Zxian

I know you don't frequent the forums as much as you used to, but Happy Birthday anyways!!!

Wrong forum. I'm moving this to the Vista forum, since it belongs there more than any other area. Topic Moved

I'll agree with this, but throw another pinch of salt into the mix.Many online PSU calculators overestimate the actual power draw - and they do so horribly. Putting my system specs into the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator, it tells me that the recommended PSU wattage is 457W (when running everything at load). I can tell you, based on my Kill-A-Watt meter that at no point has my system ever drawn more than 350W of AC power (CPU, both video cards, and hard drives stressed). The rated power on a PSU is the DC output. In simple terms, a 500W PSU can supply up to 500W of power to the components inside the computer. However, the actual power draw from your AC electrical system would be higher than that (because of the inefficiency of the AC->DC power conversion). In my case, looking at the power efficiency curves at SilentPCReview's review of the Corsair HX520 (my PSU), my system draws a maximum of 300W DC at full load. In my case, I could probably get away with a 430W or 450W PSU for my system. My rule of thumb is to find a PSU that will be at it's maximum efficiency during the majority of your usage (while still keeping at least 25% of "headroom" at full load). As you can see from the SPCR review, I'm running at pretty much peak efficiency all the time for my system.

LinkOuch....

Umm... wow. Epic fail anyone?

My first guess is that your Linux is a more recent operating system, and therefore sends a signal to any attached devices telling them to power down. Windows 2000, being a slightly older operating system (i.e much older) likely lacks this feature.

Great news. Thanks for letting us know!

It's a bit pricey, but the Logitech diNovo Edge is a very sexy keyboard. It's got great feel and a surprising range. If you can afford it, it's well worth the addition to an HTPC setup.

Get the WD6400AAKS. You definitely won't be disappointed, or worrying that you've wasted your money. I'd start off with the stock cooler to begin with. Put the system together, and then see how it handles your day-to-day gaming. If you feel that you're still not getting the performance you should, then go ahead and try to overclock the system.

Note: This case has a 8cm fan that blows from the right side (seen from front) over the harddisks. Right... but that still doesn't help the front-to-back airflow that I mentioned. The more twists and turns the air has to take from intake to exhaust - the less efficient the cooling. @TheZeus - Have another look at your budget. You should be able to get all the components while staying more or less within budget. Here's a rough estimate of regular prices at NCIX for a complete system (minus taxes and shipping). CPU (E7200) - $170 Motherboard (P5Q Pro) - $150 RAM (two 2x1GB OCZ Gold) - $65 Graphics Card (Diamond ATI 4850) - $190 Hard drive (Western Digital WD6400AAKS - much better than the Seagate you chose) - $110 Optical Drive (Pioneer DVR-212D) - $30 Case (Antec 900) - $100 Power Supply (Corsair HX520) - $105 This brings your total to $920. I'd bet that if you were to find some of these parts on sale, you should be able to get that price down as well. I know for a fact that the WD6400AAKS is on sale right now for less than $90. That takes the total to below $900.

The additional fans help, but only to a degree. The case itself is pooly designed in terms of airflow. Look at the hard drive cage. It's perpendicular to the length of the case, making it easier to install your hard drives, but it blocks front-to-back airflow (which is what you want). The "three speed fan" that you're talking about is the Antec TriCool. They're alright fans, but not really worth it to buy on their own. You can find other fans that do a much better job of moving air without sounding like a jet engine (which TriCools do at high speed). 3GHz is probably easily attained. The higher you push the clocks, the harder it is to keep the system cool and stable. Simply adding another fan to your case won't change how far the CPU that you get will go.

It's an alright case. Personally, I'd rather buy case and power supply separately, especially if you're going to go for maximum overclock (which means maximum heat). The Sonata III was advertised as a quiet case, when in fact, it's not really all that special. If you want excellent cooling performance, get yourself the Antec 900. It's got venting galore and once you start using the bottom mounted PSU layout, you'll never really want to go back. I already mentioned that you should get a quality PSU. Corsair HX series and Enermax Modu82+ are on the top of my list. As for overclocking - here's the scoop. It's not simply a matter of getting the right heatsink and motherboard. Each individual device overclocks differently. Some chips may hit 4GHz, while others might only make it to 3GHz - regardless of cooling. There's no simple mathematical formula that you plug numbers/parts into, and out pops your overclock. Some people might call it an art - requiring tweaking one way and the other to get the highest numbers. That being said - my rule of thumb with overclocking is simple. If I decide to overclock a device, I consider that device expendable. You must be willing to accept that a part might die on you even with a "moderate" overclock. Chips are tested at their stock settings and guaranteed to work at those stock settings - not any higher. If you want the best CPU heatsink you can get - look no further than the ThermalRight HR-01+ (make sure it's the "plus" version). Excellent cooling performance, good mounting setup, and a reasonable price make it something that can't be beat. For an excellent review (and review site), look at SilentPCReview's analysis.

OCZ Gold DDR2-800 - $31.99 after MIR.

Corsair or OCZ are my top picks. Just about any DDR2-800 should do you nicely for that setup (and it won't be the bottleneck for playing Crysis). By the way - there's no way you're going to be able to push that CPU to 3.6GHz while using the stock cooler. Get yourself one of the following: ThermalRight HR-01+, Noctua NH-U12P, ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme. Match any of those with a Scythe Slipstream 1200RPM fan and you'll have a setup that's relatively quiet and gives great cooling. Ditch that PSU for a quality brand name. Corsair HX series and Enermax Modu82+ series are good choices. Motherboard - I'd go with the P5Q Pro (if you want to keep prices down) or the P5K-E. Both are great overclockers and shouldn't cost you too much money.

System idle process should be using most of the CPU. It's what consumes CPU cycles when nothing else does. Does task manager show 100% CPU usage at the bottom of the window?

So... there's no reason to move up to Vista and Server 2008? That's why Microsoft themselves moved the entire microsoft.com domain onto Server 2008 Beta 3 servers last summer. BETA! These aren't even release candidates. They removed the last of the old 2003 boxes a few weeks ago, since they had seen 2008 servers perform about 10% more efficiently. My laptop handles multitasking with Vista installed than it ever did with XP - all of this on a two year old, single core CPU. When I go to install Vista on that machine, there isn't a single piece of hardware that doesn't have default drivers. Of course, I download the latest drivers, but I can actually go and connect to my wireless network without sticking the network drivers on a USB key. @fredilingue - Let me give you a clear-cut example of what crahak is talking about in terms of software development. I'm working on a piece of software for my research (you can download the source at www.qcadesigner.ca if you like), and the number one reason that I'm being held back is not my lack of powerful hardware, but rather the fact that the bloody thing is written in C. I was asked to implement some new functionality into the program, one part of which is a simple search. Now... the last time I looked at implementing searching functions was about 3 years ago, so I had to go back and look them up. Which one did I choose? Binary Search. The main reason - it's simple to code, and (obviously) better than linear search. Are there better search functions out there? Probably. Do I want to go looking at them to optimize the last detail about this program? No, because my searching functionality is not the bottleneck of the program. It's one area where I could optimize until I was blue in the face, but it would make no practical difference. You say Windows98 is fast and easy to use? Having worked with XP for the past 7 years and Vista for the past year, going back to Win98 would be torture. Lack of modern hardware support would be the main killer for me (not to mention the libraries and software that simply dont' work). A lot of my work deals with high memory requirements - simulations of mine often chew up 4-5GB of RAM. Long story short, 98 is just not up to the task in this day and age. For a machine that you use to surf the web... sure, but why would you want to? Windows XP and Vista are far more secure, and chances are you could build a modern computer that would run XP faster than the old 98 box you're using, while still saving you on your electricity bill. I tested the D201GLY2 motherboard from Intel, and with a laptop SATA drive and 1GB of RAM, you're looking at a basic system that'll handle most daily tasks (short of high-def video) while pullling a mere 25-35W from the wall.

We should start archiving any and all Vista-bashing forum posts, blog entries, and news articles. That way, we'll have definitive proof to make the whiners go away when they start saying "Vista's better than 7".

Dig hard enough and you'll easily find XP-bashing reviews and sites from 7 years ago...

By disabling the overclock, did you mean that you reset everything in the BIOS to default/auto settings? Have you tried wiping the drive entirely? I'm not sure why, but a corrupt partition table might affect the installation. Have you run a full SMART diagnostics test on that hard drive? Grab the latest UBCD and use the tools on there. When you remove the primary partition beforehand - how long do you wait until you decide that it's frozen? I've had a couple of Vista installs take a couple of minutes to detect the hard drive before letting me proceed.

Let us know how things go.

Honestly - a large portion of that is user error. I've been running all of my Windows machines (ranging from XP Home to Vista Business, and just about everything inbetween) without additional security software for close to two years now. The reason why you can give a "n00b" a mac and not have to deal with malware is because nobody targets them... although that's starting to change. Computer security ultimately comes down to the user. Most modern operating systems are "secure enough" by default, and as long as the system is kept up to date with the operating system patches (forget about AV definitions), most users should be fine.

I know you're not going to be around today (you crazy party animal you...), but I figured I'd let everyone else jump on the bandwagon by the time you got back. Have a great one!!!

@Ponch - Changed from "installing SP3 first" to "uninstalling SP3 first". Hopefully that clears up a bit of confusion.

Are you sure that the problem is with your computer and not your wireless access point? It sounds like you're having troubles with three different versions of Windows, but haven't ensured that the hardware on the other end is working properly. Any details on the wireless hardware you're using (both router/WAP and wireless card)? Don't ever rely on the base drivers for Vista, especially for wireless. Go and get the manufacturer's drivers and install those. Are you sure that the drivers in the driverpacks are also up to date?

Check to see with Microsoft's website to get the latest drivers. If all of your drivers are up to date, contact their support on the matter. They should be able to help you get a fix to the situation.