Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[3 EMS]

Aimee typed:

I've never seen "distilled water" for sale. Only bottled water with extra vitamins.

All the stores I shop at have water sections. Like the soda section but water instead. Since you don't have that, the car parts/repair stores that Till mentioned would be a good place to look. Also golf cart stores and construction equipment rental yards or repair shops. Car batteries and other batteries like them need distilled water. The use and charging of these batteries results in a constant cycle of converting water to acid then back again. The heat generated by this process will eventually evaporate some of the water. Periodically some distilled water has to be added to maintain the battery. Surely one of these types of places would know where to get distilled water and might possibly have some on hand. I think most car batteries come sealed now so as not to be serviceable. Older ones definately required it. When gas stations were full service you could get the attendant to check the water level in your battery. 6V batteries, like those used in golf carts/construction equipment, are still fully serviceable. They have caps on them.

Since you are a self-proclaimed geek you will probably like this:

No boiling necessary

 

[civ_king]

My computer has 4 RAM slots, currently I have two one space apart I want to upgrade to 4GB RAM should I buy two more 1GB sticks or 2x2GB RAM sticks?

 

[Ulyaoth]

As long as they're in sets I think they'll work in dual channel.

 

[3 EMS]

If you have or eventually switch to a 64 bit OS they will come in handy. Also the 2GB sticks might need a little more voltage to run correctly. You might want to look into that before you decide. If they need a voltage bump make sure your mb/mb bios supports that.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Does the free version of Microsoft Expression Encoder have the ability to make videos of the computer screen?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Thanks about the distilled water thing.

Quick question: Are these normal temperatures? I'm mostly worried about the CPU being around 70 C. This site says the maximum is 65 but the site is 5 years old and not the 64-bit version of the processor.

Spoiler :

EDIT: Also, for some reason the program says K8. System Properties says AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+.

ANOTHER EDIT: Looks like I'm in trouble. But now the temperature's gone down to 65. Hmmm....

I should also mention I'm running F@H so the CPU's running about 50% full-time.

 

[Fëanor]

Thats certainly way too high, is your pc reasonably clean and ventilated?

Spoiler My temps :

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'm not sure. I'm going to clean it out VERY soon, though, I'd do it tonight but it's late.

EDIT: By this I mean that the neighbors will complain if we wake up their little brats kids with the vacuum. (No compressed air.)

 

[Cutlass]

Get some compressed air. It's better.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

And expensive.

 

[Fëanor]

You can buy cans of compressed air for a couple of bucks, you can also get a mini/portable air compressor for as little as $10 which is less than the more expensive compressed air cans, although quality of such compressors is usually not great.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

We're flat broke at the moment.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Well then you're SOL. You dont want to be vacuuming your pc. Bound to rip out some component that way.

Also, your temps are high, but if those are load temps I wouldn't worry like its the end of the world. The cpu delta value might also not be calibrated and those 70+C's youre showing might in fact be mid-60's. The heatsink can probably use a good cleaning and the thermal paste likely needs to be replaced.

If you really want to know whether or not those temperatures are a major problem, get prime95 and run it. If it starts erroring out then it means the heat is causing issues. If it doesnt, it means your cpu can live at that temperature, albeit for not very long.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well, my mom's always uses the vacuum. A little hand-held one.

I'll check out the prime95 program. Hope it works on Vista.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Well considering the poo poo you've posted of your mom, i wouldnt trust her to get anywhere close to a computer with a vacuum of any sort.

And yes, prime95 works on vista.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I printed out an article saying why not to use a vacuum and gave it to mom, and she read it and crumpled it up and threw it at me and screamed some stuff I won't repeat cause I don't want to get infracted. So I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now.

 

[Cutlass]

Pocket a couple of bucks and buy a can of air and use it when she's not around.

 

[civ_king]

clean your computer out and leave it off overnight (once) should drastically lower temperatures

 

[civ_king]

this happened while playing civ then my computer crashed and I got a problem saying nv4_disp error I'm afraid to turn my computer on lest I hurt it

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Something to do with your NVIDIA graphics, I think. Can't say exactly what.

Also, I opened up the computer and using a q-tip fished out this huge glob of dust stuck in the CPU fan. (Don't worry, it was turned off, and I only touched the fans) Here's the temperatures now, after a very quick cleaning (without using any vacuums):

Spoiler :