Need a good pc builder

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rick Williams
  • Start date Start date
Why not? There's always a first time. The only reasons I wouldn't
It also depends on how much you like sending things back and how long
you're willing to wait. You can spec parts until heck won't have it,
but one bad one means you either replace it locally at a high price or
wait a week for ups to get it to you cheaper. I'd only build a
machine if I just couldn't find anything close already available; it
isn't worth the aggrevation for nothing less than bleeding edge and I
don't care to be at the bleeding edge because the price is too high.
It is different if you are going to build a few machines at a time,
then you have parts to swap so you can find the problematic part if
you have a problem; this is much harder on a one-off.
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Well, the parts DOA from the factory problem is way over-blown. Does it
happen? Yup. But I build several systems a year, and the last DOA part I
got was obviously USED (but advertised and sold as new).

The real problem is, newbie builders often assume that brand new parts are
defective, because they've screwed up installing them somehow. My first
thought when a new system doesn't boot is, what did *I* **** up on??? (I'm
not perfect). But a less experienced builder will often wonder, which part
is broken? That's where a lot of needless parts swapping comes in.

But buy good brand name parts from a good vendor (such as mwave) and the
odds of your getting a DOA part are really low.

The only advice I would give to a new builder is to have a working system
hooked up to the Internet handy. That is, don't take vital parts from your
only current system to build the new system. That way, when you get stuck,
you can do research, or even post places like this for help. -Dave
 
johns said:
The Far Cry posters spotted a driver problem with the
Audigy sound card.
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Yeah those competent game players...............that's where you should go
for Creative hardware advice

Seems that card was causing
all kinds of stuttering and pauses in Far Cry .. and
they have a fix. I vaguely remember some kind of
hardware acceleration setting, but that would take
a search ...

http://www.tweakguides.com/Farcry_6.html

This Tweak Guide talks about it, but I remember more
posting about the "compatibility" issues, and need to
disable settings. If you go to the UBI Far Cry Discussion
Forum, and post about it in the Technical group,
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they will tell you to load the most recent drivers from Creative as this was
addressed long ago. It was not creatives problem, it was the game, as this
was the only software that was effected.

I'm
sure they will jump all over you for dragging that discussion
out again, but then they will point you to the threads
on it. Still, my experience with the Dells is you
absolutely have to reinstall the system from scratch,
and bring it up testing each element as you go.
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Why?because ONE game doesn't play right?

Do
not install their DVD /RW software. Go get and pay
for EasyCD Creator. Also don't install anything that
supposedly plays DVDs. Get PowerDVD. And don't
even think about installing NERO. Holy cat! That is
a piece of garbage.
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Heh, your opinion again. too confusing for ya? So you tell him to use
Easy Headache Creator? jesus christ man get with it will you! If he is
running XP, it has burnware installed, pay for more why?



I'm guessing you used the Dell
driver for your sound card. Their drivers tend to be
out of date. Get the latest driver. In addition, check
that you have the on-board sound disabled in the
BIOS .. and you did not load an on-board sound
driver. Also, I remember from the Far Cry group
that sometimes loading mouse drivers will give
duplicate mouses
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Don't you mean mieses......


and keybds. Delete these things
if you see them.
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all newer HIDs have multiple entries in the device manager, Deleting them is
a waste of time as they will be right back when he reboots.



Don't load any mouse or keybd
drivers. They will conflict with hardware that the
sound card is sharing.
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conflicting how? Irqs are not necessarily determined by the driver but by
Bios or windows.

Usually that will give a
 
No problem, you can e-mail me anytime if you'd like. I'm always very
happy to try and answer your questions, and usually around. I love
building and helping to build, so fire away anytime.

Johan
 
Many of the Far Cry admins are software testors, and I find they
know a lot more than the techs at the vendors. Far Cry pushed
everything to its limit, and if you fix it in Far Cry, you fix it in
a lot of places. Also, the gamers asking for help admitted
when they had the problem outside of Far Cry ... see that
at the link. My experience was troubleshooting psupply
problems in my CAD labs and with newer machines in the
Engineering Offices. We had a lot of BSOD problems, and
I found the best information on that at the Far Cry site
because they were seeing it too .. on the same machines.
I switched everybody to the SmartPower 480 supplies ..
BSOD went away on 60 machines. Nobody else knew
the answer except the gamers. Now people think I'm
a genius, and Dell Tech Support is not great.

johns
 
In addition ... if you install non-microsoft keybd and
mouse drivers ... they will conflict, and also in
hardware manager, you will see multiple devices.
I don't think it is an IRQ conflict either. It is a system
level conflict of some kind. Anyway, Far Cry gamers
spotted it, and fixed FC, MOHPA, COD2, and weird
desktop pauses.
As for the Dell junkola. Go google that. Dell loads
a world of spam-ware that is incompatible with
each other once you pay for and enable it. Their
dvd player won't play dvds, and it will conflict with
Win Media Player 10, and both of them will conflict
with Dells Nero Lite.

johns
 
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