General computer talk/advice

yes, it looks like its one of the screws for the fan base but none of them are missing

edit
lol fan base

 

So, I sold my normal PC's case and motherboard, which means for the next two weeks (until new motherboard and case arrive), I'll be stuck with this ghetto catastrophe:


This, this box here is the only computer in the house now. I'm quite proud of myself that I was able to cobble together enough parts to get back on the internet. This powerhouse sports:
- Intel Celeron somethingorother, single core measurable in megahertz
- Server motherboard with nothing except a few USB 1.1 ports and COM, and BROKEN lan port
- 512MB DDR2
- A power supply that will inevitably catch fire in the near future, 250W
- Two Maxtor 40GB PATA drives, literally taped to the top of the case. No, they're not in RAID, mobo doesn't support it

Right now, I'm on the internet by using my phone's Bluetooth as an access point through a USB Bluetooth dongle in the PC (I had to use a generic bluetooth driver to connect, since the motherboard is technically incompatible with the USB 2.0 dongle). I get about 0.4 Mb/s down and I constantly lose connection, but hey, internet! This computer is terribly overburdened with Windows 7 but it's the only ISO I had lying around (remember, no PC to make another bootable USB!). It takes about ten minutes to boot and as I type, the cursor is a full word and half behind what I'm typing. The right-click context menu freezes the system under the hourglass cursor for a good minute while the HDD grind away. I haven't used a computer this slow since 2006, way back when I was in school. Frith protect me from this madness.

TL; DR - Send help, I'm three gigs into pagefile.

 

Only way to get that kind of damage can only be caused by by pressure.

 

Why did you sell your parts before the new ones arrived?

 

I enjoy pain

(buyer was only available sunday, was planning to order sunday and sell sometime during the week)

 

I have a server question. My teacher has $400 (including shipping) to spend on a server that will be running virtual machines for teaching. He's tasked me with figuring out what components to get (for some reason). It'll have multiple Windows 7/8 VM's and one or two Linux VM's. I know it'll be running Xenserver and I'll probably be setting it up. I've come up with a few pretty solid options for the price and want some input on them. First, is an HP G6 dual quad-core Xeon X5560 (Link to Ebay) for $300 with $50 shipping. Second is an HP G5 quad six-core Xeon X7460 (Ebay) with 8 146GB HDD (Ebay again). A couple more options (Ebay) (Ebay too).

 

I'm not an expert on servers, but for multiple VMs you'll want as many CPU threads as possible so the quad X7460 seems like the best option. Depending on what the VMs do and how many you're running you might want more RAM.

 

The budget is pretty tight, I agree that more RAM would be good to have, possibly a future upgrade. I honestly have never worked with a server before, then again, I don't think the teacher has either...

 

The outer glass is the digitizer. The LCD sits right underneath it. That's what's broken, no idea how it broke though.
--- Post updated ---

If you but the bottom dollar Walmart and Best Buy specials, yeah, they won't last at all. I use a couple Dells daily and they work just fine. My Latitude E4310 and Precision M4500 are both about 5 years old, were bought for cheap on eBay, and are perfectly capable and sturdy. Meanwhile my mom's Toshiba Satellite with a Turion lasted, not even, a year before needing repairs and being a slow worn out POS.

Anyway, my Precision has an i7 920xm, a 4 core 8 thread CPU that will turbo to 4GHz when given a lot of power. IIRC it scored something like 450 in PCMark whatever CPU test. (Base clock is 2GHz and in the test it throttled back to 3.6GHz from a 4GHz turbo setting on all cores.) This laptop was $200 and will probably continue to play Netflix and slightly older games like Fallout 3 for years to come. The latitude is just an i5 whatever with Intel HD stuff. I just use it for school because it's light and decently fast while getting ~4 hours battery life. I think I paid like 60 bucks but it needed a $20-30 motherboard and I eventually bought a new battery rather than use the Chinese off brand crap. Also SSDs for both laptops.

 

Neither have I. My approach when it comes to servers is basically throw more cores/RAM/storage at the problem until you run out of money, if too hot add more fans. Of course you'll need more CPU, RAM or storage depending on the server's purpose.

 

Did a bit of mental math (a lot actually, and I'm really good at it), and I think the quad X7460 is the best option. I could get away with 8+ VM's running at once comfortably, each with 2 cores and 2GB of RAM. More than that would strain, well, everything. So, that'll be my recommendation. He won't like getting the stuff from eBay, but it's all coming from decent enough looking companies and have DOA guarantees.

Side note: I think I might just toy with BeamNG on it before setting it up for virtualization. I know BeamNG doesn't like xeons, but I just can't throw away the chance to play with so much raw power. I'll need to bring my GTX 650 because all the classroom has are 8400GSs or worse.

 

Yeah, sometimes it's cheaper to buy new parts for an old computer. A new computer (by that I mean new CPU, GPU, motherboard, RAM ...) is only intelligent if your old PC/laptop can't handle anymore upgrades.
4Ghz is pretty impessive though. Do you ever need that?

 

Sad news :'(
We've got $500 for everything that is needed for the year, not just for RasPi's and a virtualization server. A server is not an option now. We'll have to figure out another solution for it, probably VirtualBox on each student's computer with a couple large flash drives for the VMs...

 

Just watched a review of the Corsair 600C, and I'm wondering: Why the hell would you make a case where everything is upside down?

There's a reason the traditional airflow is bottom to top, it's basic physics, hot air is less dense and goes up, cold air is denser and goes down. Moving hot air downward is less efficient and can cause weird stuff with air pressure in very hot environments (high-end GPUs exhausting a lot of heat, for example). There's no reason to put everything upside down other than seeing your GPU fans from the top. It's worse for cooling.

 

They are trying to sell their product by making it unique and making false claims as such as design is unheard of. Similar to the wacky 1920-30's experimental medical equipment.

 

OMG

 

Most likely. It is a great case, though. I do like the trend of getting the HDD cages out of the way of airflow, but they could do that without having the whole PC the wrong way around.
--- Post updated ---

So your GPU is using... 33.9 MW?
This belongs in /r/softwaregore

 

I have a bitfenix prodigy m which is also inverted. I ran it upside down once. Zero impact to temps. Go flip your existing machines, yes heat rises but the level in a pc ain't that significant versus the strength of your fans, particularly in a positive pressure system

 

Tried to overclock my R9 280X. It didn't like that... Doesn't help that Sapphire in their infinite wisdom decided to lock the voltage. :I

 

Still pointless, if anything it reduces fan efficiency by a tiny amount. Is there any benefit from having your PC upside down?