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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Record.dat << Streaming Audio

Recently I was trying to record audio from my sound card's playback device, and could not get any software to perform the job. I was googling and fiddling through Audacity's settings without troubleshooting the situation from its root.
Updating my drivers from the PC Manufactor's website presented me with a list of devices in Audacity's available sources that were not available before. Even though my Device Manager showed my devices as being up to date, it was using a Microsoft Proprietary driver for my audio device instead of the more appropraite device available from Dell.
Had I used the original Dell Image from the factory, I am sure this would not have been an issue. But if you are installing your own custom Windows Instance, remember to update all drivers no matter how insignificant the additional features of them may seem at the time.

Friday, September 9, 2011

My Apologies to Rockstar

A few months back I posted about my issues with Rockstar games. I still stand by my original statement that it did freeze A LOT. But I have figured out the cause of a majority of my PS3 Freezing.

Overheating.

I did some research online and found a few articles and blogs about the thermal paste that helps conduct heat from the GPUs to the aluminum conduits during high performance calculations of verticies in games. Apparently the paste that is used at the factory when creating the original PS3 is sub-par and become degraded over years of use. This results in poor cooling and can cause all types of unpredictable errors.

So I ordered some Arctic Silver 5 Thermal paste from www.newegg.com and started taking apart the PS3.

One piece of advice. While taking apart the PS3, you will notice that as you disassemble each layer, there are arrows pointing out which screws to extract. keep the screws with the component you are taking out and everything will go together much easier. There is one screw just below the wires where the power cable connects that does not have an arrow.


I instantly saw that the factory thermal paste was dried out and flaky. I cleaned it off the processors and heat conductors using 91% isopropyl alcohol and coffee filters, which dont leave particles behind. (they sell 75% isopropyl alcohol, however this can leave 16% more residue on the processors...dont know if it matters though). I used wooden toothpicks to get the excess paste off the edge of the processors.

One other note, be cautious when screwing in the metal pieces that apply pressure to the processors against the aluminum heat conductors. They can be easily cross threaded.

I used a plastic bag over my finger and applied the paste to both the processors and heat conductors evenly using about 90% of the thermal paste in the tube.

Paste does not need time to dry. Actually you don't want it to dry at all. When it becomes dry, it does not conduct heat well and needs to be replaced.

Also thanks Tim, for helping me with this project!