ATI Radeon 3200 Graphics Card

[Gold Man]

Been busy on my iPad (playing Pixel Gun 3D, Minecraft-style shooter), figured I'd read up on what you guys are saying.

I'l admit, I'm only judging a book by its cover with TF2, however I might give it a whirl at some point, pending when that is. Hopefully some point during the break I'l get the courage to finally get a Steam account by then.

As far as the advice you mentioned tirpider, it seems I'l have to stick with the driver upgraded GPU and a crummy CPU until I get a new laptop (which will be when I graduate probably...) I'm not exactly one with a whole lot of money (I have a job, but all my pay goes to my tuition), so I guess I'l have to suck it up and push on through the overheats (even though excessive rebooting directly after an overheat will kill it faster! Yay! )

[tirpider]

Check the local wal-mart (office depot, where ever) for a laptop cooling pad.
They are pretty much a plastic box with fans on them and you put your laptop on it.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Thermaltake-CLN0019-Massive23-GT-Notebook-Cooler/33386127
[spoiler]Just kidding.
$2,648 is a ridiculous price and has to be a joke of some kind.[/spoiler]

They don't do a lot but they do help. We ran an old vaio on one for a couple of years. They typically blow air right onto the bottom of the laptop and I'm sure you can confirm that gets pretty hot even just running windows for a while.

The fancy ones will have a usb hub or some lighting nonsense on it. The important part is(are) the fan(s).
I'd recommend one that is not powered by the laptop's usb port. It seems to me that drawing extra power off the device you are trying to cool is counter productive, but really getting anything to blow cool air on the hot parts will help so that's a judgment call. I've seen them for less than $10 and for more than $50 and there is a huge range of designs.

They aren't a magic bullet, and it's not the kind of accessory you will see immediate results from. But they can help keep the machine a little cooler on a tight budget till better things come along.

It's worth noting that the wife didn't like the noise, and that's the main reason she stopped using it.
That particular laptop is one of the dusty machines in the bottom of the closet. Won't power on and I suspect heat killed it.

[Gold Man]

Check the local wal-mart (office depot, where ever) for a laptop cooling pad.
They are pretty much a plastic box with fans on them and you put your laptop on it.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Thermaltake-CLN0019-Massive23-GT-Notebook-Cooler/33386127
[spoiler]Just kidding.
$2,648 is a ridiculous price and has to be a joke of some kind.[/spoiler]

They don't do a lot but they do help. We ran an old vaio on one for a couple of years. They typically blow air right onto the bottom of the laptop and I'm sure you can confirm that gets pretty hot even just running windows for a while.

The fancy ones will have a usb hub or some lighting nonsense on it. The important part is(are) the fan(s).
I'd recommend one that is not powered by the laptop's usb port. It seems to me that drawing extra power off the device you are trying to cool is counter productive, but really getting anything to blow cool air on the hot parts will help so that's a judgment call. I've seen them for less than $10 and for more than $50 and there is a huge range of designs.

They aren't a magic bullet, and it's not the kind of accessory you will see immediate results from. But they can help keep the machine a little cooler on a tight budget till better things come along.

It's worth noting that the wife didn't like the noise, and that's the main reason she stopped using it.
That particular laptop is one of the dusty machines in the bottom of the closet. Won't power on and I suspect heat killed it.

I should seriously add this whenever I do a post concerning my laptop:

I already have a cooling pad. It has a 6-inch fan, and it has a blue light. It also runs off one of my laptop's USB ports.

Taking into consideration though from what you've said, perhaps a cooling pad with more than one fan would do the job. All I have is one giant 6 inch fan cooling mine down, but even then when I remove the laptop and leave it running, I think the fan's going in the wrong direction...

So, perhaps a new, multi-fanned, no LEDs type cooling pad would be more well-suited for my old hunk of junk?

[tirpider]

I didn't know.

That's where checking reviews would come in. I don't know if more than one fan would help so much.
And my assertion about the USB power bit is subjective. Just advice if you didn't already have one. My reasons for that are grounded more in superstition than electrical analysis.

If your laptop has fans that blow out of the bottom, then the fan for your chill pad should also blow down to help the laptops fans. Otherwise (if your laptop's fan exhausts through the side or back, or has no fan) it should blow directly onto the bottom of the laptop.

The LEDs are personal preference. I can't imagine them affecting how it operates unless they get really hot.

If it's getting hotter than it used to get, then it could be because of dust build-up on the fan and other parts. Besides blocking air flow, dust can retain heat. Blowing it out with canned air can help.

The problem I have with canned air is the stress it puts on the fans when it blows across them. It can cause the bearing to wear and then you end up with a loud fan that doesn't blow like it used to. You can't always get to the fan to block it from spinning, so if you hear the whining build up while blowing out the laptop's vents (a high pitched "zing") stop blowing and let it spin down before continuing.

I wouldn't call it junk. Just getting older. Machines need maintenance after a while. And laptops start with very limited upgrade potential anyway, so their lifetime is a bit shorter than that of a desktop.
[spoiler]I just replaced an all-in-one sony that used all laptop parts in a desktop-like format. A 2-piece motherboard, integrated video/audio/lcd... It even had an integrated modem so I couldn't remove or replace it.

The only thing I could replace is the mouse, keyboard, memory, and hard drive. Because of it's design, I can't even set up the display for dual monitors. Have to use VNC or something to make it useful again.
[/spoiler]
But yeah.. laptops. That's the catch with them. You sacrifice performance and upgradeability for portability and a compact form factor. And because they have a lot of heat generating pieces in a tight space, cooling/cleaning will always be a problem with them.

I ramble (sorry)... back to your machine.
You have updated drivers and a chill pad. Have you gone over the power settings for the machine? Reducing the brightness of the display can reduce power consumption (and therefore, heat.) Tell the HD to turn off after 5-10 min. Same with the display. Any setting you can find that reduces processing power. Some settings might interfere with using it for gaming, so it's a tweaking process to find what works for you.

Since it is regularly overheating on you, you definitely sound like you are ready for a new machine. I'm on a very limited income as well and had to save up and hunt for deals to get one. And it's still not going to be the performing beast I want. The best advice I have there is to realistically look at what you can spend and get the best parts you can afford.
[spoiler]I ended up spending about $275.
$225 for an old refurbished HP 8000 elite (really a bussiness clas machine.)
$50 for a new-in-box Zotac GeForce GT 610 2Gb (Newegg said it would be here last friday (3 days ago)... I'll remember this.)

It's an intel dual core @3.16 gHz on an hp motherboard that supports DDR3 memory.
I got the full sized tower version so I could upgrade the power supply just in case I found a cheap video card that needed it. (And because I feel like a tower would be easier to cool than one of those mini-cases that are so popular now.)

All old equipment and certainly not heavy-hitters in terms of performance, but I expect to be able to play Skyrim with decent FPS if not decent quality.

There is a huge supply of cheap computers (by cheap, I mean less than $300) but you have to research and hunt to find the best-in-class type machines. And that's the hardest part... doing the research to know what is worth buying and what needs to be recycled.

I went in looking for at least DDR3 memory, a PCIe x16 slot and Win7 pro (for XP mode). I ended up getting just enough video card that if I went any higher it would need a new motherboard and power supply to actually use the card's features (even though a better card would work, it would fall over to backwards compatability with the PCI 2.0 standard. Whatever that means...)

All this (and more) knowing I'll have to replace it all again when my desire to run a modern game comes up.

blah blah blah... the more you spend now, the longer you can put off having to spend later, but it all leads to spending more later, so enjoy what you spend now.[/spoiler]

Um... I feel like I'm talking in circles now. I hope some of all this helps or is at least entertaining. Pretty sure I missed a lot and weren't we just talking about a chill pad? How did all that come out of a chill pad..... I'm going to have a glass of milk and think about the direction my life is going now....

[Gold Man]

[spoiler]
I didn't know.

That's where checking reviews would come in. I don't know if more than one fan would help so much.
And my assertion about the USB power bit is subjective. Just advice if you didn't already have one. My reasons for that are grounded more in superstition than electrical analysis.

If your laptop has fans that blow out of the bottom, then the fan for your chill pad should also blow down to help the laptops fans. Otherwise (if your laptop's fan exhausts through the side or back, or has no fan) it should blow directly onto the bottom of the laptop.

The LEDs are personal preference. I can't imagine them affecting how it operates unless they get really hot.

If it's getting hotter than it used to get, then it could be because of dust build-up on the fan and other parts. Besides blocking air flow, dust can retain heat. Blowing it out with canned air can help.

The problem I have with canned air is the stress it puts on the fans when it blows across them. It can cause the bearing to wear and then you end up with a loud fan that doesn't blow like it used to. You can't always get to the fan to block it from spinning, so if you hear the whining build up while blowing out the laptop's vents (a high pitched "zing") stop blowing and let it spin down before continuing.

I wouldn't call it junk. Just getting older. Machines need maintenance after a while. And laptops start with very limited upgrade potential anyway, so their lifetime is a bit shorter than that of a desktop.
[spoiler]I just replaced an all-in-one sony that used all laptop parts in a desktop-like format. A 2-piece motherboard, integrated video/audio/lcd... It even had an integrated modem so I couldn't remove or replace it.

The only thing I could replace is the mouse, keyboard, memory, and hard drive. Because of it's design, I can't even set up the display for dual monitors. Have to use VNC or something to make it useful again.
[/spoiler]
But yeah.. laptops. That's the catch with them. You sacrifice performance and upgradeability for portability and a compact form factor. And because they have a lot of heat generating pieces in a tight space, cooling/cleaning will always be a problem with them.

I ramble (sorry)... back to your machine.
You have updated drivers and a chill pad. Have you gone over the power settings for the machine? Reducing the brightness of the display can reduce power consumption (and therefore, heat.) Tell the HD to turn off after 5-10 min. Same with the display. Any setting you can find that reduces processing power. Some settings might interfere with using it for gaming, so it's a tweaking process to find what works for you.

Since it is regularly overheating on you, you definitely sound like you are ready for a new machine. I'm on a very limited income as well and had to save up and hunt for deals to get one. And it's still not going to be the performing beast I want. The best advice I have there is to realistically look at what you can spend and get the best parts you can afford.
[spoiler]I ended up spending about $275.
$225 for an old refurbished HP 8000 elite (really a bussiness clas machine.)
$50 for a new-in-box Zotac GeForce GT 610 2Gb (Newegg said it would be here last friday (3 days ago)... I'll remember this.)

It's an intel dual core @3.16 gHz on an hp motherboard that supports DDR3 memory.
I got the full sized tower version so I could upgrade the power supply just in case I found a cheap video card that needed it. (And because I feel like a tower would be easier to cool than one of those mini-cases that are so popular now.)

All old equipment and certainly not heavy-hitters in terms of performance, but I expect to be able to play Skyrim with decent FPS if not decent quality.

There is a huge supply of cheap computers (by cheap, I mean less than $300) but you have to research and hunt to find the best-in-class type machines. And that's the hardest part... doing the research to know what is worth buying and what needs to be recycled.

I went in looking for at least DDR3 memory, a PCIe x16 slot and Win7 pro (for XP mode). I ended up getting just enough video card that if I went any higher it would need a new motherboard and power supply to actually use the card's features (even though a better card would work, it would fall over to backwards compatability with the PCI 2.0 standard. Whatever that means...)

All this (and more) knowing I'll have to replace it all again when my desire to run a modern game comes up.

blah blah blah... the more you spend now, the longer you can put off having to spend later, but it all leads to spending more later, so enjoy what you spend now.[/spoiler]

Um... I feel like I'm talking in circles now. I hope some of all this helps or is at least entertaining. Pretty sure I missed a lot and weren't we just talking about a chill pad? How did all that come out of a chill pad..... I'm going to have a glass of milk and think about the direction my life is going now....

MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT!

Anyways, I read some of it, and have a generalized idea as to what you're going at. The battery in my laptop is actually shot (still need to replace it), so it just sits on the cooling pad with the charger plugged in everyday. I don't quite see how battery reducing features would be of any help, if my laptop isn't even portable in the first place.

As far as energy reducing features, I'm not sure how many settings would actually reduce it's heating power. I don't want to be some dude playing SWBFII with the lowest screen setting possible, and with just enough brightness to make out the reticule. From what I can gather, the CPU is my main problem anyways. The GPU runs smoothly now that the drivers are updated, and I have sinked $250 into getting 8GB of DDR2 memory for this thing already. (Still hate I blew $250 for it, I could've had a decent rig by now! )

Anyways, any idea if there's a way to get a low-end gaming rig for $70? I know I'm really pinching pennies with that amount, and I'm a total cheapskate, but that's literally all I have to work with right now.

[tirpider]

MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT!

Sorry about that. I'll try to be more direct. (even if it isn't good news.)

I think you will have a terrible experience with a $70 computer.
I periodically peek into the PC Building section on facepunch, and they seem to be building good gaming computers for around $500. But they are also targeting bargain deals, used equipment, and individual components. They also have other computers to work with while they wait for deals to become available.

I would shop around and keep saving pennies. You'll learn about the different specs as you wait for the money to pile up. I wouldn't even consider spending a dime till you have at least ~$300 to dedicate to it. Not till you can look at a machine and say to yourself "I want that machine because..."

Oh god.. here it comes again...
[spoiler]I'll be honest. Shopping for a replacement machine stressed me out. It angered me to discover the cheesy way the things are marketed, and trawling through geek sites where people start fights over why a bus is bottle-necked or which logo has the most super-geek power... I hate it.  And I'm an ex PC-tech. The modern techs are snobs about stats and if I had a choice, I wouldn't feed them a dime.

I've become a PC user and less concerned with the power of the machine and more concerned with the stability and usability of it.

Overclocked - don't care cause it's operating out of spec and will crash more.
Fancy Embellishments - Working at a carnival taught me that flashy lights are a way of fishing for rubes.
Super High Performance Specs - Flashy lights for folks that have money to spend on parts every quarter.

All I want is to run a few specific programs at a decent quality without having to deal with hardware (or OS) failure at every turn.[/spoiler]

.. be direct... be direct... ok

To find out what kind of budget you are looking at, have a look at the minimum and recommended requirements for what you think are going to be the highest end games you want to run.
Take those specs and shop around ebay buy-it-now offers to get a rough estimate on what the current market is for those things.  Then you can start making compromises on the specs.

Like you really don't need a GTX 770 when a 670 ( or even a 550 ti, but good luck finding one) will do.
Having an SSD is cool, but on a budget, a simple 750GB to 1TB HD would be better spent.

Building a machine can cost less or it can cost more. It all hinges on what you are willing to invest more of (time or money)

ramble.. (I'm self conscious about it now)

Spend more than $70. I'd recommend something with at least an i3 or i5 processor. The Dual Core and Quad Cores are pretty dated and will barely meet the needs of modern titles (if at all). (Intel because I know nothing about AMD since the early 90's.)
Here is a basic ebay search of low end machines. They all will probably need some kind of video upgrade, and monitors will be extra, but it will give you an idea of the price ranges.
ebay search for i3 / buy-it-now / new / refurbished

... more wall of text.. I am really sorry about all this.

[aeria.]

I'm pretty well experienced in the whole budget gaming PC building area. I built my PC for 500 in the beginning and it was primarily for BF3 at the time.

We can make another topic if you guys want to talk about building PCs for a budget. I'm pretty good at finding sales.