ProjectBox153

No, not at all. My FreeNAS rig is an old Dell OptiPlex that's nearly 14 years old. Your system is WAY more than enough for a NAS. Do you have a spare USB flash drive handy that you could install the OS onto? Or is the Samsung SSD just a spare drive? Also, I'd recommend pulling the GPU out unless you plan to use it for something. Otherwise your iGPU is fine.

It's a hardware limitation. The WR841HP only has 10/100 ethernet ports, so you aren't going to be able to configure a gigabit link between the two. You'll have to upgrade the AP.

Interesting, thanks for the info. Trust me, I know that wattage is in no way indicative of quality. I rarely buy PSUs (the last one I bought was in 2019), and they aren't something I'm super interested in usually, so I don't know what all the current models are and everything. This system is not at all likely to get a higher end GPU anytime soon. I have a Radeon R9 270 that I'd like to use, but the card is dead and I don't think it'll be fixable right now. In the future I might put my RX 570 4GB into this system if I upgrade from it as my main GPU, but that card isn't very power hungry. My current main machine only has a 450W PSU for the 570 and a Ryzen 7, and it has absolutely no issues.

The 2012 MBPs were known to have bad HDD cables, and they can cause issues like this. I'd recommend replacing the cable and see if that helps. As for the keyboard issue: did you have anything plugged into a USB port or connected through Bluetooth?

Honestly not surprised at all. These MacBook Pros are great when they work, but they're plagued with issues like this and the keyboards. But, Apple is Apple and Apple will continue to be Apple. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this happens again in the future.

I get that it's overkill - that wasn't my question. I was wondering if it's actually a decent PSU.

The driver wouldn't affect the POST screen too. That's not the issue for OP.

I've been looking at the EVGA 700 BQ lately. I need a new PSU for a secondary machine I have to replace the unit I'm using temporarily. It's not a very power hungry machine, and the PSU I have right now works fine, but it's not technically ATX and doesn't fit in the case, hence the need for a new one. I'll list the specs below for reference. I know 700W is way more than I need, but I'd like something that has some headroom for expansion as well as something that I can move forward to a new machine down the line (it'll be a couple years until I upgrade this machine). So, my question is: is the 700 BQ decent for what I need? Here's the specs of the machine in question: ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 ATX motherboard Intel Core i7-2600 (4C/8T, stock) 16GB DDR3 1600MHz Zotac GTX 550 Ti AMP! 1GB GPU Intel stock cooler 2 case fans (might add more later, the case is new and I still need to test thermals) 2 DVD-RW drives 1 SSD, I might add a mechanical hard drive later on The current PSU is an old Dell 750W unit that is ATX in every way except height. It's too tall to fit in most standard cases as it was designed for a custom Dell XPS case originally. Other than that it's completely standard.

Do you have any other machines you could try it in? I doubt it's your machine causing the issue, but it would be good to confirm that. From what you've already tested it does look like a bad GPU though.

What motherboard are you using? You said the BIOS tells you it has 4 cores, but are 2 of them disabled? Sometimes you can disable one or more cores in a system.

Yeah, I don't know what's up with their 2012 MBP. Those shipped with 4GB of RAM and 500GB mechanical hard drives, and they sold extremely well. I still see loads of them in use, and I've even serviced some myself. They're usually alright with Catalina on the stock drives. With an SSD they're even better.

It should work perfectly fine. Just make sure the standoffs are installed in the right spots (they should already be) and you'll be good to go. I'd be interested in seeing a picture of the end result. I love older cases like that. I don't have any full towers right now, but I've been keeping an eye out.

It's not the most ideal thing in the world for the batteries in the UPS, but it isn't too bad either. Basically the printer is causing the line voltage to dip enough for the UPS to switch over to the battery, and because that power event only lasts for a short burst it switches back over to line power. The UPS is trying to keep the voltage stable enough for your devices.

The whole point of this post was that Apple has only just now stopped offering hardware service for the 2012 13" Retina MBP. Software support ended with macOS Catalina. That means Apple offered 8 years of hardware service, and while a good chunk of that was out of pocket service at least they still offered it on their older machines.

Exactly. My point wasn't "hey look, another old MacBook is now obsolete", my point was that it's the first Retina 13" model to be obsolete. Apple does do a good job supporting their older products.

I don't recall saying that Windows 10 ran better on my Pentium M laptop than Windows XP (the stock OS) or Vista did. Sure, it's not fast, but it did work well. As for your issues with Catalina: I have no clue why you'd have so many problems. Apple officially supported Catalina on your machine, and many people are running Catalina on those MacBook Pros without SSDs. Have you done a fresh installation? There shouldn't be things in the background keeping the CPU pinned.

As someone who has run Windows 10 on a Pentium M laptop from 2005 I can say it actually runs alright.

Who says that?

Normally I wouldn't have cared, but this was the first 13" Retina model ever made. It was the first in the current era of Retina MacBooks. Kind of important in the history of the MacBook Pro. I never said it wasn't unsupported by macOS. I said it's now not supported by Apple at all, even for hardware repairs. That's a different thing.

Putting this at the top because some people are missing the point of this post: If this was any other Retina MacBook I wouldn't have even cared. This happens to be the first 13" Retina model though, so that's why I felt like writing something about it. This MacBook changed the field for the 13" MacBook Pro, and we still have the Retina display today. It's now in all of the 13" laptops that Apple offers. Summary Released in October of 2012, the 13" Retina MacBook Pro brought some great improvements to the 13" MacBook Pro. It also brought some controversial changes to the smaller MacBook Pro that many people still dislike today. However, after more than 8 years since being introduced, the Late 2012 13" Retina MacBook Pro has been classified as 'obsolete' meaning Apple will no longer offer any hardware service for the device. Quotes My thoughts Personally I'm not surprised at all given how Apple handles their older devices. This move serves as a reminder for how long the Retina MacBook Pros have been out, and just how much they've progressed. They were definitely controversial when first released. The Retina models didn't have batteries that were officially user replaceable, and more importantly (for lots of people) is the lack of RAM slots. The RAM for the computer is soldered to the logic board, something that continues to this day. The computer also moved to flash storage (mechanical drives were not an option), and the drives were fast but also proprietary. Thankfully third party options became available to allow owners to upgrade their SSDs down the line. The Mid 2017 13" MacBook Pro base model (non-Touch Bar) was the last to include removable storage. Sources MacRumors Article

This is pointless IMO. Sometimes seeing a like:dislike ratio is helpful to understanding if a video is going to be useful or not, especially when it comes to video tutorials of various things.