New PC!!

[turbo_skylane]

Ipod Killed my Socket A AMD/nvidia Machine.. so..

HP Pavillion a6245n
~Intel Q6600 Core 2 Quad@ 2.4Ghz
~Asus IPIBL-LA Motherboard
~BFG 8600GT OC 512MB PCIe 16x
~Seagate 320GB HD
~2GB Ram
Looking at upgraded cooling so I can overclock.. maybe water cooling but I've never done that before..
also might have to get a larger psu

[richardd43]

You might want to check your BIOS to see if you can OC your computer. Not all factory computers allow overclocking.

My experience with HP is they use the smallest PSU they can get by with and it is built for them. A standard power supply would not fit in the chassis.

I have not had a factory built computer for a while so that might have all changed.

[Groundbound1]

Not to get too far off topic, but how did your IPod kill your machine? Was it software related? Just curious.

[ctjoyce]

Just a heads up that machine is not overclockable. The factory BIOS is locked, and I can tell you from experience that you can't flash an ASUS BIOS to get that unlocked. You can do it with the ASRock boards in eMachines, but HP has their stuff locked down pretty hard.

Other than that not a bad buy at all. There is definitely potential for the future in that machine.

Cheers
Cameron

[turbo_skylane]

Not to get too far off topic, but how did your IPod kill your machine? Was it software related? Just curious.

Well I was trying to trouble shoot because when I would plug it in, under vista or xp, the pc would shut off, and about a week ago I tried unplugging most of my usb devices, then plugged in the ipod. made a sorta arc sound then it shut off. Ipod would turn on, pc would shut down. but this time, it was for good. Old PC no longer boots and I didn't feel like sinking anymore money into it.

Just a heads up that machine is not overclockable. The factory BIOS is locked, and I can tell you from experience that you can't flash an ASUS BIOS to get that unlocked. You can do it with the ASRock boards in eMachines, but HP has their stuff locked down pretty hard.

Other than that not a bad buy at all. There is definitely potential for the future in that machine.

Cheers.
Cameron

I wasn't gonna overclock the CPU, I didn't see any option in the bios. Just the videocard mostly. Could always get another motherboard later on, no?

You might want to check your BIOS to see if you can OC your computer. Not all factory computers allow overclocking.

My experience with HP is they use the smallest PSU they can get by with and it is built for them. A standard power supply would not fit in the chassis.

I have not had a factory built computer for a while so that might have all changed.

This is my second factory built pc. everything else I managed to build.
I'll have to check the diemensions of my baked Ultra X connect with the HP one, theres probably always some way to mount it in there so it'll fit..

[ctjoyce]

Video card overclocking you can definitely do.

And I LAWL at those saying that factory PSUs aren't enough. I can tell you THEY ARE! I used to think this myself until I started looking at what machines actually used for power consumption and realised that the OEMs GOT IT RIGHT (ZOMG right?) When OEMs build a system they put in a power supply that is going to power exactly what they put in there because they are under the impression that the average customer isn't going to be dropping any new hardware in. So yes while many OEM PCs come with only 250 ~300W supplies, realize that for what they put in it thats enough to even have a 45% cap age as long as you don't add any extras. And when most of our members that are dropping new hardware into a OEM desktop its usually a 8600GT or the like, and just as a heads up you don't need to change your supply for that.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/powercalc.jsp People please start using this thing. You will find that most of you are dropping massive PSUs into your rigs that don't need to be there.

Oh and about the new motherboard. Yes you can drop one in. Yes it voids the warranty. Yes you need to get an OEM vista disk because the HP recovery disk will only boot from an HP BIOS, not a "aftermarket" one.

Cheers
Cameron

[turbo_skylane]

ctjoyce, what would be a good cooling setup for my BFG 8600GT OC? its stock at the moment.
I've had it set to..
core:700mhz
shader:1538mhz
memory:700
and i got a very small ammount of artifacting when testing with ati tool.
I was looking at cooling my cpu and gpu with watercooling, but I've never done so before, and I'm kinda broke after buying the 8600GT.. and buying the blocks and stuff is expensive, and I'm worried I'd let it get low on coolant..

Stock clock on my card is..
core:565mhz
shader:1242mhz
memory:700

A wee bit pissed I can't overclock my Q6600, I've read around about guys running them at 3.4Ghz as opposed to 2.4Ghz..!