Best Value Graphics card

[Viper]

If they got a good chip, it's possible.

They've done pretty well with their stock coolers since the Core 2 Duo came out and they've only gotten better (coupled with better thermal capabilities of the chips).

[Smokey]

i dont think ill take it past 4 anyway fast enough for what i want just want reliable gaming & pc

[Viper]

See what it can do with the new aftermarket cooler (just for testing) and then scale it back a little for prudent purposes. Tell us what you come up with.

[goku2057]

I really have never even had the desire on my personal computers to overclock them. That may change when i build a new rig with an i7 or whatever is higher end when I build my next one. On stock settings I have never had a need on my Core 2 Quad to change the cooler. I run in normal temps under pretty much any amount of strain.

[Smokey]

ya will do Viper might be a coupla days as i just realised i gotta take mobo out to fit lol

goku i used to be right into o/c havent for a coupla yrs but wouldnt mind seeing how far this i5 will go

[Luis]

Although I've been careful (as much as you can be when dealing with delicate settings), I've had serious trouble after overclocking and updating BIOS.

- I did a 10% overclock on my Pentium II back in the day. It did run noticeably faster, then it shut off after a few minutes and I got my Windows 98 install corrupted. The hard drive still works as of today (15 years old!), so I'm sure it wasn't a mechanical failure (no lost sectors either). I'm not willing to risk it again, even if today's systems are built to support moderate overclock.

- I had successfully updated the BIOS on my AMD Athlon 64 system several times a few years ago. No real point on it, I just updated it to learn and to feel it was... well, updated. Then a buggy version was released, and I only found out after I had updated. The events revolving the repair were a huge pain.

- I updated my current BIOS about a year ago. The point was updating the CPU support, since the multiplier was missing a 0.5x step. It ran OK for a few minutes, then it failed miserably. I had three hard drives running by then, and I lost all the info from the one I mainly used for massive storage. Luckily I had made a backup of the built-in BIOS version and I could make the system boot up again, but I still have no idea why it killed all the info from one of my drives so randomly. The drive itself still works well as of today.


I'm not sure I will dare to update a BIOS again. However, the motherboard I plan to buy would allow me to boot from a USB (actual BIOS code on a regular USB drive), so I may give it one very last chance, mostly because it would add further CPU support for the processor I have in mind. However, I won't be updating for the sake of it anymore.

[Smokey]

ya i found Luis in the Pentium days they were dodgy to o/c (hit & miss) but once the c2d days came they were alot easier almost idiot proof to o/c them. but ya ive never been one to enjoy updating the BIOS as i know a bit about pcs but im not the smartest. i love all the press this button and knowing im guaranteed of it working. but i do enjoy the challenge of pushing the limits of the hardware & my knowledge as thats the way to learn is to play with it & pull it apart.

i think youll be cool if you upgrade ya pc & play with it i mean pentium 4 ya o/c tiny bits at a time same as c2d (not as bad though) but this i5 i took it from 3.3 to 4.1 in one hit & to be honest i reckon itd go to 4.5 not a problem. but when i fan mine up ill give it a go

[Luis]

Given my limited experience, I'll always advice against even thinking of overclocking or updating BIOS unless you're completely in the know of what you're doing.

That said, good luck with that.

[D3adcell]

ya Viper still got stock cooler on & clocked it to 4.0Ghz its not even sweating

EDIT: ive heard of people taking them to 5?? stock cooler

Yeah the stock coolers are pretty damn good. I actually was thinking of getting an aftermarket cooler on my i7 but after reading more about it where people did comparisons the difference was so little that it wasn't worth the cost and wouldn't really have an effect (also be a pain to take off all that thermal paste, reapply and taking off the push pin cooler).

I mean right now my CPU is running at 22 celcius. The hottest it gets when under stress is around 31-33 degrees.

[Luis]

Aren't the stock coolers noisy? That's the main reason why I always consider a bigger, more silent one.

[Smokey]

unless the pcs working hard they are pretty quiet. even my case came with 2 massive fans on it but its quiet as a mouse all i can hear is disk E: (HDD) lol

[Luis]

They must have gotten a lot better then. I think I never tried my stock Core 2 Quad fan, but the Core 2 Duo fan I had prior to this is certainly noisier (not much more though) than the bigger one I installed. The temperatures were considerably lower as well, even if they never were excessive to begin with.

[Smokey]

also ive read before not to 'defrag' ssd drives? if this is true why not does it wreck them?

[Segitz]

Well... it wears them out... and since they don't really suffer from fragmented files (it actually fragments the files willingly to keep the wearlevel stable) it'd be quite bad to do it. On HDDs, they get worn out, too, with defragmenting, but the gains (i.e. less head movement because of defragged files) are more vital, so it's worth it.

[Smokey]

cool Segitz thanks for that ya i havent done it & wont then main time i used to defrag was after initial windows install on HDDs. also that ttrim thing on the ssd is itsomething that needs to be turned on?

[Luis]

I think you can check a registry value for that, but I would appreciate an educated post about it. It needs to be set in AHCI mode though.

By the way, you should disable superfetch as well.

[Smokey]

hmm see this is where i know basic stuff about pcs... where in the hell is superfetch (in search function on windows superfetch came up with readyboost?) & AHCI mode in windows 7 lol

[Viper]

Although I've been careful (as much as you can be when dealing with delicate settings), I've had serious trouble after overclocking and updating BIOS.

- I did a 10% overclock on my Pentium II back in the day. It did run noticeably faster, then it shut off after a few minutes and I got my Windows 98 install corrupted. The hard drive still works as of today (15 years old!), so I'm sure it wasn't a mechanical failure (no lost sectors either). I'm not willing to risk it again, even if today's systems are built to support moderate overclock.

- I had successfully updated the BIOS on my AMD Athlon 64 system several times a few years ago. No real point on it, I just updated it to learn and to feel it was... well, updated. Then a buggy version was released, and I only found out after I had updated. The events revolving the repair were a huge pain.

- I updated my current BIOS about a year ago. The point was updating the CPU support, since the multiplier was missing a 0.5x step. It ran OK for a few minutes, then it failed miserably. I had three hard drives running by then, and I lost all the info from the one I mainly used for massive storage. Luckily I had made a backup of the built-in BIOS version and I could make the system boot up again, but I still have no idea why it killed all the info from one of my drives so randomly. The drive itself still works well as of today.


I'm not sure I will dare to update a BIOS again. However, the motherboard I plan to buy would allow me to boot from a USB (actual BIOS code on a regular USB drive), so I may give it one very last chance, mostly because it would add further CPU support for the processor I have in mind. However, I won't be updating for the sake of it anymore.

BIOS updates shouldn't be done unless your motherboard requires it. If your system is running fine, don't update the BIOS. Now modern motherboards use UEFI instead of BIOS which performs a similar function only much, much more advanced and easier to work with. You can do anti-virus scanning, hard drive backups, full Internet networking, etc...all without booting into your operating gsystem. Another thing, many modern motherboards have a dual BIOS or dual UEFI which means if one craps out or fails, the other one kicks in the next boot cycle. Saves the day.

As for overclocking, there are so many applications that can do the overclocking for you that it's simple. And I don't know anyone that's ruined their system from overclocking these days.

hmm see this is where i know basic stuff about pcs... where in the hell is superfetch (in search function on windows superfetch came up with readyboost?) & AHCI mode in windows 7 lol

Superfetch can be disabled by opening the Run dialog (Windows key +R) and typing in services.msc. Double click Superfetch and select 'disabled' in the start up type drop down box.

AHCI mode is a BIOS setting for hard drives. It's not part of the operating system.

[Smokey]

well so i put the upgraded fan on the new system last night aaaand it will not fire back up lol it starts all fans start but then die & reboots again and just keeps going around like that. so i put standard fan back on and it still wont fire back up just keeps restarting ive checked everything twice but cant work it out. all i can think is ive damaged something somehow..... not happy

[goku2057]

generally if it's not booting something isn't locked in properly. I'd check that the CPU is properly inserted. Could be that it isn't seated properly. Also, double check all of the fan connections. I have also seen comps restart when it doesn't detect a fan. it's kind of a safety feature on some mobos.

---------- Post added at 03:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:35 PM ----------

Other question, does it make it through POST to where windows starts loading before it fails? or does it restart in POST?