PC fettling and repairs thread

[DCBassman]

The Xeon is ticking along with solid reliability in the P9X79 motherboard. I'd ecpect nothing less. You can't mess with it or overclock it at all, it simply does what it does.

 

[Grant Fondo]

The Xeon is ticking along with solid reliability in the P9X79 motherboard. I'd ecpect nothing less. You can't mess with it or overclock it at all, it simply does what it does.

What no OC? Thought Intels were made for big voltage abuse.
When it was cooler got my i9 to 5.3ghz on all 10 cores ... that's nudging 230W, and add in 350W for gpu OC'd.
Both now undervolted until September.

 

[DCBassman]

What no OC? Thought Intels were made for big voltage abuse.
When it was cooler got my i9 to 5.3ghz on all 10 cores ... that's nudging 230W, and add in 350W for gpu OC'd.
Both now undervolted until September.

I just tried the Asus AI tweaker to see if it would adjust anything, but no. Not something I'd routinely do anyhow, just curious!

 

[Grant Fondo]

I just tried the Asus AI tweaker to see if it would adjust anything, but no. Not something I'd routinely do anyhow, just curious!

Assume base clock is locked so raising BCLK to 102 ish should work?

 

[ColinJ]

I'm going to clean up my 10 year old desktop PC and donate it to a friend. He will only use it for web browsing, email, YouTube and some old PC action games so it should be ok for him. I reckon it is about 2-3 times quicker than his current PC.

 

[DCBassman]

Been messing with the low-spec laptops.
The old A100 Toshiba is dying, I think. Will retrieve the RAM and CPU and recycle the rest.
The Asus TP200SA, lowest spec but most modern PC I have, has not fared well on Windows 11. So I investigated Linux again, with a twist.
I'd been using it with a fast 128GB Samsung Fit drive in an equally fast USB port. Well, Linux will allow you to specify that as your main drive. The piddly 32GB installed drive isn't even an SSD, it seems, but an eMMC chip. Jeez, no wonder it is slow. So, nothing whatever to los by giving this a try.
eMMC partitioned as 110MB EFI prtition and the rest is /home.
The Samsung 128GB is root and all else goes there. Using Mint 20.3 Cinnamon. It's still no speed demon, but ti works, and doesn't seem to bog itself down like it did before.
Result!

 

[Grant Fondo]

I plan to dig my daughters old i3 Sandybridge pc out tomorrow and see if I can update/speed up a bit. 10 years old, if I can nab an i7 on the cheap and stuff more RAM in, should be half decent

 

[DCBassman]

I plan to dig my daughters old i3 Sandybridge pc out tomorrow and see if I can update/speed up a bit. 10 years old, if I can nab an i7 on the cheap and stuff more RAM in, should be half decent

If a BIOS update will allow it to go Ivy Bridge, an i5-3470 is a great all-rounder, and not expensive. Otherwise, I7-2600!

 

[dutchguylivingintheuk]

I plan to dig my daughters old i3 Sandybridge pc out tomorrow and see if I can update/speed up a bit. 10 years old, if I can nab an i7 on the cheap and stuff more RAM in, should be half decent

if i recall correctly i-7's of that time where on the pro version of the ivy bridge so you would be stuck with an i5 then. If it does take an i7 it would be an huge boost, but also requires upgraded cooling. as they run hotter.

 

[DCBassman]

I run an i7-2600K on an Intel DQ67OW board, so no need for Sandy Bridge-E. There certainly isn't much choice in LGA1155 i7s. 2600, 2600K, 2700K, that's it, but these are still very good processors.
Mine is using a stock cooler with no issues. Just depends on whether the board will take Ivy Bridge also.

 

[Grant Fondo]

I run an i7-2600K on an Intel DQ67OW board, so no need for Sandy Bridge-E. There certainly isn't much choice in LGA1155 i7s. 2600, 2600K, 2700K, that's it, but these are still very good processors.
Mine is using a stock cooler with no issues. Just depends on whether the board will take Ivy Bridge also.

Regret flogging the 2500K now! 2700K's look to be about 40 quid, so not too bad.
Nagging feeling about doing a better upgrade for £130 - comet lake i3/cheap mob .... got 16gb ddr4 spare to bung in as well? Tough call as that would be way faster.

 

[DCBassman]

The Xeon is ticking along with solid reliability in the P9X79 motherboard. I'd ecpect nothing less. You can't mess with it or overclock it at all, it simply does what it does.

And continues to do so, even after I've managed to overclock it a little, up to 3.3GHz.
The rest of the server has gone off to a new home. Put it on FB Marketplace, and someone promptly drove here from Bournemouth to grab it!

 

[alicat]

Needing a bit of help.

My laptop wouldn't charge yesterday. I left it alone and plugged it in today and it charged and I put it down as 'one of those things'. The same thing happened today.

What can I do to see what the problem is? It's a Lenovo Yoga 310 11IAP. It doesn't owe me anything. I quite like it because I can take it on my travels and not worry about it being stolen.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[DCBassman]

Obvious things first: check charger, cables, and DC input jack for signs of looseness or damage. A way to test for less obvious problems of this type is to see if it runs reliably with the battery removed, assuming that's possible. Other tests are by substitution, ie battery and charger, but this is not usually something that's available.
Another possibility is to see if the BIOS has a battery health check, and see what it says.
The single biggest likelihood is the battery particularly if you've had it, and used it, for some years.

 

[alicat]

^^^ thanks for the pointers @DCBassman