The computer and electronics super geek thread

[mikeszekely]

I ordered this today at Best Buy.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-g700-gaming-desktop-intel-core-ultra-7-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080-2tb-ssd-black/6613426.p?skuId=6613426

 

[TangledThorns]

8 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I ordered this today at Best Buy.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-g700-gaming-desktop-intel-core-ultra-7-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080-2tb-ssd-black/6613426.p?skuId=6613426

 

 

Congrats. Wise way to go about it these days. 

Saw in a different forum where someone paid $1900 USD for a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5080 from a Amazon 3rd party seller... wtf.

[mikeszekely]

New PC arrived. Asus ought to step up their QC... Out of the box it kept giving me errors about being unable to continue the Windows installation. Fortunately I used to fix computers for a living, so it wasn't difficult to get into Windows Recovery, run a factory reset, and then get it setup. Another minor complaint is that Best Buy advertises it as having three M.2 slots and two 2.5" bays. Well, the only way you're getting three m.2 slots is if you pull out the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi module; there's only one free slot. As for the 2.5" bays, there's room in front of the PSU but no mounting hardware- no cages, no sleds, no caddies, nada.  I put my 2TB game drive in the M.2, and for now I installed my 3TB  3.5" bulk storage drive by screwing it into the bottom of the case with a single screw. Down the roads I'll probably get a PCIe NVME card and a 4TB SSD to replace it, but I'm kind of irritated that a case that's probably 20-25% bigger than my old one can't properly fit a 3.5" drive.

On the plus side, I went from 45-50fps on a medium-low mix and minimal ray tracing on AC Shadows to 60-65fps on High with the ray tracing cranked all the way up. So once I get all my stuff reinstalled and my settings tweaked the way I like I'll be quite happy.

EDIT: tried Ultra High and was in the high 50s, so I dialed back a few things like fog, shadows, and clutter and was able to get over 60 with with good stuff still maxed.

Edited April 12 by mikeszekely

[azrael]

4 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Asus ought to step up their QC...

Wait for the day you have to deal with their warranty service. 🤣

4 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Another minor complaint is that Best Buy advertises it as having three M.2 slots and two 2.5" bays

They never said the slots weren't already occupied, just that it had 3 M.2 slots and 2 bays.

4 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

As for the 2.5" bays, there's room in front of the PSU but no mounting hardware- no cages, no sleds, no caddies, nada. ... but I'm kind of irritated that a case that's probably 20-25% bigger than my old one can't properly fit a 3.5" drive.

SI doesn't provide additional mounting hardware for expansion. Why am I not shocked?

[TangledThorns]

9 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

 Down the roads I'll probably get a PCIe NVME card and a 4TB SSD to replace it, but I'm kind of irritated that a case that's probably 20-25% bigger than my old one can't properly fit a 3.5" drive.

 

 

Yeah, these new PC cases got bigger and heavier with the tempered glass to show off the RGB lights and is why I passed on them for my next build. Ended up buying a ASUS AP201 MFF case which is way lighter and has enough space for my RTX 5080 and a HDD. My build will be all stealth black, no RGB, which I think is distracting and just another thing to manage which I don't want. I just want excellent performance in a PC!

[mikeszekely]

7 hours ago, azrael said:

They never said the slots weren't already occupied, just that it had 3 M.2 slots and 2 bays.

I get that, and I didn't expect to find three empty M.2 slots, but I figured maybe three with one occupied by the system drive. If you're already advertising that you have bluetooth and wifi 6 just don't count that as an M.2 slot even though it's technically in an M.2s slot, because very few people are willing to give up wifi and bluetooth to add another SSD.

[Test_Pilot_2]

Passed by Microcenter to pick up a new headset for one of the kids.

They had 30 9070xt's for $699.00 that just came in. Walked around for a bit and by the time I circled back to the GPUs they were down to 19. Snagged one.

I think I have a buyer for my 7900xt at $500. We'll see if it's worth a 200-ish upgrade.

[David Hingtgen]

Dang, that's an expensive impulse buy, but I might have decided the same...

[azrael]

4 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Dang, that's an expensive impulse buy, but I might have decided the same...

🤨

Have you seen GPU prices????? MSRP for a 9070XT is a freakin' steal.

[Test_Pilot_2]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

🤨

Have you seen GPU prices????? MSRP for a 9070XT is a freakin' steal.

The $500 offer for the 7900xt helped.

Finally got it benchmarked... and while it's a niche area, I hit #1 in the world for my setup on the Speed Way benchmark on an Ally X and the EGPU I built. I need to tweak some things because the GPU is just a hair wider than the case. Once I move the fan controller it'll all fit nice. Runs wonderful, not revolutionary, but much smoother and anything with RT or frame gen is much, much better. The new Doom runs great whereas it would crash on the 7900xt sometimes.

[davidwhangchoi]

 

[David Hingtgen]

Got a weird problem with booting Windows (10):

I normally shutdown every night.  But this week I was working on a big Excel sheet (online, Windows Office), so only "went to sleep" for 4 nights in a row, to keep the site+page open.  I think Windows wanted to do an update during then.  When I finally was ready to shut down---it wouldn't.  Wouldn't close the browser, which is pretty weird.  Super-stuck.  Had to force it to shut down.  And of course, windows tends not to like that mid-update.

Anyways---wouldn't boot into Windows after that.  Tried everything, including unplugging other drives.  Oddly, it now seems to boot when my main STORAGE drive is unplugged.  But plugging the storage drive back in causes issues.  The drive should be fine---in device manager, it can sense it and says it's working--but it won't assign a drive letter and has no volume.   

Can't figure out what's going on---I kinda "would like my storage drive to be plugged into the PC like it was this morning".  My backup's old, I'd definitely lose a notable amount of stuff/work.   Considering buying like an external mount/adapter, to treat it like a true "backup" drive and see if I can just pull files off it that way, and get a new one.  

(but really, I think the drive is fine, just the windows update totally borked drive assignments etc)---I did notice that it would NOT accept a windows media USB, which is very odd.  I was planning on doing a repair reinstall, as that usually fixes most "weird" problems.  But if it won't take the windows install USB...

 

::edit::  I think it's something with drives/letters-----half the time, if I put a USB drive in---it takes FOREVER to detect it, show the folders, etc.  And half the time it just freezes.  There is definitely something wrong with how it handles drives now.   

In short--what on earth happened, that Windows now even CARES about a storage drive?  

[azrael]

Is the storage drive a NVMe/SATA drive or a USB? Sounds like the former.

If the drive was assigned a letter but a different drive is now using the same letter, the drive will mount but not be assigned a letter. 

You can force a drive to be assigned a specific letter at boot in Drive Management, otherwise it gets assigned the next available letter.

Force shutdown during the Windows Update may have messed up the partition table and/or USB driver. Maybe reinstall the chipset driver? Try removing all drives except your boot. Plug each one back in one at a time to be sure they still detect and are accessible. You can try doing a repair with only the boot drive plugged in then start plugging your drives back in one at a time. 

[David Hingtgen]

The storage drive is a SATA 2.5in Samsung 870 EVO SSD.  Usually "D".   It will sometimes show up as just a "disk" as "D", but is unreadable etc.  It'll freeze if you try to click on it.  

Figuring a Win 10 reinstall is pointless, I finally upgraded to 11 right before going to bed.  Will see if it handles drives any better.  

Am going to buy another external backup drive, and see if I can access the problem drive via an enclosure/USB and transfer contents.  

Generally: if only boot drive is installed, things are fine.  If the storage drive is plugged in--problems, most often won't boot.  If it does boot, then storage drive is unreadable/inaccessible in any way.  Some USB sticks are now causing similar issues, if inserted---it sees they're there, and gives a drive letter-----but lists no volume/size/contents, and freezes if you try to look in them.

Drive management will freeze if you try to do anything while the storage drive is plugged in.

Have tried different SATA ports, and going to start trying different cables, just in case it's a physical problem. (but the fact it refused to close a browser and refused to shutdown RIGHT before everything screwed up, makes me think it's software/update, and not physical). 

Though of course, maybe a physical failure caused the refusal?  But a storage drive shouldn't...

 

 

[azrael]

Do you have a laptop or another computer you can use to backup your storage drive? Just to rule out any potential issues with the originating computer, I'd use a secondary computer to back up the old storage drive to the new external drive. 

[David Hingtgen]

Well, it's looking worse and worse.  Bios doesn't see the drive at all, Windows11 has it "briefly appear drive F, freezes for a while, then unfreezes with the drive disappearing again". 

Samsung Magician can't see it.  (and it used to).  

Did it just up and 100% fail, overnight?  Only 2-3 years old.  

Though I swear it showed up in drive manager once, fairy early in this saga. Last dying breath?

[azrael]

12 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

Well, it's looking worse and worse.  Bios doesn't see the drive at all, Windows11 has it "briefly appear drive F, freezes for a while, then unfreezes with the drive disappearing again". 

Samsung Magician can't see it.  (and it used to).  

Did it just up and 100% fail, overnight?  Only 2-3 years old.  

Though I swear it showed up in drive manager once, fairy early in this saga. Last dying breath?

Not necessarily. Unless the SSD controller chip decided it had enough of you and shot itself. I've seen it happen. Windows kept crashing on a computer until it stopped booting and eventually disappeared from the BIOS. 

SSDs have that tendency that when they die, THEY DIE. Not the slow death of spinning rust. And it's usually the SSD controller that dies first before the NAND chips. 

The only other time I've seen something like this was when I was trying to flash a 980 Pro's firmware. It would show in the BIOS but wouldn't detect/mount in Windows nor would take the firmware flash from Samsung Magician nor bootable media until I found another computer that I could install only the SSD into. Got it to take a Windows install then finally flashed with new firmware. Behaved afterwards.That's why I said, try it on another system. 

[David Hingtgen]

Current theory:

Windows just has drive letter assignments all borked up, and is getting very confused.   It actually works to put the old "D" drive from years ago in (my backup-backup at the moment), but it freezes, works, freezes, works, and repeats, until it eventually figures it out.  

Transferring what I can while it's working.  Noticed that if you open drive manager THEN plug it in, it has a decent chance of reading it.  (can't boot that way, so can't really USE the drive---but can at least scrape some files).  Will try that method with the "just borked this week" drive later.  (having to copy via USB 2.0....)

It's like---it knows of multiple drives that have been "D" and it hates that it can't reconcile the differences and just freezes up when it encounters "any variation of a drive that has ever been D".  (yet it doesn't have that problem with C, or most USB drives)

[David Hingtgen]

Ok, I can get it to show the problem disk, with the proper partitions, if I use a SATA>USB adapter and treat it like an external drive.  So I assume it's not 100% dead.  Still can't view folder structure.   However, trying to do Xcopy of folders I know are in there, gives me "invalid drive specification" (it's currently showing as F)

My current theory/goal is to clone the main partition to another drive, then see if I can "open up the folders" and grab my files.  Best way to do so?  Is that even a viable theory?

::edit::   Hmmn, 100% free space.  That doesn't seem good...

Of course, if it was "just" 100% empty, then it should quickly be found/calculated and not cause Windows to have a fit just trying to find it...

Here it is at the moment:

 

[azrael]

I think the SSD controller is calling it quits or the partition table saved in the controller is corrupt. 

dd_rescue could probably work but you'll need to create a bootable Linux media with dd_rescue included. I'm not sure how comfortable you are doing that. Clonezilla might be able to make a bit-for-bit copy. Same with EaseUS or Acronis. 

 

[David Hingtgen]

Tried clonezilla's rescue function ----after 1.5 hours, it had done 0.82% and said 112 hours to go, with almost nothing recovered, so quit. Will look into DD rescue tomorrow.  

Ironically, I switched my main storage from HDD to SSD because it was getting old and I feared it failing.  And here the SSD dies in like 2.5 years with no warning, and the old HDD seems fine... (just missing the last 2 years of files...)

[pengbuzz]

Yesterday, after cleaning my PC (Dell Optiplex 3020 SFF), the thing wouldn't start up and had a flashing orange power light. Look it up and the manual said "mother board issue".

Well, after making a mad dash to get a new MB AND PSU, I found out what the "issue" was:

The CMOS battery died.

Apparently, the CMOS dying (especially on DELL stuff) is enough to brick your PC. It was only after a gut feeling I decided to pull the old battery and the "dead" PSU and CPU fans turned on.

Have a spare in there now, but need to buy a fresh one to be sure. Running diagnostics on the MB to ensure that wasn't just a symptom of a larger MB issue.

 

Edited 13 hours ago by pengbuzz

[TangledThorns]

Completed my new build last week, below is the specs. Overall it went well and was very happy it powered up first time. Only issue was with bottom fans rubbing against the bottom of the chassis that I was able to fix with with #10 nylon washers. It was a way easier build than my old rig from over eleven years ago. 

Re-playing Cyberpunk 2077 with all the ray tracing eye candy turned on is really nice. Still playing at 1080p as I'm waiting till September to see what is available in the 2K OLED monitor market.  

The main internal parts (CPU, GPU, PSU, mobo, memory, and SSD) from my old rig will be going into a new case for my daughter's first PC as her birthday present later this year too. 

 

CPU: AMD 9800X3D

GPU: MSI 5080 RTX Shadow 3x OC

MOBO: MSI MAG 850M Mortar WiFi

RAM: 32Gb DDR5 6000

STORAGE: 2Tb & 4Tb 5x2 M.2 SSDs and HDD

CPU Cooler: ID Cooling 360 Pro (AIO)

PSU: SeaSonic FOCUS GX ATX 3 (2024) GX-850 850 Watt

CASE: Asus AP201

OS: Win11 Home

 

 

[azrael]

10 hours ago, David Hingtgen said:

Tried clonezilla's rescue function ----after 1.5 hours, it had done 0.82% and said 112 hours to go, with almost nothing recovered, so quit. Will look into DD rescue tomorrow.  

Ironically, I switched my main storage from HDD to SSD because it was getting old and I feared it failing.  And here the SSD dies in like 2.5 years with no warning, and the old HDD seems fine... (just missing the last 2 years of files...

DD_rescue may not move any faster if there’s something wrong with the SSD controller. You lost the draw of the silicon lottery 🤷🏻‍♂️. Not much you can do. I’ve seen SSDs go for almost a decade and others die after 2 years of only minor usage. It’s why I got a NAS.

[David Hingtgen]

Busy day---installed Ubuntu.  

Tried DDrescue---it was working, but so slowly it estimated 28 years to finish.  Googled some options---now trying a "skip anything that's damaged, just grab what you can do so easily" run and that is going MUCH faster:

 

[David Hingtgen]

Said it got 99.95%.  Now to see if I can actually get files out of the big image dump it made...

 

[Test_Pilot_2]

NM - I see that the SSD looks jacked which is a bummer.

Just in case this happens to someone else - I wonder if the windows update jacked up the system's ability to see the SSD as bootable - it happened to my dad's computer and it required installing windows on a working drive, side-loading a driver for the SSD, then cloning windows from the working drive to the SSD.

It was a missing driver issue in windows for us that one of the windows updates messed up either 22h2 or one of the h2's.

Edited 3 hours ago by Test_Pilot_2

[David Hingtgen]

So---I have yet to find anyone agreeing with what to do with the actual .img file ddrescue creates.  I do not want to clone the whole thing and put it on another drive, which is what most places seem to assume will be done.  I want to "go in and grab certain files", assuming they're there.  I have seen so many different programs/methods recommended.  Anyone ever actually "grabbed the files out of a ddrescue-created img"?

PS----this is purely a storage drive.  It was never bootable.  The fact that Windows "cares so much" about this drive, and refuses to boot if it's plugged in, and freezes if you glance at it, is what's so weird to me.  

[mikeszekely]

Can't you right-click the img file and select "mount"? That should open it in file explorer as if it were a drive, then you should be able to copy files from it to another actual drive.

[David Hingtgen]

I tried to mount it, but nothing happened.   Gave it a while, but neither errors nor blinking---just, nothing.  

So far "testdisk" seems to work well.  It can directly read folders and files from the img.   And copy them to other locations.   Doesn't seem able to sort by date, so I'm just having to scroll and manually pick them.