Is it Better to Burn than to Rust?
prof_braino
Posts: 4,313
My gaming PC enjoyed a stable overclock of 25%-33% for 5 years. For the price of a budget system, I was able to get premium performance. Finally, it quit. No post code on power up. Because its so old, I can't determine it is the CPU, MB or something else that's bad, even so NewEgg doesn even carry LGA775 equipment anymore. I guess that means its about time to upgrade anyways.
Is it better to burn out a system from maximum performance, rather than have a stack of working but unused "retired" hardware?
Better to Burn out than it is to Rust. Overclock till you see smoke.
Better to throw away working systems when I upgrade, reliability over perfromance.
I just buy stock and leave it, budget is the only ctriteria
The the workstation I use is provided by another party, I have no say
I have no PC or laptop, I live out of a smart phone or tablet.
Is it better to burn out a system from maximum performance, rather than have a stack of working but unused "retired" hardware?
Better to Burn out than it is to Rust. Overclock till you see smoke.
Better to throw away working systems when I upgrade, reliability over perfromance.
I just buy stock and leave it, budget is the only ctriteria
The the workstation I use is provided by another party, I have no say
I have no PC or laptop, I live out of a smart phone or tablet.
Comments
If its just for games... Just buy you a laptop such as an Alienware just use the hdmi out to plug into your tv (at least that's what I do ).
My laptop plays skyrim at max settings, actually it plays every new title at max settings constant good frame rate..
I got tiered of sharing my desktop / dev computer with my gaming system. because my Dev system generally has all kinds of VM's and other things going on that impact gaming performance way to much..
You need twins, my friend. My cuties are available short term for birthdays and special events.
I used to overclock, back around 10-12 years ago. Then I built an Athlon 64 in 2003 and it would play Doom 3 just fine with no overclocking (games generally need a good video card more than a fast processor). I think almost any decent mid-range computer (not Walmart junk low cost stuff) these days will play most games just fine as long as they have a real video card. The video card in my new computer has as much memory as my old Athlon 64 had for system memory.
If you have a newer computer that has SATA 2 (3 Gbits/s) or better and doesn't have an SSD, then I'd recommend getting one before any other upgrade. Nothing else will make as much of an improvement. You can find good 120-128 GB drives for around $100, just use your existing drive for data storage (movies, video, music and such).
Jeff
But for your everyday machine (email, internet, programming, photos & videos & general storage), reliability is paramount.
I agree completely. Gaming is a complete waste of time, unless one gets paid for it, just like using the prop and endlessly reading and posting on these forums. But Kojak says it keeps punks like me off the streets.
All things are a complete waste of time, because you are not permanent to this world. In the end, what did it really matter what you did ? Just enjoy life, you like games play games. You like to read, read...
Some people like gaming, some like other things. Who's to say what's good or bad. It all depends on where it fits into your life and what you do with the rest of your time. Overclocking increases the current drain of the CPU and other stuff which increases the thermal stress on the chip which, over time, increases the remodelling of the metallization due to migration of the metallization atoms across the surface of the chip, and leads to early failure. So? When it's time for an upgrade due to CPU failure or graphics processor failure or whatever, you'll get more "bang for your buck". If you can afford it, you can get the best available at the time and then overclock that. Properly recycle the leftovers ... don't just ship it off to a 3rd world dump.
If you want to go faster, just spend the money to do so correctly instead of shortning the life span of your parts..
IDC what people say you OC your graphics card and it starts running +20 degrees or more over its normal temp, you will start getting BSOD errors and the what not earlier on.
My time == money, so buying a prebuilt computer for gaming is the way to go in my situation. I use to build my own but really why ?? just so I can be like oo00oo I cut a winder into da side of me case, and i Oclocked my system 10000x..... I guess.....
My Home workstation is another story, 3 x 27" monitors , 2 6780HD ATI graphics cards a lot of ram etc... etc... To run Ubuntu linux ;p It never plays games.
I do like the 'blade' laptop from razor I might buy that next time around... It doesn't have a CD rom drive, but its like 1/2 inch thick and who needs a cd-rom/dvd/blueray when you have Steam for a gaming service ??
My Irish grandmother used to warn me about drinking: "God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from taking over the world."
Maybe the same thing can be said for gaming except substitute nerds for Irish.
lol reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUDDpfApl8
Rescued and still okay a WD 1TB SATA drive, Radeon HD6570 1GB Video Card, PCI-E Wireless N Card, 8GB DDR3, i3 2100 and a good case and power supply.
$69NZ for a new LGA1155 motherboard and I now have a more than acceptable new media server. And can do a bit of gaming (flight sims) during lunch breaks.
Au contraire mon fr
to slowly oxidize or to rapidly oxidize...that is the question....
All those millions of gamers over the years have have encouraged a lot of developments in the progress of the machines we have now a days simply by demanding and paying for more and more peformance all the time. This has benifitted all of us. If we were all terribly serious and were happy with the machines and software we have then we would still be using CP/M and WordStar.
Throughout my career I have met a lot of brilliant software engineers who started out with pestering their parents for a computer "for educational purposes" ended up gaming a lot and then got into programming by wanting to create their own games. If you want to learn how to make seriously performant software then creating games is one of the best experiences to have.
All in all it looks like gaming on computers has had a very positive effect on the growth of the industry and the usefullness of computers for everyone.
Sure, I do get the feeling sometimes that many are now gaming far too much. But then that is an issue with eating, drinking, smoking, gambling, or any other obsession that is "fun". Some people will just get over taken by it.
For myself I have not played a game on a computer since, after many hours of effort, I scored 100,000 points in Star Glider on an Atari ST520. At that point the game ranked me as "Cheat". I got miffed and never returned.
So Braino, let that old stuff burn. Go out and buy the most serious gamming rig you can afford. It's your duty to further developments in computing for the benifit of mankind:)
I'd say none of the above.
I keep my old XP clean and ready as a backup, and I don't overclock anything. That's for gamers as it can be really damaging to a computer. You never really know how stable your over-clocked computer is until it has failed.
My CPU (Conroe) was designed to run at 3.33Ghz 75-80watts and FSB 1333, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conroe_%28microprocessor%29 but inferior qulaity units were markted at lower clock, FSB and power. Edit - My e6750 was sold as 2.2Ghz. Using a suitable motherboard and RAM, the part was able to run reliably at 3.2Ghz, with 1066. Testing showed my part to be unstable at 3.4 Ghz, so I backed it down to 3.2 and it tested stable, as expected. (Stability testing for overclock PC is very well defined, and very clear and straight forward). And it ran stable for 5 years no issues, premium performace for 1/10th the cost. The CPU, socket, and mother board are all discontinued, I got some mileage out of it.
Here's the interesting part: The PC would not POST. The lights would come on and the fans would turn, but no beeps, video, keyboard or mouse. Like a dope I assumed that meant the fancy shmancy $135 OCZ 92% effiency 700Watt power supply was good.
During autopsy, I hooked it up to a spare $24 500Watt power supply, it posts. Its totally fine now. Looks like bad 12volt on the old PS.
In the mean time, I had to switch to Ubuntu to get the 10 year old PC to run (WXP was just too slow). Aside from unsupported video card requiring software graphics support, it was great.
Now I have Ubuntu on the revived machine, and its actually better than it was. The only thing it doesn't run is L4D2, which is probably a good thing, maybe I'll finally get v5.5 out now.
I still think it's better to burn out. Personally, I've been fading away/rusting into a heap for many years.... and it's just no fun.
Once that stuff runs it's course, I will put it to use at home where it goes until it just doesn't, and I do little beyond maintenance. When I do game, it's on a console and that's nicely packaged up and compartmentalized. I walk away from it clean, no worries, few hassles. If I do end up gaming on something other than a console, it's either casual gaming, or retro, which may happen on the real machine more than emulation, depending.
For this hobby, and writing, any machine will do. If I can run a capture card and have sufficient CPU to compile, etc... I'm good, no worries.
So yeah, buy well, take care of it, run it until it "rusts" so to speak. I have rarely overclocked. The couple of times I did, it was for the fun of overclocking, or it was a known use case, like we do running props at 100Mhz, no worries kind of overclocking. The fun of overclocking is good entertainment and a kind of hobby in and of itself, not unlike gear heads do with various cars. For me, it was a flash in the pan, then I realized that the whole thing really doesn't get a person very much these days, unless they are in a real niche use case, or they just like pushing it. Both are OK, just not where I live normally.
Over time, I've found that cars and computers have some basic things in common. My ordinary, really old Corolla will probably never die so long as I do the basics. I've had it so long, it's actually strange to think of getting a new car when I understand that one so completely. Still fun to drive too. My old Thinkpad laptop I use for Propping is kind of the same way. Once in a while, I see a cheap spare and I buy it, and that's been the source of the odd part I needed from time to time. The money I've not spent over the years doing that is insane. Guess I'm just not out to beat the neighbors, nor a happy member of the rat race.
The product of all that is I can mostly compute out of the dumpster if I need to, and I travel really cheap, spending the money on good experiences and toys. I don't pay for locksmiths, nor do I pay for a lot of shop time. I have them do the hard stuff that isn't any fun, like a timing chain replacement, while I don't mind doing the rest myself, and that's a good bang for the buck analogy in real life, I suppose.
Oh, one other spiff. I can often get a per mile comp. In my car, that's almost pure income! So when I feel the need to replace something, or I want to do a bit of preventative, I'll haul the old car across a state and back doing something that needs done at a modest cost, collect, put it into the car, and it's mostly a free car. With computers, it's a similar thing. If I need a component, or want to beef something up, I'll knock out some contract thing or other, put it into the machine, and it's mostly a free machine having been paid for in professional service during it's prime. Need RAM? Well, maybe a few CAD models gets that done, and I like CAD modeling. Need a starter, that's an up and back to Seattle, and I like the drive to Seattle because I can catch up on my podcasts, etc...
Harmonious synergy.