My first time! i'm scared. tell me what you think...

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J

JTBALLER

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Aug 18, 2009
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APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: would like to buy the parts today BUDGET RANGE: would be happy to keep it under 1,000. but 1,200 would still be fine.

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: gaming, internet, hdmi port for movies

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: have keyboard and mouse, that's about it

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg or any other sites that are respected

PARTS PREFERENCES: i want to use the intel core i7 920, because i've read that it's very good.

OVERCLOCKING: don't know much about overclocking so not right now

MONITOR RESOLUTION:1920x1200 i believe

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: nothing right now...

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Parts I've picked out: well i've only ended up coming up with a CPU i guess right now as i'm not too knowledgeable about videocards, soooo....

Intel core i7 920

picked this case, because i thought it was cool

I wanted to have an HDMI port also, so for that I would need to have a motherboard that has one, right? and then also for that HDMI, do I have to look for a videocard that can support HDMI?

well, for the motherboard and the videocard, i'd love to have suggestions from you guys, because I don't know which cards are good and which are not, and what is the best for the price, etc.

well, i guess this is a start... any opinions?
 
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I did a search on newegg for people who have the same motherboard, the GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R 1366 X58, correct?

And found a user with a similar experience,

" Rating + 1 DOA 1

Pros: It’s a sturdy board, and has above-average layout except for the awkward-angled SATA ports.
Newegg provides a good RMA delivery service. thank you Newegg.

Cons: Would not recognize hard drive could not load OS. Thought it was my new hard drive so I installed it in another machine and the hard drive worked fine. The hard drive was detected in the BIOS. Not sure what the problem was."

This could very well be your problem, but I'm also worried since XP did a bad format, you ran XP on your new setup?

I would most likely look into a bios flash.
 
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wow!

that sounds exactly what is going on with mine... so your saying it is the motherboard?

so you think the flash bios will fix it and i won't have to send it back like this guy did?

if it IS the motherboard, maybe that would explain why it takes forever on the setup screen just to get to the hard drive part?

and yes i tried changing around the cables.

what do you think about the xp format? i think before anything i should check the hard drive, what do you think? i don't another computer to check it on though...

 
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It could be the motherboard, I won't rule anything out until we know for certain. Personally I think a bios flash may contain a fix to this issue. And if it is the motherboard it could explain it, is it very slow to post?

I am worried that the xp format errored out. Perhaps you could acquire a friends computer to test it? I'd definitely check the drive, and maybe if you get your hands on a spare hard drive plug that in just to see if the computer will recognize a known working drive.

Removing CPU cooler's is a pain, I'll probably cry when I need to take off the Mega Shadow, that thing has the most over engineered retention mount ever.
 
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haha cpu coolers aren't fun.

um, well, there's another desktop here but it uses a different connection... IDE or ATA i guess. i don't know if there's any way to test it with that?

if not, i will have to wait till monday to test on another computer.

far as post, ummm... the gigabyte screen comes up right away and when i hit the post button it goes to the post pretty fast.

well, i'm going to look into bios flash and see how to do it exactly in the meantime i guess. i started reading about it on the gigabyte site and it said it can possibly damage something so i got a lil worried haha.
 
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i did call the local computer place this morning. they told me it would be 32 dollars to diagnose the problem, then if they fix it theirself it would start at 100 dollars.

i thought about for a while seriously but ended up being too lazy to go haha. and i think i should try to test the drive before i take it there for them to take my money anyway. and once they diagnose it i should be able to fix it myself. i just need to figure out what's wrong.
 
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Old computer I take it? No sata ports? Don't think it will be possible without a conversion cable.

The board does have IDE does it not? Perhaps you could try connecting the hard drive from that computer and seeing if Windows will recognize it. (of course don't install to the drive, but just seeing if it would recognize it could be helpful)

A bios flash gone awry will most likely render your motherboard useless. I've only ever done it through Windows, I know the better way to do it is through a bootable usb flash drive, but I don't have the expertise to advise you on that.

I think you would be best served by creating a new thread, then link to that thread from here.
 
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i'm going to try the old hard drive in the computer i've built and see if it sees it in windows 7.

it's weird that windows 7 won't show it but it showed up in xp. ya know?

anyway, i hope one day i will fix this and i will make a thread just for you thanking you and letting everyone on this board know that we did it!
 
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It is weird that xp could see it, but I find it strange that it failed during the format.

I'm know you'll get it to work, one way or another. But I still think starting a new thread with a title more explicit to the problem you're facing now would be beneficial. There are a lot of geeks here that are willing to help and know a great deal more than I do.
 
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WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO



OMINOUS PRIME!

i took this 10 GB hard drive that i had from YEARS ago and tried it and windows 7 showed it in the list!

So i am installing windows 7 on it for the heck of it... I don't know if it's even big enough haha. It said it required like 21 gb, but whatever, it's installing right now.


So that was it? I need to RMA the hard drive? I'm going on newegg now to do that!

WOOO! maybe i shouldn't get too excited but this is great :)
 
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i've had this hard drive for probably 10 years at least, and it was the hard drive in my original computer, my first computer ever.

since then, i've had two laptops both of which i've had to send in multiple times and have the hard drives replaced. i also had a WD external hard drive that failed just a few months ago and was only about 2 years old.

do they just make hard drives poorly these days or what? this thing is 10 years old and still going (crossing fingers)
 
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Sorry man, was at Disney for the day. I think it could very well be the hard drive, everyone gets a lemon now and again, shipping is the usual suspect on hard drives, however I would still test it when you get your hands on another computer before putting forth a RMA.

Another thought I have, and this is probably less appealing is that the motherboard isn't playing nice with a drive as large or larger than a terabyte.

Do you have windows 7 up and running on that 10gig drive?

If so, could you put in the 1tb WD and format it through Windows? And perhaps run WD diagnostic tool to check it.
 
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hey that's probably a good idea about testing it now with windows 7. i should probably do that. i already put in the RMA. i mean... it's not a big deal is it? it's just like a return, right and they are going to send me another one.

But anyway I see what you're sayin, just make sure it is the hard drive and not my motherboard messing up. I will try that out, thanks man.
 
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A RMA isn't a big deal, just a standard return, but they won't ship a new one out until they receive the old one, so it could take a bit. Although I did have a bad experience with RMAing a netbook, that was a nightmare, ended up with a refund rather than a replacement in the end but usually they go very smoothly.

Have you checked your bios version? And have you checked the latest update on Gigabyte's website? A bios update may also correct the problem of recognizing 1tb+ drives, if the motherboard is the culprit.

Personally, I would put in the 1tb drive, locate it and attempt a format in NTFS. If it fails, and it probably will given the track record. Download and run Western Digital Diagnostics which should tell you whether or not the drive is a lemon.

If WD Diagnostics tells you it's fine, then I suspect we may have a motherboard issue. In which case I would attempt a BIOS flash to the latest version and hope that would solve the issue.
 
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*I see that was the wrong board, oops*

Regardless, what version of bios do you have? And it looks like there are two revisions of the board.

None of the bios updates says anything about playing nice with 1tb+ drives, however.

This is the Gigabyte page to download the latest bios. Although I'm not certain as to whether you are comfortable flashing.

http://www.gigabyte.us/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ProductID=2991
 
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wrong board? hmm?

to be honest, i'm not sure at this point what version the bios is... i will have to check in a few minutes.

but... is this gonna be hard? do i download it to a flash drive and then upload it during startup in the bios or something?

 
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Well there's two different revisions, 1.0 and 1.6 it has different bios updates for both boards. You can tell which board and bios version in the bios itself.

It isn't really that difficult, but it can brick the board if done improperly.

You'd need to create a bootloader I believe so the bios update can be installed via a flash drive.

I don't have the expertise to help you with that, I do bios updates through Windows, which can also be dangerous if a program interrupts the flash. I did it on my MSI board and it went flawlessly, Gigabyte has a similar update through windows.

*by wrong board I had found an oddity with a Gigabyte board recognizing a 1.5tb drive as a 500gb, but it wasn't the same board as yours, I didn't notice until afterward and I edited it out"
 
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