I BOUGHT THT POWER SUPPLY A WEEK AGObkbhalla786

My vote would be to ditch the PSU also, and go with a 1000W with dual GTX260's in SLI if you have an SLI capable mobo, otherwise give it a 750W PSU with a single GTX260. I'd leave the ram and cpu alone. Check out the video card charts on tomshardware.com and see what you think. I was in this same dilemma, and decided to go with dual 9800GTX+'s because I could keep my 880 psu, and still come in ~20fps behind dual GTX260's. I can't tell much difference between 60 and 80 fps anyway... I run everything maxed out and I'm satisfied.

i have core 2 duo E 7400 2.8G, Asus P5QL Pro Motherboard, Kingston 4GB memory, XFX GTS 250 512 MB GRAPHICS, WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE 64-BIT,

COOLER MASTER 500W PSU AND COOLER MASTER CM 690 CASe. Sometimes when the pc is at full load or returning from full load to to a a lesser load(when im turning off a game) suddenly a blue screen comes up and the pc reboots, this is worrying me a lot.

is tis the power supply, mother, or operating system, i cant figure it out, or the graphics card!!

plz help me solve this

bkbhalla786

I would say that the 500W PS is on the hairy edge for what you're trying to run.Especially if it's a year or more older. Some PSUs can degrade by up to 10% or more per year due to capacitor aging. So your 500 rated two years ago, could actually be 400. An underpowered system will do that as well. Something to consider.

Building opinions are like you know what- everyone's got one, and someone else will always claim they stink. For that reason, I don't scoff at what people want to buy. My opinion is to buy slightly behind the technology curve, because you'll get good price to performance ratio out of the deal. In your specific case though, I would highly recommend going with at least 1000W power supply, especially if you plan on going two or three way SLI. Expecially with the Ge 2XX series cards. I was looking at getting a pair of 260's for SLI, and decided to just go with a pair of 9800 GTX+'s because they only needed one power connector each, and I didn't need to start investing in more PS wattage.

I will say the Antec 900 is about the best damn case I ever ran across, and I've used about a dozen or so different ones. Never again. I'll always build with this baby. True heat dissappation at its best. You won't be disappointed in your choice there. Watch out for the top 200mm fan when putting in the mobo though. That's the only downside to this case is that it doesn't have a removable mobo mounting plate thing. I can't remember what they call it technically now. The power supply mounts on the bottom, so you'll want a PS that has a fan on one of the big surfaces so that you can face it up into the case. I have twin 120mm fans intake from the front, 120mm from the side in, 120mm in the rear facing out, and 200mm at the top facing out. Really keeps it cool.

A 32MB cache HDD is good. Never get anything less than a 32MB cache. You want all the parts working with as much throughput as you can get. Makes no sense to get a fast processor, ram, and then a 8MB or 16MB HDD cache. Creates a bottleneck...

I'd question whether more than 4GB of ram does any good. Might just be wasting cash. I've never seen my usage go over 3GB that I can recall, using Vista 64bit. Then again, I don't know how much its using during games. Maybe it's worth it...

I would have to say- EVERYTHING. Stand-offs are key. More common is a screw that's unaccounted for and then power up, only to find it behind the motherboard after smelling the smoke.

Count the hardware at your workstation. Shake test it to make sure. Get a case that has a slide out mobo tray. All these things help keep your mobo beautiful!

Unfortunately I don't think they issue Return Material Authorizations for human error. Good luck.

Could just be a bad motherboard- not easy to swap out with a known good comparison though.

Are you running Vista with 1 GB Ram? This would be a problem, need more memory.

Hard drive related? SATA or IDE? Try different plug on boardor cable. Any other read/write issues? Maybe try different HD with clean OS install and load a few programs and see if it runs better?

Im going to install my x1950pro, with 350W. the x1950 pro recommends 450W.

What are the chances of malfuntioning??

Airsoul

Depends upon how much shtuff you have hooked up to it too. Use this as a guideline. Gives you a pretty decent idea:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Most of my older games run fine (HL2, Starcraft, etc) but my newer, more graphically intense games keep crashing. (Company of Heroes, GTR 2) They run fine when I run them at normal graphics settings, but always crash a minute or two in when running with all the details turned on. There's no artifacting or slowdown prior to the crash.

Here are my specs

Intel C2D E6600

Gigabyte 965P DS3 mainboard

2GB (1x2GB) PC6400 DDR2 RAM

BFG geForce 7950GT w/512MB

Creative X-Fi

500W Ultra (forget the specific model/series) PSU

WinVista HP x64

Nothing's overclocked. Anybody have any clues? My guess would be maybe my PSU's not supplying enough power. It's 500W, but it's probably not that efficient, so maybe it's not giving my system enough power when running the more graphically intense games? I purchased an Antec Trio 550W PSU and am going to give that a shot. While I do, does anyone have any other suggestions?

PikaPichu

My first guess is that the 550 isn't even gonna cut it. Use a PS calculator to be sure. I think one is here

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

What about something to do with Vista? Vista compatible driver for the 7950?

I experienced this overclocking too high, which may mean heat related in your case. What cpu cooling do you use? If it's that stinking retail fan that comes with the chip I had the clip look like it was installed, butthe heat sink slightly broke contact away from the processor. The clips have to be pushed down quite hard then turned 90 degrees to lock into place in a cross-pattern. I could see where this would definitely overheat the chip with a few more calculations...

I was thinking about getting a new gaming computerand my budgets $1000-1500. If i got a computer from IBuyPower they would make it for me but after newegging the parts i realized i could build it for half as much. So is it hard to build your own computer and is there a book, magazine website or something to show me how to do it. The most techincal thing I've done for computers is put in a new graphics card. Thanks in advance.badgert

Here's one I built for $800.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=5546712

Less than that total out of pocket with rebates... I'd go cheap in case you mess something up on a learning curve factor... Then work your way into the big buck parts... You'd feel pretty bad if you damaged a $400 video card, or processor, or mobo, or all of the above.