need new pc

[imchief]

hey all.  desaster struck me on friday.  :'(  my pc crashed and will not come back on.  I think my MB went to pot.  I havent had it diagnosed yet but it has the same symptoms as the last one I had that crashed.  it powers on, checks both cd drives and thats it.  after that the HDD light is on solid and I can't turn it off with out flipping the switch on the back of the p/s.  Anyway, that was just a little info incase any of you all feel inclined to diagnose.  

the real reason for my post is this:  siggestions for new components.  I was thinking either AMD xp 3000/3200 of P4 3 Ghz; GF 6600 128MB OC;  1GB ram

My primary applications are FS2004 and standards like MS office suite and Quickbooks.  I have heard that P4s are actually better for FS than AMD but on the contrary AMD supposedly is better for gaming and out oerforms P4s.  I have noticed that both are commenly used by folks here at Simv.  

Any recomendations would be much appreciated and by all means you don't have to limit them to stuff I listed.  Those are just my thoughts.

[Jared]

Sorry to hear about your pc, would it be worth trouble shooting it to see if it's just one bad component? Just a thought...

Now in terms of a new one....are you looking at buying one already all made up, or are we talking about building one? I myself recommend the latter as it gives you the opportunity to learn more about it, and put the exact components in it at a lower cost.

Just my thoughts... ;-)

[congo]

A dead CDROM drive will confuse the PC as it tries to set up the IDE devices.

Disconnect all components except for a single stick of ram and the video card, (make sure the video card is in its slot correctly and DON'T pull the cpu fan cable off!), and boot the PC to a BIOS screen and check your BIOS configuration.

If you get that far, the mainboard might be ok, add each component one by one until you get an error and you'll find the culprit.

[the_autopilot]

Screw that.

Just build yourself a new computer. That what I do.

Come to think of it, I don't even wait for my comps to break anymore.

[imchief]

thanks for the input.  I would love to boot to bios but it soesn't even get that far.  I get nothing on the monitor.  

as far as a new pc I am going to build my own.  I just want some suggestions on parts and chipset ideal for fs2004

oh, and autopilot, i would love to have a system like yours but my budget just doesn't fit that

[Dan]

Well, mate I had a short budget for my system. It came to

[GunnerMan]

maybe if we could all afrd systems like yours autopilot we could all say "screw it"  ;)

Try what congo said

[imchief]

i tried upluging my cd drives and other comps. but to no avail.  I'm afriad it is probably the MB.  do CPU ever just go bad out of the blue.  It is only 22 months old?

[congo]

Yep, CPU's have been known to go

[the_autopilot]

Yep, CPU's have been known to go  P O O F !  

I have a mystery PC here that suddenly POOFED! the floppy, hard disk, cdrom and possibly some other components. Lightning or power surge perhaps on this one.

I made a CPU go poof before. I overclocked a prescott p4 to 3 ghz (it was stock 2. and then removed its heatsink while it was in operation. I lost the whole mobo and the memory. It was ok though. It was a junk computer anyway.

Maybe on your computer, The heatsink was faulty or something. A hot cpu can take out other components as I learned. CPU temp can exceed 100*C easily.

[GunnerMan]

LOL Autopilot and the cpu still worked? musta taken the whole like for that motherboard to get thermal protection going on that lol

[the_autopilot]

No, the CPU did not surive. It wasn't even a CPU anymore.

What I meant when I said "it was ok though" was that I didn't mind losing the procssor.

[GunnerMan]

Ahh well I bet it was fun, just yesterday I put an old P3 CPU card in the oven and turned it up to 500 F, got the cpu off and all the chips in perfect condition(besides they were burnt) I tried after a guy on ocforums tried with his video card to resolder a chip on, he did it much more carefully though and it worked but didnt fix the problem...