Recent content by larrymoencurly

Did you remove the heatsink to read the writing on the chip packages? (if not don't do it -- chips sometimes tear off). Some reviewers have found the writing on the chip packages not matching the SPD even for the slow JEDEC timings. I looked at a very few Micron DDR3 datasheets and didn't...

> memtest didnt give me anything when i ran it for 15 mins. 1. Memtest is a lousy diagnostic, maybe as bad as DocMem. 2. MemTest86, MemTest86+, and GoldMemory are much better but may need to be run a long time to find problems. One person found nothing by running MemTest86 overnight for...

> Corsair Vengeance GMZ64GX3M8A1600C9 1600 MHz, CL 9? Unless it's made from Nanya chips, it has to be overclocked because nobody else makes 1600 MHz DDR3 faster than CL 11. The best DDR3 is probably the used stuff on eBay that's branded Micron (not Crucial), Samsung, Hynix, SKHynix...

10W - 15W is right for soldering surface mount parts, but for capacitors with leads that go all the way through holes in the circuit board, it's way too little power to melt the solder completely and quickly, and beginners are more likely to cause heat damage with an underpowered iron because...

Do NOT use a soldering gun! It will overheat the board and cause copper traces to come off. A heat gun is risky unless you can adjust its temperature. You can burn off your skin with one. You need a soldering iron, preferrably a temperature regulated (temperature controlled) one, but a...

Before recapping my old Antec SmartPowers that were full of awful Fuhjyyu caps, I measured the ESR of the caps that looked OK, and I replaced only those that looked bad or had high ESR. Then 2-4 weeks later, some of the remaining original caps bulged. My point is that if one cap of a certain...

Neither are their user manuals. This is from the manual for an Ultra V-Series, and it does want the user to plug in the 24-pin power connector backwards. Worse, that connector had enough slop in it that it could be plugged backwards into one cheapo motherboard (antique VisionTop Otto). The...

For silicone-based products, Aavid says indefinite, Dow Corning says 2 years. I don't know about the silicone-free stuff, which uses PAG oil instead, something that absorbs water a lot. I'll bet any shelf life rating is based mainly on how long it takes for the silicone and powder to separate...

Back Blaze said that firmware caused a lot of those Seagates to fail, but they also said they didn't count drives that failed during their ~3 weeks of initial testing. So does that mean those Seagates had an even higher failure rate, or does it mean Back Blaze's initial testing isn't very good?

More likely 680W means the maximum possible output the PSU can sustain for anywhere from one second to 5 minutes, at room temperature. Temperature can make a big difference because capacity drops with heat, like 15% - 30% when going from room temp to the common 40C inside a computer case...

MaxPower/Key Mouse is rare in the US, and I got mine, 8-10 years ago, only because it was included with a free-after-rebate Soyo case. HardwareInsights.com didn't test your $5 A-Power, but they did test a "680W" A-Power...

Are there any explanations for the different failure rates? Russia's StoreLab agreed about Hitachis being best but thought post 7200.11 model Seagates were fine.

How do you know? IOW how did you measure the power output? : That A-Power looks even worse than my 300W Key Mouse (MaxPower), which at least had substantial input capacitors (each 560uF compared to 330uF) and a decent size main transformer (as big as those in good 300W PSUs). But like your...

I'd try another SATA data cable.

MHDD or the Windows version, HDDscan.com, because they're the only programs that show slow sectors, not just completely bad sectors. HDAT2 for refreshing sectors and relocating bad ones without losing the data. It's sort of like SpinRite.