What did you do to your computer today?

[efrie]

Thought this would be interesting, as this place is kind of dead.

I pretty much took it completely apart and CLEANED it.

My X4 620 is OC'ed to 3.2Ghz and it was running at 75 C when converting video to .mp4

Anyways, took the fan off the heatsink, blew that out good, took off the front bezel, the screens in front of the fans were completely blocked off, I couldn't believe it.

After a good blowing of air and moving some wires around I'm back at 45 C during video conversion on all four cores. Amazing what a little ventilation can do.

[BRealistic]

After a good blowing of air and moving some wires around I'm back at 45 C during video conversion on all four cores. Amazing what a little ventilation can do.

Yep. I fried a 9800 GT last year with diatomaceous earth dust.

[jerk]

Cougar

[efrie]

I really need a new case, but I don't really want to spend the money.

I've got something right now that does everything I need, I don't play a lot of PC games anymore. Besides burning a DVD every now and then, converting some video files, and browsing the web, my computer is fine.

I'm getting tired of looking at the same black tower though.

[samc]

Thought this would be interesting, as this place is kind of dead.

I pretty much took it completely apart and CLEANED it.

My X4 620 is OC'ed to 3.2Ghz and it was running at 75 C when converting video to .mp4

Anyways, took the fan off the heatsink, blew that out good, took off the front bezel, the screens in front of the fans were completely blocked off, I couldn't believe it.

After a good blowing of air and moving some wires around I'm back at 45 C during video conversion on all four cores. Amazing what a little ventilation can do.

Lol I had the same problem once. I was sitting at 50s on idle/small load and then I realized one of the heatsink fans died. Left me with a small blanket of dust, cleaned it up new fan and it's all happy now at 20-25c idle. I need to RMA my graphics card one day but too lazy, fan is starting to die on that thing as well.

I almost feel like buying a mac just to have something to do, kind of bored with my computer lately.

[TLC Detail]

Hooked up my kill-a-watt meter to see how much power my comp is pulling...

Managed to break 200w when playing BF3, with an i3-2100, HD6850 video, etc.

Also gave my case a cleaning and shining

Loving my new case, Antec P182SE limited edition:

[morbs_gt]

^wow.

I'm trying to rescue my tower, keeps rebooting after a couple minutes, although system temp is around 44° (111F?), and cpu stays at a cool 32° (???F). Thins started getting sour when I started folding again for vwvortex. Screen would go blank, fans would blast, and holding down power button had no effect. Guess I'll be putting folding aside for a bit until I figure out what's up.

Luckily I keep a recovery image in the boot list, so I think I'm just going to make sure everything I need is moved to my data disk, and will probably just do a clean re-install. Besides the nvidia module, and my adb setup for phone tinkering, there's very little to re-install.

[Egilbe]

I just ordered a GTX 560TI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130738

It was time to upgrade my aging GTX260 that I bought 3 years ago. I'm going to use that GTX260 to upgrade a gt220 on a PC my son uses. Should be good enough for COD and Skyrim

7% off promo code, +$20 rebate and free Batman Arkham City game.

[BRealistic]

I just ordered a GTX 560TI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130738

It was time to upgrade my aging GTX260 that I bought 3 years ago. I'm going to use that GTX260 to upgrade a gt220 on a PC my son uses. Should be good enough for COD and Skyrim

7% off promo code, +$20 rebate and free Batman Arkham City game.

Damn.
You guys spend as much for your GPUs as I do for my whole PC.

And your son should enjoy that GPU upgrade- he can finally play real PC games.

[BRealistic]

^wow.

I'm trying to rescue my tower, keeps rebooting after a couple minutes, although system temp is around 44° (111F?), and cpu stays at a cool 32° (???F). Thins started getting sour when I started folding again for vwvortex. Screen would go blank, fans would blast, and holding down power button had no effect. Guess I'll be putting folding aside for a bit until I figure out what's up.

Luckily I keep a recovery image in the boot list, so I think I'm just going to make sure everything I need is moved to my data disk, and will probably just do a clean re-install. Besides the nvidia module, and my adb setup for phone tinkering, there's very little to re-install.

First thing to do with random reboots is go to 'Advanced System Settings', Advanced tab, Start Up and Recovery then turn off automatic restart on system failure. If the reboot is being caused by something in software or drivers crashing windows you should end up with a clear error or bluescreen code to help you narrow things down.

[egecko]

Cougar

That's what I call it too! LOL!



Oh and what did I do?
Got a free '07 MBP 3,1 w/gpu issues (8600M) was going to use for parts swap...SD & N. complete teardown, evicted the bunnies, replaced w/AS5 TC on all silicon, put hdd w/SL installed, cleared PRAM/NVRAM to boot and all is fine. Ran diagnostics......all is good!

[Belfi]

I finally got around to installing an SSD over the weekend. I just cloned my windows install over for now but it's running great - booting in 10-15 seconds and recovering from sleep with no BSODs so far.

I was also impressed by how efficiently my case collects dust. Who needs an ionic breeze?

[morbs_gt]

First thing to do with random reboots is go to 'Advanced System Settings', Advanced tab, Start Up and Recovery then turn off automatic restart on system failure. If the reboot is being caused by something in software or drivers crashing windows you should end up with a clear error or bluescreen code to help you narrow things down.

Thanks, but I'm on team Open Source :S

I'll have to keep at it next weekend when I'm back home. Unfortunatel there's no ssh command to unplug and replug the power cord for me

[Minker17]

Installed VLC 2.0 this morning. Works like it should.

[NOTORIOUS VR]

Installed my new fan controller... the built in 2 stage fan controller of my Corsair case was a POS (would cause the fans to vibrate) so I bought this http://www.aerocool.us/peripheral/to...00_feature.htm



matches the case very nicely and works great!

[chickenium]

How often do you guys open up the case and clean out your PC?

[efrie]

I think I updated the internals a couple years ago, and when I did that I didn't notice anything terrible so I left it alone.

It's probably been 4-5 years since the case has been cleaned.

[SpiffyGTI]

How often do you guys open up the case and clean out your PC?

not often enough.

[KahviVW]

Yep. I fried a 9800 GT last year with diatomaceous earth dust.

Why are you working with diatoms?

[valfaw]

Replaced what seemed to be a problematic motherboard. Went like for like, a gigabyte z68x ud3h b3.

Had multiple BSOD's a day with just surfing and light use. Ran memtest which ran a couple hours with no errors, new ssd to replace what I thought was a problematic HD, clean win7 installs, tweaking BIOS, all still resulted in a few BSOD's a day.

New mobo in and so far so good, finger's crossed.

[spoonie]

cleaned out the mac pro last weekend as I was updating ram.

i'm... pretty amazed at how little dust has accumulated overall. nothing like my antec sonata in the same room, which was far, far dirtier. I guess planned airflow counts for something, granted I did pretty much throw the bits into the sonata3 as they exist.

[Das Pike]

Desktop hasn't gotten a lot of love since I bought an MBP. But I upgraded to an IPS panel recently and it's been refreshing. Gonna look into SSDs this Spring.

$299 right now! http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...n&sku=320-2676

[SurferbobGolf]

I just got my new Dell XPS8300, if you've seen my other thread...so I started the process of removing all the crap that comes on it. I'll probably end up reformatting it with the OS disk just to get all of it.

[efrie]

Last time I setup a new Dell for someone (Feb 2011) I just uninstalled everything. Win7 seems to clean things up a lot better, and run smoother than the last installments of Windows.

For me, and I was pretty OCD about it, the days of reformatting are over. I love W7.

[BRealistic]

Why are you working with diatoms?

cat
fleas
carpet

[rocksolid]

its been a while since i bought my computer. Around 2 years. So far, I have only cleaned the inside once. lol

[spoonie]

added more ram.

[theuean]

I installed hmailserver and gave myself an email address. wee.

[dankvwguy]

1. removed my totally outdated evga 760i motherboard with a core 2 duo e7500 overclocked to 3.9ghz
2. unboxed my new ****
3. installed my new asus sabertooth 990FX motherboard
4. installed my new AMD FX-8120 8 core cpu (i know all the hate behind the bulldozers but trust me, i know what im getting myself into)
5. installed 16gb of corsair ram
5. installed a corsair h80 water cooling setup
6. put my nvidia GTX 460 back in because the ATI 5970 was too big for my current case
7. closed case
8. turned on
9. jizzed

[dankvwguy]

How often do you guys open up the case and clean out your PC?

when i install new stuff i actually have the side of my case off a lot. i hide things in there....

[dankvwguy]

Desktop hasn't gotten a lot of love since I bought an MBP. But I upgraded to an IPS panel recently and it's been refreshing. Gonna look into SSDs this Spring.

$299 right now! http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...n&sku=320-2676

dell outlet is a gold mine for monitors. this model is only $20 cheaper on the outlet though. i got both my 24" monitors for $169 last year and my 27" a month ago for $239.

[samc]

Removed my ati 5850 video card because fan was dieing on me. Luckily I have lifetime warranty on that thing so hopefully XFX comes through. Now I'm using some old ass video card with a max resolution of 1280x1024 on a monitor with native 2048 x 1152. It's almost a test of patiences.

[ATL_Av8r]

How often do you guys open up the case and clean out your PC?

The case opens up???

[Egilbe]

Spent the day yesterday putting in a new mobo, ram and i-5-2500k with a Xigmatek HSF. I actually tried to spend some time and hide some of the unused cables and wires, but the wire management on the Antec 900 case I have sucks balls. I still looks better than before when I just plugged everything in and had cables and wires snaking everywhere. It looked like someone cut off Medusa's head and threw it inside the case. I wanted to use the same Win7 key, but it was an upgrade key and wouldn't let me do a clean install. I couldn't re-install Vista because the raid drivers from MSI's website was wrong, or Vista just didn't like them. I ended up using a key from another OEM copy I hadn't used yet I guess I'll be loading Windows 8 on that other pc I was making from spare parts

[16valvegli]

mac mini installed Vista using boot camp.