New Computer - Let's talk about it.

[Caliga]

Basically, yeah.  I'll just swap my current DVD burner in to the new build when it's all done.  I have a spare DVD player I can put into my current PC (taken from yet another old build).

[katmai]

Yeah if not actively buying blu rays, see no need to put a player in pc, ya freak.

[Caliga]

For me it would be different if I felt like at some point games would start being sold on Blu-ray, but the future for games is streaming for sure (and probably the future for movies, too, for that matter).

[Barrister]

For me it would be different if I felt like at some point games would start being sold on Blu-ray, but the future for games is streaming for sure (and probably the future for movies, too, for that matter).

There's no probably about it, son.

[DontSayBanana]

So I've bought everything so far but the blu-ray drive, and I am debating whether it's worth it to pick that up, in part because I would like to keep the total cost of the build below $1500.

...and I wish I lived near a MicroCenter.  I could have done the build for about $100 cheaper if so and picked everything up in-store.  I miss MicroCenter.

God bless the bins of OEM drives in plastic baggies.

[Caliga]

When I was in college, we had a MicroCenter across the river in Cambridge.  My roommate and I were big nerds and we used to go there all the time just to browse and hang out.   I remember what a big deal it was when the Pentium II came out and MicroCenter got its first shipments.  It was PANDEMONIUM, people.

[Caliga]

One of my packages arrived in Indianapolis two days ago and hasn't gotten here yet.  WTF.  I can drive to Indy in two hours.

[DontSayBanana]

Luckily, I have a MicroCenter just close enough that I can make a "pilgrimage" a couple times a year or for emergency supplies while just being far enough to keep me from hibernating there.

[Caliga]

Finally got all the parts and started unboxing/inspecting tonight.  In preparation for the build I took advantage of the EZ BIOS Flashback thing that ASUS has on all of their mid to higher-end boards now: I unboxed the motherboard, plugged it into the new power supply, plugged the power supply into the wall, turned it on, and plugged a USB flash drive into the board and pushed the flashback button, and the board switched on and updated the BIOS... all without a CPU or RAM installed.   So thus far nothing is obviously damaged and the board appears to be working.

[Caliga]

Basic build complete - CPU and memory on board, and was able to boot to BIOS successfully (no need for a video card yet since this board has onboard graphics) and all 16 Gb of RAM seem to be registering and working under their XMP profile.  Getting this CoolerMaster Hyper 212 heatsink in was kind of a pain in the ass... most of my time tonight was spent fiddling with that.  Now that it's in though, I can see that it's holding the CPU temp at 31-32 C and that's with the fan barely running/not running at all, and when it does run it's practically silent, and will be completely so once everything is in a case.

[Grey Fox]

My build is back on the table. Decided to go with an FX-6300.

Will probably buy next week with Black Friday deals.

[Caliga]

My build is back on the table. Decided to go with an FX-6300.

Will probably buy next week with Black Friday deals.

I have read some good reviews of the more recent FX chips.  But as I have some Intel stock now, it would seem weird for me to buy AMD parts.

[Grey Fox]

I don't know where to whine about this so I'll do it here.

Buying a TV sucks. It's worse then a car.

[viper37]

I don't know where to whine about this so I'll do it here.

Buying a TV sucks. It's worse then a car.

Nah, it's easier than a car

Buy a Panasonic, either the highest end model or the one just below, 55" and above.

[Caliga]

...aaaaaaaand it looks like I may have a bad PSU.

I was going to put the PC into the case last night, but when I went to boot it from the onboard button, it couldn't finish the POST.  I pressed the button like ten times and eventually it did POST and put me into BIOS, but after that I could never get it to post successfully.  Most of the time it jut flashed '00' on the BIOS code window thingy, which isn't even a defined error code in the motherboard manual.  Also, the PSU was making a faint little clicking noise every time I tried to turn it on and the fan usually wouldn't spin up.  This is one of those fans that isn't supposed to spin up unless it 'needs to' so that's not necessarily indicative of a problem, though.

I happen to have a spare Antec TruePower 650W PSU in an old case, and I took it out of there and plugged it into the motherboard and tried it.  The PC booted right into BIOS, and did it each and every time I tried afterward (like 7 times or so).

Corsair has this thing on their website called 'the paperclip test' where you plug the PSU into a case fan and then connect two pins on the ATX line with a paperclip, which is supposed to determine if the power supply is dead or not.  I did that test and the power supply does power the case fan.  It doesn't seem to want to power my CPU and motherboard, though.

Oh well.  Guess I'll RMA it.  It's been a while since I've had a bad part mess up a build--last time that happened was like 10 years ago when I had a bad stick of RAM.