[Prebuilt] Emachine desktop upgrade. Hardware recs needed!

Sounds like you have a heat buildup in your case. Possible a couple of case fans one for intake one for exhaust would sort that issue out.

Where'd you buy it? It should still be under warranty and you can get that checked. However, you will have to put back in the old hard drive because per warranty rules, its considered void if they find out you put a new hard drive in.

Looking at the hardware and considering the fact that your doing very basic things, you shouldn't have issues at all, even now. Although I doubt this, it is possible emachine decided to put it in the ABSOLUTE BARE MINIMUM on the power supply, and putting in the new hard drive is overloading the power supply.

Best thing to do, put the failing hard drive back in and vouch for your 1 year warranty, because the failing hard drive is covered under the warranty. No point in doing your own repairs on something you should get fixed for free. Since they'll reinstall the OS for you too on the new drive, that will eliminate software issues also if that was the cause.

To give you an idea on why I feel you shouldn't be experiencing slowdowns for what your doing, I have a Celeron laptop with only 3 GB of RAM with windows 7, and I browse with 6-8 tabs open at the same time, flash enabled websites or not, one of which is likely streaming pandora also.

Now this could also just be an issue with your internet speeds. That could stem from either the service you have (aka if its slow DSL) or from a bad router. What kind of internet service and router you have? I'm assuming the computer is connected to the router via ethernet cable since I don't see a wireless adapter in the specs of the desktop?

@rolli59: I guess rolli's assuming heat issues because of the so called "noises" it makes, but you can verify that with a program like Speedfan that will let ya know the temperature of the CPU. The only true cause I can think of for overheating would be of course hardware defects, but maybe excess dust accumulation? In my eyes, you shouldn't have to pay extra dollars for fans since the computer should be already designed to run with efficient cooling.

Let me know how it goes/if you can answer those questions, that will help too.

I think I was told before to have the fan replaced. The desktop was making a knocking noise when the hard drive was getting ready to give out and when I asked then I believe I was told to replace it. Is there any particular brands or type I should go with to replace what is in there?




I purchased it at Best Buy and tried taking it in once. They told me it'd be a month and a half or more wait to replace the hard drive and look the desktop over. I'm and online college student and I can't afford to be without my desktop that long. Not to mention I had three previous computers that were all freaking lemons and kept taking them in to get fixed, waited the month and a half and they all came back with NOTHING fixed.

To be clear the desktop was pretty decent at first. But after a few months of constant use it got wore down. I can easily be on my computer for 14 hours or more a day easily. It especially got bad after I started torrenting stuff and left my computer on while I wasn't using it, but with the monitor turned off, so the net would keep downloading. But even before torrenting it experienced problems. I know at one point it completely crashed and I had to reinstall Win 7. Also sometime before crashing it had a few instances where it completely got overheated to the point where it shut down. To clarify it shut down and crashed before I even would keep it on all night, and it has not shut down on me since I rebooted everything. I used one of those cans of air to blow the dust out when I replaced the hard drive. That was a few months ago though.

And when I say multitasking it doesn't even have to be net related to get it aggravated. For example I can be watching something and want to take screenshots so I will have VLC,paint, and photoshop cs2 open. Photoshop especially makes it angry.

I don't even think it's a net issue. I had Virgin Mobile Broadband and for the most half it worked great .....until the end of the month when suspiciously the net would slow down. Unfortunately they just put a cap on there unlimited so I won't be going back to them, and it doesn't even work well where I just moved. Recently I haven't been on the comp more than a few hours a day and I've noticed it's been working well but that doesn't help me when I need to use it.

I know nothings going to be fixed if I send it in through them, so I'd rather just throw in some money and upgrade myself as long as it wouldn't be over $300-400. If I'd have to spend that much I might as well get a cheap laptop and go between the two when one acts up. I just don't know what's in my best interest right now. I've tried asking several times on different forums and I always get take it in and get it fixed, and that's not a reality unless I buy a new machine. Or I get why did you buy a hunk of junk emachine.... I'm half tempted to realize this machines not going to be able to do everything I want, sell it and just go buy something nice with specs that will make doing everything I need to do possible. But every time I go to build one on a website it ends up in $1000+ range and I'd rather save my money if possible.

Thats the thing. I work at Best Buy. Unfortunately, we tend to not recommend taking it to Geek Squad if your not under the Black Tie Protection Plan because we have no choice but to send it to the manufacturer. They don't give us the option of mailing us a hard drive to put it in. Cut the middle person out, which is Best Buy, and take it directly to Emachine. That should save some time.

But if you are under Black Tie and they are still telling you that, escalate your problem, that just shouldn't happen. They should be able to take parts from the sales floor.