Laptop maintenance

[Sandals]

Well, my custom built laptop is a couple of years old now and out of warranty so I thought it's about time I opened it up and cleaned out the fans and heatsinks n what not. The CPU does generally run hot but it is a quad core in a laptop so that's not exactly uncommon... took it all apart to clean out the old thermal paste to be greeted with the below! Apparently put together by professionals who take great care and pride in their work. My CPU temps have now dropped more than 20 degrees... wish I did this a lot sooner...

[Paul_JJ]

Oh dear... idiots.

 

For such powerful laptop it's best to get the fans which is like a tray and go under the laptop and get the power from the USB, have a look for Antec if they still make one. Would really prolong the life of your laptop - the motherboard in particular.

I prefer custom PC's though and has been building them since 1995 -)

[Sandals]

On 3/15/2017 at 11:11 PM, Paul_JJ said:

Oh dear... idiots.

 

For such powerful laptop it's best to get the fans which is like a tray and go under the laptop and get the power from the USB, have a look for Antec if they still make one. Would really prolong the life of your laptop - the motherboard in particular.

I prefer custom PC's though and has been building them since 1995 -)

Yeh I've got a cooler tray... and I build custom PC's as well!!

I have the laptop so i can play games at work when i'm doing night shifts :D 

[Hudson]

That's shocking leaving the tape on, I had a similar issue with a custom desktop I bought years back, the cpu cooler hadn't been seated correctly on the cpu or had moved during delivery so was running at max temps until I took it off re-applied thermal paste and bolted it back down correctly then all was fine

[Paul_JJ]

Yeah. I've seen that as well. It really is a bad idea to send an assembled PC by post, I learned it the hard way -)

I see what you mean about the night shifts -) I have a PC at work (top i7) with 4 monitors and a laptop and of course a custom build PC at home and a personal laptop which I rarely use. I don't do night shifts, but I'm able to work from home as well, so having a good PC at home does help.

[Sandals]

12 hours ago, Paul_JJ said:

Yeah. I've seen that as well. It really is a bad idea to send an assembled PC by post, I learned it the hard way -)

I see what you mean about the night shifts -) I have a PC at work (top i7) with 4 monitors and a laptop and of course a custom build PC at home and a personal laptop which I rarely use. I don't do night shifts, but I'm able to work from home as well, so having a good PC at home does help.

I mainly play video games... so having a powerful PC is a must and you save so much money building yourself!

[Scoobyghost]

 

I priced mine up for a self build vs prebuild and there wasn't much saved. Plus buying pre-built gave me 5 yrs warranty. Even for accidental damage. The company I bought from want you to open the case and are happy for upgrades while still covering the parts you bought originally.

 

 

Link to what I own; https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-v10-gtx-1070-gaming-pc-lease-for-1-week-system-only-.html#product-details-tab-tab353

 

 

I ended up with a palit 1070. I paid total £1069 but I had to add a Wi-Fi card. Otherwise it was £1036

 

Chillblast seem a top drawer company. Fella was glad to sit on the phone while I picked his brains. I had an issue with the power lead not quite sitting in the socket so if the PC was moved it would switch off. Not a big deal at I wouldn't be moving it but with the cables sometimes tangling I was worried it'd tug it. They just sent me a new one within 24hrs.

[Sandals]

On 25/03/2017 at 9:20 AM, Scoobyghost said:

 

 

I priced mine up for a self build vs prebuild and there wasn't much saved. Plus buying pre-built gave me 5 yrs warranty. Even for accidental damage. The company I bought from want you to open the case and are happy for upgrades while still covering the parts you bought originally.

 

 

 

 

Link to what I own; https://www.chillblast.com/chillblast-v10-gtx-1070-gaming-pc-lease-for-1-week-system-only-.html#product-details-tab-tab353

 

 

 

I ended up with a palit 1070. I paid total £1069 but I had to add a Wi-Fi card. Otherwise it was £1036

 

Chillblast seem a top drawer company. Fella was glad to sit on the phone while I picked his brains. I had an issue with the power lead not quite sitting in the socket so if the PC was moved it would switch off. Not a big deal at I wouldn't be moving it but with the cables sometimes tangling I was worried it'd tug it. They just sent me a new one within 24hrs.

Yeh it seems these specialist companies can do pretty good deals... I prefer the satisfaction of building my own! I don't think I've ever forked out for a complete new system. My dad bought me a PC for my 21st and I've been working on that since... not that there are any original parts left :D

[Paul_JJ]

Yeah, it's a great fun building your own PC and do a research and stuff. I have GTX 1060 By the way, 1070 is a bit too pricey at the moment.

I used to run my own business building/fixing PC's and laptops but got a pretty good job offer I couldn't resist -) especially when you have a small kid, it's a lot easier to have a full time job rather than your own business.

Feel free to ask any questions in regards to the PC's, I'll be happy to help.

[Sandals]

5 hours ago, Paul_JJ said:

Yeah, it's a great fun building your own PC and do a research and stuff. I have GTX 1060 By the way, 1070 is a bit too pricey at the moment.

I used to run my own business building/fixing PC's and laptops but got a pretty good job offer I couldn't resist -) especially when you have a small kid, it's a lot easier to have a full time job rather than your own business.

Feel free to ask any questions in regards to the PC's, I'll be happy to help.

Yeh I'm rocking a 980ti...In that awkward position that the only way to get a decent jump in performance would be to go to a 1080ti... don't have 700 quid to upgrade my GPU!

It looks like my laptop may be on it's way out, got an intermittent fault where the USB ports don't want to work. I initially assumed it was my mouse as it was old and get's abused in my bag. Seems to have been OK for the past few days, will try updating drivers and see if it resolves it permanently 

[Paul_JJ]

I have 1060, I think it's about the same or slightly slower than 980Ti, depends on the game, but 6Gb do help for sure with AA, AF on max -) Just get a second 980Ti and SLI them, will be cool, also SLI is not as good as a good stand alone graphics card.

USB controller could be on the way or just the connector, happens pretty often, on Toshiba especially. Old business series HP never had such problem as far as I know.

[Sandals]

Yeh I avoid multiple GPU's as much as possible... it doesn't work the majority of the time so it's not worth.

The 980ti is equivalent to a 1070... sometimes the 1070 is better and vice versa

[Paul_JJ]

Can you share your 3d Mark 11 results so we could compare?

[Sandals]

12 hours ago, Paul_JJ said:

Can you share your 3d Mark 11 results so we could compare?

I could do but that one is outdated now by Firestrike... Downloading Firestrike now, I'll do 11 also

[Sandals]

3D11 was the performance preset, no others were available with the demo. Firestrike is the Extreme preset

[Paul_JJ]

You can just provide the link:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/11663161

 

My 6 year old CPU seem to perform better -) because it's overclocked. The graphics card is obviously not as fast, but still pretty good for 1060 I think.

[Sandals]

Mine is overclocked to 4.5GHz... 720p isn't the best resolution to run this sort of benchmark

[Scoobyghost]

Never thought to benchmark mine so had a go.

 

 

[Paul_JJ]

Can you run 3DMark 11 with default settings and just post a link here?

720p is good for testing actually as some games can bottleneck either CPU or Graphics card at a higher resolution. But the thing is everyone runs 720p tests, so if you want to compare to the rest, this is what you have to do.

With higher resolutions the AMD graphics cards seem to perform better than Nvidia ones (like 4K or higher), but CPU can be a bottle-neck then, so the test will be ruined even with the fast graphics card(s).