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Loading ...The long goodbye to newspapers
khenry
The Guardian is well known and lampooned for its left-wing hectoring BS. However, the decision to attempt outright emotional blackmail regarding people’s water usage in the same week that Thames Water sent out their unmetered “Part 2” bills of not less than £100 was the last straw for me. Naturally the paper did it to get a reaction. Ultimately my reaction was to stop putting up with the constant left-wing bollocks written by the paper’s named writers and just stop reading it.
As such, it was good timing when the paper gave out discount vouchers halving the price of its newspaper at the start of this month. Since a price cut is what you expect from The Sun, putting the Guardian’s effective price back down to 40p per day and 80p at weekends lets the broadsheet paper compete with both the tabloids and the former broadsheets. For circulation purposes, the vouchers will stop the rot setting in due to belt-tightening, especially since they’re valid until New Year’s Eve. However, the water campaign and the price offer marks the beginning of the end of buying the actual newspaper, bringing to an end 12 uninterrupted years of reading it at the weekend.
The cold reality is that a newspaper’s only worth buying for jobseekers if its job section generates interviews, which kept me buying both the Guardian and The Evening Standard for the previous and current jobs. Since the score is 2-1 to The Standard, The Guardian’s going to go when the voucher campaign ends.
Habit is a powerful thing. Many people would have said “read it on the internet” but not factored in the electric bill in reading the entirety of a newspaper in a single day, represented online rather than on paper. The Guardian has a smart approach to online archiving of its paper and The Observer; you can read it all online on that specific day, but as of midnight the next day, that content will disappear and you’ll be taken on an online Indiana Jones-style quest to find specific articles, and sent to obscure message board sections to seek out reader answers in regular Q&A columns, for example, regarding money. Even if it’s hard to find stories occasionally, offering all content including the job ads online now means that the savings on the paper’s full price can’t be ignored.
It’s different for TV scheduling; people do want a printed TV guide for convenience – another reason to buy a weekend paper. However, with the free papers giving a daily instant look and different sections of the web giving the scheduling, there are enough ways to find out what’s on and if you subscribe to Sky your EPG makes a printed guide unnecessary - it’s really that good. It’s little wonder that Freeview ripped it off for PVRs and DVD Recorders. Radio Times is in rude health simply because people want it for its original purpose - without it I would have missed Radiohead live on Radio 2 for example. Once again, you’re raising your bill by using the iPlayer all the time to watch or hear the same stuff, so the catchup services serve as a reminder of the original transmission times. Once you’ve seen/heard a show, it’s over with and you don’t need to try to find time to catch up.
So, with my two main reasons for having this newspaper gone, it’s a no-brainer saving to make in current economic times to go from half-price now to free at the end of the year (after 12 years of “addiction”, I’ll have to wean myself off it!). I’ll look forward to enjoying the paper(s) online except for when there are unmissable special offers like the discount vouchers, or free books or CDs. Otherwise my long goodbye to the Guardian, and paid newspapers in general, has begun.
Rated: 46.67% (3 votes)
Loading ...I Cut My Bills With a Voltmeter - Result!
khenry
Just to round off this little mini series, my winter to spring electricity bill was £117.19, this was before two sets of price rises by my provider, EDF.
Over the spring to summer billing period covered by the last two blog entries, my summer bill (which to be fair was going to be lower anyway) still dropped to £41.17 , a saving of £76.02. Due to a dead gas oven which I’ve never replaced, my gas bill is that kind of figure all the time, so I’m really happy that those two bills are balanced. This figure’s also a good achievement compared to their dire warnings about price rises. I say “rip them back off” and stop giving money for nothing to a utility supplier!
In fact, the size of the saving used to be my average summer bill, but to be fair, Antec’s/Seasonic’s Earthwatts power supplies also have to take some of the credit, not just Maplin for selling me the Voltmeter and it’s frightening that both power supplies contributed to savings on the power bill from the day I bought them, without curtailing my PC Usage. Once I modernised my CRT and downgraded my GPU as detailed in the previous post, it all came together.
Thanks to Feathers633 for his feedback and even if you haven’t commented, I hope I’ve shown you that if you need to make some savings on your outgoings for energy (depending on your bill date) you can do it using whatever’s in your house already, but just using it differently.
As a fringe benefit, the planet has been helped along with my pocket. 
UPDATE 27/9/08: My gas bill arrived and not using an electric kettle anymore resulted in a £6.96 increase to £28.41. Measured against the electric savings above, 9% of that major decrease was moved over to gas instead.
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
Loading ...Cut Your Bills With a Voltmeter - the PCs
khenry
Next week I receive my electric bill and that will tell me how successful I’ve been in cutting my energy use during the last quarter, which has become all the more relevant with another round of price rises arriving since I bought my voltmeter from Maplin. However here’s the rundown of how my computers fared.
The eldest monitor, a ten year old Taxan CRT, naturally used the most power with a spiked cold start of around 250W and had the worst power usage of 95-100w, only losing 25w in standby – so I was right to turn it off rather than bothering to let a screensaver kick in. Even so, that’s now retired.
At least the Iiyama Vision Master 410 CRT , had a better cold start of up to 120W, then 90-100W whilst booting and then 72-75W for Windows usage – since it housed more modern Energy Star technology, it cut its power output all the way down to 4.5w when the monitor received no signal either post-shutdown or when the VGA cord was plugged into a DVI converter.
The best performing CRT was Dell’s E771, which is the no-frills model, but as well as having the 4.5w standby function, it only used 46-50W for Windows. Needless to say, I retrained my eyes and learned to love its 85Hz refresh ceiling in order to cut the power bill and it’s the only screen in use until I choose a TFT.
On the whole, the old machine, with a Barton Socket A CPU but new HSF, fans, motherboard and one less DIMM to total 1.5Gb, a single EIDE hard disk, two optical drives, soundcard and NIC, demanded 130W Maximum from my 430W-rated Antec Earthwatts PSU. When downgrading the graphics card from a 6800GT to a GF3Ti200 this fell to 99.3-106W, and finally a GF2 MX100 with passive cooling dropped the whole machine’s power to 87W low, and 100.4W high, averaging 94W. Warm reboots only drop the power usage to 96W peak, so I know that you might as well shut down properly each time unless it’s a Windows update.
For my Spring 2008 build on which games are played, the idle Windows usage demanded by my 650W Antec Earthwatts PSU started at 150W, but then when ADSL kicked in after booting this rose to 174W, then 186W when Steam loaded and sat idle, 188 when a Steam game launched (any of them), dead-on 200W on the game option screen, reaching a high of 216W when playing the game. Whenever a level changed in CSS or the ZPS mod, it would drop back to 200W, then 182 as the level loaded, then on a new level there would be a low of 213.7 back up to 217.8W depending on the size and detail of the Steam level.
Naturally, a more demanding game engine like those used by CoD 4 and Crysis would use even more power than this (see issue 58 for the relevant table). If you chose an Intel CPU and a current generation graphics card like a 4870/X2 and above or GF 280/+, you can consult issue 61 for the increased power consumption while testing. When taken as a whole, I’ve certainly proved that you don’t need Sizewell B to power a midrange-to-budget PC where more than one component has been designed with energy efficiency in mind. You don’t have to miss out on optimal speed when on a budget either, the power usage would stay low when using a GeForce 9600GT instead of my Radeon 3850, even if a third-party cooler might add a few watts.
One strange event that occurred was that when booting the new build to Windows, if I wait until it’s finished booting then plug the converted monitor into the DVI port, my PC reports a 100Hz refresh rate despite my knowing that the Dell screen’s physical maximum is 85Hz. I’m not sure if I’m forcing it beyond its specification or whether it’s a reporting issue in the vein of 32-Bit Vista and 4Gigs of RAM, but at the moment, I’m not complaining!
My speakers were the biggest surprise and disappointment, they are identical Yamahas and work really well, but sadly when plugged in and switched off, their two adaptors were wasting 10W in total, even when unused. So they’re now unplugged and I’ve substituted them with headsets plugged in to the soundcards directly. These let me have sound and carry on gaming or listening to podcasts or radio shows, but without that wastage of power. Losing the hum of the speakers has also helped the older machine become near-silent.
As for other external equipment, my HP printer only peaked at 22W when self-testing or spooling paper to print, in standby it dropped to 2.6-2.7W. For a Deskjet that’s 8 years old, that wasn’t bad. Same story for the scanner, which sat idle using 4-5W and only kicked into double figures when doing final (not preview) scanning. Even so, without an off-switch I unplug it anyway so there are no external peripherals which have any further effect on power usage.
All of this testing shows that it’s not worth using my games machine for straightforward web and Windows work, when I could save 50W using the less powerful PC. Overall, my computers, even when used simultaneously, have been relegated to third place behind my oven and iron for overall energy usage.
Conclusion
The reason for the big long previous post was to show that if you curtailed your wasted power on all your white goods and other devices in the home, your PC usage will have a lower impact on the final bill. You could still do almost anything apart from folding with your computer, without necessarily needing to cut down on using your machines. My final post or edit regarding power consumption will feature the bill as I receive the total next week, even if it’s the quietest time of year and the challenge will be to keep the figure low when reaching Autumn and Winter.
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Loading ...Cut your bills with a volt meter - 1
khenry
If you want to monitor your own power consumption then Maplin has a simple voltage meter on offer until the end of September (Part no. N67FU) . It could be the best eight pounds you ever spent. It’s programmable to give costs, but it’s more useful to just get the wattage ratings and do the maths based on your own energy supplier’s Kilowatt Hour (KWh) price brackets. All figures were from the wall and rounded up to the peak except when noted.
Necessities and White Goods
The best news was that lightbulbs stick to the rated amount of power, whether they were used in fittings or plug-in lampshades. Also, ordinary gang sockets of up to six plugs, worked as the simple extensions they were designed to be and didn’t use any additional energy. Sadly, the same isn’t true of surge protectors. The six-way surge strips use a negligible 0.2 to 1.5W but the more complex and 8-plug models take anything up to another 2W. That’s why switched models are so popular, where you can individually or collectively cut the power to one or all sockets as promoted by PC Pro. As long as you remember to turn them off at night and whenever they’re not in use, you won’t have all these items trickling away for eight hours and helping to keep your bill high.
An early noughties Dyson uses a constant 100W, but dust is dust, I count a vacuum cleaner as essential and you will only use it in bursts, perhaps weekly at the most. My Whirlpool A-Class fridge uses the most power when running its frost control programme (90-100W, so 95W average). Its A rating derives from zero watt usage in standby until the fridge door is opened, when it will use 16W (including the lightbulb) and then idle back to 1.2W followed by zero when shut, unless you’ve put something warm in the fridge and it’s comparatively empty. The catch is that it will pick its own merry time to run the frost control even if that averages out to post-midnight. Since its peak is 100W and the minimum spend on my electric bill is always £30, at least that gives me an easy division to 30p per hour over a four-month period to run my fridge. By contrast I knew my Hotpoint washing machine naturally used a lot of power as its A-rating came from its programme dial power switch for zero watt use when off and reduced water consumption, but I didn’t realise it was segmented into the filling and purging of water (11W, jumping to 178-212W on the first combined spin or rinse), the actual washing (200W spike, then 63-89W for every spin, with combinations averaging 234-250W), and then the final spin was where the most power was burned. Since this is the stage where my machine needs a service, I’m turning it off early and stopping the machine from burning 430-500W then revving up to 700W peak on the fastest final spin, which is enough to power all the “fun” AV electronics in the house at the same time for over an hour, or slow-cook one dinner in my electric oven. Knowing this, my clothes can take an extra day to air dry rather than adding to my bill. Nearly seven years on, when it’s time to replace the washer I will know to look for comprehensive power usage figures rather than getting distracted by the seemingly Europe-wide A to G energy rating system.
Audiovisual equipment
Turning to those “fun” electronic items, the voltmeter revealed that hi-fi separates, rather than PC equipment, provided the best energy efficiency from my 1990s era of kit. Even my mid-range Minidisc deck used less than 9W for playback or recording and dropped to 5W in standby (As with any item lacking an off switch, I just unplug it). The amplifier never exceeded 14W. The best result was the Pro-ject Debut III manual turntable. Since the basic design of the record player hasn’t changed for a century or two, it used a measly TWO watts when powered on, moving to a punishing 3.2W when set to 45 for singles. Since it was a turntable without a phono stage or headphone socket it was useful that its power requirement could be added to the amplifier’s total and still use less power than the separate CD Player, which peaked at 26W (but dropped just below 10 in standby). The separate Sony analog tuner didn’t only feature a proper off switch but burned just 9.6-9.9W, I never saw it breach 10W while testing. If you have to let the tuner broadcast for a timed recording to a different device, it would be like leaving one single energy saving light on. The total hi-fi power use wouldn’t take much more energy than an old-fashioned 60W lightbulb especially when recording direct to Minidisc without using the amp - then call it 80W if you were listening to any one of the four playback devices. As far as I’m concerned that total makes listening to music at home a comparatively kind hobby on the planet compared to everything else we do.
Also, bear in mind that my amp was made 14 years ago and is the sole remaining part of the original set purchased in 1996. I hope the modern equivalents burn half this amount of power or even less. Ipod fans naturally use even less power just to charge up their portables from the wall, but would fall down when having to hook them up to computers to download their choice of music.
Remember all the magazines extolling the benefits of flatscreens over CRTs in the TV world? My 25in 4:3 CRT TV has a startup spike of up to 40W which is less than half that of my computer CRTs, uses 64W for normal use going up to 70W when receiving a DVD or console signal but if I ever used the dreaded standby rather than turning it off, it would power down to the same 4.5W of my noughties-era 17in CRT monitors.
I read in the September 2008 Which? Group test that they only found the one 32in Wide and flatscreen TV that used less than 100W, made by Sharp (even though I didn’t see a single standby rating over 2.5W). It also used 70W peak like my Sanyo CRT but perhaps inevitably, its picture suffered compared to bigger names. Digital picture quality certainly requires more power from the consumer at home and there is no guarantee that this will improve following the completion of digital switchover. My separate Freeview box uses a constant 6W, but the tuner in my DVD Recorder, uses 17W just to act as a passthrough for analog viewing when plugged in, and then 24W to provide the (admittedly much better) picture by itself, whether watching or recording. To balance this out, the deck has the option of timer recording without displaying the picture on the screen, so I don’t mind about the 17W needed for the unit to “sleep” until the required time. Since the recorder has a Freeview tuner, then unlike the VCR it’s replacing, it will always regain its date and time so at least you can unplug it or turn off its socket at the wall to save power.
Finally, an original Xbox burned 44W when idle, so given that a real hi-fi Pioneer DVD Player never used more than 16W, it’s another vote in favour of keeping to single-function devices.
The Exceptions
You don’t need the voltmeter for your humble electric kettle or your iron. Simply drain it, lift it off the base, turn it upside down and the power consumption in Watts will be printed on a label. The Hinari and Argos own-brand models I purchased over the past 8 years have used a consistent 2000-2200W (averaging 2025-2100W across both models) to boil water. Considering people drink hot beverages much more often than they run a washing machine, these kettles were my biggest energy wasters on a pro-rata basis. Even the fastest cooking setting on my electric oven was 1700W, so it was finally time to cut the cost of the great British cuppa.
Thankfully Argos now carries a token whistling model for ten pounds (I will edit in with the link but if it ever changes, it’s part number 840/5786) which is handy if you’re not within site of a market to find one on the cheap. It’s true that you’re transferring your energy use over to your gas bill instead, but you don’t need fancy devices to measure out the one cup. The stove kettle will always be cheaper than the electric variety unless you forget it on the hob and let it melt. If you fear that you’ll do this, then the water in a pot or pan will cost even less to boil depending on the gas mark.
Your iron, like your electric kettle, will also have its energy usage printed on a label so no need to measure it. In my case the low is 1280W and the high 1525W, second to my electric oven though I only iron single sets of clothing at a time and never the entire load.
Finally the humble toaster also has a label. At 750W for 3-4 minutes, the toaster is my sole concession to convenience - I wouldn’t rip out my ageing kitchen fittings just to toast bread with gas, so I eat the stuff less often and have turned down its settings.
Conclusion
If the electric device in question has a single function plus a proper off switch, it has a good chance of being among the most energy efficient items in your home. Combination devices may naturally use varying amounts of power but you can rest assured that some energy is wasted when leaving unused functions idle (eg, only playing back a DVD in a Freeview DVD Recorder, or only printing from a multifunction printer/fax/scanner) - so don’t sling out your separates in a hurry if you have the space to keep using them.
I’ll update regarding the power consumption of PC gear in another post.
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
Loading ...Is this the UK’s dumbest pirate?
khenry
Piracy’s a hardy perennial issue that never goes away and it recently flared up again when a developer decided to talk to them. The results of his experimental launch featuring an expanded demo and no DRM remain to be seen.
However, the £3000 fine handed down to the pirate bringing his wares in by fishing boat earlier this year was dwarfed by the penalty that a court slapped on one of four pirates successfully sued by Topware Interactive. This unnamed lady uploaded Dream Pinball 3D, a game which is yet to be released on PC (it’s out at the end of August on the same day as Stalker Clear Skies), which was downloaded 1000 times. The total fine and damages means that for a game that you could pre-order for £8.99 at Play.com, she will pay
£16, 086. The three co-defendants in that single case are yet to be fined, but the court obtained 1,000 other names from ISPs keen to take themselves out of the firing line of legal action.
The “price of games” argument isn’t going to work here because the prize was getting to play a game that was already out in the US, up to seven months before its UK release. Whatever the intellectual debate around piracy, it shows that publishers are no longer willing to put up with it, and that ISPs are tiring of covering the backs of their bandwidth- wasting, filesharing army.
The real surprise is that it’s a small to medium publisher protecting a reputedly so-so pinball game, rather than EA and ActiBlizzard protecting Crysis and Cash on Delivery 4. The latter pair of publishers could certainly afford it.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Freeloading
khenry
Since I’m changing phone contracts, I’m reluctant to have to charge two mobile phones during the crossover period at a time when I want to cut my power bill. So I put aside my concerns that solar gadgets needed another year to really become commonplace and took the plunge.
It’s good that the Supercharger add-on pouch for the Freeloader portable battery (in issue 58’s Custom Kit) is optional. The larger panel might charge the Freeloader much more quickly in summer and is probably a requirement when there is much less light in the sky and the days are shorter.
I looked at the fact that the Freeloader could sit at my feet charging via USB whilst my PC is on. That put paid to my doubts about using the device in winter and I decided that the extra panel could wait, possibly as long as summer 2009. I want to see what the battery alone can do to reduce my bills and its £27-30 cost is comparable to just going out and buying another cheap Nokia handset to use with my SIM-only contract. (Update 7/8/08 - the clincher for the Freeloader is that you can carry on charging it with the USB connector using the standby ATX current from your PSU, retained when you shut down without turning the PC off at the mains).
I may still get the newer phone, but it would be safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be using much more power from the mains than the PC was wasting anyway. As such, any future phone battery would last a lot longer than the 18 months of the last model. I’d advise turning off those stupid mobile wallpapers and screensavers, especially if you’re with 3, so you can save yourself the same problem I’ve just had.
In the long term though, I have one room which gets all the best sun, where there are no blinds, and a PC Pro reader emailed in to that magazine to say that he adds a new solar panel each year to carry on using a laptop. Eventually, he’d have enough linked panels to have the machine always-on during the summer.
That got me thinking that at least one of those windows might be useful for standing a solar panel on the window sill instead of, or in front of, any blind. This would allow me to do the same for any eventual portable I bought, or to power a solar fan to cool that room or the corridor, depending on the size and ease of connecting the devices to the panel(s).
Putting a single panel in a window is an easier way of finding out the viability of solar power generation than spending £47,000 to stick the panels all over your roof, and waiting 15-20 years to get the money back. All I need now is the gas hob kettle, and I’ll be ready to see whether the Earthwatts power supplies and these other devices bring down my electric bill in October and help the planet as a fringe benefit. The electric bill won’t fall as low as my gas, which was under £22 last quarter. However, anything below £100 would be good, given the recent energy price rises.
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Loading ...I Predict A Rodent
khenry
Who makes up the Gartner Group and why haven’t they all been fired? They just come up with prediction after prediction that means precisely naff-all. These idiots have taken time out from predicting the death (as opposed to the transformation) of PC gaming, and are now telling computer users that the humble mouse will cease to exist very soon.
Never mind the fact that this bold claim flies in the face of Microsoft re-issuing certain models of Intellimice favoured by gamers, nor the fact that even though it’s got that touch of Japanese cool, Nintendo’s Wiimotes are basically wireless mice by another name for use on your telly. Personally, I don’t want a Minority Report-styled touch screen for my computing, not when keyboards are less than a fiver and now wired optical mice hover around a tenner. A replacement Wheel Mouse Optical set me back £11 last month. It’s hardly co-incidence that all these irritating predictions about new technology only happen when the economy of scale has made the existing stuff affordable.
So as far as I’m concerned, the humble mouse is as safe as the paper in your office and your PC games.
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Loading ...Akasa Vortexx Neo - SOLD - (+ benchmarks)
khenry
Having given up on Ebay, why not flog stuff at a place where the item’s received a trusted review and practical testing? If you’re considering the cooler as reviewed in issue 59 and which I blogged about at the start of the month, I’ve got a brand new and sealed spare one courtesy of Overclockers whom I’ll never shop with again.
If you don’t have issue 59 then the review should hit the site within the next 10 days and I’ll link to it here. The card tested with the cooler was the 8800GT and other people’s user experiences at home with Nvidia cards can be seen in these two threads on the forum, here.
So if you’re interested then post a comment or email kenneth_henry AT yahoo dot com.
I also said I’d report some general temps on my Radeon 3850 with the new cooler fitted (all in centigrade unless othewise stated):
Call of Duty 4 was one of the games sending the card up to 90 degrees and crashing the machine out.
I was able to push CoD4 to 1,280 x 1,024 at 100Hz with 4xAA and everything else set to maximum, (my preferred max res on a 17in CRT) and play at 33fps average, 45 maximum (with troughs of 21-25 on the busiest maps). The temp spread was 43 degrees from the startup screen to 51 degrees in the game by the time I stopped playing the general spread of Domination Maps. When I can remember names I’ll edit this and note the peaks and troughs.
Crysis, at the village with 20 soldiers before you have to rescue the hostage in an upstairs room and destroy three tanks, was another game crashing at 90 degrees. After fitting the Vortexx Neo, not only was this busy action scene playable (which included a petrol station explosion if you drove carelessly) but the best balance for this demanding game was 1,024 x 768 with 4 x AA with the game itself selecting medium for all settings. I could then play at an average of 30fps exactly when surrounded by general jungle or landscape, only dropping to a low of 20-22fps when zooming in on the assault scope attachment of any weapon. The temperature range was 46-50 degrees.
I could have played at my desktop res of 1152 x 864, but would have had to stay at 2xAA to achieve more than 20fps on the framerate. The cooler kept the card below 50 degrees, but playable and sustainable anti-aliasing on the runt of the Radeon range was the best I could achieve before the next upgrade is due. At least it’s ready for Warhead, even if Crytek doesn’t render the engine down to prove more system-friendly.
I still wasn’t happy so torture tested the 3850 by setting everything to High, but staying at 10 x 7 and 2xAA. FRAPs reported a 47fps peak, 25fps average but the temperature stayed in the high 40s to 52 degrees. The same torture test at 1152 x 864 finally crashed the card.
Until Valve introduces its proposed engine upgrade to Source for newer dual and quad-core CPUs/GPUs, there’s almost no point in bothering with speed testing; it didn’t fall below 40fps and peaked at 50 in any of the Source games tested including mods, and managed this at 1152 x 864 with 4x AA, everything set to high or high from default selections in the menus. Like CoD 4 though, at the higher resolutions, reading text in MP gaming was almost impossible so you really needed to play with a headset enabled. The temperature was 43-45 degrees and on the day I was testing it was 23 degrees outside, but on cooler days I could play Source games and the temperature was so close to that of the Windows desktop (35-37 degrees) as to be negligible - the 2-3 degree spread would sometimes disappear when I was ALT-TABbing back to Hardware Monitor to pick up the temps.
So this cooler does what it says on the tin, it’s well worth buying and upgrading the default cooler on the current spread of two generations. Since the Radeon 4850 also sports a similar if slightly wider reference cooler, it remains to be seen whether the Neo Vortexx will fit that card as well. On the day that I fitted mine to my 3850, my frustration at the reference cooler subsided and it’s true that I could have merely re-applied some TIM, reseated the reference cooler and started again. However it was another learning experience.
As far as I know that’s the best price you’ll find because I’m including delivery and technically comes with 11 or so months of warranty if I bung in the paperwork, but if you’re buying brand new then stick to Scan like I should have done.
UPDATE 21/7/08 : Thankfully the power of CPC Blogs has struck again! The spare cooler was sold at an unbeatable £18 all in so a bargain for the buyer - basically free delivery compared to the street price on the Elite list and I was just glad to have got shot of my unnecessary spare. So if it’s not against Dennis online policy and you’re sick of trying to sell stuff on Ebay, then give your blog headline space a go.
Rated: 73.33% (3 votes)
Loading ...Akasa Vortexx Neo vs Radeon HD 3850
khenry
The Akasa Neo Vortexx 1000 (See issue 59, p59) may have won an award and in my opinion, lives up to it. However, when replacing a single-slot reference ATi HSF on an entry-level card, you’ll notice a major issue (which you can see on the online version of the review, now up here) – the front of the Neo, which raises the fan away from the top of the card, doesn’t cover the quartet of chips at the top of the card (hereafter known as the VRMs even though I’ve no idea what they do). These heatsinks are sold as separate items. That certainly wins an award from me as stupid idea of the year, as opposed to just charging more money for a more complete upgrade set.
This is a quick guide to how to add this cooler to the 256Mb version of the 3850 which many gamers on a budget are still running (unless it’s just me).
Firstly you should know how to Apply TIM (or see print issue 46, p98). My GPU’s overheating problems were caused by a leakage of the shipped thermal paste causing the copper base to almost touch the die. This is what led to my 41-50 degree temps when idle in Windows, my 70-degree temps in Source games, the low to mid 80s for Crysis (even when tweaked) and the crashout temperatures of more than 90 degrees in Call of Duty 4. Follow all instructions to Remove Your GPU Cooler (or see issue 56 p90). This will rid you of the stock HSF. Unlike the X1900 series card in the guide, the 3850 GPU looks like an AMD Socket A CPU with a central silver die surrounded by green ceramic packaging. So you can apply your TIM to just the silver area of the chip after you’ve cleaned off the old paste with TIM cleaner. Also apply a smooth but thin layer to the surface of the four “VRMs” at the top – but use the replacement thermal pads as directed in Akasa’s kit on the eight RAM chips that make up the 256Mb.
Once all thermal pads are in place and the GPU and VRMs have had TIM applied, jump back to the Make Your Own Thermal Epoxy guide (Issue 53, p102). The only thing you need to change in these instructions is your preferred brand of TIM – I used the old fashioned 80s variety of Araldite as well, bought from B & Q but either type will do. Also, you can either construct or just buy RAM chip heatsinks as directed in issue 59’s Hands On which is yet to reach the site (See the update for the link to buy them, below). If you are stuck without new ones or old flat motherboard heatsinks to recycle, and you were fed up and wanted a quick fix, then do what I did (Pretty sure CPC won’t vouch for this, but it worked for me)…
Take a pair of recently minted (2004 onwards) 2pence pieces – whose circumference covers two of the VRMs and which are literally 1mm thinner than the Reference HSF’s own layer of copper. Clean them up with any solution famous for cleaning copper coins (that’s Coca Cola, Cillit Bang or just TIM Cleaner). Once dry, use your thermal epoxy to bond them to the VRMs, which have already had that single layer of TIM applied. They need a single dollop each as they have to cover two chips – use the centre of the plumage on the “tails” side as a guide – they need to cover a total length of 5.1cm or exactly 2inches). Then place the two coins on the VRMs and gently press them down (if like me, you’d already fitted the cooler by then then you can clamp the edges of the coins with a pair of scissors to place and press the coins to the VRMs). Then carry out the final fixing of the Akasa cooler with the enclosed washers and screw-on caps on the underside and leave the entire upgrade to “dry”. After a decent 45mins to an hour, slot the card back into its case.
If your case is the Cooler Master RC330 Elite V2 from the Issue 55 Build Your Own PC or Mr Geiseric’s BBB or BBBB PCs on the forums, the rear of the Vortexx Neo won’t stretch to the back of the case like a flush double-slot cooler as shipped with the early Radeon 3870 or GeForce 8800GTS/GTX. Naturally, you should still snap out the blanking plate below the first PCI-E slot to allow some hot air to escape. You have the option of fitting a second 80mm cooling fan to the air vent parallel to the top-most PCI-E slots if you don’t feel that the Neo Vortexx is successfully expelling the maximum amount of heat. Despite the lack of a metal backplane, My tests have shown no increase in the surrounding case temperature of 30 degrees. When you first put the cooler through its paces and leave your PC running for a few hours, that will finalise the natural bonding process of the new layers of TIM. I’ll report my results in the next post but thanks to this Cooler, for my preferred resolutions, the card now lives up to issue 53 and 54’s results, rather than issue 58’s.
UPDATE: If you don’t like the idea of gluing money to your VRMs/other types of capacitor, then you can also obtain the Zalman Coolers pictured in Issue 59’s guide (page 98), separately and direct from good old Scan or quick code LN9907 - they cost £5 for a pack of eight heatsinks in total, four standard “high sprung” memory coolers and another four of the flat, “fanned out” variety (the flatter type are the ones in the bottom right-hand/final photograph). They’re so small when bought with the Vortexx, as to add next to nothing to the delivery charge. I’d be the first to admit they probably look more techy than a couple of coins. Whether they’d match the required length to cover the VRMs/non-memory chips/capacitors on every single graphics card remains to be seen. However, at five pounds, it won’t break the bank to find out.
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khenry
So here I was thinking my build was over and done with, once my preferred PSU had been installed. I opened the case and gave the cabling a second round of general management and reconnected my CPU exhaust fan’s power lead which had become dislodged.
However, I never thought I would see myself typing the following words; following tweaking, I played through and completed Crysis with no further crashes to the Radeon 3850 GPU. Its temperatures no longer breached 65 degrees when playing Cryis compared to the GPU’s crash temperature wall of 90 degrees. Before I could celebrate with a replay on hard difficulty, rather than Crysis proving hard to tackle, it was Call of Duty 4 which proved the more difficult game to configure.
CoD 4 is the one game where a lack of AA could really make the game ugly (even compared to Crysis), but one setting, Specular Map, could stop the game looking as washed out as before, without the use of AA. It didn’t prove reliable, sadly, as the game continued to crash out even if I can get 3-4 hours from it before this happens, whatever the ambient temperature. A jump of 60 degrees from the GPU alone was weird, because the twin 120mm and side 80mm fans, not to mention the 90mm cooler on the Artic 64 Pro, all keep my CPU and general case temp to the 30 degree mark and at the time of the crash, still failed to exceed 35-40 degrees now that the Antec PSU has been installed, which maintains a third 120mm fan to take out the last vestiges of hot air. By elimination, that points to the ATi single-slot reference cooler which is supposed to work, and according to all CPC tests (particularly issue 54’s), was supposed to play at my preferred res even with no AA to jack up the output of heat. I’m not saying it’s rubbish, especially when any Source engine game (including those making use of the new Source SDK circa the Orange Box) continues to work flawlessly.
Unless I have a sample card running hotter than the usual norm, (which I doubt, considering its 290-292W power consumption in its two separate labs tests, and no failures when different writers benchmarked CoD 4), I think I was accustomed to my 6800GT with a Zalman third party cooler which cooled not only itself but also the case space around it. Thankfully, within the last two issues there have been two alternative GPU coolers but this time I’ll plump for the Akasa Vortexx Neo reviewed in issue 59. Its £10 price advantage will equate to free delivery compared to the modern Zalman, and it’s much more likely that a wider range of stores will stock Akasa hardware and I can throw a replacement mouse into the box whilst I’m there.
If the reviewer had no more Crysis crashes using the 3rd party cooler but I was able to tweak that game to work on the reference GPU HSF, here’s hoping it will do the same for CoD 4, when the air is getting vented out of the back of my case again. I’m also happy that it will keep my chosen blue lighting theme going with its UV looks and sport a larger overall cooling fan*. If all else fails I can finally reconnect my second side panel fan which sits at the level of the GPU.
However, despite my new build giving me another interesting twist that won’t cost me too much money to fix, I’ll never trust the lower of two cards in an emerging ATi range ever again. Any graphics card I purchase from now on will have a dual slot cooler from the start, as having to do upgrades to my upgrades to finally attain a stable rig is limiting my gaming options until it’s sorted out.
*Akasa reported no specs in any review or news coverage regarding the Vortexx GPU HSF cooling fan but I am going to use Akasa’s separated 80mm blue LED fans as a rough guide, being the same physical size. It’s rated at 2,500RPM and shifting 32.37 CFM with a noise level of 23db(A). If you went to PC World and bought that fan separately for the side of your case, they cost me £4 but may prove more expensive outside sale times.