Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Sky]

I was kind of looking forward to the GUI BIOS, but it's more intrusive than anything and it's not really changing interaction, because it's still basically keyboard driven text menus underneath. Just a few mouse clicks to get there, instead of just backing out with the keyboard (which you're already interacting with).

[Vision]

I'm an MSI convert based on my P67 board. I was going to get into an OC on my i5 2500K, but it was late the night of my build. So I skeptically pressed their magic "OC Genie" button and booted into a stable 4.2GHz OC on a hyper212.

So you'll have a bit more tweaking to get there, but you should easily break the 4GHz barrier with a zalman.

A quick google pulled up this guide for the P67. Should be similar enough to get you going, or maybe dig a bit deeper for a Z68 article.

This guide just sort of says what settings to use to get a stable 4.5 overclock, however I always thought you wanted to go up in increments? Or should I just copy the settings according to that guide?

[Sheepherder]

You're less likely to hurt the motherboard and CPU by doing it incrementally, unless you're terrible.

[Miasma]

Overclocking isn't really that helpful, I could see doing it as a last resort as your gear gets old though.  Hopefully at that point if you start breaking things it isn't as big of a deal to rebuild.  Since most video cards come overclocked nowadays I usually download all the oc software just to lower them down to stock so that I don't have to hear the fan stress out.

Unless you're doing encoding and such I also don't think overclocking the cpu will be usefull, it won't do anything to improve your video game experience.

[rattran]

Except, it can make a huge difference in games.

[Sky]

This guide just sort of says what settings to use to get a stable 4.5 overclock, however I always thought you wanted to go up in increments? Or should I just copy the settings according to that guide?

I did say 'quick google'. Go find guides written to your chipset and learn them. Then do incremental increases and test for stability/heat.

If you want easy, go buy the MSI board with the button. Otherwise, you need to do you some learnin'.

To echo rattran: a solid OC on the cpu can get you some good performance gains. As long as you have the proper cooling, why not? A properly cooled OC will last you longer than a poorly-cooled stock.

[Strazos]

Getting ready to move soon, so could use some advice on power inverters and UPSs. Going to need someone to cover my PC, TV, 360, networking equipment.

Advice on brands and stats would be nice - no real idea on how big I need to buy to cover everything adequately. Will be buying through the Egg.

[Chimpy]

Are you taking a desktop PC or a laptop?

With the exception of the TV (and if it is a desktop PC) it is best if you just purchase a new power brick if the one your device has cannot handle 220v. In most cases these days, the transformers in the power brick can actually handle either 110/220 and the only thing you may need to buy is a new cord to go from the wall to the brick.

With a desktop PC, the little red switch on the power supply should be all you need to make it work on 220v systems (i.e. not in the Americas).

If you can get everything to work with 220v input power, then just purchase a UPS designed for their system (outlet types etc) when you get there would be my recommedation.

Buying a transformer to turn international power to u.s. is going to be expensive.

[Sand]

then just purchase a UPS designed for their system (outlet types etc) when you get there would be my recommedation.

Where he's going I dont think they have neighborhood computer stores or Best Buys. Just a guess.

[Strazos]

Yes, we're talking Desktop and TV (plus speakers, the monitor, networking gear, other little things).

I'm fairly the the desktop can switch over to 220v, but not sure about the others. Don't think the TV has an actual brick (thinking it's internal), monitor I know does not have one. Same with a few other things.

Also, while I CAN actually buy a 220v UPS when I get there, I'm not sure how trustworthy they are. And once I get there, I can not easily order this stuff from the US (has internal batteries, exceeds my volume/weight limits) without getting reamed by FedEx or something.

ALSO - the local power grid is...suspect, at best. I really cannot afford to lose components to dirty power if I can avoid it at all.

[Sky]

ALSO - the local power grid is...suspect, at best. I really cannot afford to lose components to dirty power if I can avoid it at all.

Say hello to Yegolev when you get there.

 

[Strazos]

So, unless folks have suggestions, I guess I'm buying that that's rated 1000w or 1500w+ in order to make sure i can handle everything.

[Viin]

Sounds good to me. Just make sure it has a quiet fan and enough of the type of connectors you want.

[Strazos]

So how much wattage should a 40" LCD TV take up?

[rattran]

Really depends on age and model, anywhere from 75 to 200 or so.

[NiX]

My wired 360 controller causes my computer to hang when posting if I leave it plugged in. Unplug it, no problems. Any suggestions on what to check in the bios to fix this? Checked to see if it was trying to boot from it, but that's not the issue. Tried different USB ports too. The odd thing is the first player indicator flashes when this happens.

[Sky]

Disable legacy devices in the BIOS?

[MisterNoisy]

Disable legacy devices in the BIOS?

Yar.  My board hangs during POST if I leave 'Legacy USB Support' enabled with my keyboard attached.  Kind of a pain in the ass because I need to swap a PS/2 board in to enter the BIOS.

[NiX]

That did it. Thanks!

[Yegolev]

I'm seeing semi-regular slowdowns on my PC.  It does, of course, not do it as much if I stop most of the running programs but I would like to pinpoint what it is.  Resource Monitor tells me I have IO spikes on C:, which is very annoying since I am now running on a SSD.  I can't seem to remember what is the best route to isolating this, or maybe I'm imagining that we covered this topic in the past.

Said spikes:

[Sand]

Okay need help with a hard drive problem. My main drive partition has 137 gigs in memory. Saw in the SWTOR thread that the game will require about 20 gigs for installation, so I decided to check how much space on my drive I had left. It was only 17 gigs in free space left.
I thought "maybe I should uninstall all the programs I dont use anymore" but then I noticed my installed programs only took up around 20 gigs. So I thought maybe I should move my pics and documents to a back up drive, but they were only using up about 12 gigs.

So how can I find out what is eatting up a 100 gigs of my hard drive and clean it up?
Yes I've run the basic windows cleaner and the disk defragmentor.

[Furiously]

http://windirstat.info/

[Murgos]

So how can I find out what is eatting up a 100 gigs of my hard drive and clean it up?
Yes I've run the basic windows cleaner and the disk defragmentor.

I can tell you now that it's your windows restore points.  Under the cleaner go to the advanced tab and somewhere in there is an option to delete all but the last restore point.  Click it and *boom* 100gb+ free.

[Sand]

So how can I find out what is eatting up a 100 gigs of my hard drive and clean it up?
Yes I've run the basic windows cleaner and the disk defragmentor.

I can tell you now that it's your windows restore points.  Under the cleaner go to the advanced tab and somewhere in there is an option to delete all but the last restore point.  Click it and *boom* 100gb+ free.

I'd already done that. It only grabbed me an extra 15 gigs. Im now at 27 gigs total free.
Im downloading CCleaner and and the program Furiously recommended. Going to see how much that gets me.

Last option will be moving all documents and photos to backup HD, and doing a clean install of Windows during which I will upgrade from Vista to 7.


Edit:
CCleaner got me to 42 gigs free.

Edit 2:
Looks like Windirstat.info is going to grab me another 20 or so gigs. Biggest culprits were DDO leaving 5 or so gigs of installation files on my computer after installing the game. Shouldnt a program auto-delete its installation files after installing itself?   And a gargantuan Outlook mail folder and back up mail folder averaging 8 gigs each.  


Edit 3: At the end of a very long day I managed to go from 15 or so gigs left on the HD to freeing up over 50 gigs of space.

[ezrast]

Shouldnt a program auto-delete its installation files after installing itself?  

Heavens no.

[Sand]

Shouldnt a program auto-delete its installation files after installing itself?  

Heavens no.

Okay I'll bite, why not? Why do I need the downloaded 4 gigs of installation files sitting on my HD taking up space after the program is installed?

[Sky]

I like to have them for when I set up my next pc. My stash of installers has come in handy more than once. You can always manually clean them out.

[Yegolev]

Protip: Update your SSD firmware.

[Engels]

Protip: Update your SSD firmware.

Yeah, but be careful with that. Although I know some of the newer Intel SSDs allow for a fimrware update without wiping the drive, many of them still completely reset the drive, wiping the contents out.

[Yegolev]

Protip: Update your SSD firmware.

Yeah, but be careful with that. Although I know some of the newer Intel SSDs allow for a fimrware update without wiping the drive, many of them still completely reset the drive, wiping the contents out.

So true.  Luckily I only had a Win7 image on it; or not, I don't think I'd use a SSD as general storage.  In any case, the Crucial C300 manages to go from rev 0006 to 0007 without data loss.  IO spikes gone, and I would have done a reinstall to fix that.  Even better, it operates much faster now.

[Viin]

I looked at getting a couple of more SSD 60gb hard drives last night in order to put them into a RAID 5 setup as my main OS disk. Really, still $100 each? Sigh.

Currently have 3 7200rpm 80gb HDs in RAID for my main disk, guess I'll keep that for now - but I can't get a Windows score over 6.1 with it!

My single SSD 60gb'er is where I install my games, which seems to work pretty well but I think that overall performance would go up if Windows was installed on the SSD instead ... anyone disagree with that? (If I feel like making this change, I would probably install the OS on my SSD and then change Program Files to point to my RAID).

[Engels]

Try putting your pagefile on your SSD:



In the above image, the pagefile is on the C drive, which is the default location. You can manually put it on the E drive or whatever drive letter your SSD uses. Also, remove it from your C Drive. That should give your OS a performance boost.

[Viin]

I thought it was bad to have the page file on the SSD because the frequent read/writes wore it down quick?

[Engels]

I thought it was bad to have the page file on the SSD because the frequent read/writes wore it down quick?

Well, if that were the case, then any of us who are using an SSD as the system's single drive are hosed :) Honestly, everything I've read regarding the rewritability of SSDs is inconclusive. Some people are convinced that an average SSD won't last more than a few years, others do something else with the math and estimate that even with constant use, SSDs will outlast conventional hard drives. Maybe someone else knows more on the subject, or can point to a more conclusive study than I have found.

[Murgos]

The most convincing stuff I've seen is that you can expect, at worst, 4-5 years of heavy use from an SSD used as a cache.  The argument goes, in 4 or 5 years though SSD will be 4-6 X larger for the same price so you're going to want to buy a new one in 4 or 5 years anyway so who cares if it only lasts 4 or 5 years?