PC Tech Thread

Right, fuck you all, especially @CYOA !

The awesome @spotter got it all fixed up. Turns out it’s a faulty power button.

Time for a desk mounted one anyway, anyone have any recs or just google it?

I did a bit of modding over the weekend to my living room PC. Its a Small Form Factor (SFF) HP 290 with an i5 8500, 16gb of RAM. It had a GDDR5 GT1030 GFX card in it, but I got a good deal on a GTX 1650 (GDDR6), which should let me play It Takes Two with my partner.

As you can see, the GT1030 (bottom) is a single slow card, and the GTX 1650 (top) is a dual slot card:

The PC never had any issues temprature with the GT1030 in it, but as you can see the chonky 1650 takes up a lot of space:

After doing some reading I found people saying the Gigabyte version of the card I have is know to run hot. Once of the fixes I saw people saying having some success with was re-pasting the card and, and adding nylon washers under the heatsink screws to increase clamping pressure; which I did:

Which helped a bit, 5-10c off under load, but not enough for my liking. So I added a tiny little 40mm Noctua fan to draw out some more air from the back as there are no case fans at all. I also re-pasted the CPU.

However that wasn't enough, more drastic measures were needed; so I cut this 80mm hole and fan mesh above the CPU fan, which allows it to pull in cool air from directly above it and pass it around the case.

Its a bit ugly, but its on a shelf on its side, so you cant see it and it finally has dropped the temp to a point I was happy with for extended periods.

(ignore the extra pilot hole that some cowboy drilled at the wrong end of the case 🤠)

Cracking work.
I fitted a new power button.

1 Attachment

You need to route out a little slot for it next!

Are your neighbours that rough you need the hunting knife to hand?

Anyone have experience of flashing a BIOS with a lil programmer doodah?
I've got a Dell XPS 9310 with a BIOS password I need to remove and I don't know what I'm doing other than I've found a forum where people are managing to do it by reading the BIOS chips, posting the file and someone is returning a file with the block removed.

Dell will tell you a password if you can provide proof of ownership and the series key.
If not there are a few places you can find password keygens that use the serial, not that I've ever done it for a laptop I found in the store of my old work...

I'm not the original owner so can't access the proof of purchase.
Bios-pw doesn't work for this model sadly. The only way appears to be flashing the chip

Can you just remove the CMOS battery and wait for it the on board power to run out?

Bios-pw

Did you see this post about alternative suffexs?

https://old.reddit.com/r/DellXPS/comments/15ffusn/dell_xps_9365_bios_admin_password_bypass/

I know there are a few paid services (websites and eBay) out there that can do it, i have no idea if they are more cost effective than those BIOS programmers

I have tried that but the pesky thing still remembers what it's doing afterwards.

Yep, I found that post and tried but no luck.

I'll have a look at both options and see which is going to be cheapest and easiest.
Thanks!

You might be able to jump the pins
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000235.htm

I'm not sure if it has a jumper and I don't really want to do any soldering of the bios chip.
Again, I have no idea what I'm doing. I only know what any of this even is because I've spent hours googling for a solution.

Yeah, same. I refuse to install MS Office (or any other brand of Office). I don't think I've used a proper app for 5 years or more, maybe more actually because our company was running GSuite for years before moving back to OhNo365

There used to be apps that could read it. I've not used one for 20 years though so maybe BIOSs now are more secure?

Anyone use USB DACs around here? I have a USB KVM that runs a keyboard, mouse, webcam and USB DAC into my personal and work computers. Initially had an issue getting the webcam and DAC to work with the KVM; the problem went away when I got a switch you can power from mains.

Things work like they should on the personal computer, the work laptop doesn't want to play ball with the DAC. The strange thing is that the DAC is recognised and the driver is installed, just that no signal goes through. What gives? DAC works fine if plugged into its own USB port on the laptop.

Not sure if this is the place or not but search didn't turn anywhere else up .

I'm in need of a cheap dual monitor support. Does anyone have recommendations?

"dual monitor arm" on amazon gets you some around the £30 mark, they're fine.

Just check they're large enough for the monitors you're using, and that they have the right VESA mounting sizes for the monitors.

Desk clamps are often better than stands if your desk is not made of cheese.

[EDIT] If you don't want Amazon then scan.co.uk do some: https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/monitors/monitor-stands

I used to have the Arctic Z2 that worked perfectly well with two 23" monitors.

Thank you. My only experience with stands is fancy corporate things in offices. If the budget stuff works then all the better for my wallet and a usb dock

As mentioned to me elsewhere, have a look on eBay for the Amazon own branded ones as they're actually rebranded Ergotron. I just got one for £20.

eero mesh any good? TalkTalk are offering an eero pro 6 router free with their fiber 900 package for 25 quid a month for 6 months.

This is in comparison to zen at 70 quid per month for allegedly the same speeds who offer a "FRITZ!Box 7530 AX Wifi 6 Router"

I'd like a complete system anyway, so if eero is any good then perhaps it makes sense to start with their router. Though looking online it looks an 'old' one so maybe get whatever ISP and pick up the TP link ones everyone was on about a few weeks ago.

I am a big fan of the Fritz! boxes they are great, you can pick up more used 7530's off eBay for cheap, upgrade the firmware and use them as MESH APs.

Ive done this loads of my friends and family and they've all been rock solid, really robest firmware, excellent features, excellent documentation and interface too.
Useful things like each one has a USB port, so you can add a printer to your network or attach storage.
They're not very well known in the UK, but they're widely used in europe and have a great reputation there.

I like my fritz box I got with Zen. The name is awful but the kit is great.

Built in wireguard support is great. I can simply connect to home network from anywhere and then use my PC at home as a SSH proxy for watching iPlayer and other UK content from anywhere I happen to be on holiday.

I wasnt planning on upgrading the CPU cooler on this, but when you see a Noctua cooler and extra fan on eBay for £29 posted you just have too. Anyone need a 92mm black Noctua Fan?

Annoyingly I had to re use the OEM HP socket back plate

Bodged the mounting with some 2mm nylon washers and M3x20 machine screws

It's a step up again for cooling, and noticeable quieter under load compared to the old fan

Thing is, all of that sounds like effort. I really want a solid plug and play experience. I've got no brain for troubleshooting stuff any more. Attaching storage is definitely interesting though. But I'd want it to be fast so not sure usb is the one? Am presuming it's usb2.

I'd be interested to see if I could hook it into Blackmagic cloud...