puntoMX

Over-saturation issues? There is no such thing when you look at LCD screens for PC, why would you be so worried about it? We are talking about gamut and the colors it can produce as close to perfect. Some screens do 110+ but most screens will just show 65 to 78%, so, the less than 100% screens have a loss of color (not colors as that is related to 6, 8 or more bits per color and the techniques they use to reproduce a color on the screen). it also has not much to do with backligts. So, you are asking about gamut in general or you are looking for a screen that would fit your needs?

Look for ACHI in the BIOS, that could help, but you might need to do some tricks to to get XP installed when Seven is already there. Integrating ACHI drivers could work too if you don't have the BIOS option to set ACHI to IDE. Now, you can run some older apps in compatibility mode as well in Seven, did you try that?

There are great deals on eBay for 40 to 50USD that give you: Socket 775 CPU with 65 or 45nm CPU dual cored, onboard video that support aero in windows 7 (GMA950/3000/3100 or even "better"), 2GB of DDr2 RAM, PCI-E, SATA and so on.I would look for that and go from there unless you like the nostalgic machine you have now, I know, it's cool to tweak and upgrade old stuff but in this case I think you might be better off getting something used . Need help? Ask .

Actually, the MSI "Military Class II" motherboards are nice and not a budget board at all. I would not be surprised if my next board would be a MSI (MSI P67A-GD65 or so) and not a Gigabyte . I'm just not sure about the BIOS.

Do you OC? Answer that first so we can help you better. Now, talking about motherboards, there are now 3 brands that bring good motherboards these days: ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, most can be found in the 150USD range and have the latest features, are easy to OC and will last considerably longer than a 90USD board. Check out the H67 range at some webshop. For RAM, something like G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM. Check out the local prices at www.tweakers.net.

I do agree on what you said, however, the i3 2100 is "locked" and can not be OCed as the 550, so, when it comes to OCing the 2100 isn't an option. Only the K series (2500k and so) can be OCed WITH the right board as not all boards will let you OC those CPUs.Again, all depends on budget but the OP got a HD6850 for a reason (looks like he is on a budget and tries to find the right balance;)). I just got a Phenom X4 830 (OEM, L3 cache) used from ebay for 57USD shipped and that one I will kick to some 3.6GHz or even a bit more, you can't beat that for the price. There are also cheap LGA1156 mobos on ebay but CPUs are still above 100USD... The new, eight cored, AMD CPUs are indeed... not what you would expect these days from a CPU.

Your CPU is a core2duo based CPU at just 2.66GHz, I don't know if you tried to OC it but I think you do as you are pointing to a i3 550 that should be excellent for OCing as well. What is your budget, what will be the usage? If you are on a budget than just look at an AMD X3 or X4 based system with 2x 4GB DDR3 1600 or so, with an AMD 8xx or 9xx chipset, WITH SB850 soutbridge (SATA 6Gbps and USB3, PCI-E 2.1, note that PCI-E 3.0 is out soon).

I would check with some live-Linux CD/DVD to see if the sound works first. If it does work i would reinstall the OS.

Both will work just fine for your system. What video card are you going to use (the HD5770 as in your first post?)? And if you don't care for lights coming out of the back of your PC than go for the 30USD cheaper one .

It is actually hard to get a faulty CPU, but in your case it must be indeed the CPU if you can't even memtest to run. Is the cooler making contact well will the CPU? Did you clean the contacts with alcohol from that CPU?

Indeed, this is why I say that your motherboard is faulty.

Your mobo is faulty any way. The power would come up first on the PCI-E powerconnector and then from the mobo as the mobo would need more time to send power to the card, although it´s milliseconds. It doesn't mather if it was a HD4870 or HD4850; both cards draw less power from the PCI-E slot on the mobo. *mobo / motherboard

@jaclaz : Some of those caps leak on the top as well, they have that same protection thus a cross or so in the inside (underside of the top). I´ve seen them popped but I was surprised about that. There, I did the google trick and found this: http://oerg866.tototek.com/snapshot039.jpg --- Now back on theme: The HD5770 DOES pull more power from the PCI-E slot than the HD4870; the HD4870 uses 2 6-pin PCI-E connectors to lower the electrical stress on the PCI-E slot, the HD5770 only uses one and pulls a lot more from the PCI-E slot. This change could have been enough to get an already bad electronical component to fail. Now, the next step will be solid SMD caps (HI-c), used on for example more expensive videocards and MSI new line of high-end mobos:

That depends on what router it is, most likely you would be better off using just a WIFI card in your PC and share your internet connection. I never have tried it so I hope others can help a bit more with it. Moving this topic to its appropriate place.

I use them in my budget systems as the maindrive and I still have to get the first one back from a customer. They are cheap, fast and reliable.

Exactly what I thought when I was reading your first post here (welcome by the way); it must be a printer driver problem. What printer are we talking about and did you deinstall those drivers and got later dated drivers, played with spooling settings and so on? Still strange that you can't save it well trough.

Just power off the system, look for a jumper close to the battery: 1 2 3 [o o]o Just move the jumper from this position o[o o] to this position for a few second and the BIOS is clear [o o]o return to this position when done Now, if you ask me, I would RMA the motherboard (return it for repair), but ask the guys at the shop first what they did to it so it worked for some time. I'm 90% positive it's your motherboard, but test it with another power supply first. Gigabyte motherboards normally are very good so you could have been unlucky with this one.

First, post your hardware specs ESPECIALY the motherboard model. So far it sounds to me that it could be: -Motherboard -PSU -RAM Now, to test a part of the motherboard and RAM is easy with Memtest86, go to http://www.memtest.org/ and get the "Download - Auto-installer for USB Key (Win 9x/2k/xp/7) *NEW!*", install that on an empty old USB stick. Now it's the trick to get the PC to boot into the BIOS. Next time don't touch the battery and use a Clear BIOS jumper. Remove all besides the video card (if it has one) and use only one RAM memory stick. Removing RAM can't be done with the computer having power so unplug the power supply from the net. Push the on/off button on your PC so that most of the components in the PC have no to almost nothing of charge. Now you can starting to remove parts from the PC. So, only have the motherboard connected with one RAM stick, and if it doesn't have onboard video, with the videocard in place too. Disconnect all opical and harddisk drives. Keep your keyboard connected as well. Now, see if it boots into the BIOS, if not, try the setup with another RAM stick. If it still doesn't fire up swap out the PSU. If that doesn't work it's most likely your motherboard that is bad. It's not likely the CPU as they are hard to kill and videocards will give you most likely other problems. Also, if you use a videocard with a PCI-E power connector, make sure it's connected well. If you can boot into the BIOS than set it so it boots from USB first. Most motherboards have the option to push F12 to get a boot-menu, you could try that too. Plug in the USB stick with Memtest86 on it and let it do it's work. If errors show up your RAM settings could be wrong (most of the time not enough voltage or bad timings set) or just some crapped out sticks. Let's do the above first and do give us your detailed parts list as well. IF you have no clue of the above, you are too green to do this yourself and it's better to get the thing back to the repair shop and ask the guys what they did with it that it worked.

That's indeed something you have to look into when you have AC'97 front audio connections, but I presume that Gateway has HD audio, are you sure that you have selected stereo or 5.1/7.1 right?... Else I would say it's some faulty frontpannel connectors, but you say that before reinstalling all was fine... odd...

Don't forget the nice problems on VIA chipsets; SB Live! (5.1)...

Get the SSD but don't use them for storage, so, for storage a RAID setup on those 5400-5600rpm drives is good. Now use the SDD ONLY for your programs, but not for "virtual memory" (any kind) and also not for a scratch disk for software like Photoshop/Illustrator. This way you will use the SSD where it's made for and get the best lifespan out of it. Now your new topic will be "what is the best SSD", well, all depends on what you are spending. Mostly, I would go for a Kingston or Intel (same stuff) when money is limited but as you will use this machine as your workstation, go for something more powerful from OCZ, like the Vertex 3. Note that transfer rates given could be misleading as some SSDs use compression to write so looking for real life benchmarks would help you a lot more. I personally like the 4x PCI-E cards, RevoDrive, with 120GB on them from OCZ. Now, monitor, look at IPS based screens. CPU, the i7 2600, a ATI video card, simple, HD5830 are simple and cheap (110USD), and why would you need speakers on a workstation? ... And go for 8GB (2x4) please!...

I don't recall, but most dual BIOS motherboards from Gigabyte do search on the HDD as well, try to copy the BIN file to the root on the HDD. Now, 2 BIOS chips fubared looks more like you have to look at low level I/O, thus forget fixing it yourself and get a new S775 mobo. Did you use RAID?

I won't be helpful, but it just seems another brand connector that is more open on the front. I've never seen pins on a connector like that.

If a new install of your OS didn't work I would take a look at the health of the Harddisk; bad sectors (and faulty RAM) could mess up a PC good.

Yeah, wrong forum part but what OS are you going to install?