grumperfish posted:Can you not just RMA the sticks? RAM shouldn't need to be swapped out like that, and you shouldn't have to rely on it as a "solution". If they're new or under warranty, get them replaced. I was real nervous that it was my motherboard or PSU, but RMA gave me new sticks and they just ran overnight with no errors. PNY turned them around in less than a week from the day I sent them out. So happy I finally have a stable computer I can leave on to do things.
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Jun 29, 2012 16:07
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As dicey as I feel about eBay hardware I found a seller with mobo/CPU/RAM combos which seem to be far better than anything I can find in Australian online stores. The title pretty much sums up what it is. "AMD A8-3870K Quad Core CPU APU + ASUS A55 FM1 Motherboard + DDR3 8GB RAM". I just want to know if $242 is an alright price for that or should I look deeper to try and find someone that will ship internationally?
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Jun 30, 2012 00:39
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That comes out to around US$230 shipped from Newegg, so about AU$225. Seems like an okay deal given what I've heard about Aussie hardware prices in general.
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Jun 30, 2012 00:44
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redstormpopcorn posted:That comes out to around US$230 shipped from Newegg, so about AU$225. Seems like an okay deal given what I've heard about Aussie hardware prices in general. When you put it that way that seems like a really good deal. I've been using the Passmark database as a rule of thumb for what sticks and what doesn't as an upgrade. I was horrified to note how poorly a lot of chipsets performed. many benchmarking far worse than this computer. Given that I usually seem to replace everything roughly once every three years, probably been about four with this computer if you ignore that the only thing left of it that I put together is the CPU and DVD burner that is. It works out far cheaper to play my games on console, assuming I import. $80 - $120 for a 360 game? gently caress that! um anyway the desktop gets used for internet (more than just web out there), a print server, usually a file and other service server, software development, emulation, VMs, and my older games, Steam games and minecraft so it's not a gaming rig as such. I know I said this earlier. just reiterating. the included 8gb is another bonus. The 4gb that I have is good but I still have to watch my head. Depending on a few things I might get this. Got some travelling to do, associated appointment costs and a birthday this month so it could go either way.
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Jun 30, 2012 01:23
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How much of a problem is mixing different types/brands of RAM? Right now I have a 2 GB DDR2 8500 stick (leftover from a pair after the other went bad). I'm not sure I really *need* more, but newegg has all RAM 10% off for the next 30-odd hours and that's probably as cheap as I'll ever find it (other than one that went on ebay for like $15 that I kind of regret not bidding on now). The stick I have is running at default settings for this motherboard, which is apparently 1.95v and 480 MHz or something; I've read I would have to manually set things to (hope to) get it running at full speed. The other thing is the only 8500 RAM newegg has is like $10 more than 6400s and I'm not sure it's really worth it, especially if I don't bother manually messing around in the bios.
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Jun 30, 2012 01:30
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spoon0042 posted:How much of a problem is mixing different types/brands of RAM? Right now I have a 2 GB DDR2 8500 stick (leftover from a pair after the other went bad). I'm not sure I really *need* more, but newegg has all RAM 10% off for the next 30-odd hours and that's probably as cheap as I'll ever find it (other than one that went on ebay for like $15 that I kind of regret not bidding on now). The stick I have is running at default settings for this motherboard, which is apparently 1.95v and 480 MHz or something; I've read I would have to manually set things to (hope to) get it running at full speed. The other thing is the only 8500 RAM newegg has is like $10 more than 6400s and I'm not sure it's really worth it, especially if I don't bother manually messing around in the bios.
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Jun 30, 2012 01:34
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Alereon posted:If you only have a single 2GB stick now then it's definitely worth it to add a second, if supported by your system. They may or may not work together, if running Memtest86+ afterwards finds errors, try lowering the clock speed to 800Mhz, and perhaps bumping up the voltage slightly. Default memory voltage is 1.8V, do not exceed 2.10V. x2. Mixing may also seem to work but after a while sometimes abhorrent behaviour starts to creep in. Admittedly when I want to upgrade RAM the whole lot usually gets replaced. The old ones get put aside to be used in non critical machines / much later resurrection when the main PC dies.
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Jun 30, 2012 03:48
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What's the safest cleaning solution for LCD monitors and other electronics? So far, I've been using isopropyl alchohol diluted with a bit of water, since (as far as I remember) it isn't acid or base, but the alchohol still breaks down fats and it evaporates relatively quickly.
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Jun 30, 2012 15:01
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Fruits of the sea posted:...but the alchohol still breaks down fats and it evaporates relatively quickly. This is a good thing 99.9% of the time. Stick with iso. Just don't let it evaporate in big drips or it will leave streaks/residue that just doesn't look good but won't hurt anything. Get a good microfiber cloth to wipe dry LCDs.
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Jun 30, 2012 15:25
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Fruits of the sea posted:What's the safest cleaning solution for LCD monitors and other electronics? The safest is not leaving the monitor switched on, and using soap and watrer! Which I found out the hard way. But I use any reasonable brand of cleaner now, monster is my fave, they all work well, the most important thing I find is the quality of cloth - that is the real key.
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Jun 30, 2012 16:45
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MOAR posted:The safest is not leaving the monitor switched on, and using soap and watrer! Which I found out the hard way. Soap is a bitch to get off and I would recommend against soap unless you absolutely need to get some nasty poo poo off.
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Jun 30, 2012 16:52
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I used a 'monitor cleaning wipe' on my glossy LCD....that was restarted. Took forever to get all the streaks and waterspots off.
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Jun 30, 2012 17:08
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I'm relieved to hear I haven't been damaging my monitor with the alchohol somehow. A good microfiber cloth is probably what I've been missing. So far I've been using disposables that generally do a pretty cruddy job with anything tougher than dust and fingerprints. Can microfiber cloths be tossed in a washing machine or should I just get a new one every once in a while? This isn't really a "hardware" question anymore, but  Thanks guys!
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Jun 30, 2012 17:34
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^^^ I tried washing one once and it just became rough and unusable for glass. I'd just pick up a new one occasionally. I always use eyeglasses cleaner with a microfiber cloth. Dries quickly without streaks.
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Jun 30, 2012 17:35
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grumperfish posted:^^^ Good micro fiber is washable. There are dealers on ebay that will sell you a poo poo load for pennies.
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Jun 30, 2012 17:47
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Using mfg bootable tools, should I always just do a low level format instead of a surface scan if I don't need any data off of the drive? Logic being the LLF will pick up more errors than a surface scan. Could run both but on large drives that would take FOREVER*2.
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Jun 30, 2012 20:42
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I've got nothing to add beyond getting on my soapbox and saying you mean a mid-level format. People haven't done low level formats for something like 2 decades. However, this hasn't stopped companies from calling a zero-pass a low-level format, even though they should know better. Hard drive companies included. Gromit fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jul 1, 2012 |
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Jul 1, 2012 04:16
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Are there any android tablets out there that allow different users? I'd like to share one with my roommate and / or girlfriend, but every android phone I've ever used is tied pretty hard to your google account. I want to be able to see my email, my facebook, etc, but then give it to my girl and she sees her stuff. If not : Any good coupons or websites for buying two tablets?
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Jul 1, 2012 19:25
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Pagan posted:Are there any android tablets out there that allow different users? I'd like to share one with my roommate and / or girlfriend, but every android phone I've ever used is tied pretty hard to your google account. I want to be able to see my email, my facebook, etc, but then give it to my girl and she sees her stuff.
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Jul 1, 2012 19:27
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Quick question that I think I know the answer to, but I want to be sure. I bought a 6950 last fall. This spring, I flipped the bios to unlock the shaders and OC'd it. The card runs fine, but when the fan hits 65-70%, there is a weird metallic rubbing noise coming from the fan. Any fan speed above or below that is fine. My question is, is there anything I can do return-wise or even to fix it on my own? Since I unlocked and overclocked it I assume no on the return. It isn't too big of a problem, I just set the fan to a fixed 80% in games, but I'd like to be able to use a custom fan profile and not keep switching.
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Jul 2, 2012 23:15
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Have you tried re-seating the fan?
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Jul 3, 2012 03:32
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What do you mean re-seat? Actually take the fan off?
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Jul 3, 2012 04:00
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Endymion FRS MK1 posted:What do you mean re-seat? Actually take the fan off? Yeah. Try looking around on google or something. Might look into getting an aftermarket fan, too. That is more than likely cheaper than buying a new video card.
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Jul 3, 2012 04:59
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Red Robin Hood posted:Yeah. Try looking around on google or something. Might look into getting an aftermarket fan, too. That is more than likely cheaper than buying a new video card. I'm not considering buying a new card at all for a year or two. I'm happy with either cranking the fan like now or even just backing off the overclock so it doesn't even hit the problematic speed. I'll probably take your advice and reseat the fan.
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Jul 3, 2012 05:28
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Let us know how it turns out.
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Jul 3, 2012 05:37
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I've been meaning to supplement/replace my integrated graphics card that's come with my Acer Aspire X3200 which, oddly enough, dxdiag and CCleaner and everything else tells me is a NVidia 9200 while the site says it should be an 8200  . Anyways, after going over many, many options on Amazon and taking the piss with goons in IRC, my list of limitations for the moments comes to this: it should be available on Amazon, it has to be able to fit in a PCI 2.0 Express x16 slot and, oh, it has to work with my 220W power supply. While everyone seemed to think this meant that I couldn't use anything reasonably priced that's come out in the last few years, someone saw a thread where a guy was using a ATI Radeon 5570 HD with a 220W PSU, even though it says it recommends a 400W PSU.So, I've been turned over to the tech gurus in SH/SC. At the risk of sounding  , I'd preferably like to keep it under or around $50 USD, because I have a gift card and am so very broke.
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Jul 3, 2012 07:09
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Upgrading slimline systems is a pain in the rear end and you will end up with an overpriced, low-end, likely un-sellable card in a hot case that puts lots of strain on a PSU that's going to be close to its maximum load. If the PSU goes because of this you must turn to a variety of even worse niche SFX PSUs that often require electrically flaky ATX 20/24-pin to whatever adapters. Never buy slimline systems with the intention of doing anything more than desktop work. That said the situation has gotten slightly better in recent memory - the HD 6670 will work but is $75. If you have a 1920x1080 monitor, you will have to reduce resolution, and newer stuff will require knocking down settings, but it's pretty good for low to medium detail at moderate resolutions for now.
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Jul 3, 2012 07:34
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Yeah, I got it as a gift and kept it around because I couldn't afford anything else, and quickly discovering how crappy it was, why (integrated video card) and it's purpose (home media center computer), the only reason I haven't hurled it out a window and start from the ground up is being strapped for cash. I recently came into a 1920x1080 monitor and am loving it, so that sounds like a bummer, but I could deal with it, if it means a decent card at a reasonable price. I never run games at full resolution anymore anyways, and almost don't mind ratcheting things down to minimum or low settings even though the game has me benchmarked for medium to high settings. World of Warcraft wants me to run it at close-to-max settings, but I can barely eek out 20-30 FPS looking at a wall on the absolute lowest. I reserve most first-person shooters to the console anyways, because due to lack of an ethernet cable plug I have to use a wireless USB adapter to use with Internet, and even sitting on top of the router I lag so bad that multiplayer-intensive games aren't even worth it anymore, so I just use the Xbox for that.
Dyatlov Bass fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 08:16
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All the CPUs listed are the original Phenoms too, which were a huge bust, but a new card should probably get you going good for WoW, even at full res. I'd assume for an MMO you'd want to run native just for the increased screen space, but I don't know - if that's not a concern, you can always just knock it down to the next lowest aspect ratio and keep it on medium or maybe even high, the graphics card will scale it up accordingly and it shouldn't look too bad. I'd be surprised if it didn't run well on High though, the CPU will probably limit you well before the GPU. FWIW my roommate plays WoW and Diablo 3 and stuff acceptably on a slimline with a 4550 and a old Core 2 Duo, and the 6670 is a whole twelve steps above it on the Tom's graphics card tier chart. It's a good card, just wanted to mention you can get a hell of a lot better with a larger prebuilt. One more tip - make sure to pick up the GDDR5 version of the 6670, as some have older DDR3 and aren't as fast. That one I linked is probably your best bet.
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Jul 3, 2012 09:05
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Thanks for the recommendation Srebrenica Surprise, I will probably be picking up this one that is only $58 after rebate, and reading the reviews, it seems it or one of its ken from another maker is almost exactly what I'm looking for. Although, I'm still concerned about power consumption, as I know next to nothing about how it works.
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Jul 3, 2012 09:45
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That's a DDR3 card. It's also not low-profile so it won't fit in your case.
Srebrenica Surprise fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 16:56
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We have an LTO 3A Tape drive from Quantum that we inherited from another company of ours. The tapes say 400gig Native/800gig Compressed on it. Everything I've read always says "let the hardware do the compressing, never do software compression!" But I have no idea how to get the hardware to do the compressing. The manuals don't even mention it. How do you get an LTO 3 tape drive to hardware compress so you can fit 800 gigs on the tape??
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Jul 3, 2012 18:57
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BonoMan posted:We have an LTO 3A Tape drive from Quantum that we inherited from another company of ours. The tapes say 400gig Native/800gig Compressed on it. Everything I've read always says "let the hardware do the compressing, never do software compression!" There should be a checkbox somewhere to turn on hardware compression on the drive. It may have to be set in the drive configuration or driver, as well as in your backup software. Hardware compression has a few benefits over software compression. Less CPU load, for instance. In theory you could choose different compression algorithims to best work with your data if you did software compression, but I don't know of any backup programs that do that. Also, you only want to use one method - you can't compress an already compressed file, you could actually make the file bigger. Would you RAR a ZIP file? You're not going to fit 800GB of data on a 400GB tape unless you're storing highly-compressible data like text. Binary files like images or program code won't compress as well. Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 19:38
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Gotten a few (4) Kernel-Power, Event ID 42, Task Category 63 critical errors in the last month, 2 in the last three days. Two of the times (the first and the one three days ago) involved what I guess was a BSOD, and it rebooted on its own. This last time resulted in a hard freeze with a blue/light-blue jail bar pattern on the screen. The fourth occurance I do not recall, but it is listed in the event viewer. Googling around has led to a lot of possible theories (bad motherboard capacitors, overheating, bad GPU. not enough thermal paste, etc.) but no consistent cause/solution. My system is relatively brand new (2~3 months old) and I will say that I didn't get any errors like this until I switched from my old M4 128GB to my new M4 256GB about a month ago, although this could just be coincidental.
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Jul 4, 2012 01:45
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Srebrenica Surprise posted:Upgrading slimline systems is a pain in the rear end and you will end up with an overpriced, low-end, likely un-sellable card in a hot case that puts lots of strain on a PSU that's going to be close to its maximum load. If the PSU goes because of this you must turn to a variety of even worse niche SFX PSUs that often require electrically flaky ATX 20/24-pin to whatever adapters. Never buy slimline systems with the intention of doing anything more than desktop work. Funny you should say that. Been through all that recently. Except not with a slimline case. In fact in preparation for the mobo/CPU/RAM combo I modified an ATX case I have because I'm still on the fence whether I want to use this lovely modder case again with its slightly too thin metal or the grey case with freshly fixed design flaw. The way it was made all the 3.5" bays were essentially unusable and full length cards couldn't fit. So I drilled out a whole heap of rivets, partially dismantled the case, drilled some holes to shift the bays 20mm forward and re riveted everything back together. Now full length cards like my 8800GTX should just barely fit. I have some other nice cases but they are full towers which where necessary in ~2001-2003 when I got them but they simply aren't needed now. If uATX cases didn't all command stupid prices (mostly postage) I'd get one of them. Like that cube-ish shaped shuttle one because I think it can take full size boards. Which lovely case should I go with? And I don't know if this is for here or the GPU thread but the CPU with the combo is a (copypaste) AMD A8-3870K Quad Core 3GHz 4MB FM1 CPU APU. Which has a (copypaste)Radeon HD6550D 600MHz GPU, Unlocked. The builtin Radeon only has about half the performance of the nVidia, plus the board doesn't have DVI out making it pretty useless to me. Now what I was wondering is about this voodoo they call CrossfireX. Could I jam another supported PCIe Radeon in to the 4x slot and get somewhere near the performance of the 8800GTX, plus DVI from said theoretical card? I say the 4x because I'd like to keep my nVidia card in the 16x slot cuz it has the CUDAs.
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Jul 4, 2012 07:43
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I'm going to replace my Intel 2500K's stock cooler with a Hyper 212 Plus. How should I prepare my CPU for this (e.g., cleaning off the old thermal paste)?
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Jul 4, 2012 18:06
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Instrumedley posted:I'm going to replace my Intel 2500K's stock cooler with a Hyper 212 Plus. How should I prepare my CPU for this (e.g., cleaning off the old thermal paste)? Q-tips and the highest concentration rubbing alcohol you can buy. Acetone also works but isn't as nicely storable or disposable as alcohol.
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Jul 4, 2012 18:16
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Shaocaholica posted:Q-tips and the highest concentration rubbing alcohol you can buy. Acetone also works but isn't as nicely storable or disposable as alcohol. Baby wipes also work. Well, they pretty much work for anything except glass. Going that route they have to be unscented ones without Aloe Vera and that sort of thing. A few times now I've cleaned up the old paste with a couple of them, wiped it dry with a good paper towel because tissues leave too many particulates, and put new paste on. No adhesion issues. Baby wipes aren't something to be laughed at. I've used them to clean engine parts, upholstery, my hands when they are contaminated with grease and various other things. I have no idea whats on them but it works well at cleaning.
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Jul 4, 2012 22:52
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General_Failure posted:Baby wipes also work. Well, they pretty much work for anything except glass. Going that route they have to be unscented ones without Aloe Vera and that sort of thing. A few times now I've cleaned up the old paste with a couple of them, wiped it dry with a good paper towel because tissues leave too many particulates, and put new paste on. No adhesion issues. Distilled water and a bit of very mild soap. The problem with using baby wipes to clean up surfaces that need to be oil-free is that they're designed to leave a bit of oil behind. This is good for wiping up after a baby, because you don't want the kid's skin to dry out. It's bad if you need to get a surface completely clean after you've touched it - alcohol is a better choice there.
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Jul 4, 2012 23:46
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I have a hard drive that occasionally just stops being detected, both in Windows and by the BIOS. (I get "Sata Port 2 Not Ready".) It's only got my games/Steam on it, so if it died forver I'd be okay, but I'd still rather avoid that happening. CrystalDiskinfo returns a "good" status for the drive when it can be detected, so I guess my question is what other troubleshooting can/should I be doing?
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Jul 5, 2012 03:17
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