Thursday, August 6, 2015

Virtual Worlds and Windows 10 / meh :(

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Look I am not a Windows person / I have been using it since version 3.0 / it was crap then / is still crap now.

    However it currently is the most prominent Operating System for personal computers.

    I just did an (supposed) upgrade from a dual boot Win 7pro and KXStudio 14.04 Linux.

    For the most part it was rather smooth, took about 2 hours to complete, tripped out my video-driver, so that needed to be completely wiped, and for me this sort of thing is no big deal, but the average  user, I don't know...

    I got to hand it to them folks over there in Redmond , they are definitely on the right track.

    Should you do the UpGrade ??

    Personally I would hold off, until the free-bee upgrade offer is just about to expire.

     It's not ready for Prime Time !

JayR Cela

Monday, August 3, 2015

Virtual Worlds and Hardware / Video Card Thermal Overload / A Very Real Danger !!

By Avatar JayR Cela

    OK lets get something straight right off the bat, I don't have as much time to devote to this blog as I once did, hopefully that will be changing soon.

     However I just have to issue this warning to people that are running top end high power Video Cards, the ones that require extra power connectors and Radiators, Dual Fans, and perhaps Liquid Cooling. These Devices can OVERHEAT !!!!! Big TIME !!!!!!!

     I recently had a Nvidia GTX560 based device just out of warrenty / 3 years / the cheap ass dual fans decided to lock up / due to lack of proper lubrication in the crappy sleeve bearing design used.

    Its a dam good thing I was sitting at the computer and realized something was getting flaky, so I open a component monitoring app that allows you to monitor temperatures, as I watch my GPU temp climb from a very hot 67degree Celsius to 75 to 80 to 85 to 90 to 98 degree and I just yanked the plug, which is not a good idea, I opened the case and placed my hand on the card it was so hot it actually burnt my fingers causing mild blisters.

    This is inexcusable,  shoddy design, and I am not about to mention the Brand Name, because all the Video Card Manufacturer's of Consumer Grade Goods are guilty of this, there needs to be a thermal overload shutdown built into these so called high end monster cards.

    It's damn lucky on my part I just so happened to be sitting at the computer and noticed the problem before the thing actually caught fire.

    All I am trying to say here is if you are running Consumer Grade High End Video / the fans these manufactures are using are cheap ass garbage, so expect them to fail, more than likely just after the warranty runs out. If you are pushing your video card to the max in a virtual world you need to be aware of this.

    Thankfully I replaced the burned up GTX560 with a GT730 - very similar specifications / manufacturer date July 2015 on the 14nm scale process that consumes nowhere near the 165 watt max required for the GTX560 and sips power  at  a meager 35 watts max / and I tell ya what / the specs are so similar between the two of them, for all practical purposes I can not tell the difference.

JayR Cela