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Case, PSU, video card, fans and CPU cooler and NIC arrived...
I was bored so I installed the PSU, a front panel additional USB3 panel with a USB3.1typeC port, as well as three 140MM "ugly browns" on the top of the case. I stripped out the giant 3.5"HDD rack before doing anything else, not going to have any spinning platter drives.
Had one issue with the graphics card not outputting signal in the x16 slot, so I loaded it into the x8 slot and the machine saw it fine, output signal on the DP, installed drivers, etc. Then I moved it to the x16 slot and it works fine.
ALL RGB on the motherboard is now turned off.
Anyway, loading software now, any good benchmarks or stress tests anyone recommends?
2x PCIE SSDs installed, Heat sink back plane installed:
RAM installed first, then CPU and the apartment building known as the Noctua DH-15. I had to adjust the 2nd fan up a few MM to clear the RAM, but the case had the room (I checked in advance).
Assembled MB in the case. I attached a SATA power cord to the modular PS "just in case" I want to throw a SSD or something in later (it's wrapped up and tucked in front of the PS). It felt weird not to have anything other than MB and CPU connection connected. I will say that EVGA could have made the MB power cable three inches longer... It almost didn't fit and I don't like stressing the MB connectors that much. GPU and 10G network card also installed.
About ryzen. I'm about to build my first computer since I had a 4790k
Everything I read seems to state that if I don't have a am4 processor to do a bios update I'm really limited to the most current (expensive in mini itx format) x570 boars. Is that right? Kinda messes with the amd price per performance thing.
About ryzen. I'm about to build my first computer since I had a 4790k
Everything I read seems to state that if I don't have a am4 processor to do a bios update I'm really limited to the most current (expensive in mini itx format) x570 boars. Is that right? Kinda messes with the amd price per performance thing.
Depending on where you buy a b450/x470 board, the vendor can update the bios for you. For example, I know MicroCenter will do this for free. I don't know if the online vendors are upgrading the older boards or not.
The other option is to contact AMD and they can send you a kit (basically an older AM4 cpu) that you can use to update the bios.
There are also a few boards out there that can update the bios without a cpu installed, I don't know if there are any mini ITX boards like that.
So time to finally actually start looking and getting a new laptop... need some advice.
90% of this will be used for everyday web browsing with some MS Word and Excel. Light gaming.. only that old ass game Counter-Strike. I know I want a Solid State Drive since it will be faster. I'm not sure about processor and RAM needed but I was thinking at least 8GB RAM and 8th gen i5 (this is where I am nowhere near a pro). I'm partial to Dells but am open to others. I will also be needing a docking station so I can hook it up with all my current periphirals. Also, I am open to refurbs. Any suggestions? Also, are those specs enough for whta I need it for?
Another question: My current PC is slow as a fucking snail. It's about 7 years old, has Win 7, 2nd gen i5, 8GB RAM. Any 'cheap' way to make it like new? I don't have the Win 7 disc.
My thoughts were to upgrade RAM to 16 or 32, upgrade the processor to something newer, possibly get an SSD since it now has an HDD, and install a fresh copy of Win 10 - although I have no idea how much all that would cost. I have a buddy who knows about computers and could ask him to do the labor for me.
I recently put an SSD into a 6 year old POS Dell laptop that only has 4GB and runs Windows 10. The thing flies now with only 4GB ram. It's only used for basic web browsing but it's basically as good as new now. If you get a Samsung/Crucial/WD drive they have free cloning utility. You will just need to get a cable to do the cloning. If you want to do a clone make sure the new SSD is bigger than your current HDD.
If you want to get Windows 10 I don't think there is an upgrade path from 7. You will need to get a full license for Home or Pro.
Those two large yellow blocks are probably hyberfil and pagefile. Leave those alone. The large purple single item block, what is that?
Run CCleaner and see how much it clears up.
Having said that, I recommend upgrading only as much as you need. Start with a SSD to replace your HDD and do a fresh install of W7 (you can download the ISO, or your friend can). Find paperwork from when you purchased the original computer and you should find your W7 activation code. It also may be on a sticker on the machine itself. Use that code to activate the fresh install of W7.
I am a little irritated... When I was assembling my last machine, there were two USB 3 Gen 1 (20 pin, blue plug) header attachments on the motherboard. One sat perpendicular to the motherboard and one sat parallel.
During install of the cable leading to the perpendicular header (the lower one in the picture), the rigidity of the USB header cable coming from the front of the case flexed the motherboard header and now the two USB3 ports associated with this header port are not working. Those two external ports are fairly superfluous, as they are part of an add on panel I purchased to get a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Type C) port on the front of the case. There are two other USB3 Gen1 ports on the front of the case that are using the top header in the pic and work fine. I will probably just buy a $20 USB pcie card to allow use of the other front ports, but overall I am disappointing that I flexed that connector too much. I wish cable manufacturers made the sheathing less rigid, for sure.
Dead ports with red arrows:
Last edited by stogie1020; Sep 6, 2019 at 11:14 AM.
Those two large yellow blocks are probably hyberfil and pagefile. Leave those alone. The large purple single item block, what is that?
Run CCleaner and see how much it clears up.
Having said that, I recommend upgrading only as much as you need. Start with a SSD to replace your HDD and do a fresh install of W7 (you can download the ISO, or your friend can). Find paperwork from when you purchased the original computer and you should find your W7 activation code. It also may be on a sticker on the machine itself. Use that code to activate the fresh install of W7.
I believe the pink box is pictures. I have a ton of music.. like 40GB and all songs have an album image, so I'm guessing that is what it is.
I ran disk defrag, disk cleanup and CCleaner and available space went from 321GB to 639GB. Jeez.
Also I've switched to using WizTree or TreeSizeFree instead of WinDirStat. Same thing but they take only a few seconds to give you results instead of a minute like WinDirStat does.
Also I've switched to using WizTree or TreeSizeFree instead of WinDirStat. Same thing but they take only a few seconds to give you results instead of a minute like WinDirStat does.
I dropped a PCI USB3 header into the i9 machine and connected the front plate so those ports now work, although slightly slower than the other set that connects directly to the motherboard. Using the W10 onboard drivers, I get about 40MB/s from the non-broken ports, and 30MB/s from the now repaired PCI bus ports... I will live with it.
^Be careful at least with that Intel 660, it's performance is pretty slow. If you are hoping to smoke a SATA SSD, that one probably won't do it, but if you are looking for the NVME form factor at a low cost, go for it.
The last vestiges of Nvidia and Apple’s long-term relationship are ending shortly. On Monday Nvidia published the release notes for the next update of its CUDA platform and noted that “CUDA 10.2 (Toolkit and NVIDIA driver) is the last release to support macOS for developing and running CUDA applications.” That means all future versions of CUDA will lack support for Apple devices, which could leave a decent share of the pro community, as well as the hackintosh community, without support for the most popular discrete GPUs being made at the moment.
So what is CUDA and why does this mean END TIMES for the relationship between the two companies? CUDA is an Nvidia specific parallel computing platform that lets programs take better advantage of Nvidia’s hardware. This tends to result in better performance in programs like Adobe’s Premiere and AfterEffects and can even result in better performance in some games, like Just Cause 2. The GPUs of Nvidia’s rival, AMD, can’t support CUDA, which has led to some video professionals relying on the macOS platform to grumble over Apple’s long-term reliance on AMD GPUs.
Here's my new build. There's not a lot of RGB in this one. I may kill what little RGB that it has and go for a dark theme.
I ran a Heaven benchmark on the RX5700 to see how it compares to the RX580 in last year's build. The RX5700 does about 90fps more at 1080p than the RX580. (~190 vs ~100)
Yup, jumped up and did its thing on the first shot. I just had to tell the BIOS to get the memory timings from SPD. I don't know why the BIOS doesn't read the SPD by default.
has anyone played around recently with a micro/mini form factor? i'm downsizing my office area and would like to explore options of a cpu that's mountable on the back of a monitor... i don't heavy game anymore so it won't have to be resource intensive, but i still want a decent size SSD, RAM and processing speed...
i've tried tablets and laptops as a desktop replacement, but i've always fell short one way or another and i don't want to compromise...
has anyone played around recently with a micro/mini form factor? i'm downsizing my office area and would like to explore options of a cpu that's mountable on the back of a monitor... i don't heavy game anymore so it won't have to be resource intensive, but i still want a decent size SSD, RAM and processing speed...
i've tried tablets and laptops as a desktop replacement, but i've always fell short one way or another and i don't want to compromise...
I have run into a handful of instances of Intel NUC machines, and the users have been very happy, although no long term reviews. My only concern with going smaller is heat dissipation. Fans are cheap, RAM/processor isn't.
