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    #1

    Fry's brand PC's

    Fry's doesn't rebadge lowest-bidder Chinese-built PC's anymore, but I had to deal with a Fry's branded machine from the days when they DID.

    A family friend dropped off their late 2002/early 2003 Pentium 4 era Fry's PC. It was incredibly spyware-ridden and they brought it to me for a reformat. I cracked the cheap, flimsy case open for a routine checkup. Also worth mentioning, the CD-RW drive tray was jammed open. I took it apart later but was unable to fix it.

    First thing I see is an ECS motherboard with OST and G-Luxon . Not bulging though. Then I wiggle the CPU heatsink a little and...

    the damn plastic thing that the heatsink clips on to snaps!

    I replaced that ($5.99) and then I went to reinstall Windows. But the damn thing was acting flaky during the install! Kept freezing on me off a known good XP Pro install CD. I swapped in a known good DVD drive and it still kept freezing. So then I cracked open the case again and noticed a suspicious looking 250W "POWER WIN" PSU. I opened it and found... bulging Jamicons. A trip to Fry's and $34.99 later and it was rocking a 350W Antec Basiq with Teapos.

    The XP install commences without any further drama. I boot it up, update to SP3 and start installing drivers. It's got a SiS (yech) 650 chipset. I get everything installed. Finding all the drivers it needed took a while because the TV Tuner card in it had broken links on the manufacturers website.

    The integrated SiS 7012 audio is giving me shit and only works sometimes. It will work fine, but then a reboot will kill audio and vice versa. When it's not working (90% of the time) Windows won't play any audio and iTunes says it has detected a problem with the audio configuration but Device Manager claims the audio is operating properly. I'm gonna call them tomorrow and tell them they need a new audio card. Like hell I'm gonna spend hours trying to figure out why the integrated 7012 is only working intermittently!

    I wasted two days reinstalling Windows twice and trying several versions of the 7012 drivers trying to fix the audio problems. Also this thing is a loud ass piece of shit. The ActionFlashTechnology "AFT" fan in it sounds like a CD drive spinning up a CD... except the sound is continuous and doesn't stop. The two CD drives are Top-G and BTC. The motherboard is an ECS. The PSU was some random Chinese affair with crapcaps. These machines SUCK! And to top it all off, she told me she paid $1000 for it.

    I'm gonna give it back to her with the busted audio. Everything else works fine and it is stable, but two reformats have not cured the audio. I'm gonna recommend she trashes is and gets a Dell. Hopefully she'll take my advice and I won't ever have to deal with this piece of shit again.
    Last edited by weirdlookinguy; 01-22-2009, 12:20 AM.
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: Fry's brand PC's

    Originally posted by weirdlookinguy
    I wasted two days reinstalling Windows twice
    When I'm repairing a PC and I have doubts about drivers or other SW to install, I spend 10 minutes making a OS clean image before installing something so I can restore it in 10 minutes if something screw the system up.

    Ciao
    Gianni
    "In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins...Not through strength, but through persistence."
    H. J. Brown

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      #3
      Re: Fry's brand PC's

      Did you install with or without ACPI?
      Presonus Audiobox USB, Schiit Magni 3, Sony MDR-V700

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        #4
        Re: Fry's brand PC's

        Sis is a pain in the ass: a few chipsets were good (630 above all), most are poor performers. BTW, only cheap brands choose them because they were a lot cheaper than Intel chipsets (imagine what a good board your favourite beancounter did manifacture!) and cheap are Sis drivers too. Via, while being somewhat cheap, at least solved most issues with their chipsets.

        That said, I suppose you installed the chipset drivers before the audio one and already tried to replace drivers with Device manager -> Sis 7012 -> Update drivers and selecting the exact folder with them. Try cleaning the cmos and check the audio chipset on the board: it may be failing.

        Zandrax
        Have an happy life.

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          #5
          Re: Fry's brand PC's

          I just did the basic install, I'm assuming ACPI was installed because sleep mode works fine and the computer shuts itself off instead of telling you "it is now safe to shut your computer off".

          I'm gonna try clearing the BIOS.

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            #6
            Re: Fry's brand PC's

            Originally posted by zandrax
            Via, while being somewhat cheap, at least solved most issues with their chipsets.
            Via usually gotten bashed, because when you OC, you have to OC the PCI bus and that can hinder the OC'ing.
            Nvidia nForce chipsets unlink the PCI from the system bus.
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              #7
              Re: Fry's brand PC's

              I'd almost just get a different motherboard. No sense messing with that SIS garbage.

              Oh, and I rank Dell down there near Fuhjyyu and SIS. Then again, I make a lot of money fixing Dell's... so...
              A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

              Comment

                #8
                Re: Fry's brand PC's

                Originally posted by RJARRRPCGP
                Via usually gotten bashed, because when you OC, you have to OC the PCI bus and that can hinder the OC'ing.
                Nvidia nForce chipsets unlink the PCI from the system bus.
                I'm not into OC: I'm referring to the infamous crippled PCI implementation that imparied hdd transfert rate and cause a lot of trouble with Creative audio cards (sensitive to PCI timings). Or the memory performance issues which were usually addressed by the "A" revision of the chipset: KT133 and KT133A, Apollo Pro 133 and Apollo Pro 133A, KT333 and KT333A ...

                Zandrax
                Have an happy life.

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                  #9
                  Re: Fry's brand PC's

                  Another shit-box product is the Atheros wireless hardware.

                  Their drivers are pure junk under XP.
                  I get dpc latency around 4,500 usec, multiple versions of their drivers, SP2 or SP3 for XP.

                  Runs fine under Vista.

                  I figure if I have to go buy a Fry's, BestBuy, etc, I must take a USB disk along with dpc latency checker, and my other auditing programs.

                  I placed a Fry's PC (cheap HP) with a client, and it performs very well. The PSU is a crappy BESTEC and should be replaced, but the rest is pretty good. And it sells for less than I can wholesale the parts and license.

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