Topic: Advice on buying or building a PC or Laptop

[PatMan33]

Ah... kinda shooting in the dark at this one.

Can you post a picture? It could be a bum RAM stick. Try the boot with just one stick of RAM and rotate it out, see if the boot fails with a specific stick.

Are you using any jumpers for this boot?

[Rysworld]

My RAM wasn't in correctly because I'm stupid and it wasn't in all the way.

My mum actually put it in all the way with some force and that was what made me realize. It's working now.

hurrdurr i'm good at computers giuze

[PatMan33]

Yeah RAM is annoying sometimes. The locking system is great but can make things difficult sometimes.

[Didero]

If something is really wrong with the mobo, it usually makes a series of beeps, indicating what the problem is, right? Or is that just some brands / models?

[Yokto]

I actually need to get a better laptop. But I have been putting it off for more then a half of year now. >_<

It is hard to find something I like. I need a gaming laptop (For work. Yeah that is how it is when you develop games...) and I do not want to get Windows 8. Linux wont cut it. And no Macs are out of the question.

[PatMan33]

If something is really wrong with the mobo, it usually makes a series of beeps, indicating what the problem is, right? Or is that just some brands / models?

The number and duration of the beeps may differ from model to model, but generally speaking (I can't say ALL models do it, I don't know) most motherboard will give the user an audio cue when the BIOS fires up. Assuming the motherboard speaker is turned on/plugged in. Had that happen once with a friend's system. His motherboard had an external speaker that had to be plugged into a pin on the board, which he never did.

[Kishmond]

When I build a new PC later this year, should I spring for DDR4 RAM? I just learned that was a thing, and it looks like 16GB of it is $30 - $50 more than higher-end DDR3. Think it'll make a difference?
EDIT: Aaaand it looks like motherboards that support it can reach over $800. Nevermind.

Not dead by the way.

[PatMan33]

Good work!

[Kishmond]

I did find some motherboards that support DDR4 for around $400, along with a crapton of other cool features (but who needs 2 ethernet ports?). I put together a theoretical build and the price of a nice liquid-cooled case with mobo and RAM is $1200. This is before the CPU, graphics card, hard drives, or power supply. It's probably still not worth it, but I'll wait and see what the situation is in in 4 or so months.
PC building is exciting!

This is also the first time that I'm taking into account the color of the components. It's going to look sweet.

EDIT: "Worth it" is misleading though. I'm waaaay past the 'because I can' point by now.

[PatMan33]

Sounds good!

If you can afford the DDR4 now, go for it for sure. Otherwise wait a while because no software uses it or will for a bit.

[Kishmond]

I've built the computer I mentioned a couple months ago. It starts up, but there are two weird quirks it's doing. One is that I don't think the SLI is working to its fullest. On a Crysis 3 test at 1440p and max settings fps stays at 30-40. The little SLI bar you can use is nearly maxed, so that's good, but looking at the utilization of each card one is at 90% and the other is at 10%. It may be that that game just isn't optimized for multiple GPUs (which seems unlikely), but there may be another cause.

The 2/3-way SLI bridge that came with the motherboard didn't quite reach far enough to use slots 1 and 2, so I'm using slots 1 and 3. It looks like this
image
Do you think that would affect performance at all?

Scratch that, changing the multi-GPU mode to auto fixed it. Capped at 60 fps now. 

This thing is pretty sweet. Worth every penny, and there were a lot of pennies. Picture One      Picture Two

Specs

It doesn't have a name yet, though. What should I name it?

[Rysworld]

Victoria/Vicky? Ivory? Snow Machine? Ghost? White Smoke?

(Your computer's chassis is white)

[PatMan33]

You almost have my computer, but with video cards two generations newer than mine.

I like it a lot! You've got a beautiful case.

[Kishmond]

Named it Albinus because, you know, white. Was going to do Albus which more literally means white but didn't want people thinking I named it after Dumbledore.

[PatMan33]

Harry Potter nerds ruin everything.

Can't even go to the book store on Fridays because they STILL do readings there in-character and it's noisy as ****.