Technical Q&A - all computers

[ratsoalbion]

A thread for questions and answers pertaining to PC and Mac issues be they software, hardware, OS or relating to a specific application.

[Dante Fireseed]

I have been thinking of upgrading my main hard drive in my gaming PC to an SSD as they are now a lot cheaper.

Anyone any tips on make/model and how I would go about re-installing windows 7 (I'm on 64 bit). This may sound noobish but can I re-install windows using the same disks and serial no?

[PlexShaw]

I can't advise about makes and model numbers of SSDs, but provided you are not changing any of the other components (most significantly, the motherboard), you will be able to reinstall Windows using the same DVD and product key and activate without having to directly contact MS.

[Dante Fireseed]

I can't advise about makes and model numbers of SSDs, but provided you are not changing any of the other components (most significantly, the motherboard), you will be able to reinstall Windows using the same DVD and product key and activate without having to directly contact MS.

thanks, i'll dig out the DVD and give it a go i think once i lay my hands on an SSD

this one sounds decent, might go for it

http://www.ebuyer.com/268244-ocz-120gb- ... 5sat3-120g

[magicjoef]

Looks nice. This thread could cost me money!

[Roy42]

If you're not careful, it could. If you're looking at SSDs as they relate to gaming, you really don't need to get one too big. Even 120GB seems excessive to me. You would only need it for the OS, core programs and some games you favour that you'd want to give a slight performance boost to. The rest you could get a regular hard drive for and spend about the same price on the SSD (guessing) for a 1TB or 2TB model.

[Dante Fireseed]

If you're not careful, it could. If you're looking at SSDs as they relate to gaming, you really don't need to get one too big. Even 120GB seems excessive to me. You would only need it for the OS, core programs and some games you favour that you'd want to give a slight performance boost to. The rest you could get a regular hard drive for and spend about the same price on the SSD (guessing) for a 1TB or 2TB model.

yeah agreed, but as its only £67 for a 120 gb seems worth getting that bit extra space for a few more games. I've already got a 500 gb and 1tb drive at the moment so i'll make the 1tb my back up drive for everything else and have just my OS, core programs and 2 or 3 games on the SSD, then keep my 500 gb as a spare.

[magicjoef]

It's the best price I've seen for that size (though I tried not to look too hard incase I talked myself into one).

I've heard it is quite a nice upgrade and has a noticable speed boost. A friend added one lately, I think he has two Steam installs, one on each drive. Quite a neat way to handle it.

[Dante Fireseed]

yeah everything loads super quickly, and start up and shut down is a lot faster. I also looked into the steam thing and found this, called Steam Mover, a nice little prog that quickly and easily moves your installs around for this kind of thing.

http://lifehacker.com/5626931/steam-mov ... mary-drive

[Roy42]

With the new update to Steam, you wouldn't even need to move things around with Steam; games can be installed to specific hard drives, even if it's not the location Steam's installed on.

[countstex]

With the new update to Steam, you wouldn't even need to move things around with Steam; games can be installed to specific hard drives, even if it's not the location Steam's installed on.

Oh, that's news to me! And most useful. I already run an SSD setup (90GB) but clearly that's pitifully small for my whole Steam library so I have them all on my 2TB, but being able to install a couple of the more drive intensive games to the SSD would be very handy. I will have to look up the technique.

[James]

Alright, let's say I hypothetically had £500 (I don't) and a decent 22" monitor (I do). Who wants to make suggestions for a reasonable/decent gaming PC build? Is it even possible at that price?

I'm not after top-end graphics, but something that would last a while would be welcome. I'm currently on a Dell Studio 1749 laptop (Core i5 2.27GHz, 4GB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon HD5650), so it wouldn't take much to outstrip that.

Any/all advice would be much appreciated.

[RoboticMonk3y]

Alright, let's say I hypothetically had £500 (I don't) and a decent 22" monitor (I do). Who wants to make suggestions for a reasonable/decent gaming PC build? Is it even possible at that price?

I'm not after top-end graphics, but something that would last a while would be welcome. I'm currently on a Dell Studio 1749 laptop (Core i5 2.27GHz, 4GB RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon HD5650), so it wouldn't take much to outstrip that.

Any/all advice would be much appreciated.

http://www.ebuyer.com/389050-zoostorm-d ... -7873-1061
^^ I have one very similar to this, it runs left 4 dead 2 on high settings
I already had a copy of windows, so it wasn't a problem it came without an operating system.
leaves you with £300 to spare if you want to beef it up with a graphics card if you really felt it needed it.

I'm sure you could also put together a pretty decent PC from components for under £500

[TomFum]

£500 isnt alot of money to make a desent gaming PC i wouldnt say, it would run games on lowest spec but you would be upgrading before long.

All this SSD talk as well is nice, you can pick up 120gig SSD's these day for £50 which is gooood.

And always install your steam games on a different hard drive to your windows drive, makes life so much easier, ive been doing this for past 7 years or so.

[magicjoef]

Obviously the bigger the budget the better, but considering the impact that the longer console cycle has had on games, I reckon you could put something like this together and be happily running stuff that looked pretty decent. Bare in mind what Fum said though, you might be getting itchy to upgrade sooner rather than later. It is an i5 system, 8gb of ram, 1tb storage and an nVidia 560 for about £490

(I HAVEN'T RESEARCHED WHETHER ALL THIS IS COMPATIBLE! This was just a very quick look on one shop to give a rough idea...)

Case
Power
Mobo
CPU
RAM
HDD
GPU

I built my PC a while back now, but with the couple of upgrades it has had, it isn't disimilar to this. I run all my games in 1920x1080 with mid to high settings and don't feel like I will want to upgrade until the new generation of consoles have been released.

[James]

£500 isnt alot of money to make a desent gaming PC i wouldnt say, it would run games on lowest spec but you would be upgrading before long.

Bare in mind what Fum said though, you might be getting itchy to upgrade sooner rather than later.

Thanks. That's some food for thought. If my experiences of 10 years ago are anything to go by Case, PSU and HDD should last longer, so long as I invest in decent ones and they stay healthy. Thanks also, Joe, for the links. That's a lot of work you've done there, and it's much appreciated.

And always install your steam games on a different hard drive to your windows drive, makes life so much easier, ive been doing this for past 7 years or so.

Clearly I'm a little out of touch when it comes to PC gaming. Why is this important?

[TomFum]

And always install your steam games on a different hard drive to your windows drive, makes life so much easier, ive been doing this for past 7 years or so.

Clearly I'm a little out of touch when it comes to PC gaming. Why is this important?

Its not important but it just makes things alot easier when you come to do a reinstall of windows, be it because you get a virus that kills your system or be it because you just wanna reinstall to tidy things up (i do mine every 6months or so), you dont have to re-download all of your games ( i have over 100 on my steam) again as there all on a different hard drive. Theres one thing you need to do which is make a copy of all your saved games but other than that its just easier.

See what im saying??

[James]

Ah, gotcha. Thanks.

Makes perfect sense, but I'm not used to the cycle of regular reinstalls having got out of the habit. Time was when I had it down to a fine art, but PC games were still mostly disc-based, so it wasn't so much of an issue.

[magicjoef]

Thanks also, Joe, for the links. That's a lot of work you've done there, and it's much appreciated.

No worries, any excuse to browse the components section on ebuyer Like I said though, in theory it would all work (right CPU socket etc) but I haven't done any in depth research about that configuration or compatibility.

Another good quick reference I used when picking a GPU was this list of benchmarks. That link highlights an equivalent 560 card, but you can search for any type of card to see where it fits in the bigger picture.

Fum's advice for two hard drives, one specifically for Steam, is definitely the way to go. I do the same thing and it made my reinstall after upgrading my motherboard take a couple of hours, rather than weeks of downloading overnight!

[James]

Another good quick reference I used when picking a GPU was this list of benchmarks. That link highlights an equivalent 560 card, but you can search for any type of card to see where it fits in the bigger picture.

Ha ha! I just looked for the benchmark on my current GPU (in my laptop). This was the result.