PC Tech Thread

Pc parts picker up the usage at just shy of 1000w so should be fine from that point of view. Current psu has a w counter on the side (lol) and while under load the max I saw it reach was 950w. Testing an individual gpu is a good shout. I can assign which gpu it uses so hopefully don’t need to remove one.

@sohi was one of my thoughts but updated the bios this morning and still getting crashes after that.

I actually just returned it (had bought a full machine) and they told me it was the ram.

Ran the memory diagnostic tool and that came back fine.

Updated the drivers today and that didn’t help also.

I think I maybe have managed to fix it though a bit too early to tell. I’ve undervolted both GPU’s and since doing that no crashes. With this change the system is running noticably cooler, fans don’t even get to full speed now which they used to. Potentially it was a thermal issue? No crashes when 1 gpu is running suggests the same. Will keep an eye on it and see how it does.

Bonus is under load it’s using 150-200w less power with a very small drop in performance, which is great for my energy bill 😭

Could it be that overall power draw is within spec but some rails(?) are overloaded?

High-end Nvidia cards can reach far, far higher transient power spikes than their TDP; over 500W for a single 3090.

I would look at setting a hard power limit for the cards, or a beefier/dual PSU solution if you need maxed-out performance.

Anyone got an X-Rite i1 screen calibrator I could please borrow?

Anyone need a PCI to M2 NVMe SSD adapter?
Working fine in my last PC. New PC has plenty of M2 slots though so this isn't needed.

Free + postage or it'll likely end up in the bin.

https://www.startech.com/en-gb/hdd/pex4m2e1

Auto-logon isn't working on my Windows 10 machine. It was working when I originally set it up but it seems to have stopped recently. I did it through the registry and it still seems correctly set up there.

No idea how to troubleshoot this, any tips?

I guess I could start by upgrading to Windows 11 and see if that magically fixes it.

I always use this official MS utility which automates the registry faffing:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autologon

Right now I need a new laptop and a new phone. I’ve had Apple stuff for the past 20 years but it’s always been ‘I need an Apple phone as it will work easier with my computer’ or vice versa.
This time I’m thinking of jumping ship mainly as the new MacBook Pro’s are so expensive (and seem heavy).
But the laptop market is so overwhelming! I’m after something cheaper than a MacBook Pro, lighter and able to run music production software (ableton), nice feeling keys and build quality.
Any advice where to start?

MacBook Air? Wait a little bit for the upcoming MacBook with M2 chip?

I was wondering if now was a time for me to switch from Apple entirely.

Cheers. Turns out I'd already downloaded this and used it the first time round and then entirely forgotten about its existence.

Using it again made me realise that the issue was that I'd changed the computer name and it looked like the auto-login hadn't updated to reflect that. Now working again.

I did also update to Windows 11. Took about 20 minutes and could all be done over remote desktop.

I think it's only worth it if you want something that is not really covered by an Apple product, like gaming or generally high performance GPUs. I switched a couple of years ago and it's a mixed bag.
I had to buy a Lenovo desktop and a Dell XPS laptop last year because of limited availability and they are both a bit shit.

You’ll find it difficult to find any PC laptop with equivalent combo of build quality/features/performance to a MBP for less. The Apple machines are very well priced, and I’d say that nothing else comes close in terms of build quality/materials.

As your main barrier to a MBP seems to be price, have you considered an M1 based MacBook Air, or an official refurb M1 MacBook Pro 13”? These can be had for under a grand, and will deal with most tasks.

I’m about to switch motherboard. Same CPU, same RAM, same GPU.

Can I just move my Win 11 M.2 over or is it going to shit the bed?

I replaced MB, CPU and RAM at Xmas. Was quite surprised that previous W10 install seemed to work with no issues. No harm in trying anyway.

Didn't use it for long enough to confirm it was 100% ok, nuked it in favour of a fresh W11.

Thanks. That’s good.

I’m going to nuke it for a clean install once it’s up and running but it’s easier to do that from an activated copy.

What tablet / pi / other can I stick on a fridge /similar that shows a calendar and I can maybe do other stuff from like controlling speakers etc. Mainly want to be able to see at a glance why my wife and I both are up to. (Mainly show her so she knows when I'm not around as I'm crap at remembering to say). I'm not reliable enough to actually write on a paper calendar.

How opposed are you to Alexa, etc?

Something like an Echo show is the easy option.

Otherwise, a tablet showing Home Assistant would probably be my option.

Been a long while since I last used a CDR.

If a disc had data on it and someone has formatted it, is there still a way to access the first "region". I have vague memories of being able to write different volumes to one disc.

Essentially I have some x-rays on a disc and I've tried to load and Windows just asks to format it. I've not done anything but I wonder if one of the dentists using the disc has fucked it.

I guess another option is that my CD drive in the old laptop is fucked.

Nevermind. Some grubby fucking dentist had just left a splodge on it. Cleaned that and it's mounted.

Anyone know how to extract images from a Weasis disc?

I assume they're in a file called OsiroX.pkg because I can't see any other files of significant size that don't look app-related.

Oracle's down so I can't download JRE to load the stupid viewer thing.