The HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

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Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

savesthedayrocks posted:

I have a Hardware/OS question:

I bought a prebuilt pc running XP to replace a laptop that broke. I want to run the OS from the broken laptop in the new one. Is there any problem in swapping out the SATA laptop harddrive running Linux into the prebuilt that runs windows? Basically wondering if there are issues with hdmi/network drivers.

As a rule you can't move a harddrive with an installed OS to another machine and have it work. The OS has to be installed on the machine you intend to use it on. There are exceptions when the hardware is very similar and use the same drivers, but I wouldn't expect it to work.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2010 23:58

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:41

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Miss-Bomarc posted:

So I picked up a bunch of stuff from someone's firesale the other day.

I've got a motherboard (Gigabyte MA78LM-S2H) with 2 gigs of RAM, an Athlon 2 X3 processor, and a Radeon HD 4650 graphics board. Should I junk the 4650 and just go with the motherboard's onboard graphics?

No, the Radeon HD 4650 is significantly better. That motherboard is an AMD760G chipset, with a Radeon 3000 IGP, which doesn't support DirectX10.1 or hardware acceleration for video.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2010 01:07

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

emtoor posted:

I need some application that would tell me that type RAM model # and CPU socket type. I have a bunch of old duplicate computers I would like to donate but some of them need extra parts. Any advice appreciated.

CPU-Z sounds like just what you need.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2010 03:01

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Pimpmust: Another option you might want to consider is picking up a Core 2 Quad Q6000-series on eBay. From a quick look, they sell for about $100, only a little more than the price of a new motherboard to use the dual-core CPU you got. Here's a benchmark from Anandtech comparing a CPU similar to the one you bought to a C2Q Q6600 (remember that for some tests, smaller bars are better). The performance difference will widen as applications and games take greater advantage of multi-threading. Remember that you bought a Pentium to replace a Core 2, so because of the reduced cache the performance difference will be significantly less than the ~50% clockspeed advantage on the Pentium.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2010 22:29

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Belligerent Monk posted:

I bought a 32gb Micro SD card for my HTC Magic. I loaded 3.79gb of files onto it and when I went to browse my music, almost everything was an "unknown artist" with an unknown album etc. and I couldn't play any of those files. I plugged and mounted it back onto the computer and saw LOST.DIR full of a couple gigs worth of files (each file about 3-8mb)

I was transferring files to the card by plugging my phone into my 4 year old macbook pro. Is it possible that I need a new SD card reader to transfer files to and from this card? I'm thinking either there's a problem with the data being transferred from the computer to the phone to the card, or there's a hardware problem with the card itself. Thanks!

You need a Micro SDHC (SD High Capacity) reader to use cards larger than 2GB.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2010 00:24

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

roffles posted:

What's a decent aftermarket cooler for a ATI radeon 4890? Mine sounds like it's about to take off during parts of starcraft II.

I'd recommend the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2 with the optional Turbo Module, even with the fans its quieter than most "quiet" coolers set to low. Before buying an aftermarket cooler though, I'd suggest taking off the stock heatsink, dusting it out completely with canned air and making sure there are no dust bunnies trapped in it, cleaning the GPU and heatsink base with rubbing alcohol or lighter fluid or something, applying a paper-thin, even layer of thermal paste to the GPU, then remounting the heatsink. This can significantly cut your temperatures (and thus fan noise) for free with only a few minutes of work.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 03:15

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

enotnert posted:

Gut the ram and HD thats all you're getting. Even "dedicated" cards in laptops are SOLDERED to the motherboard.

Actually they're usually on a card in an MXM slot, but there's a lot of different MXM variants so that doesn't mean it will work.

I'd say just Ebay the laptop intact, with the broken screen. You'll probably get the most money that way.

Sii posted:

I was afraid of that. So ram and HD? Well I am pretty confident I can do the RAM by myself, not so sure about the hard drive. I'm pretty sure I will see a vast improvement with pc gaming by just the RAM alone.

You won't see any gaming improvement from more RAM. There might be a small general usage improvement from going to 4GB thanks to the additional caching that can be done, but keep in mind you need to be running a 64-bit version of Windows to use more than 3GB.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 04:36

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Sii posted:

I am running a 64-bit windows, so it isn't a problem. I'm just trying to do everything I can think of to improve performance on this laptop. I know I'm not the most computer literate person, but I've gone through about everything I can think of to get the best graphics out of this machine.

What graphics card do you have? That's probably the limiting factor.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 04:51

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Sii posted:

I am using an NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics card. And I just looked, and I was wrong about the 64-bit. So gutting the ram would be useless.

The videocard is definitely your limiting factor, it's less than half the speed of a desktop 9600GT so pretty much too slow for more than the most basic gaming. If you're running Windows Vista or 7 I'd definitely recommend upgrading to a 64-bit version of Windows, it doesn't cost anything, all you have to do is get ahold of a 64-bit disc of the correct edition, format, and reinstall using your product key.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 05:25

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Sii posted:

Alright. I am currently running windows vista. And just to be certain, you say find a 64-bit version of vista, format, and reinstall using the product key I had for my vista 32-bit? Or do I need the product key for the 64-bit. And do you think I could upgrade the video card or am I sol?

There's no separate licensing for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, the only difference is what disc you install from. In fact, Vista doesn't even use different discs for the different editions (Home Basic/Home Premium/Ultimate etc), it detects what to install based on the key you enter. From some quick Googling it does appear that your notebook has an MXM 2.0 slot that would allow you to replace the videocard, but the key problems with this are going to be finding a card that's compatible with this slot, actually fits into your computer, and is power-efficient enough not to overheat or overload the power supply. Unfortunately it looks like anything better than your card that meets the power requirements would use the MXM 3.0 slot, leaving you pretty stuck.

You might want to contact the guys at MXM-Upgrade.com, if you feel confident enough to disassemble the machine and take pictures they should be able to tell you if you can get anything that would be an upgrade. If you agree to document the upgrade process with photos and write a guide, they'll even offer a 100% refund guarantee if it turns out the card isn't compatible, as opposed to charging a restocking fee. Basically the only card I could see being a worthwhile upgrade would be the Geforce GTS 250M/350M (same card, two names), but I don't think they made them compatible with the MXM 2.0 slot. An upgrade would also definitely not be cheap, probably in the neighborhood of $300+.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 07:03

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Sii posted:

I was assuming it would be costly. I guess my next hurdle is finding a better graphics card to fit an mxm 2.0. I did come across something about sli using two graphics cards, but I don't know if this laptop has an extra slot for two cards. I already have another 9600M GT in the busted laptop.

No, it only has one MXM 2.0 slot.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2010 08:49

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

The RAM of course, what are you going to get done in 90 minutes with only 512MB of RAM? Keep in mind that to use 4GB of RAM you need a 64-bit CPU and 64-bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7, so if you don't have a 64-bit CPU or are stuck on XP, just go to 2-3GB. Remember that more RAM improves battery life, since it spends less time hitting the harddrive.

Bonus Edit: Also make sure that your laptop can actually support 4GB of RAM, I have a sneaking suspicion that if it's old enough to only have 512MB, it won't. AFAIK all Core 2 and Core 2-based CPUs support 64-bit, so it would only be a 32-bit CPU if it was an Atom, Core Duo, or Pentium M.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Sep 13, 2010

# ¿ Sep 13, 2010 05:32

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Arwox posted:

My computer has an 8800gt nvidia graphics card, an intel 2.4 ghz processor, and 4 gigs of ram.

But I'm unable to run some games on max max settings without slowdown, which I dont REALLY care about too much. I just feel like I should be able to run SC2 on 100% just fine. I am curious as to what I should upgrade next.

'What is the weak link in my system?' is my question I guess.

Starcraft 2 is a high-end game, you need a really expensive system to max it out. Here's a benchmark comparing modern videocards in SC2. Your videocard is roughly equivalent to the Geforce GT 240 they test there. Your videocard is probably the weakest link right now, though SC2 also scales strongly with CPU speed, so it will hold you back as well if you're using a Core 2 Duo. This article tests CPU scaling using a modern CPU by varying both clockspeed and the number of cares.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2010 02:26

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Socracheese posted:

is it possible to get packet loss because of bad ethernet hardware? I just swapped out my mobo/ram/cpu and put a fresh copy of windows on my machine, now I'm getting up to around 12% packet loss intermittently. I'm pretty sure it's my ISP screwing up, but the problem also seems to oddly go away when I restart my computer.

Ping your modem/router, if you don't get packet loss, it's your ISP. If you do, update your network adapter drivers to the latest version from the adapter manufacturer, uninstall any non-Microsoft antivirus/firewall/internet security programs, and if that doesn't fix it, try a different Ethernet cable.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 06:00

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

The Mack and Cheese posted:

problems

First, run Crystal Disk Info, if the Health Status shows Caution or Bad, your HDD is dead. If it says OK, run the Windows Memory Diagnostic from Start, Search, Memory. If it doesn't find any errors, check the CPU temperature with RealTem and the GPU temperature with GPU-Z, and post how hot they get when gaming. Also, I'm assuming you have all Windows Updates installed, including the Service Packs, because obviously it will run like poo poo if you don't.

Aside from that, you really should upgrade to Windows Vista 64-bit so you can use all your RAM and the 64-bit features of your processor. You don't have to buy anything, just borrow/download a 64-bit disc and format+reinstall using your current product key.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 21:33

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

The Mack and Cheese posted:

Wouldn't a dead HDD mean I couldn't do ANYTHING on my PC?

And doesn't Vista 64 bit have tons of bugs?

No on both counts. The only issues with running 64-bit Windows are that you can't run 16-bit programs (Windows 3.1), and some old/crappy hardware doesn't have drivers. Check your printer/scanner if any before hand, but basically anything that will work in Vista 32-bit will work in 64-bit.

Edit: Okay, so maybe I should have said "dying" rather than "dead", but still.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Sep 16, 2010

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 22:00

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

It doesn't cost any money, and it's not :filez:

since you already own Windows. The license is attached to your key, the disc you use doesn't matter at all. Put in the product key you used to install Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit will install the correct version you're licensed for and activate just fine. And I have no idea what you're talking about with that last part, what are you looking for on the Asus site?

Alereon fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Sep 16, 2010

# ¿ Sep 16, 2010 22:51

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Ularg posted:

Is it possible for a SATA Cable to be the cause of BSODs? If so is it just trial and error with different cables until one isn't terrible?

My first SATA cable would disconnect my HDD every week, this new one I put in is giving me BSODs every couple of days. I have one more spare SATA cable but it's really starting to irritate me.

It's possible, but I'd say you have larger issues. Try running Crystal Disk Info to see if your HDD is logging smart errors (numbers/letters in the Raw Values column, Current column counting down from 100/200). UltraDMA CRC Error Count can be caused by a bad cable, anything else is a failure inside the drive. Certain values (like Spin-Up Time or Load/Unload Cycle Count) track normal usage.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2010 15:54

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Ularg posted:

So the problem is both the cable and the drive according to this?

The drive looks fine, it just has a ton of UltraDMA CRC Errors, quite possibly from a bad cable. Try getting one of those locking SATA cables.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2010 16:50

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Cast Iron Brick posted:

I have a stock HP machine with an AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.60Ghz processor and 6 GB of ram.

I'm looking to get a video card to effectively play Starcraft 2 on full, and possible emulate a PS2 competently.

Any suggestions?

Your best bet is probably a Geforce GTX 460 1GB. That's a link to an MSI card for $219.99-$20 MIR=$199.99, which is a pretty sweet deal. AMD has their next generation Radeon HD 6000-series coming out in a month or so, but if you need a card now that's your best bet. Keep in mind that this assumes your system has a power supply beefy enough to power that card, which is a minimum 450W with two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors.

mastershakeman posted:

I have an ancient PC that's started freezing/crashing a lot lately, and ran memtest on it. With either one of my ram sticks in (and regardless of the slot), memtest freezes up almost immediately. Does this mean my motherboard is fried? If so, the computer's old enough (p4 2.6ghz, nvidia geforce 5700, 2x256 ram) that I may be better off getting a usb adapter for my dvd burner and plugging it into my laptop-any recommendations on one?

Open the case and take a look at the capacitors (small cylindrical components that look like AAA batteries) on the motherboard around the CPU socket. Their tops should be clean (aside from dust) and flat, if they are bulging up or leaking then the board is dead. Here's a picture. But yeah, that PC is too old to be used anymore just junk it.

As far as an external burner goes, this would probably be a good option. There's no reason to buy an enclosure to keep using an old optical drive that's going to fail soon anyway.

Alereon fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Sep 21, 2010

# ¿ Sep 21, 2010 19:17

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

modeski posted:

I'll be looking to build a new workhorse/gaming rig in the next few months. Is it worth waiting for the new Sandy Bridge chips from Intel to make upgrading easier later?

I'm almost convinced it's a moot point because I tend to just buy/build new machines entirely than upgrade anything other than HD space (my current machine is four years old).

Sandy Bridge won't be out till the first quarter of next year, so you probably don't want to wait for it.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2010 09:12

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Danger Mahoney posted:

What typically happens when you have a power supply that has one of those fan control wires that you're supposed to plug into your motherboard but you don't plug it in? Does the fan just not turn?

I only ask because the motherboard I'm trying to pair with this thing has no power supply fan header, just one for a chassis fan and one for the cpu fan.

That cable is used so the motherboard can monitor the fan speeds. Just connect it to any fan header, or leave it unconnected if you don't care about reading fan rpm.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2010 00:56

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

I'd say its a bad videocard then, unless Memtest found any errors. Try the onboard video if present, if it looks good or doesn't have onboard video, try reseating the videocard and its power cables.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2010 15:37

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Rookoo posted:

Thanks to those that answered my previous question, replacing the HDD worked perfectly.

Another HDD question though, I recently got a 1TB samsung spinpoint F3, and apparently it's a fair bit faster than the caviar blue. I don't really have the time to manually install all my programs, windows, etc again on this new one however. Is there a way to transfer the entirety of my HDD to this new one that involves me just leaving it to get on with it?

It is possible using a disk imaging program, the problem is that since the old drive failed and corrupted data, imaging over the contents of the drive will just copy over all of the problems that caused. You definitely want to reinstall fresh.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2010 19:55

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Do you have another header you can plug it into? Motherboards usually have three or more. If it does work, the fan speed should stay the same, as the motherboard is either varying voltage or using PWM to reduce the power supplied to the fan, usually not to a target rpm but rather to preset power targets. The problem is you double the current being pushed through that header, which could overload it.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2010 00:36

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

HollowYears posted:

This definitely doesn't deserve its own thread.

I've had 3 hard drive failures within the last 6 or so months. Two WD Black 500gb's and one seagate 1TB .12 revision that I got as a replacement like a week ago as I don't trust WD anymore.

What hard drive brand should I go with next that doesn't have the enormous failure rate I've been experiencing with the two giants of the HDD world. Are Hitachi's any good?

All HDD brands have the same reliability according to drive population and data recovery studies, with the exception of the shittastic Seagate drives with firmware issues. Just buy whatever drives you like the performance/warranty on.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2010 07:20

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Metroid48 posted:

Just ran into a harddrive failure myself, on a tx2617ca HP tablet. The failure isn't an issue (3 years old, data's mostly backed up) but finding a replacement drive is! I've been looking for any 250-320GB drive, preferably from a local store (in Ontario) for quick replacement, but the connectors don't match the computer. The old drive was a Samsung Momentus 5400.4 and used some array of vertical pins to connect, while all the drives I'm finding use tabs.

I've never purchased a laptop drive before so how should I distinguish which one will work, before I get something shipped?

It sounds like your old drive was IDE and you're looking at SATA drives. Confirm this by Googling the exact model number (beginning with ST).

# ¿ Oct 5, 2010 05:09

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Sometimes they put these little plastic adapter things on the connector so that they can slide in easier. Any chance you can take a picture of the connector on the drive?

# ¿ Oct 5, 2010 05:33

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Orgone Accumulator posted:

Is 78-79C under load (and 37C idle) safe for a GTX 470? I tried googling and found a few posts suggesting it was OK but then you see other posts claiming their cards run at like 58C under load. It's a brand new card and the case was cleaned out recently so dust wouldn't be an issue. Is there any risk of heat damage if it stays that high?

Yeah that's entirely reasonable. Here's Crysis and Furmark temperatures for modern cards from Anandtech's Geforce GTX 460 review. <80C is actually really good given the obscene power usage on GF100 GPUs.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2010 06:15

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

I'm no cabling expert, but isn't Cat7 the standardized shielded alternative for Cat6? But yeah, I don't think there's any point in running STP unless you actually need the cable to operate in a noisy environment.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2010 01:18

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

What Fun posted:

Just got a new video card. Was using a Radeon HD 5770 with a few locks and restarts. Upgraded to a Geforce GTX 465, and now it seems to lock up and restart much more frequently. Could this be a power issue, or a heat issue? I just replaced the motherboard, my PS is an Antec 650W. Any ideas appreciated, I can provide more information to help with diagnostics.

Check the GPU temperature with GPU-Z under load, if it's getting above 100C that's a problem. You do have both power connectors plugged into the videocard, right?

# ¿ Oct 6, 2010 23:21

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Blackdawgg posted:

If I have an overclocked E4300 @ 3Ghz, 4GB of ram and a 8800GTS. How much benefit would I get for dropping in a GTX 460? The CPU is old and busted but I don't want to shell out money on a CPU and mobo until I see what bulldozer has to offer or hex-core Intel processors.

A 3Ghz dual-core is enough to feed most modern games. Keep in mind that the AMD Radeon HD 6000-series comes out in November, so you might just want to wait for that before making a videocard purchase.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2010 00:40

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

AMD is refreshing their lineup in a week (on the 22nd), so I'd definitely wait at least until then, in addition to Space Gopher's points. All that aside, the Radeon HD 5770 1GB for $134.99 is the best option at this moment.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2010 00:44

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

El Kabong posted:

Stacraft 2, medium graphic settings with slowdowns when a mass of units come on-screen.

My computer:
*Intel Pentium E2160 @ 2.8Ghz
2GBs of pc2 6400 ddr2 RAM
Leadtek PX8600GT with 512MB of RAM
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L

Sorry if I garbled those specs, I'm not sure what is or isn't relevant. Thanks for the help.

* This is overclocked, but I did it so long ago I really don't remember the method behind changing those settings. I'm still essential clueless beyond how to get into the bios, but I'll fiddle with those settings if that would help.

Here's an article with graphs of CPU and GPU scaling in SC2. You basically need a minimum of a dual-core CPU at 3Ghz not to bottleneck videocards in today's games, and SC2 is even more CPU-sensitive than most. You'd see real performance increases from overclocking, but your board is also new enough that you should be able to drop-in any LGA775 processor with an FSB speed of 1333Mhz or less (example). Upgrading to 4GB of RAM would be inexpensive and would increase overall usability a lot. Your videocard is also very slow, a modern 1GB card (minimum Radeon HD 5700/Geforce GTS 450) would be a huge performance boost.

Overall, I'd say upgrade the videocard (the new AMD cards come out tomorrow, so wait until next week at least then reevaluate, since prices are going to change a lot on everything), upgrade the RAM to at least 4GB, read up and overclock the CPU as far as you can, and if you're still using Windows XP then upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. If you're using Vista that's fine, but if you're using a 32-bit version of either Vista or 7 then reinstall using a 64-bit disc and your current key.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2010 00:19

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

I'd try to hold off, below the 5700-series performance drops off a cliff, and since the lower end cards aren't that much cheaper it stops being worth it. The Radeon HD 5750 1GB for $109.99 AR is basically the lowest you can go and still get decent gaming performance. On the 5670, for a 10% price drop performance is cut by almost 50%. That said, even a 5670 1GB is still a huge upgrade from your card, and if its all you can afford then its all you can afford. This Anandtech review of the HD 5670 512MB compares it to a 9500GT, a card slightly faster but comparable to yours, and it comes in about 2.5-3X as fast. A 5670 1GB would probably be 3-4X as fast as your 8600GT 512MB. That benchmark is from before SC2, but it at least should give you an idea of what to expect, and includes numbers from the 5750 and 5770 cards for comparison.

There will likely also be a Radeon HD 6670 launching in November, but we don't really know any details about it.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2010 09:59

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

70C is downright cool for a videocard. 80-90C is absolutely normal for any kind of modern card.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2010 05:42

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Why are you considering a TV instead of a computer monitor? TVs are meant for video, and may not work well at all for gaming.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 06:07

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Remember that if you get a larger screen, the pixels will be proportionally larger, so unless you're sitting much farther away from the screen, you'll need to turn up antialiasing very high to keep everything from looking terribly blocky. This effect will be much worse on a 720p display, to the point where it would basically be unusable for normal computing tasks. Other major problems with using a TV as a computer monitor include video processing lag and getting it to properly synch to a signal from your videocard without cutting off the edges due to overscan or messing with the picture.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2010 06:35

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Smoking_Dragon posted:

Does anyone have a recommendation on a good external hard drive I can use to backup my computer? I'm mainly looking for something that's very reliable and has about 1TB of storage, it doesn't necessarily have to be the fastest or anything.

As a general rule I'd suggest buying a generic external enclosure and a Western Digital Caviar Green HDD to go inside it. The major advantage of doing this rather than buying an enclosure with a drive already inside it is you can easily access the drive and replace it or use it internally without having to worry about voiding a warranty.

This Rosewill (Newegg house brand) USB3.0 enclosure for $24.99 is a good option. It provides USB3.0 for higher speeds, but is backwards-compatible with USB2.0 for current and older computers. If your computer doesn't have USB3.0 ports, you probably want to add in a USB3.0 controller card for $24.99, as this will cut your backup times (and overall transfer speeds) to about a third of what they would be over USB2.0. A Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB HDD for $64.99 is a good option to put in the box, but for $84.99 you can get the 2TB version, so I'd just do that.

If you still want to get a pre-assembled external HDD, here's a list of Western Digital USB3.0 external drives of at least 1TB that should work well for you. Stay away from Seagate's external drives, they are complete garbage.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2010 03:26

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:41

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

No, you don't need to worry about the bitterant, it's fine for use on electronics.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2010 23:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

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