System recommendations (I know..tired topic)

FoskeyMedia wrote on 8/14/2015, 3:30 AM

My PC finally died fter 6 years (it was a DELL XPS 8100....I7,16GB ram). I have basically NO $$ ..but thinking about beg, borrow or steal to rebuild. I'm going to need a MD, Chip, Power Supply and Case. The good people at Micro Center recommended a ASUS Z97E ($119) MB and an I7 4790 chip ($250). Sound like it will do the job at a low price ???

FYI...my old system has 2 issues:
1) Powers on intermittently (Bad power supply I assume)
2) When I can get it to power on I get 5 beeps and won't boot up.. I beleive it's the MB. I've swapped out memory and gotten same results.

Comments

DGates wrote on 8/14/2015, 5:29 AM

Are you sure it's not your heat sink fan clogged with dust? My systems have done that in the past. Vacuumed out the dust, and they'd come back on.

FoskeyMedia wrote on 8/15/2015, 2:52 PM

The fan spins, but I'll spray some air in there and try it again...thanks. I still have trouble getting power. I think regardless of anything I'm going to need to replace the power supply.

Jumping Rascal wrote on 8/15/2015, 4:58 PM

It could just be the CMOS battery (5 beeps for Dell shows RTC failure/battery failure). Here is a good link from the Dell community.
http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/xps/f/3681/t/19390100

When I had an issue with my Dell, I downloaded all the service documents that I could from Dell and found a lot of trouble shooting procedures that helped.

If you can get the Dell going and can hang on for a bit, the new Skylake processors and related MBs are just out with some interesting specs.

I hope that you get the 8100 up and running!

FoskeyMedia wrote on 8/24/2015, 5:54 PM

THANKS RASCAL !
You hit it right on the head...and saved me $$$. It was the battery !!!!!!
(After replacing the battey, I had to replace the PSU which would only power up intermittently)
It is up and running and I HOPE to get back to work tonight~
"HOPE" being the operative word..I have 2 pair of 4gig RAM in it..but it only registers 4 GB in Bios. It's not the RAM because I have 3 sets (2 sets of 2.2GB and the one set of 4x2 GB) If I put four chips in I get 2 beeps. If I put 1 set in I can boot, but it only recognizes half the memory. So I need to:
1) research and see if it's a Motherboard issue
2) hope I can do what I need to do in Vegas on 4 gigs ram.

FoskeyMedia wrote on 8/24/2015, 5:55 PM

And thanks for the tip on the Skyklark. Hopefully I can keep this old ship running until I can afford that.

FoskeyMedia wrote on 8/31/2015, 12:50 AM

Just starting to look into this. Curious as to why that chip seems to be cheaper than the Haskell

FoskeyMedia wrote on 9/16/2015, 10:36 AM

How is the ASRock Z97 PRO4 for a Motherboard ? It comes bundled with the i7-4790K 4.0GHz CPU for $354.98.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/446594/Z97_PRO4_ATX_LGA_1150

OldSmoke wrote on 9/16/2015, 11:30 AM

What is your typical project like? what kind of source material and render are you working with?

FoskeyMedia wrote on 9/16/2015, 5:18 PM

Between 1to3 camera. Bunch of panning and cropping. Lower 3rds. Some effects off and on. I do mostly music and dance performance and lectures. Some weddings.

Render to online for YouTube or DVD.

I'm also thinking.... I shouldn't really worry about overclocking?

OldSmoke wrote on 9/16/2015, 5:39 PM

worry about overclocking

Worry...no. Today motherboards will the job for you.

Didn't say what your source material is like. Is it HDV, 1080 29.97p or 54.94p or 4K?

FoskeyMedia wrote on 9/16/2015, 7:56 PM

I'm sorry.... 1080 29.97p

OldSmoke wrote on 9/16/2015, 8:08 PM

Then yes, the 4790K seems like a good choice. I would add a R9 290 and a good power supply.

FoskeyMedia wrote on 9/16/2015, 8:40 PM

Thanks/ How about the ASRock Z97 PRO4. Frankly I;ve never heard of them before (at first thought AS was for ASUS).

R9 290 ? Ouch.. that's another $250. I'm assuming the onboard graphics arent up to snuff ?

OldSmoke wrote on 9/16/2015, 8:49 PM

ASRock as far as I know is the lower platform of ASUS. Try the internal GPU first but buy a good power supply from the beginning, 850W minimum, 1000W better.

FoskeyMedia wrote on 9/16/2015, 11:11 PM

LOL That's a big jump compared to the 250watts I have now.

Thanks~

Stringer wrote on 9/17/2015, 2:42 PM

FWIW

Im using an 850W (Gold ) power supply with 5960X & 2 x R9 290X and the power draw I see with all at 100% is about 600w max ..

A ( good )1000w PSU might give you a little more efficiency, but an efficient 850w would still have some headroom...