Rated: 60% (2 votes)
Loading ...Akasa Vortexx Neo vs Radeon HD 3850
khenry
The Akasa Neo Vortexx 1000 (See issue 59, p59) may have won an award and in my opinion, lives up to it. However, when replacing a single-slot reference ATi HSF on an entry-level card, you’ll notice a major issue (which you’ll see when I update this post with the linked review in a month) – the front of the Neo, which raises the fan away from the top of the card, doesn’t cover the quartet of chips at the top of the card (hereafter known as the VRMs even though I’ve no idea what they do). These heatsinks are sold as separate items. That certainly wins an award from me as stupid idea of the year, as opposed to just charging more money for a more complete upgrade set.
This is a quick guide to how to add this cooler to the 256Mb version of the 3850 which many gamers on a budget are still running (unless it’s just me).
Firstly you should know how to Apply TIM (or see print issue 46, p98). My GPU’s overheating problems were caused by a leakage of the shipped thermal paste causing the copper base to almost touch the die. This is what led to my 41-50 degree temps when idle in Windows, my 70-degree temps in Source games, the low to mid 80s for Crysis (even when tweaked) and the crashout temperatures of more than 90 degrees in Call of Duty 4. Follow all instructions to Remove Your GPU Cooler (or see issue 56 p90). This will rid you of the stock HSF. Unlike the X1900 series card in the guide, the 3850 GPU looks like an AMD Socket A CPU with a central silver die surrounded by green ceramic packaging. So you can apply your TIM to just the silver area of the chip after you’ve cleaned off the old paste with TIM cleaner. Also apply a smooth but thin layer to the surface of the four “VRMs” at the top – but use the replacement thermal pads as directed in Akasa’s kit on the eight RAM chips that make up the 256Mb.
Once all thermal pads are in place and the GPU and VRMs have had TIM applied, jump back to the Make Your Own Thermal Epoxy guide (Issue 53, p102). The only thing you need to change in these instructions is your preferred brand of TIM – I used the old fashioned 80s variety of Araldite as well, bought from B & Q but either type will do. Also, you can either construct or just buy RAM chip heatsinks as directed in issue 59’s Hands On which is yet to reach the site (See the update for the link to buy them, below). If you are stuck without new ones or old flat motherboard heatsinks to recycle, and you were fed up and wanted a quick fix, then do what I did (Pretty sure CPC won’t vouch for this, but it worked for me)…
Take a pair of recently minted (2004 onwards) 2pence pieces – whose circumference covers two of the VRMs and which are literally 1mm thinner than the Reference HSF’s own layer of copper. Clean them up with any solution famous for cleaning copper coins (that’s Coca Cola, Cillit Bang or just TIM Cleaner). Once dry, use your thermal epoxy to bond them to the VRMs, which have already had that single layer of TIM applied. They need a single dollop each as they have to cover two chips – use the centre of the plumage on the “tails” side as a guide – they need to cover a total length of 5.1cm or exactly 2inches). Then place the two coins on the VRMs and gently press them down (if like me, you’d already fitted the cooler by then then you can clamp the edges of the coins with a pair of scissors to place and press the coins to the VRMs). Then carry out the final fixing of the Akasa cooler with the enclosed washers and screw-on caps on the underside and leave the entire upgrade to “dry”. After a decent 45mins to an hour, slot the card back into its case.
If your case is the Cooler Master RC330 Elite V2 from the Issue 55 Build Your Own PC or Mr Geiseric’s BBB or BBBB PCs on the forums, the rear of the Vortexx Neo won’t stretch to the back of the case like a flush double-slot cooler as shipped with the early Radeon 3870 or GeForce 8800GTS/GTX. Naturally, you should still snap out the blanking plate below the first PCI-E slot to allow some hot air to escape. You have the option of fitting a second 80mm cooling fan to the air vent parallel to the top-most PCI-E slots if you don’t feel that the Neo Vortexx is successfully expelling the maximum amount of heat. Despite the lack of a metal backplane, My tests have shown no increase in the surrounding case temperature of 30 degrees. When you first put the cooler through its paces and leave your PC running for a few hours, that will finalise the natural bonding process of the new layers of TIM. I’ll report my results in the next post but thanks to this Cooler, for my preferred resolutions, the card now lives up to issue 53 and 54’s results, rather than issue 58’s.
UPDATE: If you don’t like the idea of gluing money to your VRMs/other types of capacitor, then you can also obtain the Zalman Coolers pictured in Issue 59’s guide (page 98), separately and direct from good old Scan or quick code LN9907 - they cost £5 for a pack of eight heatsinks in total, four standard “high sprung” memory coolers and another four of the flat, “fanned out” variety (the flatter type are the ones in the bottom right-hand/final photograph). They’re so small when bought with the Vortexx, as to add next to nothing to the delivery charge. I’d be the first to admit they probably look more techy than a couple of coins. Whether they’d match the required length to cover the VRMs/non-memory chips/capacitors on every single graphics card remains to be seen. However, at five pounds, it won’t break the bank to find out.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Master Cooler
khenry
So here I was thinking my build was over and done with, once my preferred PSU had been installed. I opened the case and gave the cabling a second round of general management and reconnected my CPU exhaust fan’s power lead which had become dislodged.
However, I never thought I would see myself typing the following words; following tweaking, I played through and completed Crysis with no further crashes to the Radeon 3850 GPU. Its temperatures no longer breached 65 degrees when playing Cryis compared to the GPU’s crash temperature wall of 90 degrees. Before I could celebrate with a replay on hard difficulty, rather than Crysis proving hard to tackle, it was Call of Duty 4 which proved the more difficult game to configure.
CoD 4 is the one game where a lack of AA could really make the game ugly (even compared to Crysis), but one setting, Specular Map, could stop the game looking as washed out as before, without the use of AA. It didn’t prove reliable, sadly, as the game continued to crash out even if I can get 3-4 hours from it before this happens, whatever the ambient temperature. A jump of 60 degrees from the GPU alone was weird, because the twin 120mm and side 80mm fans, not to mention the 90mm cooler on the Artic 64 Pro, all keep my CPU and general case temp to the 30 degree mark and at the time of the crash, still failed to exceed 35-40 degrees now that the Antec PSU has been installed, which maintains a third 120mm fan to take out the last vestiges of hot air. By elimination, that points to the ATi single-slot reference cooler which is supposed to work, and according to all CPC tests (particularly issue 54’s), was supposed to play at my preferred res even with no AA to jack up the output of heat. I’m not saying it’s rubbish, especially when any Source engine game (including those making use of the new Source SDK circa the Orange Box) continues to work flawlessly.
Unless I have a sample card running hotter than the usual norm, (which I doubt, considering its 290-292W power consumption in its two separate labs tests, and no failures when different writers benchmarked CoD 4), I think I was accustomed to my 6800GT with a Zalman third party cooler which cooled not only itself but also the case space around it. Thankfully, within the last two issues there have been two alternative GPU coolers but this time I’ll plump for the Akasa Vortexx Neo reviewed in issue 59. Its £10 price advantage will equate to free delivery compared to the modern Zalman, and it’s much more likely that a wider range of stores will stock Akasa hardware and I can throw a replacement mouse into the box whilst I’m there.
If the reviewer had no more Crysis crashes using the 3rd party cooler but I was able to tweak that game to work on the reference GPU HSF, here’s hoping it will do the same for CoD 4, when the air is getting vented out of the back of my case again. I’m also happy that it will keep my chosen blue lighting theme going with its UV looks and sport a larger overall cooling fan*. If all else fails I can finally reconnect my second side panel fan which sits at the level of the GPU.
However, despite my new build giving me another interesting twist that won’t cost me too much money to fix, I’ll never trust the lower of two cards in an emerging ATi range ever again. Any graphics card I purchase from now on will have a dual slot cooler from the start, as having to do upgrades to my upgrades to finally attain a stable rig is limiting my gaming options until it’s sorted out.
*Akasa reported no specs in any review or news coverage regarding the Vortexx GPU HSF cooling fan but I am going to use Akasa’s separated 80mm blue LED fans as a rough guide, being the same physical size. It’s rated at 2,500RPM and shifting 32.37 CFM with a noise level of 23db(A). If you went to PC World and bought that fan separately for the side of your case, they cost me £4 but may prove more expensive outside sale times.
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Loading ...More power to the new build
khenry
Not only did I receive issue 59 last weekend but also the two other PSU labs issues courtesy of Faceplant on the forums. That makes my last purchase the most researched for three years as opposed to the general guesswork or emergency panic buying of the last two builds.
As usual, there was a PSU for everyone in the test despite the no-shows and I ignored the award winners and went for the Antec Earthwatts EA 650. Why?
1) I can hide the captive cabling because the case isn’t windowed anyway – having got over my fixation with lights, I can fit another LED/cathode in the case floor to make up for the Antec’s deliberately generic looks, which will take away the red light from the current unit. As admitted somewhere in one of the three labs, captive cabling is slightly more efficient even if it’s cumbersome (though the percentage must depend on how many cables the user plugs into a modular unit).
2) The next step up in efficiency terms, from 83% to 85%, would have cost a minimum of £30 extra for one of the Corsairs. In the real world, the credit crunch (and maybe exploitation of the added sales CPC might generate) has added another tenner to the price all in from eBuyer. The listed stockist sold out BUT was yet another company where you didn’t know if VAT would be added to the **£13** delivery charge on top of the attractive price. Ebuyer had the stock and my April build came from there, so it made sense to stick with them if their couriers were happy to pick up RMAs.
3) The EA 650 matched the price of the predecessor in this machine. Hiper’s 480w Type-R family, which was updated every quarter, achieved 74% efficiency back in issue 26. It’s doubtful that my version would have performed better than the test unit aside from not proving as explosive as later models. Attaining 80% efficiency in my main PC and gaining the ROHS standard, a third 12V rail, a more powerful non-LED fan and native PCI-E connectors for £4 more – ie a higher delivery charge than previous supplier CCL - represents the perfect bargain. Most importantly, I can now cover the overheads of a future GPU like the Radeon 4870.
4) There’s the possibility implied by an American reviewer that like the 430w model, Seasonic may be the true manufacturer for Antec’s Earthwatts range. If this is true, then it’s good to know that they have a more competitively priced model in this Labs, albeit rebadged, which can output the same 83% efficiency even if the cabling isn’t modular and it peaks at lower wattage by at least 50w.
5) It carries its environmental branding over to the packaging, all of which is no-frills recyclable paper and card and if your council won’t take away a slightly shiny box, your supermarket certainly will. By contrast Hiper’s plastic lunchbox, freebie LED fan and other frills may have been a nice way of showing where your money went, but irrelevant for the fairly standard twin 12v rail PSUs it was selling. The money’s in the unit with the Earthwatts range.
6) It’s only a small thing but I don’t care how good that Be Quiet 850Watt model is, if the 650Watt model could feature a standard kettle lead, this one should have done the same. Proprietary cabling is a bad 1990s throwback, as you’re locked in to trying to find a converter or you’re tied to buying spares from just that firm. Hopefully this was a shipping issue for the labs and future Be Quiet 850s will sport a standard kettle lead plug socket like the other 28 units tested, in future quarters, and I wouldn’t personally choose the one on test knowing none of the power leads I have lying around, work with it.
Fitting this PSU will at least represent a 99% completely new build, with only the soundcard recycled from another machine. Since the financial benefits to my power bill will be greatly appreciated, I just hope it arrives in a working condition to make it a straightforward PSU swapout.
It just goes to show that even if you’ve been waiting a long time for a new labs test of something you want to buy, it might throw up more questions than answers. Thankfully the answer in this case was to buy more of the same if I was happy with the first one, and it’ll be a long time before I see myself looking at the 90 Plus PSU badge - that’s as long as these two units will last.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...The Wooden Freeview Box
khenry
Whilst it’s great to have a brand brand new piece of technology in the house such as a LCD or Plasma television, it’s even better to get more than your money’s worth from a technical purchase before you opt for replacement. In modern times this is not fashionable and if you spend below a certain amount, not practical as the item will have been cheaply made.
However antiques restorer Richard Griffiths has taken his father’s 1957 television and spent another few hundred pounds this century on making it Freeview compatible. It’s even more heartwarming that Bush was once a major force in the AV hardware business, aiming for quality and not simply value.
Treating the maintenance like a good PC project, Griffiths had the foresight to update the internals once before, making it capable of receiving the then-modern 625-line PAL transmissions of the 1980s, otherwise the jump to DVB wouldn’t have worked. Another £200 made the original internals peacefully co-exist with modern Freeview electronics but without causing the tube to go bang.
It’s telling that aside from its place in Griffiths’ family history, the fact that it serves as a piece of furniture and not just a television, is the reason it stuck around for half a century. Of course, £113 in 1957 must represent more than a thousand pounds if we’re talking pre-decimalised currency.
As far as I’m concerned, if my Mum’s TV is on the blink, I’ll encourage her to call in the repair man. Her TV’s ten and a half years pales by comparison, but there’s no harm in the continued use of a set which has never had a problem up to now – especially not when a reasonable replacement might cost £500.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Buy Buy Ebay
khenry
Ebay’s Feedback changes have bitten hard and the site’s message boards are awash with sellers falling victim to the random suspension policy of a neutral and negative rating within a month, or Detailed Seller Ratings (the stars) falling below 4.6 out of five stars.
Personally I’m glad that my final buyer of all my old PC Gear, paid up and I sent off my other Radeon 9800 Pro to help towards the cost of the new build.
So now that the final sale is finished, I think that Ebay’s self-inflicted destruction of the feedback system as a whole, plus the wanton removal of sellers without power seller status, makes it the ideal time to quit selling and move with the times.
If Ebay will only treat buyers fairly and you can’t beat them, then it’s time to rejoin them and not bother contributing any further fees to the firm as an unwanted small seller. Ebid is growing even if buyers haven’t moved across there but if you specialised in Buy It Now auctions, then Amazon Marketplace or Play2trade at Play.com are two close equivalents, even if Amazon has fixed brackets for postage costs.
I nearly forgot to mention the much more personal message board sales environments of forums such as PC Gamer, Preys-World and Overclockers, where listings are free, Paypal isn’t forced on people and it’s much easier to split it and offer a discount for using any other payment method and trust is gained from the length of time that you hang around and post.
It’s also great that when I go to the post office now, it’s much more likely to be for sending fun stuff. It’s all too easy for offloading the items to the buyer to become a drudge, especially if you have to find and buy specialist packing eg card-backed envelopes for magazines.
What I won’t miss is the gloom and the paranoia; I previously had a completely open buying policy. Within two weeks of these changes, over 50 buyers were added to my Blocked Bidders list from all the tales of buyers, who, knowing they could not receive a neutral or negative rating, left gratuitous or anti-competitive non-positive feedback to perceived rivals in an attempt to get them closed down. This included one Warhammer model painter trying to shut down another seller of the unpainted pieces!
It’s no surprise that Ebay has increased the list size to include up to 5,000 accounts, more than double the previous length. So when bureaucracy of checking the boards and blocking the nutters wastes too much time and it’s just no longer fun, even if it’s a handy money maker for bills (as opposed to getting rich), it’s time to wind down and see if it’s all over by Christmas.
The last five years were great though, and everything I’ve learned should make my message board, Play2trade or Amazon sales keep going with the same rate of success. Ebay should find out that getting rid of the small timers, won’t necessarily mean that the biggest companies will flood in to take their place. Plenty of those favoured power sellers started out small and kept on going.
However, Ebay is yet another business run like the current British Government which pretends to listen when it doesn’t give a toss and imposes whatever policies it likes. Luckily, you can vote with your feet right now instead of waiting another two years.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...N-Gaged
khenry
Next in my accidental series of big companies screwing up; Nokia. Their N-Gage platform flopped and died five years ago so you’d have thought that they would pull out all the stops to make the follow-up, a success. However, an N-Gage fan site reported that whatever the circumstances (except for repairs), Nokia refuses to let you move your games to another phone when you change handsets.
There’s not much to say after that (except on the relevant forum )- it’s commercial suicide for the platform, for the second time, on a level rivalling Creative’s self-made troubles of the past two months. Some people might try to pirate these games, but it’s unlikely - by looking at the mobile market, people change handsets for looks, camera quality, or just because an operator needs to seal a deal. Expecting people to just buy their games again and give Nokia lots of free profit, or put the cost of replacing N-Gage games into any insurance policy if their “home” handset is lost or stolen, isn’t going to be a popular suggestion.
Copying Steam and keeping an individual account list of games would be a much better idea. Then the software could have been uninstalled on one handset, and downloaded all over again on the replacement model. That’s commonsense though, so Nokia will never do that…
UPDATE: The power of the internet strikes again. Yesterday, Nokia announced that they were working on a solution to the situation which would balance the needs of games publishers and customers. Thankfully the company realised that annoyed customers could just buy a mobile handset from LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola or Sagem. That would cause bigger losses for Nokia than Creative, which has outsourced its sound chips to other board makers even if you didn’t choose to buy specific Soundblaster cards.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Return to Ebay
khenry
On the day that Ebay’s new feedback system came in, the full effects haven’t been realised - I’ll find out after these next auctions are fully completed, as well as the one that I have to list tonight.
However, buyers not confirming their addresses did cause a bigger problem today, if not a new one. Sending items to unconfirmed addresses in the earlier days of Ebay caused items to be returned uncollected from delivery offices, as winners wouldn’t bother to pick them up. That happens less often now and seems to have been stamped out by sellers keeping the money and selling to someone other than the first winner.
However, if you understand English enough to read an auction from outside the UK and bid on it and win it, you should be able to select the Paypal option to confirm an address. It’s his loss anyway as I’m not posting abroad until he confirms. It’s only a minor issue and I do have to go out tomorrow, so stopping at the Post Office again isn’t a problem, it just didn’t need to happen with my first return to Ebay as a seller since New Year.
Despite seeing that Ebay’s a good way to offset my upgrade costs by flogging old hardware from the dead machines, I did miss a trick last month - one-and three day auctioneers of Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 made over £20 profit on the RRP - even if they sent the games by Special Delivery, final bid prices hit £55 to £62.
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Loading ...Service Pack 3rd Time Lucky
khenry
Make that a third installation of XP Pro. To cut a long story short it was my separately downloaded SP3 which caused my crashout, strange GDI32.dll errors and a reinstall last night, though it was largely unattended this time and wasn’t the main PC. Both machines were re-imaged and this time, the update was sought from Windows update only and worked along the lines of the CPC feature. There were no hassles and no errors despite leaving on my Antivirus software’s tray icon when I restarted.
Aside from deciding to auto detect my integrated audio after I’ve disabled it in the BIOS, which can be solved by disabling again in Device Manager, everything else is business as usual and the new build is ready for Vista whenever I want to reinstall it.
Hopefully by the end of the month the magazines, including Microsoft’s official title, will have a universal covermount along the lines of Service Pack 2 four years ago, which will install on any machine. For the moment, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who updated from a release candidate or pre RMS error download, go straight to Windows Update as directed. Or straight to Vista, since its service pack seems to just work…
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Loading ...Vista v XP?
khenry
During my upgrading odyssey of the last month, I installed Windows XP Professional and Media Centre twice and Vistas Business and Home Premium once each. As covered twice by the magazine my old machine could run Vista but why bother. That’s staying on XP.
Vista’s insistence on enforcing upgrade rules with Vista HP is irritating if understandable - the company wants to preserve revenue, so from a clean installation my upgrade refuses to activate and the Business version was only ever a total replacement for XP, or a springboard to purchase a new key direct from Redmond UK. However, there’s another angle to making people install the old version of Windows in order to get to Home Premium. On my new build, Media Centre installed with no errors for the first time in a year. On Socket A and/or Nforce 2 hardware, MCE refused certain updates and the bundled 2005 update CD refused to work - you had to obtain the very same patches from Windows Update. That didn’t happen last month on the new gear.
I’ve enjoyed XP Media Centre on the new build without any problems at all. Even if I’ve used Acronis True Image to make a proper backup of the installation as it’ll fit on a DVD-R, I’m in no hurry to try Vista again. That’s the risk of requiring a full and activated XP installation - users might be reminded of why they liked XP in the first place (even with three year gaps between successive Service Packs) and stick with it.
It’s not practical to treat OS like the latest Harry Potter - one big seller out now and then flock to the next - which I detect in the attitude of the “just get Vista and move on” crowd, none of whom would dig in their pockets to buy your replacement software for anything incompatible. Even if Vista only takes 20 minutes to install, that doesn’t take into account the service pack and then any patches on top. To be absolutely fair it wasn’t Microsoft’s fault that some incredibly slow software developers, some of whom were tardy with Vista support at launch, found problems with Vista SP1. The update must have been through extensive testing, probably via the Release Candidate programme just like the OS so there’s little excuse if you were late with Vista support, to not be ready for the patch (yes you, Zone Labs).
To stop software programs getting in the way of my eventual upgrade though, I’ve loaded up Audacity and will use that to edit audio, which will also work with Vista when the time comes. The open source program can at least act as a stopgap until I feel like buying the latest Vista-friendly version of Wavelab.
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Loading ...They finally work, FFS!
khenry
Over this Bank Holiday weekend I decided on one last attempt to cool this Socket A machine. All the non-essential peripherals or wiring that might have messed up the intake airflow from the Scythe front fan, were removed from the Jeantech Phong chassis. The cables were also re-arranged.
I wanted to keep the case below 40 degrees, lowering my expectations as far as they could go compared to this modern build where they rarely rise above 30 for 2D usage. On the first attempt it mostly managed it, taking 45 minutes and an hour before passing the 35 degrees C/95F and 39 Degrees C/102F marks respectively, on a day where it was 15-17 degrees outside.
First, I wanted to sort out the general system temps. I reinstalled my 6800GT which needed testing anyway to see if it had been killed by the dead Giga-byte mobo. Thankfully, it worked. Its Zalman GPU cooler, installed by the previous owner, subtracted three degrees from the system temperature. It’s ironic that heat was a bigger reason than speed for finally retiring my ATi Radeon 9800 Pro card, even in a backup PC.
For the hardcore, The MSI KT880 Delta motherboard would be seen as pants, requiring a CMOS reflash to clear unsuccessful underclocking as well as the usual overclocking. At least the RAM can clock independently to its full DDR speed rather than remaining at 333Mhz - at the cost of two more degrees. Outside of LAN gaming days, I can decide when to run the RAM at full speed and send the case temp above 35 degrees/95F.
Sadly, the Athlon XP 2800+ CPU, even with the new HSF and TIM application, topped out at 51 degrees. That was still too hot. Underclocking the CPU to 1.7GHz gave a stable 47 degree/116F temp reading from the BIOS and Hardware Monitor in Windows. I’m sticking with that reading at least until I install a PSU with its own cooler. This would supply triple 120mm fan-assisted case cooling to match the new build. With the Antec Earthwatts installed, and after much trial and error, I’ve found the best trade-off between performance and stability without heat-induced errors from Windows. Any remaining hot air not removed by the side or rear fans will rise through the Earthwatts’ front vents. Its silent 80mm rear fan should provide the final exhaust.
Between my “jackpot winning” clockspeed and the default CMOS setting of 1.25GHz, DDR 266 and a 100MHz FSB, the temperature spread is the same three degrees which the Zalman GPU cooler removed. So whilst I wanted to cool the PC down, there was no point making the machine a complete snail to achieve this. Even so, I’ve picked up a £7 Duron from Ebay should the Athlon ever give up and melt down.
Despite having a couple of “Why not just buy a Mac” moments, along with language as blue as the LEDs in my new fans, I wouldn’t change a thing about the last month- it was like reading every issue of Custom PC to date through direct experience. I’ve been reminded that if you get 3-4 years’ daily use from PC gear that was secondhand and practically free (as opposed to paying full price and seeing it depreciate), you should be grateful. If you wish to retain old machines, you do need spares, something I hadn’t practically bothered to do since the days of AT power supplies.
With all the money spent on cooling I could have bought a second brand new case - but that wouldn’t have brought me my crash course in proper cooling including cable management and issue 46’s TIM application article (cheers Combatus). Besides, courtesy of Akasa and Maplins (order code A10BJ, £2.50) I now have enough fan screws to attach a wind turbine to my roof if I wanted…