fixME

Just a habit. Like I said above though, the serial numbers of the memory kit I bought off AliExpress have identical serial numbers. That is not something I have seen before. Great info in this post. Thanks! I am aware that my genuine memory is DDR3L. This kit of DDR3L was very popular with overclockers back in the day. I wanted to get more of it, but at the time it went out of stock so often. I stopped looking for it altogether as 8GB of memory was enough for me. Well now in 2021 it's pretty much impossible to find, as expected. AliExpress sold me the right product. They didn't have any DDR3 @ 1.35v, so I bought this kit based solely on the brand. So far my system has been stable with both kits running @ 1.5v. The only downside is they are running at the specs of the 1.5v kit, as to be expected, and the command rate is 2T. The only thing that makes me question if they are genuine, is the part and serial number. As I said above, I found some screenshots on AliExpress where another buyer has the exact same serial number as me.

Long story short, I bought some Samsung DDR3 from AliExpress (first time using their website). I wanted the same type of memory that I already own, Samsung DDR3 @ 1.35v, but it's not longer manufactured or easily found. I spotted one listing on eBay, a 4x4GB kit, but the price was crazy inflated. I know my motherboard can accept both 1.35v and 1.5v DDR3, so I figured as long as long as I buy Samsung, there shouldn't be an issue. My old memory would just match the voltage and timings of the new kit when installed. When I got the memory I tested it by itself. 8 passes of memtest, as well as 20 hours of HCI memtest. Passed with flying colours. No crashes or blue screens. To get it working with my other memory however, I had to install the 16GB by itself, and set the voltage from auto to 1.5v in BIOS. Then I installed the second kit, returned to BIOS and made sure both were running at 1.5v, then restarted. The first time I installed both kits the PC wouldn't boot. The second time I installed the 16GB kit and set it to 1.5v first, but after adding the second kit I realized it wasn't at 1.5v and the system locked up after about 30 minutes. My system has been running for a few days now with both kits installed and no issues. However, I'm questioning if I actually bought genuine Samsung memory. When inspecting and installing the modules, I noticed the DRAM chips have different SEC numbers. As far as I know, the SEC numbers are unique to Samsung modules, but comparing the new kit to my 2x4GB, that kit has matching SEC numbers. I also looked up the part number on Google and it just links to generic memory websites or third party sellers on Amazon and Newegg. Also the serial numbers for both modules is identical. My genuine kit has different serial numbers. Finally, I found a screenshot of someone with the same kit, with the same serial number as me. I still have two weeks to return the memory if I am not satisfied, though I probably won't since it seems to be functioning just fine. I just want to know if I purchased a counterfeit product.

Oh I see what you are saying. Not a bad idea. I just need a switch small enough to fit in that slot, though it doesn't have to be perfect.

The actual power button still works. It's the plastic tab in the picture that is broken. When you pushed the tab in, it would go in just far enough to press the power button, then return to it's position, flush with the chassis. Overtime the plastic weakened and broke off. This is the actual power button. The little white piece on this daughter board.

I have an older Acer Aspire laptop. It's actually a pretty nice machine, but I gotta say... whoever decided on side-mounted, flimsy plastic tab, to engage the power button, is a cheap bastard! Simply pressing the tab over time weakened the plastic pieces and it broke off. I tried hot gluing it, but it became too stiff and couldn't engage the power button. It eventually broke off again. I tried gluing a long, tiny spring from a pen to engage the button, but that didn't work. Now I use a fork or a straw from a compressed air can to boot it up. There is no option in the bios to boot the machine when lifting the lid. Here's a picture of the power button tab and the two circular plastic pieces that hold it in place.

Yes I did clear CMOS. Sorry, I forgot to mention that. I did that twice, as well as resetting BIOS settings to factory defaults.

Hi guys, Yesterday I was helping a family member put together his brand new ASUS ROG themed build with parts he picked out. It's his first new computer in 15 years. Sadly, the experience has not be great... Specs: Ryzen 3700x Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (WI-FI) Asus ROG RYUJIN 360 cooler Asus 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply Asus RTX 2060 Asus ROG Strix Helios ATX Full Tower Case G.Skill Trident Z Royal 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL19 Memory - x2 Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2 NVME Seagate Barracuda 8 TB + a bunch of ASUS ROG accessories. Last night we built the PC, installed Windows, updated Windows, updated drivers, and installed some games. No issues whatsoever. Computer ran for a good 3-4 hours. We gamed for a bit, then left it running at the lock screen for the night. Fast-forward to this morning. The system was powered on, but the screen was black and it seemed like it locked up. I rebooted it and it took forever, but eventually went to the pre-boot screen. This was the error: When RAID configuration was built, ensure to set SATA Configuration to RAID mode. Press F1 to run setup. I never seen this error before. One, because I personally don't have an NVME drive and two, because we didn't set up RAID. Well I went into the BIOS and checked all the settings. I tried RAID mode for NVME but that made no difference. I disabled Fast Boot, disabled Secure Boot, and reset the Secure Boot keys. Nothing changed. On top of that we encountered new problems. The power button and reset buttons on the case stopped working. Even the start button on the motherboard wouldn't respond. I had to click the buttons multiple times and eventually it would reboot or turn on / off. I triple checked the connectors were in the right place on the mobo and they were. The next step was getting the latest BIOS from ASUS' website and putting it on a USB stick. It installed without issue, but that did not solve our problems. 2 hours later I started disconnecting everything but the basics. Took all the front panel connectors off including USB A & C connectors. I also disconnected the SATA hard drive. First press of the power button the mobo and it started without issue... Went to the desktop extremely quick. No errors. I started to plug in the front panel connectors again and rebooted with the case button this time. Again, no issue. Restarted a few times to make sure. Finally, I plugged in the SATA 8 TB hard drive, but I moved it over 2 rows. Again, booted without issue... I decided to stress test the PC. I ran Cinebench R20 twice, R15 once, Unigine Superposition twice @ 4K max, and Prime95 blend for 15 minutes. No crashes, no errors, no overheating. I watched everything with HWinfo64 and nothing stood out. Now I am at a loss... I figured it was something with the SATA drive and the ports. We started to use the PC as normal again. Half an hour or so it was fine and then... We paired some Bluetooth headphones and when I went to play a song in Spotify the computer rebooted. Odd, okay... No errors again. Then I went to pair a Bluetooth speaker. Worked no problem, got music playing. A few minutes later it rebooted... We started playing a game for 10 minutes or so, rebooted again. I then disconnected the keyboard and mouse from the Acer Predator monitor's USB hub and it rebooted AGAIN! We booted up another game and played for 40 minute without issue until I had to leave. A few hours ago my family let me know that the PC continues to reboot :( I troubleshooted as much as I could with the time I had. I have a working Seasonic power supply I can give him to rule out the PSU. There were no BSODs or other hardware errors, so I don't believe the CPU, memory, or GPU could be the problem. I am leaning towards the motherboard or PSU. I know the ASUS Thor is a high end PSU, but that doesn't mean it can't be a lemon. My family member is pretty upset right now and rightfully so. He spent a lot of money on these parts and some of them took months to arrive thanks to the pandemic. Hoping someone here can help us.

https://i.imgur.com/zzyj72r.mp4 Never seen anything like this before. It started happening a few months ago once in a while, casually browsing the internet or doing some on the desktop. The artifacting would last a few seconds then stop and maybe reoccur a few hours later. Now it happens so often that the computer is unusable. To rule out the problem I tried a different DVI cable, tried the HDMI port, and swapped in 2 new HDMI cables. I am 99.9% sure it is not the integrated graphics on the APU. I disconnected the monitor from my desktop and plugged it into my laptop with a different HDMI cable. The problem persisted on the laptop for 3-4 minutes and stopped by itself or because I continued to cycle through project display settings. It's been fine for 15 minutes but I am positive it will happen again on the laptop. The monitor is a 23" Asus VS238 with a TN panel. It was purchased brand new about 6 years ago. I remember this being a very popular monitor for it's time. This is the only other similar video I could find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ud0aLGwLg

TRIM is enabled on all my SSD's and it should be on my default in Windows 10. I don't think that's the issue.

So I was just reading some old reviews on the Kingston V200+. Apparently the read and write speeds listed by most manufacturers are based on the ATTO benchmark which uses readily compressible data. This isn't reflective of real word performance. The Default (Random) test in CrystalDiskMark is the one that shows real world performance. I compared copy speeds of large files to the Kingston drive and they were accurate within a few percent. For my SanDisk drive, I changed CrystalDiskMark's test to All 0x00 (0 fill) and that gave me 517MB/s write 542MB/s read which is accurate with their spec sheet. I ran the random test again and got 218MB/s writes. This is still pretty low compared to some of the other CrystalDiskMark scores I have seen. Maybe it's because the drive is nearly full. So my Toshiba drive actually gets the advertised speeds with random data. The SanDisk has the advertised read speeds, but the write is low. It wasn't a budget SSD either. The Kingston is definitely the worst. Maybe a firmware update will improve it, but probably not.

No they are not dying. My Toshiba is 99% life, SanDisk is 100%, and Kingston is 99%. I wonder if newer firmware would improve the write speeds of the Kingston and SanDisk drives.

This Kingston SSD was suppose to be decent for it's time. I remember reading that the V300 series updated the controller and had newer flash, but it was actually a bit slower. Anyway the speeds I am getting are horrible. SATA and USB 3 are near identical. I understand letting it fill up can slow it down, but my Toshiba has been 90% full before and it's always 500+ read and write. Crystaldismark

I am looking into putting more SSD's in my system and I wanted to compare the speeds of the ones I already had. Two out of the three SSD's I have do not reach the write speeds that are advertised on their spec page. Kingston V200+ advertised 480MB/s write 535MB/s. I get 106MB/s write 210MB/s read . I also tested it as an external drive on USB 3 UASP which I know is slower than SATA. I got 112.1MB/s write 211MB/s read which is abysmal. Drive is empty. SanDisk Extreme II advertised 510 MB/s write 550 MB/s read. I get 226MB/s write 527MB/s read. Drive is 89% full. Toshiba Q Series Pro THNSNH 512 MB/s write and 554 MB/s read. I get 502MB/s write 550MB/s read. This is the only one that gets close to the advertised speeds. Drive is 39% full. These are all older SSD's so they may be DRAM-less? I see no mention of that or anything about cache on their spec pages.

exFAT is the answer because of the FAT32 limitation. Unfortunately it's not the most robust file system. The lack of journaling can lead to data corruption or loss. Anytime I use exFAT and copy files from Windows, I use a program like teracopy to verify they transferred properly.

The mid 2010 model is known for the swollen/bloated battery pushing on the trackpad. I have a client who had a similar issue. He was not able to click with the trackpad, but all the tap functions and gestures worked. He was on 10.6 Snow Leopard and I just formatted his computer and updated him to High Sierra. All trackpad functions except click work. All I can suggest is doing a clean install again. Maybe something in the settings got corrupted.