Random thoughts.... [Tech Edition]

so my 6 year old enermax PSU seems to be showing its age... it's started making odd twittery noises. it is most probably one of the fans (it still uses two, 92 + 80mm), since the noise goes away when i manually (oh yes, i can set fanspeed manually - to a degree) crank the fans up to max. but then again, it get pretty loud (compared to the rest of my PC that is...).
anyway... since i don't want to do any fiddling inside and will need a new PSU anyway at some point in the not to far off future, i just ordered a new one: seasonic x-560. the first one i read up on, and it was just brilliant in all the tests i read... so i had to get it. and no, i don't mind paying quite a price for a PSU.
also, since my keyboard is starting to annoy me, i ordered a steelseries 6g v2. not as pricey as all those flashy gaming type keyboards, but nicer to look at and slimmer than the standard cherry g80 or ibm M. don't quite know about the missing windows-button though, gotta see what i can do about that, because i'll definitely miss that one...
 
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Adunaphel said:
Seasonic FTW. I had one rebranded as Corsair in my last desktop.
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yeah afaik most of the corsairs are made by seasonic... but still, test-results of the actual seasonic are still a tad better. also: i just have to have a ridiculously expensive psu...
 
Shawn said:
That's a great rundown, I appreciate it. I knew about the different kinds of WiFi but wasn't sure about the speeds and which band they used.

How does range figure into that rundown? I haven't really had range issues, just out of curiosity.
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Glad to share the knowledge :)

To be honest I never researched range as my apt is fairly small my understanding is that 11n should have the greatest range of all but of course range and transfer speeds are inversely proportional no matter what.
 
I've been thinking of getting a new CPU, would love some help with how to go about doing it.
I have an AMD Athlon II X4 630 and I'm looking to get something in the Phenom series, I don't run many cpu heavy programs but when I need to use Inventor or Autocad it feels sluggish. I'm aiming to combine this with more RAM, 8 GB, and a 5770. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Topgearfanatic said:
I've been thinking of getting a new CPU, would love some help with how to go about doing it.
I have an AMD Athlon II X4 630 and I'm looking to get something in the Phenom series, I don't run many cpu heavy programs but when I need to use Inventor or Autocad it feels sluggish. I'm aiming to combine this with more RAM, 8 GB, and a 5770. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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Just to double-check, take a look at the task manager (or another monitoring program) while things are "feeling sluggish." You should be able to see if you are running low on RAM or maxing out the CPU (or both).
 
It's both, that's why I'm aiming to combine the RAM and CPU upgrades. The RAM is more severe than the CPU when I'm just running the program but the CPU spikes a lot when I'm drawing in Inventor and when I use tools out of sketch.
 
prizrak said:
Glad to share the knowledge :)

To be honest I never researched range as my apt is fairly small my understanding is that 11n should have the greatest range of all but of course range and transfer speeds are inversely proportional no matter what.
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The thing is, someone told me that 5GHz had less range than 2.4 since it's operating at a higher frequency. I know with radio stations and mobile phone signals the lower the frequency the better the range and wall penetration, but do you know if this applies to routers?

It makes sense that it would follow the same principles as radio stations or cell service, but on the other hand, it would be weird if a fancy 5GHz only 11n router had poorer range than a cheapo 11g router.


prizrak said:
For serious, especially on OS X where everything else is all pretty. (It's been out for a couple of versions already tho)
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Everything else other than the new iTunes icon you mean, right? :p

And yeah, normal versions of Chrome are still using the old logo. I installed it last night to see if I liked it better than FireFox (I did not).
 
Shawn said:
The thing is, someone told me that 5GHz had less range than 2.4 since it's operating at a higher frequency. I know with radio stations and mobile phone signals the lower the frequency the better the range and wall penetration, but do you know if this applies to routers?

It makes sense that it would follow the same principles as radio stations or cell service, but on the other hand, it would be weird if a fancy 5GHz only 11n router had poorer range than a cheapo 11g router.
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Well range is a tricky question, it mostly depends on the power/antena sensitivity. As far as frequency goes the higher it is the harder time it will have going through walls because the wave is more "compact" and is easier deflected by solid objects. Radio/TV/Cell signals run on lower frequencies to go through buildings and such.

Everything else other than the new iTunes icon you mean, right? :p
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Don't remind me...

And yeah, normal versions of Chrome are still using the old logo. I installed it last night to see if I liked it better than FireFox (I did not).
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You will see the light one day :p
 
I never thought I'd say this, but this new router has actually caused more ballache than the last one, because it's all rigged up for IPV6 and the like. It picked up Virgin Media's 'connection-specific DNS' and redirected all searches to their stupid search page instead of letting Firefox handle it.

The fix is to use DynDNS and assign static IPs to every device. Fun. At least I'll only have to do it once, and now I can go back to typing things into the address bar that might be vaguely related to the page I want and getting there first time. :D
 
Matt2000 said:
I never thought I'd say this, but this new router has actually caused more ballache than the last one, because it's all rigged up for IPV6 and the like. It picked up Virgin Media's 'connection-specific DNS' and redirected all searches to their stupid search page instead of letting Firefox handle it.

The fix is to use DynDNS and assign static IPs to every device. Fun. At least I'll only have to do it once, and now I can go back to typing things into the address bar that might be vaguely related to the page I want and getting there first time. :D
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Verizon and Comcast do similar things with their DNS servers. You can do a "opt-out" from the page, but I usually setup OpenDNS and be done with it.
 
I decided to check out and see what networks were around me... a fair amount of 2.4GHz networks around me but the 5GHz spectrum is totally empty.

https://pic.armedcats.net/s/sh/shawn/2011/04/28/wifinetworks.jpg

But I still decided to go with the single-band Asus router... I would have to pay about $40 more for a dual-band router and another $40 to convert my motherboard's internal card and get antennas that support 5GHz, and what would I get for that extra cash?

I have never had range or speed issues with my wireless signal, it was the keyboard and mouse which were picking up interference. I could spend all the extra cash and move my own internet off 2.4GHz, but all my neighours would still be on the same spectrum.

I'm not sure why my old router was using a channel that was being used by others when there's so many unused ones, I'll have to keep using this utility on my new router to make sure its using the least cluttered channel.
 
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