Posts by darkowl72

Of course the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P has USB 3.0.

Of course they’re going to react, but honestly, you already know the backup plan if things go south—just in case they try to cut corners on quality...

With the Z3 + and Z9, the best part is that they come with plenty of valves, and the ones included are actually top-tier. It saves you from having to hunt down high-end aftermarket parts that'll run you over $20 a piece...

Look, as far as cases, fans, and coolers go... you're fine. Zalman makes solid cases and their fans are decent enough. If being dead silent is your main priority, check out the Z3+; it comes with an extra fan and built-in potentiometers so you can dial the noise down. If your cooler ends up being too chunky for the Z3 because it's over 8 inches wide, grab the Z9+ instead. It’s just as good, just wider, and comes with three fans plus those speed regulators. In this price range, it's probably the best bang for your buck you're gonna find.

Google units are decent UPS options. They've been in the US market for about a decade now, manufactured in Mexico. Sure, APC is a higher-quality, more prestigious brand, but specs matter more than names. When you're buying, pay attention to:

1. How many battery-backed outlets there are (for your PC, monitor, maybe a light peripheral like a router). Don't count speakers, printers, or scanners here.
2. The number of surge-only outlets (these don't have battery backup, just protection)—this is where you plug in things like printers, scanners, or speakers.
3. AVR (automatic voltage regulation) for stabilizing voltage.
4. Raw wattage isn't everything; even a 350W UPS will give you a few minutes, which is enough to save your work. If you want a serious UPS meant for working through longer outages, expect to pay a premium.
5. Whether it includes phone line protection (for modems, faxes, or internet).
6. If your internet comes via coax cable, you'll need to handle protection differently; you won't find a UPS with built-in coax protection.
7. If you want a "smart" UPS with software to monitor device status and battery levels, look for models with a USB port for communicating with your computer. Some use RS232C (serial) ports, but those have mostly been phased out of modern motherboards. If a board actually has one, it’s usually just internal headers, so you'll have to hunt down your own custom cable and connector.
8. The type of power outlets. Some come with non-US plugs, forcing you to use adapters, or they use those weird computer-style connectors like a monitor power cable—which is just a headache for cabling. It's best to stick with standard US outlets.
9. Whether the battery is replaceable.

With a UPS, you have to distinguish between battery runtime (protection against total power loss)—those are the battery backup outlets—and AVR (protection against voltage drops/stabilization), plus general surge protection and filtering—which usually applies to all outlets.

If you're on the internet via coax, just grab a power strip with a switch and built-in surge protection—some even come with coax connectors—to protect against lightning strikes.

Take it straight back to the service center. There’s really no point in you trying to troubleshoot this yourself. They clearly botched the job... Just get on their case and make sure they fix it right then and there while you're standing right in front of them.

I don't have any favorites. I just look for the best quality and the lowest prices. The only other thing that matters is your actual experience with a retailer—things like laggy sites, buggy interfaces, or how they handle returns and service. Newegg has a solid, well-designed site that makes building a rig easy while checking all those boxes. For the absolute cheapest deals, I always suggest checking PCPartPicker.

Keep one thing in mind: for that kind of workflow and running that many apps at once, you can never have too much RAM. No matter how fast an SSD is, RAM is faster. As long as you have free RAM, your applications won't need to touch the SSD or any hard drives at all.

You said it yourself: "multitasking that includes simultaneous 3D rendering, working in AutoCAD, 3ds Max, listening to music, having Office documents open and working in them in parallel, an active browser, some streaming, Dropbox syncing, and of course all the security tools,...."

You start a render that eats up as much RAM as it wants, then open a few browser tabs, several Office docs, and everything else you listed... Adding more RAM will give you the biggest overall system speed boost. Your CPU is going to be fighting to keep up with that workload too, which is why I suggested two different builds. Honestly, I bet you'll realize you need more RAM sooner rather than later.

First, check your power settings and see how your Power Plan is configured. Honestly, you might just want to wipe the drive and reinstall Windows. Sometimes these glitches just vanish once you start with a clean slate. If that doesn't fix it, try messing around with the BIOS settings after you read this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rs,1126-8.html

I wasn't even thinking about dual monitors 😬

http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-2-Port-...mi++usb+switch

I'm not going to try and build the rig myself since those guys definitely know more than I do, but I just wanted to point out that this is a solid setup for a machine with 32GB of RAM.😬

Have you thought about just running two separate machines? You could have one dedicated entirely to cranking out renders at full power, while the other stays free for whatever else you need to get done.

You really ought to check what your specific rendering software actually craves—whether it needs more cores or just faster individual cores—and if it even supports hardware acceleration (like using CUDA cores on Nvidia cards) to speed things up.

When you're reinstalling drivers, you really need to wipe the old ones out first—using a tool like DDU or something similar is your best bet. If the latest version is acting up, don't just keep fighting it; try rolling back to a previous version or an older build to see if that stabilizes things.

Also, test it out on a different web browser or even a basic image viewer to see if the issue persists across different apps...

Yeah, I’m speechless too. I picked up a bunch of random stuff, swiped my card, and planned on heading back tomorrow to return some kid's clothes or something—I can't even remember. All I know is the service sucked. I tried to return it, but the woman just goes "no problem" while grabbing the cash. I almost asked her, "Wait, how is that possible if I paid by credit card?" but I bit my tongue, took the money, and just walked out.

Next time, I grabbed some junk from a Home Depot, realized it was total garbage, and took it back. "No problem..." they say. So, what is it? Do you want the item back or do you want the money?

If you buy something from a legitimate retailer, it shouldn't be a fake. You only run into that kind of nonsense when you're ordering some knockoff from some random idiot on eBay. Besides, this thing comes with a warranty, and honestly, Toshiba sticks have always been reliable enough for me.

A retail store that actually offers a warranty has zero incentive to pull stunts like that. Especially a place like Walmart—they're actually great with returns. They'll even give you your money back on the spot without any hassle, even if you paid for it using a credit card installment plan!

You can.

Maybe there was some proprietary Toshiba software pre-loaded on it. Right-click and check the properties to see what file system the stick is using; if it's formatted as FAT, you won't be able to handle any large files. Try formatting it to NTFS if you're running Windows 7 or 8...

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...t-file-systems

Thanks for the compliment 😍

George Sanders37 already nailed it. It’s hard to say much without actually cracking the laptop open, but you really need to check the ribbon cable first. After three and a half years of constantly opening and closing the lid, those cables tend to fray. From there, it could be the inverter, or even the GPU itself—specifically the video memory. It might just be a loose connector or a bad cable, but honestly, you won't know until you take it to a repair shop. If you're attached to this machine and can't drop cash on a new one right now, your best bet is to grab a replacement cable and find someone handy to swap it out for you. Links are below...

Just repeating myself here, IF it actually turns out to be the cable, which we have no way of knowing yet...

http://www.ebay.ie/sch/sis.html?_nkw...d=151022850214

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...u9aqiZny1DkMhg

TVs either wipe your entire USB drive or format the recorded content in such a weird way that nothing else can read it—not even another TV. It’s basically their way of fighting piracy.

There could be a million different reasons... it might be what I just mentioned, or maybe the newer versions of Windows are throttling power to the USB ports to save energy, preventing the drive from spinning up. Or, honestly, the enclosure itself (not the actual drive) might have just died. Those external drives are notorious for having cheap-ass housing and electronics that fail for absolutely no reason at all.

You should try a different USB port, a different computer (ideally a desktop using the ports on the back of the tower), check Device Manager to see if the PC even recognizes the drive exists, or look for specific drivers on the manufacturer's website. Without actually having the drive in front of me, there isn't much else I can tell you.

http://www.nabava.net/pisaci__110?&se=1698,172735

This is roughly what the deal would look like, so take a look. You'll need to check toner prices at whatever stores are most convenient for you since they vary like crazy...

Watch those specs closely. Some retailers slap the "all-in-one" label on printers just because they meet some arbitrary baseline criteria. 😬

Also, this really belongs over in the peripherals subforum under hardware...

You can test the power supply fan while the PC is actually running. Grab something soft and flexible—like a zip tie or a thin piece of insulated wire—and carefully poke it through the PSU grill at the back of the case. Just give those fan blades a little tap while the machine is humming along. If the noise stops immediately, you’ve found your culprit: the PSU fan needs replacing.

Don't sweat it, you won't break anything. As long as you aren't jamming something rigid deep into the mechanism, the fan will be fine. Just a light touch against the spinning blades is all it takes...

You could even use your finger if you can actually reach it, but trust me, that’s just asking for a painful lesson. 😬

You didn't give me the full rundown on the blinking patterns, so go check them out here and find a fix.

Two blinks means you've got BIOS issues. Here’s what I’d suggest doing:

"Laptop BIOS corruption failure

If there's a BIOS corruption error (Blink code 2), you might not even catch the blink codes. Usually, as soon as the machine detects the error, it just restarts, tries to recover the BIOS, and then restarts again. You might just notice the startup taking way longer than usual, or maybe a message pops up saying the BIOS was recovered. If that happens, just update the BIOS on the computer. For more information, see Updating The BIOS.
If The computer does not automatically recover The BIOS, you'll have to do a manual recovery by following these steps:

Turn off the computer.

Plug the notebook into power using the power adapter.

While The computer is still OFF : Press and hold The Windows Key and The b Key AT The

...then hold down the Power button on the notebook for a second.

Release The Power button and The Keys.

Doing this allows the BIOS to hit the EFI partition so it can pull the last working version of the BIOS from the hard drive.

For Information on How to restore The BIOS, check out the HP support doc: HP notebook PCs - Restoring the BIOS."