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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
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Monday, April 25, 2005
Finally Got Around to the P4 3.4 EE (warranty upgrade) Wow. Very exciting! I finally got around to replacing my warrantied P4 3.4 EE tonight. I ran it through a series of torture tests, and it seems to be holding up very well. Only issue I see: at full load (running Seti, Prime95, Folding@Home, and Stability Test... pretty DAMN severe if you ask me), the CPU temperature gets up to 64 C. My warning threshold is at 70 C! Not much of a safety factor. I also encoded a 17 minute mpg into wmv (an app that has crashed repeatedly and consistently with the old P4 3.4 EE), and it ran flawlessly to completion. Conclusion: the CPU WAS bad! As a student of science, I'm happy to put closure to this issue. With computers, it's extremely hard to pinpoint the root cause of issues. Bad RAM, bad mobo, fried northbridge, bad power supply, bad IDE cable, loose SATA cable, too much pixie dust, bad BIOS... blah blah blah. It's enough to drive a computer science thesis-seeker mad. In my limited experience, computer problems have always been attributed to poor-quality power supplies, and more often than not, bad RAM. Special thanks goes to a little Canadian company called Eurocom. I bought the P4 3.4 EE from them via eBay. It was clearly being sold as "used", but definitely guaranteed not DOA (dead on arrival). When I first installed the used CPU, I did have to deal with bent pins (not good), but I was able to somehow straighten the pins out and seat the thing... wasn't easy... and definitely a warning sign. But I ran that CPU through a series of torture tests to "burn it in", and the tests ran without incident. After I was convinced that the CPU was good, I left positive feedback for Eurocom on eBay. A few weeks later, World of Warcraft was freezing every time I played it, requiring a hard reboot. And it was totally random. I was totally convinced that it was WoW that was at fault. I started root-causing the issue, removing and reseating video cards, sound cards, and RAM. Issue would not go away. Then I removed sound card altogether. Still, problem was still there. Then one day, I had to encode a video from mpg to wmv... bam! Same problem. Then I knew it wasn't WoW-only... it was a sytem issue. Was a little devastated, since I bought the CPU from Eurocom, as-is and used, plus I already left them positive feedback. I figured I was totally screwed out of the $575 that I paid for it. I called them up, explained to them my issue, and they told me to send it back to them. I was a little weary, but I sent it to them. Guess what? They received the CPU three days later, and called me to see if I'd mind if they drop-shipped a new CPU direct from Intel. Joy! The phone call was around 2:00PM on Wednesday. I received a Fed Ex package the next morning at 10:00AM with a brand new CPU. So, if you're ever considering doing business with a company called Eurocom out of Canada, they are first-rate! Two thumbs up to them! BTW, my CPU is idling nicely at 49 C as I type this. Hopefully, there will not be a followup story on CPU grief any time soon. If all goes well, I may even buy a water cooling kit and overclock the mofo. :) posted by Dino at 8:50 PM (permanent link)
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