UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Chit Chat The day my computer died :(

I think the time of death was approximately 12:45am on April 28th, 2003

After nearly 5 years of solid operation, under harsh overclocking conditions, residing in 9 different locations across the state, she finally gave in *sniff*

I was just surfing the web late lastnight, when suddenly POOF, the screen goes blank and the machine shuts off. So... I try to fire her up, but get the BIOS error beep code that said the video was bad. Odd.. I re-seat the card, and turn it back on. BIOS beeps saying the RAM is bad. So, reseat the ram... same thing. Hmm...

So I unplug all unecessary devices, and it goes back to the bad video beeps. Finally I say screw it and go to bed. This morning.. in more attempts to revive it and hearing those annoying beeps for an hour or so, it magically turns on! But... windows flashes a quick error screen, and the monitor goes blank. I end up firing it up a few more times, but each time it instantly hangs, and looks like there is a good deal of hard drive corruption as well

So, it is a bittersweet day. I hate having this happen when I can't really afford a new machine, but I have been dying to build a new one for a few years now, but since it was working I could never justify it, and I'm way outdated! Only running 900 MHz on SDRAM

Chances are the whole motherboard is fried... the past year or so it has slowly been falling apart. First the chipset fan stopped working. Then the case fan stopped working. Then the floppy controller stopped working. Then at random times it would lock up, and also, anything plugged into IDE2 would just dissapear from windows

lol, yeah, it has been limping along for a while now, but hey, it worked, and 5 years ago I built it for only about 900 bucks Anyway... time to start piecing together a new system. At least I will be able to play a lot of these computer games again

Ugh.... I had that happen a few months ago. Sorry Jeremy.

Sounds like time for either an Opteron or a 3Ghz P4.

That bites. I like to always refresh my computer configuration - New GPU here, new MoBo there. It's a rolling process. I guess you could say it's akin to watching a child growing up, without it ever reaching "maturity".

BTW - When and where are the services being held?

New Equipment:

P4 3.06 GHz with Hyperthreading technology
Asus P4C800 Deluxe - Product Info
Radeon 9700 Pro - Product Info
2x512MB Crucial DDR2700 RAM
2x80GB Seagate Serial ATA Hard Drives running in a RAID 0 configuration
Thermaltake Xaser III V1000a Case w/ mods and 480W PSU- Product Info

Total Shipped:

$1589.73

Existing Equipment:

80GB 7200rpm Maxtor HD
30GB 7200rpm Maxtor HD
19" Sony Trinitron 420GS Monitor
Hercules Game Theater XP sound card
Misc hardware

Overall, I'm very happy, found a lot of great prices and places with free shipping, so I probably saved at least 500 bucks than buying retail or getting a POS pre-built system. And considering the components in it, as long as it doesn't blow up or anything I shouldn't have to build a new machine again for about 4 or 5 more years

Oh, and there will be no services held, as it is going in for an autopsy (I'm taking out still useable parts for resale )

My goodness!

Actually, slight change of plan. I didn't realize that the P4 CPU I ordered was only a 533FSB model, the store called me to inform me. And upon checking, only a few places on the internet were selling the 800MHz FSB models, and they were about 600 dollars a piece

So, I scaled back to a P4 2.6GHz chip for now, which only cost about 200 bucks with shipping and a heatsink and fan. So I ended up saving about 175 dollars over my original price estimate

Still very nice - do you get on-site warrenty with that - would hate to have to ship parts back to the manufacturer.