Author Topic: Behind door #3..... (Read 656 times)

humble · « **on:** February 20, 2007, 06:16:07 PM »

the latest fry's "flush the junk" MB/CPU combo......

Which actually seems to solve a broblem for me...and maybe others. I've had 2 MB's die over the last 18 months....leaving me with decent parts...but not a usable CPU/MB combo. Given the problems by rack box is having its easier to bump it out to another use...but really building out a true rig requires memory/HD upgrades as well....

enter the ECS PT890-A/Core Duo 6600 for ~$330. Within $20 of the best price online for just the cpu and better then many places even online. Best of all it is obsolete enough it works with all my "old" hardware.

So if your caught between wanting to do a full build...but without the horses you need this is a reasonable option. ECS is not really a good MB...but i've used them without any problem building budget boxes for friends....

Krusty · « **Reply #1 on:** February 20, 2007, 07:24:26 PM »

Question: Can you make sure this one doesn't fry as well? I mean if there's a short or something in your PSU or a bad ground in your case or whatever, how do you know it won't do the same to this one?

I've always heard Fry's is a good deal on hardware. I just rarely live near any. In the one place I did, I was too young to appreciate it.

Roscoroo · « **Reply #2 on:** February 20, 2007, 07:47:22 PM »

ive bought tons of stuff outta fry's ... ive never really had any problems ... well at least the kind i dint help cause myself .

As for Ecs stuff my old gamer had an ecs in it and it lasted for 6 yrs ... went thru many lightning storms , a house fire , a evil inlaw , and lasted my little roo 2yrs it just failed about 4 months ago . so there not always that bad .

humble · « **Reply #3 on:** February 20, 2007, 09:15:17 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
Question: Can you make sure this one doesn't fry as well? I mean if there's a short or something in your PSU or a bad ground in your case or whatever, how do you know it won't do the same to this one?

I've always heard Fry's is a good deal on hardware. I just rarely live near any. In the one place I did, I was too young to appreciate it.

My boards that fried were an Asus and a gigabyte.....I've never had an ECS board that hasnt run fine IF it ran at all:)....QC is such that occasionally you'll get one U need to RMA....other then that they are good....just not great performing boards.

maddog · « **Reply #4 on:** February 21, 2007, 07:14:39 PM »

Just never buy memory at Fry's...

Roscoroo · « **Reply #5 on:** February 21, 2007, 07:35:03 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by maddog
Just never buy memory at Fry's...

Ive never had a problem w/ ram outta frys ... but then i always get corsair xms stuff .

even when i burned out the sticks over clocking they still did the rma no questions asked .

humble · « **Reply #6 on:** February 21, 2007, 11:23:12 PM »

had a glitch with the install (U need SP 2) but otherwise everything went smoothly. I ended up using XP home since my XP Pro media wasnt SP2. I loaded it up on my old 80G ATA drive. Right now i'm viewing this as my "AH" drive in what will eventually be a dual boot system. I got a 250G SATA drive for $70 and that will serve as either a XP Pro or vista boot drive for "work"....so this will do double duty as a backup for my tablet notebook (which is my real "work" PC)

E6600/MB was 320...I ended up putting 2G of DDR25300 $150....throw in the SATA drive and its about a $560 upgrade with tax and all. So not cheap....but all in all not bad in my mind. Not a bad "half step" if you dont want to max out your old 939 (or went 754 like I did). Basically you get the board free with the chip...so its not really a bad deal....vs ~$120 for a top 939 chip or ~$230 for a amd "combo" with less long term potential. I dont regret going 754 since I couldnt get a pci-e top end card at the time (and my son loves the rig). I did lose 2 754 MB's so I have a couple of 3200+ venice cores gathering dust for now.

I'll benchmark it over weekend and see what its delivers....

eagl · « **Reply #7 on:** February 22, 2007, 05:15:08 AM »

memory is hit or miss with frys. Some people have never had a bad stick from frys, and I have never bought a good stick from frys. I bought memory 4 separate times from frys, and twice it was bad out of the box and twice it failed within a couple of weeks. So I don't buy memory from frys anymore. I get memory straight from crucial.com or a name brand from newegg. I had good luck with gskill, good memory at a good price, and gskill has a line of performance memory with really good timings but with one of their models, they don't guarantee what chips are used so you get it at just a hair above the price of 'value' memory, but it's guaranteed to run at around the speed of the really expensive stuff.

humble · « **Reply #8 on:** February 22, 2007, 08:32:00 AM »

All in all I've had decent luck with Fry's. For "serious" build outs I use newegg as well. I cant recall ever getting bad stick of memory anywhere ever (knocks on wood:)).......bad MB's however I seem to attract:cry

llama · « **Reply #9 on:** February 22, 2007, 11:28:30 AM »

As another data point, I've had just fine luck with Fry's RAM in machines that aren't stressed beyond that of a "common office computer."

I've NEVER had good luck with RAM intended for gaming, a raging fast mainboard, or overclocking.

In other words, my Wife's computer will get Fry's RAM. (In fact, her mainboard/CPU were one of those Fry's combo specials a few years back. Works fine.)

My computers only gets RAM from Crucial.com. I've never ever EVER had any problems with Crucial's standard RAM packages, even when overclocked.

-Llama

humble · « **Reply #10 on:** February 22, 2007, 11:57:22 AM »

you need to know what your buying. The OCZ stuff fry's carries is generally about the same "flavor" as its equivelent Crucial/Corsair/Mushkin/Patriot. The big problem normally is in the grade of memory....

the "$99" "value" stick isnt going to match uo with the "premium/platinum/gold" stick from the other guy. The generic stuff is normally fine but not going to hold up to serious stress....

OZ "Value"

OZ "gold"

Both are very good, but if your thinking "gold" and buy value you'll be dissappointed if you try and overclock it. The "gold" is every bit as good as any other topend stick (not saying better)....

It's kind of like buying a V-8 for your truck...the only thing they have in common is the number of cylinders:)

humble · « **Reply #11 on:** February 26, 2007, 10:38:21 PM »

OK, after a minor glitch (original media XP doesnt recognize pci-e) I loaded XP Pro media edition. With a clean install I loaded AH (27 process's) and everything is pegged at 60 FPS {as expected} at max resolutions/detail.

I downloaded aquamark and got 109,653 of stock settings for both the card and MB.

Brainless install (20 min max to build out the whole system. Everything autoloaded, board is just fine, no runs glitchs errors of any kind. All in all a great lowend way to go to a e6600 for just the retail cost of chip and any needed upgrades (need DDR2 memory)....

llama · « **Reply #12 on:** February 28, 2007, 11:00:02 AM »

Humble,

What's that video card, again?

-Llama

humble · « **Reply #13 on:** February 28, 2007, 03:33:46 PM »

7900 256m GX (was a stock "overclocked" model). When I adjusted the quality settings from default to highest quality the score dropped to ~96,000. A'll in all system seems to run great so far....