That's basically it. I know how to do a lot of IT related things, but often as not I'll not have the time or inclination to do them. That's what I pay other people for. What I certainly do not do, is pay someone to do something then fix it myself when it screws up.
To take another spin on the "take it back" line of thinking, it could actually help the shop that put it together. If there are multiple guys there, and one is consistently making a mistake that's causing this, it could help them train him/her. Or, if they got a shipment of bad parts, it helps them identify it quicker if multiple people bring their systems in.
What I'm taking from this thread is: build your own computer (or learn to) :)
Scratched compares it to car repair, but really, it's more like LEGO repair. As long as you don't mind diagnosing and handling replacement parts yourself, the actual building and repair part is ridiculously easy. It's not at all like being a mechanic. That sh*t's hard.
There's really only one vaguely tricky bit left, mounting the motherboard in the case correctly. Everything else is just Tab A into Slot B.
If it was just assembling parts I'd agree with you, but thinking of the broader picture and all the hardware/software that comes together to make a useful computer, and how to diagnose/fix it when it goes wrong, I can see why many would just want to 'take it to the garage'.
If it was just assembling parts I'd agree with you, but thinking of the broader picture and all the hardware/software that comes together to make a useful computer, and how to diagnose/fix it when it goes wrong, I can see why many would just want to 'take it to the garage'.
There are about a zillion step-by-step guides (incl. videos) online that show you how to do anything & everything related to computing. As Malor said, actual assembly isn't a lot more than a snap-together model, but the software installation part, setup and tweaking can be a bit time consuming.
For the average joe, building your own, including software, really isn't that much more than any other Saturday afternoon project.
Scratched wrote:If it was just assembling parts I'd agree with you, but thinking of the broader picture and all the hardware/software that comes together to make a useful computer, and how to diagnose/fix it when it goes wrong, I can see why many would just want to 'take it to the garage'.
There are about a zillion step-by-step guides (incl. videos) online that show you how to do anything & everything related to computing.
And for many, the effort and time required to find and read/watch through all that stuff to fix a problem is simply not worth it. They'd rather pay a little money and let someone else spend their time on it.
I do it myself because I like fixing things myself. Apparently so do you. Not everybody is so inclined.
My very first build I had a similar issue to what you were/are exeriencing. Turns out the Motherboard was faulty (or I zapped it :/)
Recently just put together a decent rig to get back into PC gaming... mainly for D3.
That sounds like a video card issue, probably inadequate cooling. Do you have decent airflow in the case?
It could just be a faulty card.
With the number of issues you're having with this machine, you should start thinking about a deeper cause, like perhaps a failing or inadequate power supply that's zorching other components.
Can you post a picture of the label on the side of your power supply?
I've been keeping an eye on my PC recently too as it's been having occasional freezes, that got a lot more frequent. I was thinking of the PSU (Corsair HX520, 3x18A 12V rails sharing 480W, according to this review as the label is in an awkward spot)as a culprit and was trying to monitor it at the moment it freezed to see if there was anything out-of-spec, which either meant having a window visible on my desktop all the time, or I use HWinfo which can log to file in the background, although who knows if it would write anything useful around the freeze. I did take a good look around my computer to make sure there was nothing obviously wrong with it, and for the last week it's been running fine. It's annoying because I don't know if I solved the problem such as a bad connection to some component, or whether it's just gone away for a bit.
Well, don't break your warranty sticker. But it sounds like a bum video card, and between that and the bad motherboard earlier, I can't help but wonder if something else is causing the failures.
Make sure you have all the power connectors plugged into the video card and that they're hot and that your power supply is sufficient. Video cards that freeze under load can be a variety of issues, but power is a pretty easy one to rule out.
Have you trawled the D3 tech support forum for anyone with similar problems to you?
Stills sounds like a gpu problem. For all we know the graphics pipeline in Tribes is way better optimised than Diablo 3, maybe tribes uses much less of the DirectX11 era shaders etc.... I often find that the graphical detail I see can have little correlation with what the fan on my gpu is doing in different games.
I've got a fiver says the video card cooling fan isn't plugged in.
I've got a fiver says the video card cooling fan isn't plugged in.
+1
Run in windowed mode with GPU-Z monitoring it.
There's no way D3 would run for an hour with no cooling fan. Would never happen.
Well, if the temp didn't go anywhere, then my guess is either a faulty card or flaky drivers. Have you tried updating them?
Malor wrote:There's no way D3 would run for an hour with no cooling fan. Would never happen.
Yup, I played a bit last night with GPU-Z running as suggested (neat program!), started at around 40 degrees, hiked up to around 53 degrees, and after I quit out, it quickly sunk back to 40ish degrees, so I suspect my fan is working fine. I didn't have a chance to play for more than 45 minutes, but you'd expect a sharp increase in temperature beyond what I saw if the fan wasn't working.
Try playing D3 with different video settings too. maybe try low quality, try with AA, without AA etc. Best suggestion yet though is to simply update the video drivers. The best way to do that, IMO, is to go into safe mode, uninstall the current drivers (just the drivers, don't uninstall Physx), reboot back into safe mode, and install the newest drivers.
If you have nvidia, the latest WHQL are 301.42, and the betas are 304.48 (<--- solves a lot of issues if you have a 600 series card).
Have you looked in Event Viewer after it happens to see if anything got logged?
I finally found what could be a (I quickly changed that from "is" as you can never be sure) 'smoking gun' for my recent computer problems. The stars aligned and it did a reboot while I was logging (using HWinfo), and over the last 27 seconds before it died the +5V line dropped to 4.328V and the +12V line increased to 12.112, when both are usually rock solid on 4.919/12.049 respectively.
After a load of double and triple checking everything, PSU is what I was probably going to replace anyway, but now there's little doubt. Hopefully that's useful for someone else in the future.
edit: The failed PSU was a Corsair HX520 coming up to 5 years old.
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