Half-Saint wrote:

How is a Thinkpad T420 old school? It's a 3-4 years old model, still a bloody great laptop for an everyday user. I wouldn't call that old school or old 😀

They are considered to be classic or Lenovo classic as they have the older style keys and are not ultrabooks unlike current thinkpads.

Question: my little Sempron up there doesn't look like it's ever had thermal paste on it, neither does the OEM heatsink, but they could have been scraped clean for all I know. Both surfaces are completely flat. Is it safe to run without it?

xjas wrote:

Question: my little Sempron up there doesn't look like it's ever had thermal paste on it, neither does the OEM heatsink, but they could have been scraped clean for all I know. Both surfaces are completely flat. Is it safe to run without it?

I would definitely always use it. I even use it on my Pentium1 systems and any system I have to apply a heatsink to. Even though the surfaces appear flat, the slight differences are at the microscopic level and paste forms a thermal bond between the two surfaces.

Any and all CPU's pretty much require it if you want the heatsink to do it's job of removing heat from the chip.

rein_ein wrote:

Wanted some portable craptop that can play 1080p videos and running on windows so i got it,not actually bought but traded mine I […]
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Wanted some portable craptop that can play 1080p videos and running on windows so i got it,not actually bought but traded mine Iphone 4 for this:

Acer icona tab w510
It has dual core Atom Z2760 with HT,2gb of ddr2,32gb ssd and running W10 atm

A year ago I bough an Asus Transformer T100TAL for a similar purpose - portability, but more importantly (and the man reason I bought the thing) it's a small, light x86 windows machine with exceptional battery life and built-in 3G. I use it for mobile internet when traveling, at work and about town (in fact half of my vogons posts are made from it) - surfing the net on a phone is not really comfortable for me. The machine has a Quad core Atom Z3xxx, 2GB or ram and a 64GB SSD. It's pretty speedy for it's specs - in fact it behaves like a desktop computer. Unfortunately build quality is CRAP, so if you ever plan on buying one, DON'T. The touchscreen went to shit, it started registering false touches on the lower edge of the device, and the keyboard dock broke - the cable making the connection between the tablet and the keyboard rubbed against something in the hinge and went to shit. That means no keyboard, no touchpad, and no USB since the only full size USB port is on the dock. To add insult to injury, Asus asks for 45 euro for a replacement cable - highway robbery. For 20 euro I managed to buy two keyboard docks that had liquid spilled on them so the KB part is defective, but I have tons of spare parts and two good hinge cables now.

It's a shame really - the device runs incredibly well for it's specs, battery life is exceptional (I literally charge it every couple of days or so), wifi is great, wwan module is great, build in speakers are nice and loud, but the shit build quality and asus's crap customer service really ruined a good ideea.

Also the d|*kheads at ASUS advertised it as having USB 3.0 when in fact only select models do - and my 3G enabled one DOES NOT. The micro-usb port used for charging is a regular USB 2.0 port, and the one in the dock is USB 2.0 as well. I tried the dock for the non-3g version that comes with a HDD and USB 3.0, and the tablet will not requisite the USB port and HDD (KB and TP work fine). To top it off, they don't provide a USB 3.0 / HDD / 3G version AT ALL (since it would probably eat into their Ultrabook sales). D|%kbags.

Next time I'll extend my budget and buy an Ideeapad.

Since some days ago I'm the proud owner of a Sun Ultra 20 m2 (the case has seen better days, but the internals are flawless).
Basic specs:
Opteron 1218@2.6Ghz
4GB 533Mhz ddr2
Nvidia Quadro 1500 256MB
250GB Hitachi HD sata2

The image of the interior cames from the web, mine is identical except for the fact that it only has one 250gb HD.
It's a pretty nice machine, but probably I'll end keeping the case, after repairing and modding it, and selling the internals (I'm a heathen, I know 🤣 )

Nice! I've never actually used any sun hardware or SunOS myself for anything. I should some day just to learn probably.

very orderly that case 😀 is it prepared for 2-3 huge fans in the frontpanel?

and yes shiva2004, you will burn for giving that away xD

mrau wrote:

very orderly that case 😀 is it prepared for 2-3 huge fans in the frontpanel?

and yes shiva2004, you will burn for giving that away xD

Well, in the lowest part you could put a big fan, but above the drive cage there is a solid metal plate. Yes, it's a clean and orderly case, but it has low upgrade capabilites for it's size, that's why I said that I will probably mod it. (And I will burn for so many things that one more is irrelevant 😉 )

Radeon HD 5770

Radeon HD 5850

Neato.. if a little older. Whatcha using em for? Current games or some such?

Actually, they are just a part of my collection - I have no use for them right now. But I'm going to include these in rather extensive benchmark project of DX10 and early DX11 hardware. No ETA though, it won't be finished anytime soon. 🤣

Found this really cheap and couldn't resist:

Gigabyte GTX 970 Windforce 3X. My sister has the G1 version of this in her PC (higher clocks + backplate). I stuck it in my 8320e rig since it's the only running modern desktop I own.

Nice, my newest video card is still GTX 770. I wonder how cheap was really cheap for you?

When I say cheap, I mean cheap considering how much it costs new (~350e). I got it for 1000 lei witch is 223 euro - and it came boxed + invoce and 2 year leftover warranty.

On the other hand, considering I make about 400 euro / month, it's not really that cheap... oh well - I'll just smoke less / go on a diet and take the subway to work this month 😜

I can't wait to try a SLi setup with these two. Unfortunately none came with SLi bridges and the ones I have are from old 6600 / 6800 cards... not sure if they'll work - or be long enough for that matter..

kanecvr wrote:

When I say cheap, I mean cheap considering how much it costs new (~350e). I got it for 1000 lei witch is 223 euro - and it came boxed + invoce and 2 year leftover warranty.

On the other hand, considering I make about 400 euro / month, it's not really that cheap... oh well - I'll just smoke less / go on a diet and take the subway to work this month 😜

I can't wait to try a SLi setup with these two. Unfortunately none came with SLi bridges and the ones I have are from old 6600 / 6800 cards... not sure if they'll work - or be long enough for that matter..

Just so you know, SLI technology hasn't changed since the Geforce 6600 days. An SLI bridge is an SLI bridge, old one or new ones it doesn't matter. Your old bridges would connect these modern cards just fine and work normally. If it's long enough.

Also it depends on the game you intend to play.. if you're trying to play new games like Star Citizen, or Tom Clancy's The Division, or other new DirectX-11 games, you would most likely be entering cpu bottleneck arena with a pair of 970's on that system. Supposedly it does well with a single card though.

Yeah... don't really care about playing anything on both cards - what I want to do is benchmark! Fire Strike, Unigine Valley, Haven and alike. I also won't be benchmarking on the AM3 machine - in fact I'm not even sure the AMD 970 chipset supports SLi... I have a Z77 mainboard stashed somewhere (MSI Z77A-GD65) as well as a 2500k I can take over 4GHz. I only have two issues - 1. the sli cables I have are too short for two 970 cards installed on the Z77A-GD65 and 2 - I can't use my sister's 970 while she's home since she spends most of her down-time playing ESO or SWTOR....

Sudden even for myself picked up possible i5 upgrade for my secondary pc,comes together with "dead" AsRock H55DE3 mobo

Cool kit. Unfortunately I see bent pins. Maybe you could straighten them?

LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 are on my "to buy" list - I'm hoping to get an 1156 kit soon enough, but I'm having trouble finding a working LGA1366 board. I've had two so far and sold them both like an idiot. One was a gigabyte with USB 3.0 and sata 3 - GA-X58A-UD3R

kanecvr wrote:

Cool kit. Unfortunately I see bent pins. Maybe you could straighten them?

LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 are on my "to buy" list - I'm hoping to get an 1156 kit soon enough, but I'm having trouble finding a working LGA1366 board. I've had two so far and sold them both like an idiot. One was a gigabyte with USB 3.0 and sata 3 - GA-X58A-UD3R

Just tested "dead" board,yep it didnt start with my i3,just like it didn't start with i5 and the worst... my board didnt start with i5,but starts with my i3...
Already try elder bioses,different ram and it combinations,few power supplies.
it's in a power up-power down loop when i5 installed 😠
else gonna try on friend mobo at weekend,who still use i7 870 as main system

Power up -> power down cycles and or 4 short beeps mean - "System timer failure" or "Bent pins on motherboard" the latter can also mean the CPU is bad. Try checking and straightening the pins on the motherboard (some are clearly bent) and then retest it with the working i3 CPU - maybe you can at least salvage that.

Also look for missing SMD capacitors on the bottom of the i5 cpu. That can cause the power loop and above mentioned errors.