I'm confused at what your saying Robgmur, but it does seem like a nice board besides the fact that I'm not sure how great of qualiyt Asrock is.

Originally posted by Nunez1212

I'm confused at what your saying Robgmur, but it does seem like a nice board besides the fact that I'm not sure how great of qualiyt Asrock is.

ASrock has made many great boards, though I wouldn't say that their quality is as consistent as Asus or Gigabyte.  Generally Fatality doesn't slap his name on garbage, though...

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

Originally posted by Nunez1212

I'm confused at what your saying Robgmur, but it does seem like a nice board besides the fact that I'm not sure how great of qualiyt Asrock is.

ASrock has made many great boards, though I wouldn't say that their quality is as consistent as Asus or Gigabyte.  Generally Fatality doesn't slap his name on garbage, though...

 Amen. My buddy who just built his PC has this MB in fact, no problems at all and runs strong

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

Originally posted by Nunez1212

I'm confused at what your saying Robgmur, but it does seem like a nice board besides the fact that I'm not sure how great of qualiyt Asrock is.

ASrock has made many great boards, though I wouldn't say that their quality is as consistent as Asus or Gigabyte.  Generally Fatality doesn't slap his name on garbage, though...

I do not exactly keep up with Fatalityes quality of branding lol...so I wouldn't know, but the board does have great reviews on newegg.

Originally posted by Nunez1212

I'm confused at what your saying Robgmur, but it does seem like a nice board besides the fact that I'm not sure how great of qualiyt Asrock is.

 What that means is... You're a perfectionist on a budget, so get what meets both ends of your requirements right at center field.

Oh I see, so your justifying the AsRock mobo because it is smack in the middle?

Originally posted by Nunez1212

Oh I see, so your justifying the AsRock mobo because it is smack in the middle?

 Is a ducks ass water tight?

There will be a few other MBs that match this one for roughly the same price, if not cheaper. I simply recommend this one because for the price it has everything you will need, has great reviews accross the board and a 3 year warrenty as well.

Originally posted by Robgmur

Originally posted by Nunez1212

Oh I see, so your justifying the AsRock mobo because it is smack in the middle?

 Is a ducks ass water tight?

There will be a few other MBs that match this one for roughly the same price, if not cheaper. I simply recommend this one because for the price it has everything you will need, has great reviews accross the board and a 3 year warrenty as well.

That was one strange metaphor my friend...

Thanks for the mobo recommendation though. I believe this is the one I will be purchasing tonight. The only thing I am not super fond of is that I will see Fatality's face every time I boot up :P

Originally posted by Nunez1212

Originally posted by Robgmur

Originally posted by Nunez1212

Oh I see, so your justifying the AsRock mobo because it is smack in the middle?

 Is a ducks ass water tight?

There will be a few other MBs that match this one for roughly the same price, if not cheaper. I simply recommend this one because for the price it has everything you will need, has great reviews accross the board and a 3 year warrenty as well.

That was one strange metaphor my friend...

 

Thanks for the mobo recommendation though. I believe this is the one I will be purchasing tonight. The only thing I am not super fond of is that I will see Fatality's face every time I boot up :P

 I wanna say you can change that, i'll have to ask my buddy, he never said anything about that as being a problem. You will indeed have a fine machine. I will be with you buying a new video card when the new lines release. I think i'll be getting one the high end southern island card and when Nvidia launches i'll grab one of their higher end keplar.

You must be hoarding money like a gremlin to get one of each.. I already pulled the trigger on everything but the SSD and thats because my pay has still not activated into my account yet >:(    But hopefully it will be in soon so that I wont have everthing but the SSD next week...  I pre-ordered Skyrim after my classes today, so I'm pretty much all set at this point. Now all I have to do is wait one more week...

Originally posted by Nunez1212

You must be hoarding money like a gremlin to get one of each.. I already pulled the trigger on everything but the SSD and thats because my pay has still not activated into my account yet >:(    But hopefully it will be in soon so that I wont have everthing but the SSD next week...  I pre-ordered Skyrim after my classes today, so I'm pretty much all set at this point. Now all I have to do is wait one more week...

 Military?

Nope. The way my work does pay is through a debit card, and they transfer the money onto it at sometime that night...I was hoping it was going to be dead on 12:00 a.m. but I was wrong.

---

Originally posted by czekoskwigel

---

Originally posted by Nunez1212
I'm confused at what your saying Robgmur, but it does seem like a nice board besides the fact that I'm not sure how great of qualiyt Asrock is.

---

ASrock has made many great boards, though I wouldn't say that their quality is as consistent as Asus or Gigabyte.  Generally Fatality doesn't slap his name on garbage, though...

---

ASRock used to be Asus - they spun off their custom OEM and low-end motherboard division into it's own company (ASRock) back in 2003 or so. Lately (in the past year or two), ASRock has been trying to get into the higher end market under it's own name. It's first few "high end" or gaming-class products were a bit underwhelming, but lately it has got some pretty good reviews.

The only problem is that they have only been competitive for the last generation or so of motherboards. Nothing at all wrong with them right now, they just don't have quite the history that some of the other companies do yet.

As far as the Fatal1ty brand name goes - that's just marketing baloney, and he will slap his name on nearly anything related to gaming just for the promotional bucks. I wouldn't sink an ounce of faith just in the fact that he put his name on something.

That's more or less how I thought about it, but I did not order it for the Fatality name. I ordered it because it had great reviews and a very nice set of features.

Seconded on the Fatal1ty name.

It's true that I've never seen his name on downright disastrous products, in the sense that some budget and a reasonably well-established company needs to have the dollars to pay for the name to begin with, but at the same time, it's hardly a case where all of his products are good. There's a lot of mediocre junk in there, too.

The Creative Fatal1ty gaming headset is less than $40 for a reason; it's not that great. It's not terrible by any means, but it's definitely a cheaper product with lower-end performance. The OCZ Fatal1ty 550W modular PSU isn't worth any more praise. It's absolutely the epitome of mediocrity. The ripple on it only barely stays in spec, the voltage regulation is so-so, the physical quality of the unit's construction is so-so, the capacitors are the lowest end you'll get from an even remotely passable brand, and the efficiency of the unit is, well, mediocre.

In this case though, this motherboard is well-reviewed, so it seems like it'll certainly work well enough. It might lack a bell or whistle, but the substance is all there.

DONE! Everthing has been successfully shipped out and I will be receiving it early next week. Now I just have to hope and pray I don't get any DOA items.

Originally posted by Ridelynn

Stress testing:
Run Prime95 (this stresses your CPU and a bit of memory) - let it run for an hour or two, if it doesn't say anything is wrong, your good with that.
Furmark - run it for an hour or so, if you don't see any artifacts (strange lines or colors popping across the screen) - your good to go with video
That's about all I do for stress testing as long as those two pass. If your computer randomly reboots during the tests, crashes, or tells you that it failed a test, then you need to do some investigation.
(edit)
Forgot to mention it's nice to have a temperature monitor program installed when you do this. Stress testing will also tell you the maximum temperature of components you should ever expect. Should your temps be ~very~ high it could indicate a heat sink or fan isn't working properly. And in the future, if your temps deviate much from what you see during your stress test, you'll know something has gone wrong. I like SpeedFan, it's free and tells you what you need to know. There are a bajillion other temp monitors though.

If a part is broken, DOA, or whatever, first you try to RMA it back to whomever you bought it from. Most places will just do a straight exchange. In rare cases, they will refer you back to the manufacturer and turn it in on warranty exchange, which works more or less the same way but takes a bit longer to process.

How do I know what is TOO hot and such with the speedfan. I'm using it to test some stuff out on the video card since I already have that, but it randomly shows a flame and then it says it's good...so how do I know if it's at an exceptable temperature or not?

Update:

I just ran furmark for about 30 minutes and the gtx 260 maxed out at 83 celsius..it smells like burnt toast in here now, so I aborted the testing at that time. Is that ok?!

---

Originally posted by Nunez1212

---

Originally posted by Ridelynn
Stress testing:
Run Prime95 (this stresses your CPU and a bit of memory) - let it run for an hour or two, if it doesn't say anything is wrong, your good with that.
Furmark - run it for an hour or so, if you don't see any artifacts (strange lines or colors popping across the screen) - your good to go with video
That's about all I do for stress testing as long as those two pass. If your computer randomly reboots during the tests, crashes, or tells you that it failed a test, then you need to do some investigation.
(edit)
Forgot to mention it's nice to have a temperature monitor program installed when you do this. Stress testing will also tell you the maximum temperature of components you should ever expect. Should your temps be ~very~ high it could indicate a heat sink or fan isn't working properly. And in the future, if your temps deviate much from what you see during your stress test, you'll know something has gone wrong. I like SpeedFan, it's free and tells you what you need to know. There are a bajillion other temp monitors though.
If a part is broken, DOA, or whatever, first you try to RMA it back to whomever you bought it from. Most places will just do a straight exchange. In rare cases, they will refer you back to the manufacturer and turn it in on warranty exchange, which works more or less the same way but takes a bit longer to process.

---

How do I know what is TOO hot and such with the speedfan. I'm using it to test some stuff out on the video card since I already have that, but it randomly shows a flame and then it says it's good...so how do I know if it's at an exceptable temperature or not?
 
Update:
I just ran furmark for about 30 minutes and the gtx 260 maxed out at 83 celsius..it smells like burnt toast in here now, so I aborted the testing at that time. Is that ok?!

---

You can set the "flame" or alert temperatures to whatever you want. They probably default to around 70C or so.

The real answer is chips can run as hot as they are capable of doing so. If it didn't glitch out, your 260 is fine at 83C then. They will start glitching when they start to overheat (you see random color spots, overheating, BSOD's, flat out reboots or power shutdowns in extreme cases), and whatever temperature that happens to be, that happens to be. It looks like "typical" maximum temperatures for a 260 is around the mid-80's, so that's not too unusual.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=116578

Most new silicon can run as high as 100C and be ok.

Of course, the cooler the better.

So...the burning smell is ok?

Originally posted by Ridelynn

You can set the "flame" or alert temperatures to whatever you want. They probably default to around 70C or so.

The real answer is chips can run as hot as they are capable of doing so. If it didn't glitch out, your 260 is fine at 83C then. They will start glitching when they start to overheat (you see random color spots, overheating, BSOD's, flat out reboots or power shutdowns in extreme cases), and whatever temperature that happens to be, that happens to be. It looks like "typical" maximum temperatures for a 260 is around the mid-80's, so that's not too unusual.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=116578

Most new silicon can run as high as 100C and be ok.

Of course, the cooler the better.

That can't be right, my 480 GTX (Fermi) is famous for being hot and it is around 50C on normal use and 60C when playing games that uses a lot of juice. The 480 is a high end card and famous for being one of the hottest, the 260 is just a mid range card. I have a big case though, and it is open always (it actually seems to be cooler when I opens it then when I have it closed with all fans, and it is a lot less noicy.

Anything over 70C is a source of worrying, it is easy to damage the GPU if it overheats.

My suggestion: Start by looking on the temperature inside the box. See that it have fans working both pulling in and out air and see so dust isn't covering the airholes. Check so your harddrives ain't too close to the GPU, they should preferably be as far as possibly from the rest. Clean the fan of the GFX card from dust.

Use Riva tuner (or similar program) to increase the speed of the GPU fan.

If you still have an issue it is time to actually get a new GPU fan, or to consider water cooling.