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Post by ForRealTho on Feb 12, 2020 20:15:53 GMT -5
Nice. I just went with a 2 tb NVMe drive and called it a day. When I upgrade this laptop I am going to try and get the lowest sized SSD drive I can and just swap the one I'm using in.
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Post by Coolverine on Feb 12, 2020 21:18:42 GMT -5
I made sure to do a backup image to my external HDD once I had all of the necessary drivers installed (chipset, LAN, display and audio). Also created a restore DVD, which I should have already done before. BTW I would recommend opting out of and uninstalling OneDrive after a fresh Windows 10 install. The real version of it has a monthly fee, the cheapest is only $2 a month but I still can't justify that when I can do my own backups locally. Also no telling where your files are uploading to. *edit* Also I'm not sure what it is, but my desktop looks MUCH better after a clean install, somehow there's just much more clarity and sharpness. My old Windows 10 install was almost 7 years old and looked nothing like what this new install looks like. I actually still have my old Windows 10 install on my 256GB, still connected. I can go into it and browse all of my files, but the MBR on it is fudged. Tried to repair but it wouldn't even get that far. Here's after I installed the 2nd M.2 SSD (the top one under the top PCI-E x16 slot). ![]() Once I find all my important files on the 256gb, I'm thinking about formatting it and using it for Linux. Attachments:
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Post by Coolverine on Feb 13, 2020 19:32:24 GMT -5
I updated the BIOS on this motherboard but after the update, it would never get past the "press del key to enter BIOS setup" screen, even pressing del key wouldn't go into the BIOS setup. Cleared CMOS twice but it still wouldn't go any further, I was afraid I'd bricked this motherboard.
Decided to shut it down and disconnect everything except the M.2's, after restarting again that got me into the BIOS setup. Then was afraid I'd lost my data because I didn't even see anything as a boot drive, even though it detected it. I restarted once more and went into the BIOS setup, this time I saw the boot drive and was able to get into Windows so I shut down again and reconnected all other drives. It's working fine again, I've even restarted and shut down a bunch of times since just to be sure.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2020 15:08:26 GMT -5
Can't believe they're still making motherboards without some kind of built-in safety/backup measures for the BIOS. I guess it's a form of planned obsolescence. They're hoping you brick the motherboard, so you'll go and buy a new one.
Remember the old days when the m/b BIOS could only be updated via floppy or 3.5" disk (which had high rate of read failures), and there was a high chance of bricking your motherboard.
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Post by Coolverine on Feb 14, 2020 22:08:06 GMT -5
Did some more upgrades. Funny enough, the problem where it wouldn't get past the BIOS splash screen happened again after I put in this new CPU and new RAM. I again solved it by unplugging all my drives except for the M.2's and then it let me get into the BIOS. Powered off and plugged everything back in, it's all good. It's annoying but I'm just glad it's worked twice now. Again, I restarted several times to test it and it's loading up just fine.  I think pretty much all motherboards now do have failsafe features, I know Gigabyte boards have a dual BIOS in case one fails. *edit* I got the Ryzen 7 3800X for $259 (w/ tax). The Microcenter near me has them on sale for $299 but they had one open-box for $239. I went there and asked for the open box one, trusted that it was good but the cashier opened it and checked it. I'm glad he did, it had bent pins and a ton of thermal paste all over it. Someone who didn't know what they were doing bought it and damaged it, then returned it and it got restocked at a lower price without being checked thoroughly. They sold me a new one for the price of the open-box since it was their mistake, that's a retailer who cares and stands behind what they sell to their customers. Every time I go to Microcenter it's always packed too, I'm glad to see they're doing so well in the age of online retailing. They usually have better prices than Amazon or anywhere else. I think this might be the best deal I've ever gotten on a computer part, especially for a CPU. They're also selling the 2700X's for $139 brand-new right now, I think they're trying to clearance them. I wanted the 3700X but that open box 3800X was cheaper by $40. I'm glad it worked out the way it did.  |
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Post by ForRealTho on Feb 14, 2020 23:48:25 GMT -5
Nice. We have no Microcenter here. I've never been to one.
I want a new laptop but I'm patiently waiting for the 4000 series to drop. They said Q1 2020 so hopefully something good comes out.
The 4000 series should be a good speed boost over what I am running plus I want at least 2070 level performance. I wouldn't mind AMD video.
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Post by Coolverine on Feb 15, 2020 8:36:32 GMT -5
Nice. We have no Microcenter here. I've never been to one. I want a new laptop but I'm patiently waiting for the 4000 series to drop. They said Q1 2020 so hopefully something good comes out. The 4000 series should be a good speed boost over what I am running plus I want at least 2070 level performance. I wouldn't mind AMD video. I was gonna wait for the Ryzen 4000's but there's no official word yet on when the desktop ones might release this year. Might be between July and September sometime, according to another site. When I saw what the Zen 2's are going for, I went for it. Last few times I've been there, the cage where they keep purchased items for pickup had a ton of Ryzen CPUs in it. I didn't see a single Intel CPU in there. Intel is doing okay though, plus they are staying competitive on pricing. I think AMD is only beating them at consumer level. Microcenter.com has an online store but not everything is available for online purchase, unfortunately. Things like CPUs and videocards are usually store only. |
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Post by ForRealTho on Feb 20, 2020 23:17:50 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on Feb 24, 2020 19:14:04 GMT -5
^After putting my 2 M.2 SSD's in RAID 0, all of my games load up much faster compared to before. There are much faster SSD's than these (Crucial MX500 SATA's) but I am happy with the speed improvement plus the price on them was very good. I'm not surprised that there's not much of a difference between SATA and NVME loading times, that means SATA is probably more cost effective.
Also I took my top case fan out and put the stock metal cover back in. I had been wondering about my CPU temps with a top fan being kind of close to the CPU cooler, thinking maybe it was disrupting airflow. Seems like I was right, my CPU is running a few degrees C cooler but my GPU is now running a few degrees hotter. I might just get a new case, there are some nice ones nowadays. Might actually go with some side windows this time.
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Post by ForRealTho on Mar 11, 2020 10:58:24 GMT -5
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Post by ForRealTho on Mar 11, 2020 16:24:16 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on Mar 11, 2020 20:09:40 GMT -5
I'm actually thinking about switching to Radeon this year, the 5800 XT is supposed to be coming and even the 5700 XT is about equal with the RTX 2070. AMD announced that their future GPU's will do ray tracing but I don't know if that includes the 5800 XT.
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Post by ForRealTho on Mar 30, 2020 19:43:59 GMT -5
I wish these damn laptop chips would hit mass production already so I could buy one. Like with Coronavirus and everything I won't be biking like I usually am when it gets warmer this time of year so I have all day to fuck around with a new laptop. HURRY UP ALREADY!
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Post by ForRealTho on Apr 21, 2020 15:35:39 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on Apr 21, 2020 16:15:44 GMT -5
Seems like a really good price for those specs. |
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Post by ForRealTho on Apr 23, 2020 20:18:48 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on Apr 23, 2020 21:01:48 GMT -5
I think Intel's still faster than AMD when it comes to gaming but it's a very small difference now. My 3800X is a beast to say the least, right now I'm doing a system backup and can still play games and they stay smooth.
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Post by ForRealTho on Apr 23, 2020 21:28:18 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on Apr 24, 2020 15:16:26 GMT -5
Wow 300hz is nice. My monitor looks great but it's only 75hz, still better than 60 though.
Ryzen's are very nice, I'm a little concerned about the heat though. I ran Prime95 and F@H and my CPU goes up to 83C under heavy load. In most cases (gaming etc) I've seen it get as high as 70C. I'm thinking I can improve temps if I remove the stock thermal paste and put in some of the premium stuff.
I haven't had a chance to see how well it does with video/audio stuff but even the 1700 I was using before did that very well.
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Post by ForRealTho on Apr 24, 2020 15:31:47 GMT -5
Wow 300hz is nice. My monitor looks great but it's only 75hz, still better than 60 though. Ryzen's are very nice, I'm a little concerned about the heat though. I ran Prime95 and F@H and my CPU goes up to 83C under heavy load. In most cases (gaming etc) I've seen it get as high as 70C. I'm thinking I can improve temps if I remove the stock thermal paste and put in some of the premium stuff. I haven't had a chance to see how well it does with video/audio stuff but even the 1700 I was using before did that very well.
I highly recommend liquid metal. It is 10x better at conducting heat then Arctic Silver 5 or any other high end paste. The only thing is you cannot use it on aluminum or it will eat it up like acid. As long as you have a copper heatsink you are good to go. My Predator was hitting 95c after 2 hours of PUBG. I put on the liquid metal and when I turned my laptop back on I thought I forgot to hook my fans back up because of how quiet they were. After 2 hours of PUBG my CPU never went above 70c. A 25c drop in temps is insane. The only downside is it is conductive so if you spill it on your board you can fry it. If you aren't an idiot and pay attention to what you are doing its fine. www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Conductonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B01A9KIGSII haven't made up my mind if I want to get that laptop or not. With 300 hz G-Sync becomes a lot less relevant because its much harder to see screen tearing. |
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Post by Coolverine on May 3, 2020 14:03:32 GMT -5
Wow 300hz is nice. My monitor looks great but it's only 75hz, still better than 60 though. Ryzen's are very nice, I'm a little concerned about the heat though. I ran Prime95 and F@H and my CPU goes up to 83C under heavy load. In most cases (gaming etc) I've seen it get as high as 70C. I'm thinking I can improve temps if I remove the stock thermal paste and put in some of the premium stuff. I haven't had a chance to see how well it does with video/audio stuff but even the 1700 I was using before did that very well.
I highly recommend liquid metal. It is 10x better at conducting heat then Arctic Silver 5 or any other high end paste. The only thing is you cannot use it on aluminum or it will eat it up like acid. As long as you have a copper heatsink you are good to go. My Predator was hitting 95c after 2 hours of PUBG. I put on the liquid metal and when I turned my laptop back on I thought I forgot to hook my fans back up because of how quiet they were. After 2 hours of PUBG my CPU never went above 70c. A 25c drop in temps is insane. The only downside is it is conductive so if you spill it on your board you can fry it. If you aren't an idiot and pay attention to what you are doing its fine. www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Conductonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B01A9KIGSII haven't made up my mind if I want to get that laptop or not. With 300 hz G-Sync becomes a lot less relevant because its much harder to see screen tearing.
Oh yeah, just recently I was cleaning the bottom of my mouse and the buttons must've pressed against my desk, I suddenly had 15-20 instances of Fallout 76 open on my PC, it barely slowed down. It wasn't the actual game, just on the main menu but that would have probably brought my old Core i5 system with 8 gigs of RAM to a grinding halt. I think they intentionally made the game where you can play multiple instances (for playing as alternate characters at the same time maybe) but there should be a limit.
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Post by ForRealTho on May 3, 2020 17:15:28 GMT -5
Its not bad at all. Its easy to apply. You just don't push the applicator right onto your board. If you use a qtip the "painting method" you put it on a qtip and wipe it on your CPU. You use way less then normal thermal compound. For my laptop I used Super33 electrical tape that you can get at any Walmart. Its melting point is 105c so you never have to worry about it getting too hot. Put that all around the CPU and applied the liquid metal. Done. On a desktop I don't know if you would even need to bother doing that. If you don't have a copper heatsink they are pretty cheap these days. I've had it on my laptop for over 2 years now and never needed to reapply. My temps are still fine. Supposedly if you wipe down your CPU and reapply it works even better but I haven't felt the need. I'm debating preordering this ASUS laptop. It comes with the liquid metal preappied: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0876LP52P/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mylaptopguide-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B0876L89TZ&linkId=8fafbb509ba2a7f0ce309dbedcb73544&th=1 |
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Post by ForRealTho on May 4, 2020 8:10:09 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on May 4, 2020 14:27:46 GMT -5
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Post by ForRealTho on May 16, 2020 18:24:58 GMT -5
I hate the waiting game. Supposedly my new laptop releases May 25th but with Coronavirus I realize it may be delayed. My CPU is getting a pretty ridiculous boost: cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-10875H/m34954vsm1111393Going from the 300th something fastest CPU to the 19th fastest. Been using G-Sync for 3 years now and was worried screen tearing will be awful without it but it turns out at 300hz screen tearing is barely noticeable at all so I am planning on forcing V-Sync off in all games. As of now I leave G-sync on in single player/coop and force off G-Sync/V-Sync in comp games. Will be a lot more simple not having to worry about it anymore. Also I didn't know this till recently but in some games forcing V-Sync off in the Nvidia control panel doesn't actually work right and you need to turn it off in game or it can lead to weird issues. I had never heard that before. Learn something new everyday. |
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Post by ForRealTho on May 21, 2020 14:47:33 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on May 21, 2020 15:06:36 GMT -5
Sounds expensive, but I would buy that, maybe even 2 of them.  |
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Post by Coolverine on May 27, 2020 17:32:03 GMT -5
Was gonna play KotOR II but then remembered this game has an issue with my Saitek keyboard where it acts like the left arrow key is stuck. There's nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell, it works perfectly fine for everything except this one game.
I found a Saitek Gamers Keyboard at a thrift store for $5 years ago but it's missing the wrist rest and some other small attachment for macros, still has been a great keyboard. Also the keys on the new one are switch-type like a laptop has which I like, but I know how these keys can be so I got a 2 year replacement plan for it just in case (was only $7). I'd been wanting a new kb anyway, so far the new one is outstanding and looks very nice.
*edit* Very good keyboard, the material feels great and it's very comfortable. I was able to bind Spotify app to the media keys, but I had to use the one from the website and not the Windows Store. The keys are nice and responsive, typing on it feels very fluid. It works just fine for gaming but I feel like it would be better for office use, I'll probably be using it for work from now on. |
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Post by ForRealTho on Jun 1, 2020 9:46:53 GMT -5
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Post by Coolverine on Jun 1, 2020 9:57:39 GMT -5
I've got 2x 1TB M.2 SSD's and a 4TB 2.5" SSD, it's more than enough space but I wouldn't mind having more.
I actually could afford 2 of those Sabrent 8TB ones right now, but I'd probably just buy one. That means I'd end up taking out one of my 1TB M.2's.
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