Gorth Posted September 22, 2008 Author Share Posted September 22, 2008 Woohoo... Got my Sapphire 4780x2 plugged in (sort of, see below), plus the additional HDD's Having fun with the HDD's trying to set them up as a bios raid. It bsods Windows and according to the allmighty google, all I need is to reinstall Windows and use a floppy disk with some special Intel drivers on it I think I might look for alternatives, if necessary just as two separate disks at the moment. Obervations on Sapphire cards: It's friggin heavy It looks like a brick, it weighs like a brick (close to a Kilogram) and it alone is as noisy as my old PC (I know, Mkreku had warned me about that) And finally, it's an incredibly poor fit inside the case with more than half a centimeter gap beween the rear panel and the mounting/fitting thing of the card. Poor design or poor craftmansship? I might need to find some pieces of metal tubing and some very long screws to actually attach that brick of a card to the case. I definitely need water cooling for this one Oh yeah, and then of course, it is very fast. I always did wonder what NWN2 would look like maxed out and still have a good framerate. Now I know “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgon Posted September 23, 2008 Share Posted September 23, 2008 Why do you have to use floppy drives for things like BIOS updates and Raid setups. I mean I know why, it's because some of them don't support NTFS, but really, floppies are hopelessly outdated, can't you get a regular usb stick set up as a floppy. Na na na na na na ... greg358 from Darksouls 3 PVP is a CHEATER. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spider Posted September 23, 2008 Share Posted September 23, 2008 We don't need floppy, at least not to update bios. I managed to update mine without a floppy. Modern motherboards have built in support for USB-devices and dvd-drives. Don't know about raid though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted September 23, 2008 Author Share Posted September 23, 2008 We don't need floppy, at least not to update bios. I managed to update mine without a floppy. Modern motherboards have built in support for USB-devices and dvd-drives. Don't know about raid though. That about sums it up. The Intel raid seems to be the odd one out. I updated my bios too yesterday through the ASUS update tool, running under Vista no less, didn't even need to reboot right away afterwards. Alternatively, the bios can be (re)flashed from a usb stick if you mess it up completely. “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted September 26, 2008 Author Share Posted September 26, 2008 Another entry in Gorth's diary. While the gfx card is nice and I don't really have any games besides NWN2 that challenges it, the noise levels are just unbelievable. A vaccuum (sp?) cleaner running on full power would feel at home there, Ordered the following beauty from EK Waterblocks in Slovenia. Hopefully, that will bring some peace and quiet back to my office The darn sound card is still on back order... *grumble* I suppose my next task is to find a monitor that does justice to the nice capabilities. “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted September 30, 2008 Author Share Posted September 30, 2008 Whee... got my soundcard today. Finished installing it in less than 55 minutes. 5 Minutes to plug in the card and the thingy that sits in the 5.25" drive bay, 5 minutes to install software, 10 minutes to update software online... and 30+ minutes trying to attach a stupid cable between the drive bay thing and the card *Sigh* Now I just need my gpu water block to arrive from Slovenia, then I can finally start to put all the innards back into the case, fasten all the screws, see if everything still fits in there, get all the stuff that made my desk look like a construction yard since mid June cleared away and move the thing down onto the floor, where its new home is, get my printer and other peripherals hooked up again... etc. Oh, and I need a new monitor. Saw a 30" Samsung that looked very sexy “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walsingham Posted October 4, 2008 Share Posted October 4, 2008 Thinking about this some more, why can't you just soundproof it, rather than reducing emissions? Is cooling the issue? Surely there must be high conductivity materials which would conduct heat? Maybe a lattice of aluminium foils? "It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"." -Elwood Blues tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 4, 2008 Author Share Posted October 4, 2008 Well, the card is unfortunately not designed that way. It has it's own "airduct" which is why it takes up two slots on your backside. One slot used for connectors, one slot is the outlet of air from the fan. I.e. very hard to sound proof. Even as it is, it runs to hot that I am occasionally worried that it might fry my soundcard which is located just above it. Watercooling is usually more efficient in getting the temperature down. Besides, when the hoses and everything else is there, I might as well hook up the second largest heat generator on the circuit “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walsingham Posted October 4, 2008 Share Posted October 4, 2008 Flipping this again, how is the heat generated? Resistance in the materials? What are the materials? (I'm in engineering mood and clutching my TRIZ handbook) "It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"." -Elwood Blues tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 4, 2008 Author Share Posted October 4, 2008 Ehhh... Whatever causes heat when eletric circuitry operates. Physics classes are way too many years ago, so whatever converts electrical energy into heat. Current, meet Resistace, Resistance, meet my friend Current? The more operations you force the card to undertake, the more current it draws, the hotter it gets. Gorth's solution? Dip it in water “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walsingham Posted October 4, 2008 Share Posted October 4, 2008 Gorgon was saying that some cards are optimised for high heat. "It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"." -Elwood Blues tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 4, 2008 Author Share Posted October 4, 2008 Oooh... it runs hot allright. Hence my fear that it might fry my sound card as collateral damage Burnt my fingertip when accidentally touching the card the other day “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samm Posted October 6, 2008 Share Posted October 6, 2008 When you watercool it, make sure the RAM is cooled as well Btw, fingertips are burnt at 60 Citizen of a country with a racist, hypocritical majority Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 7, 2008 Author Share Posted October 7, 2008 When you watercool it, make sure the RAM is cooled as well The water block I ordered is a "full cover" model. Covers both GPU's, RAM, the whteverthebuschipsarecalled etc. with either direct contact or through some little "pillow" thingies you cut out with a scissor and stick to the chips and makes contact with the cooler. “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walsingham Posted October 7, 2008 Share Posted October 7, 2008 What if I installed a small boy who waved a carpet at it? "It wasn't lies. It was just... bull****"." -Elwood Blues tarna's dead; processing... complete. Disappointed by Universe. RIP Hades/Sand/etc. Here's hoping your next alt has a harp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samm Posted October 7, 2008 Share Posted October 7, 2008 You'd need to feed him, otherwise his life expecancy might be lower than that of other parts of the PC, and without him, these parts are likely to fail, too... I wouldn't recommend it, I've been there. Waving. Citizen of a country with a racist, hypocritical majority Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgon Posted October 7, 2008 Share Posted October 7, 2008 When you watercool it, make sure the RAM is cooled as well The water block I ordered is a "full cover" model. Covers both GPU's, RAM, the whteverthebuschipsarecalled etc. with either direct contact or through some little "pillow" thingies you cut out with a scissor and stick to the chips and makes contact with the cooler. If I want to oc my machine I would have to solve the Northbridge temperature first, lots and lots of copper there, but it's barely keeping it under 45. How does that work, can it help out any board significantly. Na na na na na na ... greg358 from Darksouls 3 PVP is a CHEATER. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 11, 2008 Author Share Posted October 11, 2008 When you watercool it, make sure the RAM is cooled as well The water block I ordered is a "full cover" model. Covers both GPU's, RAM, the whteverthebuschipsarecalled etc. with either direct contact or through some little "pillow" thingies you cut out with a scissor and stick to the chips and makes contact with the cooler. If I want to oc my machine I would have to solve the Northbridge temperature first, lots and lots of copper there, but it's barely keeping it under 45. How does that work, can it help out any board significantly. No idea. My Asus board has half a tonne of copper there, leading the heat to an array of cooling "fins" around the CPU area. The intention being that the CPU fan would suck air past them as part of the CPU cooling. In the case of passive/water cooling they provided two small fans designed to mount on the copper plating to make up for the lack of air flow. ... So, got home from work yesterday and voided the warranty on my Sapphire gfx card right away, tearing off the stock fan. Applied the thermal paste and those little pieces of "padding" to the various chips on the card. Fixed everything in place and was careful not to tighten the screws too hard. Attached the hoses, put the card back into the computer, switched on the power and... nothing. Oh yeah, forgot to put the powercables from the powersupply back After that, everything seemed to work nicely. Downloaded a little usitility to monitor the various temperatures on the card, everything looking Ok. Then for the big test, playing an hour of The Witcher to give it some workload and things sure started heating up a bit (50-55 degrees) but that was about it. Started an OpenGL screensaver to keep the card busy, checked the battery in the smoke alarm (in case the thing decided to catch fire) and went to bed. Checked the PC again this morning and while still running at around 50 degrees, nothing had fried and it was watertight Best of all, it runs quietly again. Now I just need to put my PC all back together “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 26, 2008 Author Share Posted October 26, 2008 Harddisk Woes! >_ First, one my two new Samsung 640Gb decided that it didn't want to play nice. No big deal, I hadn't really started using it yet. It just kept popping up with a warning in Windows that the disk was bad and that I should back up stuff and get rid of it. About every friggin 15 minutes or so, minimising all other windows, interrupting whatever was doing. Out it went, returned to the seller for a replacement. While waiting for the replacement, my main drive, my Samsung 1Tb disk started getting bad blocks on my C: drive, destroying my Windows installation and making it non-bootable The repair function from the Windows Install disk was no help and so I resorted to the command line option, backing up a few important things (my mailbox) to another drive and took the disk out. Had to use my old PC for a few days. Went down to a local retail store yesterday and grabbed two Seagate 500Gb disks, which are presumably faster, but also considerably noisier than the Samsungs. Got Windows, drivers and the basics up and running again... just to discover that The Witcher stores it saved games on the C: drive in the Documents and Settings folder There are days where I really hate computers. At least my Seagate drives have been running with no problems for two days now. Crossing fingers and knock on wood etc. Oh yeah, while I was at it, I got a glowing plasma ball with little multicoloured lightning jumping around inside to put on top of my PC, powered by the USB port. It was either that or a pair of fluffy dice for the monitor Edit: My "preciousss...." in it's currently still unassembled state “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgon Posted October 26, 2008 Share Posted October 26, 2008 Your own fault for not having proper backup >_ Whatever is important to you can't just be on one physical drive. Na na na na na na ... greg358 from Darksouls 3 PVP is a CHEATER. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorgon Posted October 26, 2008 Share Posted October 26, 2008 I think i'm going with seagate too next time around, they have a pretty solid reputation Na na na na na na ... greg358 from Darksouls 3 PVP is a CHEATER. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorth Posted October 27, 2008 Author Share Posted October 27, 2008 Your own fault for not having proper backup Whatever is important to you can't just be on one physical drive. My important stuff is backed up on an external HDD, like Photo Albums, Serial Numbers, Electronic Invoices, Registration Keys etc. I should probably add my mail folders to that. “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” - Albert Einstein Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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