Quinch

Spire 420 thermal paste, came with the new heatsink. Also, the heatsink specs are http://www.spire-corp.com/main/produ...sp?ProdID=1140 , the CPU is a fairly oldish Athlon x2 dual core at 2.1Ghz. Anyway, I've reapplied the thermal paste again, much thinner this time, and it helped a bit. What's the generally "safe" temperature range for a CPU to work in, anyway?

Done that twice over - the second link is the paste before I've clipped the heatsink on, not too thick, but with a large and consistent surface area. I think.

Alright, so... I've got an overheating CPU problem.

A quick rundown... replaced my old and grindy CPU fan with a new one... except when the CPU runs at full or near capacity {for example, when running, oh, a game of some sort}, the temperature gradually creeps up, and keeps creeping up indefinitely - or until the CPU starts screaming in pre-shutdown agony.

Stuff that might bear mentioning;
The fan only has three connector pins instead of four. However, since it came with the heatsink itself, I assumed it shouldn't be a problem.

The specs on the box say that it should go up to ~3K RPM, but SpeedFan never reported it going more than 2K-ish.

Once the CPU eases off, the temperature quickly drops back into fifties and gradually down into upper thirties.

There's a consistent layer of thermal paste across the chip. There's a bit of horizontal wiggle room with the heatsink clipped in place, but it seems to fit snugly against the chip anyway.

Pictures and crap: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...h/PB120246.jpg and http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...h/PB120248.jpg

Any ideas? This constant game of "I'm not touching youuuuu!" is starting to get on my nerves.

Just to run this by the board and see if there's a point to it. What with freems being heavily locked down communication-wise on account of spammers, would there be any point in creating a Steam group for freem players organize and coordinate team-forming?

Unslotted, what are the speeds at what levels? Paragonwiki fails me and I can't check firsthand in the game.

Banefire: "Hey, run a bunch of only thinly connected missions, hunts and runarounds that culminate in nothing at all!"

The Tsoo Takeover: "Ninjas have kidnapped the other gangs. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the gangs?"

Division: Line: Needs to be revamped to reflect the second invasion.

Short version is, you get Marauder as your Lv1 contact no matter which side you pick. After that, it's up to the alignment - you can run Warden and Responsibility arcs regardless of which side you're on, but for Power and Crusader arcs, you need to be a loyalist or resistance respectively, so if you want to run everything, you'll need to switch sides periodically. On the upside, there's a trick to switching sides easily - almost all morality missions let you choose your side before the mission ends; so you can switch a side, then simply exit the mission and repeat as necessary. I usually use Cleopatra's takedown, since there's least hassle involved before the pick-a-side prompt.

The only, but huge {huuuge!} thing that's been keeping me out of Praetoria are the mobs.

Unmezzable, unstoppable, rock-flinging Big Dogs?
Burnpatch spamming blast masters?
Instadeath-from-range sword masters?
loldefense clockwork?

They don't belong in a starting area. I consider them Lv30 mobs on a vacation, certainly not something to be fought when your options are "punch" and "punch a little harder".

Balance, please.

My personal "lawbook" for newbies;

1} Forget everything. Yes, everything. Including that thing. And that other thing too.
2} If you're having fun, you're doing it right.
3} It's the journey.
4} No harm, no foul.
5} When in doubt, ask. When certain, answer.
6} Experience trumps XP.
7} Present your best side. Expect the same.

Ehh, for the most part, I only use dual builds on my glittersquid - one with heavy slotting in the tentacleblaster form, and the other for lobsteratry.

For almost every other character, I just stick to general-purpose slotting.

Mind control/Empathy controller.

Whack-a-mole on crack.

That is all.

The problem with market "balance" argument is that it treats the goods as a homogenous entity, while they're anything but. High-level salvage, for example, is often in high supply and low demand* because once slotted, Lv50 characters have a continuing supply of salvage with no need to replace their enhancements, whilst lower level IOs are more "transient" and thus have a much higher replacement rate.

My suggestion would be an inspiration-style conversion system, much like what we saw with base salvage - convert three {or more} identical pieces of one type of salvage {or recipes} into one piece of salvage of the same rarity. That way, it might be possible to balance out the disparity between items which are in absurdly high demand, and ones which are in absurdly high supply, while a net material loss would keep the goods from being completely interchangeable.


*hell, I think I broke the Lv50 damage market just by mass-producing thousands of IOs from cheap demon reports and kinetic weapons
**and recipe pool categories and whatever else they might be grouped by

Scrappers, stalkers and brutes.

Given that I can't relax unless I'm keeping track of at least three separate things at once, a single-target oriented AT bores the living daylights out of me.