PC filter upgrade

If you read my old blog post here, you know that my PC case fans are arranged in a positive pressure orientation and are filtered. Just read the link about the benefits of positive pressure ventilation.


However the current aluminum screen mesh filter on the side and the blue aircon filter on the front do not trap all the dust particles. The amount of dust inside the case is greatly reduced but not eliminated. I can see dust on the fan blades, on the places where the air flows and on the back of my video card. So I decided to upgrade the filters. I used a 3m brand aircon filter.



For a little less than 200 pesos, I get a rectangular piece of filter 18cm in height 39cm long. It is pre folded into 3, this gives you three 18x13cm filters if you elect to cut along the fold lines. For this build, The side intake fan uses up one and the front uses up less than one but the extra was cut off and discarded.

This is more expensive than the old blue one and I hope it catches more dust. I will be monitoring the GPU and CPU temps to see if they rise too much.

For the front filter I continue to use the velcro tape. You can see it as the red and black rectangles on the edges. Since the



Being more transparent, the aesthetics of the case is impaired but for me its an OK compromise.

For the side intake fan I opted to mount the filter on top of the existing mesh filter as a temporary measure. This prevents it being sucked into the fan blades, although the resistance to flow might increase. Some tape and the built in double sided tape is used to help anchor the filter but the main anchor is done by punching holes for the screws.





Ok thats it. Hope this further reduces dust build up. If this works, I'll buy more 3m Filtrete filters as replacements. Its expensive but its less expensive than the parts inside my pc.

Update: I'm saying this again. Yes, filters decrease airflow so you just have to have more fans or more powerful fans to compensate.



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smart money card replaced

My old smart money card is pretty beat up. Physical damage from sweat and flexing inside my wallet. Since its now not working with supermarket cash registers, I decided to replace the card.

Replacement took a week from my local smart office. The number is different from the old one so I had to re-link it with paypal. The linking and verification process worked. So the rumors that smart money is now not compatible with paypal is not true.

crysis2 demo benchmarks

Here are some crysis2 demo benchmarks. Note that this is only DX9. When you use DX 11 expect your framerates to be 20%-40% slower.

source

update: the specs of the pc used was

CPU Processor	Intel Core i5 760@2.8GHz
Motherboard Motherboard	Asus P55
RAM Memory	Chaintech DDR3-2000 4GB (2GB × 2)
Hard drive HDD	Seagate Barracuda (Seagate Barracuda) 7200.12 1TB

source

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The power cable is not connected to the video card

I have a june 2008 vintage PC. A core 2 duo e8200 and a MSI radeon 4850. The power supply or PSU is a dec 2009 vintage OCZ mod X stream pro 600w.


Recently I've been getting this error message. It pops up in red letters during POST, along with a beep - pause - beep  sound. 

"The power cable is not connected to the video card. Please refer to the Getting Started guide for information on proper hardware installation"

This happens if I turn on my PC within say 30 minutes or so of turning it off or if I reboot or if I go to the BIOS setup end exit. Otherwise the PC works normally. Games work.


Using a little common sense (confirmed by googling), I theorized some possible diagnoses. 

• video card
• PSU
• 6 pin cable
• video card's sensor or power chip

My PSU is modular so I tried changing the 6 pin cable with the spare one in the PSU's box. Didnt work. There are 2 free slots on the modular PSU where I could plug the 6 pin pci-e cable and both did not work. A visual inspection of the video card, motherboard and PSU (it was still in warranty so I did not open it and I just looked inside the grilles).

I dont have a spare PSU or video card available so for a week or so I ended up keeping the PC on all the time (except when I went to work or slept for the night) since it does work as long as I let it rest 30 min or so after turning it off.

Eventually I bought a 2 x molex to 6pin pcie cable. It solved the problem.

I have to assume that the problem lies within the PSU.  I am theorizing that the molexes and the 6 pin power cable are separate, maybe connected to separate rails or something and the rail that powers the 6 pin cable is faulty while the rail that powers the molexes still works. 

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Update: after a few days, I'm again getting the red flashing letters if I don't rest the PC for maybe a half hour. I contacted OCZ and they said that the RMA center for OCZ is in taiwan. Its not worth it to mail the PSU to taiwan so I bought a HEC cougar 550w  for php 2700 at PCHub. Unfortunately, this new PSU does not fix the problem. I have to assume that it is the video card. The video card is probably sending a signal to the PC that it lacks power.


Bummer. I'm thinking of buying a radeon 6870 or a geforce 560ti. The geforce has slightly higher power consumption and benchmarks. Both cost 11,000+ pesos. Both can be run by a 550w PSU.

Update: The problem is fixed. It really was the video card. I'll blog about it later


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DUMeter name your price

DUMeter is a nifty little program. Its a network monitoring tool. Primarily what it does is show a graph in a small window. The graph shows the data coming in and out of your PC via the network. So when you download a file off the net or open a webpage you see the graph showing activity.

It has other nifty features like an "alert" whenever more/less than X megabytes of data was uploaded/downloaded/both in Y minutes. The alert consists of a couple of options. I usually use the "shut down computer" if less than X megs were downloaded in Y minutes option. I use this as a safeguard against wasting energy. Imagine if you left your PC on overnight downloading then the internet went down, your PC would still be on, but it would be doing nothing.

Another feature is it can say how much data you have up/downloaded. There are reports that can be customized to hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. You can even export to a spreadsheet.

But this is not freeware. It costs $29.99. I have not seen any freeware with this many features. However, dumeter's publishers allow you to haggle. This is a link where you can make a single offer and if the offer is accepted, you can buy dumeter at the lower price that you specified.

Try it

UPDATE: this offer may not be available in all countries

The disadvantages of the steam client

STEAMWORKS is a digital distribution game service. This is their website. To download and run a steam game, you have to run the steam client or software. Everytime you run it it accesses the internet to validate your login and password. It can store your login and password for convenience. If it detects that there is no internet connection, it will offer to run in offline mode.

Steam has its own disadvantages. the steam client and some steam games can take many seconds to connect to the steam servers if something is wrong with your internet connection or router. Again it depends on your ISP if it is reliable or not. Sometimes I sometimes "hack" games to bypass the steam verification to be able to load up faster. Morally I believe that its OK since I paid for the game and I do not give or sell the game to other people, only I play it. Although the steam client has an offline mode, there is no way to force it to go to offline mode every time. The closest is to run it in offline mode then exit. The next time you run it it will ask you if you want offline or online mode. The steam client takes many seconds to shut down, and if its active when you shut down windows, it will add those many seconds to your windows shutdown time.

Special danger. In some cases, a combination of internet and/or router problems can fool steam into thinking that 1. there is an internet connection, therefore there is no reason to suggest going into offline mode and 2. steam cannot connect. I have not been able to replicate the conditions reliably but it has happened to me several times. If that happens, steam will delete the current password stored (even if you set steam to remember your password), assume that the current password is wrong  and pop up an error message, asking you to input a new password and it will refuse to go into offline mode.  Lets say your internet had say scheduled maintenance for say 1 week and it cut off in the middle of steam's logon sequence. If the timing is right, steam will, as explained above, delete your password and ask for a correct password. When that happens, since your net is down, you can't logon for 1 week. If you can't log on, you can't play your games until you log on. Workaround is a secondary internet connection like a 3g usb stick or a "hack", as mentioned above.

Philippine Blog directory

Someone is starting a directory for Filipino Blogs.

You can see it here. Currently its pretty empty but hey, lets see if it can grow.