What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

  • Thread starter tlowr4
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The hype surrounding the Steam Deck motivated me to try running my favourite old non-Steam game, Escape Velocity Nova, on Manjaro (via a live USB install) to see if I can set it up with gamepad controls. Unfortunately though it failed to launch, then in formatting my flash drive to try Debian instead I managed to put it in an unrecoverable state and I don't have any more flash drives to make a gparted drive to fix it!

So I bought a three pack of 16GB drives for like £5, I'm sure they'll be terrible but 16GB is 16GB.
 
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Got my eye on the Torrent too, as someone who air cools I love the PSU on top design allowing for a healthy blast of fresh air to the GPU! Kinda hoping they do a compact version of it for those of us who don't need room for radiator + push/pull fans though.

That's impressive, was the 9700K overclocked?

(I have 8700K at 5GHz - higher end AMD 5xxx and Intel 12xxx are the first to beat it significantly!)
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Yup the 9700K was overclocked the day it got put onto the MB almost 3 years ago , was sitting at a steady 5GHz OC without any issues .

Retested it in Ciniebench 23 the day before I pulled the MB and CPU

9700K Single Core Run 1242 OC Last run
12700K Single Core Run 1893 Stock first run
 
Not strictly computer but kinda relevant:

SD card in my phone has been acting a bit iffy, music that I know I have saved to it has been disappearing. Had a good ~3 year run of reasonably heavy usage.

In the process of dumping it's contents to my main laptop because over half it's 236 GB space after formatting is the entire run of Game of Thrones besides the last season shudder and it's the only active computer I have ATM with sufficient storage.

Also taking the time to sort through everything and get it kinda sort of organized into as few folders as possible because I had to dart to like three different main folders on the card for certain sus files.

As for music, it's a simple enough recovery. Between the stuff saved to my phone directly, Amazon Music, and the Blue Frisbee (my last laptop), I can get back all of it.
 
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Got tired of my mouse not scrolling down properly despite scrolling up just fine, so I decided to take it apart and fix it. Upon doing so, I found a crap ton of hair that had gotten into the scroll wheel over time. So I pulled the scroll wheel out was able to get it all out at once and had to spend a few minutes figuring out how the torsion spring goes back in, but I eventually got it. Then I reassembled it and now it's smooth as butter! :D

So glad it's fixed now, I was beginning to think I'd need a new one. Tempted to take apart my old one and fix it too since its scroll wheel quit working long ago.
 
Well...

Despite upgrading to quite an expensive PC, today I've had to make space to fire up my old PC. It runs Windows 7, and that's the last OS my version of CorelDraw will work on. I've tried using a Virtual machine on the new PC and running Windows & Corel and under that, but it runs like absolute dog poo. Having recently gotten back into Blender for asset creation (Cities: Skylines), and wanting to get back in SVG creation for GT7 liveries, and need my old Corel for creating textures and vectors. I did try buying a new version of Corel, but the version that's affordable for hobbyists is crap - they kindly refunded me, so props to them, but I want... I need my 2006 version!

So...

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Three monitors, two PC's, and one AV amp on the desk (just).
 
Spent two hours on the phone with my elderly father. My mother is basically bed-ridden and they're holed up in one room of the house, so dad needed help getting the laptop to work with his email and files. He is on my Microsoft365 tenant, so he has the full Office suite on both machines. I walked him through getting logged into Microsoft Teams, then I got him into a meeting to share his screen, and take control. Sorted the laptop. Then I repeated the process on his desktop PC. Moved all his files onto OneDrive so he can access them from the desktop and the laptop.

He thinks that OneDrive is "magic" (that's not an endorsement, he thinks it is actual magic).

Hopefully he's sorted now, but my mum isn't well at all, and he's asked my sister and I to visit at the weekend, so if he needs any further support, I can do that for him on-site.
 
But first, my last computer.

..and now my new computer

Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition R10​

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor 3.7Ghz
RAM 16.0 GB DDR4
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4gb
1 TB Hard drive
500 GB SSD
SanDisk - Ultra 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive

okay, specs out of the way...let's start at the beginning. bought the Alienware off a local Facebook Marketplace for $500. The catch, the person I bought it from had only purchased it for the video card that it originally came with, which was a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 24Gb G DDR6X, which is why it wasn't over the original $1K price. This was a brand new PC which I was able to add to my Dell products along with the original warranty! I just installed a 500gb SSD I originally bought my my old Dell laptop but never got around to actually using it. Then when I bought my new Dell, Inspiron 15 3511 laptop which I bought in November, I originally was going to install the NVMe SSD in that but then the opportunity to buy the Alienware popped up and installed the NVMe in that instead. With the current price in GPU's I just found a decent priced card from NewEgg, plus a couple of 8GB DDR4 Ram. Eventually I'll buy a better GPU I suppose.
 
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I began thinking about my options towards my next PC. And actually, my next PC... may not be a PC. I am sort of compelled a laptop may offer some better performance figures than my current PC. I already have a Chromebook as my second computer, but I am thinking this PC may not be competent enough to keep up with basic computing needs and not able to play a lot of the different games today. I don't need a supercomputer or some gaming PC or laptop. All I am looking for is a decent gaming and basic laptop. No idea on what I am considering to replace my budget PC that I had since about 2014, but I am just looking at my options.
 
I am in the process of finding out what to transfer to my 1TB external hard drive to try to free up internal space on my PC. I moved 4 GB worth of data over to my external hard drive. I usually have no idea what is actually taking up space on my PC, so I am moving around what I can to help free up space.

While this is going on, I am thinking about choosing my next PC. And... that new PC... may not be a PC at all. It could be a very decent laptop. If I could get something decent enough to play Assetto Corsa (and maybe Assetto Corsa Competizione), rFactor 2 (which I am willing to give a second chance), and perhaps the latest builds of Blender 3D (after 2.80), that would be great.


[OMISSION] I may consider getting a 2TB external hard drive that is Chromebook compatible. I have just over 200GB left on my current 1TB hard drive, but a very good external hard drive at 2TB or more could futureproof me a bit.
 
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The Microsoft fails of today:

  1. Excel glitches out when you apply too many conditional formatting rules.
  2. Word tables randomly decides to no longer align its columns.
  3. Add a 2 MB png image to a Word document and the file size increases by 11 MB (how they have managed to achieve that is a mystery).
  4. Trying to access the Teams account of the company where I do my thesis project, but Teams insists on always redirecting me to the Teams account for my university.


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Learned that my bad Dell XPS PC power supply is going to take a week to fix. It's already been in the shop since last Thursday awaiting diagnosis :banghead::banghead:

I learned my lesson though, before this I was turning it off each night before bed, I won't be doing that anymore.
 
Jezza819
Learned that my bad Dell XPS PC power supply is going to take a week to fix. It's already been in the shop since last Thursday awaiting diagnosis :banghead::banghead:

I learned my lesson though, before this I was turning it off each night before bed, I won't be doing that anymore.
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Dell is the absolute worst for this: using non-standard-fitment parts just causes grief for customers. If it were a standard ATX PSU, you could have replaced it overnight.

 
GilesGuthrie
Dell is the absolute worst for this: using non-standard-fitment parts just causes grief for customers. If it were a standard ATX PSU, you could have replaced it overnight.

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That's true. On the positive side I did get it back yesterday ahead of schedule. But this time I'm not going to turn it off every night so hopefully this power supply can last at least another 5 years or so. But next time I might go the route of letting someone locally build me a system so I can avoid this headache in the future.
 
I bought an HP 14 a year or so ago, and although it has a pleasantly snappy 10th gen Core i3, it was severely gimped by having just 4GB of RAM. Not too long after buying it is when I started getting in to high gear with my desktop upgrades too, so ultimately the laptop didn't see much use.

Wanting to do more PC stuff in bed these days, I decided to finally upgrade it with 16GB of DDR4. Now, it's been a long time since I've taken apart a laptop (since maybe 2013 with my now-dead Asus K55N) so I'm sure this is more than common now, but...

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I absolutely geeked out about how tiny this motherboard is. Not that I expected the opposite, I just haven't seen one this tiny since my ancient Asus EEE Netbook (10.1"!).

Curiously there are some unused connectors down by the NVME drive which I figure allows them to reuse the board for SKUs that have a 2.5" drive. I was gonna try installing one myself in here, but with how thin this laptop is in that area, I don't think it'll work even if I'm correct about the connectors' purpose - they look very different than desktop SATA and I didn't do a lot of research on them, so I'm probably not. The NVME drive is only 128GB (this + only 4GB RAM is no doubt why it was only $270) with only about 65-70GB usable to me, and although it isn't a problem yet, if I do any more upgrades for this machine it will definitely be to get at least a 512GB NVME in here.
 
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Nice. That battery looks very replaceable too, for when it loses its ability to hold a decent charge. Thumbs up to HP for using standard components
 
Jezza819
That's true. On the positive side I did get it back yesterday ahead of schedule. But this time I'm not going to turn it off every night so hopefully this power supply can last at least another 5 years or so. But next time I might go the route of letting someone locally build me a system so I can avoid this headache in the future.
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I'm not sure if that will actually lead to less wear on the power supply, unless there is a specific issue with this one. I would figure like most things more time on leads to more wear.
 
ROAD_DOGG33J
I'm not sure if that will actually lead to less wear on the power supply, unless there is a specific issue with this one. I would figure like most things more time on leads to more wear.
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I just figured pushing the power button everyday had something to do with it. Here at work we never turn our computers off.
 
ROAD_DOGG33J
I'm not sure if that will actually lead to less wear on the power supply, unless there is a specific issue with this one. I would figure like most things more time on leads to more wear.
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I think the perceived wisdom (with which I tend to agree) is that when you leave the system on, it reaches a stable temperature and stays there. Whereas when you switch them on & off, there is a repeated cold-hot-cold gradient which causes stress on the components in the power supply.

Certainly it wouldn't be related to the actions of a physical switch: although good power supplies have a hard switch on them, computers have been switched on & off by sending a tiny current across pins on the motherboard for years now.
 
Jinxed myself by removing my CPU cooler this morning in preparation to install my 5900X that was supposed to arrive today... delivery got delayed until tomorrow evening, thanks UPS.

Tempted as I am to re-install the cooler to resume playing Elden Ring, I think I'll find something else to do today… maybe. :lol:
 
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I've just spent a not insignificant sum on some stuff to do a bit of maintenance on my PC, PS4 Pro and my brother's PC, which has a ten year old GTX 680 that has never been repasted and an i5 2500k that hasn't been repasted since I overclocked it to 4.3GHz in 2014... My PS4 is doing the very common thing of sounding like a jet engine, only it has gotten to the point where I literally can't use it without waking my son up in the other room, and if I don't wear headphones I need to turn the TV way up to be able to hear anything. So I got a new fan that's supposedly quieter and some Kryonaut Thermal Grizzly paste. Turns out 1g of paste is very, very little but I've never actually managed to use a whole tube of paste before it dries out anyway so maybe it's enough.
 
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Alright my 5900X actually arrived today, thankfully a couple hours before I needed to leave for work… so I got it installed and gave Elden Ring a very brief whirl just to see if performance improved any, and yeah it was a butter smooth 4K60. A definite improvement over the 3600.
 
I changed from my regular PC monitor to my smaller HDTV, and I also used the HDMI input rather than using the combination of VGA and HDMI. My PC has only one HDMI port. I did this so I could take advantage of having PC speakers. I also notice the HDMI output delivers richer colors than VGA.
 
Typing my first message on my new laptop. Everything installed and ready to go.

Man this thing is FAST. I was using a Sony Vaio before and it was almost 7 years old and full of dust. Now, I have a HP Pavilion 14"

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My son is going off to college next year so in preparation, I've changed out the TV I've been using as my computer monitor for an actual monitor so he can take the TV with him. That was easy enough - an HDMI to DVI cable.

Only problem was now I didn't have sound.

I had a set of 2.1 Harmon/Kardon computer speakers connected to the tower but they didn't work. Turns out the jack had been disabled. But they sounded horrible. Assuming it was the volume pot, I put a few drops of acetone in the pot and started twisting for a while. Problem solved.

Bonus - the H/K speakers sound a ton better than the TV speakers did anyway.

Since that worked so well, I did the same thing to some old JBL Pro computer speakers that he'll probably also take with him.
 
So I replaced the fan, refreshed the thermal paste, adjusted the thermal pads (two of them were only barely sitting on the VRMs they were supposed to be cooling) and removed the dust from my PS4 Pro, it honestly is whisper quiet now where it was previously screaming, I'm pretty happy with that.

The thermal paste looked super rough, it had turned yellow and basically flaked off the CPU die when I poked it and the heatsink was probably 75% clogged with dust on one side, hardly surprising it was getting too hot. I have doubts the new fan will make any difference, it's a revised model to the one I have (it's supposed to be the same as the one in the most recent model revision) but I couldn't see any difference. I felt it was worth doing while I was in there anyway though.

Scary job to do, too, since you have to strip it right the way down and unclipping the top and bottom lids means pulling way harder than you'd want to. I regret not replacing the thermal pads now but at least I didn't tear any so they shouldn't be any worse now than they were.

For my next act, I'll be salvaging a hard drive out of an old-ish iMac because I can't be bothered to try to fix it, it's literally not worth my time.
 
These are the things I'll attempt to do today:

  • Dust the PC (Even when its not dusty, still like to blow it out)
  • Run to Ikea and grab a Metal Nightstand to move my Tower to so I can free up desk space
  • Switch my monitors around on the monitor stand with new found desk space Sigh
  • Do my best Pablo impersonation so I can go and buy the 5800X3D with the monies (Wish me luck!)
 
Just repasted the CPU and GPU coolers in my brother's PC, which we realised was built during (and has remained relatively untouched since) Obama's second term in office, the dust was so thick on both that I could - and had to - peel it off with tweezers but thanks to the dust filters I installed on day one the rest of the interior was remarkably clean, all things considered. Although those filters were almost completely clogged too.

Then when it came to my own PC, there was a sprinkling of dust on the inside of the glass panel where, I suppose, the proximity of the huge CPU cooler slows the air enough for dust to "precipitate", but other than that there was just a very thin layer on the horizontal surfaces. I also decided to replace the single 120mm front fan with two 140mm ones, I went with Corsair ML140s mainly out of curiosity, but needed an Akasa PWM fan splitter since those fans have to be PWM'd as the maglev bearings need 12V to actually work.

I'm not even sure why I did it because the cooling was fine and I haven't turned the PC on for over a month at this point and probably won't until I move again (and my Steam Deck might arrive before that, even), but it was pretty satisfying. Depending on how it sounds I might replace the exhaust fan with a ML120 Pro (the non-pro has a grey propeller in a black frame, the Pro is black on black and can be seen much more easily than the front fans).

Still haven't pulled the hard drive out of the iMac, it's almost as if I really can't be bothered.
 

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