Adventures in home computing!

[wonko the sane?]

Curiosity and a little skill, when combined, can be a scary thing.

So randomly while killing time this morning (I was waiting for some delivery guys to show up.) I saw a video reviewing the intel arc GPU. Since the arc is one of the potential candidates when I build a future new computer, I wanted some insight into its performance. The dude mentioned some features including something called "re-bar" and that I might need to update my bios to make use of it. Which lead to a different video (same guy.) about bioses.

Which... kind of led to me checking, then updating my bios. I always get anxious at bedrock level software, largely cause my earliest attempts (thankfully, on far cheaper devices.) wound up in a couple of bricks. But flashing firmware and updating a bios are NOT the same thing, so it went well. And now my Prime B450 has re-bar support! So I turn it on, save and exit.

And almost immediately boot back into the bios. It can't find my boot drive. In fact, it only find 2 out of 4, and one of them is ******* mechanical!

Turn off re-bar, save and exit. I wind up back in the bios, BUT now it just wants me to specify the boot drive cause it can actually see the M2 I use.

I think the technical term for this kind of moment is "huhn... neat".

Turn on re-bar, save and exit then start poking around in the bios settings. Turns out that (for whatever reason, I don't know, and probably never will.) turning on re-bar was turning of CSM. But I managed to get both working, and here we are. Going to try some games later and see if there's any noticeable improvement on my old RX480, or at least less stuttering in sanctuary when I play fallout 4.

So, any one else got any stories to share?

Edit: with a full TWENTY MINUTES of gameplay to it's credit: there were no crashes, so... yay? Immediate observation indicates that load times might be a little better... maybe? But there's DEFINETLY an improvement in textures as there is WAY less pop in, on both loading screens and during gameplay. Controls feel a little tighter too, but that's probably an artifact.

 

[MEDdMI]

Nothing too exciting on my end. I've installed basic computer components, memory/video cards, once a fan. But that's about it. I got a cheap desktop years ago for PC gaming but only used it a few times.

 

[Pocket]

My dad works at a school, as I believe I have mentioned before, and sometimes brings their garbage home. One time it was a bunch of laptops and a couple mini-desktops. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, as my own home rig I had been upgrading like the Ship of Theseus since 2008 had finally bitten the dust in a way that was pointless to try to do anything about.

So, story number one is that I installed Kubuntu on one of the laptops for fun, and then tried to get another running Windows reliably. Turns out there are some really weird issues with the drivers for its GPU and if you install too new of a version, the output to the built-in screen just freezes at the login prompt, but you can still plug it into a monitor. Never did get that straightened out. But even weirder to me was that it was just not letting me put it into sleep mode. All of the options in Windows that pertained to such a thing existing were either grayed out or missing, with no explanation. This had me stumped for months until I thought "Hey, maybe it's a BIOS compatibility issue and I have to seek out a firmware update to resolve it." And then I was like... "Oh. Wait. BIOS. Is a thing that exists. And might literally have a setting to disable sleep mode for some ungodly reason." So a quick boot into BIOS later, my hunch turned out to be exactly right. Why the owner of this particular lappy had decided that sleep was for the weak, I don't know, but that's sorted now.

Story number two is that I set up one of the desktops to serve as my main computer, because as nice as those laptops are (seriously, they're really nice laptops, to the point that I genuinely do not know why they were throwing them out), I haven't figured out a good way to actually use them as desktop replacements without a docking station. Anyway, at one point I became aware that there had been two different specs of these otherwise-identical machines, and I had ended up with one with a slower CPU. So a trip to the school later, we now have three more, all with the faster CPU. I set one of them up, with vague plans for the other two, and then let it sit awaiting its turn to become my dad's new desktop when his current one finally dies... or when he's willing to preemptively pull the plug on it. It's been long enough since then that I decided to fire it up and run whatever updates it needs... only to discover it had just mysteriously died in the meantime. Like, it won't even POST anymore; it just flashes the power light in a pattern that Google says means "either the motherboard or the CPU is dead". So I was like, OK, let's try to narrow it down to one or the other by pulling the CPU out and plopping it in my regular one." Fortunately these are really easy to get apart (they're the same model that Linus Tech Tips featured recently in his video about upcycled computers being sold on Amazon), so I got out the custom fan shroud (think laptop or console fan) and pulled off the heatsink and...

...yeah. That's the UNDERSIDE. At this point I'm pretty sure it was the CPU that had died, and no points for guessing how.

(That is, however, the most overengineered cooling setup I have ever seen on a computer; I guess since these were destined for offices and labs, they knew they were likely to get basically no maintenance over their very long lifetimes and didn't want to take any chances. Stuff like this is how Dell has remained on top.)

 

[wonko the sane?]

That is... an impressive cooler for a laptop. I don't think my cooler master on my CPU is quite so hardy.

 

[Pocket]

No, that's from the mini-desktops. The fan was definitely laptop-esque, though; it's one of those weird fans that has to pull from a vent that's perpendicular to the chip so it has a million blades and they're not scooped like a desktop fan.

 

[wonko the sane?]

At least they made an effort at ventilations and heat management. Apple is just taking the piss on these days to ensure smaller builds and repeat customers.

Speaking of ventilation: I had an urge to move some of my case fans around. I replaced one late last year due to failure (and related note, I need ANOTHER new one now because of this mornings shenanigans.) and only today realized that the fan layout actually dated back to when I was using like three mechanical drives for storage.

So, and understand me here: against my own better judgement (cause if it ain't broke, don't fix it.) I went and fixed it. I moved three fans around the case, inverted airflow on two of those three, realized I had the fixings to mount another 120mm on my cpu cooler (One on each side of the radiator block, go figure, right?) oh, and spent almost a solid HOUR just on cable management. Like, seriously: I went and spent good money on a huge case with built in cable management features which was not that common when I bought it, and still wound up bunching everything together and twist tying it to make sure it doesn't touch any moving parts.

Before you go and make any assumptions about it: no, this was NOT the first computer I've built into this case. It's the THIRD! It would be the second, but hydroquebec being completely unable to follow the law in regards to planned and schedule power outages killed the second.

And related, the second of three case fans that came with the case is dying. I'm going to be purchasing a new 140mm as soon as I'm finished with this post. I could probably let it slide for a while, but it's an energy efficiency/sound level thing.

 

[Pocket]

Before you go and make any assumptions about it: no, this was NOT the first computer I've built into this case. It's the THIRD! It would be the second, but hydroquebec being completely unable to follow the law in regards to planned and schedule power outages killed the second.

I hope you've bought a UPS since then.

 

[wonko the sane?]

NOPE! Cause I'm both relatively poor AND like to live dangerously.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I'm not a hardware guy, but I have a few virtual machines on my laptop.

 

[Pocket]

At this point I'm pretty sure it was the CPU that had died, and no points for guessing how.

Update: What the actual jive.

So, I realized that the heatsinks on the rest of these computers probably needed a good vacuuming out just like that one did, so I shut down my main system, opened it up, took it all the way apart and scrubbed it down as thoroughly as I've ever done to anything. And then, since I had taken the heatsink off (it too was clogged with dust, but the less disgusting gray variety), I wiped off all the thermal paste and got out the tube I had left over from the preventative maintenance I'd done on the PS3... geez, was that three years ago now? This stuff doesn't have an expiration date, right? Anyway, before I went to the trouble of putting it on, I decided to try swapping in the CPU from the dead machine instead, just to be 100% sure it was hosed.

Instead, it powered on, POSTed, and booted up Windows like nothing had changed. And I mean "like nothing had changed", because I hadn't actually shut it down properly so Windows thought I was still using the 2.9GHz chip. After a restart, it now reports it correctly. I'm surprised Windows can handle that, although a swap to a slower chip might have caused some fun problems.

So I guess I have a faster computer now. And some more spare parts.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Experimentation AND salvage! The hallmarks of a very good day.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alright, so I was reading the manual for my case (I know, I know, confiscate my man card...) because I wanted to know what the max size for the rear air grill was. While in the process of doing this, I saw that the hard drive bays are removable.

Oh... I genuinely did not know that.

So I cracked open the case again, and pulled out two of the three bays, the lower bracket holding the old bay tower, and moved my front fan (sigh... again. Seriously considering just getting the double barrel 200's and ending that question entirely.) for once again improving air flow.

I have to admit, I am liking the cleaner and more minimalistic look, shame there's no glass side wall cause I'm slowly getting to the point where I do want to see the inside of the computer.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Adventures in home computing... and seating!

Alright, so about a year ago, I needed a new chair. I found a gaming chair I liked, and I bought it. And after a year of use: I was in very real pain. My back, my legs and my arms all hurt for different reasons (and the arms were so stupid. The material of the arm rests was drying out the patch of skin that was in contact. It got so bad I thought it was going to tear my arm open when I was scratching it. Thankfully, a few weeks of hydrating rub and other than a noticeably different colour and texture for those two patches of skin, it's fine.) so it was time to get another new chair.

Or, rather, an old one.

My brother, probably because where he currently lives is in an ageing out neighbourhood, has managed to acquire THREE completely different bankers chairs. You know, the old wood ones? And all of them literally free from the side of the road. So I stole one from him and have been using it since. My back doesn't hurt anymore, my legs don't hurt anymore and there's no arm rests so my forearms aren't going to dry out like before. My shoulders hurt, but it's literally muscle pain because I'm not using arm rests anymore, and will disappear with time. My total investment so far has been 18 bucks for a chair pillow with some straps to prevent it sliding around. (At a place called Jysk, it's a nice red and black plaid thing meant for a dining room chair.)

So of course, it's not broke: let's fix it!

I wondered if the base to the gaming chair would fit the holes on the seat of the bankers chair. So I went and took the bases off both and compared. Long answer: no, no they do not. In the process of re-assembly, I realized WHY the bankers chairs was quite so creaky: the frame holding the seat to the base was twisted a bit. So I broke out the BIG vice, wrestled the spoke back into proper place... and the bolt won't stay in the bolt hole... Damnit. Go dig a bigger bolt out of the shop, and it worked beatifully. But while I was doing THAT I noticed that the load bearing mechanism (two large compression springs in a retaining frame with an adjustment wheel) was misaligned. So I took THAT apart, lined everything back up straight (which went well, because the frame itself wasn't twisted anymore.) and put that back together.

After an hours work, all I managed to do was take about half the creaks out of the bankers chair... but that's not bad actually.

 

[Pocket]

I should do a teardown of my used computer chair sometime, and try to figure out why it has a habit of making a clunking noise when I swivel it.