Monday, November 1, 2010

Fall Has Fell

Written 1 November, 2010

Fall Has Fell

Suddenly it's November. The unseasonably warm October is behind us, and a characteristically cold November 1 is upon us-- at least here in New York, where I am staying for some weeks.

The last posts of the Bob saga were difficult. First, I had managed to weave a complex story that left no easy way for me to write myself out of. Second, Sweetie's desktop is running a fever. The graphics card is at 97 degrees Celsius as I write this, with only the browser open. When I log into Second Life, the temperature goes to 108.

According to SpeedFan, something (I suspect it's the processor) is running at 127 degrees. Whatever is hot, Second Life is moving like molasses, with frame rates about .6 second.

On the other hand, the computer is still working okay with Chrome and has a comfortable chair, so I've been writing here and going across the room to log into SL on my laptop to take photos to illustrate my blogposts. I then paste the photos into the post I'm working on, walk across the room, and resume work on the desktop.

Sweetie was feeling ill this weekend and was often lying on the couch watching video on my laptop, which slowed the process somewhat. I was seriously beginning to think I wouldn't get the Bob Saga finished in time for Halloween, but she rallied and went into muse mode and stimulated my imagination and I finished in time--- just.

The next time I go off an a ramble like The Bob Saga, someone just shoot me, please?

I'm about to have a peek inside Sweetie's desktop to see if I can determine the cause of the overheating. I'm pretty sure a fan has failed. It was making a dying fan noise for a while, and then it stopped. I suspect it's the processor fan. Her computer has a single core chip, which is apparently one that doesn't work without an operating cooling fan. I think the GPU is hot because of proximity.

So hopefully, $10-$20 bucks for a new fan and Sweetie's desktop will be back in business. Then I can attend to the many things I neglected while doing the Bob thing.

6 comments:

Mairenn said...

When your done with Sweeties...I will send you mine. I may be AWOL for a bit to try to get my desktop back to the land of the living. This laptop just whimpers when I try to run Secondlife on it.

Cheyenne Palisades said...

Night before last we blew the dust out of Sweetie's desktop and the GPU temp is way down. It still runs too hot, so the side of the case is off and we have a 15" fan positioned to blow on it if need be. This at least lets us get onto Second Life.

My old laptop just didn't have the graphics capability for Second Life. I could log on, but all I saw was gray goo. My new laptop has great built-in nVidia graphics and actually runs better than my desktop. Alas, laptop graphics are fixed and can't be upgraded. Maybe in a year or so we'll be able to run SL from a browser. That would be handy!

Cheyenne Palisades said...

I just found a great four-core AMD Phenom 9850 processor at New Egg-- only $69.99 with free shipping! And an ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS AM3/AM2+/AM2 Micro ATX motherboard with nVidia GeForce 7025/nForce 630a graphics for $49.99. Guess what Sweetie's getting for Christmas? Sure hope she doesn't read this comment!

Cheyenne Palisades said...

Good luck with your PC, Mairenn!

Mairenn said...

Setting up a 2 gig drive with WinXP to act as a master and will try to slave the faulty drive to remove needed data. Then an Fdisk and reload. The drive checks out with chkdsk and scandisk. Going to check NewEgg, I want to build a new system...but will have to be piece by piece over a few months...at least.

Cheyenne Palisades said...

Mairenn-- I was poking around New Egg night before last. I found a sweet price on a powerful processor and motherboard:

AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition 2.5GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HD985ZXAJ4BGH - OEM

Four cores, and just $69.99 with free shipping!

ASUS M2N68-AM PLUS AM3/AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA Geforce 7025/nForce 630a Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

That's pretty good onboard graphics, and just $49.99 with free shipping.

Looks like 4 gb of fast RAM will run about $85.

Comments say the processor runs like a scalded dog.

I sure wish I could afford this for my homne PC. I'm tempted to snag the processor as a starting point.