Chronic bluescreen, monitor resolutions, and upgrade possibilities.

[Shadows]

ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI x 16 ATX Intel Motherboard
core 2 duo E6700 conroe 2.66GHz
9800GTX
4 gigs DDR2 800
XP 32-bit


Was moving my computer one day, going down a flight of stairs, and tripped on the dog running under my feet. That PC went for a ride all the way down those goddamn stairs...pieces of the case shattering and flying everywhere. But the chassis remained intact! I was sure that thing was done for, but after straightening out the cpu heatsink fins, it came right on and ran like nothing had happened.

The only difference is that, ever since then, I get the bluescreen of death, and then it restarts. This happens every couple of days, or several times a day, depending on usage. It's been nearly 2 years.

Thought it was the hard drives and I used some program to test them. The SMART report came up with all kinds of errors. Had 3 WD raptors in RAID 0 and they were all trashed. Replace the drives with a single older 7200 rpm drive that showed 0 errors on the SMART test. Bluescreen problem didn't stop. Maybe i'm not using the right application to test the drive and the old one is damage too? It wasn't in the case when it took the fall.

If it was the cpu, wouldn't it just not work at all? And if the mobo was damaged I'd think it wouldn't even hit the post screen. So that leaves RAM or the HDD, right?

Another issue I have is with my display. Used to use a samsung LCD 22" that ran a native res of 1680x1050 (i think that was it, you guys will know i'm sure). Looked great. Had to sell it a while back so I needed a new one later on. Got a deal on a 22" samsung LED TV. It runs at 1360x768, because when I do 1920x1080, it gets kinda blurry and the color seems off. It's hooked up using a cable with DVI on the PC's end, and HDMI on the TV's end. What am I not getting here?

The above issues are what I really would really would appreciate any feedback on. As for the following question on upgrades, I'm just curious. Thanks in advance, for any help!






I've not paid much attention to PC hardware in a few years so I wanted to get an idea of what's out there. I'm not looking to buy soon, PS2 retail release at the very earliest. So I'm not in desperate need of advice, but would appreciate input from anyone who doesn't mind talking about this kind of thing. I understand prices will drop quite a bit in that time, but I was hoping for just a ballpark figure.

I understand this is a theoretical build based on speculated requirements of a game that's still in development, but humor me.

For the purpose of this, budget is whatever it'll take to run PS2 full-tilt. I don't need any fancy bells and whistles, just hardware strong enough to play the game at max video settings with smooth frame rate. Also will be used for web browsing, music, and maybe video/audio output to TV.

Would need a case, power supply, motherboard, cpu, probably faster RAM to go with new mobo, fans, cpu cooler, and of course video card.

I'd be able to use my old hard drive and dvd drive. Mouse, keyboard, and monitor are covered as well.

Monitor was discussed earlier on, and I'm happy with it for now.

Running XP 32 bit...is it really worth it to put up the cash for 7?

Would like to have HDMI output. Not worried about super fast SATA or USB, as the one on my current mobo is fast enough for me. SLI I don't care about but who knows, maybe in the future?

Will probably overclock, at least a little bit. Always have in the past, but ran into trouble with overheating when I got too far. Which brings me to my last question:

Liquid cooling. Always was weary of it, thinking it's a real easy way to ruin an expensive PC. However, I like the idea of being able to buy stuff cheaper and overclock for higher performance...and actually have it run stable. Don't have any clue what the real risks are, how much it costs, or how difficult it is to install. Can someone shed some light on this?