Be Excellent To Each Other

I think the magic factor you are overlooking is "flatshares." Not sharing a bathroom with semi-strangers is desirable.

The fuck is wrong with a bucket under the bed you posh knobberoonies?

True, but most of my context for comment here is looking at flats in Glasgow and it's not like flat sharing is really a thing here (students notwithstanding). Here, and I suspect in most places outside London, the idea of having to share a flat any time after leaving uni would generally be met with horror. Well, you're not long out of Wales so presumably you know what I mean.

We don't live in the north.

I dream of a bucket, me.

LUXURY!

The Intel NUCs have an IR receiver and I believe with some fiddling can be set to power on with a remote, and you can choose different specs, provide your own HSS/SSD.

They worked out more expensive than I really wanted to stretch to when I was considering replacing my HTPC (an Acer Revo) under the telly, but they seem like quite nice pieces of kit. Read up on them, maybe they'd suit you. Not sure if the built in GPU will be a bit weedy for PS2 emulation as I've not tried it.

Actually, I see you wanted 2 drives in there. Maybe this isn't what you are after (unless you are happy for external drives, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a small case if you then have to have other boxes plugged in to it).

Had a disappointing problem with the Steam controller last night playing Tomb Raider. It's been fine up until now, but when loading up the game using my preferred control scheme the haptic on the left trackpad was going crazy and it was selecting all my weapons at random. I tried disconnecting the controller's batteries, rebooting the Steam Link, rebooting my host PC and nothing would fix it. If I use other control schemes it's fine, but they aren't as good.

Fuck sake. My PC has started randomly doing hard shut downs for no reason I can work out. It did it maybe once last week then a couple of times earlier this week and last night saw it happen about four times.

At first I thought it was linked to having something plugged into the front USB ports but last I had nothing plugged in yet it shut down twice when I was actually using it then another twice when I tried to leave it on over-night for Steam downloads.

I checked the Windows logs and couldn't see anything at all; just complaints from it that the shut downs were unscheduled but nothing prior to them indicating a problem.

My only other area of investigation is the physical power button on the front of the machine. For years now it's been a bit iffy such that when you press it the actual button can slide sideways a fraction behind the case front and get stuck in; which of course means that it powers straight back down again after a few seconds. Jiggling it a little bit after it gets stuck has always popped it back out again and that's been fine so I've never looked into it any further. I'm far from convinced this is the root of my current problem though because in all occasions the power button wasn't stuck in so there's no reason it should be forcing a shut down.

The machine's so old it's certainly not worth attempting stuff like replacing the motherboard but I really don't want to have to upgrade it quite yet because it's currently happily doing everything I need.

Anyway, anyone got any idea of possible avenues to investigate here?

Your PC is currently entering an error mode due to a lack of sufficient LEDs.

Solution: Add more LEDs. Preferably Red.

Your motherboard got any kind of heat sensor that'll tell you if it's getting too warm? Fair chance it's got fan intakes full of dust and is getting too hot because it can't move air around well enough to cool properly. Worth getting a dustbuster inside the case (cue ZOMG hoovering PCs kills components discussion...)

Have you updated the firmware? That was the issue I was describing the other week, and unplugging the X52 etc. made no difference.

Then I actually updated the controller firmware (mainly so that the Link would stop nagging me to) and it cured it straight away.

I've no idea about the heat sensor, I'll see if I can find out. I don't think the thing is too dusty but I'll give it a hoover tonight anyway, that's a good shout. Can I just stick a hoover attachment into the thing or is that just a totally terrible idea?

When I reset it to factory settings I did all the updates, yeah. I think I solved my random freezing issue though - it seemed to be my ethernet powerline adaptor.

I wouldn't be expecting it to overheat if Bamba's had it shutdown overnight just doing downloads - that said there are various programs that can monitor and log temperatures for both CPU and GPU so can't hurt to have them running in the background.

Sounds to me like a dicky power supply or motherboard, or maybe a poorly seated cable somewhere, I'd take a look at that power button though, maybe dismantle the housing and just take it down to the raw switch.

Take it all apart, reseat all the cables, that sort of shizzle.

If it isn't bluescreening and Windows isn't logging anything, you'd have to say hardware really.

Core Temp was what I always used for CPU temperatures, I guess that'd still work OK - http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

Ta, I'll take a look at that app. Does it log temperatures as well as letting you monitor them? Ideally I want stuff logged so that I can just leave it running till it dies then look back at what it was sitting at moments before.

My general plan tonight is:

- Hoover entire inside
- Check all cables
- Check gfx card and CPU are seated okay
- Check fan on PSU is spinning okay and it doesn't smell dodgy
- See if I can fix the power button itself to rule that out
- Check BIOS options to see if there's any setting that would force a shut down in certain scenarios
- Memtest
- Run that app to log ongoing temperatures

I'll bet dicky PSU too. Is the little fan in there spinning properly? Does it smell weird?

Fair point, I'll check that too. That wouldn't be too bad, I don't mind replacing the PSU if it comes to that.

I use Hwmon for temps these days. I'm not sure if it logs temps to file but it definitely keeps your max and min temps all the time you have it open.

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Not only does it do CPU temp but it does GPU/s temps board temps and even better, voltage. So you can have a look at your 12v and 5v rails, though do note sometimes they were wildly inaccurate due to some motherboards.

Also run a memtest, given it's free and check for dust bunnies. Those bastards stop for no man !

Good shout, added to the list!

Welp, I'm fairly satisfied it was a cooling problem. Mostly because, when I opened it up to Hoover it and jiggle things around I found that the square bracket around the CPU that the heatsink clips onto had somehow snapped on one side and the whole heatsink could be fairly easily tipped up on one side so that it came completely off of the CPU. There the vaguest of vague possibilities I somehow did that myself when cleaning dust out of the case but I seriously doubt it. So now I need to source a new heatsink and fan. Also, one of those square bracket things if they don't come with the heatsink.

Something similar happened to Hearthly a while back.

A new cooler will include all of the brackets. Yours sounds like an Arctic Freezer (possibly). You may have to take the motherboard out though.

I'm hoping not as that'll be hell on a stick. From doing some googling there seem to be plenty of coolers that don't even need the brackets and just attach directly to the motherboard with twisting push pins, if the comments on Amazon are to be believed anyway. Am I right in thinking that I can basically buy any cooler that's advertised as supporting my motherboard type (socket 775)? Or is there any more to it?

This is an example of one where the questions and answers mention that it doesn't need a bracket and just clips directly to that motherboard:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0039P9 ... 5+heatsink

Yeah I guess something like that would work

Yeah you can easily get by with one of the push-pin coolers, the ones with mounting brackets are a right pain in the arse unless your case has the motherboard cutout, and even then they're a faff.

I'm a very big fan of these, although you can go cheaper if you wish, this is only £16.

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2

EDIT - I'm a bit curious about the diagnosis though, generally speaking if your cooler isn't making good contact with the CPU, it'll only last a few minutes before overheating, hitting the tjunction and shutting down. If you were able to play games for any length of time beyond a minute or two I'd be surprised.

It's not impossible there's also something else going on with it but I certainly need to fix this first then see how it goes.

Well, we're back up and running; though for how long remains to be seen I suppose. Gratifyingly, when I went into Priceless and asked for a cooler, the very first one the guy offered me was the exact model Hearthly had recommended so hopefully that's a good omen.

I'm looking at the various reported temperatures and for the moment at least they're holding pretty steady in the mid 40s which is hopefully a good sign. Obviously I'm not stressing the machine at all but neither was I really in some of the past times it's shut down and if the cooler wasn't fitted properly I'd expect stuff to heat up alarmingly even at idle.

New laptop time for Hearthly Jnr, she's currently playing WoW on Mrs Hearthly's old Sony Vaio which was purchased in August 2009, so it's really not done bad at all.

It still works fine but it struggles dreadfully with WoW (which has a fairly advanced graphics engine these days), even with all the settings dialled down quite considerably - plus the fans make a proper racket when it's running the game. Also, because it's only got 4GB of RAM it's constantly thrashing the SSD for paging, so that's clearly going to die at some point.

I swapped out the original 500GB hard drive some time ago for a second-hand 128GB SSD, which is now approaching capacity, not least thanks to the 57,000 screenshots of the game that Hearthly Jnr has taken. (Seriously, 57,000 screenshots, and counting, and she wants to keep them all. I already back them up to two separate locations as the loss of them is inconceivable. The entire life of her Gnome Warrior 'Randish' is charted in exquisite detail.)

(It was a very high spec laptop back in the day, costing north of £1100 IIRC, with a proper discrete GPU along with a 1080p screen, Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM etc. The GPU is a Radeon Mobility 4650 with 512MB of its own RAM, and I doff my cap at it for being able to chuck WoW around at 1920x1080 and generally maintain north of 30PFS, albeit at very curtailed graphics settings.)

I'm pretty much decided on this custom spec from PC Specialist, including delivery it comes in at £888 which is very keenly priced, having had a shop around at other haunts I can't see it being possible to match this spec for the same price, and 'gaming laptops' tend to waste resources on RGB keyboards and LEDs all over the place, whereas this comes in quite an austere enclosure.

It's not insanely specced but it should last a decent amount of time, and the GTX965M is a very capable mobile GPU part. I did consider getting her a normal PC but you're looking at around £650 for the base unit, and then extra for a monitor on top of that, so the cost difference isn't that great, and then you've got all the extra wires and stuff that come with a normal PC, whereas the laptop is very neatly self-contained on her table.

Order will most likely be placed before the end of the evening.

WINDOWS 10 IN YOUR HOUSE! DOOOOOOOMMMM!

You might want to get the one on the left a better chair while you're at it.

Not even I am stubborn enough to try and source a new laptop with Windows 7 on it, which I'm sure would be entirely possible, but entering the realms of the foolish I think.

Also as a new build, rather than an upgrade, I'm hoping it'll be free of many of the gremlins that have been encountered elsewhere.



Me and Mrs Hearthly both have exactly the same basic wooden chairs with a cushion on them, we've had them forever and don't feel any great motivation to replace them

I picked up an Asus GL552JX (I think it's that) last month for much less than that, and it's got a GeForce 950M and an i7 in it. Would heartily recommend.

That seems to be around the £850-£950 mark from what I can see?

Apologies in advance for this tedious list of my grievances with the Asus compared to my PC Specialist spec but it's my solemn duty to be a nit-picking arsehole in such matters

The 950M is a reasonable mobile GPU but not great, and having had a Google the GL552JX uses the DDR3 variant rather than the faster GDDR5 version. The 965M is a substantially more powerful part in both scenarios but especially so compared to the DDR3 version of the 950M.

The i7 CPU is considerably more expensive than the equivalent i5, but doesn't offer any bonuses beyond hyper-threading which makes little difference to games.

The screen size is slightly smaller than that on the Vaio, so a slight step backward in that regard. (15.6 versus 16.3, whereas the PC Specialist is an upgrade to 17.3)

Whilst it does have an SSD, it's half the capacity of my PC Specialist spec.

Overall I'm not convinced by the ASUS, unless you got it for something in the region of £700 or so?

I was given a nice laptop recently. Core I7 (sandy) with a desktop GTX 460 in it. It's massive (nearly 18") and it's an Asus ROG so it has overclocking, backlit kb and so on. I had a 64gb SSD lying around so I chucked that in alongside the 750gb it had.

Very nice laptop for free

I did indeed get it for £699, although I see Amazon have now bumped that up by £100.

Fair enough, for £700 it makes sense, pretty much a £200 discount from my spec, and the 950M is still a fairly respectable GPU.

Is that the image that gave you the sweatshop idea?

Ha! No. I got the idea from Reddit.

I was just coming here to give your source as well.

http://imgur.com/a/l5ppq
http://imgur.com/a/CkWVA

Having played a chunk of XCOM with the Steam Controller, this afternoon I've tried some of Shadowrun: Dragonfall. I really like this thing.

Millions of YouTubers can't be wrong, dude.

Fantastic article on Eurogamer.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... e-i5-2500k

Good part of course is that people are moving from 8gb to 16gb any way, so adding the extra ram speed in doesn't even affect the price much.

One of my biggest computing regrets was getting a crap locked I5, not the 2500k. Even more stupidly there was only about £30 difference.

Wanted to mention the keyboard I got last week.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01A ... ge_o02_s00

If you're looking into mechs and fancy giving one a whirl I highly recommend it. Do note though, it's tiny. However, since getting it I have realised just how little I use a keyboard beyond the basic functions, so to that ends it's fantastic. I personally prefer blues myself (preferring the click to the clack of other keys).

I also got one of these for it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00F ... ge_o02_s00

And again it's very good

I've done gone and pre-ordered a Rift, on the basis that it won't be charged or shipped until July which gives me time to get things like wedding payments out of the way

I'm going to need to upgrade my PC. Current spec:

Core i5-4570 @ 3.2GHz (not overclocked)
16GB RAM
Radeon 7970
SSD

Is it basically just the graphics card I'm going to want to replace here, or is the i5 a bit long in the tooth now too?

I don't think you can overclock that CPU. ARC says it turbos to 3.6ghz

http://ark.intel.com/products/75043/Int ... o-3_60-GHz

But that may be on one core only. It's a tough call Gaz tbh. With Haswell CPUs you really need to be at 4ghz for them to shine. Mind you, given you are going to be using a single GPU (I assume?) then it should be fine. You could track down a 4690k but without knowing what motherboard you have (and thus the phases it has) it's hard to tell if you could overclock that.

I'm also assuming your PSU is up to the job (because the 7970 is quite greedy). I dunno. "Suck em and see" really.

Just downloaded and ran Steam's VR test.



Looks like Portal? Portal 2? (not sure I have never played either) and results were pretty good.

I was running the 5820k at basic speed which I think is around 3.6ghz?