*Chazz

I hope I don't ruffle any feathers by kind of "reviving" this thread. I just wanted to update what happened for those who may come across this post interested in learning about my mistake. I was able to take my components into a hardware shop and have them test my components(They did it for free! Real nice guys). Long story short the mother board and the RAM were toast. The CPU was fine and the most surprising of all, the GTX 1060 survived the negligent abuse. After plugging it in restarting the system a few times it finally put up a screen on a barebones driver. We then installed the drivers and it straightened out and now works perfectly fine (Maybe long term damage has been done but that's speculation at this point.) Thanks for your help. I certainly learned a lot!

I have a buddy of mine running the following specs: Gtx 750ti Asrock z75 pro3 i5-3470 8gb ram DDR3 gskill ripjaw His computer has been blue screening lately seemingly regardless of the different hard drives that have been placed in his system. Replacing them did alleviated the symptoms for period of time with only the blue screens to return later. He outlines his process below: Was running several years with 1tb hdd (wd black) until it began crashing suggesting the to hdd needed to be replaced(blue screens and crashes to desktop with increasing frequency) Peeled a kingston 250gb ssd from a laptop to put in the desktop as a temporary solution. Worked fine (although I may remember one or two random blue screens) for several months. Got a 1tb wd blue ssd and did a fresh install of windows to replace 250gb. The 1tb worked for 1 week, then blue screens, crashes to desktop, crashes while launching applications, and random chrome "aw snaps". Crashes were indiscriminate, happening on a blank desktop, or in the middle of a game. Things worsened until virtually nothing would launch. Put back in previously mentioned kingston 250gb ssd in desktop without any changes to it's data, and desktop worked just fine, for 1 week, then blue screens and crashing applications. Ran a windows RAM diagnostic -- no errors TLDR; Computer has been been blue screening lately seemingly regardless of the different hard drives that have been placed in his system. Replacing them did alleviated the symptoms for period of time with only the blue screens to return later. Some Questions: Is there a chance the two SSD's could be bad, or have been damaged by his old system? How can we or is there a way go about diagnosing the source of the issue without the need for equivalent hardware to swap with? The hardware is fairly old so I suspect that its likely the mother board or the maybe the RAM? Which may be more likely to go bad: the RAM or the Motherboard? What do you think is likely the issue responsible for the blue screens? Many thanks for the help.

Yah that makes sense now. Thanks for the insight.

Been looking into replacing my current wifi card. Any ways after digging around and reading some reviews I didn't like the how many wifi pcie adapters required you to use a usb header on your mother board. I ended up going with this --> https://www.newegg.com/intel-wi-fi-6-ax200/p/N82E16833106102 as I liked the fact that it came straight from intel and was intended for a PC. Reading enough amazon reviews gets you antsy about stuff especially when it appears to be from some shady manufacture overseas. I was short sighted and it's obviously not compatible with my mother board (ASRock B450 Pro). I am now aware of the different M.2 slots and have also learned that there really are no slick adapters for these wifi cards. Unlike the M.2 to mini pcie (https://www.amazon.com/M-2-PCIe-Converter-Bluetooth-2010-2016/dp/B083YW3RM3/ref=sr_1_17?dchild=1&keywords=m.2+ngff+wifi+to+mini+pcie&qid=1603331349&sr=8-17). On the newegg's website it says in poor English it sates in the description "Modules uses an M.2 connector and a standard Key A or E socket. Adapters are available for sales for use with motherboards that don’t have Key A or E sockets." These adapters seem to be tough to come even on newegg. They do have the pcie adapters where you simply drop in your wifi card but they include hardware that I already own such as the antennas. (https://www.amazon.com/Deal4GO-Wireless-Adapter-Desktop-Converter/dp/B08BWXNXFS/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=wifi+card+to+pcie+adapter&qid=1603326540&sr=8-9). My hope was to find a solution that didn't require me to run Bluetooth from a usb header but I guess that is just the way it is when it comes to M.2 Key A + E slots and normal pcie slots. There is just something about them that isn't compatible. So it looks like I will be returning what I purchased and going with a more conventional solution. It looks like I will be going with this solution here -> https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Wireless-AX200NGW-802-11ax-Computer/dp/B086V3KS9F/ref=sr_1_21_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=tp+link+pcie+wifi+card&qid=1603329406&sr=8-21-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzUURSMEVLWktBSlAxJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNzI2OTExM1BSUTQ4VTdHSDNOQyZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMjU5NDk4M1QyN0s1T1dSRjBEWCZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2J0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU= It's Wifi 6 and I can drop in an updated card in the future if that ever becomes warranted. It also doesn't have those ridiculous and outlandish "gameresk" heat sinks that are completely unnecessary in my book. I am curious if there is such need but to me its like placing a heat spreader on your ram... completely unnecessary as ram produces little heat. Maybe for increased range but your also limited by your router's sensitivity and and power. Further, I recon that its the exception for such ranged hardware needed than really necessary. TL;DR: are there M.2 Key A+E to PCIE 4x adapters on the market that I simply haven't been able to find?

True and good point. I've never really considered paying attention to what the specific rails can supply. However, it did come out of a another pre built gaming rig running a gtx 1660. I figured that was enough to suggested that it would be fine.

I'd check the psu, but to answer your question again. I did add in a small edit that maybe wasn't there maybe you didn't read. Regardless I knew I was taking a bit of a risk but so far its worked great. Power supplies are tuff to test short of bringing a rig in and dropping it in. We met and a Mc D's parking lot. I did want to short the start up pin on the psu and get a volt meter out and measure the voltages but my volt meter was in another vehicle. But that's still not fool proof however as some issues may only show when a load is applied. So far so good though. The craziest thing I've done is hook up 500W inverter to my car bat with my PC in the back seat of the car to test a gpu (it was an rx 560 and low power draw rig but still made the inverter start squealing its low battery warning from the voltage drop on the car battery with the running of a game!)

And what unit is that exactly? wattage has nothing to do with quality. It came out of a HP OMEN prebuilt desktop. Apparently the guy got a new case and I think that the hp power supply it came with didn't work for him for an interesting reason. He didn't tell me that upfront, but the 6 pin barely reached the GPU which would have been a real headache (and is likely why he got rid of it). It says "bronze" certified and was only about 2 months old (which seemed probable since the internals were relatively dust free). I after I made an offer for $20 he met me in between with $25 which I felt was a good deal. There is no physical switch on it, but its certainly a step up from the 300W gray box PSU that was all ready in my bros rig.

I have a younger brother running an LGA1155 mother board ---> https://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Z75-CrossFireX-Motherboard-PRO3/dp/B007P709YI He recently got a 1060 and I helped grab a used but relatively new 500W PSU for $25. Now his current CPU is a i3 3220 and it manages with games like War Thunder on max settings with about 70 fps and usage of about 60%. However, in a game like Space Engineers which can a be a cpu intensive game when large structures are built, the cpu chugs and gets really bogged down and frame rates drop. I have brother as well that currently is using a i5 3470, and despite being an 8 year processor (based on release date) it holds up with Space Engineers. After a quick browse on ebay these things are silly cheap right now running for about $35 used on ebay. However, I wanted to stop and ask if there are any other notable cpu's that may perform even better. I have done a little bit of digging --> https://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/Socket 1155 (LGA1155).html and have found the i5 3570 with a higher clock speed for about $40 on ebay, as well as the i7 3770 which features hyper threading however they are thrown around for $80 on ebay. I reckon the i5 3570 will be just fine for him. But I am curious if you guys might be aware of any other notable cpu's that might be compatible. TLDR: What's the best used cpu that will work in a LGA1155 socket for some low budget but acceptable gaming?

Back with more news and questions of course. I have acquired a new mother board and have finished installing it in the case. I did try to test to see if the system powered up before installing it in the case. It worked did not post however or get any monitor response. I carried on though thinking that it may need to run video through the GPU rather. Now that everything is assembled the system doesn't post nor is there any signal detected by the monitor. I have jumped around from DVI to HDMI with the graphics card, and without. The fans spin up for about a minute, then stop and spin up again making me thing that its in a boot loop. My conclusion for now is that I may have zapped my CPU as well sadly. Now my understanding of how sensitive the CPU is to electrical carelessness is limited. I was curious if you guys had any additional insights on how likely it is that the CPU is really damaged. I wouldn't be surprised honestly. I've checked RAM mounting, power cables, and was careful about mounting it as well (All though I have a pretty good black eye on my track record now though). I'll keep reviewing and diagnosing. At this point I might pick up a new CPU from ebay or newegg. Maybe take a step down to a 2200g as I am not much of a power user and I don't have a lot cash to throw around. As well, the 4000 series might be worth holding out for possibly. TL;DR I bricked my mother board with some poor assumptions on the standardization of power supply plugs. I have a new motherboard and it refuses to post or show anything on the monitor but will cycle the fans on and off after about a minute of spinning. How certain can I be that the CPU was actually damaged?

Time for an update. I have pulled my PC apart and removed the CMOS battery to reset the bios. No response is still the result sadly. However I think I have figured out what happened and yes, I was an idiot. Now I'd like to reveal more information to my initial endeavor of attempting to power the 1060. I considered it irrelevant as I was initially confident that my setup was correct. Since I had been running a 1050 I had no additional power being supplied of course. I figured that my power supply would have the cable readily available. This turned out to not be the case as I found out that it is a modular power supply and I had obviously left the unnecessary cables in the power supply box which I cannot find at this time. I then determined that I could make my own 6 pin connector... I realized that I could be getting into dicey territory especially if I get wires backwards. I have included pictures of the fabricated connector made from a broken power supplies 6 pin connectors and soldered together (It looks pretty jenk). I have triple checked that all the wires run to the correct port and have googled the voltage layout. Its pretty straight forward. Grounds are always near the latch, and 12v are furthest away. Now here is where I think I went wrong, the power supply likely came with an 8 pin connector to interface with the port labeled "6+2 PCIe & 4+4 CPU". After doing some additional research its now obvious this is the intended port to be used. In my zealous urge to power up the system, I assumed that the other 2x6 connectors would suffice and that they should be set up with the 3x12v wire and 3x ground configuration. After probing the powersupply with volt meter, it turns out that these unlabeled 2x6 ports are additional peripheral and sata connections. These have a completely different layout and apply voltage in the wrong places... So now I get to figure out how much damage I did. Fingers crossed it was just the mother board, but I would say there's a good chance that I owe my brother a GPU... I also found this article from gamer's nexus shedding light on the subject. Moral of the story, more research and simply being patient could have saved me a tremendous amount trouble. https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2702-psa-on-mixing-modular-psu-cables-dont-do-it

My brother picked up a GTX 1060 recently. He is still getting the rest of his build together and I offered to run it my PC for funnzies. My rig is as follows, CPU: 2600 GPU: 1050 RAM: 16Gb MB: ASRock AB350M AM4 AMD Promontory B350 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard --> https://www.newegg.com/asrock-ab350m/p/N82E16813157763 SSD: Crucial 1 Tb PSU: CX450M Obviously I have been running on a low end GPU for a while with the intent to upgrade when the stars aligned, but I was itching to give a it try. Anyways, the problems started when I swapped out the GPU's and the system failed to power on. I saw some LED lights on the GPU light up but the only response I could get out of it was the fans spinning for a brief moment. I didn't smell any smoke (for-shadowing). I checked to make sure it was seated properly, and I switched the 1050 back in and the system failed to respond to the power button being pushed. Now while this was occurring I didn't realize that I had left the PSU switch in the "ON" position with it plugged into the wall. I checked that the power button headers were still plugged and found them to be loose actually. That didn't fix the issue. I also verified that the power button switch worked and tried jumping the power pins as well with no response. I sat there in disappointment trying to find that quick simple thing I did wrong to no avail. I also verified that the PSU still worked as well by connecting the "green" wire to ground. Later after taking a break getting some food I messed with the 24 pin connector. I unplugged it and re-plugged it in to see a brief jump in the fans, and then yes, I smelled some magic smoke and saw a tinge of it in the air. I could not source where it had come from. I think I sealed the deal with my negligence a second time as the PSU was on in fact... In conclusion, I think I have damaged my mother board. Hopefully, nothing else. I wanted to hear what you guys have experienced and if you have ever removed a GPU with the PSU switch on or can cast confidence in my diagnosis. I think my negligence stemmed from feeling comfortable in thinking I knew what I was doing. I have been watching LTT for years now and I have seen them swap cards in and out like its nothing with out ever hearing of such a mistake causing damage to a system. In my mind I believed that the systems today are fairly robust and you'd have to hot swap with the PC powered up (I think I can even remember Linus yanking a gpu out at one time with the PC powered up, but I digress). If I am and idiot feel free to say it, and hopefully this thread will serve as reminder to everyone to switch off and unplug everything when swapping components out.

HI everyone, Just curious about the website user bench mark. --> https://www.userbenchmark.com/ I have used it a lot lately to gauge how CPU's perform compared to one another and GPU's. Do you guys find it to be accurate in the performance reports/comparisons it does? What other websites do you prefer? Thanks.

Just seeing if there are any serious points I haven't considered is all. Its easy to make an uniformed decision.

Yah, Just chasing my tail around the bush really.

Sorry mate, I'll make sure browse around next time a bit more.