PC for less than £900
A few months ago my PC was fried.
I was sat at it, heard a storm happening outside so went to take a look. It was an amazing sight; I wish I’d had taken some photos of the folk lightening and dramatic sky!
I came back in as the storm was dying down and my computer was off. I hit the power button expecting everything to be fine; maybe just a short power cut? Alas, just a brief spin of the fans and then nothing. I tried again but this time nothing at all.
I had a spare motherboard and power supply so thought, although they’re not as good as the ones I as using, at least I’ll be able to get my PC back up and running.
I spent all afternoon rebuilding my PC but still was getting nowhere. I could have cried!
In the end I called my insurance company. They arranged for a company to pick up my PC to take a look at it to see if it was repairable. After a couple of days they were in touch to tell me that I’d be needing a complete new PC. It was happy days when I was told that they would send me the cash value, as new minus my excess.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that most readers aren’t interested in anything I’ve written up to this point so here’s what I bought (from Scan.co.uk)and built.
What I bought
Corsair H50-1 Hydro High-performance 1 £41.50
Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, 1155, 1 £129.15
500GB Seagate ST3500413AS Barracuda 1 £23.59
Asus P8P67 Pro Rev3, Intel P67, S11 1 £115.67
LiteOn IHAS122-18 22x DVD±R, 8x DVD 1 £11.59
2TB Hitachi Deskstar, 0F12117, Cool 1 £46.09
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Blue 1 £59.12
2GB XFX HD 6950, PCI-E 2.1 (x16), 5 1 £161.99
750W Coolermaster RS750-ACAAE3-UK G 1 £49.99
Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced Dom 1 £54.99
Net Total £693.68
Carriage £15.98
VAT @20% £141.93
Scansure (Accidental damage insurance) £25.38
Total £876.97
Issues after build
After thinking I had completed the build and feeling happy with my cable management I put the sides on the case, plugged everything in and tried booting. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch.
After a small amount of investigation it turned out that the RAM modules weren’t installed properly. There had been no error beeps however – the only indication was a single LED on the motherboard.
Once the RAM was installed properly (human error on my part) I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with no issues.
I do occasionally experience very long boot times or complete system hangs when booting into Windows (it’s fine with any other OS). After several BIOS updates (none of which have helped) and much research it seems like a fairly common issue with the P67 chipset that I’m stuck with for now. The system is 100% stable once booted into Windows and I’m a little perplexed as to what’s going on as there are no errors. If anyone reads this and has had similar issues or has any suggestions please let me know and I’ll report back.
Overclocking
The Core i5 2500k is a monster CPU. Overclocking was easy right up to 4.7GHz on my particular chip using this guide: http://is.gd/myBdUq
My core voltage was a tiny bit high at 4.7GHz so I’ve settled at a very cool and stable 4.5GHz.
At the time of writing, I’ve not overclocked the Corsair Vengeance RAM. The only memory tweaking I’ve performed was to change the Command Rate to 1T from 2T and to manually add the correct timings. Voltage is still stock and the RAM is completely stable.
Graphics card unlocking / overclocking
The 2BG XFX HD 6950 I purchased was a reference card so using this guide I flashed a 6970 bios. This worked great but after reading a little more I started to get concerned that it may cause issues with the card in the medium to long term.
I settled on using a modded BIOS that unlocked the shaders to 1536 (as are available on the 6970) and then overclocking using Catalyst Control Center after using a simple registry “hack” to increase the overclocking limits of the card.
*If you do use the registry hack please be very careful and don’t overclock too much. The hack allows you to overclock way too far which could result in a dead graphics card. I take no responsibility for any damage you may cause.
Conclusion
Generally I’m very happy with this system. It performs extremely well in day to day tasks (which for me are Photoshop CS5.5 and some video encoding) with only the occasional game not running well at maximum setting (Crysis 2 with DX11 pack and textures etc. comes to mind).
Using an Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive on a Windows PC
I’ve not actually got an Xbox 360 or the HD DVD add-on drive but I’ve been doing a bit of research as in the past couple of weeks, two people I know have been trying to get the drive to work on their Windows PC’s.
In the course of my research I have discovered that it’s easy to install the device but more difficult to find software for HD DVD playback.
To install the device; simply connect it to your Windows driven PC. The device is plug and play and will install in little time. If there are any prompts when installing (such as one asking you to use Windows update to find drivers) click yes and next etc until driver installation is complete.
Once the drivers for the device have installed, insert a HD DVD disc to make sure the files on the disc are readable. If so continue to the next step.
This step can be skipped if running Windows Vista or Windows 7 (I believe). For Windows XP users however, the Blueprint UDF reader should be downloaded and installed.
Download the UDF reader from here, unzip the contents, read the readme.txt file, follow the instructions and install.
Now, to play anything you’ll need a player capable of playing HD DVD movies. Cyberlink has removed all HD DVD functionality from the later versions of PowerDVD (as HD DVD is now officially dead) but you can download PowerDVD 6.5 HD which does support HD DVD.
Download PowerDVD 6.5 HD
Download HERE (hosted with RapidSpread which is a free service that distributes your files to several file hosting providers).
AFAIK, these instructions will work but if you do have any problems feel free to leave comments or contact me.
Samsung T240HD Review
There’s a story behind me getting the Samsung T240HD. It started with my not so old Dell E228WFP 22″ playing up. The Dell E228WFP had been a horrible screen since I received it, colours were way out (even after countless hours of calibration), it had a terrible viewing angle and back light bleed etc, so I was very happy that it decided to die and I had to buy another screen.
I had to get something quick because I’m lost without my computer so I had a look on the www.pcworld.co.uk website to see what they had. I found a Samsung T240 (not the T240HD which has the digital tuner etc) for an okay price so did the Collect@Store thing and headed down to PC World to pick it up. I was waiting for 10 – 15 minutes before the young, spotty member of staff came back with a Samsung box. I paid, called for a taxi and went home.
Once I’d got home I noticed on the box that the contrast ratio was 10000:1 instead of the expected 20000:1 so was feeling a bit unhappy but thought, I’ll unpack it and give it a go. I then opened the box to find a remote control which I thought was strange. I then noticed that the model was T240HD not T240 which I had ordered. I set up the monitor with my PC and then decided to do a bit of Googling to see what the difference was. I discover that the T240HD with Digital TV tuner was a lot more expensive! The outcome of all this is I got a bargain from PC World for the first time in my life! I hope the young, spotty member of staff that accidentally gave me the wrong screen isn’t in trouble though!
Anyway, back to the thing I was here to write about, the Samsung T240HD. Putting the screen together was a breeze. One part to slot into the back of the monitor and then the base to slot into that. One disappointing part of the base is that it’s not high adjustable. It would be nice it it would raise by just an inch or so.
After the monitor was on my desk the next thing to do was to plug it into my computer which was easy. It was picked up right away. The only thing I had to do was to adjust the screen resolution to the rather nice 1920×1200. It’s nice to have the extra screen real-estate. The colours are perfect, the contrast and brightness are about as high as anyone could ever want. The screen is one of the best I’ve ever used on any computer.
Next I decided to try to install the software that came with the screen. I tried but then discovered that it doesn’t run properly on Vista x64 so un-installed it again. Not that this is a bad thing really. The screen looks perfect as it is without any software calibration.
Seeing as I had the T240HD with digital tuner instead of the expected T240 I decided to try out the digital tuner with an indoor aerial. After many adjustments of the aerial I managed to get the tuner to pick up all of the available Freeview channels. The picture quality on Freeview is okay. It’s as good as you can get really. It’s not great if you’re sat too close to the screen but then Freeview or any other non-HD source never is. I would call it adequate and can’t say anything nicer than that. Role on BBC HD etc being broadcast on Freeview I say!
The EPG and on-screen displays for Freeview are user friendly but could be improved upon. I understand that they’re the same as on other Samsung TV’s and DTV Monitors. I’ve never used another Samsung TV or DTV Monitor though so I can’t confirm if there are any differences.
I probably should have mentioned this before; the screen and it’s glossy surround are beautiful! It makes me feel the need to buy a new case for my PC to make it look a little more classy! It’s one of the nicest looking screens you’ll ever find.
I’m going to finish off my very haphazard review by saying I’m extremely pleased with this screen and would recommend it. I would say I wouldn’t pay the £400+ price tag (from PC World) for it unless you really want a digital TV tuner built in . I would go for the T240 which has a higher contrast ratio instead at the lower price of just over £200 which has the same looks.
If you have any questions about the screen feel free to ask and I’ll answer honestly.
Dell Inspiron 530 – How Upgradable is it?
I’ve had a Dell Inspiron 530 for just over a year now. It was pretty good in the processor department when I purchased it but memory and graphics performance was mediocre. Over the past year the system has seen a few upgrades.
The system started out having an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, 2GB DDR-2 PC2-5300 RAM, a 250W PSU (YES! Just 250 watts!), 2x 320GB HDD, NVidia 8600GT 256MB GPU on a Foxconn G33-S motherboard all packed into a smallish case.
I’ve kept the case, motherboard, CPU and hard drives but the rest of the system has changed.
First thing to change was the PSU to a more substantial 650W one. The next thing was the memory – I took out the 2 GB of slowish memory and changed it for 8GB of GeIL Black Dragon DDR2 running at 800Mhz with tight timings. I then installed a 9800GT which I overclocked quite nicely to 9800GTX speeds. The system was running well and I was happy with it for a month or so…. I then noticed a rather nice pre-overclocked Palit 4870 Sonic graphics card and I had to have it!
One thing to note about upgrading the graphics card on the Inspiron 530 is that the case is small and high end graphics cards tend to be big so it is a squeeze to say the least! The Palit Sonic 4870 only just fits in the machine. To get it into the case I had to remove one of the hard drives. Saying this though, it is worth it! The machine can now play all of the latest games at high settings at 1920×1200.
Another thing to note is for the Inspiron 530 to support 8GB of RAM (or in fact anything more than 4GB) you must have a recent version of the bios. This can be downloaded from Dell and installed through Windows with ease. Of course for your system to support more than around 3.5GB – 4GB of RAM you must also be running a 64bit operating system or be using a hack that allows 32 bit Windows to see more RAM.
If you have any questions about the system feel free to comment or contact me and I’ll be happy to help.
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