[pcguytech]

@ Pico - Still same price a bit cheaper than last time I bought it.
Thermal Paste

BTW, Good luck! with the Poll

[Slamman]

I'd say no to the pinning, I figured it locked more likely. They just don't want too many pinned tpoics per section. As long as there's periodic bumps... should prove if successful

To stay on topic, were we ranting on associated subjects.?.. My current repair is proving still to have some wrinkles, only on one disc tested, it skipped after replacing most everything from one player to another, but it is working for the most part. Bugger

This post has been edited by Slamman on Sunday, Dec 6 2009, 23:42

[ChanandlerBong]

Very annoyed at the minute. Was just about to buy a desktop for £400-very good deal and then the day we were supposed to buy it they put it up £110. No warning, it wasn't on sale before they just put it randomly.

[Slamman]

That's what "layaway" is for, if you have some money to put down. Pawn shops are great in that way, you can layaway with very little money down

[pcguytech]

Dell to Sell PC Factory to Foxconn

QUOTE

Dell Inc. said it reached a deal to sell a personal-computer factory in Poland to Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, a division of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Michael Dell entered the retail PC markets and began cutting costs after returning as CEO in 2007. .Terms of the deal, in which 1,600 Dell employees will be transferred to Foxconn, weren't disclosed. Foxconn will continue building Dell computers at the plant, Dell said. A Dell spokesman declined to comment on whether the Round Rock, Texas, company would close or sell other plants. The deal is the latest example of how Dell has abandoned its once industry-leading strategy of building PCs to order in its own factories. While that structure helped Dell become the world's largest PC maker by volume at one time, the company has struggled in recent years. Since 2006, Dell has been outpaced by rivals Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer Inc., whose outsourced manufacturing operations have become cheaper and more efficient than Dell's. "They've been trying to get rid of plants for some time," said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros. who said the deal is "positive" for Dell since owning factories can be a drain on PC makers' bottom line. "It's just become overhead for them." In addition to getting rid of the Poland plant, Dell this year has closed its factories in Ireland and North Carolina. Last year it closed a plant in Texas. A Dell spokesman said the company still has factories in Texas, Brazil, China, India and Malaysia. Dell's direct sales model-in which the company took orders online and only started building PCs after they were paid for-originally resulted in huge amounts of cash and fast growth. But in 2005, PC sales growth shifted from commercial buyers to consumers, who tend to buy in retail stores where Dell had no presence. Competitors like H-P also found that by outsourcing PC production to Asian manufacturers like Foxconn, they could build huge volumes of PCs for retail stores more cheaply than they could on their own. Dell, meanwhile, kept committing to new factories in the U.S. and Poland and resisted entering retail markets. Sales and profits began lagging; Dell is now the world's third-largest PC maker behind H-P and Acer. To revive the company, founder Michael Dell returned as chief executive in early 2007 and entered the retail PC market and cut costs. Last year, Dell began selling its factories. But that became difficult after the markets crashed in late 2008. The PC market shriveled, making PC factories an unattractive investment for buyers. In January, Mike Cannon, Dell's production chief who Mr. Dell recruited to overhaul the company's manufacturing, left Dell. In the ensuing months, Dell closed its Ireland plant and moved production to Poland. It also raised controversy in North Carolina earlier this year when it closed its factory there that had received tax breaks from the state. Dell has pushed into new markets in recent months. In September, it reached a deal to buy tech-services firm Perot Systems Inc. for $3.9 billion. Since then, Dell has announced that it will enter the smart-phone market.

SOURCE

FOXCONN makes some excellent gaming rigs.

[SagaciousKJB]

Well, we already have had a "tech news" thread tried, and we already have a "Random Questions" thread.

Also I'm opposed to trying to just throw everything into one topic. I don't know what about this appeals to people beacuse it is so disorganized and leads to ridiculously large posts in which people reference posts and information several pages back. It becomes a bit irritating rather quickly, and then of course if it does become large enough it will only be pruned and then all the information inside of it lost.

Past that, this forum isn't really that active anyway, so there's not really a tremendous volume of posts to where this is needed. Past that, if we did do this, I think it would eventually turn into a situation where all of the "chat" about PC Chat would turn into nothing but posts asking for help, which is already the grand makeup of the forum anyway. I think it's refreshing to see a post just discussing some random portion of technology, and if we start to bunch all of that up into one large post it will become monotonous and a bore to read.


It's already here though so people will use it however much they want. If that's a large amount, then it will be bumped to the top. If people aren't interested in posting in it, it will go to the bottom. Either way it doesn't really matter, but you said I had to justify why I said "no"...

[Pico]

Thanks for the good explanation Sags. I understand your points, some are true and similar to what Slam said.
But really, I don't think it'll turn into a "help me" thread as we already have one of those. As for it getting cluttered, that is the nature of general chat topics, even with a set theme such as this one.
I know this section isn't highly active but theres a good one or two dozen of us that frequent the area and as I've said (and as the past page now has shown), we all have small things we want to talk about which a new thread wouldn't warrant so they go unsaid. There's been tons of times where I've passed up posting info because I think it's rather unimportant but still interesting.

As for now, it'll obviously have to fight the tide of the endless help threads made by other forumers passing through...

@Chandlerbong, I hear you on that. We were looking at getting a PC for my brother about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. There were a few at Best Buy online with a Q6600 C2Q, 3GB or so and 500GB HDDs for like $600... then they just seemed to jump to $850 out of no where, then eventually switched to running Q8200's and the like. Sad how some awesome tech sells for nice prices at one minute then boom, gone.

[Slamman]

There is the "random question" but as with my repair, when I got it working, there's that feeling of success you just want to share, it makes you feel good about your ability to tackle those nagging electronic projects, crashes, errors, what have you. So ranting on something, or just basking in the glow of something that worked, that's good in my book. I find YouTube highly enjoyable for that as well, many people will tune into just tech videos and comment, more then I would have expected!

[Xcommunicated]

I can see the reasons for pinning this topic, but if we do, I think it should just be called Random chat rather than trying to cover news and information as well. I really don't think anyone minds if tech news topics are posted so long as people aren't posting every little tidbit of irrelevant news out there. Things like new graphics driver releases, news and rumors regarding future tech, discussion and comparison of tech-site reviews for a tech product, and so forth probably merit their own threads.

Edit - I also think the Reminder about Warez post ought to be copied into the Read Before Posting A Question topic to reduce clutter. Any Objections?

[Cursed]

That all seems fair enough to me. I think this sort of topic is useful since there are times when you want to say something but not create a new topic, and it can't be put into the Random Questions.

[Pico]

Sounds good, about the title change, to me Xcomm. Maybe not specifically "Random Chat" because I know I'll get it mixed up with "Random Questions" and post in the wrong thread a bunch of times
I did think there was already a bunch of pinned threads in this area, which made me feel like this wouldn't be popped up there.
And as for the warez one being merged into the Read Before posting thread, makes sense. Chances are if they're going to read any pinned thread first, it'll just be that one.

@I hear you on that. I know there's been a few tech things I've done that I never posted about. Like when I swapped out the LCD screen from my broken Zune (first gen, it just kept shutting off after the loading screen) into my brothers Zune which had a cracked screen. Those little f*ckers can be a bitch to work with, but I did it, lol!

[pcguytech]

QUOTE (Pico @ Dec 7 2009, 13:13)

Sounds good, about the title change, to me Xcomm. Maybe not specifically "Random Chat" because I know I'll get it mixed up with "Random Questions" and post in the wrong thread a bunch of times I did think there was already a bunch of pinned threads in this area, which made me feel like this wouldn't be popped up there. And as for the warez one being merged into the Read Before posting thread, makes sense. Chances are if they're going to read any pinned thread first, it'll just be that one.

This would be an awesome idea. Good Luck Pico

[Pico]

Soooo... I picked up some thermal paste from Radio Shack... clean off the old stuff, apply the new sh*t. Attempt to re-seat the heat sink... and since the people down at Intel some how think a couple little sh*tty plastic clips are sufficient, I need a new heat sink. One of the clips broke off... and in my rage I chucked the f*cking HSF at the ground and broke another clip. I don't understand what the f*ck could be going through their minds when they decided to make sh*tty plastic clips instead of just using good old fashioned screws. f*ck, if it's cheaper use plastic screws... but these clips are f*cking retarded.
They never stay tight enough to go in the holes in the mobo, and if by some wonderful act of god they actually make it in the hole, good luck extending one with out it popping another out of the whole due to the uneven pressure... if I could meet the guy who designed them I'd literally punch him in his f*cking face.

So... I'm stuck on a sh*tty old PC with an AMD 2800+ and 512mb of RAM. And since I've installed Windows 7 on it, the resolution is off because they don't have any updated graphics drivers to support widescreen. And it's so slow I can't even watch youtube videos. f*ck me.

[Cursed]

When I built my brothers e5200 system for him I had a bit of trouble attatching the heatsink with those ridiculous clips. As soon as I got one side in, the other would pop back out. Even now I don't think it's on perfectly, but as long as it doesn't fall off and keeps it cool I don't mind.

[Pico]

Like before I assumed it was on good enough, but it probably could have been a little tighter. And with the heat problems I was trying my best to get it on as tight as possible... and so many tries with the clips not going in properly just was too much I guess

So hopefully I can save up for a decent one that screws in...

Oh, and thanks for the pin. I'm assuming you did it Xcomm? Took me a minute to find it, I though it some how got bumped down to page 2, I was confused for a minute there
How about changing the poll to "How retarded are Intel clip on heatsinks?" Lol...

edit: I'm looking at these two:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...8-223-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...8-019-_-Product

The second one, being larger, obviously will provide better cooling. Especially seeing as it's got a larger fan PLUS a higher max speed. What bothers me is that it's a 3 pin, so you have to use the analog speed controller
They're both like that... and I hear the finish on them is less than desirable... so I might have to lap it which would be annoying. And as I thought, I'd have to remove the mobo to install which sucks, but it beats the sh*t out of those sh*tty clips!

Anyone have experience with a Zalman HSF? They seem to sell well.
Now, I just need to find an extra $50...

I'm aware this post contains more smilies than legally permitted.

This post has been edited by Pico on Tuesday, Dec 8 2009, 08:33

[3niX]

Well...

QUOTE

How retarded are Intel clip on heatsinks?

In fairness, socket A coolers were even more retarded.

[pcguytech]

Pico - Those Zalman HSF are one of the best CPU coolers out there. If you do decide to get one of these make show you have enough room to install it. Otherwise you may have to remove the motherboard to install it. A install vid on the link below, so you can see the installing process, before you buy.
Zalman

@3unix - I would find socket A coolers quite simple to install. The worse time I had was with a SSF heat-sinks from back then when I use to have a Pentium 4. Because just like Pico mentioned above, my machine at the time also had similar hard plastic clips attached to the mobo which broke off when I tried to replace CPU. Their was no way to repair the broken clips after-wards. So I savaged anything I could and threw the board away.

Congratulations! Pico on the pinned

[Pico]

Thanks for that link pcguy, looks a bit easier than most people made it seem. It'll definitely help if/when I get the HSF.

I've got some more bitching to do. To start, I have a T-Mobile G1 running Android. I've rooted and am running a popular ROM, Cyanogenmod. It has a setting called Compcache which uses the SDcard to speed up the phone... I enabled it last week and got siginificant speed boosts. Then just the other day it started slowing down. Yesterday it kept locking up completely... then it wouldn't boot. In the bootloader it couldn't read the SDcard, so I took it out, put it back in just now. It loads up and runs smooth, except it won't open any apps saved to my SD card... I think it's pretty much dead
Which sucks because the way my phone is set up, I HAVE to have an SD card and I don't have any spare ones anymore.
All of my electronics are slowly breaking on me... this computer is so slow it's not even funny. It's almost out of RAM, I keep getting pop up messages telling me that.

[Xcommunicated]

QUOTE (Pico @ Dec 8 2009, 10:39)

All of my electronics are slowly breaking on me... this computer is so slow it's not even funny. It's almost out of RAM, I keep getting pop up messages telling me that.

It's inevitable. I think my system drive is about to die. My pc is stable and I'm not getting any disk errors or anything, but when I empty the recycle bin or open files, it slow to respond sometimes and the drive makes a loud click. I've had about 5 hdd failures in 7 years from different brands, so I find it laughable when I see fanboys go at it over freaking hdds. "Seagate is sh*t and WD rules!" f*ck you, they're all basically the same mechanical parts and susceptible to failure.

I thought about replacing it with a 300GB WD Velociraptor, but I don't think the minimal performance increase is worth the extra money. I just wish SSDs were much cheaper by now.


And I forgot to delete the poll up there...

[Cursed]

Cough Xigmatek Pico Cough

I agree that the brand of a hard drive makes virtually no different to reliability. In the last ten years I haven't had any hard drive go on my PC and I've had loads of brands. The only failed hard drives I have is a 10GB on a laptop I got for free and a 20GB Maxtor I got for free from school. They're both old so it's to be expected.