paddy-stone

Just to add, I bought a minisforum a few months back. Lovely and small, I sioot about 2 feet away and can't hear it... evenb under stress testing it barely makes any noise, and man those 16 threads can crunch TBH. I have barely used my main PC since buying this. I only got the 6800U model, but it's more than enough for most of my daily tasks, I did a few tests recoding video and audio files.. and it flies. It was done in like 5-10 seconds on the audio file that was converted from EAC to aac as my brother couldn't play it on his player. I converted some Flac audio to aac too, the whole album was done in like 10 seconds. Anyway, for a £400 mini pc, I am pleased... came with 32GB DDR5 6400Mhz too. When I got it it was going to be just a placeholder until I got something better for my main pc, but decided to keep it as my daily... my workspace is so clean now. I may get another to have as my NAS as it uses so little power... also has 2 USB4 ports, and I have an NVME connected to one of them for if I need to move some files, it's only a 10gig NVME adaptor ATM, so only goes approx 800-1000MB/s, but handy still, I';m even using it with magnetic adaptors so don't have to "plug/unplug" some of my more useful adaptors that I have in use.

I keep some things for a few years, say 5 at most, for usefulness, and only include things like CPU/mobo/ram/psu/case. After that it's unlikely I would ever use it again. I do keep some stuff after the 5 years, depending on what it is, but then it comes down to how much storage space I have left, whether it has a sentimental aspect, or maybe for a server build etc... it's a very complicated process. The only things I regularly throw out are things like power cables, sata cables etc, these can seriously build up over time, and be a big problem... so I generally keep a couple of spares and recycle/give away the rest. I just did that with a huge bin bag full of cables in fact as ti was getting too much again. Plus I used sata components less and less, favouring m.2 instead, so I just keep some sata cables for a server build or 2 and recycle the rest. Same with PSU cables, I have so many of them (all same brand for ease of use), that I just keep the more useful ones. Seriously I have 4 big fabric boxes full of cables etc. PSU/network/fan-cooling stuff/AV cables. Then the rest of 2 rack systems are full of cases/mobos/gpu/cpu/etc it can get overwhelming pretty fast. My oldest cpu I still have around is 4670k. Ahh hang on, no I still have an i7 2670qm on my old laptop, so that's about 14 years old now I think? other than those everything is ryzen 1700/ i7 6700k era and better. Everything else got recycled.... only reason I keep the laptop is it's sometimes useful as I only have 2 laptops total.

Can you temporarily put a GPU back in there to see if it posts? at least then we'll know whether it's a display issue or not possibly. are all the other components known as working ie they have been used without problems in other builds recently?

^ this For me this is always step one of troubleshooting.

Yeah, for me making friends was easy when I was younger.. even though I still liked being alone from time to time. Now I am older, it's not easy to make real friends with people any more. Everyone mostly just focuses on their own lives. Which for me kind of works out nicely, I don't have to make excuses about why I can't go to things etc... I just wanna peaceful life, where I can plan out my projects to do, mainly DIY and such. And do some cooking, gardening etc, play with the dog. I got my first strawberry of the year yesterday

Exactly! - I would gladly swap places with someone that doesn't have pain pretty much all day every day, sleep problems etc etc... I don't get much enjoyment out of being off work, I have more free time for sure, but with hardly making ends meet, and bad health, it's so not enjoyable as it would be to someone with good health and money to spend. Thank you for your understanding. I'm not saying I don't get some enjoyment out of the free time I have, you have to try doing something to keep from being bored all the time, sleeping, and to stop you from blowing your brains out. I know other people that are like myself, but they don't have an outlet for their misery... so they get bored, moan about stuff all the time etc... and I keep telling them to find some kind of hobby, anything, just to stay sane. But some people can get too focused on what they've lost, missing out on things and it makes them depressed. I went through that stage the first few years, it was terrible! but in the end I just found stuff to occupy my time that didn't need someone else to entertain me or whatever. I just started this thread as a kind of joke at my own expense, and to see if anyone else actually doesn't mind being alone, and tries to make a go of it

OK, I won't bother going into all the reasons etc. But I am disabled, and it's extremely painful to walk, and do other things... pretty much all the time. I have creative outlets, like cooking and working with my hands when possible, like woodworking/metalworking, welding etc... it's not always possible because of the disabilities though, also why I can't work, it's just not safe to assume that I can do certain things. I mostly read and/or listen to music, those are things I can do most of the time as it depends less on the use of my hands, and with audio books it's even better. I like to grow plants too, which is good for times when I am very sensitive to loud noises etc, and bright lights. This is the hand I've been dealt, and I'm trying to make the most of it, and work with what I can... it helps that I have mostly always been an introvert anyway. I can't imagine feeling that need to go out with all the hurdles I have... then it probably would drive me crazy... if I wasn't already Oh, I am an adult by the way, very much so... so don't rely on my parents for anything (plus my mum died recently). But seriously you don't know how you get things like food when you're stuck at home? it's called delivered shopping, been around even in my small ass town for a very long time... and I cook my own food, most nights if I can. And if I can't cook (I have problems with my hands too), then I have toast, or whatever... we only have 2 takeaway restaurants where I live, so don't rely on fast food at all. By the way, the people insinuating about not having to work... you wouldn't feel that way if you got sick and had to stop working. I've seen this mentality a lot.. I would actually love to work again, if I was able. It was very tough giving up work, and getting to that point over about a 5 year period of being in constant pain, sleep issues etc... I just couldn't go on how I was. I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm just saying it's not like being on vacation, I have these problems all the time, whether I'm working or not.

The furthest outside of the house I've been in roughly 6 months, is about 20-25 metres which is down the bottom of my garden.

For my mini-pc I had very good luck with https://www.driverscloud.com/ Haven't had any problems with it at all... But YMMV

Agree with above, if you're not opposed to getting one from China, you can go on aliexpress and find loads of systems based on n100 cpu, and is mini PC sized, which means no worrying about power supply etc, just pick one that you need, for example some come with 2 sata SSD/HDD slots... but bear in mind that those one can be much more expensive. My preference would be to go with a normal mini pc box, and use the USB for storage, along with an external USB drive, or possibly a HDD dock for example. If it's just for home usage, that should be plenty fast enough, I've used USB storage drives in the past with no problems at all. [edit] Just found this one for $106 freehttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005234874016.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.4.3358ojdZojdZ1u&gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.40050.354490.0&scm_id=1007.40050.354490.0&scm-url=1007.40050.354490.0&pvid=4b9e26d8-a7dc-4557-acc0-e2685a9746e4&_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40050.354490.0,pvid:4b9e26d8-a7dc-4557-acc0-e2685a9746e4,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238116%232002&pdp_npi=4%40dis!USD!270.26!102.70!!!270.26!102.70!%40211b613117086938887121125e8ef8!12000032308953602!rec!UK!882557326!&utparam-url=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller|query_from%3A

Go on Amazon to see if it's as cheap there. I went on Amazon.uk and can get the 240 Arbg for £62

I wouldn't bother.. but if you already have a mobo that's suitable then maybe $10.

Well you could always try one of these ways with linux https://office-watch.com/2023/microsoft-office-linux-four-ways/ But really if you need windows for certain apps, then stick with windows, although you might find that it's pretty slow, especially adding office on top of windows already bloated use of ram. So you might want to add more ram as 4gb is very low.

Depends on what you want to do with it really in some respects? If just general web browsing. media playing, media server etc, then can easily go with linux mint/pop-os/ubuntu for most things.