…alternatively, the dang computer just needed a good cleaning.

Sort of.  The video card is crap; it’s an AMD, and my computer guy flatly refuses to work with AMD cards.  Which is actually fine by me, but he also didn’t have a NVidia card of the right type (I’ve got a AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB Video Card (Require Min. 600W Power Supply) in there now) to swap it out with.  But the basic problem that was causing the CPU to crash were the fans; dust/gunk buildup was causing the overheating and subsequent shutdown.

For right now, the box has been cleaned thoroughly of dust and it’s running considerably quieter. It does still runs loud in Fallout, but it’s no longer shutting down.  The plan is for me to go buy a new video card* and have the guy install it; yes, I could do it myself after I watched a few YouTube videos, but I had to spend five minutes convincing the guy to charge me anything for looking it over in the first place.  This is why we have money, right?  To make it possible to have people who can specialize in stuff.

Moe Lane

*I think that I should be looking at the GeForce GTX 960, or maybe the 1060; that’s roughly equivalent to what I have now, right?

8 thoughts on “…alternatively, the dang computer just needed a good cleaning.”

  1. Yup, that’ll do it. I’ve long since stopped putting my pc’s on the floor or tucked out of view to cut down on dust and neglect. I’ve not had the bad luck with ATI cards you’ve had, but their cards certainly have a spottier record (mostly due to driver issues). ATI has certainly gotten better, but they have a lot of bad memories to overcome.

    1. This is also useful: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html

      Basically it’s what they consider the best GPU for what you want to do (1080p gaming? Get the RX 480. 1440p? Get a GTX 1070.) And they explain why they pick each card as opposed to alternatives (for example, why they picked the 480 vs the GTX 1060: “Serving up performance that sometimes exceeds a Radeon R9 290, sometimes beats a GeForce GTX 970, and sometimes leads both cards in our benchmark suite, the Radeon RX 480 successfully satisfies AMD’s goal of enabling VR on the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. In a more conventional gaming PC, the card manages playable frame rates at 2560×1440 with some detail settings dialed back, and great performance at 1920×1080 maxed-out. It does all of those things for around $190, if you snag the 4GB version.” I got the XFX 480 RS (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAD2C5AX5031&cm_re=xfx_rx_480_rs-_-9SIAD2C5AX5031-_-Product) because of the reviews of it.)

  4. Heh, I’m perfectly capable of building machines myself, and swapping components, and I usually pay someone to do it. I don’t actually _enjoy_ working on computers, and there’s a non-trivial chance of either getting a bad component, or popping something else via static electricity, so I’d rather pay someone else for the headache…

  5. I do this sorta thing for a living, in fact run a company that does this, and while there are some upsides to Nvidia, I can say that I just dropped a Radeon RM470 into my machine and I am VERY happy with it.

    This is my second Radeon in a row after having been an Nvidia purist since I bought my first GeForce2 card (which replaced my Voodoo3). I have a tech who thinks as yours does (won’t think of anything but Nvidia), but while at one time the Radeon drivers were pure junk, that time was long ago.

    1. I wasn’t going to mention an AMD since Moe expressed distate above, but I just picked up an RX 480 8GB to replace a GTX 950, and it it a huge increase (the new DOOM on very high graphical settings will easily do 150FPS).

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