Tech Question

parrot head

parrot head

n/a
Dec 22, 2008
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Minneapolis Minnesota
We run about a dozen of these machines in our call center for voip:

HP
i5 processor 650 @ 3.20 GHz
4GB RAM - 64bit
300W power supply

There all about 1 year old, but a few of them are lagging when multi-tasking and even voice quality on a couple of them seems to lag once in a while. We'd rather not buy a dozen new machines.

So we're planning on upgrading their power supply to something like this:
Newegg.com - CORSAIR Gaming Series GS500 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified High Performance Gaming Power Supply

That should help quite a bit and possibly adding another 4GB of RAM to each.

Thoughts?
 


Maybe try to nuke the hard drives and install fresh windows first, because there are probably lots of useless shit piled up over the time.
Also change the termopaste of CPU (maybe on GPU too, that depends on what kind of cooler you have there) once in a couple of months, that helps the performance quite a bit.
 
Prly run ok on 300w. Generally when you don't have enough wattage you will lock up / freeze.

You need to check your system resources and see whats taking them all first. Could be your onboard/sound card, gpu, cpu or something as simple as a application that was coded sloppy.

Start up your resource monitor to look (ctrl+alt+delete, performance tab, resource monitor)
 
Buying 500W power supplies to fix application speed with a ~70W CPU?

Thinking hard drives are a bottleneck on a VoIP application? VoIP in general is GSM quality, to ~50k'ish uncrompressed...

It's malware from your boys surfing bullshit all day. CC reps aren't the brightest bunch, and aren't paid to know how to do more than click a few buttons. Besides that, it's a fucking HP, it comes preloaded with a ton of bullshit.
 
+1 for shadowcasters advice

also clean dust from everything and move any cables to attempt for nice air flow
 
parrot head said:
We run about a dozen of these machines in our call center for voip:

HP
i5 processor 650 @ 3.20 GHz
4GB RAM - 64bit
300W power supply

There all about 1 year old, but a few of them are lagging when multi-tasking and even voice quality on a couple of them seems to lag once in a while. We'd rather not buy a dozen new machines.

So we're planning on upgrading their power supply to something like this:
Newegg.com - CORSAIR Gaming Series GS500 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified High Performance Gaming Power Supply

That should help quite a bit and possibly adding another 4GB of RAM to each.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

First Question: Do you allow employees to access the web?

I was an IT manager for 140 seat call center before getting into IM and this was our biggest issue, they love visiting sketchy shit while working, your machine most likely has spyware / adware. I would check this + cpu and ram usage first before even getting into hardware. Also be sure to check that the integrated graphics drivers are installed, they can degrade performance of the machine and give it a laggy like experience.

Power supply most likely not the issue as long as its booting and running without crashes / lockups.
 
parrot head said:
What's the process for this?
Click to expand...

1) Remove CPU/GPU cooler.
2) Wipe off old thermal paste.
3) Apply new thermal paste.
4) Put the cooler back on.

[ame="www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3gx6c62D7I"]How to Remove and Apply Thermal Compound [Updated Tutorial] - YouTube[/ame]
 
sumohax0r said:
First Question: Do you allow employees to access the web?

I was an IT manager for 140 seat call center before getting into IM and this was our biggest issue, they love visiting sketchy shit while working, your machine most likely has spyware / adware. I would check this + cpu and ram usage first before even getting into hardware. Also be sure to check that the integrated graphics drivers are installed, they can degrade performance of the machine and give it a laggy like experience.

Power supply most likely not the issue as long as its booting and running without crashes / lockups.
Click to expand...


If I paid for your trip and some cash could I fly you up here for a day or 2 to check out our center and go through it for us... not kidding
 
Insomniac said:
Buying 500W power supplies to fix application speed with a ~70W CPU?

Thinking hard drives are a bottleneck on a VoIP application? VoIP in general is GSM quality, to ~50k'ish uncrompressed...

It's malware from your boys surfing bullshit all day. CC reps aren't the brightest bunch, and aren't paid to know how to do more than click a few buttons. Besides that, it's a fucking HP, it comes preloaded with a ton of bullshit.
Click to expand...

YEP YEP.
 
BigWill said:
Prly run ok on 300w. Generally when you don't have enough wattage you will lock up / freeze.

You need to check your system resources and see whats taking them all first. Could be your onboard/sound card, gpu, cpu or something as simple as a application that was coded sloppy.

Start up your resource monitor to look (ctrl+alt+delete, performance tab, resource monitor)
Click to expand...

Try Ctrl-shift-esc shit is awesome
 
Grab one of the machines that is going slowly, start menu, run msconfig.

Click startup Tab. Disable all, only enable what is required and your security software.

Click services tab, check hide all microsoft services. Only enable what is required and your security software.

If that does not help, grab one of the machines that's going slow, do a complete factory restore (HP should have come with factory restore discs, if you don't have them call HP they will send them to you, there might be a restore partition on the HDD as well that you can restore from depending on the model). After a factory restore, have the employee use it for a day and ask if its any better. If it is better, and it most likely will be, then its software related (Malware/Adware/Viruses most likely) and you don't necessarily have to buy any new hardware.

If it is still slow then it's hardware related. First thing would be to make sure the machines are clean inside, no dust or debris and that the cases have proper ventilation. If it is still slow after that then you may have to upgrade the machines but I'm like 90% sure that it would be solved without having to buy any hardware if it's just a few of the machines having problems. You could probably run hardware diags on the machines as well but if they aren't crashing or giving any error messages the hardware is probably good. Sometimes faulty ram or hdds on the verge of failing start to cause machines to behave unexpectedly or slowly but running hardware diags usually quickly rules that out.

Identical machines, and only some are having issues always points to software (malware/adware/viruses or crap that shouldent even be running in the background hogging resources most of the time), or possibly dust/debris/ventilation issues. Less likely is ram/hdd/cpu/mobo hardware issues.
 
Are you running a Softphone Application on these desktops? Or are you piggybacking actual phones off of the PCs ??

What Software / type of system is it?

Typically you are describing two completely unrelated issues: Call/Voice Quality, and Lagging.

Your Call/Voice Quality most likely has nothing to do with the amount of power in the computers. That is regulated by your network equipment and how the voice packets are tagged - QoS / VLAN / etc. If you have no prioritization setup on your network - Voice will be drowned out with data.

Lagging - Lock the PCs down and run only what is needed. What type of firewall are you using in house (I am talking hardware firewall)? Alot of this can be stopped at the source and only allow whats needed in and out of the network.

I have used and setup softphones and systems from Avaya, Samsung, and Allworx, and can tell you this: I have ran their applications with much less with no trouble at all.

I think the issue at hand here is a poorly designed network.
 
KaniGT5 said:
Are you running a Softphone Application on these desktops? Or are you piggybacking actual phones off of the PCs ??

What Software / type of system is it?

Typically you are describing two completely unrelated issues: Call/Voice Quality, and Lagging.

Your Call/Voice Quality most likely has nothing to do with the amount of power in the computers. That is regulated by your network equipment and how the voice packets are tagged - QoS / VLAN / etc. If you have no prioritization setup on your network - Voice will be drowned out with data.

Lagging - Lock the PCs down and run only what is needed. What type of firewall are you using in house (I am talking hardware firewall)? Alot of this can be stopped at the source and only allow whats needed in and out of the network.

I have used and setup softphones and systems from Avaya, Samsung, and Allworx, and can tell you this: I have ran their applications with much less with no trouble at all.

I think the issue at hand here is a poorly designed network.
Click to expand...

It is definitely not your hardware (the computers you described). What type of switches do you use? If you're using cisco (or even later versions of linksys) you can throttle bandwidth through each port. Even if you only have 1 comprimised machine, it may be hogging all bandwidth. Start using a network packet analyzing tool to see wtf is going on. Like wireshark, or ethereal, or winpcap.
 
danej said:
It is definitely not your hardware (the computers you described). What type of switches do you use? If you're using cisco (or even later versions of linksys) you can throttle bandwidth through each port. Even if you only have 1 comprimised machine, it may be hogging all bandwidth. Start using a network packet analyzing tool to see wtf is going on. Like wireshark, or ethereal, or winpcap.
Click to expand...

I doubt its cisco equipment. Depends how big the envirornment is - but if he is talking a dozen PCs - I would be surpised if there is even a managed switch in there.

The real issue at hand here is that his network needs to be locked the fuck down. Throw in a PIX/ASA or a Sonicwall, and a good Layer 3 switch to route traffic accordingly. The rest of the PCs ...just dumb them down to terminals and only launch what needs to be launched - i.e - the softphone app and any call scripts/paths etc.
 
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