graphics card – Tech Leopard

RamblingEpic’s Dying Graphics Card

27 May 201327 Nov 2012 by Drea

A little while ago, I swapped out RamblingEpic’s old PC case for a Bitfenix Merc Alpha & added a new power supply when the old one split up the side (never good, right?!) and started making a God-awful vibrating noise! Since then, we’d done everything we could to source and solve the small whine from his graphics card. The culprit has eluded us to this day, but currently at best guess, it’s something on the inside of the small fan included on the cooler attached. I’ve had the heatsink off completely, the fan’s been painstakingly cleaned out several times until completely spotless and yet the noise remained. We were happy enough leaving the card in as performance wasn’t being affected and it was apparently something RamblingEpic could live with – not so sure I could’ve done the same if it had to sit right next to me!

At the end of October, completely randomly, the whine suddenly evolved into an all-out mechanical cranking noise! Fearing any sort of proper damage, we removed the graphics card altogether and finally caved in on buying a new card. Time to say a fond farewell to the Asus Nvidia ENGT 220 1GB DDR3 and welcome the next phase of RamblingEpic’s gaming!

HTPC/Server: Aug Upgrades

21 Nov 201216 Sep 2012 by Drea

Apologies for this ‘August Upgrades’ post coming a little late in mid September! August became a bit of a whirlwind and before I new it, we were into September and I’d started a new job! Busy, busy times!

Anyway, these are only minor upgrades due to budget this (and last) month, but every little improvement counts and so there’s another, albeit small post to add to the build log. In early Aug, pretty much straight after payday, I picked up a pair of D-Link Powerline Adapters to let us connect the server to the TV downstairs in the living-room where the idea was to have it become more of a HTPC. The other Aug purchase was a Sapphire HD5450 ATI Radeon 1GB DDR3 graphics card. The HD5450’s a basic 1GB card with an all-important HDMI port that offers audio as well as video. This was vital at the time to allow for easy use as a HTPC connected to our TV without having to worry about a separate speaker system for sound. The card copes fantastically with HD content so even BR quality video isn’t an issue. It also copes v nicely with basic gaming and emulators.

Gaming PC: Proposed Upgrades

21 Nov 201225 Aug 2012 by Drea

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Now, to business! With the release of Guild Wars 2 this week, and World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion next month, I’m feeling the urge to upgrade my gaming PC a little. Nothing major since my Hackintosh project is far more pressing at the moment and alas my budget won’t stretch to building a completely new gaming PC – much as I’d love to! Currently, my gaming rig is as follows:

Starfury Gaming PC — My Gaming PC, Starfury 🙂

Antec 1200 Case
MSI P7N SLI Platinum motherboard
2.4GHz Intel Quad Core Q6600
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR2 RAM
500GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
2x 512MB GDDR3 9600GT Nvidia SLI
Windows 7 64bit

Firstly I may start tinkering with the overclock on my CPU again to try and get my 3.0GHz back again. Everything was just that little bit more smooth when sporting 4 x 3.0GHz. I originally was running at 3.0GHz, but when I upgraded my RAM from 2GB to 4GB in Feb this year, I suffered a lot of stability issues. I’d upgraded to 4GB RAM, but since my motherboard’s older now, still DDR2, alas RAM is very expensive so I doubt I’ll be upping this to 8GB anytime soon! It cost £49 just to pick up the cheapest DDR2 2x2GB kit I could find, a price to cringe at considering the same 4GB kit as DDR3 only costs £30 and 8GB barely £35-45. So until my next proper gaming build, the motherboard (an MSI P7N SLI Platinum), CPU and RAM will remain as they are.