CoffeeFiend

The same happens as on your regular PC: usually nothing, or very close to that. My question is: and what do you think happens when a CPU does something similar (they all have errata)? Or when a network packet is corrupted? Or when a bit is corrupted on magnetic storage? Or a driver (or the OS) that has a bug screws up some data somehow? (all of these being FAR more common) It's a massive waste of money IMO. Even more so on a home server -- it's not like you're providing services that can't ever go down, or that you are going to countless thousands of dollars every time it does. Most fancy RAID controllers don't even require a x16 slot. I have some (the cheapo kind admittedly) in x1 slots. I think the most I've seen is a x8, but that's serious overkill. Sure, you can saturate a simple x1 card in RAID as it's limited to 250MB/s (that's still more than acceptable performance in my book for a home server though), but even just a card that fits in a x4 slot has access to 1GB/s of bandwidth -- you're going to need a lot of really fast hard drives to saturate this, or preferably RAID'ing expensive SSDs! A PCI-e x16 2.0 slot has a 8GB/s BW which you probably wouldn't hit, even with 16 high end SSDs in RAID so it doesn't make much sense for them to use that. Then again, your network is nowhere near that fast (good Gigabit ethernet stuff with jumbo frames and everything has about half the BW of a single x1 slot -- that's ultimately how fast you'll be able to get data off from it). Just sit down for a sec and think what you're going to need this for. Personally, I hardly ever need very large files really fast. Most large files I access are movies and the speed required for this is pathetic (around 1MB/s -- a ATA33 drive from the 90's could easily handle it speed-wise)

^^ What he said. There's not too many chipsets that fit the bill (Socket 775 + ECC). There's the 5 year old 975X which is kinda crappy. And then X38 & X48 which are quite hard to find now and have mostly moved to DDR3 (and often only detect ECC errors/doesn't correct them -- and that only with DDR2), as well as 3200/3210 which in most cases will have PCI-X slots (or PCI-e x8/x4) instead of PCI-e x16 (some of those would use FB-DIMMs instead too). The closest thing I can find right now is the $240 TYAN S5211G2NR Toledo i3210W. Socket 775, 3210/ICH9R chipset, 8GB DDR2 max (4 slots, ECC supported), etc. Your two x16 slots will work at x8 though as there's only 16 PCI-e lanes total. Not that I would bother with ECC RAM on a home server. Not quite sure why you'd want two PCI-e x16 slots for that either.

The XP compatibility mode isn't so much meant for games as for legacy apps. Games (the 3D intensive ones) won't run so great if at all because you don't get 3D acceleration in a VM. So just like running a very ancient video card which modern games really don't care for. Your best bet is looking for a compatibility update for your game first. That and running the game using the XP "compatibility" mode (right click on the exe, pick the compatibility tab, tick the checkbox, then select the OS you want). For more help, you could try listing the games you can't get running. The last resort option is dual booting but that's a kind of a pain.

It isn't. Java and Javascript are unrelated, even though they sound alike. Javascript is interpreted by the browser (IE/Firefox/Chrome/Safari/etc). Java is something totally different. Depends on the particular server-side language you want. Either ways, a quick google search turns up countless relevant results.

Nope, fans work on 12v, and this cap definitely isn't on a 12v rail. It's unrelated.

Before the VRD? For sure (ATX 1.3 and before), as they were feeding off of the 5v rail. After the VRD, still quite likely as voltages were higher, and capacitor technology wasn't what it is today. Not that I have any old P4 boards handy.

The caps after each phase of the VRD usually have a capacity well below this one (1800uF) being unecessary due to the nature of high frequency switching design -- doubly so for modern designs with lots of phases, and their voltage is also typically lower (more like 2.5v). They wouldn't waste the money on a unnecessarily high capacity cap with also too high a voltage which also takes a larger area of the PCB. I'd bet good money it's not for that Just saying...

Typical placement for the power components. Filtering and storing power. It's merely degraded, not completely broken. In just about any system out there, losing some non-critial parts will do that, kind of like if your air filter on your car fell off, it would still work. That's a fairly typical electrolytic cap. We already know it's not on the 12v rail (a 6.3v cap wouldn't tolerate that), and most likely it isn't on the 3.3 either (they'd likely have went for a lower voltage to save money), the -5v has been unused by all boards for quite some time, leaving us with the 5v rail only, and using 6.3v caps on 5v power is very classic (just look at any old thing from the 80's full of TTL logic, it's full of 6.3v caps) Also, it's unlikely that it's really part of any "important" part of the voltage regulator circuitry. The phases of the VRD feed off of the 12v rail since ATX12V 2.0 back in 2003, and this seems like a machine that came out after that judging from the specs you gave us. So the voltage for the CPU, RAM and such parts should be unaffected. The 5v rail isn't used by a lot of stuff these days. Most electronics now operate at 3.3v or lower. The vast majority of the power used by the computer comes from the 12v rail(s), either as-is (fans, motors, etc) or regulated to a lower voltage (CPU, RAM, etc), various electronics feed off of the 3.3v rail. The 5v is fed to PCI slots for sure (doesn't mean individual cards actually make use of it though) and some other various stuff (like analog audio) so it's not that surprising you can get by with not so clean 5v. I'm just wondering how that cap got damaged in the first place. I'd have a good and thorough look at all of the caps on that board (especially around the CPU), chances are some of them are vented.

That. Such tools aren't magic, and won't do the job for you, nor are a substitute for knowledge. Nah. I have seen n00bs stab themselves with screwdrivers before, and a wrench in their hands quickly becomes a replacement for a hammer Somewhat of a poor example IMO. That's hardly the entry level programmer, and you're getting a LOT more than the DIY job (it doesn't even compare), like the USB connection (*and* RS 232), being able to program chips without a computer off of the SD slots with the built-in LCD, the availability of different ZIF sockets, it can be updated, it comes with fairly decent software (that's also familiar), it's well supported by the manufacturer, it's a fairly rugged machine that will last for years of in a production environment without extreme care, etc. But yeah, there's often ways to make-do without the really nice (and often really expensive) tools. Tools-wise all these companies aren't exactly popular in North America. Here you'd be talking about Snap-on instead.

Not yet, but they do have native 6 Gbps ports today (all 6 of them, not only 2 like Intel will have next year). But either ways, there is a limited benefit to USB 3 and SATA 6 Gbps on a Intel motherboard -- there's just no PCI-e BW to back it all up (not enough lanes, and not enough of the 2.0 kind, like I previously mentioned), and the speeds are going to suck for the most part. All of the SATA ports and USB ports, as well as the PCI-e slots (besides those for the video cards), the Gigabit Ethernet and others share the same 2GB/s DMI path, and that's one huge bottleneck. If you go with P55 it's even more crippled (it doesn't even have half as many PCI-e 2.0 lanes as X58... *nowhere near* what any current AMD chipset offers, even the low cost 870). The only way to mitigate that is by buying an expensive board that uses a PLX 86xx series PCI-e switch chip or a nforce 200 bridge (such as the $700 Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 for instance), neither of which solves the real problem of not having enough PCI-e 2.0 lanes (which the upcoming chipsets don't seemingly address either), it merely gives you the option to cripple your video slots for not-as-bad SATA 6 Gbps & USB 3 performance.

It's a matter of preferences IMO. Any Windows OS from the last decade will happily use NTFS, Macs can natively read it (or write it using a few available options such as NTFS-3G) and on Linux it's mainly the same. There isn't a single computer at home, or work, friends or relatives that wouldn't use a NTFS formatted drive natively. And 4GB files are getting quite popular. From ISO files, HD video files of different formats (kmv, mp4, mov), WIM files, "video" DVD images or even as one large VOB or MPG file, large rar/zip images, etc. As far as I'm concerned, NTFS is the only option, unless you're talking about small memory cards meant for electronics like cameras or digital photo frames where the lowest common denominator (FAT32) is often the only option, but even then exFAT will likely soon take over. Just my $0.02

I have to echo that statement and I used to use it a lot in the Win2k & XP days.

The P55/H55/X58 chipsets and associated Sockets (1156/1366) are being replaced indeed. If you build a machine using them don't expect to be able to upgrade it much. It looks like they're going to be changing sockets like that quite often in the foreseeable future (every couple of years or so perhaps). In the end, you'll end up in the same position where you are today: there are no nice CPUs that decently priced for your board. I'm there too on my C2D rig, thanks to Intel. Upgrading your CPU means getting one of the very few remaining C2Q, all of which are overpriced for their relative performance. A simple Q8300 costs neary as much as a Phenom II X6 1055T ($40 difference) but it has less cores, all of which are slower (slower single threaded perf too). And getting that isn't even attractive in your case. Yes, it has more processing power if your apps manage to use all 4 cores (hardly ever), but the single threaded perf is slower so a lot of stuff would actually run slower. A Q9650 would have about the same single threaded perf and 4 cores, but it costs more than the X6 1055T which still outperforms it quite a bit and some faster i7's too. Intel doesn't want to sell you half-decent C2Q's that are priced competitively, they want you to buy a whole new kit again and again. This is why I'll soon be selling my C2D setup too. If you go with a current Intel 1156/1136 system, you'll soon be in the same position, and waiting for the new 1155/2011 offerings means mostly the same thing but a bit later. Upgrading Intel rigs is becoming a too much trouble IMO. Besides, the upcoming Intel chipsets very much fail to impress. H57/P57 hardly get any improvements, be it in terms of total PCI-e lanes (the existing AMD chipsets already have more, ranging from 26 on the 870 to 42 on the 890FX; this will be a bottleneck with fast video cards + SATA "3" with SSDs and USB3), it's only getting 2 SATA 6Gbps ports (WTF, really?) out of the 6 ports when AMD already has 6 out of 6 beign 6 Gbps today, and only 2 USB ports move to USB 3, the remaining 12 staying at 2.0 which is overall no better than what you're getting on a fairly typical ~$100 AMD motherboard today, but only you have to wait for it. And if you're thinking about X68 (the replacement to X58) then be aware its going back to 4 memory slots I just can't think of why I'd possibly want to wait for any of this, only to be able to pair it with rather expensive processors that will be EOL'ed way too fast. Intel basically sold me into buying a Phenom II X6 1055T ($200 for a 6 core beast that's faster than a i7 920 or i7 860 both of which are ~$80 expensive), 2x4GB of DDR3 and a decent motherboard which already has more SATA 6Gbps ports than the upcoming Intel offerings will have and at least as many USB3 ports (many of which are available with the power boost option too) and depending on my chipset choice, way more PCI-e lanes too. Cheaper, faster, better in many ways and most likely upgradable for far longer. AMD makes it far less trouble to upgrade these days (I can drop in a 6 core beast CPU on the kids' old dual core setups anytime I want, or even a great quad core for $100 total expense -- no such luck with my C2D) I'm not sure what Intel is up to lately, but it just fails to impress. Perhaps it's their new IGP they're working on but that also fails to impress. For example the i5 661 at $200. For that much, you can have a faster Athlon II X4 630 along with a Radeon HD 5670 1GB or a GeForce GTS 250. Except such an i5's 3D performance is no faster than the IGP in the outdated 780G AMD chipset from 2008 (ouch), and I'm not confident it's any good for H.264/VC1 acceleration (with MPC HC, VLC or any codec), if it has a OpenGL performance that's any good (for apps like Photoshop) and the like either. They'll have to earn my trust first. Intel seems to be AMD's best salesman For about $600 you can get a Phenom II X6 1055T beast along with 8GB (2x4GB, not 4x2GB) of nice DDR3 and a really nice motherboard today. That's what I'll be buying. With the same $600 budget and going with X58 today, all you could get is a significantly slower i7 920 that's also more power hungry ($280), less RAM (a cheap 3x2GB kit) which uses smaller sticks too (around $150), and one of the very cheapest x58 boards (there's only 3 or so within $170). But hey, if you have a significantly bigger budget than I do, it might still be a good pick.

Right in the center of a city of 1/2M people. I hear ya. Analog 480i recording is simply not an option in 2010 as far as I'm concerned. The quality is just too awful but there's not too many alternatives -- just the overpriced crappy DVR that only works with the TV it's plugged onto. Then again, I don't even have a HDTV yet (a half-decent LCD TV over 40" is still in the 4 figures here and we'd all be fighting over it anyway), also because we mainly watch stuff on our 23.x" and 24" LCDs monitors. So HD Cable not working with computers in any way makes it mostly worthless to me. Nevermind most of it is upscaled from a 480i source (and often stretched from 4:3 to fill the screen too) and overcompressed in the first place. My front neighbour spent $5000 on a nice setup and in most cases it's nigh impossible to tell his HD channels from the non-HD ones (yes, HD cable box, HDMI cables, etc -- it's the source that sucks). I'd love Blu-Ray-like quality but it's usually below DVD quality. I'd just be wasting money.

That's like saying you want to buy a car that's nice... to something nicer. It really means nothing (no help at all). It's pretty typical. For the main part (generally speaking): -for the super low end, a low end Intel Socket 775 CPU like the E3300, cheapo motherboard with onboard video of some kind and an old low-end chipset like the 965, some DDR2. It's not exactly great but when it comes to the absolute cheapest it's hard to beat -anything above that and below the next "category": AMD has better value (unless you are going to manage some crazy overclock or similar) -for something high end (basically anything faster than AMD makes) then your only choice is Intel There's dozens of current CPUs and hundreds of boards. We know absolutely nothing about your particular usage/needs/preferences nor budget. That's like asking a recommendation "for a good vehicle", without providing any kind of extra infos. There's no way to answer this. Compared to a 386, or compared to a Xeon X7560? You're always very vague and again it's hard to answer in any way. Do you actually expect anyone to maintain some kind of up-to-date list of around a hundred CPUs, about 600 or so current motherboards from at least a dozen manufacturers and even more kits of RAM? And even have it organized to "build combos" in any practical way (based on the CPU socket, chipset, and DDR2 or 3, max TDP, current BIOS version, etc that each and every board has)? There is simply no such thing. Go to a reputable seller with a good selection and decent inventory from the area where you'll be buying from. Look at what they have then go from there, it's what we all do. If you want some kind a better answer, then perhaps you can tell us if it's for basic office work, gaming, rendering and encoding, or whatever else you need, and a ideally some idea of how much you can afford to spend. What we suggest will change quite a bit depending on your answer, just like it would if you were asking for a card, and told us you wanted something to tow a 5th wheel within $50000 or a luxury sports car within 1M.

Well, you still got it pretty easy compared to just about everybody. Around here, there is no Clear QAM at all and there is no CableCARD in sight so you can forget about HD cable on your PC altogether, solutions like Tivo don't work either, there is no solution to get DBS or DVB-* devices (like satellite providers) working with MCE either, and nice OTA HD (ATSC) feeds are just about non-existent either (there's only 1 channel here, and it's in french, and 95% of what it transmits is just upscaled 480i -- yuck). If we want HD cable, we're completely stuck with really crappy boxes from the cableco, and the only other option is staying with 480i junk (*shudder*) Well, we still can... But it was more like fighting with it to set the tape speed, times, durations, fiddling with tapes, etc (oh, and the quality is awful too) DLNA devices are supposed to be able to browse and play shared content that's stored on a Win7 PC (and yes, also stream music and such from WMP)

Actually, 40% isn't bad at all for a system that's been used for 6 months. Its value decreased significantly in that time frame (even if it was new, sitting on a shelf) -- especially something like a i7, and now it's a used system too so it's worth a LOT less, and they'd have to sell it refurbished for a fraction of the original price. But like they stated, they'll likely charge a restocking fee too (another 15% or so likely), shipping is on you (another $50 or so likely -- probably lots more if it's international shipping), etc. Every other company would do the same (hey, at least you were given the option)

Yeah, the 955BE isn't priced so nicely, that's why the 6 core isn't much more expensive. If you think you can make use of 6 cores, by all means. Rendering, well, I'm not into that stuff myself, I'm not sure what apps you're using for that, nor the complexity of your scenes so I really can't say anything. As for autocad (people still use that?) I just don't see it benefiting from it, unless things changed drastically since the last time I've used it. Honestly, keeping 6 cores busy is pretty darn hard, short of certain specific jobs like encoding video (and even then, only with modern codecs & proper settings)

Well, the i5 is faster, but it's also more expensive. The choice is yours. The Core i5 750 is about 25% faster (not saying you'll actually see games or apps run that much faster) than the Athlon II X4 635 but it costs a bit over double, and a similar board for a i5 will cost around $50 extra too. To put things in perspective, the motherboard I listed and the Athlon II X4 635 is about $200 total. Something similar with a i5 750 (about 25% faster) would be more like $350 (75% more $ overall). It's really fast if you really need it, but it's not an amazing value.

Just curious why you picked that. Yes, the L3 cache gives a few percent boost in some applications (~10% for games), but the Athlon II X4 635 is nearly as fast and a lot cheaper. Mobo wise, I'd much rather move to something that uses DDR3 than picking an old board based on DDR2. Something like the GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 perhaps. DDR3, 2x USB3 + 8x USB2, 6x SATA 6 Gbps (SATA "3"), 2x PCI-e x16 2.0 slots, 2x eSATA, 7.1 HD audio with spdif and toslink, firewire, etc, on a high quality board (solid polymer caps, 2oz PCB, good mosftets, etc) -- all for about $100

Here Yep. It's there. Didn't search too hard, did you?

I'll have a look. It never came across my mind to check some privacy-related thing to get rid of some junk files (strange place IMO). And it wouldn't let me even go there unless I canceled the current operation too.

I figured I'd add my 2 cents. Tivo has its strengths: -it's better for those that are "technically challenged" (you know, those who can't install Windows on their own or set the clock on their VCRs) -it's better for those people that run malware-infested warez and have to reformat every other week -the guide costs money, but they supposedly keep it more updated when some shows are canceled or moved around Win7 MCE has its own too: -devices work together. Win7 PCs, media extenders (including the Xbox360 which doubles as a decent gaming device ), WHS and all. TV on your computers too. The extenders, including cool little devices like the roku soundbridge radio also work with WMP integration (stream remotely, etc) and all. Being able to stream the same playlist you sync your mp3 player with to your entertainment system or radio is nice for sure, and your movie library is handy too -- yeah, it does more than just TV. It's a fairly nice system overall. -you can add as much space as you want, anytime. I've seen 2TB drives for as little as $110 -you can have loads of tuners (for digital cable, OTA, analog, etc), and control some devices using infrared, etc -- it's versatile and powerful -if your cableco ever moves to SDV, then you can get a tuning adapter, whereas with tivo.... no idea (might be a tie) -you can make backups of the recordings on your PC. If your Tivo ever breaks down (like my old satellite PVR did, thrice) then just say goodbye to your shows -no annoying monthly fees, nor several hundreds of dollars upfront Mind you it seems like we'll never get anything like CableCARD up in Canada. Our only option is the cableco's highly overpriced and really crappy PVRs (along with the really bad plans)

I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned before. I think most people who want such an app are for the most part quite happy with CCleaner already and not really looking for a replacement. So I decided to give it a try anyway. The one thing I'll give it right off the bat is being free and nag free. CCleaner comes with an optional toolbar. Yes, it's optional, but no, nobody wants of that Yahoo toolbar (*shudder*), and it's selected by default. But beyond that... Not so great. It only shows how many files it found, not how much space would be saved. And it only works for Windows' own files which is a fairly severe limitation IMO. CCleaner also found files to delete for Chrome, Firefox, Nero, ImgBurn, Office apps, Flash, MPC HC, winrar, 7zip, etc. It just seems much more thorough. And for the few things CCleaner still misses such as the highly annoying flash cookies then you can add some custom entries too (options > include > add). Sorry but it looks like I won't be switching anytime soon.

That's another way, if you can find one. Most things labeled and sold as "hub" nowadays are actually switches so useless for this. Using a hub is very often not an option either: unplugging a server from its gigabit switch to plug it in a 10mbit half duplex device will do funny things to performance (ditto if you stick the hub between 2 gigabit switches). One basically has to look on the used market for some old device (or build your own) -- or again, getting a network tap which is admittedly more expensive but doesn't suck. And that still doesn't make the PC see beyond itself (traffic that doesn't get to its NIC), it merely makes traffic go everywhere