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June 18th, 2008

I can’t sleep

I couldn’t fall asleep for the past few nights, I don’t know why. I used to be able to fall asleep quite quickly, but that was back when I was still in Sri KDU. Maybe I am a lot less stressed than I used to be :) Although I wouldn’t say I’m stress-free right now. You should see my workload! *Gasp*

I don’t like it when I’m in this semi-sleepy state. I’m not sleepy enough to fall asleep, but I’m not awake enough to do anything productive either. I normally try to read, but instead of getting sleepier, I’d have read several chapters but am nowhere near dreamland as I would like to be. So… I end up switching on my laptop and surfing, and doing mindless stuff like blogging.

I’ve tried googling my name up before. FYI all instances of my full name are ME. Hehehe. But I’ve also tried googling variations like “ms hoo” to see what kind of links will be generated. I’ve also looked at some of the incoming links in my Wordpress dashboard, and found many of my students’ blogs. Erm, and I know this is really late, but I found a blog entry that amused me!!

Benjamin of 5A included me in the 11 he would like to have with him on a stranded island because I know how to calculate water pressure.

Except that it’s not 11 because he doesn’t have enough blog buddies, so it’s only a miserable 9. It’s kind of like getting into a football team because not enough people tried out.

Yes yes, I know the post is 2 months old, but I don’t go around reading students’ blogs like a certain teacher does. (No offence!)

In other news, my PC is giving a lot of problems. I bought a desktop to do my video editing recently, and as of last week it suddenly started switching itself off for no reason. This happens only when it is processing something. If I leave it on idle, it can stay on for hours but when i make it run (like process a video, burn an image, etc) the computer will suddenly die halfway through the process. When I say die, I mean that the power just kills itself. It doesn’t show the shut down screen or freeze or anything like that. And I can still start the computer up after that with no problem. I can’t figure out what’s wrong. It’s a pretty new computer, only bought it in March. If it was a PSU or a cooling fan problem, shouldn’t it also die if it was left idle? Yes no? OK, hardware isn’t my forte, software is more my thing. I initially thought it was an application or a driver error because this problem started only after I installed Nero 8 trial version, but it’s still occurring after I’ve uninstalled Nero 8. In fact I’ve formatted the hard disk and reinstalled just Windows and the movie editing software, but the problem is still occurring. Help, somebody…?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “I can’t sleep”

  1. Eng Seng Says:
    June 19th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    It sounds like maybe the PSU cannot supply enough power for some of the rails. It only happens when you do video editing or anything processor intensive, right? What brand is your PSU? And what other components you got in there? You got installed any software that watches the voltages on your motherboard?

    If you do need to change your PSU, I recommend you buy Corsair PSU. They’re quiet and got enough power.

  2. Matt Says:
    June 20th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    ^I agree^

    But you don’t necessarily need to buy a Corsair PSU,though they are definitely good. Just buy a name brand PSU. I’ve used AC-Bell(Taiwanese OEM for a lot of the bigger brands), Thermaltake, Enermax and Cooler Master in situations where they are all under prolonged high load and they stood up fine.

    Name brands aside, what you need is a power supply that can give a steady output at its rated power, i.e the rating is the true power not the peak power. Often cheapo power supplies will say 600W but will only be able to sustain it for the whole of 3 seconds before they explode or crash.The reason for buying a good name brand power supply is that these manufacturers usually put the actual sustained output on the packaging instead of the peak power output.

    For your needs (unless you have an insane number of HDDs and or a monster video card) I`m guessing 450-500w range would be more than sufficient and provide you with the option to add more drives in the future without worrying about power.

    Expect to pay around RM300-RM400 for a decent 500Wish PSU.
    When it comes to power supplies:

    1)Don’t pay less, you will get crap that will do weird stuff like what you’re experiencing now.
    2)For the same power rating, the heavier the better(weird in this day and age of ultrathins and superlights, but with PSUs this generally holds true)
    3)A better power supply will better cope with the weird ass power fluctuations our friends at TNB get up to all the time , especially if its a house with older wiring.

    That aside, there is a very mundane cause of this, which is rare but i`ve seen it happen way to many times(in production servers which crashed ONLY under load causing huge headaches) , open the machine up and check if the motherboard takes axillary power connectors. A lot of newer motherboards take 1 or even 2 aux power connectors in addition to the standard ATX one. Person that built your PC might have forgot to plug one in and that would cause EXACTLY the symptoms you described. Same goes for aux power on the video card (though this is even more unlikely)

  3. zyenhoo Says:
    June 21st, 2008 at 10:52 pm

    Argh. I really didn’t want to have to spend more money :(

    Thanks for your advice, guys. Will look into it when I have time!

  4. Eng Seng Says:
    June 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 am

    I still must come out to defend the Corsair PSU. Other PSUs I’ve used are noisy and not worth it in the long run.

    There’s no need for you to buy a 600W PSU unless you’re running dual NVidia cards and overclocking everything. Visit this page and key in the details to see what PSU wattage you need:

    http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

  5. Matt Says:
    June 22nd, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    I daresay most if not all relatively high end power supplies have automatic fan speed controllers.

    500W (or 500ish for those manufacturers that dont make exact), actually the safe number is around 430-450 but factoring in possible future upgrades and the effects of capacitor aging. as well as the PSU efficiency.Doesn’t hurt for a bit extra:D

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