dbruce

Hi, thanks for the reply! I'm in the USA. I don't really have weight preference, and battery life isn't a huge concern though it'd be nice if lasted at least a couple hours with some moderate usage, but generally I should have access to power if need be. I'd rather have a better screen and/or more performance I think. With as much multitasking as I do, I believe I'd prefer a quadcore. I can't think of anything else that must be factored in. But like said before, I can throw money at ram/storage later on, but I need a rig sooner than later so I will only have about 800. I might be able to go up to 1000 if it's really worthwhile.

Hi, since I am having issues with getting all of my RAM working and I'm at a loss of how to fix it, I'm considering buying a laptop as a replacement as I'd like the option to be able to work on my back patio if so desired. I'm not sure if this is possible considering my budget though. current setup is an i7 3770k, 16gb ddr3, gtx 1050ti with an ssd. Well...only 8GB ddr3 is usable as for some reason the OS and BIOS only recognize 8gb while memtest86+ passes all dimms and cpu-z recognize all 16gb. I'm guessing it's mobo related, but I can't seem to pinpoint the issue and am afraid of it further declining, though it seems to be running fine on half of the installed RAM for the moment... From what I've found, in order to at least match my current desktops power, I need at least an i5 8300h cpu. If i want an upgrade in performance,I need to look at something like the i7 8750H which have a few laptops using it at similar prices to the 8300h. I'm having trouble deciding what to pull the trigger on. I would like to be able to use the laptop outdoors, so the screen would need to be bright enough for that. I've always had a lot of trouble seeing laptops outside, but it's been years since I've used a laptop, I'm hoping they are better about that now. It would not be my main place of work, but on a nice day it would be awesome. As far as graphics go, I don't game a whole lot, but I do occasionally play SC2/D3/WoW whenever I feel the desire, so being able to run that decently would be a factor. I would also like to be able to connect at least 1 monitor, maybe 2 if possible, while I'm at my desk. I'm trying to stay around $800 USD price point. I could maybe scrounge up a little more for the perfect computer but not a lot more. Also black friday and cyber monday are coming up real soon here so I could try and get something then for a better deal potentially. As I write a lot of code and always have multiple windows I'm working in I think a 15" might drive me insane, so I'm thinking a 17" screen is probably the way to go. Here are a few laptops I have been interested in: Dell G3779-7934BLK-PUS - $925 a little more than I really want to spend at the moment Dell G3 Gaming Laptop - $760 but non Ti gpu and also a 15" screen... ASUS FX504GE-ES72 or it's cheaper model the ASUS TUF Thin & Light Gaming Laptop PC (FX504) and the MSI GV62 8RD-200 again only 15" I don't know much about optane memory, but from what I gather, SSD is usually the better way to go, and I hear I should avoid the SSHD. As so much of my stuff is based in the cloud, I don't have huge storage requirements, 500gb is more than enough, i could live with 256 for a little while and upgrade that later. I could live with 8gb of ram as well for now, and grab more when I get more cash if that means a better screen/case/keyboard/etc... Hoping somebody can help me find a few laptops to pick from and make a better decision. I'd like to stay under $1000 at the most right now though, preferably cheaper with options to upgrade later though.

Hnmm, I have no idea how to tell which 2 ram came together, they all look identical and have been mixed and matched so many times since I bought them. I didn't think it mattered since they were all the same timing and frequencies but I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert, I really have no idea. There is only 4 DIMM slots though and I've tried a ton of different combination, I'm sure at some point I have tried them correctly. Thanks for the link, I'll read through that a bit.

Hi, just got back home and am going through the comments now. I mentioned in the initial post that my OS install was corrupted and required a fresh install. I checked to see if I could disable dual channel that was mentioned earlier and I did not notice anything that would allow me to do that in the bios. Also the BIOS are up to date. As for the specs I am running an i7 3770k on an Asus Sabertooth z77 with G.Skill DDR3 4x4GB

Hi, I have exhausted all of my personal knowledge and need some help troubleshooting this. First off, some background: I have been having issues for almost a year now where my computer would freeze during various tasks. Not often, but maybe has happened 6 or 7 times now. Twice it happened during an program installation or repair of one that caused my OS install to become corrupted and required a fresh reinstall of Windows. I have not been able to replicate this, it seems very random. In the process of checking my ram I ended up corrupting my OS as well somehow. I'm not entirely sure the freezing is connected to my RAM issue, but felt I should mention it just in case. Yesterday I noticed my system was using 80% memory with only a few chrome windows open and thought it strange. Looking closer I noticed it was only recognizing 8gb of RAM, when I have 16 (4x4gb) installed. So to troubleshoot, I popped out all my ram and individually reinsterted them, booted into the bios to check them to see each stick appearing to work just fine. So, I tried 2 sticks in every combination possible, but it showed 8gb no matter what. Then I tried 3 in each combination and only get 8gb now, same as with all 4 sticks. Thought that was strange. Checking CPU-Z I noticed it acknowledges all 4 sticks of ram being present. But task manager says 2 of 4 slots being used. There is only 50mb of RAM reserved for hardware. Memtest86+ shows all 4 sticks available, and no errors in 2 full passes. BIOS are up to date. Totally at a loss of what else to try. The RAM is not new, and I haven't changed the BIOS in quiet awhile, this just appeared recently as far as I know. I'm going to try clearing CMOS when I get home, but if that doesn't work, I'm totally at a loss of how to troubleshoot further. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much for taking the time to read this.

The temps are all fine, and I yeah I should try cleaning out the dust, it has been awhile.

It just locks up like cd that's skipping. I also bought the 1050 myself. That was the first thing I suspected, so I ran memtest86 a few times, but nothing showed up. I haven't crashed since, which I guess is good? But I'm sure it'll happen again.

No, it doesn't look anything like that. It just locks up, if there's any video/audio playing when it locks up, like a CD skipping. I have to fully power off, hitting the reset button on my tower doesn't work, instead it just sits there with a black screen and doesn't even get to the bios splash, until I cut the power fully.

Had to run out for a bit, I'm not sure how to do a registry check exactly, but I ran `sfc /scannow` and nothing showed up. It's also happened now on 2 different installs of windows which I think makes it unlikely to be a registry issue.

That was my first thought, but the first time it happened, I ran the windows error checking on the disk with no issues and just now I ran `wmic diskdrive get status` in cmd which returned 'OK'. I've never heard the acronym SMART before but from a super quick search it seems like that's what your talking about?

Hi, hoping someone could help me out here. A few months ago I experienced my first freeze on this build. It happened a few times in the following weeks, and then one day during a patch update for a game, it locked up on me, which I believe corrupted my boot drive I think, because I couldn't boot. Out of impatience I simply did a fresh install. Since then it hasn't happened (I want to say it's been maybe 6 weeks since), until a few minutes ago. I had a show on netflix in the background on my tv which I use as a second monitor and working on some code on my main screen, when I went to alt tab back to the console, everything locked up. When it happens it's more of like a skip I guess. Had no control over anything though. Hitting the reset button on the tower doesn't reboot it, it acts like it's going to reboot but no bios splash screen pops up or anything it just stalls with a black screen. I have to hold the power button in and fully turn it off and then turn it back on. I've been using this build for maybe 3 years now without problems until now. All my temps look fine, I'm really not sure how to even troubleshoot it because it just happens so randomly and is usually at least a few days and sometimes weeks apart, and it's happened while doing different things. I'm not sure where to start with troubleshooting. Thanks in advance for taking the time to help me out.

Yes I have checked the settings. I just uninstalled Bitdefender too, but that didn't seem to help at all. I don't have the original factory disks, as this was bought used off Craigslist. Though I was thinking of maybe finding a win7 iso and seeing if it still dimmed the screen, despite having just finished setting up my development environment the other day...lol

Oh der. Thanks for the tip, not sure why I didn't think of that. Good idea, but unfortunately I am not seeing anything related to sensors or ambient light detection or anything related in the Device Manager. Hmm... edit: I'm wondering if this laptop even has a sensor. It doesn't seem to matter if i'm in a dark room or in the sun. It matters more of what colors are on my screen. edit2: Another thing I've noticed today is that it doesn't seem to start dimming until I am fully logged into windows 10. Only then does it start dimming. Probably because my desktop image is a space photo and dark. Soon as I open chrome, it brightens back up. It's not instantaneous, it does take a second or so to fully dim/brighten, it's actually kind of laggy in doing so. This leads me to believe it is software related not hardware (which is usually good...lol)

Hi, I just picked up a laptop from someone on craigslist a few days ago, and everything seems to be running okay, the only problem being the screen brightness seems to automatically adjust on me and I can not figure out why. The screen doesn't seem to get too bright to begin with, but it's bearable indoors. I believe the model of the laptop is a Inspiron 5423 and it seems like this is a known issue with these laptops in the past, but the fix was to go into the dell battery application and turn a setting off. I have a fresh windows 10 installation on here and no dell applications at all, and would prefer not to install one if I can, though if it will fix my issue I wouldn't be too apposed to it... I have tried going into the power saving settings and playing with those settings, but it still appears to be an issue. I haven't tested this plugged in, but I was reading it was an issue regardless of being on battery or plugged in. The issue is a darker screen gets dimmed, and it makes it hard to read. When working inside text editors doing web development I prefer a dark theme like Atom's "one dark" syntax theme that comes with the editor. But when I switch from the browser to Atom, (from white to black basically) the screen dims down, and I can barely read the text. If anyone knows of a fix or can help me troubleshoot this, that'd be very much appreciated. It is pretty irritating regardless of only paying $110 for the laptop lol.