Finally happened

[DarkTails]

Figures that soon as I find some more cool games to play my gaming laptop dies

And now a brief timeline of Mr. McFrakken's lifetime:

-Mr McFrakken is born somewhere in a seedy corner of China and is shipped to America to find a slightly better life.

-Some guy buys it from Best Buy for $2000 when new and does all sorts of horrible bothersome things to it for a few years.

-Guy posts it for sale on Craigslist and I'm looking for this particular model, it's a match made in hell

-Guy comes over in new Camaro to drop off laptop, it's an older model than he advertised. And it's more fucked up than he advertised. Turns out he's kind of an idiot. I'm an idiot for still buying because I needed a laptop. Mr. McFrakken is MINE.

-Spruced up Mr. McFrakken with all sorts of programs and gizmos, he's never felt better, that scar in the lower corner of the screen is mega manly.

-A year later a hard drive starts to fail, no worries, he's still chugging along!

-Soon after, the DC power jack starts to loosen, have to jiggle the power cord to get it to charge properly. Battery begins holding less and less charge. No problem, I'll just leave it plugged in most of the time!

-Mr. McFrakken starts overheating despite frequent cleanings and air cooler, fans and hard drive get noisier, occasional glitches when using him pop up. Still going though, he'll never die!

-Forward to the present, I forget to clean McFrakken for a month. I update the graphics card drivers, now he has amazing new gaming quality! I test Mr. McFrakken's newfound powers, then at the peak of enjoyment he shuts down completely. I try to turn him back on but he only lights up for a second and shuts down again no matter how many times I press his power button.

-Run the gamut of tests to see what's wrong; change the CMOS battery, check for wiggling DC jack, inspect for noticeably burnt-out components, remove the giant clump of dust completely blocking one of the cooling tubes... oops.

-Nothing works, Mr McFrakken's motherboard must be damaged, he's dead. And repairing him will cost as much as a new laptop

Now I'm stuck on the nice PC but with no graphics card. FML!

Moral of the story: Runic waited too long to release TL2! HOW I PLAY NOW!?

[Zidders]

Sorry to hear about you friend. As far as vid cards go, despite having an on-board card, you might still be able to run Torchlight II. Travis mentioned that he was going to see about making it possible for us to turn things like weather off, so you might be able to tweak it to the point where you can run it.

As far as video cards go, maybe there's someone here who can sell you one for cheap?

[Kukuku]

Heh. My graphics card started malfunctioning a while back. I get screen tearing just from scrolling my web browser, so that's a good sign. And I can't replace it because I have more important expenses to worry about. So for me, it doesn't matter when T2 gets released. I won't be playing it for some time.

Maybe if I'm lucky, I can have someone describe to me what it is like to play Torchlight 2 when it's released.

"It feels like what a thousand sunrises would taste like, only you don't use your tongue!"

[DarkTails]

My laptop might just need a new battery, it was down to only holding like 15% charge at maximum last time I checked. It doesn't run without a battery attached, so I'm guessing if the battery can't hold a charge to pass to the laptop then there isn't enough power to turn it on. I've had the laptop plugged in for a few hours now and the charge indicator never gets fully charged, so I'm guessing it's not holding a charge at all anymore.

I don't know, I hope I can find someone who lives nearby to try their battery before I buy a new one and waste money on shipping both ways if that isn't the problem.

Far as graphics cards go, would be great if anyone can suggest what the best card and PSU I can get for an HP m8300f desktop. I would call HP and ask but I already tried that twice, both times I was transferred to India and both times the representatives recommended cards that didn't fit in the case, couldn't be plugged into it, would melt my computer if they could, and were the most expensive cards out at the time. Fuck HP. lol

[GettingFreaky]

Lesson:

Don't buy used junk off craigslist.

[Cactuscat222]

Do you have a price range?

Because yeah, it looks like you'll need to up the PSU as well. 300W isn't very big, especially if you're looking to get a more recent card. Though, most of my knowledge is in the higher-end cards; I'll have to look up the others and see what kind of power those things juice.

[DarkTails]

Price range, I don't know, feels like I'd have to drop a few hundred to play modern games on the PC, and at $300-$400 I can already just buy a used gaming laptop like this one and have it last me a few years lol.

I saw this post, it's from early this year: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/342936-33-what-better

They recommend a Radeon 6750 or 6770 (1GB DDR5), just need a 400w+ power supply. The motherboard uses DDR2 so I'm more inclined to get a more recent laptop lol

[DarkTails]

In case anyone wants to donate to the "Give Tails some money for a new laptop Fund", here's a pic to show just how screwed I am ;_; lol

I popped off the cooling system after trying all other remedies to no effect, this is what I found, a blackened... thing. CPU? A core? Whatever it's called, I'm pretty sure it isn't supposed to be black. The one next to it with healthy thermal grease is still shiny and silver. Also, the grease on the black one was like chewing gum. Pretty sure this thing burned out



Oh well, time to list it for parts.

[wolfmane]

That's an impressive burnout.

[DarkTails]

Go big or go home! *killer guitar riff*

No, wait, I'd rather go home! lol

[GettingFreaky]

Go big or go home! *killer guitar riff*

No, wait, I'd rather go home! lol

Doh, looks nasty. Got a credit card? Use it to buy yourself
a decent video card for your nice comp.