Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:32:51 +1200, "~misfit~" <misfit@'SPAMTRAP'orcon.net.nz>
wrote:

>Hi Group.
>
>A friend of mine has just bought a new computer. He specified what he wanted
>and they built it for him. Basically all he asked for was an 80gig HDD,
>512Mb RAM, P4 and a gamers graphics card as the machine was to be used
>mainly for gaming.




Did they put in the Parts that he recommended or was it so open that they just
filled it with cheap junk..?

I think they saw him comming.

>So he gets his machine with XP Home pre-installed and straight away it's
>crashing. It won't play games for more than a minute and even just
>web-browsing crashes it after a while. He spoke to their tech who wanted to
>know exactly how it was crashing and when. He said it gives blue-screens
>with varying messages at different times and sometimes just spontaneously
>re-boots.


One must deal with reputable shops, far to many copyboys out their, and from
what I read there is one on every corner in Aulk..

Hardware/PSU question
 

Hi Group.

A friend of mine has just bought a new computer. He specified what he wanted
and they built it for him. Basically all he asked for was an 80gig HDD,
512Mb RAM, P4 and a gamers graphics card as the machine was to be used
mainly for gaming.

So he gets his machine with XP Home pre-installed and straight away it's
crashing. It won't play games for more than a minute and even just
web-browsing crashes it after a while. He spoke to their tech who wanted to
know exactly how it was crashing and when. He said it gives blue-screens
with varying messages at different times and sometimes just spontaneously
re-boots.

They weren't helpful, firstly saying it's something he's doing and then
saying send it back and they;ll get it back to him in a week. He said that
wasn't good enough and was told to bring it up the next day and he can wait
if he wants to while they look at it.

He takes it up there (Albany from Pukekohe) and waits 3 hours in the
car-park. They tell him it was a corrupted windows problem and that they've
fixed it. He asks for the windows CD as, although the paperwork that came
with the PC said CD included, there wasn't one. They say there was and won't
listen to his protestations.

He gets it home, tries to install and play Battlefield 1942 and crashes.
Repeatedly. He's been talking to me about it but I'm loathe to get involved
as I feel it's a warranty thing and they should fix it. He say's there's a
langauge problem for a start, the tech doesn't have English as his first
language, and he doesn't know how to deal with the guy who just keeps
insisting it's my mate's fault.

He rings them back and they agree to give him *another* windows CD if he
goes to pick it up and tell him to install over windows. I gave him a
bootable floppy with memtest86 on it, thinking it could be flakey memory. He
re-installed but still had problems so booted into memtest and left it
running over-night. It went fine, no errors reported.

So he bought it around to me. I formatted and did a fresh install. No
problems. I left it dowloading a 26Mb driver-update and came back to it 90
minutes later to find it had re-booted.

I installed prime95 and started the torture-test. It crashed after 30
seconds. I installed 3DMark 2001 SE and tried to run it. It crashed after 10
seconds.

The graphics card they put in is a GeForce4 MX440 and he's not that happy
about that, it's not exactly a serious gaming card. He intends to replace
it. The CPU is a P4 2.4Ghz.

I decided it was time to take a peek inside it and was very surprised to see
on big letters on the PSU "300 Watt".

I think this is the problem, the PSU isn't big enough. What do you guys
think?

Thanks,
--
~misfit~



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.507 / Virus Database: 304 - Release Date: 4/08/2003

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

"Bryan McNally" <bryanm@es.co.nz> wrote in message
news:bha9if$r7p$1@lust.ihug.co.nz...
> Most P4 systems come with a 320 watt power supply which is adequate for
> most users. A 300 watt supply I suspect would be borderline on any P4
> system. The amount of hardware installed is relevant to. My own personal
> opinion would be to run with at least a 350 watt power supply.
> I would recommend a TI4200 graphics card if on a budget as a good
> replacement. If possible though a DX9 card would be even better as there
> are games due out soon that use DX9. Well thats my 2 cents worth.

Thanks. I would have thought that 400 watt would have been more like it
personally, especially as he said it was for gaming. At the moment it only
has the two IDE devices, the aforementioned 80gig HDD and a DVD-CDRW Liteon
combo drive.

I told him he's an idiot, he didn't know much about graphics cards (he does
now, I also suggested a ti4200 and showed him some benchmarks) so he just
asked them to put in a 'gamer's card' and he ordered it verbally so he
really has no come-back I feel.

BTW, there are games out now that use DX9 and have been for a while.

This machine is a huge jump from his last machine, a P100 with a 1gig HDD
and 16MB RAM and he really didn't know much about the latest gear. All he
knew was he wanted to be able to play Battlefield 1942 smoothly and be
reasonably future-proofed.

I'm just curious if anyone else thinks that the problems he's having are due
to the PSU. It'd be a bitch to kick up a stink about it, get it replaced
with a larger one and still have problems. If it is the PSU and he's having
problems with a measly passively cooled GF4MX it'll get a lot worse if he
puts a ti4200 in, they suck a bit more gas.

Cheers.
--
~misfit~



> ~misfit~ wrote:
> > Hi Group.
> >
> > A friend of mine has just bought a new computer. He specified what he
wanted
> > and they built it for him. Basically all he asked for was an 80gig HDD,
> > 512Mb RAM, P4 and a gamers graphics card as the machine was to be used
> > mainly for gaming.
> >
> > So he gets his machine with XP Home pre-installed and straight away it's
> > crashing. It won't play games for more than a minute and even just
> > web-browsing crashes it after a while. He spoke to their tech who wanted
to
> > know exactly how it was crashing and when. He said it gives blue-screens
> > with varying messages at different times and sometimes just
spontaneously
> > re-boots.
> >
> > They weren't helpful, firstly saying it's something he's doing and then
> > saying send it back and they;ll get it back to him in a week. He said
that
> > wasn't good enough and was told to bring it up the next day and he can
wait
> > if he wants to while they look at it.
> >
> > He takes it up there (Albany from Pukekohe) and waits 3 hours in the
> > car-park. They tell him it was a corrupted windows problem and that
they've
> > fixed it. He asks for the windows CD as, although the paperwork that
came
> > with the PC said CD included, there wasn't one. They say there was and
won't
> > listen to his protestations.
> >
> > He gets it home, tries to install and play Battlefield 1942 and crashes.
> > Repeatedly. He's been talking to me about it but I'm loathe to get
involved
> > as I feel it's a warranty thing and they should fix it. He say's there's
a
> > langauge problem for a start, the tech doesn't have English as his first
> > language, and he doesn't know how to deal with the guy who just keeps
> > insisting it's my mate's fault.
> >
> > He rings them back and they agree to give him *another* windows CD if he
> > goes to pick it up and tell him to install over windows. I gave him a
> > bootable floppy with memtest86 on it, thinking it could be flakey
memory. He
> > re-installed but still had problems so booted into memtest and left it
> > running over-night. It went fine, no errors reported.
> >
> > So he bought it around to me. I formatted and did a fresh install. No
> > problems. I left it dowloading a 26Mb driver-update and came back to it
90
> > minutes later to find it had re-booted.
> >
> > I installed prime95 and started the torture-test. It crashed after 30
> > seconds. I installed 3DMark 2001 SE and tried to run it. It crashed
after 10
> > seconds.
> >
> > The graphics card they put in is a GeForce4 MX440 and he's not that
happy
> > about that, it's not exactly a serious gaming card. He intends to
replace
> > it. The CPU is a P4 2.4Ghz.
> >
> > I decided it was time to take a peek inside it and was very surprised to
see
> > on big letters on the PSU "300 Watt".
> >
> > I think this is the problem, the PSU isn't big enough. What do you guys
> > think?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --
> > ~misfit~
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> > Version: 6.0.507 / Virus Database: 304 - Release Date: 4/08/2003
> >
> >
>


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.507 / Virus Database: 304 - Release Date: 4/08/2003

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

"~misfit~" <misfit@'SPAMTRAP'orcon.net.nz> wrote in
news:bB4_a.113925$JA5.2557602@news.xtra.co.nz:

> I'm just curious if anyone else thinks that the problems he's having
> are due to the PSU. It'd be a bitch to kick up a stink about it, get
> it replaced with a larger one and still have problems. If it is the
> PSU and he's having problems with a measly passively cooled GF4MX
> it'll get a lot worse if he puts a ti4200 in, they suck a bit more
> gas.

The problems he is experiencing are exactly the same as problems I had with
my PSU. The problem with the PSU was not that it was underpowered (it was
320W) but that it was just fairly low quality (an iCute piece of junk).
Replaced it with a 350W Enermax and everything is fine.

--
Tim
- <insert witty signature here>

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:05:08 +1200, Tim <newsgroups@netdaemon.org> wrote:

>"~misfit~" <misfit@'SPAMTRAP'orcon.net.nz> wrote in
>news:bB4_a.113925$JA5.2557602@news.xtra.co.nz:
>
>> I'm just curious if anyone else thinks that the problems he's having
>> are due to the PSU. It'd be a bitch to kick up a stink about it, get
>> it replaced with a larger one and still have problems. If it is the
>> PSU and he's having problems with a measly passively cooled GF4MX
>> it'll get a lot worse if he puts a ti4200 in, they suck a bit more
>> gas.
>
>The problems he is experiencing are exactly the same as problems I had with
>my PSU. The problem with the PSU was not that it was underpowered (it was
>320W) but that it was just fairly low quality (an iCute piece of junk).
>Replaced it with a 350W Enermax and everything is fine.



Bit Tim that was for a AMD Electric Fire..

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

"Tim" <newsgroups@netdaemon.org> wrote in message
news:Xns93D62AC2B81newsgroupsnetdaemonc@192.168.0. 1...
> "~misfit~" <misfit@'SPAMTRAP'orcon.net.nz> wrote in
> news:bB4_a.113925$JA5.2557602@news.xtra.co.nz:
>
> > I'm just curious if anyone else thinks that the problems he's having
> > are due to the PSU. It'd be a bitch to kick up a stink about it, get
> > it replaced with a larger one and still have problems. If it is the
> > PSU and he's having problems with a measly passively cooled GF4MX
> > it'll get a lot worse if he puts a ti4200 in, they suck a bit more
> > gas.
>
> The problems he is experiencing are exactly the same as problems I had
with
> my PSU. The problem with the PSU was not that it was underpowered (it was
> 320W) but that it was just fairly low quality (an iCute piece of junk).
> Replaced it with a 350W Enermax and everything is fine.

Thanks Tim, that's one person who thinks I'm on the right track. :-)
I'm not sure of the brand name of this thing, I've put the sides back on,
but it wasn't a name I recognized and I know of several PSU brand-names.
--
~misfit~



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.509 / Virus Database: 306 - Release Date: 12/08/2003

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

"~misfit~" <misfit@'SPAMTRAP'orcon.net.nz> wrote in message
news:i45_a.113951$JA5.2558404@news.xtra.co.nz...
> Forgot to mention, The CPU vcore varies between 1.42 and 1.48v by the
second
> and the 3.3v line is usually 3.28 and dips to 3.25 at times. This is
without
> the PC doing any work, just sitting there. Readings observed in BIOS and
> using MBM5, both agree. All the other voltages are down a little on what
> they should be as well.

I think this deviation is within acceptable limits.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

In article <NC1_a.113727$JA5.2553677@news.xtra.co.nz>, ~misfit~ wrote...
> I think this is the problem, the PSU isn't big enough. What do you guys
> think?
>
>
If it is one of the "free" psu that come in cheap cases it probably
doesn't have the current capacity required on 12V line.

Take it back - even if your friend specified the case the shop should
have known better.

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

There was a problem B1942 and refresh rates on monitors too.

GP forums - www.gpforums.co.nz - might be able to point you/him in the right
direction.

Re: Hardware/PSU question
 

>but don't want to look like a
> prat if it doesn't fix the problems.
>

Every technicians worst nightmare LOL