Building a new PC using these components...

StillBallygowan

Hi,

I'm considering building a new PC using the following components:

• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, nForce4 SLI, Socket-939
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz
• Thermaltake Armor Black, AluminiumSuper tower
• Thermaltake Silent Purepower 680W, DualFan, 4xSATA, ATX/EPS, SLI, 20/24pin
• Asus Radeon X850PRO 256MB GDDR3
• Corsair TWINX2048-3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MBKit
• Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA16MB 7200RPM
• BenQ DVD±RW burner, DW1655, 16x, Dual, LightScribe
• Plextor DVD±RW burner, PX-750A, 16x,Dual, RAM, Black Oem

Is this a good spec or is there other components I could consider?

Thanks

WizZard

Nice spec. I'd swap the PSU for an Antec/OCZ/Tagan/Enermax cos it's brutal, but apart from that it looks like a nice mid-high end rig.

DonkeyRhubarb

I have the PSU your thinking of, its great, would power a tank. Its also good for future upgrading, it doesnt even break a sweat and is suprisingly quiet. Everything else looks good, but maybe consider changing the graphics card. Its good, but is being outdated quickly. If you want to keep cost down, maybe consider the 7800GT. Also, is that MOBO sata2? It will save you hassle installing Windows if your MOBO & HD are SATA2 with Windows SP2. My case is the Antec performance P180 case & I swear by it.

StillBallygowan

The motherboard has the following spec:

• ATA-133 - connector(s): 2 x 40pin IDC
• Serial ATA-150 - connector(s): 4 x 7pin Serial ATA - RAID 0 / RAID 1 / RAID 0+1 / RAID 5
• Serial ATA-300 - connector(s): 4 x 7pin Serial ATA

i've heard the XFX GeForce 7800 GT is very good. not sure if i need to spend that much as i won't be doing much gaming!
i've priced it all on komplett and the price seems good.

StillBallygowan

I see Komplett do the Tagan Easycon 580W - do i really need 680W that the Thermaltake provides!

Dooom

I'd be quite surprised if the Thermaltake PSU actually put out 680w. That aside, I'd second the advise to get a different make, TT are just..well, I don't trust them.

Anyway, I've an Enermax 600w PSU in my machine and it works wonders, quite as hell and never one fault in her. Plus when the computer shuts down, the fans keep spinning for a few minutes after to cool down the components.
Always handy when your CPU accidently hits 84 degrees.

StillBallygowan

your Enermax PSU sounds great. where did you buy it? i didn't notice it on Komplett

Dooom

Enermax Noistaker 600w, it's about halfway down the page. Blue one.

Anyway, if you're going to order it from there, check out the Enermax Liberty PSU's aswell, have heard good things about them.
Also, the Seasonic PSU's are excellent. The Antec's are good too.

Choice's yours.

StillBallygowan

Updated specs:

• Plextor DVD±RW burner, PX-750A, 16x,Dual, RAM
• Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA16MB 7200RPM NCQ
• BenQ DVD±RW burner, DW1655, 16x, Dual,LightScribe
• XFX GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 eXtreme,PCI-Express, Dual-DVI, VIVO, 450MHz
• Thermaltake Armor Black
• Seasonic S12 Powersupply 500W, 120mmFan, 4xSATA, ATX/EPS, SLI, 20/24pin
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket939, 2MB
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, nForce4 SLI, Socket-939,S-ATA,Dual-GbLAN,Firewire,PCI-Ex16
• Corsair TWINX2048-3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MBKit w/two matched CMX1024-3200 DIMMs

- cost including VAT & Delivery = €1,848.52

DJ Hafez

Don't go for the maxtor, ive had way too many problems with it :rolleyes: it doesnt seem to like nforce4 mobos :mad: get seagate or Western Digital

netman

Try the new Western Digital SE16 (or RE2) drives, they have borrowed a lot from the bigger brother - Raptor, and are reasonably quiet and very very fast. Western Digital also gives an extended warranty on SE16 drives - 5 years. Maxtors just don't mix well with nForce4 chipsets.

Also, why the Plextor DVDRW? Unless you really want the Plextor for some reason, I'd recommend NEC or Pioneer (same NEC chipset), a drive that you can get region-free firmware for, and that can be rip-unlocked.

Graphics card is an overkill if you're not doing much gaming. Anything from the X800 or 6800 series would also be an overkill but won't cost you as much. Besides, with new graphics chipsets being introduced every 6-9 months it won't be long until 7800 series becomes obsolete and their prices drop rapidly. Investing into something you won't be using doesn't seem like a good choice to me, you can always buy a 7800 later if you decide you want to become a full time gamer, and pay less for it!

The power supply is an excellent one and will serve you well. It's the quietest on the market, and Seasonic have been holding that prize for years, and it also has very stable voltages. With the amount of connectors and support for EPS it should last you a long time.

CPU - even if you're not going to overclock, try getting a Socket 939 Opteron instead. It has twice the cache memory of X2 processors, slightly updated design (newer stepping) and comparable prices, and will work on this motherboard. Komplett used to stock them but the last I checked they were all out.

Memory - are you sure you need 2GB of RAM? I know it looks nice on the task manager, and the POST screen takes that little bit longer to count to 2GB but you have to remember that you're paying for it
I have 1GB of RAM and I rarely get to fill it, and I do a LOT with my PC.
Again, you can always upgrade later. It's hard to find a job that would require 2GB of RAM on a desktop PC these days.

Anyway, I hope this helps!

K.O.Kiki

StillBallygowan, you're going a little overboard with that PC:rolleyes: Unless of course you have a son/daughter pestering you:p

But for everyday, that's overkill.
Let's start again -- and this time, we'll go for silence!

• Downgrade the CPU to an X2 3800+, it'll suit your daily needs plenty.
• Now, the GPU... If you're not doing much gaming (as you said), get something cheaper & silent. I recommend this Silent 6600GT; again, it'll more than suit your needs, and should be usable for even newer games. And it's silent!
• All harddrives have equal performance; however, the Samsung P120S has been praised for its silence for months now. Get two if you want.
• Those 2 discdrives are fine; although I'm not sure about how good Lightscribe is... might want to get a NEC drive instead.
• Mobo's fine; just don't get the "X16" model (€218), get the normal Deluxe (€157)

StillBallygowan

This is all great advice. I'm still pondering what spec to get, it's changed around 4 times in the past 2 months. I like the silent approach. It's also bringing the price down!
I was just looking at the Gigabyte 6600GT Silent Pipe, 256MB

I'm trying to budget to €1800, by the looks of things I'm getting a high-spec machine for that sort of cash so I don't mind going overboard.

I'm looking for really good ability to handle games, watch/burn DVDs, listen/burn music, photo editing mainly.

The PC I have at the moment is due a change, 6 year old DELL Dimension 8200 -
- P4 1.9Ghz
- 768MB RAM
- XP Pro
- Creative SB Extigy
- NEC DVD/RW ND-2500A & Samsung DVD ROM SD616
- 64MB Graphics card nVidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400
- 60 GB Samsung Hard Drive & 40 GB Maxtor Hard Drive

Upgrading to the following...

• Thermaltake Armor Black, AluminiumSuper tower
• Seasonic S12 Powersupply 500W, 120mmFan, 4xSATA, ATX/EPS, SLI, 20/24pin
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket939, 2MB, BOXED w/fan
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, nForce4 SLI, Socket-939,S-ATA,Dual-GbLAN,Firewire,PCI-Ex16
• Corsair Value S. PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MBKit w/two matched Value Select 512MB
• 2x NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-4551A, 16x,Dual, Ram, LabelFlash
• Samsung SpinPoint P120S 250GB SATA28MB 7200RPM NCQ
• Gigabyte 6600GT Silent Pipe, 256MB DDR3PCI-Express, Tv-Out, DVI-I, Retail

Price inc. VAT & Delivery = €1,525

netman

The new Hitachi and Western Digital drives are much faster (about 20%) than the Samsung Spinpoint P120 and offer larger capacities than 250GB.

I think the P120 belongs to the previous generation of drives and Samsung needs to come up with a new drive to stay in the competition.

It does offer lower temperatures and less noise than the competition, but I believe that's only relevant in a situation where you don't use any noise supression.

I've had both P80, P120 and now WD SE16 and I can't notice any difference in noise. I'm using Innovatek's Innovibe kit, pretty similar to the Sharkoon kit you can buy in Peats. Only the seek noise is audible, and it's a nearly silent crunch. In a silent room, with a watercooled PC with one 120mm fan (at low voltage) and a near-silent power supply (Seasonic).

If you don't need the space, and you're not too worried about performance than P120 is an excellent choice. In any other case I believe there are better drives out there.

vishal

is the wdse16 any good?

conzy

I have an Enermax Liberty 500watt, really nice. silent, and 2*22amp 12volt rails:)

If you have you're heart set on a 7800gt get the leadtek, I have it and its great, it has a better cooler than the refernece cooler.. BUT ITS STILL LOUD:D

Anyway its €300 and mine can do 500/600 which is a nice OC from 400/500

Anyway if you're not gaming a lot a 6800gs would be grand;)

netman

vishal wrote:

is the wdse16 any good?

The 400GB one takes much of it's design from the Raptor, and it's very similar to the Raid Edition, the difference being in firmware.

The 250GB one I'm not sure about, I think it's a different beast but still mighty fast. I went for the 400GB one.

K.O.Kiki

netman wrote:

The new Hitachi and Western Digital drives are much faster (about 20%) than the Samsung Spinpoint P120 and offer larger capacities than 250GB.

I think the P120 belongs to the previous generation of drives and Samsung needs to come up with a new drive to stay in the competition.

I was on about the P120S (note the "S"); it offers nigh-on equal performance to other SATAII drives and is quiet. Also, it only came out 3-4 months ago, so it's definitely not "previous generation".

StillBallygowan, are you sure you wouldn't want to save €165 by getting a 3800 instead of a 4400? It just seems overkill for normal use...

A thing I just noticed -- where's your soundcard? I swear you should get yourself a soundcard; a Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic can be had for €123 (ie, a bit less than the difference in downgrading processors). A dedicated soundcard makes a good difference to performance, and also makes everything sound sooo much sweeter:D

netman

K.O.Kiki wrote:

I was on about the P120S (note the "S"); it offers nigh-on equal performance to other SATAII drives and is quiet. Also, it only came out 3-4 months ago, so it's definitely not "previous generation".

Actually, you're carrying on part of the model number there.

The drive is a part of Samsung "P" series, and the "S" incorrectly comes from the model number, which is SP2504C. Komplett display it correctly in the product description but not in the product name.

In the P120 series, there are two models, SP2504C which is 250GB and SP2004C which is 200GB.

P120 were introduced in April 2005, so in terms of IT equipment it is a bit dated. Since Samsung didn't put out any newer P-series drives on the market it can be considered current generation if you're looking at Samsung alone. However, both Hitachi (7K500) and Western Digital (RE2) have introduced drives with superior performance and greater capacities, that leave the competition behind. Both of these outperform the current generation Seagate (Barracuda 7200.9), Maxtor (Maxline III) and Samsung (P120) drives by quite a margin.

While a 20% increase in performance might not seem like a lot, you have to remember that the hard drive is by far the slowest component in the system, and increasing the speed of the slowest component is where you'll notice it the most.

Some will also like the 5 year warranty, personally I swap drives every 1-2 years so I'm never caught out by the warranty running out.

The sound on the motherboard is more than adequate for most users. The old Realtek 5.1 was quite an improvement over Soundblaster Live!, and while newer Soundblasters offered better surround sound and better signal quality I don't consider it money well spent. I think you should give it a go, a new sound card can always be added to the system, but once you've spent the 123 euro you'll find it hard to get it back. God knows you won't make more than 80 euro back for it on boards

Besides, Audigy 2 offers the same or better signal-to-noise ratio and can be had second-hand for 30 euro. Unless you have use for SB X-Fi, or are an enthusiast, you're better off putting your money elsewhere.

The X2 4400+ is a bit of an overkill, depending on what you do. The CPU prices will drop and it might make more sense to start of small and upgrade later. The 4400 is a more advanced core than the 3800, not only is it faster but it offers double the cache size. You can get the same cache size (2MB) but with lower clock speeds and more reasonable prices with an Opteron 165 processor. It might be a better start in the dual-core world, which would set you back about 340-350 euro. (pretty much the same price as 3800)

StillBallygowan

K.O.Kiki wrote:

A thing I just noticed -- where's your soundcard? I swear you should get yourself a soundcard; a Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic can be had for €123 (ie, a bit less than the difference in downgrading processors). A dedicated soundcard makes a good difference to performance, and also makes everything sound sooo much sweeter:D

I'm going to use my existing soundcard - the Creative SoundBlaster Extigy. Might hook up a decent set of 5.1 speakers at some stage or i could do that now by downgrading processor which will save me some money!!
Looking on Komplett:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is €340
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ is €405

blue chuzzle

what do people think to the idea of raid harddrives for improved preformance_


why is this never talked about as a big way to improve day to day computing? after all everything comes off the hard drive at some point... so if you can put in 2 and have twice the hard drive preformance lots and lots of things go much quicker.


this is bearing in mind that ram is cheap and you would have plenty in it in the first place

blue chuzzle

by go much quicker i of course mean load much quicker.

why stop at 2 hard drives? bang in as many as you can. i see you have space for 4?


go nuts.

netman

blue chuzzle wrote:

what do people think to the idea of raid harddrives for improved preformance_


why is this never talked about as a big way to improve day to day computing? after all everything comes off the hard drive at some point... so if you can put in 2 and have twice the hard drive preformance lots and lots of things go much quicker.


this is bearing in mind that ram is cheap and you would have plenty in it in the first place

Actually it only improves performance in certain applications like video editing, where large amounts of data are sequentially read or written. For most things that people do raid (striping) makes no difference, and in fact having two separate drives speeds things up more.

For example burning images off one drive, while your OS and swap space are on a different drive. Or compressing/decompressing files from one drive to another.

On the other hand, as a safety measure raid (mirroring) makes a lot of sense. For another 100 euro or so, which is the average cost of a new drive most people are buying, you get a peace of mind. Makes upgrades harder, as you need to replace two drives instead of one, but I see this as a much better use for raid.

blue chuzzle

but its how long things take to load that annoys me.

well, the best example are games.
but any application would have to open a good bit quicker if there were 2 hdds supplying the data


or am i wrong?

SeanW

For what reasons I don't know, but Maxtor has a terrible reputation. Why? I have 2 Maxtors in my rig, the original 40 gig that came with it and an uber-cheap 80 GB that I added some months ago.

Would reccommend 'em in a hearbeat, as I would Liteon optical drives (theres a nice CD/DVD+/-RW in peats for €60.

netman

blue chuzzle wrote:

but its how long things take to load that annoys me.

well, the best example are games.
but any application would have to open a good bit quicker if there were 2 hdds supplying the data


or am i wrong?

It depends largely on what you use your desktop for, in some cases a single drive will be faster than a RAID 0 setup. RAID is accompanied with higher CPU utilisation, and in case of RAID-0 there's also additional risk, if any of the 2 (or 4) drives fail - you lose the whole data.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=1491&p=24

A more recent article shows a motherboard RAID setup with two of the fastest drives on the market (WD Raptor) in RAID-0:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101

For double the cost and double the risk, the overall gain in performance is 2.6-3.6%, and sometimes the RAID was slower than a single drive.

Hardly worth it unless you're living on benchmark results alone

Games.. well, if you look at the extensive reviews above, games have no benefit from RAID-0, and in fact some load slower from a RAID. But that's simply benchmark results, in real life games load whatever data they need and it doesn't really matter to anyone if that took 39 or 40 seconds. Once they're loaded the performance depends on the graphics card, cpu and memory. So the hard drive plays little or no part in gaming experience.

Unless of course you don't have enough memory to run the game properly and it's constantly using swap space on your hard drive, but then you're going to have a pretty horrible gaming experience regardless of how fast that drive is.

netman

SeanW wrote:

For what reasons I don't know, but Maxtor has a terrible reputation. Why? I have 2 Maxtors in my rig, the original 40 gig that came with it and an uber-cheap 80 GB that I added some months ago.

Would reccommend 'em in a hearbeat, as I would Liteon optical drives (theres a nice CD/DVD+/-RW in peats for €60.

There are issues with Maxtor drives and nVidia nForce4 chipset, which is the one used in this Asus motherboard. That's the only reason

StillBallygowan

netman wrote:

You can get the same cache size (2MB) but with lower clock speeds and more reasonable prices with an Opteron 165 processor. It might be a better start in the dual-core world, which would set you back about 340-350 euro. (pretty much the same price as 3800)

Interesting article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29195

K.O.Kiki

StillBallygowan wrote:

Interesting article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29195

Yeah, but they'll probably be either skt940 Opty's, or just unavailable:(

netman

The article talks about 2xx series, those are dual-processor chips for socket 940, no use to us mere mortals.

You'd be looking for 165, 170 and 175 Opterons for socket 939.

There's still some around, there's a web site in Germany that offers Opteron 165 guaranteed at 2.7 Ghz for just over 400 euro. It's overclocking, not everyone's comfortable about it, but it's a dual core chip with 1MB L2 cache per core, and the latest and greatest from AMD - FX60 is running at 2.6 GHz and costs over a thousand euro, so the little Opteron wouldn't break the bank and would give the same/better performance.

DonkeyRhubarb

As regards to the HD, I have the Samsung P120S. It really is silent and damn fast. If your looking to get a soundcard, the MSI K8N Platinum has Sound Blaster Live 7.1 HD onboard. Sounds brilliand, is fully featured, takes away from processor load and could save u money by combinind motherboard and sound card. Some people are sceptical of onboard sound and up to now I could see why, but I have had nothing but joy from this board.

Alkers

Are the opterons dual core? I thought only the ones starting with a 2 were dual core and the 165s etc were all single core?

K.O.Kiki

Simona1986 wrote:

Are the opterons dual core? I thought only the ones starting with a 2 were dual core and the 165s etc were all single core?

Strange but true.
Also
Strange and uber-cool!

netman

Simona1986 wrote:

Are the opterons dual core? I thought only the ones starting with a 2 were dual core and the 165s etc were all single core?

The ones starting with 2 are SMP enabled for dual processor operation.
The ones starting with 1 are single processor. Now that's where the confusion starts

At present, the 14x models are single processor, single core, like 144, 146 and 148.
The 165, 170 and 175 models are single processor, dual core.

Hope that makes sense to you... They're similar to the Athlon64 processors, some are single-core, some are dual-core.

netman

DonkeyRhubarb wrote:

As regards to the HD, I have the Samsung P120S. It really is silent and damn fast. If your looking to get a soundcard, the MSI K8N Platinum has Sound Blaster Live 7.1 HD onboard. Sounds brilliand, is fully featured, takes away from processor load and could save u money by combinind motherboard and sound card. Some people are sceptical of onboard sound and up to now I could see why, but I have had nothing but joy from this board.

As far as I can tell MSI K8N Platinum has a Realtek audio codec onboard (ALC850) that provides 7.1 sound, the same onboard audio that the Asus A8N has, and most of the market. (it's not Soundblaster)

It does use more CPU than dedicated sound cards but it's nothing major, and the sound quality is really good. Like I said before, you can always purchase a Soundblaster X-Fi or Audigy later on.

Alkers

netman wrote:

The ones starting with 2 are SMP enabled for dual processor operation.
The ones starting with 1 are single processor. Now that's where the confusion starts

At present, the 14x models are single processor, single core, like 144, 146 and 148.
The 165, 170 and 175 models are single processor, dual core.

Hope that makes sense to you... They're similar to the Athlon64 processors, some are single-core, some are dual-core.

Yeh that's what I thought but from reading this thread I got the impression that someone believed all opterons were dual-core.

StillBallygowan

I've decided on the final spec...

• Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket-939, Super Cooling pipe, PCI-Ex16
• Thermaltake Armor Black, AluminiumSuper tower (Without PSU)
• Seasonic S12 Powersupply 500W, 120mmFan, 4xSATA, ATX/EPS, SLI, 20/24pin
• NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-4551A, 16x,Dual, Ram, LabelFlash, Black OEM
• Gainward GeForce 6800GS 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express,"Ultra/2300PCX XP",425Mhz * switched to this instead!
• Corsair TWINX2048-3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MBKit w/two matched CMX1024-3200 DIMMs
• Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA8MB 10000RPM
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA216MB 7200RPM
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket939, 1MB, BOXED w/fan
• Plextor DVD±RW burner, PX-750A, 16x,Dual, RAM, Black Oem

Placing the order over the weekend, all items are in stock so I hope to have it built by next weekend. I'll post some pics up when that's done! Final cost including VAT & Delivery came to €1730

K.O.Kiki

*Last minute suggestion*
Asus' 6600GT looks much nicer IMHO; has S-Video out (missing on Gigabyte)AND is €7 cheaper IIRC, its memory is also better for OC'ing

netman

Actually Gigabyte card comes with a S-video output and RCA component output (HDTV, much better quality). Asus seems to offer the same.

I've seen the Gigabyte 6600 Silent Pipe and it's an excellent card. I've also seen plenty other Asus cards and they have a fantastic reputation and superior quality. Both of these seem to offer the same, so you could look at the software bundle and then decide.

And yes, Asus does look cooler! Make sure you have room for it tho.

StillBallygowan

Arghhhh.... motherboard is faulty
All the parts arrived yesterday, built it with a friend last nite and just not working... power going to motherboard, fans spinning, DVD writers powering up, graphics card works, processor seems to be working - so either processor or motherboard!?
The BIOS screen came on 3 times, after adjusting a few things, got to the OS setup screen, tried installing that, when I restarted I got the same error... No input signal!

DemonOfTheFall

Possibly an issue with the Motherboard needing an updated BIOS before it can run properly with an X2 ?

StillBallygowan

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Possibly an issue with the Motherboard needing an updated BIOS before it can run properly with an X2 ?

I can't even get to see the BIOS screen - no signal from the graphics card. I got to the BIOS screen and OS setup screen last night but after it restarted same error message "No input signal"!
I turned off the PC, unplugged the power cord, unplugged all cables.
The CPU and RAM is inserted properly.
I cleared the CMOS.
Insterted the graphics card back in and turned back on the PC (CPU, power supply and fans are all functioning!)

conzy

If you can get as far as the bios its OK, you need to update the bios to a newer bios that supports X2 processers......Mkay;)

netman

A stupid question - did you connect the PCI-express power cable to the graphics card?

If it's the motherboard it would beep if there were errors, unless it wasn't working at all - which isn't the case.

Most likely it just needs a BIOS update to support the newer revisions of Athlon 64 processors.

Also, have you connected the CPU fan to the correct header on the motherboard? I'm not sure what the Asus mobo you bought does, but my P4 motherboard went into immediate shutdown if there was no reading on the CPU fan header. The cable was long enough to reach two other headers and it's real easy to plug it into the wrong one.

DemonOfTheFall

What I meant was that you might need to get a loan of a single core S939 processor off someone, put it in and check if the PC runs. If it does, then you'll need to update the BIOS befroe you can use your X2. A lot of motherboards floating around were shipped before the X2 came out, so they don't know how to talk to it.

StillBallygowan

netman wrote:

A stupid question - did you connect the PCI-express power cable to the graphics card?.

Yep, I had the power cable connected to the graphics card. I've also checked it's connected correctly and in the right slot

netman wrote:

Most likely it just needs a BIOS update to support the newer revisions of Athlon 64 processors.

I cant see BIOS screen, there is no output on the screen.

netman wrote:

Also, have you connected the CPU fan to the correct header on the motherboard? .

Yep, I've all the right connections set up. All the fans are spinning too.

StillBallygowan

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

What I meant was that you might need to get a loan of a single core S939 processor off someone, put it in and check if the PC runs. If it does, then you'll need to update the BIOS befroe you can use your X2. A lot of motherboards floating around were shipped before the X2 came out, so they don't know how to talk to it.

Unfortunately I don't have a single core processor to test with.
I might ask a friend who works in a computer shop if they have any to test it with.

Alkers

Have you tested the GFX in another machine?

StillBallygowan

Simona1986 wrote:

Have you tested the GFX in another machine?

Yeh my friend and a technician in a computer shop tested the GFX card in another PC and it worked.
It has worked on my machine but it hasn't worked since i.e. I did get to the BIOS screen twice and I was setting up the OS on the harddrive but when it restarted, same issue "No input signal"

netman

StillBallygowan wrote:

I cant see BIOS screen, there is no output on the screen.

You don't need to see the BIOS screen to update it, in fact you don't even need a graphics card to update it.

Just make a bootable floppy with the new BIOS image, make sure it has all the switches for starting up automatically in autoexec.bat and boot off it. Most likely ASUS supply this in a form of a downloadable self-install package.

I do think it's strange that you got into BIOS and then it just loses video.
Crashing in the middle of a BIOS update would be disasterous for the motherboard.
If I were you I'd make sure machine actually works, even though you can't see anything, maybe by getting a DOS bootable floppy that just plays a midi file on the PC speaker. You'd know if there's no sound that the whole machine crashed, not just the video.