Exilian
Off-topic and Chatter: The Jolly Boar Inn => General Chatter - The Boozer => Topic started by: Jubal on December 20, 2015, 10:27:43 PM
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My laptop just died, power just went totally. Suspect it's overheating again, and possibly the motherboard is wearing out at last. I tried rebooting with no joy; after taking the battery out and running off the mains I've managed to power it up and get it functioning again. I'm a bit nervous about its likely future though - may need to be investing in a new computer not far into the future if things are starting to wear out and this wasn't just a freak issue.
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Oh dear - I'm sorry to hear this. Is this the same laptop that was suffering battery problems in the spring? It sounds to me as if something odd is happening with the power supply system.
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Power doesn't seem to be the sole issue this time, I'm back using it with the battery without issue. I think some processor part might have been overheating though.
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Too much pron.
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If you have a small PC enthusiast shop around you, they might just check if they can work out what the problem is for free or very cheap?
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Replacing thermal paste (if you have that sort of thing in laptops, never opened one up tbh but I don't see why you wouldn't) can help with heat as can finding out if anything is taxing your CPU more than it should. Cleaning fans of whatever is in them and creating more efficient airflow can also do wonders.
EDIT: Oh and a BIOS update could also help if your fans aren't going at the right speeds.
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A tool called speedfan shows you every temperature and fan setting on your machine for diagnostics.
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Replacing thermal paste (if you have that sort of thing in laptops, never opened one up tbh but I don't see why you wouldn't) can help with heat as can finding out if anything is taxing your CPU more than it should. Cleaning fans of whatever is in them and creating more efficient airflow can also do wonders.
EDIT: Oh and a BIOS update could also help if your fans aren't going at the right speeds.
In anything other than ~2000 pound gaming laptops accessing anything other than the hard drive and battery is very, very difficult.
Hell in ultralight, unibody laptops like macbooks you can't even get to them without an apple engineer or ifixit team.
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My laptop seems to be happier now it's back in Norfolk, and the fan is quieter again; it's possible that the soot and dust in my Grandparents' house was making the fan quite unhappy.
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In anything other than ~2000 pound gaming laptops accessing anything other than the hard drive and battery is very, very difficult.
Hell in ultralight, unibody laptops like macbooks you can't even get to them without an apple engineer or ifixit team.
Oh. Fair enough.
@Jub it does sound like a fan issue tbh, this article may help http://www.pcworld.com/article/2021499/how-to-clean-your-laptops-cooling-fans.html
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All seems to be going OK since I got home to a less dusty and sooty environment. Life in the old machine yet!
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It's just gone very dead indeed and won't boot up for love nor money. Power light works, hinge switch seems to affect power light, not a peep from anything else.
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So far the only laptop I've found that lasts more than two years of heavy use is this MacBook Pro. Cost the bloody Earth though!
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It's just gone very dead indeed and won't boot up for love nor money. Power light works, hinge switch seems to affect power light, not a peep from anything else.
You'll have to pull the drive and salvage your data (http://i.stack.imgur.com/1UBUx.jpg).
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Right, update:
Am currently using a mix of my tablet and a spare laptop kindly lent to me by Glaurung for the next few days. Have access to internet etc but not to my files (I could pull them from cloud onto the spare laptop and may grab a few that way).
Tomorrow I'm in London for a quiz audition, so I'll take the old machine to a repair place nearby on Tuesday. Assuming that repair is not a completely trivial job (and I'd be VERY surprised if it is) I will also rapidly research & order a new laptop then so I can get on with getting the programs and files back that I need to actually function normally. If I can get the old one fixed cheaply I may well do, if not I might get the shop to do file recovery (which should be simple, I'm sure the HDD is in good working order; not sure if I'll really need to as carbonite will have 99% of my stuff, depends what they charge to get me the 1% that I either inevitably forgot to add to carbonite or was done within about 48hrs of doomsday). I genuinely don't know what shops charge for these sorts of services, does anyone have ballpark ideas/experiences?
Hopefully by the weekend/sometime next week I'll have a new machine, ideally by Fri/Sat so I can spend the weekend getting it functional.
@Flamekebab: Two years? That seems awfully short, though I guess you're possibly doing some super-intensive video stuff that I wouldn't be? The one that's just died is about four years old and it's been used and carried around an awful lot in that time.
@Comrade_general: I will indeed make it so. :)
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Video editing, gaming, transcoding stuff, that kind of thing. Most develop overheating issues around the two year mark - the same has been true for hardware Jenny has owned.
This MBP is the last chance for current laptop tech for me. It's holding up admirably so far, thank the gods.
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This old box did three years, had a heat problem, got that fixed, did another year then died. But yes, it's a pity they don't last long. I'd be tempted to get a desktop except for the fact that I need to be able to move my workspace not too infrequently.
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We opted to get Jenny a Mac Mini for that reason - easy to pick it up and take it with us when we need to go somewhere. I'm sure similar small machines exist too although they're likely to be fairly worthless for gaming.
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(http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/so-pc-what-are-you-doing.jpg)
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(http://i.imgur.com/VFtnJARl.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/VFtnJAR.jpg)
:P
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Video editing, gaming, transcoding stuff, that kind of thing. Most develop overheating issues around the two year mark - the same has been true for hardware Jenny has owned.
This MBP is the last chance for current laptop tech for me. It's holding up admirably so far, thank the gods.
I have mostly only played games with a tiny bit of video editing, but my 4, turning 5 year old HP laptop (i7, 7670m, 1tb 5400rpm Hd) still runs well, and boots in ~30 sec , only problem is that it is rather loud - but again, you've obviously used yours more intensively than me, also I mainly use my desktop these days.
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I tend to be of the opinion that if I pay for hardware I should be able to use it without curtailing its lifespan.
It's lucky that I don't have a hardware decoder for H265 or this machine would be running full pelt 'round the clock!
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Sloth: Yes, I'm sure my laptops would run for longer if I could afford a desktop as well, but I can't Also your laptop would probably have been solidly a price bracket above mine when you got it, I suspect.
FK: I'm not sure I understand you there - surely by definition hardware of this sort is likely to have a its lifespan defined by the level of use?
This is what I'm leaning towards - a new pavilion with pretty reasonable specs:
http://www.johnlewis.com/hp-pavilion-15-ak011na-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-128gb-ssd-15-hybrid-green/p2269733
Thoughts?
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A desktop that is well built and hoovered occasionally will keep running pretty much indefinitely in my experience. Many laptops seem to not be built to be used for much more than a spot of office work and web browsing despite having hardware under the hood that is usually for heavy duty stuff.
Essentially I wouldn't expect miracles out of a Celeron CPU (do they even still exist..?) but a high-end multi-core CPU like an i7 should not be overheating after a couple of years of video editing!
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This is what I'm leaning towards - a new pavilion with pretty reasonable specs:
http://www.johnlewis.com/hp-pavilion-15-ak011na-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-128gb-ssd-15-hybrid-green/p2269733
Thoughts?
Found the same one on Amazon for (however the hell you type the pounds sterling thing)30 less.
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Aye - John Lewis can be worth their slightly higher prices though as they include longer warranties/guarantees and has better customer service if things go wrong. Also parents prefer JL and they may be paying much of the cost, especially as it's my birthday shortly!
Going to hear back about the old machine tomorrow, then when I have a prognosis for that will probably buy new box. Not sure what to do if they can fix the old one easily - try and keep it running for a bit or get a new one anyway to avoid unexpected catastrophes at more critical junctures...
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Aye I just live the frugal life.
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I tend to be frugal on most things - tech I tend to invest more to be sure I can keep it running, and books I just spend way too much on!
But anyhow - any thoughts on the machine itself?
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Looks a little overpowered for Rome. xD
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(however the hell you type the pounds sterling thing)
Alt + 0163 on numpad :), or in the extra - extra symbol section on mobile.
But anyhow - any thoughts on the machine itself?
Assuming you're mainly playing TW, it should run pretty much all of them at very high or max settings except maybe Attila and warhammer.
I'm not sure how much you plan to travel, but if I had around 900 pounds I would personally build a 500 pound desktop and then get a 350 pound laptop, and then put an ssd in the laptop for a total 900. But this may not fit your usage scenario, so if it doesnt, that laptop looks pretty damn good for the price.
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Yet another update!
Got a £90 motherboard repair done on the old computer (The Machine, as I call it), so it's working again now. The guy in the shop didn't tell me exactly what the repair done was and I've not used that place before so not sure how long it will last. Still leaning towards getting a new computer rather than trying to keep this as my main machine, though, given it's getting on a bit and I don't want to go through this again in a few months when I'm writing up my dissertation. I'm going to mull it over for a day or two then probably order something in the next week or so.
@SdS: That's a fair shout, I suspect I do want the power to be portable - as I'm likely to be moving several times in the next 2-3 years and I'm often having to move my desk across the country (when I visit family for example) I think running a laptop as an all purpose machine probably makes more sense :)
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I hate computers yet love them
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They play rtw and that's something.
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They play rtw and that's something.
QFT :)