PC Tech Thread

I probably dropped about £10k on my AV setup

I don't even own a webcam.

'Quiet' but still, I'm 'quite' flattered.

My PC is fanless. Depends what you're doing with it. I like the silence... right before I play 24hrs of banging techno (or as many hours as possible before the neighbours come down a second time)

I think your build is better. The case includes 1 fan you probably want a couple more.

Selling a combo of parts if anyone's interested.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/391888/

Both of those CPUs are only about 65 W. The CPU fans they probably come with (check they do) should be sufficient.

You don't need any more case fans. If you find you do, you can always add later.

Finished the NAS upgrade, I have been a disk at a time as I had the funds to purchase them.

Final usable storage space is 87.3TB, an additional 29.1TB is used as part of the RAID protection, and the Synology system is consuming 74.5GB across all 8 disks.

What I went for in the end:

• 8 x 16TB (HDWG31GUZSVA) HDD
  
• 2 x 1TB SSD (MZ-V8P1T0BW) as the SSD cache
  
  

I'm already using 33.1TB of this NAS... but the anticipated growth is slow, so it should be good for a number of years.

Memory upgrades. Specifically MOAR, not faster*.

I have 2 x 16GB sticks at the moment (32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB** PRO DDR4 3200MHz ) - shall I just get the same again (£90), or 2 x 32GB sticks (£142)?

* my coding is rubbish, java IDEs are rubbish, and I'm done with things crapping out in the middle of a multi-day run because the OS has killed them)

** RGB reeeally not important. As long as I can turn it off, I'll take it or leave it.

I'm getting rid of a few old PCs so need to back up drives before wiping them. Any suggestions on easiest software to do this? Windows based or, I guess, a liveUSB.

Something where I can access the files in the backup would be good, even better if I could mount it and run as a virtual machine. Cheers

A Linux liveUSB (i.e. the simplest is an Ubuntu install USB but don't install)... and then dd.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-clone-restore-linux-disk-image-dd/

What you'll get is just a disk image that is restorable to another disk.

If you want to access the data, just save the data separately... I find a trivial way to do this is Syncthing for the folders I care about and just have it sent to a network... once sync'd, you may nuke the disconnect and then nuke the original hard drive.

Cheers. From what I remember of dd the image it creates is the same size as the disk but in these cases the disks are largely empty so would prefer something that took that into account.

I've got everything I "think" I need in terms of data backed up to another machine or Onedrive. This is really for the stuff that I didn't realise I didn't have that is squirrelled away in a config folder or something rather than somewhere obvious.

Do Chromebooks/tablets need a malware and virus checker.

My PC failed to get past the MB boot screen this morning. Fortunately turning it off and on again seemed to resolve it for now.

Beyond backing things up, is there anything else I should do? Are there any diagnostic tools that might be useful to run to try and narrow down what the issue might be?

(Been a long time since I've thought about PC parts)

turning it off and on again seemed to resolve it for now

The first thing I learned about computer science back in the early 70s was the difference between a bug and a glitch. What you described is most likely a glitch, and aside from having back ups, the only thing you can do is wait for it to happen repeatedly so that you can try to diagnose it as a bug.

Get the same again!

If this is a desktop PC this is usually the point where I would give it a clean and just ensure all cables are seated securely, and to remove and reseat RAM, and if it's much older to consider refreshing the heatsink paste.

At the very least, were it to recur I would have already removed all of the most likely causes of it and it would aid better debugging.

Additionally... time to download the motherboard manual if you have not and to figure out what POST LEDs exist on the board.

I have a thunderbolt port that only shows attachments when I restart. So I have a drive attached to it and have to turn the computer on, then restart for it to show up. Evertim. Boi crie etc

What might the pathway for diagnosing look like - something a hammer to the bios would likely solve in one way or another?

Ta, that's all useful advice that sounds obvious now it's been mentioned 😅

Desktop or laptop?

Also if it does it again pay attention to any beeps, they're your error code.

that only shows attachments when I restart

Is this being routed through hubs / connections that may not be fully active at startup... for example is it connected to a monitor and only comes alive when the monitor has fully negotiated the frequency and resolution?

This would sound like why you need to restart... you have latency somewhere that delays the establishment of the connection, but after having started a restart works because the right things in the right order now pre-exist.

In essence, there's latency somewhere about some connection establishment, and so there's an order things need to be started in and for whatever reason that order is not happening - I would guess external TB hub or monitor, but only you know your system.

Thanks @se1derful and @Velocio
Desktop:

5950x / vision b550 d / vision 3090 / 64gb 3600 corsair vengeance rgb (2x32gb) / wd black sn850 4tb / noctua nh d15s / 4 x nf s12a / corsair 4000d airflow

The drive (sandisk 4tb extreme pro - not without their issues I know) is plugged in via an apple thunderbolt cable directly to the port on the motherboard. I never use it for other devices, just drives.

Thinking further on it, there is another thunderbolt port next to it that works fine...

If it's a case port, pretty much the same advice as further up the thread to be honest. Reseat, check the port for dust, try a different cable.

there is another thunderbolt port next to it that works fine

TB is strange, even if it's on the motherboard you may have mutiple hubs internally that are each coming alive in a specific sequence and that interaction with the motherboard (and then the OS) can be due to that sequence.

When I start my Windows system, on the BIOS screen it presents a "1 drive, 6 keyboards, 2 mice, 9 hubs" (or something to that extent)... and I know (because I once looked it up) that things like USB have a max number of ports per hub (and it's ~7) and that TB has a max bandwidth (and it's phenomenal)... and the result is that a lot of these things are logically daisy chained... I only have 1 real keyboard, and I do not have 9 hubs, I have a single TB hub, and the monitor has some extra ports... but this is evidence of the system design that is internally chaining.

With TB, one of those ports is the first hub... everything else is daisy chained off of the first.

My hunch... attach to the first hub if you can discover it and try and reproduce to see if this fixes it.

Anyone have an idea about Chromebooks?

^^ & ^^^ Thanks both.