Posts by Zachary Nguyen2

I'll try it on another PC and then plug it back in.

swiftowl7 said:It doesn't change much. We have to establish first that you can't just guess blindly that it isn't the PSU—everything starts there.

If a single voltage rail on the PSU fails, neither the motherboard nor the system will behave right. It won't beep or even start parts of the PC. It’s complicated to explain.

A failure like yours usually hits the PSU, the motherboard, the GPU, or the RAM. None of those parts are cheap, and it could be a combination of things.

Yesterday, it actually booted once—I reached the Windows screen—when I put one stick of RAM in the fourth slot. Then I shut it down, swapped in the second stick, and still no picture. I went back to just the one stick in the fourth slot, and still nothing.
I thought it was the RAM, so I bought new RAM, but nothing changed. It's the same issue, so it's definitely not the RAM.

Jack Cook7 said:Good grief...

First, unplug the power cord from the wall.

Then, call that crazy geek friend of yours. While you're chatting about the new season of Mandalorian, casually ask him if he knows a good PC technician who handles power supplies. Keep it low-key, obviously.

I was talking about the CPU power cable going into the motherboard.

swiftowl7 said:What about the armor? 😁

Haha, you're crazy. 😁

First off, the beeping isn't necessarily linked, but here's my diagnosis:

- Based on the symptoms, it’s almost certain a part of the power supply died (even if the PC sounds like it's running). Your best bet is to grab a spare PSU and swap it out to test it. If the computer boots normally with the new one, you found your culprit. Just borrow a unit for testing, then buy a new one if it works.

Until you try that, don't assume it's the motherboard. It looks exactly like a GPU failure, but since the RGB keyboard won't even light up, it’s definitely the power supply.

The RGB keyboard lights up when I turn the PC on.

Jack Cook7 said:Also, pull out all the cards, drives, and RAM, then unplug everything else. If it doesn't beep and stays silent, you're looking at the motherboard or the CPU. You can try pulling the processor if you're comfortable doing that; if there's still no beep, it's the motherboard. If it does beep, it's the CPU.

Do I really need to take it apart, or can I just unplug the power supply?

My PC was running fine this morning, but when I tried firing it up this afternoon, it sounds like it's booting, but the monitors stay black. I’ve already tested two different screens using both HDMI and DisplayPort cables, but nothing works.
I tried swapping the RAM sticks one by one in every slot, cleared the CMOS, and even pulled the battery, but no luck. I also tried reseating every single cable just to be sure.
The RGB on my keyboard and mouse used to light up the second I turned the power on, but now they stay completely dark. Does this mean my motherboard is dead?

Timothy Kim60 said:Sensitivity explained. High DPI means one tiny nudge sends your cursor flying from one side of the screen to the other. Low DPI means you’re basically wrestling with the mouse just to move an inch.

Gamers love high DPI now. They think cranking it up makes them more precise, even if they just end up lowering the sensitivity in the settings to compensate. They believe it somehow helps them play better. 😁

I just picked up a Roccat Kain 122 Aimo on sale recently. Honestly, 16,000 DPI is a bit overkill for me. I usually stick to 12,000, but I'm getting used to it. I've started using the full 16k for gaming and just lowering my in-game sensitivity instead.

I read somewhere that it's better to crank up your mouse DPI and lower your in-game sensitivity rather than doing the opposite. I'm not exactly a hardcore gamer, so I couldn't tell you for sure if that's actually true.

I tried running at 4k DPI. It was way too much for me.

Timothy Kim60 said:They've finally shown up. $33 The RTX 3060Ti was cheaper at Links, but it's sold out now.

This just popped up. Someone should grab it while the price is still decent.

Check out this graphics card on Links.
Check out this graphics card over at Links. It’s an RX 5800.

What was the price?

There they go again with their monopoly.

Lawrence Phillips said:Hey everyone, I'm not sure if this is the right spot for this, so I'll just drop it here. This isn't really about buying a new card, more like just thinking out loud about which direction to take my next upgrade.

I bought my PC based on the recommendations in this PDF, and I have to say, I'm really happy with it. 😁I wasn't even thinking about an upgrade.

I was playing Borderlands 3 recently and it was a bit frustrating. I had to drop the settings down to medium because I couldn't hit an average of 60 FPS on high.

I have:

Core i3 8100
RX 580 8GB.
8 GB of RAM.
It's a B450 chipset motherboard.
I'm playing at 1080p.

Looking at current GPU prices, some sites are calling my setup the ultimate bang-for-buck right now. To actually get a serious upgrade, I think you really need to look at cards from... $833It's all about pairing it with a better CPU, obviously. I’ve decided it doesn't make sense to invest in a new GPU for another year or two. Seems like a pretty logical move right now.

With newer games demanding so much more CPU power, I'm worried my current processor might actually bottleneck my graphics card.

Since I didn't pay much for it back then (around $500)—$200I think I could probably get a couple hundred bucks for it. I'm looking to upgrade sometime soon.

Alright, let's get into it.
Core i5 7600 - $267
Core i5 8600 - $333
Ryzen 7 2700 (X) - $1300-$500
Core i5 9600 - $533
Core i5 10th Gen is coming out around March. It might be worth waiting for that.

You can find a first-gen Core i5 on Craigslist for around $90. If you haggle, you could probably grab one for even less.

I can't seem to find—or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places—a solid performance comparison between my GPU paired with a Core i3 8100 versus a Core i5 9600.

I'm wondering how much an RX 580 8GB can actually pull from a faster CPU, and if upgrading my processor right now even makes sense.
I'm definitely not going to mess around just for an average of 10 fps.

Should I upgrade to a Core i5 right now? Does it even make sense?
I've got my CPU situation sorted for the next four or five years. In about two years, once prices drop, I'll probably grab something like a Radeon RX 5700 and squeeze a few more years out of this motherboard.

What do you guys think?🍿

There isn't much of a difference between medium and high settings, especially in a game like Borderlands.
I’d just wait a year or two and see how things play out. It really depends on what kind of games you're planning to run.
You should probably pick up another 8GB of RAM. I'm not sure if you have an SSD yet, but your GPU is solid. If that gap between medium and high settings is really bothering you that much, just go grab a Core i5.

Timothy Kim60 said:Dell UltraSharp Monitor - $215, plus some US sales tax and shipping costs

What do you mean by our sales tax?

Man, I still remember building my first rig and just settling for $367 16GB of 2666MHz RAM.

Roger Mitchell4 said:Is a Fortron Hyper 500W power supply strong enough?

Yeah, it is.

Paul Hernandez49 said:Maybe he can keep that PC for his son, so once he grows up a bit, it'll be decent enough for some games.

How many years does it take to "grow up"?
That computer is already too weak for most games.

Man, why did SSD prices drop so much?
I paid $333 for a 500GB drive when I built my PC about a year and a half ago.

He should ditch the HDD and put a bit more toward a 500GB SSD.
Is that build from Dell?

wiredotter14 said:Yeah, they're running underclocked
.

Whether it's under or over, that's just overclocking.

Alexander Moore67 said:People don't overclock their cards for mining.😵

Mining is starting to act up again, though it was actually running fine a couple of years ago.
They tuned them just to cut down on power consumption.

wiredotter14 said:He says he bought them between July and October 2017. He hit the jackpot back then, and the cards paid for themselves in just 2-3 months. Plus, he probably bought them through a business to write off the sales tax.

He’s down to his last few now, though I wonder when he actually started selling them.

I don't buy the part about them only running for two weeks, but it doesn't really matter. Someone running that many GPUs was definitely undervolting them to 0.85V. The only thing that could have worn out is the fan, and they're still under warranty so......

Between July and October, he picked up 19 cards that sold out fast.

GPUS
Purchased Nov 27, 2017 (3-year warranty from that date)
48x Radeon Sapphire Nitro+ RX 570 4GB - $283 - all in original packaging, used for 3 months - 27 left

Purchased Dec 28, 2017 (3-year warranty from that date)
11x Radeon Sapphire Puls RX 570 4GB - $283 - all in original packaging, used for 2 weeks - 5 left
2x Radeon Sapphire Puls RX 570 4GB - $25 - no box, used for 2 weeks
10x Radeon Sapphire Puls RX 570 4GB UNOPENED - $350 - brand new, factory sealed, never used - 5 left

If what he said is true—that he only mined for three months and bought them right at the Bitcoin peak—then he really blew it.
I just don't get why he's waiting until now to sell instead of having mined with them for a full year. It seems sketchy; I bet those things have been running 24/7 this whole time.