The PC thread

[Grizz]

Put me in with the anti-W10 crowd. I use it begrudgingly because my laptop can't really run 7 well; a lot of drivers are missing and/or wrong.

Windows 8 and 10 always made me feel like I was using a half-completed Mac-wannabe on top of a Windows XP/7 core. It just never really felt cohesive. That's probably because it's still unfinished with a bunch of legacy crap (control panel, various UI elements/modes, compatibility tweaks) floating around. I've seen obscure and bizarre performance issues on countless systems, though they were definitely more prevalent pre-1709. The two most obnoxious ones were random and persistent high disk usage, and various issues with changing power state (usually, it won't wake up, or won't get the graphics card going during waking). I've seen this on contemporary machines that shipped with W10 as well as upgrades. Then there were things like user profiles fucking themselves randomly, programs disappearing, and all sorts of shit like that which basically couldn't be fixed without at least a "Reset." I can't tell you how often those resets failed for some reason anyway. Anyway, that basically sums up my nine months at Geek Squad. (Actually, I could spend hours complaining about incompetent management, assholes in their twenties picking on the 19-year-old, and so much else...) Then there's all the bonafide bloat, the attempts at strongarming users into Microsoft's ecosystem (say what you want about the Apple ecosystem; it's fleshed out to some degree), the spyware, and countless niggles that power users will encounter daily. Oh, and the ongoing experiment to add *nix-like permissions to Windows and NTFS has mostly created extremely obscure bugs.

Anyway, I have an ASUS ROG laptop from 2016, upgraded with a 256GB SSD hooked up to a USB Hub with two WD Bookshelf drives full of garbage, and placed on a small Ikea bookshelf full of LPs. Next to it, on my desk, a 24" ASUS monitor that I bought from some poor guy down on his luck on Craigslist (I feel really bad about that actually), a HyperX Cherry MX Blue keyboard (vendor coupon), an Insigna Microphone (store-brand accessory/cost-based employee discount), and a SteelSeries Rival 110 Mouse (accessory/cost-based employee discount) on an Insignia mousepad. As my second monitor, I have... a hand-me-down 2009 iMac. I use Synergy to remotely control its keyboard and mouse, and it's almost as seamless as a plain old extended desktop. It works well enough for playing video on its nice screen and has decent enough speakers, and it can be useful for some obscure Mac-centric tasks I might run into.

I'm pretty content with this setup right now. I need to run a proper hardline to my room, and also move the router (again... long story). For right now, I generally use a hacked WRT54G as a wireless receiver for the computers. Yes, I'm serious. The NICs really don't like the amount of attenuation in my room.

[El Barto]

Put me in with the anti-W10 crowd. I use it begrudgingly because my laptop can't really run 7 well; a lot of drivers are missing and/or wrong.

Windows 8 and 10 always made me feel like I was using a half-completed Mac-wannabe on top of a Windows XP/7 core. It just never really felt cohesive. That's probably because it's still unfinished with a bunch of legacy crap (control panel, various UI elements/modes, compatibility tweaks) floating around. I've seen obscure and bizarre performance issues on countless systems, though they were definitely more prevalent pre-1709. The two most obnoxious ones were random and persistent high disk usage, and various issues with changing power state (usually, it won't wake up, or won't get the graphics card going during waking). I've seen this on contemporary machines that shipped with W10 as well as upgrades. Then there were things like user profiles fucking themselves randomly, programs disappearing, and all sorts of shit like that which basically couldn't be fixed without at least a "Reset." I can't tell you how often those resets failed for some reason anyway. Anyway, that basically sums up my nine months at Geek Squad. (Actually, I could spend hours complaining about incompetent management, assholes in their twenties picking on the 19-year-old, and so much else...) Then there's all the bonafide bloat, the attempts at strongarming users into Microsoft's ecosystem (say what you want about the Apple ecosystem; it's fleshed out to some degree), the spyware, and countless niggles that power users will encounter daily. Oh, and the ongoing experiment to add *nix-like permissions to Windows and NTFS has mostly created extremely obscure bugs.

Anyway, I have an ASUS ROG laptop from 2016, upgraded with a 256GB SSD hooked up to a USB Hub with two WD Bookshelf drives full of garbage, and placed on a small Ikea bookshelf full of LPs. Next to it, on my desk, a 24" ASUS monitor that I bought from some poor guy down on his luck on Craigslist (I feel really bad about that actually), a HyperX Cherry MX Blue keyboard (vendor coupon), an Insigna Microphone (store-brand accessory/cost-based employee discount), and a SteelSeries Rival 110 Mouse (accessory/cost-based employee discount) on an Insignia mousepad. As my second monitor, I have... a hand-me-down 2009 iMac. I use Synergy to remotely control its keyboard and mouse, and it's almost as seamless as a plain old extended desktop. It works well enough for playing video on its nice screen and has decent enough speakers, and it can be useful for some obscure Mac-centric tasks I might run into.

I'm pretty content with this setup right now. I need to run a proper hardline to my room, and also move the router (again... long story). For right now, I generally use a hacked WRT54G as a wireless receiver for the computers. Yes, I'm serious. The NICs really don't like the amount of attenuation in my room.

I've read some interesting stories about Geek Squad. 

Win10 is a mixed bag. I found it a lot more stable and generally more friendly than Win7. It's also a little quicker in my experience (though that's partly due to my Win7 install being 32bit). My issue with Win10 isn't functionality or stability, but MS's belief that we're all a bunch of bleedin idiots. I built that computer from the ground up. It's mine. I don't need Microsoft's permission to delete a damn file. It seems I spend an inordinate amount of time searching for tweaks to allow me to change things MS deemed too important to. Being told I need administrator permission just to run a damn game makes my blood boil. Being told I can't access a folder even more-so.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Seems like Intel might finally be getting some serious competition by AMD.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-third-gen-ryzen-7nm-launch-intel-cpu,39449.html

[ReaperKK]

Just saw that yesterday and now I'm torn. I was literally going to order a new mobo + cpu combo this week but now I"m going to wait to see some benchmarks.

[TioJorge]

Definitely wait if you haven't pulled the trigger yet. Best news I've heard in a long while, especially with Intel throwing any concept of innovation out the window and basically outright saying "We're not ready for 10, let alone sub 10 nanometer; here's some of our other shit while you wait to pay high end dollars for sub par products!"

I wasn't as blown away by the start of Ryzen as a lot of others despite simply just loving ANY kind of competition Intel has. So right now is an amazing time because Ryzen turned out to actually be viable and NOW it's starting to become what the original hype intended. It seems. Always wait for benchmarks, but definitely wait no matter what because if this is as advertised, then we're in for a real CPU world turnaround. For real this time, as Intel has (apparently) another year of work ahead of them. So within that year and if Ryzen 3000-series is what they say...they'll be curb stomping Intel by the end of the year.

I know I'll be upgrading my Ryzen build. I'm still using the 77000k OC'd as of now but I'm looking forward to working on the Ryzen system. It's still sitting pretty with the lil 'ol Ryzen 5 1600 for that system.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Hopefully this will kick Intel in the ass and push them. It's good for us consumers when there's competition.

For the first time ever I might get an AMD product, always had Intel and Nvidia but we'll see. I first wanna see some true benchmarks before I buy anything.

[faizoff]

Bumping this thread because it's been a while.

My PC, that I assembled 9 years ago to the day, exploded followed by a burning smell when I turned it on. I'm going to guess it's the PSU since I took it all apart and the smell from the PSU had the burned odor, couldn't see anything else visibly burned. Going to clean the whole case and all components before replacing and testing since it's a big dust warehouse at the moment.

To add to it, my NAS backup which is on RAID 5 shows up in a 'degraded' status. One of the 3 TB WD Red failed and will need to be replace, odd the Red failed and not the Blue drives I had in my array.

I've never done a HD replacement for a RAID before, fingers crossed it's a simple HD swap and the controller will auto rebuild after that.

[Northern Lion]

9 years ago? Man, I think you should scrap the whole thing and build a new one.  You'll get more power, better energy efficiency and it'll be quieter too if you pick the right components.  My build has Be Quiet! brand case and fans and I can hardly tell it's even on.

And if budget is an issue for you you could easily buy last gen AMD stuff and it won't cost you much plus your rig will be miles better than what it currently probably is.

And Crucial makes really great and really affordable SSD's  including MVMe's.

[cramx3]

A RAID 5 HDD swap should be that simple, just swap with a same drive and it should rebuild.  If anything, I'd imagine the NAS box has some software to force it if it doesn't, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't automatic.

And yea.. 9 year old rig, that sounds like scrap to me at this point.  But if you aren't gaming and on a budget, I guess you could just swap the PSU.

[faizoff]

My 9 year old rig runs quite amazing really, it boots up in like 20 secs and not a hint of slowdown anywhere, I don't game that much so dont have any of the newer games. I occasionally play Rise of Nations or any of the half-life games or AoE. The rig has enough juice for it. Heck I can play all 3 Crysis games at a very high detail level.

I do some mild video editing, Blu-ray ripping and host a few VMs for exploring, and have some IDEs. It really shows no slowdowns on anything I throw at it. The only reason I would upgrade is for 4k at every level. Sure the energy efficiency will be even better on newer models. I don't have a burning need to upgrade at this point. I might hoard components if there are great deals for an upgrade but I'm going to keep using this as my daily driver until something major breaks down. I'm still not sure what the issue is but strongly feel it was the PSU.

My 9yr old rig

i5 2500k OC'd 4.2 Ghz.
32 GB DDR3 RAM
Radeon HD 6780 1 GB (LOL this is old)
512 GB Crucial SSD (Main drive)
14 TB HDD
2 x 28" monitors 1920x1080
Creative Soundblaster Z

The NAS server is just over 3 years old at this point and I'm a little unhappy a Red drive went down but that's how things go so c'est la vie. I dont think I have had any data loss on it, but since I keep like a million backups I should be ok.

[cramx3]

Yea, if you aren't into modern gaming then that's probably fine. 

[El Barto]

Yeah, I believe Faizoff and I had this discussion in some other thread, but I've got a very similar setup. The venerable i5-2500k turned out to be one of the all-time great overachievers. It really only became outdated about 2 years ago, and a ton of us are still using them. A 33% overclock is pretty much effortless, and requires only air cooling and no voltage increase. I think mine is OC'd to 4.3 or 4.4. You can get them up to 5.0, but that does require considerable effort. I built mine Thanksgiving of 2011 and the only thing I've done is replaced the cooler with a much more robust one. I've upgraded graphics cards 3 times in that span. In his situation I'd do just the same and simply replace the PSU. I really can't think of any real benefit to upgrading.

And I'm not surprised that the red drive failed before the blue. Blues run slower and cooler and are made for general use, rather than performance. That's all I've used for quite some time now. Since my boot and game drives are SSDs I don't need the added performance.

[faizoff]

I remember that we have almost the same setup. It is true how resilient the i5-2500k has been. Overclocking to 4.5 GHz on air cooling is a cinch on this bad boy. I was debating on getting a new video card just for 4k when I saw so many deals for an AMD 580 but then that would imply I get new 4k monitors to take full use of it and then it would just cascade into getting a new CPU/RAM/Mobo... which is why I wanted to hold out.

Interesting note on the Reds, I've always assumed they were the most resilient of the line and most popular. I am replacing it with a Blue so there's that.

[cramx3]

My brother had the i5-2500k and I had the i7-2600k, those lines of processors were fantastic.  But for me to game todays games while recording it with a green screen effect, I need more juice.  I'm already thinking 2020 might be the last year of my current build.  I'm going to eventually want to get into the 4k game.

[El Barto]

I remember that we have almost the same setup. It is true how resilient the i5-2500k has been. Overclocking to 4.5 GHz on air cooling is a cinch on this bad boy. I was debating on getting a new video card just for 4k when I saw so many deals for an AMD 580 but then that would imply I get new 4k monitors to take full use of it and then it would just cascade into getting a new CPU/RAM/Mobo... which is why I wanted to hold out.

Interesting note on the Reds, I've always assumed they were the most resilient of the line and most popular. I am replacing it with a Blue so there's that.

Looks like I was only half right. Blue is the slower, mainstay drive. It's black that's the performance drive. Reds are optimized for NAS, which is probably why you bought it, and can either be 7200 or 5400 rpm. I don't know if there's any factual basis in it or not, but I've just assumed the slower drives will run cooler, longer, and the performance doesn't really matter if they're just storing music and video.

[faizoff]

Replaced the Red drive and rebuild it. I should have figured there was something up with the drive since it was making a noticable spinning noise. It wasn't the typical click of a hard disk dying.

The new Blue drive is super quiet like the rest of them. I'm guessing that Red drive was somewhat faulty from the beginning since it was always making a noise during read write operations.

That was an easy fix with no loss of data thankfully.

Also got a new Corsair 650W RM series PSU and sure enough every thing worked for the main rig after the replacement.

The amount of dust inside the chassis was incredible. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I never cleaned inside over the course of 9 years.


Have to do cable management correct this time round. Way to messy before.

[cramx3]

This actually reminds me, I have a spare 4TB hard drive sitting on my desk, I should back up my current 4TB drive for safety onto it.  It's been awhile since I backed up my shit and I'm probably around 3TB full now from all the concert videos last year. 

[Northern Lion]

I have an old backup HDD that fell off a shelf and broke a few years ago.  The problem was that I had just transferred all my family photos and videos onto it so I could replace the HDD in my pc at the time.  And I hadn't yet completed the task.  The disk itself is in good shape but the reader mechanism is completely shot.

At the time I couldn't afford to have a company retrieve the data for me.  I think they wanted like $700 or so.  So I just held onto it.

I think it's about time I got that taken care of.  I wanted to figure out how to do it myself but I don't think I have the right tools/environment for that kind of task.

[El Barto]

I have an old backup HDD that fell off a shelf and broke a few years ago.  The problem was that I had just transferred all my family photos and videos onto it so I could replace the HDD in my pc at the time.  And I hadn't yet completed the task.  The disk itself is in good shape but the reader mechanism is completely shot.

At the time I couldn't afford to have a company retrieve the data for me.  I think they wanted like $700 or so.  So I just held onto it.

I think it's about time I got that taken care of.  I wanted to figure out how to do it myself but I don't think I have the right tools/environment for that kind of task.

You don't. Since you only need to read from it for an hour or so a clean room probably isn't all that important. Repairing the scan mechanism isn't going to happen. You might be able to buy an identical drive and just swap the platters out, but in all likelihood you'd destroy them both trying to get the various oddball sized screws out. I've dissected plenty of HDDs, but I never had to worry about reassembling them. The good news is that you won't damage the platters if you try. If you give it a shot and it doesn't work out you could probably still send the carcass off to a recovery specialist.

[Herrick]

9 years ago? Man, I think you should scrap the whole thing and build a new one.  You'll get more power, better energy efficiency and it'll be quieter too if you pick the right components.  My build has Be Quiet! brand case and fans and I can hardly tell it's even on.

And if budget is an issue for you you could easily buy last gen AMD stuff and it won't cost you much plus your rig will be miles better than what it currently probably is.

And Crucial makes really great and really affordable SSD's  including MVMe's.

I put together a new build last week and it's very weird how quiet my fans are. I never used the auto-fan features in my other builds but I'm using it now. It's almost too quiet but my case doesn't seem to be putting out excessive heat. The CPU cooler is stock. I'll see what happens in the summer when my room becomes an oven.

I don't know if I should even bother using Prime95. I don't plan on overclocking any time soon if ever.

[faizoff]

I have an old backup HDD that fell off a shelf and broke a few years ago.  The problem was that I had just transferred all my family photos and videos onto it so I could replace the HDD in my pc at the time.  And I hadn't yet completed the task.  The disk itself is in good shape but the reader mechanism is completely shot.

At the time I couldn't afford to have a company retrieve the data for me.  I think they wanted like $700 or so.  So I just held onto it.

I think it's about time I got that taken care of.  I wanted to figure out how to do it myself but I don't think I have the right tools/environment for that kind of task.

That is always tough and I've been through it at least twice and it is very demoralizing personally. It's the reason I make crazy amount of backups for personal photos and videos across several devices. It appears overkill but I've already been saved a few times  because of this practice.

Still in the process of finishing up bringing my rig online and came across a weird RAM problem. I have 2 A slots and 2 B slots for a total of 4 each. My B slots dont work at all. I painstakingly checked each of my four RAM sticks on each slot and rebooted every time. All RAM sticks work on the A slots, they do nothing on the B slots. My hands are so sore from the constant pull and push lol.

It's so bizarre, and haven't come across this before. I don't know if the power supply going kaput had anything to do with it. My mobo manual says technically it can only support a max of 4GB per slot but I have a set of 4 x 8 GB RAM sticks that I've been using for years with no issue. Now I'm downgraded to 16 GB total RAM and 16 GB RAM of DDR3 to figure out what to do with.

[Chino]

My battle station is evolving 



I did this primarily because I'm trying to learn CAD at home and using Youtube as my main source for lessons. I can have the instructor up top (22") and have the entirety of the lower screen (32") for the modeling software. It's going to take a minute to get used to. I prefer a SBS setup, but the cat's house gets the spot to the left.

[Northern Lion]

My battle station is evolving 



I did this primarily because I'm trying to learn CAD at home and using Youtube as my main source for lessons. I can have the instructor up top (22") and have the entirety of the lower screen (32") for the modeling software. It's going to take a minute to get used to. I prefer a SBS setup, but the cat's house gets the spot to the left.

(whistles) Very very nice Chino!

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Nice setup Chino! Getting a second monitor was a lifechanger for me.

[ReaperKK]

Very nice Chino. I'm going to start hunting for a second panel myself. I have a TV I use as a second monitor but it looks like shit.

[Chino]

Thanks fellas. My sister came over last night and said I should have flipped the mount so I could have hidden the upright/stand in the corner of the room. I kind of like it exposed and visible where it is. It gives the space kind of a rugged look or something. You actually can't see the upright at all when sitting down. The perspective in the photo above is kind of weird.

[Northern Lion]

Thanks fellas. My sister came over last night and said I should have flipped the mount so I could have hidden the upright/stand in the corner of the room. I kind of like it exposed and visible where it is. It gives the space kind of a rugged look or something. You actually can't see the upright at all when sitting down. The perspective in the photo above is kind of weird.

I really like the way you have it now.  It looks supremely awesome.

I have my pc connected to the living room TV, and I just set my mouse on my couch arm and my keyboard on my lap.  It's not ideal, but because of space in my home, it's the best I can do right now.

[Zydar]

I ordered myself a new monitor this weekend since my current one is getting a bit old. A Samsung C27R500F, this will be my first curved monitor.




It will arrive in a few days.

[Podaar]

Ultrawide, Zydar?

I've had an LG curved 3440 x 1440 monitor for a few years and have loved it. Enjoy.

[Zydar]

No, I have limited space at my desk so unfortunately no ultrawide this time    Just a 27" screen, my current one is 22".

[cramx3]

A new monitor should definitely be my next investment for my PC, but I've been so comfortable with my set up that I've gotten a bit lazy... however my NVMe 128G is getting full and that may be a more immediate upgrade due to necessity soon. 

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

Ultrawide, Zydar?

I've had an LG curved 3440 x 1440 monitor for a few years and have loved it. Enjoy.

Seriously, after I got my ultrawide I can't go back to a regular 16:9 screen.

[ReaperKK]

Nice Zydar, I'm shopping for a new monitor myself. Going to bite the bullet and go curved ultrawide I think.

[Podaar]

Ultrawide, Zydar?

I've had an LG curved 3440 x 1440 monitor for a few years and have loved it. Enjoy.

Seriously, after I got my ultrawide I can't go back to a regular 16:9 screen.

Right? I used to have two side by side. I'll never be able to do that again.

[El Barto]

Ultrawide, Zydar?

I've had an LG curved 3440 x 1440 monitor for a few years and have loved it. Enjoy.

Seriously, after I got my ultrawide I can't go back to a regular 16:9 screen.

Right? I used to have two side by side. I'll never be able to do that again.

At home I keep a 27" front and center, and an older 19" 4:3 to the right. They're the same height, and a lot of what I watch is still in the old TV format. I hate watching 4:3 shows on widescreen more than I hate letterboxed 16:9. That'll likely be changing soon, though. The old 4:3s are dirt cheap, but they'll be extinct fairly soon. Also, I'm not sure my mount can handle two 27" monitors. Unlike Chino's it's strictly side-by-side, and they're pretty wide. Moreover, that'll be the end to having one of them centered.