SenorKiwi

Just figured it out actually - rookie error, the microphone had 0% gain on itself when out of the box. Didn't check that..

Thanks for your time, and have a good day!

Just figured it out actually - rookie error, the microphone had 0% gain on itself when out of the box. Didn't check that..

Thanks for your time, and have a good day!

Just figured it out actually - rookie error, the microphone had 0% gain on itself when out of the box. Didn't check that..

Thanks for your time, and have a good day!

Thanks for the suggestion - I'll definitely give Upwork a shot. I tried Fiverr a week ago but that ended in dismal failure and a waste of a day

Try a different cable. Try motherboard video output (if you have)

Well, I don't think there would be a big performance difference but the 100-hour card will probably last longer.

Honestly I'd pay the $30 extra. 4 months of crypto mining is quite a bit worse than 100 hours of gameplay. Please, don't buy the crypto mining card.

Sony like Samsung has a PC Companion app with backup functionalities etc. i guess it can be used. That would be at least worth a try downloading it from Sony and try out if it can access all sms. 

Try running chkdsk
 
https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/#From_the_installation_disc-3
 
Then boot up and try to get back into windows.
 
If you're able to get to the login screen/desktop, immediately restart your computer so it can successfully shutdown and restart. 
 
 

Yes, it helped - tried a few other things too so not exactly sure what fixed it. But good suggestion and it helped :) 

Windows 7 doesn't seem to be supported by that motherboard, can't find any drivers.
 
 

You must download and install usb3 drivers for win7. I hope you can do it using only keyboard.
 
Difficult way - plug your hdd to different computer as second drive and download drivers, unpack them and then plug your hdd into your new motherboard and use keyboard only to install downloaded drivers.
 
Worst scenario - boot again using old hardware, download every driver you need, then change motherboard... and use keyboard to install drivers (chipset, then usb).
 
Workaround - buy cheapest PCI-E USB controller, install it using old hardware, change hardware and your PCI-E USB controller will work, so you can use both - mouse and keyboard to install onboard drivers.
 
You may use special software (mostly paid) to insert drivers into working windows installation, but this is even harder.
 
B360 have no official support for win7. It will work (I trying that by myself - it's possible and works good, but not as good as win10 on that motherboard).

Thank you everyone for your help. Lots of useful tools for the future. That windirstat was perfect and found CSGO as the problem instantly. 15GB less now - perfect! 
 
Thank you all and have a great day!

Uninstall any programs you don't need (Check Add/Remove programs for stuff you don't use)
Empty recycle bin
Clear browser cache
Check to see if there are any files that can be moved to the HDD (such as photos, movies, music, games, etc)
Buy a new, larger capacity SSD

@TheKiwiColonel
I don't want to offend you by any means but just checking your files and see what you don't use then deleting them is the only way of cleaning space. If your OS is installed on your SSD, you can delete everything from TEMP folder (Windows button + R and type %temp%) ((Windows may not let you delete everything but that's okay!))

Other tip is to install CCleaner and run some scan/delete. Be sure to uncheck your browser cookies deletion if you don't want to lose saved logged accounts or passwords.

Download windirstat (https://windirstat.net/) and you can visually see what is taking up space, makes it easier and you don't have to go trough a million different folders to see what's taking up space

It's the " Since surely there is some junk programs somewhere or something causing this large use of space. " - part that I was objecting to: only you can know the answer to that, no one else. We can only offer some very generic suggestions, which may or may not help you enough. But I'd try Disk Cleanup first, Windows has a tendency of keeping tens of gigabytes of old installation-files for the major updates around and if you haven't cleaned those up before, that might just be enough.

I don't know why no one has recommended the built in windows storage manager.
 
If you have windows 10 go to:
1) Settings
2) System
3) Storage
4) Click on the drive you want to see the statistics of
5) You get this view:
6) Now from there you can click into each category, to see even more indepth look on things. For example click into programs, and you will see how much each program uses.
 
 

Yeah just delete it.

I guess that would be up to your own morals

EVGA is a cool company, even if you told them they wouldn't do much,

It's slightly better in every way except for noise. It's not better to a degree that matters at all though.

Its entirely possible that that was the next best thing they had lying around.
 
RMA does that sometimes if they don't have other stuff...

It's fine, they usually give you a serial number, and paperwork on the RMA form (if any) to show its changed serial number for another RMA if that ones goes bad.
I got a 290x from a 3rd 290 RMA.

They might not had any like yours in stock so they sent you a little upgrade for free.I'd keep it im sure they knew what they sent you.