PC Tech Thread

The Dell UltraSharp U2515H is £20 more than it was 6 months ago which doesn't compute in my head for IT kit.

#thanksbrexit

Fuck you old racists!

In trying to change the location of my 'system folders' in windows 10, I've managed to bugger up something in the registry I think. The folders have been copied across to the correct HD, but now what should be 'documents' on the left is linked my music folder. If I change the location to point at the documents folder, it changes 'music' too! Even tried using this registry hack, which got rid of the folders from 'this PC' but when they were restores, same problem....

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A PC problem that's really pissing me off.

One of my PCs spends most of its time under little load and has a passive CPU cooler so I don't need a fan. Occasionally it does a load of transcoding which currently sees the CPU temp get up to about 85 degrees.

I want the case fan to turn on at a certain temperature and off when it drops below that. The BIOS utility doesn't seem to make any difference to the fan speed,, just runs at full speed regardless.

LM-Sensors on ubuntu shows the fan speed and CPU temp but can't control them.

I've tried the 3 pin fan that came with the case and a 4 pin PWM fan and neither makes any difference.

Am I missing something obvious. Is there another option?

Fans with built-in temperature cut-off switches don't seem to exist. In theory I guess I could have something activated by USB but that's beyond my very limited programming skills.

What motherboard?

Have you tried an app called fancontrol on ubuntu?

Cases don't have thermometers. Neither do fans.

The sensors are usually on the motherboard or in the CPU.

The fan control points on the motherboard should indicate whether they are sensor bound, i.e. the heatsink always is, and the case fans seldom are.

You may be able to move the case fan lead to another power jumper that has a control and then achieve what you want.

Though... is it an issue? 85'c for a CPU isn't a lot, and the heatsink handles that, and the ambient temperature within the case isn't a big deal and even a slow case fan will clear it shortly (and nothing is going to overheat in the interim).

Did you point the music directory at the same directory as documents? If so, don't do that.

Maybe. I'm backing up all I need to then going to reset windows as there's still loads of unused software lurking on my system, it could do with a good clear out.

You're probably good then.

The truth is in what the command line sees... open DOS, cd to the drive and folder, then dir to list the contents.

You should see the real names, rather than the Windows GUI names.

Nice one, I'll give that a go

Sorry, thought I'd put that. Motherboard is ASRock H81M-DGS R2.0 The BIOS has a whole load of fan customisation available but the fan always runs at the same speed.

I've tried fancontrol. When I run the pwmconfig none of the fans change speed so it says they aren't able to be controlled.

@Velocio I'm mixing terminologies a little. The CPU has one of these http://www.nofancomputer.com/eng/products/CR-80EH.php
as it's passive the air in the case heats up under load which is what I want to turn a fan on to clear.
The temperature I'm measuring is from the CPU/motherboard.

The case fan is actually plugged into the CPU fan jumper, although I've also tried it on the chassis fan jumper. I was assuming that they were sensor bound as there are BIOS settings for fan speed but they don't seem to do anything.

I can find very little info on safe CPU temps. If 85C is OK for two or three hours (and rarely that) then the option is just to leave the passive cooling. It idles around 35C or so so there's no issue there.

Cheers

Aren't those actually libraries as well as system folders. It's a little confusing but from what I remember the Music library on Windows can actually contain links to a variety of folders, one of which can be the Music folder http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/8811-library-include-folder-windows-10-a.html

85'c is fine.

Somewhere above 95'c for a sustained period is tougher. Not because of the CPU itself, but at this point the environment starts to matter and too much humidity and you could be boiling the moisture in the air as it comes into contact with parts ;)

The CPU is good for < 90'c for a sustained period of time. Most CPUs idle at 45-50'c even when doing nothing.

You are unlikely to be damaging your CPU. Additionally, even when transcoding the CPU will be idle quite a lot between buffering to network, hard drives or even to RAM. The temperature is an average anyway.

85 degrees is fine
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000687.htm

I'll do some stress testing to see where temperatures get when I push it for a while and whether it starts throttling at some point.

Although @Sumo in that list an I3 is down as 50°C - 60°C

That's the average. 50'c - 60'c average... peak is way higher.

Sony Vaio laptop I thought the HD had failed as I was getting "cannot find OS" error message on boot.
Created Windows 10 media on USB and DVD on another laptop and installed a new SSD (couldn't clone old HD) and done all the disk partition /setup/MBR things I can but it refuses to boot from either and will boot from a recovery disk but won't do a reset from it still complaining of partition and locked drives. What's the next step?

Probably something to do with the UEFI set up.
Try to enter the bios and see if there is a setting for legacy bios instead of UEFI.
http://www.howtogeek.com/56958/

This is probably a better link http://superuser.com/questions/496026/what-is-the-difference-in-boot-with-bios-and-boot-with-uefi

Had that the other day on a Windows 10 machine, thought it might be terminal disk failure or corrupted boot sector.

Dug into bios and it turned out boot disk settings had changed from SSD & HDDs to floppy & CD so very easy to fix.

Never happened before, suspect it was Win 10 update related although buggered if I can see how or why.

If I 'cross-flash' my TD-W8980 to VDSL enabled firmware, will it make make my internet connection any faster over a standard (not fibre) connection?

That feckin' Dell UltraSharp U2515H is now £270

Fucking Brexit! Tech prices are supposed to drop not fucking increase. Argh!

Ok folks... long story short... I can't instal W10 on my iMac anymore... crazy idea/performance hit running it off a USB drive (flash)?

I have one at work, colours are worse than my really old 24inch Apple Display, which sits next to it. Just FYI.