Tom1999

I'm experiencing a problem with my PC in that the audio output is noisy. This is especially true when playing certain games, where in GTA 5, for instance, the game becomes unplayable due to background noise through my speakers which changes pitch as I move around in the game. It could be FPS-related. After a bit of research, it appears to be a ground loop problem. I even bought a USB sound card to see if it was the onboard audio on my motherboard and the problem still persisted. The ground voltage of the USB ports seems to cause buzzing, as when I touch the usb connector of the sound card to the usb terminal without plugging it in, noise can be heard through my speakers. Does anyone know how to resolve issues like this? For reference, my power supply is a Corsair CS600.

I've been looking at the Gigabyte AB-350 Gaming 3 and that looks like a good motherboard for the price. Only thing looks to be the cheaper power delivery. Anybody have any experience with Gigabyte's motherboards? I've never bought a product by them before.

Thanks! Do you think it's worth going for a motherboard with a dual bios or not? I haven't updated a bios before so am just kind of hoping that what comes is up to date enough to run the RAM I get at its rated speed

Which is the best and most reliable motherboard in the $80-100 price range to use with an r5 1600? Any RAM compatibility issues/lack thereof with any specific brands? It must also be red and black (Cliche I know but it's a build for my friend and he loves that colour scheme) Some I've looked at already are https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B350-TOMAHAWK.html https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B350-GAMING-PLUS.html#productFeature-section http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-AB350-Gaming-3-rev-10#kf Any thoughts? Thanks

Resetting the CMOS has fixed it. Not sure what the problem was, but it's gone now!

It's whatever HP supplied in the PC, and I don't think it's the problem here.

So my friend moved his PC from one side of his lounge the other day, and after that it failed to boot up. He gave it to me to have a look at. I'm unsure what the exact model of the PC is, and cannot find specs such as what the motherboard is, but I do know it was pre-built and contains the following: Core i7-2600 460W non-branded PSU GTX 460 1TB Seagate HDD @7200rpm 6GB RAM It also had Windows 7 Home 64 bit. None of it has ever been upgraded. All I know is that it is a HP Pavilion Elite HPE Branded PC from ages ago. So far, this is what I have done: I tried to boot using the graphics card to a monitor - no screen. I then removed the card and tried booting from the onboard graphics - success, but it would blue screen as soon as it tried to boot windows. After trying lots of different things, I eventually removed the hard drive, put it in my own PC, and backed up all of the photos/media etc off of it before putting it back in his PC and freshly reinstalling Windows 7. This was successful and there is now a desktop which works perfectly. Okay cool, so I put the graphics card back in and plugged the monitor into that again. No screen. Turn PC off. Plug into motherboard without removing GPU from slot. PC boots straight into windows. I go straight to device manager, and check 'show hidden devices' in the settings tab. There's no GPU shown. Looks like the motherboard doesn't even recognise it is there. The card is clearly getting power because the fan is spinning. It has also definitely been inserted into the slot properly. I boot into the motherboard settings (When pressing esc immediately upon startup, I get a list of options - one of them is 'launch UEFI application', which when pressed on does nothing) and I check to make sure that the pcie slot isnt disabled etc. - it isn't. At this point I'm out of ideas. Does anyone know what might fix this? Is my friend's card dead?

I don't think there'd be any considerable lag during most normal use. Docking a GPU does lose a few frames over having it directly attached to a motherboard though. For an i7 7700k I believe you'll want a z270, x99 is for enthusiast 6000 series processors (6800k - 6950x) I think?

I've heard that Powercolor isn't always the best in terms of quality, and of course with this being one of the cheaper 460's, corners may have been cut to keep the price down. Have you had a look at the used market? Older cards which are faster than a 460 can be found way cheaper, just keep in mind that they'll also be more power hungry.

Ram speed and brand makes little to no difference in real life. As for a power supply, those two aren't terrible in terms of brand, but perhaps spend some more in order to get better quality components within the supply. Look here for more information: It looks like the best way to speed up your system might be to look into buying an SSD and reinstalling windows and your main programs on that. It'll improve load times of programs and games.

Try looking at an RX 460 or waiting for the 1050 or 1050 ti then, as these are newer, similarly priced (at least in the UK) and don't require a power connector as they draw directly from the mobo.

I'm assuming that what you bought comes with a power supply already, what is the specification of that?

So after building a PC and installing and activating windows, I would like to make some upgrades in the future. Specifically adding a graphics card, adding another RAM module, and adding extra hard drives later in my build. My question is, can I simply unplug my machine as and when I get the parts, plug them in, and start up my PC again, install the drivers and be working normally? In other words, will windows still be activated and working correctly? Thanks

Perhaps the RAM? DO you have any DDR2 you can swap into the PC to see?

Contrary to what my speed test suggests, I really do live in a developed part of the world!