Oh, no Loyd. That would be the sensable choice. The B&D one you recommend in there is the normal one that the shop I worked at issued. This is almost the exact model that fool got. In addition to the drill, he had to hunt around to find a screw bit attachment long enough to allow him to get inside a case. I wonder if he ever flicked the “hammerdrill” switch on it by accident…
Well it seems the problem is fixed for now everybody. I suppose all that dust buildup was overheating my videocard(there was a major dustball locked in the videocard fan that probably kept it from doing its thing), and thus the CPU shut itself off before potential damage was incurred.
As it stands everything is functioning properly as can be for now. I plan to go case shopping tomorrow so I can dump this current megafan/open case setup.
Geez. I have an 14.4 volt drill I use for… screwing down deck screws and stuff like that. I’d never use it for a PC. One momentary oversight with the clutch, and you drive the screw down into the table, wrecking motherboard and case in one fell swoop.
The Milwaukie just has a high and low speed setting, no “hammerdrill”. However, I’ve got a large number of bits and bit extenders for use around the house – this isn’t only used for PC stuff.
I had an earlier version of the Black and Decker driver. It’s nice, but S-L-O-W. But the bit holder does indeed extend beyong the body of the screwdriver, so you don’t need a separate one.
Interestingly, I was screwing down a motherboard into a mini-ITX system, and an electric screwdriver with a long, flexible snake extender was the only way to screw in one of the screws. Even a long, standard screwdriver couldn’t get the right angle. Grrrrr. Geeks like me can take care of this, but normal humans shouldn’t have to wrestle with stuff like this.
As ever,
Loyd Case
I say the anti-static wrist strap has to be stopped at all costs. Otherwise before you know it, we’ll all be wearing anti-static kerchiefs. And if that’s not gay, then I don’t know what is.
Note to self: get flexible snake drill bit extender. Llllllloyd, i’ll be building up one of the extremely small mini-itx systems (2" x 7" x 10") soon and I’ve already begun to realize how annoyingly tight the tolerances will be. The laptop hard drives and cd-roms are plenty small, but it’s a pain to source 0.8" high DIMMs.
Well, that settles it, then. Static electricity is obviously a myth. I guess I’m just glad that my PC’s components are designed by engineers and not you, wumpus.
If I based my car safety practices on the same sort of formula, then I’d never wear a seat belt, either (number of times I’ve been injured in an accident: zero). Of course, it’s that one time that it does happen when you’ll wish you had not been so cavalier about ignoring simple precautions.[/quote]
Good grief, I fried a Permedia 2 prototype on the job way back in 1997 with static electicity (and at the time, it was one hot card). Six years later I learn I’ve been living a lie…
Damned martians! I wish the stonecutters would 'fess up about them…
A lot depends on where you live, or what time of the year. If you’re in a relatively humid area, and handle your gear carefully, you’ll often get away with the “touch grounded object” method.
If it’s really cold, or the air is very, very dry, then grounding yourself with a strap is not a bad idea at all.
I’m fortunate in that my home office has anti-static carpet. I wish I could say I planned it that way, but I was just lucky when we chose the carpet.
As ever,
Loyd Case
Do you honestly think redneck enthusiast sites like HardOCP would still be around if it was that trivially easy to zap computer parts with static electricity? Sure, it happens, but it’s rare. Particularly if you make some token effort to discharge yourself before touching anything important.
I never said that it was trivially easy. I just said that given the fact that it costs me nothing (other than offending your fashion sense–or whatever–which could even count as a point in its favor) to put on a static wristband when I’m handling, say, a $300 video card, why not do it?
Oh, I forgot–because it’s “gay,” whatever that means. Dude, if you think using a static wristband makes you “gay,” then you better find another hobby. Because to the rest of the world, this argument would sound a lot like two Trekkies arguing over whether or not Spock could beat up Worf.
Jesus, you’re still arguing about this…?
Well, put me in the “gay” camp, I use a wrist strap too.
There was something in the air that night,
The stars were bright,
Fernando…
And Spock could kick Worf’s ass, by the way.
I’ve never seen so much static in a thread.
Cut it out, or i’ll ground you all
Only the current topic, please.
And to bring the topic back around…
BDGE, did you have any luck with solving the problem?
asjunk
Do people read BDGE’s posts or just the ones that are off-topic?
–Dave
Strangely enough, I did read it. As he indicated, he’s replacing the open case/fan situation – which could well have been ameliorating the heat problem alluded to earlier (see posts above). While the video card looks like a good fix (and for his sake I hope it is!), until he closes up the case and discards the fan it seems a little premature to declare victory.
Unless, of course, BDGE works for Nintendo – then you can proclaim victory for him, Dave. 
So – BDGE, what’s the status report?
EDITED to fix the damn quotes
Haven’t bought a new setup yet.
I’m playing with the devil(wumpus?) keeping this same setup going despite the warning precautions my CPU have been hinting at with these recent crashes, but I feel edgy lately.
Most likely I’ll make a trip ‘this’ weekend to go scour for new case options; but as of right now, things have moved back to normalcy.
Maybe I’ll get a static guard wrist strap too! :!:
I’m laughing so hard there are tears coming from mine eyes! Redneck enthusiast sites. I didn’t see the HardOCP article on case mods with a gun rack but maybe I haven’t looked hard enough…
So I’ve got a strange GPU issue. I get random corrupt output which manifests itself as all manner of pixel patterns, flashes of missing image data, and total signal loss to the monitor. I’ve tried both HDMI ports as well as a couple different HDMI cords. My Reverb G2 is connected to my Displayport, and I’ve never noticed this issue with that.
I know the monitor isn’t the problem, since I can use it for other sources all day without any issues. I know Windows isn’t the problem, because I’ll get the artifacts even in the BIOS. I know my PSU isn’t the problem, because it happened with my old EVGA 700 as well as my new Corsair RM850x.
It’s been going on for months, but the issue comes and goes. Sometimes I’ll go days without seeing signs of it, and other times it will be so constant as to be damn near unusable. I was just idling on a blank desktop and the thing was going apeshit with video anomalies, and then I loaded up Furmark and there was absolutely no corruption at all during the ten minute stress test. Rock solid. And it hasn’t happened since then, which was a good 20 minutes ago.
But when I was playing Assetto Corsa earlier it was flickering in and out occasionally, so it does happen when the card is working as well. Just not as often as when it’s idle it seems.
Really, I can’t see it being anything but the GPU, but I’m puzzled as to why it’s so random to where it’s not a problem for days, and then for 15 minutes at a time it’s severe. Could it be a sign of video memory corruption? I did run a GPU Memory test program and it returned no errors.
Anybody have any experience with this issue? I really, really don’t want to buy a new video card right now…
IANAPCDoctor, but standard procedure would be to test the PSU (which you kinda did by using a different one), then run a backup GPU and see how it goes. Of course, those are sadly rare these days given the shortages. Regardless, I’ve always been told (which means take with a grain of salt) video artifacts when not under load are signs of VRAM corruption, in which case a new GPU is needed as a typical consumer can’t really replace or fix that.