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Ugh, should have typed SF instead of SR. Just noticed it now.

What about sending money, having someone from SR buy the parts you need from Newegg or Amazon, testing them, and then shipping them to you? Or would that be prohibitively expensive or just problematic? It really sounds like your options are terribly limited buying locally.

I'm definitely not an expert on SSDs, but reading a lot of Newegg reviews pretty much confirms what Dave said. Intel is tops for reliability, and when they have shell shocker deals they're not much more than Samsung or Corsair. I agree about not splitting hairs over performance. All of the name...

Thanks! :) I think I'll go with this power supply. Not fanless, but based on the numbers the fan will probably hardly be turning.

No, it's definitely not for a high-powered PC. That setup will only work if the CPU's TDP is maybe 70 watts, perhaps 100 watts at the most.

Thank you all for doing this, and thank you Merc for organizing everything. It's really appreciated. Based on that total, it looks like the MB and CPU are covered, and Dave already took care of the SSD. :D I'll be buying the remaining bits and pieces on Newegg today-basically the power supply...

I think this is a better approach to passively cooling the CPU. If you use an SSD and fanless power supply, you have a virtually silent system. There might be a slight 60Hz buzz in the power supply which you'll hear in a very quiet room, but that will be about it.

If two of your caps have visible signs of failure, I'll bet good money ALL of the caps around the CPU power supply are out of spec. If you're handy with a soldering iron you can try to recap the board like I did with mine. The biggest issue is that the ground plane sucks heat away as you're...

I know the feeling. :( Even though my ancient A7N8X is working fine again, I've resigned myself to buying a new MB and CPU this month. I figure it's only a matter of time before it acts up again, and with my luck that will occur at the worst possible time.

Look for bulging caps around the microprocessor. If so, then that's probably the problem. In not, try reseating the RAM and the processor. If that doesn't work, I would guess either the motherboard or power supply is toast. My first guess would be the power supply. It sounds like the system...

I would personally feel more comfortable with my data on an SSD than on a mechanical drive. In the latter case, all I have is a few microns of air between the heads and platter separating my data from disaster. It's really amazing mechanical drives work at all, let alone that they are as...

I'd love to see a comparison of the A10-5800K and A10-5700(K?). The 5700 isn't yet available at Newegg. If it's not severely handicapped compared to the 5800K, I would probably go with it, especially if the idle power scales with TDP. The 5800K already does very well in that department. It would...

I agree about smooth frame rates. The rare times I can hit 60 fps things seems much more fluid. And yes, I tend to turn up all the detail to the max. The good news here is should the high resolution monitors become affordable in the next few years, I can always add a discrete graphics card if...

1280x1024. I don't have a widescreen monitor. Incidentally, my A7N8X plays MS Train Simulator and BVE passably well, so any upgrade should have my present and future needs in that department covered, even for a larger monitor. On another note, will newer systems like the one I'm interested in...

There's loads of things like that in NYC but the big problem is my hobby interests mean these groups would be 99% male (except maybe for biking, which can be mixed company). Also, running my own business with its crazy schedule pretty much precludes being able to do anything with regular...

This is why school for me was a great way to meet females. You're forced to share space in the classroom, so the time is there to appreciate people you might otherwise quickly dismiss. And you always meet others through your friends. I had lots of friendships of varying levels with females...

Same problem here. I have friends, but none of them really do things where you might meet females, and none have lots of unattached female friends.

Of course I would feel like shit if I put in a huge amount of effort trying for a relationship but coming up empty. In fact, a friend of mine was in exactly that position a few years back. It's only human to feel that way. I spent much of my early to late 20s walking aimlessly around NYC, or...

For what it's worth here I pretty much gave up on ever having a significant other when I was younger than Merc. It's not that I couldn't get someone if I tried, especially in a place like NYC. It's just that what I could probably easily get I personally wouldn't find all that appealing or worth...

That's just it-chances are good in this case that I might never need to upgrade either the GPU or CPU before it was time to upgrade the M/B. I'm not so sure that would be the case if went with Intel here and/or a discrete graphics card. I don't deny discrete graphics cards may offer some...

I vaguely remember running optical drives off a promise controller and not having any issues. I suppose I could see if it works in my present machine. Yeah, reading the reviews on Newegg those USB parallel ports seem to be hit or miss. That's why I think I might have more luck with parallel...

Newegg was selling the Intel 330 series 180 GB for $110 but they're out of stock now. The Samsung 830 128GB looks like it might be a good fit. Maybe wait for the 840s to come out and hope for a price drop (not that the current $90 price is bad)? Regarding the A10 Trinity, as Chewy said it...

It looks like Trinity is finally in retail channels. This M/B looks pretty close to what I need. If it had a parallel port header and a pair of PATA ports it would be perfect but I can get around those limitations. Since my A7N8X-E is still purring along, I'll wait a few weeks just to see if any...

Sounds good to me. Once I set up my machine I may need some tech support here on how to set up VMs but it sounds like a better solution than dual-booting. Yes, I will try that first just to see if it works.

If the upgrade path is particularly buggy what about having a dual boot setup where I have my current XP install and Windows 8? Is this possible? I'm probably stuck with XP for some applications which might not work well or at all under 8, such as my DOS-based PCB design software. You're right...

Because it would likely cost more than an AMD based system, and the graphics performance might not meet my future needs. Besides that, I like the idea of helping Intel's competitor.

I'm assuming by that you mean they both need to be either 32-bit or 64-bit? I never am when I do stuff like that. Some semi good news here. I reapplied thermal compound to my CPU heatsink and also bent the female pins on the power cable of my power supply so they make better contact. The...

Lunar, if that future comes then I'm moving to Linux. Last thing I need is to store my data remotely and have to depend upon a gazillion things all working right in order to access it. I'll bet I won't be the only one leaving MS for good in that scenario, either. Honestly, I would be happy using...

Apparently I'm not the only one pissed off that M$ didn't offer a direct upgrade from XP to 7. I'm hoping they fix that oversight with 8.

Well that sucks. :( Any chance I'll be able to do a direct upgrade with Windows 8 then? It's stuff like this (and the aforementioned parallel port issue) which has made me keep using a computer which is a museum piece for so long. Doesn't M$ realize that people spend literally years setting...

I'll definitely wait then for the next generation APU then. The A10-5700 looks perfect for me. The rationale for choosing AMD over Ivy Bridge is to get as much graphics horsepower as I can without a dedicated graphics card. I'd rather avoid graphic cards at this stage because it's another...

BTW, is AMD releasing Trinity in October as planned? If I upgrade, I'd much rather go with Trinity than Llano, if for no other reason than it supposedly uses less power and is faster.

Merc, so you're saying I can upgrade from XP to, say, Windows 7, without reinstalling all my apps? Or is there another way to do what I want, which is to keep all my apps? Can I run an XP virtual machine which is identical to my current setup from Windows 7?

I just realized something looking at some of the specs on new PSUs-few of them have power plugs for PATA devices. That's not a major issue. I suppose I can just splice the plugs onto a new PSU. Both my optical drives and the 250 GB HDD are PATA. I can run all of them off my Promise Card if the...

Here's what I would need here: 1) Decent PSU (I'd rather err on the side of getting higher wattage so it'll last longer running at lower power levels). The Seasonic Coug linked to seems pretty good-quiet, active PFC, Gold Plus Certified. 2) CPU with decent integrated graphics (so far only AMD...

I'm bumping this thread because the PC has been having the same problem again. It started about 6 months ago and today it finally got to the point where the system is unusable. I suspect it's the power supply this time because all the caps were replaced last year. The power supply is a Seasonic...

That's pretty decent for someone who only rides weekly, and not for speed like me and Dave. Just for kicks I made a mental note to see where the 18 mile mark came up on last night's ride around midnight (much too hot here to ride during the day). I was there at 65:34. And at the 70 minute mark...

That lights the room up pretty nicely. It also looks like it renders colors reasonably well.

I'll send you a PM when you're ready to order the drivers so we can exchange info. I should also be able to recommend a transformer, although the one Dave ordered looks pretty good. For 8 LEDs you'll probably need to go higher than 24V if they're in series (or you could just do 2 parallel...

I'm going to guess that the dimming input on the 2100 mA driver needs to have a voltage applied. The driver has 0 to 10 V dimming, and the dimming input may default to 0 volts when open.

That looks good to me. I'm estimating the heat sink will be dissipating 25 or 26 watts (this assumes about 1/3 of the the power to the LEDs comes out as light, the rest as heat). The heat sink will get warm, but probably not too hot to touch, and the LED junction temperature should be just fine...

I used to have the same line of thought as SD but that was back in the days when LEDs have wide variances in Vf. Nowadays it's likely Vf from the same bin will match to within 0.1V or better. An alternate arrangement is to connect each triple in parallel, and then use two groups of three triples...

That one wouldn't work at all on 12 VDC. It would work fine on 24 VDC. Each string would get 1050 mA. Yes, 6 strings of one triple each per driver. I assumed when you said "series of 6", you mean a series of six triples. I think that's where the confusion came in. Anyway, connecting them like...

Yes, that would work just fine. Actually, 2 series of 6 if the input voltage is 12 VDC, 4 series of 6 is it's 24 VDC. Each 2100 mA driver can drive 6 LED strings in parallel at 350 mA per string. With 12VDC you're limited to 3 LEDs per string, or one triple wired in series. With 24 VDC you can...

That seems like a good power supply but since it's constant voltage instead of constant current I'm assuming using a dimmer will lower the output voltage. This means the dimming feature will only work if you don't use DC-DC drivers in between the power supply and the LED. Basically, you would...

I'd say my drivers have a proven track record at this point. I have several thousand running in an automotive environment with relatively few failures. An automotive environment is much more severe than a household environment. My drivers don't cost any more than anyone else's either.

I still manufacture drivers. Once you settle on specs, let me know and I'll see if something I have is suitable. It should be as I make automotive LED drivers but the chips I use can operate way above 12VDC if necessary. In fact, most of them can operate to at least 30 VDC, a few even to 60 VDC.

Yep, that's pretty much how it would work. The point of using one constant voltage supply for an entire room, versus individual 120VAC drivers for each LED fixture, is it makes the wiring if you have a bunch of fixtures in a room much simpler (i.e. most of the wiring is low voltage). By using an...

I'm tempted to say the same ones I used in your and my chandelier projects but those might not be useful here if the number of LEDs in the string needs to be less than three or more than six. Truth is I haven't really looked at what else is available in a while. For the purposes of this project...

I think it makes more sense to just switch the transformers on the 120VAC side. If you switch on the 12V side, the transformer still draws power even when the lights are off.