Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Buying Too Much Computer

Back in 2009, I was a competitive gamer. So, I invested in a cutting-edge computer put together by this company named Digital Storm in California. They did an awesome job and I got an i7 chip overclocked with two monster video cards SLI-linked together so that I could play some great games.

Well...I've had nothing but trouble with this beast and I want to advise to any people out there...just stick with the regular computer companies. Dell, HP, etc. Just to be clear...this is not Digital Storm's fault. I bought a computer that I didn't understand with too many gadgets (like liquid cooling and overclocked RAM).

I had my motherboard fry out on this thing so had to have it shipped back. I also had a graphics card go bad and had that replaced by NVIDIA (great customer service). Well the latest thing that's been happening is I cleaned all the dust and gunk out of it yesterday and when I reconnected it, the RAID 0 solid state hard drives fell out of sync. I eventually got them resynced using an Intel program that does this kind of thing but now I occasionally get the blue screen of death. The only thing I can figure is that installing the new drivers for the video card might have done something that occasionally causes the desktop to crash.

I understand a lot about computers. But I don't understand RAID 0, AHCI, or some of the other error codes that I get. So yeah...lesson to learn from my mistake...avoid buying too much computer and you'll be happy. And always backup your stuff. I backup everything so am good even if my pc crashes for like two months and I have to ship it back to Digital Storm for them to fix. It just sucks being without your machine for that long.

17 comments:

  1. I know how it feels to be out of depth with a PC. My computer has this thing called a "floppy disk drive", and I just can't figure out what the hell it's for...

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  2. Hmmm, you know the part in Finding Nemo where Marlin is with all those surfer turtles and the little one is explaining how to ride the current? Then Marlin says somerhing like, you're very cute kid, but I have no idea what you're saying.

    That's kinda/sorta how talk of computer innards makes me feel. :D I hope your tech troubles pass soon.

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  3. A floppy disk drive is ancient and not used anymore.

    My one and only is a Toshibia laptop that is due for a replacement. It's great and all, but I need a stronger one.

    And I understand the pain of being without a computer for a long period of time. It feels like I've gone back one hundred years when folks wrote stuff by hand. 0.0

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  4. No kidding. I don't know how I'd survive without my computer for a couple of months. Scary thought. I'm not computer literate. . .at all. But, I think you're right. There are so many powerful machines out there, and if you don't know how to use them, it creates all kinds of problem for the user.

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  5. Computers have pretty much passed me by now. Fifteen years ago I sort of new what was going on but there's been so much new stuff and I just haven't kept up with any of it. Mostly I just use my Dell desktop for the Internet and downloading music, so it's not usually doing a whole lot. My Toshiba netbook I use pretty much for Word and the Internet. If either goes down I still have my old Toshiba laptop that works but is kind of slow.

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  6. Hehehe that makes sense to me. Hope you get all those issues sorted out. *hugs*

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  7. All this will pass and you'll laugh when the day comes that you know too much about computers. Debugging becomes a lot scarier then.

    I bricked my zt desktop and had to run off my little eee pc netbook for a few weeks. Wasn't the best but I learned how to abuse google docs for sanity's sake.

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  8. I've heard good things about google docs. I use Microsoft Word 2010 and have been impressed by it so haven't made the switch yet.

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  9. I blame whoever recommended you buy a computer from Digital Storm. :P

    FWIW, mine has been running error free for 4 years though I told them not to overclock anything and go with a basic package.

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  10. Noted.
    I've also heard rumors that customer service is coming back in fashion.

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  11. I don't understand half of what was said here. But I don't backup often enough and I worry about it, and now you've made me worry about it again and I can't do anything about it until I get home, so dang it, why do that to me?

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  12. Computers, they suck. I spent something like $3k on one a several years ago so I could game like crazy with it. They had a hard 1 year warranty and when my motherboard died after something like 1 year and 3 weeks they recommended I buy another one - at $800. So, I've since bought cheap stuff and don't think it's worth it to have the best gear. Not for me anyway.

    Besides, the only time I ever come close to doing something taxing is when I'm piddling in photoshop and I've got dozens of open layers - It can be frustrating, but I'd rather deal with that than what you've described.

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  13. You think YOU don't understand... heck, I don't even understand what you don't understand. What I'd really like is a computer that guarentees it is virus and hassle free for a decade. If I could have that, I would never need to complain. (erm... about my computer)

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  14. Man, that stinks. Sorry it's giving you so many problems!

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  15. So sorry! Nothing worse than computer problems. We are a multi-multi computer household. Two people, seven computers, three of which are Macs. Each computer is geared toward a different task, one is specificlally for gaming. That's the one I never touch. I just look at the thing and it has a meltdown.

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  16. @ Michael, no more overpriced disasters waiting to happen for me either, unless I build it myself.
    @ McFrost, Niel was telling a joke.
    @ Kevin, was that a crack at you or me?

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  17. I don't think I could live without my computer for 2 months.

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