recommendations after fry-ing my pc...

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orubap

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Nov 3, 2005
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while doing some decorating and flicking the ring-mains on and off at the circuit breaker, i think i fried my mobo - pc won't boot and the ethernet activity led on the mobo's onboard rj45 is constantly blinking despite the pc being off.

i took the 24pin psu plug, snapped off the end 4pins and stuck it in an old socketA tower, while leaving all the molex's in the original tower and the psu powered up fine. thats obviously not a definitive test but currently im thinking that makes its either the mobo or cpu gone.

any comments? anything else i can try here?


so ive resigned myself to gettin a new mobo, and kinda quickly since i want to get up and running again. sticking with 939 for the moment and after a bit of research im keen on the:

mobo: Asrock 939N68PV-GLAN LINK

so i come to the point: what gfx card to buy? current card is a saphire 550 something or other which was a budget shite-o even at the time of purchase so this time round im after a single midrange nvidia bit i'll be honest and say im clueless about them since i don't game or overclock. my uses are:

- NO games. i dont game on the pc at all.
- dual monitors. one vga and one dvi output would be nice but would settle with two dvi's.
- occasional video editing.
- watching HD. hdcp compliancy is pretty important as i intend to stick this mobo&gpu in a media center down the line.
- unsure on this but im thinking given the mobo's design a card with a regular fan would be preferable. guessing the chunky ones with the big copper pipes (called passive cooling?) might block the x1 slot.

any advice or maybe some links to recommended reading (for the non-gamer) would be much appreciated. thanks...
 
In the US, a midrange NVIDIA card would mean either the 8800GT or the 9600GT. Since you've said yourself that you have no intention on gaming, you could settle for the lower-end 8600GT.

I've heard that AMD/ATI is better in regards to video quality, so if you're willing to go that route, you may want to look at either the HD3450 or the HD3650 for your needs.

While you're at it, you may want to check out the power supply a bit more. Though it shows no visible signs of damage, the power supply may still cause problems for you down the road -- after all, it's the one device that powers everything else up.
 
cheers for the reply.

i was kind of leaning towards 8600 cos of price/availabilty already so im glad you mentioned that. having read up a bit on the ati equivalents and the 3650 my heads exhausted, this is where i wish i knew more about chipsets/ddr2 or dd3/purevideo/udv and all that jazz.

now, i may be reading this wrong but am i right in saying the 3650 has hardware encoding and decoding for h.264/mpg1/mpg2/divx/wmv - where the 8600 only picks up the slack for h.264?

edit: fair point on the psu. its an antec neo 480W. just wish i had another athlon 64 rig to test it properly.
 
It may be normal for the LAN LEDs to be flickering while the computer is turned off. Mine do.

HD3450 or 8400GS cards would seem to be good choices for you. Since you mentioned that you will be "watching HD", I think that an HD3450 would be a better choice since it has better support for accelerating HD playback. The HD3450 should also run cooler.

If you plan to do "NO gaming" then there's no reason to get an HD3650 over an HD3450.
 
thanks dhc. only game i play on the pc is minesweeper :). so u think i could go down a notch in either brand? wasnt sure what with the HD playback but thats duly noted.

the lan led's is an interesting point, i never noticed it flickering when the pc was off before but then i cant say for sure. u got me thinking now it would be annoying as shit to swap out the mobo and find out it was the psu after all. maybe i should try and get hold of a decent psu to test properly b4 i start spending.
 
I havent read up lately on it, but I remember that the 8400GS/8500GT and HD2400/HD2400Pro had worse support for the hardware HD playback in the driver set. Though, the reviews said it was just a matter of time before they improved drivers, hopefully. You may want to look into it, though. I haven't read up on the HD acceleration lately, so again, I may be completely wrong.
 
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