RamblingEpic’s Dying Graphics Card

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!

Sapphire Radeon HD 7750
Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 1GB DDR5

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Tech Survey: 19 Nov 2012

Greetings everyone! Two glorious weeks of annual leave are upon me again, and apart from the usual stuff that needs done around the house & the copious amounts of gaming I hope to get done during this pre-festive period, I DO have a lot of content I want to get up here on Tech Leopard and on my other blogs. For now, I’m including a little fun in the form of a tech survey which has been floating around & winged itself my way. If the mood strikes, please feel free to comment with your own answers or blog it yourself.

1. What is your favorite Apple product?
MacBook Pro! As pretty as the iMac is, and dinky as the Mac Mini is, I’m still a laptop girl at heart and nobody makes them as gorgeous as Apple.

2. Which version of Mac OS X did/do you enjoy using the most?
I’m outta the loop a little since my main Mac is still an old, late 2007, white MacBook. I started out on Leopard and upgraded to Snow Leopard – this model of MacBook won’t support Lion or Mountain Lion, though if it did I think I’d be seriously enjoying me some Mountain Lion goodness right now.

3. Do you prefer using a mouse or a trackpad?
Mouse!

4. 10-inch tablet or 7-inch tablet?
10’s nice, but 7’s that bit more portable and comfortable to hold in your hand for extended periods.

5. Do you think you could go an extended period of time (4-7 days) without two monitors?
Ooookay now don’t freak out, but I don’t have 2 monitors to use at home. *ducks* I’m still using a single 22″ monitor here hooked up to my gaming PC and my MacBook via a KVM switch. I get to use dual screens in my job now & feel like it’s spoiled me a bit, so hopefully I’ll be able to add a nice new monitor to my current setup someday soon!

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Site Updates: Nov 2012

Happy November everyone! I trust you all had a good October and a fangtastic Halloween! Again I apologise for the lack of updates, but between having 2 weeks off work where I became completely sucked into Minecraft and my Tekkit server and carrying out my gaming PC’s case swap, I haven’t had the inclination to … Read more