Sméagol Posted January 29, 2011 Posted January 29, 2011 Not exactly a succes again . But I'll try again next week.
Daft Posted January 29, 2011 Posted January 29, 2011 I'd have joined you but...still waiting for my computer...
Daft Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 So this Intel jizz up means I'm going to have to wait about 8 weeks. Woe. Aaaarg.
McPhee Posted February 1, 2011 Author Posted February 1, 2011 Lame. I'd cancel the order or switch to the old school i7 chips tbh, prices are likely to change over 8 weeks. Last time I buy Intel TBH, got to send my motherboard back come April when the fixed ones are in circulation. Right pain in the ass (though not quite so bad as your delayed order).
Daft Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 Hmm, what would I have to change to switch to the old chip? Just the chip and the motherboard? What difference is that going to make? What do you mean the prices are going to change? For the old chip or the new SB one?
McPhee Posted February 1, 2011 Author Posted February 1, 2011 (edited) General prices. Graphics card and hard drive prices are falling all the time, memory prices are all over the place and there's always new stuff coming out, driving prices down. An nVidia/ATi price war seems to be kicking in to gear at the moment and if AMD's new CPUs can compete with Sandy Bridge then there could be similar stuff going on with CPUs and motherboards. Personally I'd be asking PC Specialist what reason I have to leave my order in place, it doesn't seem that there's much (if any) advantage to doing so. You could ask them to switch you over to the i7 950, an X58 motherboard and 6GB (or 12GB) of RAM (the older i7s use tripple channel memory, you need 3 or 6 sticks of RAM). That should get your system to you faster. It's also possible that they might be able to swap your motherboard for one unaffected by the problems, but you'd need to wait a few days for more details on the problem to trickle through. Edited February 1, 2011 by McPhee
Daft Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 So the issue is with the SB compatible motherboards? From the sound of it Intel were just doing a blanket recall.
McPhee Posted February 1, 2011 Author Posted February 1, 2011 (edited) It's the chipset on the motherboards that are faulty, see here; http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall They're going to recall all motherboards. The plan from there seems undecided yet, but personally I'm expecting a straight swap. I wouldn't be happy with waiting a week or two for them to repair the board and ship it back to me. Edited February 1, 2011 by McPhee
Daft Posted February 1, 2011 Posted February 1, 2011 I guess I'll leave it a couple days until the dust settles and then consider either cancelling it and re-ordering at a later date when everything is fine or seeing if I can roll back to an i7 950.
Daft Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 (edited) So I've been given some options with regard to my PC order, A) We can put your order on hold for when the new motherboards aredelivered to us, and assemble/re-assemble your computer then. Current estimations of delivery dates for the new stock are towards the end of March/start of April. B) You can cancel your order and receive a full refund, or alternatively order a different computer, for example an i7-950 based system or an AMD based system. C) We will dispatch your order to you at your request. Your computer will still have full warranty cover but you will forfeit the right to have the motherboard replaced because of this issue. Any other problems will of course be covered under warranty. D) We can install (free of charge) a 2 port SATA 3GB/s PCI/PCI-E card which you can use to connect your optical drives and/or hard drives to. The only downside to this is the loss of a free PCI/PCI-E slot. D is looking pretty juicy since I'm an impatient fop (although asking to wait about 3 months is slightly beyond the realm of impatient). BUT...it doesn't sound like that bad a compromise so I'm wondering why this solution isn't being offered more...i.e. Is there a downside that I'm not understanding? Edit: Also, forgot to mention, in the email, "The issue affects up to 4 of the SATA 3GB/s ports on your motherboard(SATA 6GB/s ports are not affected), and may cause the ports to degrade or even stop working after several months (possibly years) of use. Your SATA ports are listed as 0 - 5 and this issue only effects ports 2, 3, 4 and 5. Because the total number of SATA 3GB/s hard drives and CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives you have ordered is 2, your order is not directly affected by this issue and therefore your computer will operate perfectly normal. However the issue will still remain on your motherboard and if you were to add additional hard drives or CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives in the future, your motherboard may not recognise these drives or they may operate slower than expected." So my current set up would be fine. But if there are issues adding stuff might be a problem. Not sure I would add anything, though. Edited February 2, 2011 by Daft
Shorty Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 An American retailer was offering identical options and Kotaku ran an article on it. I didn't bother linking it because I didn't imagine you could force/suggest PC Specialist to consider the same options. Obviously someone did though
Daft Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 (edited) Yeah, saw that.Are they pretty much same options (in a different order)? The only difference is that instead of 'SATA II Multi-port PCI card' PCSpecialist is offering a 'SATA 3GB/s PCI/PCI-E'. I think the latter is better, but I might be wrong. But I am a layman so I don't even know what this means. So, like I need uber help. Edited February 2, 2011 by Daft
Shorty Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 3GB/s is pretty standard but if they're offering a PCI-e card that does make it slightly better since it extends your options/potentially won't use up a slot. On a non-sandy-bridge related PC Gaming note, I just bought one of these: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/designer-s-xbox-360-wireless-controller-gaming-receiver-for-pc-white-grey-47380 Allows you to use your wireless 360 pads on your PC. They're currently at a decent price (comes to about £7.50 with shipping) and are supposedly as good as the official ones
Daft Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 (edited) It should be on the PCI-E because the PCI slot is taken up by the wireless card. Edit: Sorted. Went for option D. With a 10% failure rate (so pretty good odds) and no foreseeable need for an additional HDD I think it's the right choice. Edited February 2, 2011 by Daft
Daft Posted February 8, 2011 Posted February 8, 2011 My PC has been built and is QA. Might be here before the end of the week. Colour me excited!
Daft Posted February 8, 2011 Posted February 8, 2011 Just bought Dan of War II and the Chaos Rising expansion together for £9.99 off Steam in anticipation. Question, do people generally use game chat on PC? If so, anyone want to recommend me a good mic?
Nolan Posted February 9, 2011 Posted February 9, 2011 I don't really know about Mics, but in my experience it's less hit and miss to find talkers than on consoles. It also helps that even without a mic people can still communicate via keyboard in most games.
Emasher Posted February 9, 2011 Posted February 9, 2011 Has anyone here played Two Worlds II enough to recommend it yet? I'm looking for a good RPG, but I haven't played the first, so I'm not sure what to expect.
Nolan Posted February 9, 2011 Posted February 9, 2011 Well the first was pants, so the second could only be an improvement....but I'd be wary about paying more than $20 for it.
Dyson Posted February 9, 2011 Posted February 9, 2011 I am on Ventrilo with my gaming buddies 100% of the time I play games, even single player. I rarely use in game chats.
Daft Posted February 10, 2011 Posted February 10, 2011 (edited) Can anyone help me, Steam gets stuck when it's 'Updating Steam platform...'? Edit - Fixed!! Twentieth time's a charm!! Edited February 10, 2011 by Daft
Daft Posted February 11, 2011 Posted February 11, 2011 Uuurm, Crysis constantly crashes in the menus when I select any options. One solution seems to be to put it in the EA folder...or something. But I bought it directly off Steam. Can anyone help me with this?
Emasher Posted February 11, 2011 Posted February 11, 2011 (edited) Try updating your graphics drivers. Its possible that the company you bought your PC from installed the possibly out of date drivers on the disk that came with the card, rather than getting the latest drivers from the internet. If that doesn't work, right click on the game in your steam library and select "Properties", then press the "Verify Integrity of Game Cache..." button on the "Local Files" tab. If that doesn't work, go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps" and delete any files related to Crysis in there, then go back into steam and re-install the game. Note: You didn't actually delete the game files, just the file that tells steam the game has been installed, steam will re-install the game, but it won't have to download the files again (However, at first, it may look like its doing this). Edited February 11, 2011 by Emasher
McPhee Posted February 12, 2011 Author Posted February 12, 2011 http://www.getgamesgo.com%2Fcatalogue%2Fgame%2Fjust-cause-2&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.hexus.net%2Fcurrent-bargains%2F198974-just-cause-2-4-99-a.html Just Cause 2, £4.99 at GetGamesGo (Eurogamer). Picked it up last night for £2.49 before they put the price up. Cracking game! It looks absolutely stunning (especially in 3D). Just taking a peek at some of the mods for it now.
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