Puma911

Gateway 2000. I live where Gateway was based. Practically 20% of our city worked there lol. (Sioux City) Gateway even has an exhibit at our local museum which is kinda neat.

Since the mods changed my name for me I figure I may as well explain it. I accidentally registered with my rn but had it changed to Puma911 which has been my in game handle for years now because of Red vs. Blue when they were deciding what the Warthog looked like- "It looks like some kind of jungle cat..." "Like a puma?" "Yea like a puma!" also my birthday is Sept. 11 so there's that.

When Diablo 3 came out I had a store bought Gateway from about 2010 with an AMD quad core APU and it wasn't cutting it. I had moved my system to a friends house so we could all nerd out on Diablo and I couldn't even play it . So they helped me pick out and buy an AMD 6950 to throw in and that was the first time I'd even seen the inside of a system. My friend Showed me his system and I got jealous. I can't even remember specs but It was a cooler master full tower case with two GPUs in crossfire and it looked amazing. I had to have my own. A year later when I had the money to do It I started researching. I got most of my info from newegg tv and linus tech tips as well as various forums. I ended up with: AMD 8350 Corsair H100i ASUS Sabertooth 990fx R2.0 Samsung 840 Evo 120GB WD Black 2TB 7200rpm NZXT Phantom 630 Corsair HX850 with Modular Individually sleeved green cables 2x PNY GTX 780s in SLI (well I'm ordering the second one in a week ) and some green LEDs because the phantom has a huge side window and I wanted to show off my first build lol I Definitely had some struggles and ended up having to RMA my mobo but I got a new one and everything when off without a hitch. Now I can't stop looking for more ways to optimize my current system or dreaming about future ones. it is ADDICTIVE. not to mention allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the games!

Yay giveaways! Why do I want the M8? It's better than my s4....shiny...

but why the brown fan blades and red cable? 0.o give me all black and Ill jump on board.

I will do that next time. ok that is reassuring while I'm here any thoughts on the black screen and cpu led? weird thing is sometimes if I leave it unplugged overnight it has booted right up in the morning sometimes. but here in the last few days it has not worked at all. when it does boot up it will run for days and I can game with no problems. I have tried flashing the bios and even removing the mobo battery for an hour as suggested by a friend of mine and then reflashing the bios. I just tried booting without the cpu and same thing- can't even get into the bios. black screen.

so I'm troubleshooting my new system: AMD 8350 cooler master hyper n520 cooler Sabertooth 990fx r2.0 geforce gtx 780 corsair hx850 psu NZXT phantom 630 Samsung evo 120gb WD black 2TB and ASUS recommended that I try booting without the cpu since I'm getting nothing but a black screen and a constant light on the cpu led on the mobo. Went to remove the cpu cooler and it was ON THERE. I mean is cooler master putting super glue in their thermal paste? Anyway I tried slowly pulling and ever so gently rocking side to side to help loosen it up because it just was not coming off. i gave it a tug and the cpu came right out with it. needless to say I am concerned about the health of the mobo. the cpu pins look ok. is my mobo ruined? any suggestions for a thermal paste that will let go of my cpu when I need to remove it again?

But if the Board died why would it run smoothly all day long? Is there a part of the board directly related to startup that might be the issue?

I will try that. I won't be able to for about 15 hours though. I'm at work

ASUS Sabertooth 990fx R2.0 AMD 8350 CPU AMD 16Gb (2x 8Gb) 1600Mghz entertainment series RAM PNY Geforce GTX 780 Samsung 840 Evo SSD (operating system located here) WD Black 2TB HDD Corsair HX850 PSU Windows 8.1 NZXT Phanto 630 Ok this is my first home build. Shout out to Linus reviews for help selecting parts. But I digress... the issue at hand. Booted up for the first time, Installed Windows 8.1 with no problems, updated all dirivers to their latest versions (BIOS, LAN, Audio, GPU etc) and then went on to install programs on the HDD. I routed some of the default folders in W8.1 like Music, Video, Documents etc to the HDD. I believe this is when problems started. The system would run for about 10 or 15 minutes (an hour on occassion) and then crash. The CPU LED on my mobo would light up constant and would get nothing but a black screen or a frozen screen. I ended up reinstalling W8.1 and left everything as it is on a default installation. It ran great. I gamed on it for a good 8 hours with no problems until I went to shut it down and here is the issue: When I shut it down and go to start it up again a few minutes later I get a black screen and that CPU LED lighting up constant. What is weird is when I leave it unplugged overnight and plug it in and start it up in the morning it starts right up and runs all day. The only interchangeable part I have is a 600w psu from my old system so I can verify that the psu is good. Hell if I can game on it all day long you would think everything else would be fine too. It's just when I shut it down it won't start up again unless I unplug it for at least a few hours. Thoughts? Comments? anything really at this point would be helpful lol

I am on an ASUS notebook model number A55VD. Here is a link to it http://support.asus.com/Search.aspx?SLanguage=en&keyword=a55vd&ps=10&pn=1 Windows 7 64 bit Intel CORE i5 processor I had a windows update that ruined my USB ports. They have zero functionality. Thumb drives do not appear, USB mice don't work. nothing. I have spent a couple hours on the phone with ASUS on 2 occasions with minimal success. If you follow the above link and go to download there are 2 USB drivers available but for some reason installing those doesn't even fix the issue. The only thing that worked was a reset to factory settings. I did that, installed a massive pack of windows updates and everything was fine for a day or two. I installed some games etc and then another windows update was downloaded and installed which again disabled my USB ports. The only thing I can think to do at this point is restore to factory and immediately disable all windows updates. if I do that will my system suffer as a result? I just seems a bit overkill to disable all windows updates. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the tip. I pretty much just game so hopefully I won't have any issues.

I am a little worried about the jump to windows 8 but from the sounds of it it operates more quickly in general than windows 7. What are startisback, Start8 and classic start?

Thanks for the help only question left is windows 7 or 8.

The sabertooth 990fx r2.0 also looks pretty slick. I'm attracted to the tuf theme as it implies longevity but I noticed that the capacitors are rated for longer on the crosshair. Right now I'm caught between those two until I hear different.

Yea I was looking at that formula z. Looks pretty amazing. As for the ram it was a combo with the processor on newegg and I made an impulsive decision lol based on what I've seen it should do just fine for gaming though.

Hey guys I'm building my first gaming pc from scratch and am having trouble deciding on a mobo. AMD 8350 GeForce GTX 780 GPU Corsair 850w psu 16GB AMD 1600 Entertainment series ram (2x 8gb) NZXT Phantom 630 full tower case (or was it 680? Meh one of those) I have a budget of 400 USD. I want a future proof board that will handle any upgrades such as a RAID 10 Configuration and a second GTX 780. Looks are somewhat of a factor for me also as I want my first build lookin good! Thanks for your help. Any other suggestions for the build are welcome (aka cooling etc)