Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[0culus]

Not sure if this is sad or not. Saturday Night at home alone but this selection will help and maybe a touch of something alcoholic

When my mom was still alive, that was the “time to decompress” lineup. Spend a weekend  every solstice or so stoned out of our gourds, watching Python and listening to Beatles, Eagles, Clapton & Floyd. 

mnem
Mmmm... lumpy brownies...

Leeeed Zeppelin....bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrr

[med6753]

Not sure if this is sad or not. Saturday Night at home alone but this selection will help and maybe a touch of something alcoholic

When my mom was still alive, that was the “time to decompress” lineup. Spend a weekend  every solstice or so stoned out of our gourds, watching Python and listening to Beatles, Eagles, Clapton & Floyd. 

mnem
Mmmm... lumpy brownies...

Leeeed Zeppelin....bbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrr


(Attachment Link)

Ever see this live version of Kashmir? Incredible. 

[Mr. Scram]

Roses are red
Violets are kind of blue
When tealots listen to Zeppelin
Our neighbours do too

[mnementh]

@bd139 My own case is a Corsair Obsidian 750D case and I have a water cooled AMD FX 8350 4GHz 8 core CPU with 5 x 140mm fans in the case, 2 at the front, 2 on the top with a double radiator and 1 at the rear. There is another built into the Corsair RM850W modular PSU and the case sits under my bench/desk and I have to say that even with all of those fans it is whisper quiet. The graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX960 2GB) also has 2 built in fans. I have had this now for 5 years and the same case will be used again when I upgrade the MB and CPU. Mind you it is far cheaper then when I brought it, as it always when your on the cutting edge. 

https://www.ebuyer.com/579787-corsair-obsidian-series-750d-full-tower-atx-case-cc-9011035-ww

That's a pretty hefty bit of kit that! (SNIP) I'm feeling I live in the dark ages here 

   That is pretty much the EXACT machine I just upgraded from after getting a heavy dose of reality with my “Resto-Rod Rebuild” trying to bring my old 1055T up to spec for Steam and light VR. STILL not enough machine for modern computing. Even with the FX-8350 & RX580 upgrade, could barely manage 60FPS in VR and tracking was atrocious; simply not enough real-time compute power and BW. With the same RX-580 on my Ryzen 3700 build, I can now easily do 70FPS at higher res, and tracking is phenomenal for WMR with no added lightboxes.

One core on the Ryzen 3700 can pretty much outperform all 8 (4...?) on the FX-8350. Bulldozer indeed; there’s a reason NewEgg was blowing them out for $50. 

Not intending to be a dick... but you really are in the dark ages. Just like I was, and received a truly rude awakening with the Resto-Rod rebuild.

mnem
Oooohhh... such a shiny blue-light 

[bd139]

Yes I fully admit that now. For reference I installed Fusion 360 on this and it is considerably less of a piece of shit now. There you go, hat for dinner. Tasty hat 

Also spent a good hour today playing Unreal Tournament pre-alpha. I spent at least a year of my life in UT99 in Facing Worlds. Now I desire a better keyboard and mouse. Bloody rabbit holes.

I'm refusing to go down the water cooling route though. I CBA with that shit  . This thing is almost 100% silent even flat out and CPU doesn't get above 65oC. To quote Dave: "winner winner chicken dinner".

Still hunting for HP goodies though 

Edit: Upgrade plan is in flight already:

1. November 2019 - decent KB and mouse TBD
2. Jan 2020 - Decent sound card (M-Audio Air series - I have a reason for this )
3. Mar 2020 - Another 16Gb of RAM
4. May 2020 - Another 22" screen (rejigging my bench/living room the month before)

[Mr. Scram]

Yes I fully admit that now. For reference I installed Fusion 360 on this and it is considerably less of a piece of shit now. There you go, hat for dinner. Tasty hat 

Also spent a good hour today playing Unreal Tournament pre-alpha. I spent at least a year of my life in UT99 in Facing Worlds. Now I desire a better keyboard and mouse. Bloody rabbit holes.

I'm refusing to go down the water cooling route though. I CBA with that shit  . This thing is almost 100% silent even flat out and CPU doesn't get above 65oC. To quote Dave: "winner winner chicken dinner".

Still hunting for HP goodies though 

You'll be able to eek out a bit more with water but air cooling is very good nowadays. Very high performance and dead reliable for essentially no maintenance or risks of springing a leak. Are they still working on a remake of Unreal Tournament? I think I played a pre-alpha years ago.

[Specmaster]

Absolutely nothing wrong with the Beatles, Eagles, Clapton or Floyd and I'd chuck in the mix Genesis and Phil Collins and since I picked up SWMBO and Sister in Law from Gatwick Sunday, I've had this stinking cold that SIL brought back from Madeira with, I've gone through 2/3rds of bottle of Bells Extra Special old Scotch Whisky that already aged 8 years when I got it as a present from my Father in Law in 2000 so its at least 27 years old and I've still got the bunged up hoot and hacking cough though. Still I've got another couple of bottles tucked away if I need them 

[Mr. Scram]

There's a neighbour who drives a boy racer Peugeot with the exhaust hanging off. I heard a racket outside and went to look what the idiot was doing now. Turns out it was my neighbour's neighbour coming home in a veritable and fairly recent Ferrari. He wins. 

[Specmaster]

Yes I fully admit that now. For reference I installed Fusion 360 on this and it is considerably less of a piece of shit now. There you go, hat for dinner. Tasty hat 

Also spent a good hour today playing Unreal Tournament pre-alpha. I spent at least a year of my life in UT99 in Facing Worlds. Now I desire a better keyboard and mouse. Bloody rabbit holes.

I'm refusing to go down the water cooling route though. I CBA with that shit  . This thing is almost 100% silent even flat out and CPU doesn't get above 65oC. To quote Dave: "winner winner chicken dinner".

Still hunting for HP goodies though 

Edit: Upgrade plan is in flight already:

1. November 2019 - decent KB and mouse TBD
2. Jan 2020 - Decent sound card (M-Audio Air series - I have a reason for this )
3. Mar 2020 - Another 16Gb of RAM
4. May 2020 - Another 22" screen (rejigging my bench/living room the month before)

Water cooling, nah, piece of piss, all totally prebuilt and assembled, and sealed for life, simply remove the air cooler, fit the combined pump and heat exchanger to the CPU, mount the radiator and fans, job done. Should run at at least 10C cooler and quieter. Nothing to do externally, all fits right there in the area of the CPU and if IRC, your case has space for a top mounted rad above the motherboard, 30 minutes work at worst.

https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categories/Products/Liquid-Cooling/Dual-Radiator-Liquid-Coolers/Hydro-Series%E2%84%A2-H110i-280mm-Extreme-Performance-Liquid-CPU-Cooler/p/CW-9060026-WW

[bd139]

You'll be able to eek out a bit more with water but air cooling is very good nowadays. Very high performance and dead reliable for essentially no maintenance or risks of springing a leak. Are they still working on a remake of Unreal Tournament? I think I played a pre-alpha years ago.

Yeah it's good enough for this which is the point. Also I'd have to stick the radiator on the top of the case, which is sound insulated. There is a removable panel for that if you want it but it removes on practical part of the thing and that is that it is a pretty good shelf for crap to sit on. Yes there's a half decent UT pre-alpha. It may be the same one. It's pretty good though albeit full of morons. Within 30 minutes of starting I was getting decent amounts of kills. Surprised to be honest.

There's a neighbour who drives a boy racer Peugeot with the exhaust hanging off. I heard a racket outside and went to look what the idiot was doing now. Turns out it was my neighbour's neighbour coming home in a veritable and fairly recent Ferrari. He wins. 

We have a wanker opposite us who does that. Fucking revving it at 2AM being a dick. The dude chained it to the lamp post outside. One night there's an almighty bang and someone has reversed a Transit with no plates on it into the bike against the lamp post and destroyed it and bent the lamp post.

Water cooling, nah, piece of piss, all totally prebuilt and assembled, and sealed for life, simply remove the air cooler, fit the combined pump and heat exchanger to the CPU, mount the radiator and fans, job done. Should run at at least 10C cooler and quieter. Nothing to do externally, all fits right there in the area of the CPU and if IRC, your case has space for a top mounted rad above the motherboard, 30 minutes work at worst.

https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categories/Products/Liquid-Cooling/Dual-Radiator-Liquid-Coolers/Hydro-Series%E2%84%A2-H110i-280mm-Extreme-Performance-Liquid-CPU-Cooler/p/CW-9060026-WW

There's space for a radiator but as mentioned, there's a sound insulated panel over it. If I take that off I lose (a) the crap shelf and (b) the quietness.



I'm liking the controls/ports on the top. Very handy. Reset button isn't wired for ref. I don't plan on pressing it on purpose or otherwise 

[Specmaster]

@mnem, FPS is much more a function of the graphics card then the CPU surely? I play World of Battleships on mine and can get a FPS of 76 on average with my my graphics card set at 1920 x 1080 and it the whole PC is set up as bog standard, no overclocking of the CPU, GPU or the RAM and I have heard of people who have tweaked these settings using the built in AMD overclocking utility getting some pretty high numbers out of their system, my 8350 is running at the standard 4GHz out of the box so for the time being I'm still a very happy bunny with my rig. I have no doubt that if I was spend a bit more another graphics card with more memory (mine is 2GB) it would gain a few more frames but it never appears to lag behind, game play is always smooth and responsive unless I'm playing a game from a few years ago like Command and Conquer and then it can sometimes really suck but that's because Windows 10 does not backward compatibility to well.

I'll more then likely do my next big push forward on upgrades in a few years time and then I'll take it upto just below the top level of specs again and should again be good for a few years again.

[med6753]

Coolant drained and refilled on the CR-V. I do that every 18-24 months just as cheap insurance. Never have to worry about tired and rusty coolant plus the cooling system remain corrosion free. So....it's ready for Winter. Bring it. 

[bitseeker]

For real! Aw, med, now you're gonna make me wanna get a 114.

Join the club and collect the whole set!  I mean, there's even a TV calibrator. 

How do I know? Because I have one, of course.   

Seriously, for calibrating lower frequency gear, the 114, along with the old level sine and square generators (both of which will do 100V pp, I think) are great to have around.  Even at plus fifty years old, it still works pretty damn well.

Cool. The first, and currently only, item in my "collection" is a 191. So, I'll keep my eyes peeled.

[Specmaster]

@bd139, I think that you will find that if you RTM that you still fit the shelf after you have installed the top mounted radiator, I have one like that on mine which is magnetic and you can remove if you like, but then it looks exactly like yours with those huge slots and holes for things to fall inside and I really don't think that it would designed to be used without the shelf being fitted.

Incidently, I still use mine as a shelf for storing items on , like my tablets and phone for instance as the double rad is mounted at back of that grill and remains uncovered so there is a good airflow still. There is also in your case I believe a space where you could fit the radiator in the front of your case and remove the single fan that currently sits there and use the 2 rad fans instead.

EDIT
I just watched a video about your case, it is lot smaller then mine in depth so the radiator would occupy the entire top vent and if you want to use that, you should have, supplied with it, a magnetic dust filter that you fit there in stead of the shelf. The filter is a carbon copy of mine and I use it as a shelf, and so could you as long as you don't cover it all.

[bitseeker]

Krylon Colormaxx Gloss Bahama Sea

@bitseeker
Please add this to the OP as a Tek paint colour.
Med posted a pic of the spray can a few pages back and that would be good to link as the money shot.

It's there, under "Electronics Miscellany". I added a thumbnail image to make it a bit easier to spot amongst all the links.

[bd139]

@bd139, I think that you will find that if you RTM that you still fit the shelf after you have installed the top mounted radiator, I have one like that on mine which is magnetic and you can remove if you like, but then it looks exactly like yours with those huge slots and holes for things to fall inside and I really don't think that it would designed to be used without the shelf being fitted.

Incidently, I still use mine as a shelf for storing items on , like my tablets and phone for instance as the double rad is mounted at back of that grill and remains uncovered so there is a good airflow still. There is also in your case I believe a space where you could fit the radiator in the front of your case and remove the single fan that currently sits there and use the 2 rad fans instead.

It's magnetic as well. There's a grille you can put over it that came with it. But if you need to run airflow through it, you can't stuff a book on it

[Mr. Scram]

Coolant drained and refilled on the CR-V. I do that every 18-24 months just as cheap insurance. Never have to worry about tired and rusty coolant plus the cooling system remain corrosion free. So....it's ready for Winter. Bring it. 

Have you ever looked into water free coolant? Sounds like that may be of interest to you. Better performance and maintenance free.

[mnementh]

Yes I fully admit that now. For reference I installed Fusion 360 on this and it is considerably less of a piece of shit now. There you go, hat for dinner. Tasty hat 

Also spent a good hour today playing Unreal Tournament pre-alpha. I spent at least a year of my life in UT99 in Facing Worlds. Now I desire a better keyboard and mouse. Bloody rabbit holes.

I'm refusing to go down the water cooling route though. I CBA with that shit  . This thing is almost 100% silent even flat out and CPU doesn't get above 65oC. To quote Dave: "winner winner chicken dinner".

Still hunting for HP goodies though 

Edit: Upgrade plan is in flight already:

1. November 2019 - decent KB and mouse TBD
2. Jan 2020 - Decent sound card (M-Audio Air series - I have a reason for this )
3. Mar 2020 - Another 16Gb of RAM
4. May 2020 - Another 22" screen (rejigging my bench/living room the month before)

 

Two humble suggestions: 

1) Your standards for “absolutely silent” are ALSO “dark ages”.  I tried the stock cooler, and it is almost as loud as the stock one from my 1055T (Which is now on my FX-8350, since they didn’t change a FUKKIN’ THING about the AM3 stock cooler in the decade since my 1055T was new). If your case will support a 120mmx240mm rad, a sealed-system AIO from Corsair, etc is definitely the way to go. They’re as cheap as $70 from reputable brands now and on mine, the switching whistle from the VRM is actually louder until ALL the fans start to ramp up under load. I specifically chose my case for top-rad, and it was only $40.

2) Before you bump up the RAM, get into a better video card. RX-580 8GB at least; this is pretty much entry-level minimum-spec for anything more than grandma’s eMachine. ANYTHING that RENDERS nowadays... 2D, 3D, CAD, video editing, gaming... first tries to push as much of the rendering compute load off onto the GPU; even for non-gamers, a fair amount of GPU power really is necessary because that is how ALL personal computing is trending.

The $30-50 2-4GB “system-builder” or “commodity” graphics cards out there... as well as many costing much more... are literally e-Waste BEFORE you take them out of the box. They ONLY exist because so many people out there don’t know how non-linear the value is on these cards. Sure, you’re you’re “only” paying $30-50; but you’re getting 1-5% of the performance of something civilized.

This is the trickle-down effect... the stuff that was for “crazy gamers and power-users” a year or three ago becomes today’s base-level standard equipment, and everything from OS to apps expands to take advantage of that expanded capacity. The march of progress, buddy. 

mnem

[bitseeker]

As promised, here are some pictures of my new Meratronik V540.

Meratronik is a company in Poland which produced such equipment.
They are still around, as per the look on their website:
http://www.meratronik.pl/

The Meratronik V540 is a DMM which can measure only DC voltage up to 1000V.
My V540 was built around 1979.

The V541 can measure DC and AC. Here are some more detailed information
about the V541:
http://danyk.cz/meratronik_en.html

The V543 then can measure DC, AC and Ohms.
Here can be found some pictures:
http://multimetry.tzok.eu/multimetr.php?typ=V543

Manuals, schematics etc. can be found here:
http://bee.mif.pg.gda.pl/Oktoda/index.php/Polskie_przyrz%C4%85dy_pomiarowe

One thing I really like at those meters is that they are using
this very nice and huge Nixie tubes made by RFT in the GDR.
The V540 contains one ZM567M which can display "+", "-" and "~".
The other five tubes are ZM566M which displays all the digits from 0 to 9.
The height of the digits is 30mm.
Technical details can be found here (sorry, it's in German):
http://www.tube-tester.com/sites/nixie/data/V600/Z566M/z566m.htm

Very cool. I've seen a couple of these during the past year or so. Didn't know much about them, but the display is very tempting.

Added to the POI.

[med6753]

Coolant drained and refilled on the CR-V. I do that every 18-24 months just as cheap insurance. Never have to worry about tired and rusty coolant plus the cooling system remain corrosion free. So....it's ready for Winter. Bring it. 

Have you ever looked into water free coolant? Sounds like that may be of interest to you. Better performance and maintenance free.

I know someone who tried that "waterless" coolant and they had issues with it, although I don't recall specifically what those issues were. Besides, nothing is "maintenance free" despite what vehicle manufacturers continue to push and owners discover AFTER the warranty period that they got screwed. For example, most car makers say that automatic transmissions are "sealed for life". It's a whole lot of crap. The CR-V has an auto gearbox and I changed the ATF at 30K miles. I'll do it again at 60K miles and so on. It took 4 quarts of Honda specific ATF and about an hour of my time.       

[bd139]

couple of replies to @mnem:

1. Why bother if it's quiet enough? Complexity balance here. The stock cooler is pretty quiet on the 2600X and it runs cool enough. Even flat out it's barely audible. Think it's AM4 "Wraith Spire" in there. Came with the retail boxed 2600X.

2. I need 32Gb for VMs, not render. I usually run a 32Gb node in AWS but I'm pulling my stuff out of AWS now as this is good enough and doesn't take so fucking long to provision when I need it  . RX550 is fast enough for me at the moment on the 3d front. I'll upgrade if I hit a wall.

Going back to me being a Ferengi bastard, I only solve problems when I encounter them, because that costs the least latinum (which I need to collect so I don't have to work any more!).



Priorities here are:

1. Quiet. MUST live with it. Solved
2. RAM. MUST run VMs in it. Ok for now. Optimisation required.
3. SSD. MUST run VMs+compilers in it. Solved.
4. CPUs. MUST run compilers in it. Solved.
5. GPU. MAY run games / CAD. Solved.

[mnementh]

@mnem, FPS is much more a function of the graphics card then the CPU surely? I play World of Battleships on mine and can get a FPS of 76 on average with my my graphics card set at 1920 x 1080 and it the whole PC is set up as bog standard, no overclocking of the CPU, GPU or the RAM and I have heard of people who have tweaked these settings using the built in AMD overclocking utility getting some pretty high numbers out of their system, my 8350 is running at the standard 4GHz out of the box so for the time being I'm still a very happy bunny with my rig. I have no doubt that if I was spend a bit more another graphics card with more memory (mine is 2GB) it would gain a few more frames but it never appears to lag behind, game play is always smooth and responsive unless I'm playing a game from a few years ago like Command and Conquer and then it can sometimes really suck but that's because Windows 10 does not backward compatibility to well.

I'll more then likely do my next big push forward on upgrades in a few years time and then I'll take it upto just below the top level of specs again and should again be good for a few years again.

Real-time 3D rendering and synchronized tracking requires massive BW and the bulldozer architecture just doesn’t have it; you can see it in the utilization overlay while you play/work/WTF-Ever. With the Resto-Rod, I was at 100% CPU/50-60%GPU just walking around my virtual living room; the CPU was my bottleneck. Now with a higher-res headset (OdysseyPlus) I’m at 40%CPU 100%GPU doing my flight sims.

Not only does Ryzen 3rd gen have massively more BW, more modern architecture & instruction sets means it simply does more work per tick. THAT one-two punch is why Ryzen 3600 ALONE has sold more than EVERYTHING Intel makes since its release; 3600/3700 together have sold twice as much. 

And we aren’t even talking about ThreadRipper, which has ALSO received all the same architecture upgrades and increased core count/interconnect speed. 

mnem
“May you live in interesting times.”

[med6753]

Shit, I'm all out of popcorn. 

Am I going to have to go buy some? 

Ain't I a stinker. 

[mnementh]

Shit, I'm all out of popcorn. 

Am I going to have to go buy some? 

Ain't I a stinker. 

Why? I don’t see any disagreement here. I’m amazed at how much stuff has progressed... how much higher “the bar” has been raised in this segment... literally just as amazed as I sound!

I used to be a proponent of much of the “conventional wisdom” I’ve seen bandied about recently... and until now, for the most part it has been pretty much correct for a long time. But the times, they are a-changin’...

mnem
I just hope I’m not proselytizing the progenitors of SkyNet...

[med6753]

Shit, I'm all out of popcorn. 

Am I going to have to go buy some? 

Ain't I a stinker. 

Why? I don’t see any disagreement here. I’m amazed at how much stuff has progressed... how much higher “the bar” has been raised in this segment... literally just as amazed as I sound!

I used to be a proponent of much of the “conventional wisdom” I’ve seen bandied about recently... and until now, for the most part it has been pretty much correct for a long time. But the times, they are a-changin’...

mnem
I just hope I’m not proselytizing the progenitors of SkyNet...

I see no disagreement either. Just being a jerk.