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Early morning power outage
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I don’t know what woke me up this morning, but my internal clock wanted me to be up. It was around 7:55 in the morning and I heard my mother say “..woah”. Looking around the room (while still in my bed) I’m noticing how dark it is.
What happened? It wasn’t a storm that blew through. It wasn’t ice, yet the power’s out. So I indistinctly get up to go check the fuse box. Flicked all the fuses. None of them were off. So it wasn’t a fuse popping.
Better go report the outage on my phone, then. Check our power company, and notice noone was reporting this. So I’m trying to report the problem. My mother interrupts
me, getting anxious. Tell her to wait. 5 seconds later, someone else has already reported the outage. Estimated restoration time is 10am. About 2 hours from now. And I see the source of the outage, affecting 4,000 customers right now, in the downtown area. Seems someone hit a telephone pole with their car, that just so happens to be connected to one of the sub-stations which controls a quarter of this city’s power. Great. Not the first time I’ve seen this, though.
Welp, can’t do much. Might as well head back to bed and sleep the time away for when power is restored. And it was restored a half an hour before 10am.
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Asking my friends for help
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Since I no longer have to wonder if what I’m seeing is thermal throttling or not (it is) and with all my plans in place… I just have to wait to see if I can either get someone to come here to repaste the paste, or go up to them via Uber. The one I tried contacting last night has yet to reach me, but I bet their response will be “sorry, we only work on
laptops” or “sorry, we don’t do onsite visits for your case”. But there are others out
there. Surely.
Meanwhile, I wanted to discuss with my friends that whole ‘get another card to act as a fail-safe incase I fuck up’ plan incase I have to do this myself. But finding friends that actually have built a computer, was kind of rare. The only one that was actually informed enough, was Inari. But he wasn’t my first pick. I’ll explain later.
First I asked Ferret, one of Jero’s friends who just happened to be on at the time. I thought for sure, he would know how to build computers.. and he doesn’t. Well, he kinda does, but he’s had a bad history with PC Part Picker, where it claims he’s good yet.. bad stuff happens to him. Said blue smoke was coming from his.. what was it again? Fan controller or something? It had something to do with fans, but I forgot what it was. So if it was his fan controller, that means the blue smoke…. was coming from his motherboard. Oh
fuck.
So he would rather “blow two grand on a prebuilt”. ..I wish I had your kind of disposable income, Ferret. I also wish I was able to save money for myself instead of for an in-home generator (with my mother throwing money in my savings account for it).
–
I then went to Toucan, thinking he might’ve built a computer. He has, but.. well sadly I cannot remember everything he said. The only thing I remember quite well, is the ‘he can’t help me’ part. ..Yeah. So this was a mistake asking him. Oh wait, I also remember he’s the second person I know that doesn’t know a GPU has thermal paste. He kept assuming I’m talking about my CPU.
At this point I was thinking of asking Inari, but I just felt it wouldn’t work as he’s a fursuit maker, not a PC builder (at least I don’t know him ever discussing PC parts). Plus he isn’t in the US. I need to find someone who’s in the US.
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So next was Lostwolf. He hasn’t built a PC but he knows someone in his group that has. And then he spent most of the time spinning around me, asking questions of stuff I have already tried and didn’t work (as I’m really sick and tired of re-explaining my issue, word per word).
He wanted me to relax and watch videos with his friends, which I tried to do. But my mind kept on swarming of things I could literally do right now, but am too scared to do them. If only I had the courage to just go on and replace the paste myself. But I had questions if I even bought the right paste for the job.
Eventually I had enough ‘relaxing’ and finally caved in to see Inari. Even if he can’t help me, maybe he can reference me to someone who can.
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And finally, we have Inari. And much to my surprise, nearly everyone there has built a computer. Inari especially. To me it seemed he knew what he was talking about, staring at one of his friends and saying “I know of an upgrade for you”. So I’m thinking “ok, this is perfect!” But I was struggling to explain what was going on as everyone was talking over me. Was very annoying, but I did my best to be patient and wait my time to speak.. which was far and few in-between.
One of his friends though, ‘took over’ for Inari and I tried to explain my issue, but again too many people were canceling out my words. We moved to another area of the world where I was able to fully explain my issue. And while I don’t remember everything I was told, I have learned a lot.
Key things I’ve learned;
1. Definitely replace the paste.
1a. Do NOT ‘spread out the paste’ as the guy in that video of replacing the paste of this card. It may not be even when mounting the heatsink on it.
1b. Half the size of a pea would work for applying new paste (this makes things even more complicated for me).
1c. As for ‘buying the right paste for the job’, he mentions the paste I have would work, but he would’ve gone for something else if he was me. Sadly I forgot what paste he said to
get, but I think it was ‘NX’, or ‘XT’.. or something along those lines.
1d. The paste I got, I was warned would “come out runny”.
2. Try to remove the front panel to have more airflow into the case, or get a case that has a meshed front panel to allow more airflow. …I knew it was a mistake of getting the case I had, but at the time I was on a budget and had to cut a few corners.
3. Consider adding more fans. From the friend, he uses these ‘Wathai 120mm Industrial high flow‘ fans (that he calls “server fans”). I’ve never heard of this brand name in my life. And Inari recommends I get these ‘Akasa 120mm APACHE Black‘ fans. Another brand I’ve never heard in my life.
3a. Apparently, Noctua fans are bad as the ball baring “goes out in 6 months”. …Fuck. So let this be a mental note for future me, that I might have to replace the exhaust fan (again).
4. It’s up in the air if the Thermaltake 700W that I currently still have in its box that’s brand new, is as ‘bad’ as the Overclock discord told me. Maybe I should ask in
the Microsoft Community discord and see what they could tell me, if it’s ‘worth’ spending over $100 on a PSU, or use the 700W I have for the new card (if I decide to go that route).
So this is all I know right now. Also when the guy left, he said to “do research on fans”. Right, like that’s going to happen when I’ve been used to asking others for help when it comes to PC part researching.
I need to keep asking others for their opinions, and then gather them in a list. Buuuut the problem with that is, there will always be conflicting responses of “you should
get X”, “NO!! X is shit, get Y!”, “are you shitting ME?! Y IS SHIT!!” etc.. etc. 😩
There’s never an easy way to make informed decisions when it comes to PC hardware. …And I HATE DOING MY OWN HOMEWORK!! 😑 Why I ask others to do it for me!!
Honestly, I think it would be a better option to just do what Ferret does and buy a fucking prebuilt. But there we go again with me asking “is X good?”, because I don’t care to go on
these ‘PC brand name here’ (and other informative) websites, and have the knowledge to know what the fuck I’m reading. And I’m being punished for never…. never putting in the effort to learn things like ‘core clocks’, ‘chipset’, and other things true builders use.
This is why I don’t call myself a ‘PC Gamer’. I don’t deserve the title.