Ser James Acinonyx of Compactis

Getting a fresh perspective is helpful.

I'll give it some thought. Thanks for the tip, though.

Hmm... that is interesting. From what I've gathered you can use the same Pro license to fresh install when you do a hardware upgrade. Would Edu version have the same hardware upgrade compatibility that Pro has? Or is it more restrictive, since I read it can only be installed on one machine? And by hardware upgrade I'm referring to things like motherboard, not just GPU or CPU.

Well the license is several years old, and on onthehub.com it says, quote: "* These products and/or offers are not for the general public. You may be requested to provide proof of academic or organizational affiliation prior to order or participation." I suspect I might get trouble with activation (or potential deactivation) if I am caught activating a several years old license when I no longer attend that school. If that was not a factor, I would've considered ordering an SSD already and try installing it.

It'll be a compatibility patch at the very least, and that's all I'm really after.

Never called it an upgrade, and it was an SSD. Reinstalled Win8 and it was all smooth sailing again.

Alright, I will keep that in mind, and mull it over some more. Thank you.

Correct me if I misunderstand this, I am just trying to learn it. But does it mean I could do a fresh Win10 install on a new SSD and put in the Win8 key I'm currently using? I know it sounds bonkers, but again, just trying to understand. My dad had his laptop severely slowed down when the Win10 update was forced onto his Win8 (it kept all the files and everything, the machine was just slowed down), so I'm hesitant to "update" on top of my existing OS.

As the list of features I miss out on without the dreaded Windows 10 slowly becomes longer, I have begun considering going for the conversion. However, I realized today that the license I have saved for a Win10 installation is apparently an Education license, so I realize that's not going to work. And so I wonder, is it still possible to activate a Windows 10 installation with a Windows 8 license? I have searched around on the web, but most of what I found was either four years old or inconclusive. Any requirement to connect the Win 8 license to a Microsoft account, doing a fresh install on a new SSD or other matters are okay with me, I am just asking whether I need to buy a new license or not. Thanks in advance for any helpful answers.

I'm pretty sure it is. I haven't tested every single game I own, just did a quick test with an extreme shader on Minecraft and a voxel load test on Space Engineers, the latter being the most intense (occasionally going between 70 and 95%, though most of the time staying in the 60s). From what I remember GPU usage is considerably lower on all other games I play.

So I've been rocking a more than decent rig for a few years now, and while it handles most tasks without grudgeworthy issue, I do notice dips in performance on certain games. And with those dips combined with the news on newer hardware, I have been thinking about what upgrade would be sensible. Now before I ask my questions, let me get a few comments and questions out of the way: 1) Yes, the combination of parts is not ideal. I was not tech savvy when I first built the PC, so my uncle just put together a list of parts for a 'low to middle'-budget machine and I ordered the parts trusting him. Later I've done a CPU and GPU upgrade due to a christmas sale some years ago. 2) I don't immediately plan to do any upgrade due to financial inadequacy (on my last year of studying for my certificate, aim to get a job by autumn), so I'm sure new hardware will arrive on the scene before I get to such point. I am merely asking for suggestions and advice on what not to prioritize. So, with that said: My rig is described in detail in my signature and/or my profile, but the gist of it is: i5-6600K MSI B150 PC Mate GTX 1070 FTW Crucial BX200 240GB SATA SSD Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD 7200RPM With the price-performance value of Ryzen, I was pondering whether I should transition to that platform, as it is considerably newer than my Skylake processor. The GPU usage rarely reaches 100%, so I'm led to believe CPU is of higher priority. Hoping for a continuing decline in SSD pricing, I may opt to get a drive of that type (whether SATA or M.2) for the games that load the slowest (like Space Engineers and GTA V). Any input is welcome as long as it's not just 'You're dumb and your PC is dumb' and similar.

So I was watching some demos online on how people have connected their Corsair HD120/HD140 RGB fan hub to an Arduino board and added their own codes for custom lighting patterns. Now I recently received an Arduino start kit for my birthday (to do various projects with, not necessarily RGB related), and I have the HD120 RGB 3-fan kit with the whole shabang installed in my rig, and I was thinking about trying this myself. In two of the videos I've seen: Vid1 and Vid2 it looks like they have the right plug to connect in the remote port of the hub. To me this would mean they either cut the wires for the remote and used that, or got a plug from somewhere else. I was wondering if anyone knew where I could get a plug like that with wires on (or spare remote), or if I will have to cut the cable myself. I have soldering tools, so I can fairly easily splice on some sort of hot-swap connectors on the cut ends, but other solutions would be preferable if possible.

Alright, I've done some more tweaking, and I managed to get a stable 2101MHz over three loops of Valley, with no artifacts, with an offset of +135MHz. Due to a minor hiccup with drivers earlier, whatever fan curve I had was lost, so the fans ramped up to an audible 50%, with temps of right below 60C. I will consider this a successful OC, for now at least. My only minor gripe is the sound level of the fans, but that could be remedied by tweaking the fan curve at the cost of slightly higher thermals (or if I win the lottery I might watercool the darn thing, lololol).

I had more time before I had to go than I thought, so I took a new benchmark. I did get some artifacts, so I dialled back to 125MHz offset, and got a stable 2088MHz over three loops of Valley with no noticeable artifacts. Thinking of going up in increments of 5MHz until I get artifacts again and then fall back one step to verify a stable, artifact-less clock offset.