System Hardware: PC | MOBO | RAM | CPU | HDD | SSD | PSU etc

Hello everyone, I've decided that I'm going to build my new computer myself and I need advice on what type of parts to get. I've already decided that for now I'm going to keep my current case, CD-ROM, CD-RW, 3.5" floppy, sound card, and modem in order to save some money. I'll gradually update them when I've got the money. At this point I've pretty much decided that I want an AMD processor, at least the XP 1900+ as well as Crucial or Corsair PC2100 DDR memory. I need advice on a stable, reasonably priced, middle of the road motherboard and a 128 MB graphics card. A new hard drive is also on my priority list and I need advice on what brand to purchase. Thanks to a…

I'm just about ready to upgrade from my GF2 MX to a GF4TI 4200. Problem is I haven't seen any GF4TI 4200 cards that have dual VGA outputs. They will have one VGA and one DVI and one TV-OUT. Is there a converter that will let me plug a VGA monitor into a DVI plug? The GF2 MX I have has dual VGA outputs and I can't give up my second monitor.Also, is there such a thing as a motherboard with more than one AGP slot?? I have a third monitor laying around and would love to hook that up, but don't want to have to buy another PCI video card to use it.Matt

Inherited a computer with windows 2000. Has a hard drive with total capacity of 40gb. When I go into disk management under administrative tools 4gb have been allocated to system and the rest shows as unallocated. How do I allocate everything to the system? In other words, I do not want any partitions when I am done. Thanks for any help.

Good morning. I finally got fed up with my video card locking up (I have a post below) and went out and bought a Triplex GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128 mdg card from Triplex. I couldn't install it and am wondering if its a bad card or if there is a compatiblity issue I don't know about. Using either the drivers included with the card or the most recent Nvidia drivers, the card will not complete the install. I get a warning message after the system identifies the card that it failed to install, and when I open up the hardware profile and it says that the card is not installed because it is "configured incorrectectly (Code 1)". No driver is associated. I tried every driver on m…

As this forum has its fair share of Voodoo5 users, I wonder if any of you could cast your eye over this post I made at voodoofiles.net forum and give me any ideas :->>I bit long this story, but any help appreciated :-Upgraded my old mobo (a PCChips M577 with k6-2 550) to a new Gigabyte 7ZXE (with an Athlon XP 1800+ CPU). I had my Voodoo 5500 PCI in the old system and it worked well.I put the V5 into the new system, boot, and I get nothing, it shows nothing on screen, I get no beep codes from the new mobo. I try a GF2 GTS AGP in the new mobo (and take out the V5) and everything is fine. I set the 'VGA to boot' to PCI with the V5 and it still does not work. Even if th…

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Good evening everyone. I was told by a close friend of mine that there was a set of drivers for the VooDoo 3 video card. Yea I know it's crap LOL. But the pay they give us in the Army is barely enough to support my wife and 1 and a half kids. Let alone getting a new vid card.My issue is that I have a few aircraft, the new FSD T-38, a MD500 Hughes helo, and a few others that are showing up black. I was told it was that VooDoo doesn't support 32 something. But that there was a fix for it. That would allow me not only to see those, but to be able to see the water reflections and such. I just checked the VooDooFiles site and after about an hour of "I have no clue" searching, …

I'll cross post this in the FS2000 forum.Cheers,bthttp://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/revie...%20vs%20GF4.htm

ok,ok, I admit , a military flight simulation site is not the first place you'd expect a review of such kind of sim controller, but anyway...it's my main site :)Check http://F4Freeware.Net - Hardware Reviews

i cant get anti alising to work in FS! I have anti alising set to 6x in the display properties of my computer and i FS i have anti alising checked, but everything looks jaggy!! Please help me!!

I recently reinstalled fs2002,all the files that used to open with notepad have now got a different icon,i am unable to access config filesHow can i change it back to open with notepad?Ihave windows xpThanks for any help forthcomingDon

My machine had big time crash (power supply related). Since I'm sure the warrantee manufacturer will reformat the hard drives(2) when repairing it, I want to recover my FS downloaded files (abour 12 gigs).Can I pull the drives (Windows 98 SE), and put them in the machine listed below (Windows XP), one at a time, just to copy files over. I have plenty of free space on this machine.Are there any tricks I need to know.TIA !!!Bob (Lecanto, Fl)AMD, Athlon XP, 1800+MSI, K7T266 XP ProPC 2100 DDR, 1024 MBXP, Home Edition Elsa GLadiac 920, GF3/64Mb andPNY, Verto nVidia TNT 2-M64/32WD, 100 MB, 7200, Ultra 100Sound Blaster, Audigy MP3+CH Prod, VPP Yoke - Sound CardCH Prod, Pedals - …

I have a Diamond Viper V500 Video card which seems to be causing me major problems and prevents me from running my FS and games.System:--Celeron 450 (o-clocked)-198Mb Ram-Win98I think the problems with the video first appeared arround the same time I installed a CDRW, however that seemed to be a straight forward install and I can't be certain about the timing.The only way I can run FS or any game for that matter, is if I go to system tools and reduce the hardware acceleration slider to the first mark, (which gives me 6-7fps on my Celeron 450 :( ). If I try to set this to the normal hardware acceleration Max, or if I enable hardware acceleration within FS, the system hangs…

I posted this in the MSFS forum without any success. Hopefully, someone can help. I have a p4 1.9 gig computer with a leadtek GeForce 2 Pro video card and am having problems with lock ups. In graphically intense games (IL2, Need for Speed Porche and only sometimes in MSFS 2002) the game freezes with a pattern of coloured lines on the screen. I have tried every driver out there (currently using the 29.42 drivers from the NVIDIA website) with no help. Once, and only once, I got an error message on reboot saying that the card had failed to execute a draw command. Otherwise, a hard re-boot comes up as if nothing had happened. Is this a card going bad? Is this a card over…

Hi there,Well I recieved my new video card today, and it solved my lockup problem. Very exciting considering I've been without a real system for months. Amazing how you take FS for granted... it's a real pain in the arse when it's missing from your life. :-)Anyway, my new Leadtek video card has a S-Video adapter on it, and I have been trying to get an old RCA TV to work with it. Using the provided S-video to RCA adapter and the provided RCA cable I have managed to connect my video card to the TV set.However, after enabling the second display TV to Clone mode on nView (latest Nvidia drivers) for some reason I cannot get the second TV to display - all I get is a blizzard on…

Having gitter problems recently. Did nothing to my settings but did update the the latest Nvidia drivers (29.42). I uninstalled the old drivers befor installing the new ones. Can anyone recommend the best drivers for FS2002 that are compatible with my video card? Any help is appreciated.

I am currently considering upgrading my GeForce2 GTS 64MB card to A GeForce4 128 MB card. Can someone tell me if the difference between the GF4 4200 and the GF4 4600 is worth the considerable price difference ($100 CDN)? From the specs I can't see a huge difference but perhaps experienced users can advise me... ThanksASUS A7V333 MBO512 MB DDR RAM PC 2700Athlon XP 2000+John-PaulToronto

Hello and allow me to introduce myself. My name is Pedro. I have a compaq computer that came with AMD Ahlon 1.1ghz processor 128mb of ram and a Nvidia TNT2 PRO Graphics card. Its not even enough for flight simulator lags too much, and with addon scenery which absolutely a must because i hate default fs scenery i cant even push back from the gate there is so much lag. Well ive decided that i absolutely need to upgrade my system but SDram and new graphics card might not just do the deal. I believe my system is At form Factor which i believe all the AMD Athlon XP processors are form ATX, so now i would also need a new motherboard that is form ATX, but my mid tower is form AT…

I only have 250W power suply, and will be getting Aopen GF4 TI4200 128MB this week.Will I be able to run it? I believe the minimum requirments were 400W for GF4 TI and 350W for GF3?I have tried running GF3 and it worked with absolutely no problem at all, so I'm wondering what would be the case with GF4 Ti.Any expereinces or guesses? Also how would I know if it didn't work? Will it boot and freeze or it just won't boot?Is it possible to damage it in anyway because of this?Any information is grately apritiated. :)(I can swap it with 300W from my father's comp if it happens to not work - but thats all I got)Thanks in advance.

Dear All,For those looking for the fastest system, and planning to do it yourself, you will likely consider a motherboard based on the VIA KT333 chipset. If so, then be very careful when considering a Gigabyte GA-7VRX or GA-7VRXP board when used in combination with a GF4 videocard. This board is highly rated by Tom's hardware, and based on this rating, I bought one myself. I spent at least four miserable days trying to get this board to work before ultimately returning it for a refund. Today, I discovered (somewhat to my relief) that the problem turns out to be faulty core voltage regulation. You can learn more here. This problem has been solved, and the modified (versio…

Hi,I am in the process of planning a new system build with significantly more grunt than my faithful Intel 440BX/PIII800/GeForce2GTS 32MB/512MB SDRAM setup. My current system is based around Windows98 and has been stable and very reliable for some time now. For the moment and the foreseeable future I am understandably anxious to preserve this situation.I wish to install Windows XP Home on a second physical drive with the intention of gradually 'winding down' W98 over the next year or so.The idea is to have a dual boot system.Windows 98 is installed on a fast IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40Gig drive that has 2 partitions: C: and D: These are formatted as FAT32.Windows XP Home will b…

Hi!I am about to get a better joystick with a USB connector and Iunderstand Microsoft's Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 is good.Does anyone know if the hat-switch is continuous for view-panning,or is it just fixed views, like left-right-back-forward.My old Sidewinder Precision Pro (non-USB) has continuous panningwhich is a very important feature for me.Grateful for info.Live well.Hans HermanssonSweden

Hi,Just today I have updated my system with a new Athlon XP 1900+ CPU and massive heatsink/fan combo plus a new case. Once I fired up FS2002, after about a minute in the sim it does a hard lock. No BSOD, no illegal operation, just a hard lock.I also formatted the HD this afternoon and no effect. I did notice however that after formatting it determined I had 6 MB of bad sectors on the HD.Additionally, I have been having a bit of unusual graphic effects in the sim - the view seems to shake, and sometimes black polygons appear on-screen. This happened with a GF3 Ti 200 vid card and my current GF2 MX card. The weird effect syndrome carries over from the past however now it se…

Hi!I have just upgraded my machine with a GF 4 Ti 4200 64MB.Sometimes I get funny patterns, like black streaks across thescreen, especially with 3rd party scenery addons.Does anyone know what could be wrong.I have the newest drivers and, to my knowledge, everything is properlyinstalled. Direct X 8.1.Happy for tips and comments.Thanks!Hans HermanssonSweden

I have the same problem other seem to have with the CH USB pedals deactivating after a certain period of time. For me, they seem to deactivate after about 5 minutes of non-use. As long as I'm moving them every now and then they work fine, but if I get up for a few minutes and come back they are dead and I have to unplug and replug them back into the USB port.One other thing I've noticed is that the right pedal does not zero itself. Even with my feet off it still reads about 7/255 on the control panel calibration utility. I have to press down on the bottom side of the pedal to zero it. I'm wondering if maybe this has something to do with the problem.I've tried turning…