In my previous blog post I described how I fixed my Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC graphics card by changing fans and thermal paste. I noticed 7% increase in measured performance. What I left out from the post that I also discovered and observed other methods for increasing the GPU performance.
Fallout 4 came out on year 2015. Before this, a realization came out, being that my old rig could not handle the new game in its current state. What a bummer. But there was a silver lining. Or bronze. Or at least iron, I swear.
A Finnish computer shop had a bundle campaign: Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC graphics card + Samsung 850 EVO 250GB for 399 EUR. I considered this a deal and bought the bundle. I think they might have had free game voucher also in the mix, but Google evades me on this.
The GPU arrived and it had many problems, it seemed. First there were instability problems with strange block garbage. These cleared after I ditched my “high-quality” Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard for Asrock Z77 Extreme4.
One issue was still present, being absolutely horrible fan noise. This had been present from the start. Seriously. You buy the thing, take it out of the box, run some stress on it, and the whole thing rattles like it is going to give out functional smoke any minute.
The thing is, that I was able to fix it. There is video about the results here, check it out first. Then we show you how we did it.
The highly appreciated ISO/IEC joint committee JTC 778.736 has chosen “We value your privacy” as the best meme of year 2019. The award is truly spot-on and I sincerely congratulate JTC 778.736 for their keen eye on following contemporary Internet trends.
If you are like me (which is quite unlikely but still) you really appreciate a clutter-free experience. I had been trying to find a proper watch for months but there seems to be one diabolical design pattern in every combination analog + digital watch. The designers try to fit F-117 cockpit worth of gadgets to the bezel! It just does not work. With tedious work I was finally able to find one simple watch that caters for my tastes, namely Casio G-Shock GA-800-1A. Read below for my introduction about the watch.
I have been using my Thinkpad X230 for 6 years. I have been a bit of a harsh master to it and it shows via all the cracks and loose USB ports. The resolution is also quite tiny compared to modern standards. I decided to get new laptop. I tried first with HP EliteBook 840 G2, but I just couldn’t get used to scrolling without the mouse middle button. I wanted a Thinkpad with FullHD screen, upgradable memory and regular LAN port. X270 is the last Thinkpad to fulfill all the needs, so I got a second-hand one via Finnish online auction. To my surprise the laptop is also able to support 32GB memory stick! Read more to follow the full upgrade process I had with the computer. Continue reading “32GB RAM for Thinkpad X270 (and other pimp-ups)”
I have had troubles keeping my workplace clean. One of the base problems is that I have not had any place to keep my cables. So they have been just laying around like worms after rain. I decided to do something about it eventually. I tried to buy a solution but the designs available were ridiculous. It turned out that this device is at least in Finland so rare that many organizations just gobble up something themselves and go with it. We took the same approach. The result is here:
Have you ever resized your USB stick FAT32 partition in Linux Gparted and then in it has broken something and turned it to RAW format in Windows? I saw this thing happen to me. I figured a way to fix it, so here I present the whole ordeal.
Did you receive the 8050800C error from Windows update while trying to get the Windows Defender updates? I did with my Windows 7 Pro 64. Lots of sites tell a lot of stupid things to try, things that are only there to make the site catch more Google hits to serve more ads. Nobody seems to test their stuff anymore. I did. And I have a working, tested solution.
Terrible news. It seems that the windows scanning solutions leaks handles. I have seen it consume tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of handles. After enough handles are used, Windows crashes 🙁 Rest of the text is kept for posterity.
Recently my father gave me his old multifunction printer. It is a Samsung SCX-3205. It does not have Ethernet port for easy wired connectivity, so I decided to add it as a networked printer via my virtual Windows 7 installation running on my ESXi host. Everything worked fine after installation of the drivers, with one exception, the physical “Scan to”-button. It just didn’t do anything.
After I realized the Scan To button did nothing, I thought that the virtual environment was to blame. I tried to fidlle around in ESXi settings but the button remained mute. Then I hooked up the printer to my desktop machine and started investigating.