SpencerHH

So to say the least, I'm trying to setup a crypto mining network of ~150-200 iMacs, partly for the fun of it and partly for potential profits. The current plan includes mining Monero on the processors, which are i5 something or others. But I also realized they all have Radeon 6770M's. Unfortunately I haven't even been able to test them because everything I've tried requires at least 1 GB of VRAM, and these mobile ones only have 512 MB. Does anyone know of any software on Mac OS (I can't change the OS) that could take advantage of these cards? Whether it's for Ethereum or whatever else I don't really care. Thank you. There's probably some moral implications to what I'm planning on doing, but I'm not concerning myself with that right now, so please don't hurt me. I also know it's not anywhere near reasonably profitable, but that's also not exactly a concern.

My online LEGO group has been doing streams for years now, basically only through Hangouts on Air. Here's a link. However, the quality of the audio and video, accompanied by the constant video switching, makes the stream considerably difficult to watch. I have some level of experience with streaming past Google Hangouts, but not enough to make something that can basically accomplish what Hangouts does. Is there some sort of "simple enough" solution? Something that takes the audio/video input from ~5-12 people talking over Discord, Skype, or whatever, lets us switch between them, and allows us to stream it from one of our own computers for improved quality. Please let me know if you have anything in mind, I can do the research if you just want to drop some names, thank you so much.

I'm working on turning this older laptop hardware into something useful, kinda of a long story blah blah blah... Point is, upon getting the heat sink off, I realized there's two different chips it's cooling. The CPU clearly has thermal compound on it, but the other has something else that's a lighter color with a seemingly different consistency. Pictures are here. In both images the "regular" thermal paste from the CPU is on the left and the other is on the right. Is that just a different thermal compound from another company and it wouldn't matter what I replace it with? Or is it discolored from a different amount of heat over time? I just want to confirm it's a thermal compound before moving forward. Thanks!

@JDE

I recently killed three hard drives with a new (to me) power supply. The new one is this older Antec 850w, 80+ bronze. I'm no longer that heart broken over losing a bunch of data, so I've at least been trying to figure out what I did wrong or what was wrong with the power supply. I can't find many other people in the same position on the Internet, and all the responses are varied. I plugged the hard drives and an SSD in after testing the power supply elsewhere first to make sure it functioned properly and wouldn't straight kill everything; I figured I could trust it in my computer. However, within a few hours, I was sure the hard drives were totally dead every since that initial instance. The SSD still operates as normal though. I've built a few computers through the years, so I don't think I was doing anything fundamentally wrong. I've also never heard anyone warn about something like this. I thought SATA was a standard so this wouldn't be a concern. I guess they received the totally wrong voltages? Were the voltages switched somehow, 5v and 12v in opposite places? Could a bad power supply do this and simply not affect the rest of the system? If you have any opinion, dropping a note would be great. Thanks

Grade Point Average It might just be something in the states...

Sure

Hey everyone. I'm looking for around 10 more people to take part in a small survey for a school project that will be comparing teens total Steam hours and their GPAs. I will just need your first name, GPA, and your total Steam hours. Here's a calculator: https://steamdb.info/calculator/ Thanks (This isn't a legit study. I just wanted something that would make the teacher happy.)

I recently build my computer, and I have an SSD and a hard drive. And with having an SSD, came the issue of desperately not wanting to install most programs on to it. So I did some stuff, and now I realize there are a lot of things I would have done differently, so I want to start from square one and erase both drives. But I'm just curious on how I should go about doing that, because I'm not sure what factory settings is going to do on a PC that isn't from a manufacturer. I'm open to everything, including having to install Windows again, as I was never asked for a product key Thanks

Thanks

Do you have an recommendations for an SSD?

I dont really want to go over 1k for the whole PC, so I was considering adding an SSD later. Maybe they'll will have some break through and become cheap soon!

Thanks for the input guys!

Here is my my new (and first) build! I'm totally open to any tips, or parts I should change. Thanks https://pcpartpicker.com/user/SpencerHH/saved/#savedbuild_1861271

I may buy a Sapphire Tri-X R9 290, but I just want to know the dimensions before purchasing, but I cant seem to find them anywhere. Hopefully someone has it and can measure at least the length for me. Thanks, have a nice day!