to plug in was the CPU power cable...gonna want that. What happened was that the power supply has a dual connector. It combined the 4 and 8 pin CPU power providers. This motherboard only needed four, but of course we didn't see any four pin connectors, only the 8 pin. We moved on to plugging in other things and didn't think to come back and ponder this. Once we had powered up the computer, everything seemed to be working (all fans on, no smoke, etc.) except the omnipresent beep. After going over a few ideas, we unplugged everything, opened up the computer and it was like a derp moment once I realized that the CPU had no power...So I looked over the manual again, and realized that the four pin we needed was part of the eight pin. We found it, spent the time to split it, and plugged it in. We hooked up the monitor and keyboard, and voila, our first images!

At this point, we breathed a sigh of relief. Me especially, I was so worried that the CPU had been damaged, or that the motherboard had gotten statically disabled, or some other stupidly tragic, awfully expensive mistake had been made. But, it turns out that everything expensive works so far.

I need an extra SATA cable. The OEM DVD drive didn't come with its own is the problem I think (not surprising), but since we can't plug in the hard drive and the DVD drive at the same time (they're both SATA), getting an OS running tonight isn't happening.

When we first tried to boot it, just to see if we could get to BIOS, we got to this:

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable

And some message about an Ethernet card. From what I can tell, this is because the computer tried to boot from the Network, not having detected an OS on the hard drive (reasonable). So as soon as I get to frys or radioshack or wherever and pick up this cable, and install it, I'm gonna try getting the BIOS to boot from the CD/DVD drive with the XP disk, and go from there...

The beep was the motherboard letting you know something was wrong. It is unlikely something can go to wrong in that situation I believe. The motherboard runs checks when it recieves power and can stop devices from comming on if something is wrong. Also OEM products pretty much never come with extras they you get only the main product and that is usually it no cables nothing.

I mean the one, single beep that's actually a good sign (I do hope it's a good sign...). The start-up beep.

And yeah, I should've planned ahead and ordered an extra SATA cable, but didn't think to..

I have about a dozen extras if you lived close I'd help you out XD.

Haha, it's okay. I got one for like $7 at a nearby store. Everything is ship-shape now. Formatting the drive, which will take a while at 640 GB, but it appears it's only a matter of time now!

DONE

dling tf2 now!

See you in game

Glad to hear it all worked out.