Sounds like an issue with the DC Jack. Power's not getting from the AC Adapter to the battery. Depending on the lay out of the components, replacing the DC Jack may be more work then it's worth.

Could also be an issue somewhere in the Motherboard.

So as far as tech goes, personally I'd wait for Haswell just because I like the newest, sexiest, shinest stuff. Realistically I don't know how much of a difference it'll make. Even though this is a Tock upgrade (generally a decent performance difference and a shrink of the processor's die), Intel seems to be using Haswell to be trying to make a bigger push for power efficiency. Supposedly using it as a way to compete with ARM (think Ultrabooks vs tablets). So performance difference for gaming may be minimal.

Normally I'd recommend an i7-3770k over an i5-3570k. Again for gaming most benchmarks place them pretty closely, but I follow the "go big or go home" mentality. The i5-3570k should perform admirably and keep your costs down about $100USD. Still if you can spring for an i7-3770k I'd say go for it.

GPU wise I agree with Will, with the prices the way they are there's really no reason not to get whatever the best Price:Performance card you can get in the current gen. Just finished reading Loyd Case's article, and normally I'd say go for like an HD7950 or HD7970, I'm probably going to recommend getting a GTX770. Performs just as well as the HD7970 and you're getting nVidia's newer architecture.

As for MoBo, I'm a die hard Asus fan. So I'd probably recommend Asus or, if you want to be different, Gigabyte motherboard. I like Asus's Sabertooth line, but you can also find some good P9Z77 boards for cheaper.

RAM: I'd say go w. 2x8GB to get to your 16GB. Stick w. 1600MHz or better. If you find a good deal on 1333MHz go with it. Unless you're tweaking your RAM you won't notice much performance difference from the speed of it anyway. Go for lower latency if you can, 9-9-9-24 or lower. Again not a huge difference if you can't, but worth looking at.

SSD: I'm running a Sandisk Extreme 240GB, and it works well. It's also constantly on sale somewhere for sub $170 so it's a good deal. Also look into Crucial's m4 or Samsungs 840 series. Samsung's 840 PRO line is better (uses different type of NAND) and offers a decent amount of boost in performance, but consult your overall costs before deciding on one over the other.

Throw in a 1TB Caviar Black drive for media and backups, a Case of your choosing, a 750w or better PSU, and an aftermarket cooler (again not necessarily needed I just had one of Intel's stock coolers die on me awhile back and always mention it) and you're in good shape.

EDIT:

Also probably should throw in a $20 Optical Disc Drive and a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium OEM or Windows 8 OEM. Gotta have an OS and a way to install it.

Great article as always Loyd.

I'm glad to see nVidia has a decently priced card that can compete with AMD in terms of performance. Not sure how true it is but I always feel like w. AMD you get the better price/performance ratio. With nVidia you end up paying more but getting a faster overall card (or pay less and get slightly less performance).

With AMD's 9000 series seemingly not coming out until later this year this is probably going to be the card to beat.

Personally think I'm going to wait until Haswell and see what effect all these "Next Gen" consoles have on the GPU market if any. For now my i7-940 and AMD HD5850 are chugging along with much issue.

So based on your OP I'm hearing you can get a hold of a version of Windows 8 from Microsoft? You should be able to get the upgrade version through some digitalriver download from MS and that's 100% legit.

If you can get that version (the upgrade version), try doing the windows 8 upgrade clean install trick. I've never tried it using and OEM key but it's worth a shot. I've done it a dozen times for people who only have the upgrade disc/license and a blank drive.

I want to say you shouldn't have a problem but I've never tried exactly what you're trying.

Basically:

Use Windows 8 Upgrade disc/ISO to reinstall windows 8. Once you get into Windows it will tell you it couldn't activate. Use this registry trick to get it to prompt you to enter a new product key. Enter your OEM key and hope for the best.

Worst case is that it doesn't take your OEM license with the upgrade install....In that case, you're going to have to see if there's another way to get a hold of an OEM install disc.

I don't want to get into the whole piracy thing, because my personal stance is if you have a legal license to use the software who the hell cares where you get it from. But here's not the place for that debate.

EDIT:

Also should add that there are ways to edit the ei.cfg file in a Windows 8 iso and apparently change what keys it will accept, but I haven't messed around with it enough to give you any solid advice. I did it all the time w. Windows 7 (actually I would just delete it in my Windows 7 iso's) but haven't tried it with Windows 8. Just food for thought.

@Arazand said:

@JustinNotJason: That is correct I was mistaking it for something else.

@Arazand said:

In some tests the especially TRIM-applications the Samsung drives have done a piss poor job, while in other tests it does an excellent job, now TRIM is not something you need to care about if this is going to be your one and only drive. (TRIM is a system used when you use the SSD to cache regular files for quick access, but that means you need a second HDD to store everything else.) And the Samsung drives have shown some deficiency after torture testing only running at a quarter of the original speed. So what Samsung have in speed the lack in other fields and what opponents lack in speed they gain in other fields.

I'm actually not sure what you're confusing TRIM with. TRIM is garbage collection so when the SSD does it's internal data manipulation it won't move garbage data and perform superfluous write cycles. TRIM is something you should be concerned with in the sense that it's important, but not concerned with since most Modern Operating Systems (Windows 7+ and I believe any OS X after Snow Leopard) will automatically enable.

I agree w. everything else though. I think the Samsung Pro comes w. a 5 yr warranty and the non-Pro only a 3 yr.

I personally got the Sandisk SSD because it was on sale at the time, got good reviews, and apparently Sandisk makes alot of the flash chips used in other SSDs. Its been working pretty well for the last 6 months.

TLC chips are new enough where it's unknown what their longevity is going to be like (though I suppose you could make that argument about any SSD chip style).

The truth is that MLC (and SLC before that) is going to have much better performance when compared to TLC chips.

Simply put, as you make each chip hold that extra bit of information you lose performance. The flipside being you gain the space and lower price point.

Realistically you're probably not going to see the biggest difference in terms of performance between the 840 and the 840 Pro. If you were doing more industry level stuff - constant accessing data and updating - I'd say go for it. The 840 is slower than the 840 Pro but coming from a traditional spinning drive the speed difference between the two won't be readily apparent.

If you have the extra money, I'd say go for the Pro, but if you don't it's not a huge loss. The reviews for both are solid and realistically, in my experience, the controllers on SSDs (and HDDs for that matter) tend to go bad before anything else. So even though your flash memory is rated for xxxx Read/Writes, you're more likely to boot up to an "Unmountable Boot Volume" or the like before the flash ever goes bad.

I never thought of tested as a cooking website...but honestly this is probably my favorite recent piece of content.

God I make terrible Omelettes...hopefully this'll change.

Case: Antec 902

CPU: Intel Core i7-940 @ Stock speeds

CPU Cooler: Corsair H50

MoBo: Asus P6X58D-E

RAM: G.Skill 6GB (3x2GB Tri Channel)

GPU: ATi HD5850

PSU: Antec Earthwatts 600w

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB (Running Windows 7 Pro x64)

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 250GB (Running Mac OSX 10.8.2)

Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD (Running Windows 8 Pro x64)

Monitors: Asus VE246

Samsung SyncMaster 2333

Keyboard: Logitech G15

Mouse: Logitech G500

Been going strong since August 2010 with minimal upgrades....in fact the only upgrade is that I keep adding HDDs and Operating Systems.

Awesome. The typo is pretty glaring though.

How cheap is cheap? Sub $300? Sub $500? What're you doing in school? Will you be carrying it alot?

I was going to post something like this last week but just didn't get around to it. I don't know why this is being blown up so much, especially here on Tested. Every single anything that has that conversion rate has it listed on the box.

Go around and look. Ext. HDD's, Laptops, SSD's, iPods, Tablets all say in some capacity: "1GB=1 billion bytes; formatted capacity may be less" or "Available capacity may vary". I actually went and looked and they all say that.

^^^Nah I'm pretty sure that EULA's what it always been. You can't have it activated on more then one computer at once. If you do it may just require you to call Microsoft and have it activate over the phone using the robot voice.

@will said:

@JustinNotJason said:

I love you guys but I'm about to rage:

You talk about the ins and outs of Apple finances for forever (which I liked fine. I honestly don't find it as boring. I like tech finances.). But you couldn't be bothered to even look into Office 2013 at all before talking about it?

Office 365 (the yearly sub model) is one of 4 skus for the new version. The other 3 are all one time retail purchases.

Seriously just go to Office.com and glance at it for 30 seconds. On top of that Office 365 is for 5 PCs not one.

Source: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/store/?CTT=97

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up with news over the last few weeks. $100/year for 5PCs makes sense for a family. I still think $140/PC is crazy expensive for a retail release, especially if the license still excludes business use on the Home & Student version. And yes, Office Live is free, but it left quite a bit to be desired, at least for me.

The Markets changing around Microsoft. Google and Open Source software (more google I think) are eating Microsoft's lunch.

I forgot about Live Docs, mostly because I feel like they're only doing that to compete with Google Docs and as a companion to full retail software. Google Docs is still far superior to Live Docs.

Anger only lasted a few seconds. By the time you guys started to talk about Sim City 5 all was right with the world.

Still though, sometimes fact checking doesn't kill the whole podcast.

I love you guys but I'm about to rage:

You talk about the ins and outs of Apple finances for forever (which I liked fine. I honestly don't find it as boring. I like tech finances.). But you couldn't be bothered to even look into Office 2013 at all before talking about it?

Office 365 (the yearly sub model) is one of 4 skus for the new version. The other 3 are all one time retail purchases.

Seriously just go to Office.com and glance at it for 30 seconds. On top of that Office 365 is for 5 PCs not one.

Source: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/store/?CTT=97

Actually sounds kind of like the future. Having a larger mobile computing device stored away and something smaller that can interact with it.

Sounds stupid but actually may be a good idea.

@frytup said:

I use Virtual Clone drive for (pre-Win8) Windows. To me, it's less annoying than daemon tools.

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

Same....

I also use UltraISO from time to time. I actually have both installed on my machine.

Would recommend either really.

Reread OP. Will edit later.

Backup everything on your harddrive. Whether the drive is going bad or not, do this anyway. Even if it is an Ext. HDD, have all that data on another Ext. HDD (or if possible cloud storage).

When that's done, visit your manufacturer's website and download their diagnostic utility and run it. This will tell you if the drive is bad or not (for the most part) and give you some piece of mind.

Solid article. I feel like in general there are always awesome android apps that I'm missing out on. Dead Trigger looks like a game I could get into.