Posts by Ryan Gonzalez4

I'm on the hunt for a decent laptop desk—something with enough surface area to accommodate a mouse and specifically large enough to fit a 17" model.

Something along these lines: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....AC_SL1500_.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....AC_SL1500_.jpg

I haven't been able to find anything remotely similar in any local shops around here. Does anyone know if there's a specific retailer that actually stocks these? I wouldn't mind ordering from overseas, but I really need it to arrive within three weeks.

Every single thing I've come across is either completely out of stock or they won't ship to my area. Honestly, it baffles me that not a single computer store in Washington, D.C. seems to carry something this basic. 🤔 🤦

If anyone happens to know where I can track one down, I’d truly appreciate the lead!

Honestly, GPU mining isn't really the primary driver here; it’s just the easiest scapegoat for those clueless clerks in retail stores to throw at uninformed customers. If you ask me, most people working behind the counters at computer shops don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about—they simply haven't been trained enough. At least, that's my observation regarding anything related to PC hardware.

I won't even get started on our local repair services. I've had friends drop off their rigs at places like ADM or Protis, only to find out the actual issue was never even addressed. Meanwhile, if a PC ends up on my desk, it actually gets fixed. It’s frustrating how little effort they put in, not to mention the times I've seen components returned from service completely trashed or broken beyond recognition. 🤦 🙄

Anyhow, let's get back to the main point.

1. China has redirected most of its raw materials inward, significantly cutting down on exports.
2. Shipping container costs have skyrocketed.
3. Due to COVID-19, there was a massive, sudden influx of gamers—Steam actually released the stats to prove it.
4. Mining was incredibly profitable this year thanks to the crypto bull market.
5. COVID-19 also crippled production, with chip manufacturers operating at a mere 20-30% capacity.
6. There is a global shortage of raw materials right now; everyone is feeling the squeeze, from major automakers to companies making basic microwave ovens. Everyone is fighting over the same small piece of the pie, and recycling just isn't profitable enough for them yet.
7. Scalpers.☕

Those are just a few of the reasons, and I'm sure there are plenty more. For anyone sitting around hoping things will improve anytime soon or waiting for prices to plummet: dream on.
We are looking at a situation that will take years to stabilize; if things even start looking up by the end of 2023, we should probably consider ourselves lucky.🎉

That is an excellent and very straightforward chart.
https://game-debate.com/news/30698/r...pean-retailers

I went ahead and did another clean install of Windows 10, and honestly, it feels like everything is finally back on track—everything seems to be running normally again. I still need to put it through its paces with a bit more testing to be absolutely certain, but for now, things look pretty solid.

wiredotter14 said:Try testing with just a single RAM stick.

It’s not a direct comparison, but I had similar symptoms on my old junk rig after messing around with settings too much. Turns out the Windows installation was just corrupted. At least run an sfc /scannow

I've already tried everything under the sun and nothing has touched the problem, so at this point, I'm left with Windows as the primary suspect. My plan is to pull the current SSD entirely, swap in a different one, and perform a clean install of Windows to see if that clears things up. That way, I can always pop the old SSD back in with its existing OS if the chaos continues.

Furthermore, since I swapped in the i9 9900K, my rig has frozen up at least once within a 24-hour window. It’s one of those complete system hangs where nothing works except a hard manual restart. I never encountered a single hiccup like this with my previous processor. I've already flashed the latest BIOS, so everything technically should be running perfectly, but clearly, reality isn't matching the specs. Does anyone have any insight into what might be causing this?

Historically, my ritual for testing any CPU overclock has always been running a Prime95 stress test using the blend setting. I’d typically let it churn for somewhere between 9 and 12 hours, and if it managed to pull through without a hiccup, I considered the overclock rock solid. In my experience, I never encountered a single blue screen or system crash during daily use that suggested otherwise.

However, things have taken a rather frustrating turn recently. I installed a brand new i9-9900K into my rig, dialed in an overclock, and predictably, it threw an error after about an hour of testing. Thinking maybe I pushed it too hard, I reverted everything back to the factory default settings in the BIOS, but even then, Prime95 immediately starts spitting out errors again.

I’m honestly at a loss here; I’ve never dealt with a situation where a stock CPU paired with default BIOS settings would fail a Prime95 run. It makes absolutely no sense. What on earth am I looking at?

I've attached a screenshot for reference; https://ibb.co/3cxF4SP

The temperatures seem perfectly fine. Here are the full system specs:
Corsair Hydro Series, H150i Pro, 360mm Radiator, Advanced RGB
MSI RTX 3070 gaming setup
MSI Z370 gaming M5 8
Patriot Viper RGB LED, 16 GB Kit (2x8GB) 3000Mhz, black, PVR416G300C5K
Patriot Viper RGB LED, 16 GB Kit (2x8GB) 3000Mhz, black, PVR416G300C5K
Intel 660 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, SSDPEKNW010T801
Seagate SSHD FireCuda 3.5" 2 TB, 7.200 rpm, ST2002DX002
Samsung 500G 840 EVO SSD
1TB HDD and 500GB HDD 7.200RPM
Corsair HX850i PC build
Corsair Obsidian Series 500D RGB SE Premium

wanderingbison9 said:If you aren't planning on running a Chiu 1 x fast M.2 NVMe alongside a massive array of mechanical Hard Drive Corp units, then honestly, there’s really no reason to be worrying about occupying that M.2 slot.

Look, having one solid NVMe drive is plenty; you still have to account for your RAM and CPU, which are much more likely to become your actual bottlenecks.
The real headache is that once I run a plot, everything needs to be connected back to the Hard Drive Corp units. That means I'm going to run out of SATA ports. Right now, I've got ten Hard Drives lined up, leaving me with only two available ports. So, I'm just sitting here trying to figure out the most efficient way to tackle that problem. 🤔

fadedorca66 said:The guy probably just wants to farm some Chiu 1 x

It's about farming, not mining 😛 👍
I consider myself quite an environmentalist, haha.

driftingcanyon2 said:If you're strictly planning on installing just Hard Drive Corp units, then honestly, you don't really need an M.2 adapter option. Modern SATA3 Hard Drives generally top out at around 200 MB/s for sequential read/write speeds, which means a simple PCIe card is more than enough since the SATA3 standard caps out at 600 MB/s—three times what those drives can actually pull. Besides, what’s the issue with your motherboard's available SATA ports? I assume they aren't all spoken for; most boards come with at least four ports by default, right?

Technically, I have six, but I've got another ten 14TB Hard Drive Corp units coming my way, and I simply don't have enough ports left to accommodate them—I'm down to my last two.

driftingcanyon2 said:Option two is definitely the superior choice if you're looking at raw speed—we're talking 1700 MB/s compared to just 600 MB/s with option one. That said, in any day-to-day scenario, you probably won't even notice the difference unless you're moving massive amounts of data all at once. There is, however, a significant catch with both setups: because these SSDs are sitting on adapters or PCIe cards rather than being plugged directly into the motherboard ports, most BIOS configurations simply won't recognize them as bootable drives. They’ll function perfectly fine as secondary storage, but don't expect to run an OS from them.

I'm not planning on putting my OS on an SSD anyway; I'm sticking with a 7200 RPM hard drive for that. I'm just trying to figure out which setup makes more sense for my needs. So, based on what you're saying, you think the M.2 card is the way to go for this specific build?

Could someone lend me some guidance regarding a bit of a dilemma? I'm trying to figure out the most efficient way to expand the number of SATA ports available on my PC.

Naturally, I am looking for the sweet spot—maximizing the port count without sacrificing data transfer speeds across the board.

So far, I have been weighing these specific options:
https://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-Cont...g=hardfocom-20

Alternatively, there is this:

https://www.amazon.com/Internal-Non-...et_feature_div

Is there perhaps a third path I haven't considered yet? If not, which of these two would you recommend as the superior choice?

Michelle Bennett5 said:Wait, did you actually take the whole rig in, or just the motherboard?
If you didn't bring everything, it might be worth taking the whole setup down there. Might as well force them to deal with the actual components that are blocking the system from working properly.

You can't just file a warranty claim for every single component; they only cover specific items. They won't take the whole machine unless you're looking to pay for the "service" of them inspecting the rest of it.🤔 🤦

Given how much they've been dropping the ball lately, we decided to just head over to Micro Center and pay them to assemble the whole build and run a full diagnostic on the system. They called us back in two days to tell us the motherboard was essentially toast—that was their exact way of putting it. Apparently, there are even deeper issues, and the thing won't even boot up unless it's running on a single stick of RAM because the board is so faulty.

And that’s the reality of what Protesilaus is claiming about the motherboard being perfectly fine... Honestly, my patience is starting to wear thin with this whole situation.

So, I filed a warranty claim and this was the official response I got back: "Tested and working fine."
They ran it with a Ryzen 5 3600 paired with an R3 1200, using KVR26N19S8/8 RAM, a VS650 power supply, and an HD5450 graphics card. According to them, it boots, outputs video, and loads Windows perfectly enough.
Apparently, Windows PE works just fine, the internet connection is stable, and it passed an Aida64 stress test without breaking a sweat.
They’re running BIOS v1201.

Honestly, I’m at a bit of a loss here. What am I even supposed to do with that?

Larry Ortiz5 said:I’ve also got my doubts about the motherboard, but if you can, maybe try swapping in a different power supply just to rule it out...

We actually gave that a shot a little while ago, and honestly, it didn't change a thing. Still running into the exact same wall. I ended up dropping it off at the service center today to file a formal warranty claim, so now we just wait and see what they come up with.

Let me clear one thing up right away: this isn't some weird quirk with my monitor. I’ve tested three different screens paired with three entirely different graphics cards, and the behavior remains identical across the board.

I was putting together a new rig for a buddy of mine, and once everything was finally assembled, I hit the power button. Everything sounds fine—fans spinning, lights coming on—but the screen stays completely black. It just sits there, cycling through input sources like it's searching for a signal that simply doesn't exist. No output whatsoever.

Then, after I kill the power and try again, it suddenly decides to work perfectly, booting straight into Windows 10 via a USB drive. I breeze through the installation in a few minutes and, ofc, get back to the standard Windows setup. But then, the cycle repeats: the screen goes dead again. The PC resets itself, fans are whirring, but the display is pitch black. If I shut everything down at the power strip and give it a little breathing room before turning it back on, it works again. Then it fails again. I managed to reach the desktop and start tweaking drivers, but as soon as I shut down and try to reboot, we’re back to square one. A little pause, an off-and-on sequence, and it works. It’s just this endless, frustrating loop.

Like I mentioned, I've swapped out multiple monitors and various GPUs with totally different port layouts, and the result is always the same. Every single combination of these components acts exactly like this.

The only thing crossing my mind right now is that the motherboard might just be a lemon. Should I just pack it up and send it back for a warranty claim?

I couldn't even test this using onboard graphics since I'm running a Ryzen 5 2600 x, which means there's no integrated graphics to fall back on.

The motherboard is an Asus tuf B450M-PLUS gaming.

Adam Moore3 said:It’s a tough call, though I don't think you can really go wrong with any of them. You should probably dive into some reviews to see what the consensus is, but if you're looking at this diagonal size, 1440p is pretty much non-negotiable. Running 1080p on a screen that big would be a total disaster.

As for the wall mount, honestly, I haven't the slightest clue. Your best bet is to comb through the manufacturer specs or just let almighty Google do the heavy lifting for you. 😬

I did a little digging myself and managed to narrow the field down to three options. Since I almost exclusively stick with Nvidia cards, I prioritized monitors that support G-SYNC Technology. Also, according to the documentation for all three, mounting them on a wall shouldn't present any particular headaches.

AOC AGON AG352UCG6 (Micro Center $2253)
specs; https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/e7df113a

Dell Alienware AW3418DW (Best Buy $2660)
specs; https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/494fdf1

Acer predator Z35P (Newegg $2499)
specs; https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/d2c3bcd

So, if anyone feels inclined to help me make a final decision, I'm all ears.

Is there anyone actually out there?

Here is my current setup:

CPU:
Core i5-8600K 6-Core 3.6GHz
GPU:
GeForce® GTX 1070 Ti Gaming 8G
RAM:
16 GB DDR4 3000MHz
OS Hard Drive:
Sandisk SSD 840 500GB
2nd Drive HDD:
2TB
3rd Drive HDD:
1TB
4th Drive HDD:
500GB
Operating System:
Windows 10 64
Motherboard:
MSI Z370 gaming M5
Case:
NZXT Phantom 410
PSU:
Corsair HX850i 850W
Headset:
Logitech G930
Keyboard:
Razer Ornata Chroma
Mouse:
Logitech G900 Chaos Spectrum

My current monitor is about a decade old,☕
Samsung SyncMaster P2270HD
Screen Res:
1920x1080

I am looking for an upgrade that is significantly larger than what I have now, and more importantly, I need something that won't give me a headache when it comes to mounting it directly to the wall. I’ve done a bit of digging, and it seems like many high-end monitors come with these proprietary stands that look nearly impossible to swap out for a standard wall mount. Though, I suppose there is little point in splurging on a premium $1667 unit if I can't actually hang it on the wall like a civilized person. 🤔

I'm not entirely sure how much of a dealbreaker G-SYNC or FreeSync would be for me. As for 4K resolution, I suspect my current GPU would struggle to push anything meaningful at that level, so I was leaning toward 2K, or perhaps just seeing how things perform in HD. Honestly, I might just be overthinking it.

Since I work from home, my station is basically running from roughly 9:00 AM until somewhere between 1:00 and 2:00 AM. I need a versatile setup that handles everything from professional tasks to movies and, naturally, gaming. I briefly considered a gaming TV, but for this specific size range, a dedicated monitor feels like the more sensible route. I’m aiming for something in the 30" to 35" bracket. The dilemma now is deciding which one to pull the trigger on—and specifically, why one model would stand out above the rest.

Here is the shortlist I've put together so far:

Asus gaming rog Strix XG32VQ AOC AGON 35
AOC AGON 35" AG352UCG6
Acer predator Z35P 35"
Philips 349 X7FJEW 34
Dell Alienware 34

What are your thoughts? I'll admit, I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to display technology, so I'm feeling a bit lost on what constitutes a good buy versus a total waste of money.🤔

Nicole Garcia43 said:Hey everyone, just wanted to drop a quick update so you all know how this whole saga wrapped up.

Here’s the final build I went with:

Kingston Technology A400 SSD 240 GB 240 GB 2.5
Toshiba P300 1TB
AMD Ryzen 5 1600
LC-Power Dragonslayer LC-984B-ON
ASRock Radeon Phantom gaming D RX570 4
Gigabyte B450M DS3H
G. Skill Aegis 8GB DDR4 3000Mhz
be quiet! system Power 9 500 w
Acer nitro VG240Ybmiix led monitor FreeSync

Got a keyboard, mouse, and ethernet cable too, bringing the total to roughly $2.75.

Everything was picked up at Best Buy, and honestly, I am beyond happy with the service there.

I grabbed a Windows 10 Key on eBay for about $6.50.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me out.

Only problem is... I totally bombed my history exam, so the PC is stuck in hibernate mode until Sunday. What a bummer! 😬

Honestly, this isn't even funny, it's just brutal... I mean, come on, three strikes? It's not like we're talking about one. WTF.

Ashley Wood3 said:I feel as though I no longer have any need for university lectures; perhaps it would be more beneficial to unlock a small computer and finally learn something truly practical.

Bingo. Truth be told, practical experience has done far more for me in life than any damn formal education ever could. Honestly, some people are so naive—especially those wide-eyed young parents out there...

crimsonstag84 said:Honestly, it’s probably not worth the jump... either commit to the 9700K or just pivot to a Ryzen 5.

It doesn't really track for me, especially since UserBenchmark doesn't show any massive performance gaps, yet you definitely feel the sting of that price $417 difference. As for those Intel chips, the more I crunch the numbers, the less appealing AMD looks to me. So, "go big," huh? If we're playing that game, why stop short of an i9 9900K? 😛 Since the socket remains the same, you're essentially future-proofing for a potential CPU swap down the road anyway. An i5 isn't exactly a disaster if you approach the build with some pragmatism.