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Sunday, February 2, 2014

Upgraded PC for video streaming

Upgraded another teen machine in the house.  It is used for web, video streaming and some video game play.   I'm currently using Intel instead of AMD.  They are a little more $$, but they run a lot cooler and I can use the stock fans with no issues.    I've been happy with the performance of the last couple Intel builds.

A decent processor from New Egg or Amazon now, I bought it in December and just now got around to using it...


 
Intel Core i5-4570 Haswell 3.2GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54570 
$189 from NewEgg after promo code. $30 cheaper than the i5-4670. 3.2G vs 3.4G. Nobody will notice the difference. 

Upgraded the memory to 8Gb with a fairly low end module. I'm no longer buying Gskill, I've spent too many long hours debugging systems that turned out to have bad memory.
Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (1x8 GB Module) 1600MHz 240-pin DDR3 Non-ECC CL10 Desktop Memory KHX1600C10D3B1/8G
$69.99
Gigabyte Z87 LGA 1150 CrossFireX HDMI DVI ATX Motherboard (GA-Z87-D3HP)
1 of: Gigabyte Z87 LGA 1150 CrossFireX HDMI DVI ATX Motherboard (GA-Z87-D3HP) [Personal Computers]
Condition: New
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
$126.49


Transferred over the video cards. This machine has two. One for the dual PC screens, and another for the HDMI TV monitor.   The new mobo will allow two full length PCIe video cards.  One of these is a PCIe 1X card.   I'll keep it anyway for now, there are 1x slots on the mobo.

XFX AMD Radeon HD 6770 1GB GDDR3 2DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card HD677XZAF4;HD-677X-ZAF4
PLACED March 17, 2013
XFX
HIS ATI Radeon HD5450 Silence 1 GB DDR3 VGA/ DVI/ DisplayPort Low Profile PCI-Express Video Card H545H1GD1
PLACED March 11, 2013
HIS


On first boot I got a fail.  The machine lit up, spun the fans for two seconds, stopped for two seconds and repeated in an endless power cycle.   Sometimes this is the processor finding the right speed and it will recover, but this did not.   Next usual cause is the 12V CPU power plug is not installed.  Nope it was plugged in.   Next thing is the memory modules.  I had started with the new 8GB and the 2x2GB gskill modules that were in the old mobo.  Reseated them, no improvement.  Removed the old modules and left just the new one.  Bingo!  Machine boots.  There is no speaker on this mobo so there were never any beeps.   I was hoping to leave 12GB in the machine but I decided to throw out the old 4Gb, it was 1333 instead of 1600 anyway.  I'm not sure what the issue was, didn't debug it.  8Gb of memory it is.  Still a 2X upgrade from the previous rig.

Kept the old 500G hard drive. I did NOT re-install windows now that I know the magic. The machine runs windows 7.  

Links to how to make windows accept the new mother board:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/304001-30-bsod-motherboard
http://www.dowdandassociates.com/blog/content/howto-repair-windows-7-install-after-replacing-motherboard/

Copy the mobo driver CD to a USB on a working machine, and plug in the USB drive.  I've stopped using optical drives in most machines, since mine were all IDE and now mobos only support SATA.   Otherwise you can just put the CD into the new machine directly.

The gist is, boot the machine, let it try to do a startup repair and fail.  When it fails, click the link on the bottom of the form for advanced options.  The last is command line, pick that.

Type C: and dir, D: and dir, etc to find which drive is the windows install and which is the USB.  They won't be in the usual places.  On my machines the windows install is always on D: and the drivers on USB are on E:

Type this command, and watch the spaces.  Leave one out at it won't work.
dism /image:d:\ /add-driver /Driver:e:\ /recurse

Get a cup of coffee as it copies in all the drivers.  The machine should boot fine after that, and the motherboard drivers will all be installed an happy.

Machine came up and everything worked.  Sound, video, etc.  Windows experience for the processor moved from 6.5 to 7.6.

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