Advice on a new PC motherboard 'bundle' Featured

Bob, I'd be interested in hearing more about these Apps (with apols. for thread creep)

They are specifically for Siglent equipment, supplied by the manufacturer.

But there is other software out there. The API is open.

Apologies?!? Surely thread creep is the very lifeblood of this newsgroup.

More interesting facts revealed by thread creep than by adherence to the newsgroup ethos

The prices on these, seem a bit rich in places.

with Windows, they don't have to install a license key in it -- it can be activated later. A lot of Windows installation is automated, so the labour time involved is lower than it used to be. Twenty five years ago, they were opening boxes and saving the CD/DVD discs for software installation, and doing those steps sequentially, taking some amount of time. A lot of the OS materials download and install onto the machine without help now.

Since you probably won't be asking for a separate video card (expensive), the video in the CPU will be good enough for test. Video can be unstable, in a few cases (really new items can have half-finished drivers). But if you're using less bleeding edge kit, to save money, the drivers are more likely to be mature.

I couldn't have predicted what happened to mine. It ran fine at first. About a year after acquisition, I started getting black screens. But, these weren't ordinary black screens. Something in the machine was attempting to communicate with me. The machine was turning off the 5V rail that powers keyboard and mouse, so I would not be able to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. My guess at the time, is a video driver was doing this. Windows does have "emergency responses" claimed in some previous blog articles, but we don't know what those responses are, so I can't blame what happened on the Windows kernel.

That's all I could figure. My conclusion after a while, is the root cause was an address map error in the BIOS code, where it poorly planned how memory was to be used, and two address spaces overlapped in some way. By turning off the iGPU and RealTek NIC, and installing a cheap video card and Intel NIC (PCIe), the weird black screens stopped. But it cost me a bundle for the gear to test and isolate to that solution. For example, I could have sent the CPU in, under warranty, and it would have come back NFF and just my time would be wasted. So I tested the CPU locally, in the room, and the CPU was just fine... on yet another new motherboard.

The lesson there is, I could have had a "tested bundle" on day one, and a year later, that could still have happened to me. I don't understand the timing, whether it was an "improvement" to Windows, that caused that to happen, but that's unlike anything that has happened to me in previous builds. I could not find a matching symptom set, in Google when that happened. It could happen on average, every second day. What you were doing with the machine at the time (idle or busy), made no difference.

Today, like every day, the machine is just fine. 200+ for a cheap video card, 70 for a NIC (because it obviously could not be another RealTek NIC :-) ). If a brand lets you down, you show it the door.

As for the motherboard companies, we're kinda running out of brands to recommend. Maybe my next one will be PCChips.

Paul

I too am looking for a motherboard bundle. I have laptops, but I want to be able to use a tower case to host a number of HDD. Probable also a DVD writer for old time's sake.

So I need a new MoBo or a recent business machine with a proper tower case with some real estate.

I haven't finished going through every posting in the thread, but (although entertaining in parts) the thread drift is killing my will to live.

So - Mobo or decent tower case with plenty of disc slots and option card slots, anyone?

M.2 NVMe slot would be a bonus.

My last bundle from OverClockers cost me around £200 but that was a while back. [See signature.]

Cheers

Dave R

I spent £10 on an Amazon Basics USB DVD writer, some 15 years ago, it seems to have sat in a box for most of the time since then.

I have just built an Asus Z170P into this case:

SilverStone CS380 V2 Mid Towe Chassis, ATX/MicroATX/Mini-ITX, 8x 2.5/3.5" Hot-Swap Bays 3x120mm Fans, 2x USB 3.0 83KS0

From Scan

Would you be interested in buying a 2nd hand White Tower case or a Black tower case?

Location is Northampton.

This is literally just the case, will take a minimum of 6 x 5.25 drives, min of 3 x 3.5 inch drives

SO you'd need to supply everything else including the PSU!

It won't look brand new but at least any would be thieves will think its a low spect older machine and ignore it!

When I build a machine, I always fit two DVD burners......

my current machine is now 5 years old and I can count the number of times on one hand where I have inserted a DVD into said burners......

This is why I can't understand why anyone would buy a tower these days. Any Mac Mini has ample ports and is small and quiet. And takes next to no space on the desk.

I replaced my 3 towers with 3 refurbished Lenovo M93p at about £70 each,

Quiet, small, fast enough and with more than enough USB ports.

Are you sure about the 'quiet'? I borrowed one recently and it had a quite noticeable fan on most of the time.

Otherwise impressed - built like a tank and ran W11 nicely.

It depends on the machine's use. My home server is in a Silverstone tower with 8 x drives accessible from behind the door, supposed to be hot swap but I've never tried it.

Ive got one in suffolk and know of two more in herts, those have working MoBos. Mine is no longer working and I cant be arsed to fix it. Power hungry pentium

Networked storage doesn't need grunt , or windows. Minimal linux plus SAMBA will get you there

I used to use it to make bootable linux disks, but some computers are no longer coming with the ability to read DVDs so I only use it now for ripping DVDS and CDs onto my server.

USB sticks being the alternative to install linux with.

Towers have capacity for a lot of spinning rust and/or massive video cards. If you need either, you get a tower.

I was thinking of getting a Ryzen 5 3400G CPU, plus a £50-60 motherboard (probably A520 or B450), as I don't need too much computing power.

Ebuyer do an incredibly cheap B450 mobo for £30.

I already have a tower case, with a brand new PSU and plenty of capacity for HDDs. Various other components as well including a graphics card.

I am suffering from intermittent halts where the PC just powers off. I suspected the PSU but this is still happening with a brand new PSU fitted.

So I need at a minimum a new MoBo to go into the existing case. I am open to suggestions for a used full W11 compatible tower system if this is significantly cheaper than a new MoBo.

I also have other cases waiting fettling.

Cheers

Dave R