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EChondo

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Everything posted by EChondo

  1. I'd wager it's time for a clean Windows install. If your temps are good, drivers are updated, and short of hardware failing; Windows is the likely culprit unfortunately. If you have a spare drive, I'd do a clean install, setup LoL and do some tests and go from there. If it continues, then I'd say you have a hardware problem somewhere.
  2. EChondo

    You're back!

  3. How are the fans operating on battery vs. on AC power? Do you notice the fans increasing in speed on AC power? What are the idle clock speeds on battery vs. AC power? Even though its idling, once you plug in AC power, the laptop may enable a higher processor minimum. You can kind of check this through Windows via the Power & Sleep settings. Go to Power & Sleep settings via the search bar. Then on the right side, click on Additional Power Settings. Then "Change advanced power settings". And look for "Processor power management". Mine looks like this; So, minimum on battery, the processor will run at 5%, but when it's plugged in, it'll run at minimum at 99%(or whatever you set it too). I would check this on yours and see if you can change this manually OR you may need to choose a different Power Plan in Windows. In my "Power Saver" plan, the minimums are both 5%; Yours may be set to 100% when plugged in for minimum processor state. This could be causing your laptop to idle at a higher clock speed, which will start warming up the laptop until it reaches a point where it'll throttle itself down due to the heat(60c-70c like you indicated).
  4. It's very powerful, but it isn't a walk in the park. It's a good choice to consider, but I wouldn't focus your sights on it as the end option. Relatively. If you know what you're doing it could probably take 30-40 minutes to install the OS, boot, and setup everything software wise. A bit confused here to be honest. Could you clarify a bit? 4 drives for FreeNAS? And then 1 drive for FreeNAS to backup to? So you have your Main PC backup files to FreeNAS, then FreeNAS backs up to PC 2? If yes, then yes you can have 4 drives be an exact copy of each other(so theoretically it can allow 3 drives to fail before data loss occurs). I'm not 100% about automated backups on either side. I've never required that functionality so I am not aware of it being available natively via FreeNAS. I know you can use programs like FreeFileSync on Windows, and on Linux you could setup a cron task to rsync everything automatically. FreeNAS's RAID options are; Stripe: requires at least one disk(All disks are available) Mirror: requires at least two disks(All disks are mirrored to one drive) RAIDZ1: requires at least three disks(1 disk failure allowed) RAIDZ2: requires at least four disks(2 disk failures allowed) RAIDZ3: requires at least five disks(3 disk failures allowed) So you probably want to pick the Mirror option. I run a 8x8TB drive array in RAIDZ2, so it's ~64TB raw storage, but 40TB after RAIDZ2 implemented, as a personal example. It can be easy, FreeNAS makes it kinda simple, but you'll need to semi-know what you're doing. Please know that you're going to have to setup everything from the OS to the storage array to the network share. Also may need to know about file permissions. Yes! FreeNAS is very powerful and probably has all your solutions. I'd also look into OpenMediaVault and Unraid(paid software, but has a 30 day trial). I HIGHLY recommend you watch some YouTube videos and even read the FreeNAS User Guide provided by FreeNAS. Link here for latest OS version: https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.3-U2/freenas.html
  5. I've been battling with this thing since April of last year when I bought it. I just installed the 302 BIOS when it released a couple days ago and did a clean install of Windows. So I had two issues with this laptop. 1. The infamous .39GHz/400MHz bug So far the .39GHz core clock bug hasn't been seen yet for me. When I did my clean install of Windows I also installed, from AMD directly, their 2.04.04.111 chipset drivers. I would install ASUS's Armory crate software, but Valorant blocks it from opening it seems, so I can't use it to regulate fan and temp control. 2. Boot drive, uh, not booting(infinite ROG load screen of death at BIOS) For this I ended up having to install a secondary M.2 drive(in the second slot), opted for a 256GB NVME I had lying around, and in the BIOS deleting the first M.2 from being bootable(the stock Intel 660p). Once I did that, I installed Windows onto the secondary drive and had the BIOS use that for the primary boot option. Ever since then, the laptop has been booting up perfectly fine. When I did the 302 BIOS update, it obviously reset the BIOS and I immediately encountered the same ROG screen of death and once I deleted the first M.2 everything went back to normal, again. I have not tried swapping the M.2 drives to see if it's the slot or the drive, but I know it's not Windows as I have installed various Linux distros(including the latest Ubuntu 20.04) onto it and the problem continued, so it's definitely the drive, slot, or BIOS, or even a combination of the three. So, if anyone has an unstable GA502DU, I'd recommend installing the 302 BIOS. It seems to have fixed my major problem for the core clock bug. I've been playing Valorant and Guild Wars 2 on it for the past couple of days without issues.
  6. Your motherboard does not have the FX8320 listed as a supported CPU: http://www.asrock.com/mb/NVIDIA/N68-VS3 FX/?cat=CPU Also, your motherboard does not have any Windows 10 drivers listed for download, so it could be something on that front. However, before you start swapping hardware and software, you should try a different game that is not based on the Source engine. The Source engine, especially the build CSGO uses, has had numerous issues with performance. If other games don't give you issues then it's probably CSGO's fault, but if other games do have similar issues then use MSI Afterburner and Task Manager and see if your GPU Core Clock and CPU Speed(GHz) are being boosted to their max(or at least close to it) when gaming. I know some people have had issues with "power saving" features that would block the GPU/CPU from being utilized properly. AMD has a power saving feature called "ULPS" for their GPUs that can cause this, which can be disabled via MSI Afterburner or Regedit(I would use MSI Afterburner though, just in case). If that doesn't solve your issue you could try installing Windows 7 since your motherboard supports it and see if it's a compatibility issue with Windows 10. If that doesn't work then it might just be your motherboard then. Honestly I have a i7-3770 and a R9 390 and I have terrible drops in CSGO and I've tried everything I could think of and nothing has seemed to fix it. I started having issues back when Valve introduced the R8 Revolver, so back in November 2015. Best of luck!
  7. Hey, I can just take Friday and Monday off from work and have a 4-day NMS vacation lol. Better than taking 4 days in the middle of the week!
  8. Damn, I have three 32" 1080p TV's from Vizio from 6-7 years ago, all still working great. And I just bought one of their 4k TV's. Great company, though a little curious to see how this acquisition plays out. Hopefully not much changes or things get better!
  9. Mod note: Thread moved to Cases and Power Supplies sub-forum. On-topic: Is $300 your max or your preferred? Because you can get some really nice cases for under $300, but if you want to go all out then a Case Labs case, the Corsair 900D, or the Cooler Master Cosmos II would be your best bets!
  10. My best guess is probably because of processing fees and profit losses. When you buy a game with a CC/Debit card Steam is charged a fee, they also get charged a fee when you issue a refund. I don't know exact numbers, but as an example lets say that the processing fee is 0.20% and you're buying a game that is $10. 1. You buy the $10 game, Steam is charged 2 cents. So Steam made a $9.98 profit. 2. You request a refund, Steam is charged another 2 cents and refunds your $10. Steam is now at a -$0.04 loss. 3. The game goes on sale for $5, you buy it. Steam is charged 1 cent, 5 cent loss so far. Steam is now at a $4.95 profit. It doesn't seem like much, but now add in 10,000 people doing the exact same thing. That's $500 loss, $49,500 profit. Now if you weren't able to refund and you had to stay with your $10 purchase, Steam would be at a $80,000 profit, plus however many more people would buy the game at the price point of $5. Also don't forget Steam has to pay the publishers/developers as well, and the processing fees are cut out of Steam's profits, not anybody else's. Steam probably made this decision based on scenarios like this. The Summer Sale 2015 had flash sales and refunds(IIRC), so it was probably the deciding factor for Steam to decide whether or not to keep flash/daily/community deals. So it must have cost Steam enough money to warrant the change. TL;DR: Steam gets charged processing fees and if everyone refunded their purchases when a game goes on a deeper discount then Steam makes less profit and hurts them in the long run. The only way to "fix" this is to block people from buying a game they just refunded for a certain period of time(which kinda contradicts why Steam created the refund system) OR make customers pay transaction fees(which I don't think consumers would be too happy about this). Well, if the transaction fees are really part of the decision that was made...
  11. Fast: 47Mbps Speedtest: 78Mbps I doubt I'm being throttled since I'm using a VPN. So probably a poor connection to Netflix servers. I'm on AT&T U-Verse, business line. *Edit, just retested without my VPN on. Fast: 75Mbps Speedtest: 80Mbps So either something is throttling VPN connections or the path I'm being taken through with my VPN is poor to Netflix. I use PIA and I have great speeds when downloading from Steam/Origin/etc. so my VPN provider isn't crap lol.
  12. Switched to Opera years ago, it has always been faster than Chrome for me.
  13. Great that 3D NAND SSD's are coming down in price pretty steadily. I think I'd rather opt for a similar priced 1TB SSD though. You can get a Mushkin 1TB for around $220 USD(so around 24 cents/GB). Hopefully prices continue to drop and we can get rid of hard drives soon!
  14. Don't care at all about this. Achievements don't mean squat nowadays, don't know why they keep bothering with them.
  15. I've been hearing/speculating about this since the start of highschool(about 6 years ago at this point). Personally I don't see the purpose to add additional tax to the item(don't know if Philly has sales tax). We already get taxed enough and our taxes don't go to where we want them to go. If they actually cared about health issues they'd propose a bill to ban drinks like these, which probably won't ever happen until they ban cigarettes first. To me this is just another situation of wasted time and resources that won't do anything for consumers.
  16. Thread has been moved to the Audio sub-forum. @AjintaWelcome to our forum! Just make a self-note to post in the correct subforums in the future, if you have any questions or you're unsure where to post something you can PM one of the mods that are online at the time and we'd gladly help! Hopefully now that this thread is in the correct place more experienced members on this topic can assist you more easily
  17. I don't have flash installed and refuse to do so. Twitch is the only thing needing flash at this point that I use and I would love if they switched over already. Chrome isn't my daily driver, but I have to keep it installed with a bunch of Twitch bookmarks because of flash...
  18. I'm really hoping Zen is at least comparable to Intel's next release. If we can get some good competition going again then it'll help everyone out. I'm on a Z68 chipset and have been itching for an upgrade even though I don't really need it. Even if Zen isn't amazing, if we can get a price war going then I'm definitely upgrading sooner than previously anticipated.
  19. Probably not underrated when it first came out, but it holds up pretty well with some modifications, and that is Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic 1(haven't played 2 yet). I consider it a really good RPG with a great story behind it, and you can get it for less than $5 nowadays. Another game for more of today's standards would be Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, just an absolutely amazing racing game and I'm surprised I don't see more people playing it on PC. I haven't played Mario Kart 8 yet, but I think All-Stars Racing is way better than the other Mario Kart games I have played. Oh and one more game comes to mind and you can only emulate it nowadays, but Wario World for Gamecube is extremely fun. It feels like it's its own separate game entirely even though it comes off as a Mario spin-off type game. I have some very memorable moments of playing it and I honestly don't know a single person who has played it other than myself. I HIGHLY recommend it, controls are probably a bit clunky nowadays, but if you can get used to them then I think many would enjoy it.
  20. I believe you need to use; player.modav X (+/-)# "setav" only sets the value, but resets when the game launches again. "forceav" is a little finnicky with how Skyrim handles it, sometimes it isn't permanent. When using modav you have to modify the value by either adding or subtracting, not setting it to a number. Example; X = 10 player.modav X -5 X = 5 player.modav X +10.5 X = 15.5 I hope that makes sense. So try modav and see if that fixes it.
  21. EChondo

    dinner

    Thread has been moved to off-topic. Please refrain from posting in the wrong sub-forums in the future @chin chin
  22. Topic has been locked due to being already posted.
  23. I'm 100% against paid mods, mainly because it'll only ruin modding going forward. The modding community has been open and free for the past 20+ years without a cent being asked. When money gets involved, especially with this kind of thing, people will only care about the money which will lead to secrecy, stealing, and we'll end up with a Early Access version of mods flooding in trying to nickle and dime everything little thing. Sure, there'll be a few good mods here and there just like there's a few good games coming from EA/Greenlight, but the majority will be junk. Steam already has tons of issues with EA and adding paid mods ontop would be a catastrophe. Also just like to point out that Skyrim has ~46,500 mods on the Nexus and Fallout 4 has ~8,900. That's almost 20% of Skyrim's mods and it's only been a little over 4 months since Fallout 4's release and the GECK/Creation Kit isn't even out yet. No one is requiring a damn thing from anybody, but I've donated already to some great mods and I plan on buying the lifetime membership to Nexus with my next paycheck. Money does not fuel the modding community, it'll only ruin it if it becomes required. I'm all for a donation button on Steam Workshop like Nexus has, but anything more than that and things are going to go downhill.
  24. If they drop the subscription I wouldn't mind buying a Xbox One/PS4. $50-$60 can get me a lot of games on a Steam sale.
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