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Nthman posted:Does anyone have experience with sticking an aftermarket cooler on their video card? I ordered a Xigmatek Bifrost cooler from Newegg and plan to slap it on my 6870. Yeah I installed an AXP II onto my GTX 570. I've used other Xigmatek products, though not that one, and never had a problem with them. As stated make sure you get the right model for your card and just be careful, it's not as easy as the duplo block level of difficulty of putting together a computer, but it's still fairly simple. You might check on if that fan is helping- if you have a reference blower and it's pulling in air from the exhaust of the card, you're just putting hot air back into the case. That's why people usually have side fans blowing cool air over a card instead.
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Mar 21, 2012 19:58
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I've been looking into repairing bad motherboards, ect. I'm really good at soldering , and was wondering if there is any guides out there on this? I know I'd need a multimeter, and just wondering what other tools to repair bad capacitors, ect. Thanks!
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Mar 22, 2012 00:22
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No side fans on my PC but I do have one stock 80mm fan on the front, 1 top mounted 40mm and two rear 40MM fans, also the extra cpu cooler fan I have attached with zipties over the PCI slots below my vid card. The cooler seems nice and it has the same 53mm measurements as some of the other cards so it shouldnt be a problem with it fitting. The GPU gets way too hot (80ish max full load) even with it supposedly having a blower fan pushing air out of the case so I figured id give this a try and see how well it helps.
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Mar 22, 2012 04:04
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Nthman posted:No side fans on my PC but I do have one stock 80mm fan on the front, 1 top mounted 40mm and two rear 40MM fans, also the extra cpu cooler fan I have attached with zipties over the PCI slots below my vid card. The cooler seems nice and it has the same 53mm measurements as some of the other cards so it shouldnt be a problem with it fitting.
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Mar 22, 2012 04:18
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Nevermind I actually took the time to look at the full specs of my case and its a Super Flower 201S. It was a hand me down from a friend about 2 years ago because hes prone to getting a new setup every 6 months and had it sitting in a closet while prepping to shelve his latest unit at the time. I just honestly never paid attention to the details of it because I was just going to upgrade it but it never really happened. VVVVVV edit: Sorry if I sounded like some nub, ive never paid too much attention to computer cases before this. Ive been learning about creating proper airflow and all that fun stuff lately. Nthman fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 04:22
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G.Skill doesn't make cases...
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Mar 22, 2012 04:24
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Putting together a new system and just dropped an i5-2500k 1155 chip on an MSi Z68MA-ED55 board and... the locking bracket seems like it is taking WAY too much pressure to lock down and is sort of teeter-tottering in the top of the chip. Surely this can't be right? EDIT: Well, gently caress, I got the arm down but jesus that seemed like a lot of pressure to do so...? Duke Chin fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 08:02
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I'm looking into an audio program that recommends storing the audio data on a seperate hard drive for low latency and smoother performance. I've got an external usb 3.0 Seagate FreeAgent, and I'm just wondering if that's going to cut it or whether I'm going to need to buy another drive? Most advice says to grab a 7200rpm drive, but I can't find any info on my FreeAgent that tells me what rpm it runs at.
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Mar 22, 2012 08:15
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I have one of those drives. It's a 5900 RPM disk. It's plenty fast for sequential file transfer, like single-track recording, but if you're going to need any random I/O, you'll want to skip USB drives entirely. And if you need 7200 RPM disks, skip pre-assembled external drives entirely; they're almost all low-RPM drives. If you want external, buy a fast internal drive and put it in an eSATA enclosure.Duke Chin posted:Putting together a new system and just dropped an i5-2500k 1155 chip on an MSi Z68MA-ED55 board and... the locking bracket seems like it is taking WAY too much pressure to lock down and is sort of teeter-tottering in the top of the chip. Surely this can't be right? That's normal.
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Mar 22, 2012 08:37
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Factory Factory posted:I have one of those drives. It's a 5900 RPM disk. It's plenty fast for sequential file transfer, like single-track recording, but if you're going to need any random I/O, you'll want to skip USB drives entirely. And if you need 7200 RPM disks, skip pre-assembled external drives entirely; they're almost all low-RPM drives. If you want external, buy a fast internal drive and put it in an eSATA enclosure. Ok, cheers man. Got any in particular that you recommend, bang for buck-wise?
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Mar 22, 2012 08:54
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Seagate STx000DM001 seems to be the current price/performance king. 1TB per platter, comes in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB drives (on Newegg, I think there should be a 4TB drive too, but it may not be out yet). x = size of drive in TB, so the ST1000DM001 is the 1TB version.
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Mar 22, 2012 08:59
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Factory Factory posted:...but if you're going to need any random I/O, you'll want to skip USB drives entirely. Have you found USB3 to really adversely affect random access? I've only tested data transfer rates, and they pretty much match eSATA, but I must admit I've not looked into drive seeking.
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Mar 22, 2012 10:20
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It's not a huge huge huge effect, but the USB Mass Storage device standard involves a non-negligible amount of added latency, plus you lose access to random I/O features like NCQ. The former is ~10% of a hit, and not having NCQ loses on up to a 2.5x speed-up if the queue length is decently high.
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Mar 22, 2012 10:37
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EDIT: Wrong Thread.
Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 15:54
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Cat knocked my laptop to the floor today. While the case is now cracked in the corner, it seems okay otherwise. But to be on the safe side, I'd like to give my hard drive a test for errors. I've not heard any clicking or grinding or anything like that, nor have any SMART errors appeared, so I doubt hardware issues, but it's best to check. Can someone suggest a good app? Standard windows 7 laptop.
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Mar 22, 2012 23:05
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smartctl has a Windows port. You can get it from SourceForge, then either install the shell extensions (i.e. right click menu options) for use from the list of drives in the Computer window or by running "smartctl -t short C:" or "smartctl -t long C:" from an Administrator-privileged command prompt. After the test runs, you can see the results in the bottom of the output from a "smartctl -a C:".
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Mar 22, 2012 23:13
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Factory Factory posted:smartctl has a Windows port. You can get it from SourceForge, then either install the shell extensions (i.e. right click menu options) for use from the list of drives in the Computer window or by running "smartctl -t short C:" or "smartctl -t long C:" from an Administrator-privileged command prompt. After the test runs, you can see the results in the bottom of the output from a "smartctl -a C:". I have a linux partition, didn't know of that tool. I'll run it in there. Cheers!
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Mar 22, 2012 23:31
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I'm unsure if this question would be best asked in the PC building megathread. So I posted a week or so ago that I need to pick up a new video card for my current PC since my current one has expired which I'll reuse when I build a new PC for the fall (probably after the new Intel chip drops?). I just wanted to confirm that the Radeon HD 7850 is a good pickup right now as I'm finally starting to see them in stock? I've been lurking this thread, the PC building thread and the AMD megathread and there appears to be rumours of an NVIDIA offering in the 200-300$ gaming sweetspot range for GPUs? If it'll take like a month before any significant price drop, I might as well just buy my new card now I think? (I'm sorry if this triggers another argument about the 'best' value). Oh yeah, if it matters I run 1900x1080 and dual screen 1400x900. If the advice is go buy it now, my next question is a dumb question I guess. Should I worry about the specific vendor? http://www.directcanada.com/search/?kw=radeon%20hd%207850 I was going to pick up the ASUS card because that's something I recognize.
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Mar 23, 2012 01:33
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My old 600W PSU has just died, luckily for me I have parts arriving next week for a new build but without a PSU to power it. Should I just get a 600W or go for a 750W PSU, new build will consist of an i5 2500k, z68 mobo, 580GTX, 2 harddrives, DVD drive and a few fans and lights. Im guessing I can't go wrong with the 750W?
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Mar 23, 2012 15:45
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I'm wondering about where the bottleneck is in my computer. I know my stuff is pretty much top of the line. But when I look at game benchmarks at review sites with the same hardware as mine, their results are always much higher than mine. For instance, they list a 2600K with 4 GB ram and a 5970 running BF 3 maxed at ~~58 fps, 45 lowest. I have a 2500k (4.2ghz), 8GB 1333 DDR3, Radeon 5970 and a corsair 120 SSD. In BF3, I sometimes do get 60 fps on small maps like Metro or Seine. But when I get onto the bigger maps, I go below 40. Still playable but annoying. The worst case is Crysis 2. People with worse graphics cards and processors can max the game out , and show it off to youtube with a steady 35-45 fps. If I max out Crysis 2, I get a goddamn slideshow averaging 20-30 fps. Why is this happening? My PSU is more than enough (750W Corsair). edit: All of this at 1900x1200, trying to run the games maxed out without ridiculous AA / AF.
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Mar 23, 2012 15:48
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I have been having the occasional problem with my CPU overheating under absurd loads. Last time it happened, I bought proper thermal compound (Artic Cooling) and applied it as best as I could from checking different tutorial videos. That worked well for about two months. However, the latest overheating shutdown seems to have done something or other because my CPU temperatures never go lower than 84 ºC even when idle, and I don't overclock. I clearly need to buy a proper cooling solution instead of that Intel stock fan/heatsink thingy. So, my questions are: 1) do I have to clean and reapply a new layer of Artic Cooling? 2) what is a good cooling solution for an Intel i5 760 (socket 1156) on a small desktop case? e: actually, is this one good? Saoshyant fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 11:42
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Saoshyant posted:I have been having the occasional problem with my CPU overheating under absurd loads. Last time it happened, I bought proper thermal compound (Artic Cooling) and applied it as best as I could from checking different tutorial videos. That worked well for about two months. However, the latest overheating shutdown seems to have done something or other because my CPU temperatures never go lower than 84 ºC even when idle, and I don't overclock. I clearly need to buy a proper cooling solution instead of that Intel stock fan/heatsink thingy. So, my questions are: I use this for my desktop, and I find it works great. It's probably a good idea to make sure that the stock heatsink hasn't popped off and is sitting tight and level. You'll be putting a new layer of thermal compound on when you replace the heatsink anyway.
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Mar 27, 2012 13:58
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Yeah, if you're getting that temp at idle, you really need to check that your heatsink is installed correctly.
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Mar 27, 2012 16:27
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Cross-posted from system-building megathread. (link) We (my research group at a large institution) are building a workstation for use with Comsol Multiphysics, Siemens Solid Edge, and MATLAB use on Windows 7 x64. It has to be a Dell – my department gets a corporate discount and they like the Dell support. (Well, maybe it doesn't have to be, but it'll have to be a drat good deal if it's from somebody else.) Budget is about $5000–$5500 (US). I had two questions about the Dell Precision tower line, that I didn't think rated their own thread and was hoping somebody here could help me with: 1. Do we know when Dell is going to upgrade the Precision workstation tower line with Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge processors? I'd hate to spend all this money only to have significantly more power available for the same price in a month. (New socket, too, so there's no upgrade path.) 2. The T7500 is available with a 256 GB solid-state boot drive. Does anyone know what brand that SSD is, and is it SATA-3 6.0 Gb/s, etc.? Is it possible to just buy the machine with a 1.5 TB ordinary SATA drive, and then add my own one of these or something? I guess that's a no-no on this kind of workstation-class hardware if I want to keep the warranty? Basically, I ask because Dell charges a shitload of money for their SSD (even given that it's 256 GB) and want to make sure that I'm really going to see the performance increase that I think I am. Any other suggestions would be welcome. Thanks!
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Mar 27, 2012 17:07
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Skilleddk posted:I'm wondering about where the bottleneck is in my computer. I know my stuff is pretty much top of the line. But when I look at game benchmarks at review sites with the same hardware as mine, their results are always much higher than mine. For instance, they list a 2600K with 4 GB ram and a 5970 running BF 3 maxed at ~~58 fps, 45 lowest. Not many review sites will benchmark at 1900x1200 nearly all will use 1900x1080 which could be the difference. I think the 5970 will struggle using MSAA, try changing is to something less memory hungry Numpty fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Mar 27, 2012 |
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Mar 27, 2012 17:40
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Sgs-Cruz posted:1. Do we know when Dell is going to upgrade the Precision workstation tower line with Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge processors? I'd hate to spend all this money only to have significantly more power available for the same price in a month. (New socket, too, so there's no upgrade path.) Not exactly, but I believe the PowerEdges just got the latest Xeons, so hopefully the Precisions will follow soon. quote:2. The T7500 is available with a 256 GB solid-state boot drive. Does anyone know what brand that SSD is, and is it SATA-3 6.0 Gb/s, etc.? Is it possible to just buy the machine with a 1.5 TB ordinary SATA drive, and then add my own one of these or something? I guess that's a no-no on this kind of workstation-class hardware if I want to keep the warranty? Basically, I ask because Dell charges a shitload of money for their SSD (even given that it's 256 GB) and want to make sure that I'm really going to see the performance increase that I think I am. Yeah, their mark-up is nuts. I think if you put in your own SSD, it wouldn't void the warranty, but it may affect any of the "ISV certified" tags the machine gets. (I think that's just a fancy way of asking for money and guaranteeing it'll run $expensive_CAD_program)
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Mar 27, 2012 17:42
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Skilleddk posted:I'm wondering about where the bottleneck is in my computer. I know my stuff is pretty much top of the line. But when I look at game benchmarks at review sites with the same hardware as mine, their results are always much higher than mine. For instance, they list a 2600K with 4 GB ram and a 5970 running BF 3 maxed at ~~58 fps, 45 lowest. How are you recording frame rates? Are you sure you're using the exact settings used by the benchmark configurations? For instance, Crysis 2's DX11 tessellation performance is notoriously awful; if you just wind every setting to absolute max, you'll end up with a small quality improvement and a big performance hit. And, of course, keep in mind that anybody on Youtube can tell you whatever they want about how they have things set up. Sgs-Cruz posted:We (my research group at a large institution) are building a workstation for use with Comsol Multiphysics, Siemens Solid Edge, and MATLAB use on Windows 7 x64. It has to be a Dell – my department gets a corporate discount and they like the Dell support. (Well, maybe it doesn't have to be, but it'll have to be a drat good deal if it's from somebody else.) Budget is about $5000–$5500 (US). It shouldn't void the whole warranty to install aftermarket hardware, but it will definitely make any trouble harder to deal with. They'd be well within their rights to ask you to take your equipment out of the system and try again - exactly what you don't want to have happen when you've got an important deadline riding on whatever it's doing. If you're looking at pricing through Dell's website, try to go through your institution instead. If your account has a bunch of big orders and service contracts, they'll be willing to give quite a bit on smaller purchases of high-margin items. Come up with a configuration you want, hand it over to your contact at Dell, and ask what they can do for you.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:22
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movax posted:Not exactly, but I believe the PowerEdges just got the latest Xeons, so hopefully the Precisions will follow soon. movax posted:Yeah, their mark-up is nuts. I think if you put in your own SSD, it wouldn't void the warranty, but it may affect any of the "ISV certified" tags the machine gets. (I think that's just a fancy way of asking for money and guaranteeing it'll run $expensive_CAD_program) I asked on Dell sales chat and they said it's an SATA 3 drive. No word on whether that actually means 6.0 Gb/s interface (SATA 3 still supports the slower speeds right?), and also he wasn't able to say what brand the drive would be. He said they use different models depending on what's in stock. In any case, even an SATA revision 2.0 (3.0 Gb/s) drive is a huge boon when opening big programs like the ones we're planning to use this thing for, so I think I'll go for it. (COMSOL Multiphysics 4.2a takes almost 30 seconds to open on one of our older dual-Xeon Dell Precision workstation, that one has 96 GiB of memory but no SSD!)
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Mar 27, 2012 18:24
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If Dell packs it in a workstation, I doubt that it's not a heavily validated drive. At worst, I'd say you'd get a somewhat schlumpy Samsung drive. But who knows? That said, an aftermarket Intel 520 would do the job quite handily and is as close to unlikely to solve problems as you'll ever find in a drive. And in my experience, Dell Enterprise Support has been very accommodating about aftermarket hardware, including spending much time troubleshooting my server with me despite it having four non-Dell array drives. Also, a note on ISV certifications, those basically just say "It will run well, and it won't crash due to driver crappiness." A very, very nice guarantee for a business machine that's doing major number crunching, as that can be hard to do cheaply or sometimes at all without a large company's dev resources to throw at problems. If you add aftermarket hardware, obviously that can no longer be guaranteed, but you still have the certified drivers on the bulk of the hardware.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:35
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Walter_Sobchak posted:It's probably a good idea to make sure that the stock heatsink hasn't popped off and is sitting tight and level. unpronounceable posted:Yeah, if you're getting that temp at idle, you really need to check that your heatsink is installed correctly. Funny thing. I get home, open the rig to check if the heatsink is fixed and it doesn't seem to budge. I shrug, turn on the system, leave it on for an hour and idle temperature doesn't go over 56 ºC. Heck if I know what happened before. Thanks for the tips, though. Now, the challenge will be to find a drat good heatsink that will actually fit in that cramped space. The one I had in mind doesn't seem to, and neither does yours, Walter_Sobchak, so I either find something smaller but efficient or I kiss goodbye one of my RAM slots.
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Mar 27, 2012 19:52
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Saoshyant posted:Funny thing. I get home, open the rig to check if the heatsink is fixed and it doesn't seem to budge. I shrug, turn on the system, leave it on for an hour and idle temperature doesn't go over 56 ºC. Heck if I know what happened before. Thanks for the tips, though. In my mATX case, I believe I have 82mm of clearance for a heatsink. I use a Scythe Shuriken, a recommended low profile heatsink from the system building thread. It covers one of the ram slots, but if you insert the ram first, and it doesn't have stupid heat spreaders, it shouldn't be a problem.
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Mar 27, 2012 20:09
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unpronounceable posted:I use a Scythe Shuriken, a recommended low profile heatsink from the system building thread. This seems like a good choice. How is it noise-wise? Noisy?
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Mar 27, 2012 20:55
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Saoshyant posted:This seems like a good choice. How is it noise-wise? Noisy? From the looks of it I would imagine it would definitely be quieter than a stock fan, though not as quiet as something you could fit a 120mm+ fan on. Specs say 31 dba but it's hard to trust those numbers for anything.
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Mar 27, 2012 21:11
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Is there some sort of tool that I can run that will collect data if a crash or powerdown occurs and give me an idea of what is happening? Kind of like the little black box on an aircraft? I'm having what looks like a hardware failure, but I really have no way of identifying the problem at the moment. A couple of days ago my PC just powered off (seemingly) at random, as if someone had just yoinked the power cord out of it. If I hit the power button, the mobo lights flash for a split second, the case fans spin 1/4 or 1/8th of a revoloution, and nothing. If I leave it overnight, or for quite a few hours though, it will power on again and run for anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours before it dies again and the whole process repeats. Now I was thinking originally that my PSU was done. I had the same problem 6 months ago or so, got a tech in to look at it, and while he couldn't find the actual problem, he tested my PSU and told me it was fine and wasn't causing any problems. After just leaving it shut off for a few weeks, I go to turn it on one day and it just worked, and has for months until now. So now I'm thinking something on the motherboard is shorting out, but I have no idea where to even start looking for that. I was thinking of just upgrading the mobo, (therefore CPU and RAM as well,) to get away from it but if theres some kind of tool that can tell me what's causing the problem before I throw down another $500 then that would be great.
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Mar 27, 2012 22:16
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Wouldn't happen to be based on a P55/H55 etc. or another Intel chipset, would it? That sounds like the symptoms I had when a Gigabyte motherboard let the PCH overheat.
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Mar 27, 2012 22:26
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Factory Factory posted:Wouldn't happen to be based on a P55/H55 etc. or another Intel chipset, would it? That sounds like the symptoms I had when a Gigabyte motherboard let the PCH overheat. Not one of those, but it is an LGA 775 running a Core2 Quad Q9400. Motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3L (which I'm pretty sure I got from the quick picks list a few years ago.) So you're thinking an overheating problem? Would make sense I guess, will realtemp give me PCH temps or is there something better I could use to track that and maybe make a logfile of what's causing the shutdown?
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Mar 27, 2012 23:46
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The BIOS should give the temp as System or PCH or somesuch. If it does, HWiNFO64 can probably read it.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:09
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Factory Factory posted:The BIOS should give the temp as System or PCH or somesuch. If it does, HWiNFO64 can probably read it. Ok, so doesn't look like a temp problem and doesn't look like it was software induced either. I just rebooted again after leaving it for a couple of hours after the last shutdown, and as I was having a look through the BIOS, it died. Literally 20 seconds previous to that, I was looking at the page with the temps and both System and CPU were showing 25 and 26 respectively. Probably lasted about 3-5 minutes from powering on. Any ideas?
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Mar 28, 2012 01:27
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I'd test with another power supply. It's one thing to plug it into a voltmeter/multimeter, but you can only really see it's working for sure using a fairly expensive oscilliscope. I'd also try swapping the RAM around, and trying each stick alone in each of the RAM sockets to see if you can find a problem with specific slots or a specific stick of RAM.
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Mar 28, 2012 01:29
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Factory Factory posted:I'd test with another power supply. It's one thing to plug it into a voltmeter/multimeter, but you can only really see it's working for sure using a fairly expensive oscilliscope. Ok, so took one stick of RAM out and it fired up and made it to Win7 for about a minute or two and then died again. Then tried each stick of RAM on it's own in each seperate slot, and it's back to doing the split second of power and then nothing again. I don't have another PSU to try it with unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure that's what the tech did when he took it back to his shop last time, and got the same results. Short of spending $80 on another PSU, (which might not even be the problem,) I'm kind of out of ideas right now.
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Mar 28, 2012 01:52
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