What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

[Nexus]

I am not sad due to the dust.

Stock Intel cooler
Non modular PSU
Negative Air Pressure Set up(this is not good as it attracts dust)
No Cable Management
Cheapo Fans

Kinda reminds me of my first sinful PC.

I was already over my original $1k budget, getting a third-party cooler, better fans and modular PSU would've cost me too much money.

My current case won't allow me to have more than one intake fan but hey, the current fans do the job.

The cable management is the best I could do, unfortunately. There's no hole for the CPU cable, so I have to leave it in it's current position.

The stock cooler isn't fantastic but it's good enough.

 

[Grayfox]

I was already over my original $1k budget, getting a third-party cooler, better fans and modular PSU would've cost me too much money.

My current case won't allow me to have more than one intake fan but hey, the current fans do the job.

The cable management is the best I could do, unfortunately. There's no hole for the CPU cable, so I have to leave it in it's current position.

The stock cooler isn't fantastic but it's good enough.

I would suggest removing one exhaust fan.

With negative air pressure setups air is drawn into all the small holes which is another point of entry for dust.

 

[Nexus]

I would suggest removing one exhaust fan.

With negative air pressure setups air is drawn into all the small holes which is another point of entry for dust.

I might disconnect the top one, but I don't know how it'll effect the GPU. It's gotten up to 73°C during the Summer.

 

[JohnBM01]

I noticed when I change my Display Settings from duplicating displays to extending displays, GTR2 goes to a bigger resolution than when I normally play the game. It runs at 1200x720 when I change my dual monitor display to extend, but I normally play the game at 800x600. The bonus is that I can take some better screenshots at a better resolution. What hurts, however, is that I'll have to re-adjust the screen settings for if and when I make a video through OBS (Open Broadcaster Software).

Speaking of OBS, I found a few new ways to have videos record better. You can disable the preview when recording. You do need to adjust the view settings properly if you're going to record. It also helps you aren't in the folder where you place your video while you are recording. I have never done a stream with OBS, but I am somewhat considering attempting my first live stream either on YouTube or Twitch. I will need some practice before attempting such a thing.

 

[Darla Starch]

Basically completely redid the build sheet for the gaming PC I've mentioned a few times before as a wedding gift for a former work friend. Still roughly same overall cost as before, but going AMD for processor and graphics card freed up some room elsewhere.

 

[andrea]

Replaced my PSU with a new one because it turned into a jet engine. Took me about an hour.

 

[sesselpupser]

Yesterday I went over to my brother's flat to install the SSD (256GB 850 Evo) and HDD (2TB Toshiba) he bought and get Windows 7 Pro installed on it. It turned out to be a complete hassle, because:

1. His friend gave him his old Windows 7 key (not strictly ok, I know), it was an OEM copy of Windows 7 Pro that would also activate Windows 8.1 and 10, but only the Pro versions. The Windows 7 key he already had was for Windows 7 Ultimate, so he could only use the Windows update tool to get Windows 10 Ultimate (or something, not the Pro version anyway) so when the update tool asked for a key, it wouldn't let him activate it.
2. Microsoft don't host the free ISOs of old Windows versions that they used to and the only mirror I could find dealt only in torrents - neither of us know anything about torrents. Fortunately we're not stupid and it's not difficult so I was able to get the Windows 7 Pro ISO, I also checksummed it and it was a legitimate copy.
3. Then, after making the installation media, the installer asked me for the DVD/CD driver even though it was on a flash drive. After much head scratching I realised it was because it was in a USB 3.0 port, so I put it in a 2.0 port and it was fine... Except:
4. I'd formatted both of his new drives as GPT rather than MBR, and Windows 7 didn't want to be installed on GPT. Instead of giving me the option to revert the drive to fresh-out-of-the-box spec I had to boot back into his old install and use DISKPART to fix it (which, again, was easy).
5. It still refused to install but didn't tell me why, but I Googled the error code and the solution was to remove all of the other drives from the PC.

After that it worked fine, all I had to do afterwards was download the drivers for the motherboard and graphics card, set up Chrome, Steam and Nvidia Share for him and I was on my way... A mere three hours later than I'd anticipated.

Next week, barring any unexpected expenses, I'll hopefully be buying some DDR4 RAM to motivate me to save for the CPU and motherboard to suit it at the end of March. I was thinking 2x8GB DDR4-3200, probably G.Skill because I've had a total of 24GB (6x4GB) of G.Skill DDR3-1600 since 2011 and it has been flawless so far. The CPU and motherboard are obviously going to be an i7-7700k (with a Noctua NH-U14S) and an Asus Strix Z270G, replacing an i5-4690k (NH-U9S) and Asus Z97-M Plus, which will be rehomed in a Silverstone GD-05 (USB 3.0) HTPC case as a second PC that I'll probably sell to a friend... The money from that will go toward a 27" 4K monitor. I've got my upgrades planned.

 

[Phoenix]

Cleaned some dust of a couple of my top and CPU cooler fans, because it was about darn time.

Will give the whole potato a good clean when I get a day off work or something.

 

[Pillo-san]

Next week, barring any unexpected expenses, I'll hopefully be buying some DDR4 RAM to motivate me to save for the CPU and motherboard to suit it at the end of March. I was thinking 2x8GB DDR4-3200, probably G.Skill because I've had a total of 24GB (6x4GB) of G.Skill DDR3-1600 since 2011 and it has been flawless so far. The CPU and motherboard are obviously going to be an i7-7700k (with a Noctua NH-U14S) and an Asus Strix Z270G, replacing an i5-4690k (NH-U9S) and Asus Z97-M Plus, which will be rehomed in a Silverstone GD-05 (USB 3.0) HTPC case as a second PC that I'll probably sell to a friend... The money from that will go toward a 27" 4K monitor. I've got my upgrades planned.

Why getting an i7 7700k? It is only a quad core cpu. Even if an 7700 is faster core per core than the upcoming AMD ryzen I would rather choose the Ryzen 1700 before a quadcore intel. I can say you this right now. A friends old 8core xeon(sandybridge) on x79 chipset is performing better than mine i7 6700@4.8 ghz in simracing games. So you should rethink your system choice if you play sims.

 

[Darla Starch]

TL;DR: I somehow manage to turn off my keyboard in KSP, trying to fix it.

 

[TB]

TL;DR: I somehow manage to turn off my keyboard in KSP, trying to fix it.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/40716-keyboard-lock-bug-or-quotfeaturequot/

 

[Darla Starch]

Whole thing shut down, even after multiple reboots. Backlight still works fine, can get into BIOS without issue. Drivers reinstalled, nothing. Going for broke ATM and doing a reinstall of 8.1.

 

[sesselpupser]

So you should rethink your system choice if you play sims.

No, I shouldn't. I don't believe for a second that a Sandy Bridge Xeon outperforms an overclocked Skylake i7 in any of the usual racing sims, because none of the usual racing sims are built for eight cores, so either the rest of your components are unbalanced or your PC isn't running properly. I've done my research and I'm going to stick with the latest iteration of the most popular CPU for builds of the level I'm aiming at, because it's popular for a reason. Skylake i7s even outperform the cheaper two Broadwell-E i7s in a surprisingly large number of games, what does that tell you about the value of additional cores?

 

[JakeMR2]

Yup. I can agree fully with that, that's why I'm getting a 4-core i5 that runs at 3.5GHz without overclocking the CPU, thus. I won't buy a FX 6-core that runs at the same GHz, but it lacks the L1 cache, so it won't perform well.

My friends always tell me that I made a mistake with not buying "more cores from AMD" but I still feel I got a better bargain than most people.

Once I build my system up, I'll show it then.

 

[Korza]

Yesterday I went over to my brother's flat to install the SSD (256GB 850 Evo) and HDD (2TB Toshiba) he bought and get Windows 7 Pro installed on it. It turned out to be a complete hassle, because:

1. His friend gave him his old Windows 7 key (not strictly ok, I know), it was an OEM copy of Windows 7 Pro that would also activate Windows 8.1 and 10, but only the Pro versions. The Windows 7 key he already had was for Windows 7 Ultimate, so he could only use the Windows update tool to get Windows 10 Ultimate (or something, not the Pro version anyway) so when the update tool asked for a key, it wouldn't let him activate it.
2. Microsoft don't host the free ISOs of old Windows versions that they used to and the only mirror I could find dealt only in torrents - neither of us know anything about torrents. Fortunately we're not stupid and it's not difficult so I was able to get the Windows 7 Pro ISO, I also checksummed it and it was a legitimate copy.
3. Then, after making the installation media, the installer asked me for the DVD/CD driver even though it was on a flash drive. After much head scratching I realised it was because it was in a USB 3.0 port, so I put it in a 2.0 port and it was fine... Except:
4. I'd formatted both of his new drives as GPT rather than MBR, and Windows 7 didn't want to be installed on GPT. Instead of giving me the option to revert the drive to fresh-out-of-the-box spec I had to boot back into his old install and use DISKPART to fix it (which, again, was easy).
5. It still refused to install but didn't tell me why, but I Googled the error code and the solution was to remove all of the other drives from the PC.

After that it worked fine, all I had to do afterwards was download the drivers for the motherboard and graphics card, set up Chrome, Steam and Nvidia Share for him and I was on my way... A mere three hours later than I'd anticipated.

Next week, barring any unexpected expenses, I'll hopefully be buying some DDR4 RAM to motivate me to save for the CPU and motherboard to suit it at the end of March. I was thinking 2x8GB DDR4-3200, probably G.Skill because I've had a total of 24GB (6x4GB) of G.Skill DDR3-1600 since 2011 and it has been flawless so far. The CPU and motherboard are obviously going to be an i7-7700k (with a Noctua NH-U14S) and an Asus Strix Z270G, replacing an i5-4690k (NH-U9S) and Asus Z97-M Plus, which will be rehomed in a Silverstone GD-05 (USB 3.0) HTPC case as a second PC that I'll probably sell to a friend... The money from that will go toward a 27" 4K monitor. I've got my upgrades planned.

Just in case you have to do it again, Windows 10 can be activated with a Win7/8 key provided you've got the Anniversary Update installed meaning you don't need to install the older OS first.

 

[Nexus]

Yup. I can agree fully with that, that's why I'm getting a 4-core i5 that runs at 3.5GHz without overclocking the CPU, thus. I won't buy a FX 6-core that runs at the same GHz, but it lacks the L1 cache, so it won't perform well.

You're comparing an i5 against the (relatively) ancient FX series though, @Pillo-san was talking about Ryzen, which is supposedly outperforming Kaby Lake.

We won't know for sure just how well it will perform until reviews start coming out, but I think it's safe to assume that (at the very least) it'll be performing as well as Broadwell.

I know that people have been saying this for a while, but more games are starting to use over four cores, especially with DX12 and Vulkan (along with the eight core processors in the PS4/XB1).

Besides, the extra cores would be useful for other applications, like streaming.

 

[Pillo-san]

No, I shouldn't. I don't believe for a second that a Sandy Bridge Xeon outperforms an overclocked Skylake i7 in any of the usual racing sims, because none of the usual racing sims are built for eight cores, so either the rest of your components are unbalanced or your PC isn't running properly. I've done my research and I'm going to stick with the latest iteration of the most popular CPU for builds of the level I'm aiming at, because it's popular for a reason. Skylake i7s even outperform the cheaper two Broadwell-E i7s in a surprisingly large number of games, what does that tell you about the value of additional cores?

Sure right now sky/kabylake is king because of its high ipc and frequency but it does indeed loose to systems with more cores in some scenarios. Broadwell-e is a bit slower clocked and has lower ipc, of course it will not output same amount of frames and that is even more evident when talking about my friends old 8 core sandy. But there are instances that show that more cores/threads are indeed showing better experience. What happens when something starts up in the background? Or that there suddenly are more things on the screen to calculate like more AI and physics for the objects? What will you choose high frame count or stuttering? If you know what I mean when I say this then you have done your "research" at least.

I too thought that a modern intel 4core machines should do just fine in simracing games that is why I have an i7 6700 right now coming from an i7 3770k(bought it because I gave the other sys away). But after some digging it is evident that 4cores even with ht does not cut it in when I want to experiment with more cars on track.
And if you really want to look at apples to apples(same frequency) when testing cpu perf in games you clearly see that an i7 with more physical cores will outperform an 4core/8t sku. And that is in today's games. What will happen in the future and maybe even later this year? Will you buy a new system again then? Why not get something that is a bit "slower" per core yet have more cores over when they are needed most? Hint, perhaps Ryzen?

If I would be in your place right now I would not buy an i7 7700k especially not if you have i5 at the moment because most of the time you would only get just more fps but the system would be as vulnerable to sudden short system freezes/stuttering when something takes to much resources.

 

[BobK]

Achieved something of a minor milestone on my Raspberry Pi this afternoon:

 

[Nexus]

No, I shouldn't. I don't believe for a second that a Sandy Bridge Xeon outperforms an overclocked Skylake i7 in any of the usual racing sims, because none of the usual racing sims are built for eight cores, so either the rest of your components are unbalanced or your PC isn't running properly. I've done my research and I'm going to stick with the latest iteration of the most popular CPU for builds of the level I'm aiming at, because it's popular for a reason. Skylake i7s even outperform the cheaper two Broadwell-E i7s in a surprisingly large number of games, what does that tell you about the value of additional cores?

Sure right now sky/kabylake is king because of its high ipc and frequency but it does indeed loose to systems with more cores in some scenarios. Broadwell-e is a bit slower clocked and has lower ipc, of course it will not output same amount of frames and that is even more evident when talking about my friends old 8 core sandy. But there are instances that show that more cores/threads are indeed showing better experience. What happens when something starts up in the background? Or that there suddenly are more things on the screen to calculate like more AI and physics for the objects? What will you choose high frame count or stuttering? If you know what I mean when I say this then you have done your "research" at least.

I too thought that a modern intel 4core machines should do just fine in simracing games that is why I have an i7 6700 right now coming from an i7 3770k(bought it because I gave the other sys away). But after some digging it is evident that 4cores even with ht does not cut it in when I want to experiment with more cars on track.
And if you really want to look at apples to apples(same frequency) when testing cpu perf in games you clearly see that an i7 with more physical cores will outperform an 4core/8t sku. And that is in today's games. What will happen in the future and maybe even later this year? Will you buy a new system again then? Why not get something that is a bit "slower" per core yet have more cores over when they are needed most? Hint, perhaps Ryzen?

If I would be in your place right now I would not buy an i7 7700k especially not if you have i5 at the moment because most of the time you would only get just more fps but the system would be as vulnerable to sudden short system freezes/stuttering when something takes to much resources.

You guys might find this article interesting.

 

[Grayfox]

Nailed the last bend for my rig.
Washed all the tubes and fittings
Polished the tubes with some plastX polish.

Now Leak testing with just plain distilled water.

So far, leak free.

 

[Darla Starch]

Currently playing around with the parts list for a PC I intend to build for a friend who's getting married later this year. Not actually building it for a few months. Might be a bit overkill for 1080p, but hey I have to futureproof somewhere.

 

[Grayfox]

Currently playing around with the parts list for a PC I intend to build for a friend who's getting married later this year. Not actually building it for a few months. Might be a bit overkill for 1080p, but hey I have to futureproof somewhere.

Why get an FX CPU when zen is about to be released.

Dont forget AMD has caught up with the times and has moved to DDR 4 as well as PCIe 3.0

Also get rid of the Arctic Silver 5.
It sucks, plus normally you get some with the new cooler.
Get rid of the fan controller, Speed fan can do the same thing automatically
Get rid of those **** color fans, a cheaper fan from a good brand will work just as well

 

[Nexus]

Currently playing around with the parts list for a PC I intend to build for a friend who's getting married later this year. Not actually building it for a few months. Might be a bit overkill for 1080p, but hey I have to futureproof somewhere.

I highly recommend against buying an FX CPU, (unless you already have a motherboard from a previous rig), as they've aged pretty badly.

If you want to build a PC now, I'd go for a Kaby Lake i5. It's probably worth waiting for the Ryzen R5 CPU's to be revealed first, though.

 

[Darla Starch]

I've got a little over six months to actually order and build it, this was just to get a general idea of pricing. (Have another friend who agreed to go halvsies on funding once his job situation is worked out.)

I'm fully intending to change things out before I lock down the specs during summertime.

 

[Fastcarguy]

I bought a computer. Its an Acer Aspire r15 that I bought for school.

 

[Nexus]

Reinstalled Windows (again) on my PC, because a recent update made it unstable.

 

[Grayfox]

Started the long and tedious process of installing things.

 

[bluemoon_19]

I installed a new PSU into my system today in the hope it will stop my strange issue. My PC sometimes fails to POST and need a restarts or to be turned on or off to work. I came to conclusion it is most likely PSU since once on it doesn't crash EVER, I have 1 8GB stick of RAM and that got maxed out the other day playing a game and the PC was fine. So since the RAM seems good since no BSOD and no crashes suggests the mobo, GPU and CPU are still good.


I got an EVGA SuperNova G2 550 W as replacement and even un-boxing was a joy so nicely presented

 

[sesselpupser]

My PC sometimes fails to POST and need a restarts or to be turned on or off to work. I came to conclusion it is most likely PSU

You're probably right, at work we had a super short-term stopgap CAD workstation PC (an off-the-shelf Dell office PC) that we upgraded with a GTX 1060, naturally that required a new PSU but all we had lying around was a no-name '550W'. It would boot and POST fine, once, but if you switched it off you'd need to discharge the PSU before trying to boot it again or else it'd just fail. I replaced it with a Corsair RM550x and it worked fine after that. I mean, your issue could still be something else (bad BIOS, for instance), but it's not unreasonable to suspect the PSU.


I didn't end up buying the RAM at the end of last month because I figured I might as well just wait and get free shipping, I did so much overtime the month before that I don't really need to save that hard anyway so the incentive is unnecessary. Ryzen has failed to convince me that the 7700k is a bad idea for a gaming PC (I'm not denying that it has its uses) so that's what I'm getting. But if I do save hard this month I'll be able to get the 4K monitor with it at the same time, that's always a far more satisfying box to open. Also it's my birthday this month so hopefully there'll be some additional cash coming my way, not to mention the fact that a friend wants to buy the PC that I'll be able to build with my old parts.

 

[Grayfox]

Overclock my new rigs 6600K to 4.7Ghz.
Stress tested it,
Installed Teamviewer on it and on my HTPC as well.
Configured them
Installed Folding At Home
Configured it so I can remote control the HTPC from my new rig.