PC Tech Thread

So managed to speak to OCUK, long conversations... but they have agreed to replace the motherboard, refund the price differene for both the AMD chip and the motherboard, which according to today's price, it's £60 in total... yesterday's price, it would have been £90... oh well, at least the threat of sending the whole machine back to them did make them think twice...

We will see what happens with the new motherboard, if it's still fucked then I will return the whole thing...

Thanks for all your help so far!

Need a new keyboard and mouse combo for my WFH/home office. Current mouse is being a dick. Will consider wired if good enough but wireless is preferred.

Asking for my boss - anyone knows any good quality wireless, that is without a USB receiver so completely no wire no plug no nothing webcam? And wireless conference mic?

I think they are not common but I said I’d ask.

Money isn’t really the main factor as long as they don’t cost too many arms and legs.

Good quality + wireless = expensive in my experience.

Is there a reason for wireless other than perceived clutter? Is it a permanent conference / meeting room? I.e. you don't need to change location each meeting? If it's permanent get a ceiling mic installation. Will be much better quality and always work/won't need to be charged/won't get lost/pilfered etc.

Starleaf might have something.

Because wires are the devils work.

I’ve accidentally bought a Louqe Ghost.

What @chrisbmx116 saus basically. I don't have a problem with a few cables but my boss has a Surface Go and he wants to be as mobile as possible.

He is a a director level so he goes to conferences / meetings etc etc so he wants wireless everything which makes sense. I have warned him about connections / battery / quality already but he wants to try.

How expensive are we talking about. He has a reasonably sizable budget for stuff like this.

Anyone want to P/X a different GPU with my Vega 56, may need something that runs a bit cooler and uses less power.

Need your expert eyes, PM'd you.

I'm far from an expert, but will look out for PM...

So PC drama update:

OCUK cannot replicate the issue no matter what they try... They also said that my videos are showing no fault when they are very obviously there...

so I threw the 30 days return policy to them and in the end, they are going to put in a different motherboard and call it a day. They are going to put this in:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-rog-strix-x570-e-gaming-amd-am4-ddr4-x570-chipset-atx-motherboard-mb-6dv-as.html

Good luck with whoever they sell my faulty motherboard to... I just hope they don't need the front USB port nor Bluetooth.

Forgot to say as well, those of you who like my Keychron keyboard, they have just started a new kickstarter campaign for a new 65% keybaord.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keytron/keychron-k6-a-compact-65-wireless-mechanical-keyboard?ref=section-homepage-view-more-recommendations-p1

I didn't have to pay any import tax or VAT and to be fair, delivery was pretty fast Kickstarter standards.

Think I will go for a cheap one this time...

Last KS I backed took years to deliver, so I look forwards to a long flat parcel sometime next year.

what was it?

I have been lucky that all my KS projects have arrived more or less according to what the creators say.

PiJuice. I think they went through a couple of engineers on the PCB layout and revisions.

I've been shucking hard drives today. Upgrading my 4TB WD Reds with a pair of 12TB monsters I pulled out of some external WD hard drives. Only $180 USD each!

Holy shit though, 8hrs to rebuild the raid array...

What mail program do you guys use on Win10?

Been using Thunderbird for ages but it seems to look and feel really outdated.

Looking to have one solution for a couple of POP3 / IMAP accounts.
Is the built in “Mail” any good, are there better options, or should I just continue using Thunderbird?

Thanks.

So I should get my PC back in a couple of days but I suddenly have a thought to the problem of the front USB ports, and sorry if some of you have already stated the obvious before (other than my wasting my time on this build)...

As I have said before, they work independently fine but when I put in 2 things, only 1 port works. It’s not a power drain issue as the combo I tested are a mouse with a flash drive or something... Some of you have said it’s a dodgy cable, but isn’t that one of the cables from the case itself? So swapping the motherboard wouldn’t solve the issue then? When I first spoke to OC, they said it was missing pins on the motherboards so which is which? Like I said, the ports work perfectly fine as long as only 1 of them is in use and when I looked inside the case, I think I saw 2 separate cables from the front ports... and I presume the pins are on the motherboard not the cables?

They are still going to swap the motherboard as the Bluetooth definitely is related to the motherboard...

Get 3 cables, 3 devices and a second machine.

Then you can do enough combinations that you would be able to rule out or identify a dodgy cable, a dodgy device or a dodge motherboard. No point worrying until the machine comes back.

This is it, if it’s the case the I don’t want to send it back again as they are actually working on it tomorrow or Tue. They have now had it longer than I have. If it wasn’t for the discount the agreed and the fact that I can’t return the Win 10 copy. I would have asked for a refund...

PC came back yesterday, front USB ports now both work as expected.

Bluetooth seems OK so far, will have to test it for a couple of days to be certain.

Had a slight issue with reactivating Win 10 as I didn't know I had to deactivate it first if you need to replace major parts, motherboard is one of them. However, a phone call to Microsoft sorted it less than 10 mins, so all good.

Also, strangely, or not, the sluggish mouse thing when the USB receiver was pluged into the back is also gone... not sure how this is resovled, same mouse, same placement of the PC... oh well...

So keeping fingers' crossed Bluetooth is resovled properly.

Thanks everyone for your help and espeically thanks for pushing me to send it back right away and the tip on insisting on the 30 days returns / refudn rights, otherwise, OCUK would just send my PC back and say no fault found, charge me a tenner for 'testing', which is still what they believe with the old MSI motherbaord...

I do have 1 quesiton, when OCUK tested the PC, they must have connected a couple of their Bluetooth devices to my PC - Damien's iPhone and a pair of headphones. No matter what I do, I cannot remove them. I have already uninstalled them from the Device Manager, ran Bluetooth troubleshoot and restarted the machine, but they are still hanging around...

Any other idea?

1 Attachment

Any other idea?

Burn it.

Hi, just want to ask a quick question for the more knowledgeable folks here. I have a desktop running win7 from ssd with hdd with some photos and videos. It's broken now ( os boot loader can't be found or something similar), I tried all the methods that I could find on the web with no success. My question is: if I unplug the hdd with all the important stuff then do a fresh install of win10 and plug the hdd back in will it see all my stuff? Or will it want me to format the hdd?

^ I am no expert but I have extracted files by booting the machine from a USB drive with Linux (Ubuntu or Mint etc). Once you have transferred all the data you want to an external drive you can try loading Win10. Other OS are available.

Yes but ensure that you install win10 onto the ssd. Definately unplug the hdd to stop windows putting the boot loader in the wrong place.
It will not want to format the HDD as it will see it as already formatted when you plug it back in.