Dude that sucks. That chances of getting a bum CPU from Intel? God is smiting you!

Sorry to hear it, that's just plain weak. Especially with your other machine stripped already. Always sucks when that PC you've been looking forward to fails - i've had it happen myself one time. Hope the new CPU will do the job!!

Ive been there. I swear i was inches away from bursting into tears. I feel the pain.

so, I'm not one to leave shit alone, so I tried more combinations of crap trying to get the PC working. shiny's been supportive and opened some alcohol. After a bit, I talked her into assembling the PC herself, in case it was something I was doing. You never know... I have bad luck.

So, she puts it together with my assistance, we turn it on ... phase light. So we leave it running for awhile, poking around in the case... and the lights go off. So I hooked up a monitor and, holy crap, I've got display.

At any rate, to make a long story short, my shit works... I'm posting on it right now. Am I a retard that just didn't wait long enough for it to boot? Possibly. I don't really care, to be honest, i have a working computer. I'm seriously thinking about never building another PC, though... just buy one from Dell or something and be done with it.

Glad to hear it cause I just saw this story

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/show ... p?t=636484

Reported fake Intel CPU sold at Newegg (first build ever - i7 920)

lol, holy crap at the fake cpu. The first time I bought a CD burner (back when they were rare and expensive), I bought it at Fry's took it home... and it was a box full of paper pads. Pissed me the hell off. At the time, Fry's was like a 30 minute drive one way... so we drove back and exchanged it. Bastards. I'm sure it was some enterprising Fry's employee.

Good to hear you got it fixed up. Good job on Shiny too - a woman's touch, eh?

Curious to see if you'll have the same vast improvements as 11B.

EDIT: ok just read the other thread, guess so!

yea, the improvements are incredible. Waiting time for loading still exist, but are massively reduced, thanks to the SSD. I'm still installing software and crap. My other computer went tits up almost completely... I was able to pull off the boot drive and pull my DA save games off of it (yay). I tried doing the same with the data drive where all my important shit was, but I forgot I was running a RAID-0 array, so the only way to access the data was by booting up the original PC.

It took a few tries, but I would get the PC booted and copy off big chunks of my crap before the computer would blue screen again. Then I'd have to turn it off for a few hours and try again. Still, it worked... and I think I'll never build another RAID-0 for that reason. If the RAID controller dies, you're screwed. At any rate, the box is now in another room. At some point I'll be building a core2 box (probably a quad, but whatever) and recycle some of the parts. To be honest, I'm pretty happy with that pc.. it's lasted me quite a few years. Even now, I think the only thing wrong with it is the motherboard.

I did some more playing around with my shiny new box... man, i love it more every day.

Anyway, I installed Adobe Photoshop CS4. Anyone that's played with it is probably aware that it's a bit of a memory/cpu hog. On my last box, it took awhile to start up, probably 10-15 seconds, if not more. On this computer... 2 seconds. You get a second of its splash screen loading DLLs, then a second before it's usable. I'm amazed.

I went ahead and installed and ran 3dMark 06, just for the hell of it. I ran the full set of tests (registered version) and my score actually went up quite a bit... I'm sure because of the cpu tests.

The SSD rocks but imo the biggest performace boost with it is the window of time when windows has loaded to the desktop but not loaded all your BS programs like AV and steam. All that stuff loads instantly. I mean I type in my password and bang everything is load and steam is already showing me whos online. I always hated that pause between desktop and loaded background programs.

I use a program called Startup Delayer because when windows XP tries to load all the programs at the same time at start up Steam and Messenger dont get along too well and it causes the machine to be non responsive. For example i cant surf web because windows is still busy resolving all the load commands. Now Steam and messenger start 50 seconds later. SSD is still too expensive here, even the 32gb costs like $150.

I upgraded my monitor today. Went from a 19" widescreen lcd @ 1680x1050 to a 25.5" lcd running 1920x1200. This thing is freakin' monstrous. I suspect I may be needing to upgrade my graphics card soon, since my 8800gt will now be pushing more pixels.

I upgraded my graphics card on Monday. It was pretty much a must once I went from 1680x1050 resolution to 1920x1200. My poor 8800gt was struggling something fierce trying to render newer games at those resolutions. Plus it was missing out on dx11 support, which is starting to become increasingly important.

Now, rather than turn most options all the way down in order to play Just Cause 2 at decent framerates, I can max everything except antialiasing. That still kills my card. Every other game I seem to be able to play completely maxed with no ill effects.

I was initially looking for a gtx460 1GB, but Fry's was lacking, so I settled for a gtx460 2GB. It only cost me about $20 more for an extra gig of RAM, so it was probably a good investment regardless. While jacking with my graphics card, I also realized I was actually underclocking my CPU. oops. I was running at 2.0ghz instead of 2.6ghz. I fixed that, too.

I haven't run any benchmarks, but does it matter? Anyway, I'm quite happy with my new card. It's a double slot card (not so good), but it's not full length, which is definitely a plus. So it's twice as thick as my 8800gt, but only 3/4 the length. It does use 2 of the gpu power connectors. However, it came with an adapter so you can use 2 ide power connectors instead, which is what I did. If that hadn't worked, I would've had to buy a new PS.

I'm tempted to reinstall Metro 2033 and AvP just to see what the upgraded graphics will look like.

Good to hear you're up and running with the new card. Let's hope it'll also prevent you from any more sudden crashes and locks like you had a while back. Or did that get sorted already?

/me is jealous now. How much did the card cost in total?

with taxes the card was just shy of $300. I could've bought it online and saved a bundle, but I was willing to pay for instant gratification. Plus if something goes wrong, it's much easier to return/exchange at a brick & mortar store.

Regarding my 8800gt, I believe it's heat damaged. I was able to stop the intermittent crashing by manually kicking the fan speed up to about 70%. After that it was solid. If I let it run at what it thinks is right, it would blue screen pretty regularly. So yea, probably heat-damaged, but after running for 3+ years, that's not too surprising. I remember how my 8800gtx blew up after 6 months.