Apologies. Since shipping it was the root of the problem it seemed like the proper support advice.
It’s pretty much impossible from a distance to guess what still functions and what can be salvaged, but adding parts in from POST one at a time seems the best, if most time consuming, way forward. Good luck.
Well it seems like the biggest unknown is the CPU right?
Assuming you want to continue this path, get a new mobo. You’ve got the SSD, the PSU, memory and CPU, all presumed good. If you get the mobo and everything plugs into it and worked, then at that point you can decide what to spend on a GPU. You don’t need a video card to find out what is good because the mobo will be brand new and if everything is good, then you can actually decide what to spend after knowing if the CPU is good or not. As for the hard drive, you don’t have to pick up the HDD or a second SSD right now, you could do that later. It might be a little more tricky to shift the windows stuff to it, pictures, etc, but it’s going to be your secondary drive so it’s not that hard to add it later. Cases are a dime a dozen. There’s always one on sale and not just cheap crap, just more plastic, less features of some of he better brands.
Hey, just checking in. How is the rebuild, re-attempt going? Got everything covered?
Tim, I apologize I’m just checking back into this thread as well. Very sorry to hear about the shipping problems!
Along the lines of Nesrie, would you consider a crowdfunded assist?
You’re very generous, as is Nesrie too. I really appreciate both your kind offers.
We are trying to figure out what to do.
Last week I was all gung ho about reusing the existing parts, but now I’m having second thoughts, especially about the CPU. If we decide to buy new motherboard and CPU, it sort of means doing some research. And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. :)
At some point, I’m guessing one of us is going to compile a list
haha, I wrote all that above and then spent the next hour over at PC parts picker. If anyone here has the time and inclination to validate my thinking on parts, I’d really appreciate it your opinion.
Here is what we’re getting to start out:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QPvwM8
We’re hoping the P/S, SSD, and memory are good.
I can’t find the exact same at PC Parts Picker site, but it looks like that motherboard supports most memory configurations. I think this is the memory we have:
We’re hoping the GTX GeForce 1050 3G still functions
If we have to buy a new card, I’ll have to spend some more time doing research. I wonder if an older card (1050) with more memory is a better value than a new card 1060 with less memory? I also wonder how much more performance I will see from more memory on a new card (1060 3G vs a 1060 6G)?
As a recommendation, this is where vendors that specialize in this shine. Though old, newegg is where I would go for something like this.
They offer what they call combos, super combos and upgrades. Each of these has componets that replace the things that typically age in an older built system. Motherboard, CPU, and memory are usually the basics.
Start here:
Skip down to DIY super combos, or look for the regular combos (motherboard and CPU only.)
Oh, thank you Skipper. I used that site to evaluate my CPU and found a much better (faster and cheaper) option that is even compatible with the RAM we have. I just have to go through and mine for details. Very helpful! Thank you
And with the July 4th here you might see some additional deals. I use Newegg, Fry’s, Microcenter and on rare occasion BHP and Amazon for my parts.
It’s alive!
Today we did the rebuild and it looks like pretty good results. Both drives showed up in the BIOS, the graphics card worked, all the memory showed up. I’m not really sure what else to check, but so far it looks good.
I’m working on getting Windows installed again.
Great to hear. I hope the rest goes smoothly for all.
I did a combo once, and kind of regret it, because I ended up with an AMD system (pre-Ryzen).
Man, it’s taking a long time to get to the first screen for the Windows install. I haven’t done this in so long, I wonder if I did something wrong. I set it to boot from the first USB hard drive, put the USB key in the slot, then it booted up. It’s just been sitting at a black screen with a little spinning doughnut for the past 2 hours. Does that seem right? How long does it take to get to the first screen?
That’s not right. Check if anything is loose maybe, and make sure the windows installer is fairly recent.
It’s an old USB stick I had, and I checked and saw it had a bootable copy of Windows on it, but I’m not sure if it’s Windows 10 or something earlier.
A quick Google says 2 to 3 hours isn’t unusual.
I have an ISO of Windows 10 and the utility to make a bootable USB stick. So I guess I’m going to give it another 30 minutes, then recreate the USB drive with the ISO just to be sure. I will feel stupid if it takes another 3 hours, but what can you do? It’s always something.
It should definitely not take 3 hours. It’s just a clean install.
Okay, I pulled it and I’m going to make a new bootable drive with the win10 ISO. Thanks guys!
It wants to scan the drive. Do I want the drive scanned? I skipped it last time, but it just did that doughnut thing. Now it’s scanning, but I want to just reformat the drive, so I’m not sure why it’s scanning now.
It’s been some time since I did a clean install, like years, but on an SSD, I don’t remember anything taking long at all. I actually remember being surprised it was up and running so quick. This is the SSD that survived the shipping mess right? Is the only thing that made you think it was okay is because the BIOS saw it? If that’s the case, maybe running the scan isn’t a mad idea. There aren’t any moving parts so I don’t know why it would have been damaged but you never know.
I would think your speed limit is going to be that stick and port, not the drive. The initial install I remember being quick but the freaking updates, that took some time and a few restarts.
