1st Build Graphics Card Suggestions

[bytheway_r]

I'm willing to jump on the 550W bandwagon as long as the OP is thinking about upgrading to something more power hungry within ~2 years. Certainly a 550W PSU gives you the headroom to play around with your build later on. Now, the problem may be that everything's heading towards lower power consumption as of late. Who knows how much power you'll need to run a PC in a year or 2. If the current trend continues at the same speed as now we may not have much use for PSUs over 500-600W soon.

[Dark Mantis]

I guess we will see a lot of them converted to welders then! 

[littledigger]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for all the input, makes very interesting reading. 

As a novice to hardware (more a software man myself), I am having good fun watching you more or less agree on just about all things, but slog it out on the finer points. Some looking to the future, some to the here and now. Great stuff guys and I mean that in an un-patronising way. I really do appreciate your expertise. Right! enough of the flannel.

I found a pretty good review on the HD 5670 at this address: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/graphics-cards/354787/ati-radeon-hd-5670, have made up my mind to go for this card.

As for the PSU, I've decided not to scrimp on price as you do have to pay for quality. I totally understand that if I am only pulling 300w at the moment, it seems a bit of an overkill to splash out on a much bigger wattage unit. But....... I was looking to add on at a later date, probs make it into a home theatre system. Not guarenteed but probs.

Therefore, without the aid of experience on my side, I have set my heart on a - Corsair VX Series, 550 Watt, ATX, PS/2, Power Supply, UK Version.

Having read what DM wrote about a single +12V rail and finding that another grey mist was rising, I spent an hour or so Googling single rail vs multi rail PSU's and decided to go with DM on this. This Corsair has the single +12V rail.

So there we go.... it's the HD5670 and the Corsair VX Series, 550 Watt PSU for me. 

Thanks again all you guys for all your input on my project, I will continue to read your stuff with admiration and a chuckle. Will let you know how it all pans out when I've assembled it all.

Adios

[Dark Mantis]

I think you have made a good decision all round and your new hardware should last and serve you well. Good luck with the build. 

[littledigger]

Been a while but have assembled my first build and am well chuffed. It was not plain sailing though.

When I had assembled it, I turned on the power and........ nothing...... no fans no lights, I was gutted! Took it apart again, laid it all out on a sheet of cardboard and tried the bent pin thing on my PSU, it worked the fan spun. Phew! I was thinking that I had fried my mobo, but when I plugged an old MP3 player into a usb on the mobo, it lit up.... we have power. Now I'm flummoxed!

To cut a long story short.... I had put a couple of the case wires on the wrong connectors, Pwr LED on the Pwr Switch and visa versa. Assembled it correctly, worked fine. It is running like a dream now, well almost.

Anybody any idea why there might be a 30 second delay between pressing the power on button on the case and it booting? No fan sounds, no black screen, nothing. I have tried different Bios settings, but to no avail. Have looked on web, not much stuff makes sense on there. It's not a real problem, but it can get a little annoying.

Am thinking of my next build now, am having to reign myself in though. Am off on a great holiday in Sept and can't justify the money yet. Hard though, keep seeing special offers on bigger n' better mobo's, processors etc. Defs learned a few things though, great feeling, gotta do it again.

Thanks guys in advance.... Take care

[Dark Mantis]

Hi good news then. I see that you kept a cool head and managed to faultfind on your own. It's all logical.

I expect in the BIOS you haven't disabled the floppy drive so do that. Also make the hard drive yopur primary boot device and disable the full screen logo while you are there. You can enable quick boot too. They are the main things that tend to slow down booting so do them first.

[littledigger]

Hey DM, not so sure about the cool head, nearly blew my top once or twice and was very dubious about sticking pins in electrical thingys, but managed not to throw it all in the bin. Will try your suggestions. Many thanks.

[Dark Mantis]

I can't imagine that...Gort being uncool! Never, it's not possible!

[littledigger]

Good job I'm not Gort, I'd probs have blasted the machine with my heat ray after the first balls-up. Luckily I'm a Taurean (very patient apparently).

Have done all the things that DM suggested, but then I read through my explanation of the problem and guess what..... I described that wrongly. I should have said that it's 30 secs between pressing power button and the appearance of the POST screen.

Was thinking about that last nite and finally realising there was a single beep before the POST screen appeared, I realised that it must have done a self test taking 30 secs, so all I had to do was disable this feature.... ye har I worked through it logically......

Guess what, I've been all the way through the bios settings and there is no power up self test feature. How the hell can this be? On my earlier versions of bios it was always there, but it is not in the phoenix award bios F6 (I upgraded). Would it be too much trouble for the bu**ers to keep the feature in the bios settings? If only for us semi-techies?

Ah well, back to the interweb and hours of trawling I suppose. Do any of you older peeps remember the infancy of the web, when you could get pretty accurate information when searching, rather than 16,000,000 pages of completely unrelated rubbish? God I'm getting old.

Hang loose guys

[jannie]

Being a really old peep, I can remember when there was no internet, and everything was sent by carrier pigeon

[absic]

I remember the days when the internet was called a book!

[Dark Mantis]

Engraved on stone tablets!

[littledigger]

Looks like none of us are spring chickens then ha ha! 

1,000,000 pages of gunk later and I'm still no wiser as to why my bios has no quick POST setting. Anybody any ideas......PLEASSSSE? Have got Phoenix Award BIOS 6.00pg.

Have googled bios version, checked images and I find that there are differing advanced bios feature settings accorded with this version. In one there is the quick POST setting and a virus check thing and in others, they are the same as mine, no quick POST or virus check thingy.......... confused is an under-statement. Not losing my cool..... but just cannot believe there's nothing on interweb on this.

Why can't Phoenix just tell us if they have discarded the damn Quick POST - enable/ Disable setting?

Sorry guys starting to rant - later dudes

[Dark Mantis]

The problem is with all these BIOSes they basic BIOS is supplied by Phoenix, AMI, Award or whoever and then they are customised to suit the particular board the manufacturer is putting them in. Again as new versions are released they can have different attributes and sometimes you will find things added and sometimes taken away. It is not down to the BIOS chip manufacturer but the BIOS engineers of the motherboard manufacturer.

I hope that makes things a bit clearer for you.

[littledigger]

Thanks DM, yes much clearer now. Like I said at the beginning, it's no problem waiting 30 secs for a POST, it would be annoying if there was an easy way to rectify it, but there isn't, so no probs. Thanks for all your advice DM, much appreciated.

Will keep my eye on the forum now and again to see what's happening, but you probs won't hear from me until after Sept when I will start planning my next build.

Just to throw a little teaser into the mix..... AMD vs INTEL

What's the verdict? I suppose it is what you wish to do with the machine, but people generally have preferences. I have built an AMD based machine and am very happy with the result, but I am now wondering 'what about an Intel'?

Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense