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  1. NickR

    m4 64GB- Marvell or Sandforce!?

    Alright I'm getting rather confused. When I look, the Crucial m4 64GB, sometimes says it uses a Sandforce controller, and some say it uses a Marvell controller. Which is it? I just ordered one on newegg to replace my X-25V, but I want to establish this.
  2. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    Should be either 5W-20 or 5W-30 iirc.
  3. NickR

    Oil Analysis - Actions?

    My cavalier had the oil pump fail on the highway, which destroyed the bottom end. That is entirely likely plausible to be oil related.
  4. NickR

    No pics thread? Then tiem.

    Come on, let's see your ride(s) 2011 Chevy Cruze 1LT Itty bitty 1.4L Turbo 1985 Honda Shadow VT500C These pics are old,. back before we traded in our cars for new ones.
  5. NickR

    Oil Analysis - Actions?

    Hmmmm I take it you don't feel that it makes a difference what oil you use? And that oil analysis aren't useful for telling if there is an engine problem? Well to each their own, but I'm not one of the "car is an appliance" people, and I will spend the extra time and effort to make sure...
  6. NickR

    Suggest me a mid-life-crisis ride

    Personally even if I had the money, I'd buy an older M3- one with a Straight-6, I just prefer Straight-6 over V8s. Plus the M3 is about as perfect as a car can get, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper. JMO though, even if I had 150k to spend on a car, I would probably still have my Cruze, maybe a...
  7. NickR

    Xeon E5 2687W For Sale on eBay

    Why would it be illegal, is my question?
  8. NickR

    Oil Analysis - Actions?

    RPD: Next oil change, give Pennzoil Ultra 5W-30 a shot.
  9. NickR

    Oil Analysis - Actions?

    The "oil life monitors are bs" is bs. GMs OLM is actually very, very useful and accurate. They spend a lot of money developing it. It takes into account engine coolant and oil temperature, running time, RPM, an a ton of other variables. It uses a baseline oil spec, (Dexos 1 for new vehicles)...
  10. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    Oh hey craig, 'sup man?
  11. NickR

    Oil Analysis - Actions?

    That is a really bad UOA, even for one of those engines. (GM V8s tend to show higher levels of iron and copper than other engines, doesn't mean more wear though, it's just their characteristic). what oil were you using for that run? If you are running 8k+ OCI, use Pennzoil Platinum/Ultra...
  12. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    Also, 5,000 miles on synthetic (term used for ease) in a 2008 model year, 2.4L Toyota SMPFI engine? What a waste. Any decent syn will easily do 7,500 miles, PU you could easily do 10k on that, as long as the engine actually gets up to operating temperature when you drive it. If you drove it...
  13. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    Like I said earlier, there is no real advantage to what you see as "true" synthetic. Group III is extremely refined, it may technically still be a petroleum product, but it is in no way worse than the much touted synthetics. Group III in Pennzoil Platinum, Valvoline Synpower, Castrol Syntec...
  14. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    The real fact of the matter these days it that Mobil 1 is Group III. i.e. Highly refined crude oil. It's still excellent, but it's not a "true" synthetic, though that doesn't really mean anything. Pennzoil Ultra, the new SN/GF-5 formulation uses a nice dose of Group IV or PAO, which is a...
  15. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    Mobil 1 is extremely popular... Can't for the life of me figure out why. It isn't particularly good synthetic oil, especially for the price. Pennzoil Platinum and Pennzoil Ultra are quite a bit better, and the same price or cheaper. M1 tends to show higher iron levels in UOAs, compared to PP...
  16. NickR

    Is there a decent small sporty car that has a good A/C?

    If you want a car with good A/C, get a GM product. If nothing else, GM cars generally have arctic air conditioning. Even the much lambasted cavalier, it's one major plus was that it had the best A/C in it's class. Look at the Pontiac Solstice GXP, 2.0L Turbo. Or if you can, a Saturn Sky...
  17. NickR

    3/4-ton truck for towing - reccomendations

    If you can, find a a Dodge with the Cummins. Cummins diesels are going to be the most reliable of the 3 in older trucks, avoid any Ford with a diesel, unless it's the 7.3L.
  18. NickR

    What oil do you use?

    What car and engine do you have, and what oil & filter do you run? How often do you change it? Me, 2011 Chevy Cruze 1.4T, Pennzoil Platinum 5W-30 w/ACDelco Cartridge filter. I change it when the Oil-life-monitor drops down to 20%, so about 8,000 miles. The 2011 Equinox 3.0L SIDI V6...
  19. NickR

    Possibly making the switch from AMD to Intel.

    Saratoga County. And no problem.
  20. NickR

    Possibly making the switch from AMD to Intel.

    Hyperthreading means that each individual core can handle multiple threads simultaneously. The Quad-Core with HT is the i7, the i5 is quad core without HTR. AMD Phenom CPUs don't have hyperthreading at all.
  21. NickR

    2500k overclocking tips

    Read through a bit,still want to ask. I will be getting an i5-2500k and ASUS P8Z68V-Pro/Gen3 for Christmas from my awesome family this year. Replacing my current Phenom II X4 965BE. (Also considering upgrading from my X-25V to an M4 64GB but that's another story). Anyway, I have a couple...
  22. NickR

    What paste should I use?

    I like Antec Diamond Formula 7 or whatever it is. It's available at Staples, and it works well. Combined lapping the cooling block and switching from AS5 lowered temps on my PhII X4 from 55 under load to 48 under load. And that's using two completely silent Rocketfish 120mm BB fans in push-pull...
  23. NickR

    Safe laptop CPU temps?

    I have a Lenovo Z565 laptop with the AMD Phenom II N660 (3.0Ghz Dual Core) and it's pretty excellent. It's fast, the Radeon 4270 is enough to run WoW and Starcraft 2 which is all I need to run on my laptop. It's well put together, the keyboard is excellent and all. I still can't believe it was...
  24. NickR

    Call of pripyat using too much ram

    So I have the STEAM version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, and I'm using the Atmosfear 2.1, and the Absolute Nature Texture pack. Well, everythings going great, running great, about 30 hours on this save game. And then... Today I go to load up the game... X-ray 1.6 keeps crashing when...
  25. NickR

    Lenovo laptop wireless driver

    I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and buy an Intel Centrino AGN Dual-Band mini-PCIe card from Amazon for $35.
  26. NickR

    Lenovo laptop wireless driver

    It's a Broadcom 4727 card, can't locate drivers for it anywhere.
  27. NickR

    Lenovo laptop wireless driver

    My router is a Netgear WNDR3700v2 running the latest version of DD-WRT. All other wireless, and wired for that matter, devices work properly, download speeds into the 25-30mb/s range. This one is very inconsistent, but rarely tops 6. I have my other laptop, a Samsung with a Centrino AGN...
  28. NickR

    Lenovo laptop wireless driver

    Alright guys, I have a Lenovo Z565 laptop, it has a crappy Broadcom 802.11n chip in it that maxes at 65mbps. That isn't the problem though. the problem is that other devices will get 20ms ping, and 25-30mbps download on speedtest.net. But this laptop will do 50ms, and no faster than 6mbps...
  29. NickR

    Ideas for ideal GPU's for my 6-monitor setup

    6990s for sure. Get water cooling block for CPU and graphics cards. You'll need a car radiator to cool that methinks.
  30. NickR

    hp touchsmart 310 pc processor problemo!

    At low loads most processors will automatically underclock themselves to conserve power and produce less heat. Ford example, my desktop Phenom II X4 that I have overclocked to 3.75Ghz will run at 1.0ghz under no load.
  31. NickR

    Phenom II Overclocking

    By slightly raising the NB-HT/ NB voltage, and going to HTT 200Mhz, I'm able to get 3.9Ghz stable. Technically it's 3.92Ghz because when set to 200, the HT is actually 200.9. Whatever, not complaining. Good enough for me, thanks. Only thing is that CoolnQuiet doesn't seem to work now, it runs...
  32. NickR

    Phenom II Overclocking

    I have an AMD Phenom II X4 965BE, a ASUS M4A88TD-V motherboard, 8GB (2x4) Corsair DDR3-1333, and 2x XFX 5770 in crossfire. Now, stock clock on the 965BE is 3.4Ghz. I was effortlessly able to bump it to 3.75 at stock voltage, using 250Mhz HT and a 15x Multiplier. Now, the annoying part. I...
  33. NickR

    laptop temps

    So earlier today I picked up a Lenovo Z565 laptop from Bestbuy for $449.99. It has the Phenom II X2 N660 (3Ghz, Dual Core), 3GB of RAM (soon to be 4), 320GB HDD, 15.6" Screen, Radeon 4270 graphics. Alright so did a little testing. First of all, the laptop itself is great. It has great fit an...
  34. NickR

    Help me make my system silent

    The h50 is a completely sealed kit, you don't have to do anything but put it on no filling or topping. Off to worry about. Just silent, case exhausting, CPU freezing goodness. I wouldn't have touched water cooling if it wasn't that easy. Pick quiet fixed speed fans and itbis as quiet under load...
  35. NickR

    P8P67 Deluxe - What would you recomment for Power Supply?

    I agree with the xfx modular 650 I'm actually waiting rightbnow on delivery of one along eithbanother 5770 for fire. It's a great psu (see hardware secrets review of non-modular version). With the rebate you can't beat it.
  36. NickR

    Old PS good enough for SB rig?

    Honestly that earthwatts is probably plenty for you're needs, and really efficient to boot.
  37. NickR

    Sound Cards

    Ok so to start, I'm a partial audiophile. I don't spend thousands of dollars on equipment, or mod stuff to sound better. But I do enjoy sound enough to spend $200 (at the time) on some Harman/Kardon Soundsticks III, $160 on a Logitech G930 headset, Polk Audio speakers in brand new car... You get...
  38. NickR

    Help me make my system silent

    Replace the stock CPU fan with a Corsair H50 water cooling kit, using two Scythe 1200RPM S-Flex fans in push-pull exhaust configuration. Replace other case fans with that fan as well. Not much you can do about the graphics card, except replace it. You could try this one...
  39. NickR

    Boxes left on the porch

    You're fine. We once had the postman leave a $2000 gateway laptop on our porch. In the snow. In 10 degree weather. It was there for about 6 hours. In a big gateway box. That laptop lasted us for 8 years before we broke the mainboard power connector. You'll be fine.