Topic: The Generic Computer Advice Thread (Read 572787 times)

bloop_bleep · « **Reply #4290 on:** October 20, 2020, 11:46:52 pm »

Quote from: wierd on October 20, 2020, 11:05:57 pm

If the service is performed by a properly certified technician, etc-- they cannot ignore the warranty claim.

Unfortunately I'm not one of those.

Mine has a pretty good processor at good value, so I suppose the cost of that thing ate into the budget for a proper cooling system for it. I've thought of putting it on top of a plastic tupperware-like container filled with ice or ice packs, or buying one of those big laptop cooling pads (so much for the lap-top part of "laptop"), to even making my own little heat pump refrigerator pad that I can stick underneath it as a project. Not sure if I know enough physics for that yet, but maybe. I don't game much, and when I do it's mostly stuff like DF or C:DDA, so it probably doesn't need to be too powerful.

Quote from: methylatedspirit on October 20, 2020, 11:33:10 pm

Overclockers, man. Extreme overclockers. Extreme competitive overclockers. Those people will literally pour liquid-fucking-helium on CPUs if it means they can get a hundred more MHz over the world record. They will take literally anything (up to, including, and beyond removing the IHS, then replacing the thermal paste with liquid metal) if it means they can say they're number one. They're absolutely bonkers, but I do admire their work.

Connect the "+" side to the "-" side of the battery bypassing all that complicated stuff in between, for maximum efficiency!

wierd · « **Reply #4291 on:** October 20, 2020, 11:55:00 pm »

I would say it is bumping heads with the TDP of the CPU, vs the heat movement capabilities of the radiator, given the confined space of the laptop shell.

Undervolting the CPU will cripple its performance, but put it into the correct thermal production range for the cooling system.

Maybe someday we will see a thermal radiator that also contains those "Over-unity" LEDs, so that the radiator can actively emit IR photons to improve thermal elimination properties of the radiator. But I doubt that will be any time soon.

methylatedspirit · « **Reply #4292 on:** October 21, 2020, 01:04:03 am »

Quote from: wierd on October 20, 2020, 11:55:00 pm

Undervolting the CPU will cripple its performance, but put it into the correct thermal production range for the cooling system.

I'd like to disagree with you there. Undervolting does not reduce performance. If anything, it should increase performance because the processor is thermal throttling less than before. On my laptop, when I did those Cinebench R20 runs, I could see the score rising from ~1600 points stock to 2000 points undervolted. It was free to reach the max all-core speed of 4.0 GHz.

To get technical, here's all the possible reasons my i5-9300H can throttle based on what HWiNFO64 reads:

It's a lot to take in, but do you see anything that would suggest "voltage too low"? There's some for "voltage too high" or "voltage regulator too hot", but nowhere does it even suggest that the processor is smart enough to detect that its voltage is too low and start throttling accordingly. If the voltage is too low, it just crashes. It is unable to recover from such an error. BTW, the "GT" fields are for the integrated graphics; it's the "IA" and "RING" ones that matter here.

I'd like to show you the ThrottleStop interface.

You notice that near the "Limits" button, there's red text that says "HOT"? That means it's thermally throttling (which means I really need to check that heatsink). It shows the reason why it's throttling if it is. In this case, it's throttling because it's reached PROCHOT, the thermal throttling point.

Let's click that "Limits" button. This shows up:

Same story here. "THERMAL" means it's thermal throttling, "EDP OTHER"... that just happens whenever it thermal throttles. I don't know what's going on there. Here, it will tell you why it's throttling in very clear terms.

I'd like for you to undervolt your processor (assuming you have an Intel processor, Core 2 Duo or later). Open up ThrottleStop, dial in a nice undervolt and click on the "Limits" button to see why it's throttling. Run Cinebench/Geekbench/Prime95/anything you want, then look at that "Limit Reasons" window while the benchmark's running. Look at it. Does it ever show anything resembling "VOLTAGE"? It might show "THERMAL" + "EDP OTHER"; that's thermal throttling, but I don't think I've ever observed voltage-related reasons while undervolting. Tell me if it does. If you see "POWER", that means it's throttling due to power limits. It's still better than stock, though, because it's more efficient than it was before.

Starver · « **Reply #4293 on:** October 22, 2020, 09:35:07 pm »

In anticipation of Christmas, both as a gift and possibly for use in a Christmas Lockdown scenario, I'm thinking of getting a relative a large-screened Android tablet that can handle a few simple things that they all can, but decided that Zoom is a must (because I've lugged over my own desktop kit to her place, over the last few months, so she can participate in some Zoomed meetings, but it may not always be possible to schlep over there at whim).

I'm also fairly sure I want it to be Android 10, so it doesn't drop off the back end of usefulness for as long as possible, and based on that *if I was buying today*[1] I've narrowed it down to a good-spec (relatively) cheaper one with the Go version or one almost five times the cost that isn't. Both good makes that I trust, but obviously the first one a 'budget' build in all respects.

I've been bitten by Go before. I once got a Go 9 one (mislead by the shop, in a spur-of-the-moment purchase) that refused to consider installing a very much simple app that I *still* use on an old Android 4 device and was (as in this case) a rather strange but definite key requirement for its purposefulness. Won't appear on the Store app, won't install from the page gone to on the Store website saying it's not supported. So if in the next month or two I find I'm still left with that choice, does anybody know if I'm going to be stung in this key requirement? Not been able to find anything conclusive either way.

(For not much more I could go for a Windows laptop that probably has absolutely no issues running the Zoom executable but, for her own reasons, she refuses to countanance an 'upgrade' in that direction. And I'm not too keen on Win10 myself, so unless I can find (and get working, if that's an issue) a good native Win7, or finagle a Windows-free one to work to this one particular, I'd consider that just too exorbitant an ultimate addition to either of our respective tech-graveyards. Those familiar with my occasionally mentioned habit of keeping on using practically neolithic hardware and systems will understand my own hedging, and it's obviously a genetic trait!)

[1] Actual candidate models will probably change, as online and physical stores rotate stock in the run-up to the season of goodwill and giftgiving and I try to get the best of the deals that roll around, but the relative price-points have been pretty much the same since at least April, when I first had this vague inkling, even if exact model numbers have changed.

methylatedspirit · « **Reply #4294 on:** November 07, 2020, 04:03:16 am »

My laptop seems to have the annoying tendency to bug out and lock the screen brightness at either maximum or minimum when I turn the screen on*. It tends to happen when I leave it on for a long time without restarting, around the 7-day mark, usually. It's annoying because I want to see how high my uptime can get. When it does that, I have to restart, and I can't do anything about it. How do I get this to stop?

Here's a dump of my Computer Overview from SiSoft Sandra:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tell me if this isn't enough.

Three things to note that this dump doesn't make obvious:
a) The integrated GPU inside the CPU is disabled in BIOS, so the system doesn't see it at all. The GTX 1650 is the only thing driving the display.
b) The CPU is undervolted, and the GPU is overclocked. It's possible that these modifications are messing with something in some way.
c) They're both subject to a near-constant load throughout the 7+ day run from bootup to shutdown.

*This thing has a feature where decreasing the brightness using the function keys when already at the minimum brightness turns off the screen altogether. Raising the brightness when the screen is turned off turns the screen back on. Very useful for overnight computation.

dragdeler · « **Reply #4295 on:** November 14, 2020, 11:25:10 am »

wierd · « **Reply #4296 on:** November 14, 2020, 05:41:15 pm »

rule out the ram by running memtest86 on it for a few hours.

If the system is able to do that, and returns no errors, I would say this is a software issue, or an issue with the hard drive.

Ametsala · « **Reply #4297 on:** November 14, 2020, 06:15:44 pm »

Quote from: dragdeler on November 14, 2020, 11:25:10 am

At w7 loading screen, fans flare up as usual but the motherboard starts beeping... I tried to read the code... There is none is just beeps continuously. First time it happened it booted fine and seemed stable, system ran for at least 30 minutes. I restarted because of an installation, same problem. Misdiagnosing beeps, I checked ram and if like fan cables were looking allright.

Are there any errors in the Event viewer?

dragdeler · « **Reply #4298 on:** November 14, 2020, 09:09:31 pm »

Ametsala · « **Reply #4299 on:** November 15, 2020, 08:12:54 am »

I'm not too familiar with the Event viewer myself, but you can use it to check the system's logs. Because the beeping started when Windows was loading, there should be something about it there.

Just writing "eventviewer" in the start menu search box should get you the correct thing, even if your windows language isn't English. I've got Finnish, and it works.

dragdeler · « **Reply #4300 on:** November 16, 2020, 11:23:17 am »

ArchimedesWojak · « **Reply #4301 on:** November 17, 2020, 10:16:56 am »

Starver · « **Reply #4302 on:** November 17, 2020, 10:42:08 am »

Big questions,to which I'll give a wide-ranging single answer: Anything[1] that you can type at the command-line/DOS-prompt you can put in a file to run as if you had typed them. Useful for little frequent/similar jobs you might do, just write what you normally do into the file, instead, and run the file (at the command line, or via a mouse-click) without risk of introducing errors. Well, once the process is error-free, anyway.

I wouldn't jump straight into .BATs (or .CMDs, which are a new[2] 'preferred' way of doing almost-but-not-quite the same thing - as in most things I'd write could be saved either as BAT or CMD and the system would not care) if you don't already understand and use the command-line itself, so I'd first ask what you think you need to know before starting to look for a good tutorial that suits you in that regardm

(Or, if you have specific needs, maybe we can bash out a "well, what *I* would do is..." direct example/explanation for you to pick straight up and maybe adapt.)

[1] Almost. There's some things you need to change/preconfigure slightly due to variable-replacement, but that's beyond your first few steps, probably.

[2] Well, newer than when I started...

ArchimedesWojak · « **Reply #4303 on:** November 17, 2020, 10:50:01 am »

Starver · « **Reply #4304 on:** November 17, 2020, 12:28:12 pm »

Yeah, you could call it Computer Smarts, I suppose.

But to specifically learn about batch-files isn't usually the first port of call these days. In the '80s and early '90s you might have to dive in to adjust the AUTOEXEC.BAT for various reasons. These days you might either go into the Registry (to mess with the <1% of keys that you ought to be messing with), fiddle with the Start Menu (Startup items, where used or go into some Properties dialogue or other (depending on what's wrong/needs making more right). For anything that goes beyond "let the program installer/uninstaller do its job", that is.

Do you ever use the command-prompt? If not, then it's probably a leap to start with .BATs and look to something more GUI-related to start your search for geek-skills. Perhaps learn how the Excel(/OpenOffice/LibreOffice/etc, if necessary) cell functions work; there's a lot of fun to be had with VLOOKUP(), OFFSET(), MATCH(), etc, believe me...

Or learn javascript/HTML5, to create intetestingly dynamic (local) web-pages. If you have a LAMP server (a geek project of its own) then with the PHP (or, by my personal preference, Perl) that is the P you can make server-side dynamic pages. Or Python. All the rage for scripting and various forms of compatible automation, with plenty of How To material. LUA (helpful for things not unrelated to DF)? Or a proper compiled language if you're determined.

Away from coding/scripting (which .BAT files are a quite flexible but still very limited form of), learn Photoshop(/GIMP) skills, or 3D rendering/printing software. Or... or... ...many other things that I could suggest.

I'm sure others here would have their own bunch of suggestions (including not to follow something I suggested). I'm not sure there's a 'generic advice' answer to the question you ask, but maybe if you have an idea (other than Batch files for their own sake... you might as well be interested in learning COBOL - you'd probably end up being paid more, as a contractor) we can probably rustle up something of an opinion or slightly less rough guidance...

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Author Topic: The Generic Computer Advice Thread (Read 572787 times)

bloop_bleep

Re: The Generic Computer Advice Thread

wierd

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methylatedspirit

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Starver

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methylatedspirit

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dragdeler

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wierd

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Ametsala

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dragdeler

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Ametsala

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dragdeler

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ArchimedesWojak

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Starver

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ArchimedesWojak

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Starver

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