The "Quick Questions That Don't Deserve A Thread"...Thread. v5 - Hardware & Software

[QUOTE=ToasterCat;47761191]Does anyone know of a good place I can get older laptops (early 2000s-ish) for a low price? Everything on craigslist here either has a dead mobo, is smashed into pieces, or is so filthy that it could make a septic tank repairman vomit (or it's all of the above) and the thrift stores just assume it's a computer and computers are very high tech and expensive so they charge 400 dollars for a 2002 gateway with 256 MB of ram.[/QUOTE] Ebay? What are you looking for specs wise/budget?

Why are there magnets in hard drives? I mean how come most deadly thing to Hard drive is placed in actual hard drive? That's like storing gasoline beside fireplace.

The magnet is how the hard drive works. Your analogy should be more correct if the fireplace worked via the gasoline.

[QUOTE=arleitiss;47762917]Why are there magnets in hard drives? I mean how come most deadly thing to Hard drive is placed in actual hard drive? That's like storing gasoline beside fireplace.[/QUOTE] The motor that spins the patters works by electromagnetism, same with the mechanism moving the reading/writing arm. Fuckin' harddrives, how do they work?

[QUOTE=arleitiss;47762917]Why are there magnets in hard drives? I mean how come most deadly thing to Hard drive is placed in actual hard drive? That's like storing gasoline beside fireplace.[/QUOTE] The reason why magnets are deadly to hard drives is because they rely on electromagnetism to work ya dangus.

I just opened up one of the broken hard drives (well it worked but it was barely working, very slow and damaged sectors). I noticed if I expose it to air - alarm goes off (literally) When I put cover on, and block all holes - it works. What's up with that? Is that some kind of warning signal when HDD is exposed to air?

what are some typical signs of the CPU running on a unstable OC? I know that my current OC will BSOD if torture tested, but will run fine if ran in any other setting. I've yet to see it BSOD while actually playing a game or using stuff like Handbrake. I've experienced stuttery FPS at times and thought maybe my OC could be to blame? sometimes programs like Chrome will go very slow and stutter as well. [IMG]http://i.cubeupload.com/vUriwc.png[/IMG]

Yesterday my laptop was running fine, battery was holding a charge and all that. Halfway through the day it refused to turn on if the laptop wasn't unplugged, but once it turned on it was fine and the battery worked. Today, it's almost as if the battery isn't there at all, with the laptop losing all power once the battery got removed. In windows it says the battery is fully charged, and the battery indicator lights say it's full. Any thoughts?

I couldn't find the Android thread, so I'm post this here. I'm trying to find an app that will allow me to read pdfs without touching the screen (page turning and zoom features using voice or hand gestures.) Does something like that exist?

ASUS 980 STRIX for 450€ or EVGA 980 Classified for 550€? I cant decide, kind of want the EVGA for the warranty but is it worth it?

I have a MSI Twin Frozr 970 and an Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz S1155 6MB. Was looking for a good guide on overclocking these? Like do I have to fiddle with settings or is there just sort of good general settings I can use?

There are overclocking guides for both CPUs and GPUs - too many to count, and I don't have good ones on hand, so you'll just have to Google them. But they won't give you safe numbers. The reason we can overclock is that not all processors are created equal. During manufacturing they're tested whether they can stably run at stock voltage and clock rate given stock cooling; if they can't, the manufacturer throws them out. As manufacturing isn't exact, some may be able to go higher on stock cooling, or even higher on better cooling, but the maker doesn't care about that, so you have to manually test how far you can push them yourself.

[t]http://a.pomf.se/drmdop.jpg[/t] I seem to be a BSoD magnet. I'm not a computer whiz, anyone care to explain?

Is the STOP code always 0x00000101?

[QUOTE=DrTaxi;47772924]Is the STOP code always 0x00000101?[/QUOTE] First time I got a BSoD with my R7 This is the BSoD's I got with my R9, which is now RMA [t]http://a.pomf.se/nctcaf.jpg[/t]

I just disabled shadowplay and I got massive fps boost in games. Would deleting the whole nvidia geforce experience increase my FPS any further?

[QUOTE=arleitiss;47773608]I just disabled shadowplay and I got massive fps boost in games. Would deleting the whole nvidia geforce experience increase my FPS any further?[/QUOTE] if you're not using shadow play, then you don't really need nvidia experience. You can just keep the gpu drivers and you'll be good. Imo nvidia experience is bloatware. [QUOTE=Over-Run;47772170]I have a MSI Twin Frozr 970 and an Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz S1155 6MB. Was looking for a good guide on overclocking these? Like do I have to fiddle with settings or is there just sort of good general settings I can use?[/QUOTE] I have the same card as you, and while people have a lot of methods to test their oc, this is what I do personally. 1) in MSI afterburner, unlink temperature and maximum power level, and set power level to 110 and temp to 85C 2) launch a benchmark program like unigine valley and rune it at max settings on windowed mode 3) increase core clock by increments of 10 until you start seeing artifacts or crashing. Then turn the core clock down by about 30, this will be your base stable core clock 4) start increasing the mem clock by increments of 20 until you start seeing artifacting and stuff. then turn it down by 50. 5) keep running benchmarks and tweak until the system is completely stable. Stability is dependent on the quality of the mobo and psu too btw! NOTE: I usually don't mess around with voltage, and got my clock stable at around +150 core clock at 1478Mhz and memory clock at +495, or 8001Mhz effective mem clock.

[QUOTE=KangarooSteak;47773686]if you're not using shadow play, then you don't really need nvidia experience. You can just keep the gpu drivers and you'll be good. Imo nvidia experience is bloatware.[/QUOTE] Well I was refusing to get rid of it because I was using ShadowPlay, now I realized that that extra FPS I am getting from disabling ShadowPlay is just totally worth not using ShadowPlay.

[QUOTE=arleitiss;47773696]Well I was refusing to get rid of it because I was using ShadowPlay, now I realized that that extra FPS I am getting from disabling ShadowPlay is just totally worth not using ShadowPlay.[/QUOTE] how big of a boost are you getting?

[QUOTE=PredGD;47773843]how big of a boost are you getting?[/QUOTE] Let me actually test that precisely. Will post back soon. [editline]21st May 2015[/editline] Well, I noticed it's on average 10 fps increase. That's based on driving in city on GTA Online. [editline]21st May 2015[/editline] What's a handy way to store text files in encrypted format? I've restored my lost hotmail accounts which I used 6-7 years ago, and I need to store passwords with emails.

I think something might be wrong with my graphics card, it's a GTX 750. When playing some games, the screen will freeze and get minor corruptions. I lose keyboard input and then it recovers a few seconds later. Pop-up comes up saying that the NVIDIA kernel drivers crashed and that it recovered, but it just crashes again a few minutes later and doesn't recover. Sometimes it won't recover the first time at all, and I'll also get random squares in varying colors across my screen some crashes too. At one point while playing GTA V it froze, and I had to reboot. Windows wouldn't boot and would just flicker a color before going blank and rebooting a few minutes later but that fixed itself. Here's an image I found of the issue [t]http://i.imgur.com/M6aHO86l.jpg[/t] I've tried updating my drivers but no luck, on 350.12 atm. No overclocking Does anyone know what the issue is?

I think I torqued the hell out of my laptop's headphone jack. Now there's a only a loose connection to the left channel. I could theoretically replace it, but I would have to find an identical replacement jack, and I'm just not seeing it right now online. Its one of the headphone/mic combo things too. Right now I'm using a cheapy USB audio device like this that I just happened to have like this. [t]http://uk.connectland.eu/var/product-large/6/638.jpg[/t] It does the job, but the line out is WAYY too powerful. Earbuds are only tolerable at 2 out of 100. My Sennheisers sit at 12. There a bit of low background noise too when its silent. Does anyone have a recommendation for a halfway decent, portable, and modestly inexpensive ($40-50 USD would be my max) USB audio adapter? I would prefer it to have mic in, as I use a Modmic. Buts not not intrinsically required.

[QUOTE=zhalcyon441;47774967] Does anyone know what the issue is?[/QUOTE] This arises here once every three weeks if uninstalling drivers and reinstalling them does nothing It's usually a hardware issue

A bunch of image host related shit seems to of completely fucking died and after having restarted my internet I don't know how to fix it. Could someone give me a hand? My Steam download speeds are fine, videos are loading fine, but some things are just either loading slowly or not at all. Examples of this slow loading are; - Facebook - Embedded Images - Images in general - YouTube thumbnails As said, I've restarted my internet and it seems to of done sweet shit all. [t]http://i.gyazo.com/8255b272e2818eba09f4000543a56716.png[/t] [t]http://i.gyazo.com/7529a36135e18358b484a9444907a706.png[/t] [t]http://i.gyazo.com/c9ba21c081cf3719aedab3a176f1310e.png[/t] In the time its taken to type this post up the image in Demache's post still hasn't loaded. [editline]22nd May 2015[/editline] It's also worth noting I seemingly have no issue on mobile. [editline]22nd May 2015[/editline] Compiling a list of websites that seem to of stopped loading properly [U]on desktop.[/U] - SFMLab. (Not really on phone either but significantly faster. Agonisingly slow on desktop but seems to of come around.) - Imgur links accessed through Reddit. (All fine on mobile.) - Facebook on off with loading wall posts. (No issue so far.) - UPDATE: Most websites I seem to download things from (SFMLab mainly) are now having trouble with the actual downloads, barely hitting 1mbs which they normally do I think. Steam is still fine at a cool 4.2MB/s Another update: A lot of odd images that I access through Google Images are loading incredibly slowly. It isn't happening consistently enough that I can define a pattern.

[QUOTE=Starship;47771617]ASUS 980 STRIX for 450€ or EVGA 980 Classified for 550€? I cant decide, kind of want the EVGA for the warranty but is it worth it?[/QUOTE] I own the 980 STRIX and it's pretty badass. What they did with the heatsink and cooling capabilities is incredible. My GPU idles at 26C with the card fans off and that is something I've never seen before. Rips through every game I've thrown at it, including The Witcher 3 and GTA V, all while being whisper quiet and cool. In-depth if you want a read: [URL="http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/68046-asus-gtx-980-strix-oc-review.html"]Hardware Canucks review[/URL]

[QUOTE=Demache;47776413]I think I torqued the hell out of my laptop's headphone jack. Now there's a only a loose connection to the left channel. I could theoretically replace it, but I would have to find an identical replacement jack, and I'm just not seeing it right now online. Its one of the headphone/mic combo things too. Right now I'm using a cheapy USB audio device like this that I just happened to have like this. [t]http://uk.connectland.eu/var/product-large/6/638.jpg[/t] It does the job, but the line out is WAYY too powerful. Earbuds are only tolerable at 2 out of 100. My Sennheisers sit at 12. There a bit of low background noise too when its silent. Does anyone have a recommendation for a halfway decent, portable, and modestly inexpensive ($40-50 USD would be my max) USB audio adapter? I would prefer it to have mic in, as I use a Modmic. Buts not not intrinsically required.[/QUOTE] I used to use a Sabret usb audio adapter, it worked well until I realized it was fucking with the signature of my headphones, its 10 dollars but honestly it's not particuarly that great of a quality adapter. For something that sounds good I'd recommend the HiFiMe DIY Sabre Tiny for a good sounding DAC for not so much money, unfortunately it would just be the headphone out but it will at least be quality.

[QUOTE=Sai;47779909]I used to use a Sabret usb audio adapter, it worked well until I realized it was fucking with the signature of my headphones, its 10 dollars but honestly it's not particuarly that great of a quality adapter. For something that sounds good I'd recommend the HiFiMe DIY Sabre Tiny for a good sounding DAC for not so much money, unfortunately it would just be the headphone out but it will at least be quality.[/QUOTE] Cool, looks exactly like what I'm looking for.

[QUOTE=Demache;47780070]Cool, looks exactly like what I'm looking for.[/QUOTE] It's pretty much built for efficient headphones in mind so your earbuds and Sennheisers should pair well with it. Hope its to your liking.

[QUOTE=Sai;47780091]It's pretty much built for efficient headphones in mind so your earbuds and Sennheisers should pair well with it. Hope its to your liking.[/QUOTE] Yeah, its not too disappointing that it only does output, I'll just keep the cheap adapter for mic input, as it is adequate for voice chat.

[QUOTE=Demache;47780124]Yeah, its not too disappointing that it only does output, I'll just keep the cheap adapter for mic input, as it is adequate for voice chat.[/QUOTE] Alright thats good, the problem with the cheap adapters is that they can either make your headphones sound too loud, too low, or just plain make them sound worse than they really are. I'm using my player as a Dac+Amp right now in the meanwhile I get something better.