0xDiddi

No, it doesn't happen with the HDMI to HDMI cable, and I can't test with the DP to HDMI cable as it is too short to reach from my monitor to my pc.

I just got a new monitor today (which I don't think is at fault here, but let me know if you think it is part of the problem). It came with a DP to DP cable which is good, because I don't have any other compatible cables at hand. Note here: I have two other monitors which run just fine. One uses a HDMI to HDMI cable which I've had for years and the other uses an amazon basics DP to HDMI cable, also without issues. So at first, I connected the new monitor with the DP to DP cable that it came with, but soon noticed that it regularly goes black for a few seconds, and sometimes it even goes to sleep entirely. It seems to happen more in games than on the desktop, and more in some than in others, but I can't really play anything for very long before it becomes annoying. However when I connected the new monitor with my HDMI (to HDMI) cable I didn't seem to get these issues (aka in Elite: Dangerous I could go for a solid 15 minutes or so without blacks, whereas with the previous cable the monitor would go completely to sleep within the first 5 minutes tops). I can't test with the DP to HDMI cable because smart me ordered a 1 meter one for that, which is too short to reach the new monitor. My question now is: are these known symptoms of a faulty DP cable? As I'm fairly certain at this point that the answer is yes, I'll just order a new DP cable and see if that fixes it. I'll make sure to report back when I get it and have some results.

Oh yeah, I have upgraded my PC twice since I last updated my profile. I'm currently running a RTX 2080 and an 8700K, so I think I'm fine there. Sadly the monitor Luna linked doesn't ship to germany, and most other viotek monitors seem to ship from the same vendor, who also doesn't ship to germany. Interestingly on ebay, the official viotek store seems to ship to Germany, and there I found an open box deal, that for $360 base, even after $50 shipping and $100 import tax, converts to about 450€, which is 60€ cheaper than the Samsung from my original search.

As the title says, I'm planning to add a third monitor to the two 1080p60 monitors I already have. I am basically looking to upgrade in all dimensions and go to 1440p ultrawide and above 100hz refresh rate. After seeing the recent LTT video on repairing a monitor, I went on ebay to look around, but as there are very few broken monitors on offer here in Germany, I also started looking for working monitors. I am currently looking at these three monitors. The Acer Z35P is the one I found on ebay and may be able to get for 600€ (as opposed to ~770€ new). The Samsung and the Philips I can get from Mindfactory for 510€ and 545€. I guess now I'm asking if anyone has experience with any of these monitors (or other monitors that meet my aforementioned criteria). I have noticed that while on displayspecifications.com all three monitors are listed to have 100hz maximum refresh rate, on Mindfactory the Z35P has 120hz listed.

So I've just set up my NAS system with unRaid. I was quite surprised when I realised that it seems the intended way is to run it from my thumbdrive. It seems odd that it'd be intended to have a thumbdrive sticking in the back of your server at all times and would like to know if this is indeed the intended way to run unRaid or if I'm missing something. At that point I'd also like to know if the license key (when I buy one) is going to be fixed to the thumbdrive I activate it on or if the installation can be moved to a different drive at a later date.

Yeah, my main need (for now at least) is being able to access my files. However I'd like it to work as seamless as possible. I've made the experience that (at least on windows) mounting a ftp server doesn't allow you to edit files in place, but requires you to edit them elsewhere and upload it afterwards. My main machine is windows, so there's my priority, but I also use a macbook for university and work, so if there's something that allows such seamlessness on both platforms, that'd be great.

Another question: does someone have experience with the nas software of different brands and how they compare to each other in terms of features and/or usability?

Over the past few weeks I have looked at the hardware side of building a personal nas system, but so far I have graciously ignored the software side of things. Thus far, I have the impression that building a small server myself is quite a lot cheaper than buying a prebuilt nas system. This makes my question twofold: A) Given that I can vpn into my home network, what software exists for a diy solution (apart from ssh+scp) ? B) Is the software on prebuilt nas systems any good (i.e. does the software justify the higher price) ? Because most of what manufacturers advertise sounds like stuff I'll never use.

You can see your server region in the menu dropdown from the menu. I have no idea what could cause this, but maybe the servers you're usually connecting to are down for maintenance (which'd be weird), or your ISP is screwing with stuff. You could also check if the high ping is also present in other games or normal browsing. You can open the command prompt and execute ping www.google.com to see your ping to google.com

My mainboard is (or better: was) a MSI x58 pro. Even before I bought it (used), I knew from google, that its north bridge would get quite toasty, which is why I ordered a small fan with it that I zip-tied onto its heatsink. Nevertheless, with my baseclock overclock, temps around 85 C were common, but it worked flawlessly for over a year. Until now. I wasn't at home for ~2 months for an internship, but had my PC set up so I could boot and use it remotely (still worked fine). When I returned however, the pc was behaving really strangely1. At this point, I noticed that said fan had died and the nb heatsink would be really toasty to touch. Because of the wonky behaviour, I didn't turn my PC off for over a week (sleep mode was the best it got, hibernating didn't work). I finally had to turn it off, because I was going on vacation for another two weeks. When I got back, the only thing still working on the mainboard, was the standby-led. There is now no way (I could find) that turns the damn thing on, leading me to believe (together with the previous strange behaviour) it died. 1: See the spoiler foldout in this post for a lengthy explanation of the strange behaviour.

Frankly that's a good question. First off, I ruled out the PSU with ye olde paperclip test. Everything else I ruled out by the fact that before I went on vacation (during which the whole system was off), everything worked more or less fine1. 1: I have a whole separate post about that in my backpocket. Here it goes: (Note that it was written during my vacation when I didn't have access to the pc) --- Thanks for the feedback!

So my Motherboard just died. This wouldn't usually be a huge deal, but here's my problem: I'm running a Xeon x5650 on a MSI x58 pro with 16gb of DDR3. That stuff's ancient. However I only got this system a year ago, and with the current DDR4 prices, I'm not exactly enticed to go for current stuff. On the other hand, I'm also not enticed to mindlessly throw more money at ancient and used replacement parts that themselves might fail at any point and leave me at the same point as I'm in now. So here are some of my thoughts: I need a new mobo. That's out of the question Everything else still (probably) works, at least before I went to vacation for two weeks As DDR5 likely won't hit mainstream for another 2-3 years, that wouldn't be worrying either Final note from my side: money itself is no problem. It's just that I'm not enticed to throw most of my current system out. So, if you have any thoughts or recommendations, please let me know.

My dad just installed Malwarebytes and ran a scan and apart from some toolbars/adware, it came up with the following: Files: Generic.Malware/Suspicious, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\TASKS\OEM Generic.Malware/Suspicious, C:\WINDOWS\OEM.EXE Registry: Generic.Malware/Suspicious, HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENTVERSION\SCHEDULE\TASKCACHE\TREE\OEM Generic.Malware/Suspicious, HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENTVERSION\SCHEDULE\TASKCACHE\TASKS\{C12E9133-7F2C-4FD0-B43F-40C60529F1D7} Generic.Malware/Suspicious, HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CURRENTVERSION\SCHEDULE\TASKCACHE\BOOT\{C12E9133-7F2C-4FD0-B43F-40C60529F1D7} After moving all of these into quarantine, the office crashes were gone. [Note: this so far only applies to the crashes my dad had. If this is my friends' issue as well remains to be seen.] So this might just be a "regular" virus, but my speaking tinfoil hat whispers that (given the name "OEM.exe") it could also be Microsoft forcing you to update Windows (as in my friends' case) or buy an office License (as in my dads' case).

My dad and my friend have a problem where after like 5 minutes their Microsoft office would stop responding and eventually crash. The problem affects all MS office programs, but (as observed so far) no other applications. They both couldn't find anything on that issue online and as their specs are quite different, none of us has a clue as to what the cause might be. My dads' specs: My friends' specs: My specs (I don't experience any crashes):

No, I searched only active offers.

I would think so, as a mains powered unit has a ground line which (depending on the device quality) can avoid static charge.

Probably nobody will buy the parts at those prices, but thats what I found on ebay just now

I just looked at ebay and found some values: Processor: 30 to 60 pounds Mainboard: 120 to 220 pounds RAM: 30 to 60 pounds The price also depends on things like the product condition and whether or not you got the original box.

Putting the parts on ebay seems fine. If you want to get an idea of how much you can expect as pricing, try searching your parts on ebay (if you haven't done so already). Apart from that, your partpicker link is broken, you need the perma-link and not your current URL.

As I am far past my target budget and even over my absolute maximum (even with the non-great PSU), I have come to the following conclusion: In case I win the Polaris giveaway: Then I can invest the ~200€ I saved on the GPU into a quality PSU, as well as a better CPU (including appropriate Motherboard, etc). I then could buy within the next week or so. Otherwise I would have to wait (some months or so) until I have some more budget, and would then go with a gtx 1060 and an i5 skylake.

UPDATE: Changed the PSU from a "450W Corsair vs-series" to a "400W be quiet! system power 8". See the spreadsheet for details.

0. Intro I plan to build a new pc for my personal use. If this thread is in the wrong forum, feel free to move it to the right one, I just felt like putting it here because I would like to get some feedback from experienced pc builders. 1. Budget & Location I'm from Germany (€, "Euro") and my target budget is about 600€. But everything up to ~650€ is acceptable. I have a idea of what I want to get, linked in a google doc spreadsheet later this post. I'm planning to get my parts from the German store www.mindfactory.de as they offer some good deals (like no shipping costs when buying after midnight). 2. Aim I'm using my pc mostly for gaming, but also for programming and (some) video recording/editing. Gaming: Almost anything from (modded) Minecraft up to AAA titles like 'Rise of the Tomb Raider' and ArmA 3. The system should be able to deliver an at least decent quality for current as well as upcoming titles. Programming From simple stuff like MC-Mods to complex things like Unreal Engine 4. I'm also (sometimes) developing server stuff so running a VM (Virtualbox) should be possible. Recording/Editing I plan to create Videos (Let's plays, Tutorials,...) on the stuff mentioned above so doing this should be no problem. 3. Monitors I'm currently running two 1080p Monitors and one old 768p CRT (which will hopefully get replaced soon). An upgrade to 1440p is not planned (yet) but may be possible during the lifetime of this system. 4. Peripherals Peripherals are not needed as I already own a good keyboard and mouse. An OS is also no problem as I can get Windows for 10€ from Dreamspark. 5. Why are you upgrading? I'm not exactly planning to upgrade but to buy a completely new pc and then sell my old system because selling it "as is" should be more efficient than selling the old parts on their own. So I'm buying a new PC because my current setup (gtx 660 with amd fx 6100) isn't cutting it anymore in recent games and I thought now would be a good time as my budget reached a decent level and a bunch of new GPUs were released just recently. 6. Do you have an idea of what you want to get? My current idea for upgrading is this spreadsheet. Links to the individual components are in this sheet. The system looks as follows: GPU: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 CPU: Intel core i5 4460 RAM: 16GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 PSU: 450W Corsair VS-Series Motherboard: ASRock H81M-VGA4 HDD: 1TB Seagate Desktop Case: LC-Power 930W 7. When do you plan to buy? I'm at least waiting this week until the AMD Polaris giveaway has ended so that I don't end up with two RX 480s, but apart from that, I plan to buy as soon as possible. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on this build, please let me know.

1. Budget & Location I'm from Germany (€, "Euro") and my target budget is about 600€. But everything up to ~650€ is acceptable. I have a idea of what I want to get, linked in a google doc spreadsheet later this post. I'm planning to get my parts from the German store www.mindfactory.de as they offer some good deals (like no shipping costs when buying after midnight). 2. Aim I'm using my pc mostly for gaming, but also for programming and (some) video recording/editing. Gaming: Almost anything from (modded) Minecraft up to AAA titles like 'Rise of the Tomb Raider' and ArmA 3. The system should be able to deliver an at least decent quality for current as well as upcoming titles. Programming From simple stuff like MC-Mods to complex things like Unreal Engine 4. I'm also (sometimes) developing server stuff so running a VM (Virtualbox) should be possible. Recording/Editing I plan to create Videos (Let's plays, Tutorials,...) for the things mentioned above so doing this should be no problem. 3. Monitors I'm currently running two 1080p Monitors and one old 768p CRT (which will hopefully get replaced soon). An upgrade to 1440p is not planned (yet) but may be possible during the lifetime of this system. 4. Peripherals Peripherals are not needed as I already own a good keyboard and mouse. An OS is also no problem as I can get Windows for 10€ from Dreamspark. 5. Why are you upgrading? I'm not exactly planning to upgrade but to buy a completely new pc and then sell my old system because selling it "as is" should be more efficient than selling the old parts on their own. So I'm buying a new PC because my current setup (gtx 660 with amd fx 6100) isn't cutting it anymore in recent games and I thought now would be a good time as my budget reached a decent level and a bunch of new GPUs were released just recently. 6. My idea My current idea for upgrading is this spreadsheet. Links to the individual components are in this sheet. The system looks as follows: GPU: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 CPU: Intel core i5 4460 RAM: 16GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 PSU: 450W Corsair VS-Series Motherboard: ASRock H81M-VGA4 HDD: 1TB Seagate Desktop Case: LC-Power 930W 7. When do I plan to buy I'm at least waiting this week until the AMD Polaris giveaway has ended so that I don't end up with two RX 480s, but apart from that, I plan to buy as soon as possible. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on this build, please let me know.

I'm currently using an Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II so an AMD RX 480 would be a great upgrade. Apart from that I just planned to build a pc with an 480 anyway so saving some money is also great.