PineyCreek

Bump, any more thoughts from anyone? Turned it on again today, totally stable. What a strange thing...

Tried removing the RX 580 to see if the motherboard outputs work after that? I will say on my 1080Ti with my Asrock X370 Taichi I never see anything Asrock or BIOS-related (or anything) on my DisplayPort screen until Windows starts loading. To see the Asrock logo on power-on or do anything in BIOS, I have to be connected to the DVI port on the card. Just mentioning that as a datapoint; I don't have an APU nor a motherboard with display outputs.

Ok, I've never encountered a fix this silly, but I suppose it's not dumb if it works. Background: I have a computer built around an Asrock X370 Taichi board. It's been mostly rock solid save one thing: It had a couple of USB issues on one bank of ports on the back outside of warranty. No issues, port expanders (i.e. 4 to 1, etc.) exist. I believe that some of the USB ports are powered by a separate controller...but my most recent issue actually isn't related to that. I only provide that information for background. Scene: Recently, I updated the board from BIOS 3.3 (bridge) to 5.1 (effectively the next bridge) to verify I wasn't going to have major issues going to 7.0 and 7.1 to run a 5800X. After the update (and fixing settings again since it resets CMOS during this process), everything's as it was before, no issues. Cut to a week later roughly, tonight. I turn on my computer and note that my keyboard isn't working. I move the keyboard to a different port on the back, now we're good. Get into Win10 and note my external USB drives that are on a USB port expander (8 to 1) are offline. One of the USB controllers is listed in Device Manager as having problems/warning symbol. I restart that. The drives come up (File explorer opens a window for each drive as its default option on connection)...then go offline, then up, then down, etc. Now, nothing else is connected to that 8 to 1 save the external hard drives, and both of those are independently powered by their own wall-wart/power brick. The normal inclination would be to try connecting the external hard drives to a free port on the computer to see if they stay up...but this expander DOES have an extra power connection you can connect so devices on it can exceed the 500mA cap for regular USB. So I connect it to the expander...and my problems stop. To be clear, I connected the connection to the port expander. I did not and have not plug it into the wall or surge protector. All it has is a physical plug connected to the power port on the expander. The wall connection/wall-wart is sitting atop my desk next to the expander. ...uhhh, what? Everything is stable now. Now I'm starting to think that all my odd USB issues are related to this port expander, but the keyboard is plugged directly into the back. It had no power on boot, i.e. during POST, pre-Windows. I had no issues with BIOS updates, and I always keep my AMD chipset drivers updated. Could this oddity with the expander have still affected the bus and somehow caused JUST the keyboard to stop? Oh, and the keyboard? I tried moving it back to its original port on the back...and it works, no problem. Anyone else had a similar experience? Opinions? Educated guesses?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dwm/dwm-overview Basic desktop usage and display using hardware acceleration.

If you check the processes tab in task manager and scroll over to the GPU column, check util, sort by percentage, look at the engine column next to it to see if it shows 3D, etc. Here's an article talking about Task Manager's attempt to show usage. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/gpus-in-the-task-manager/ I.e. the 3D graph showing high usage doesn't really mean your GPU's under heavy load. This should be evident by nothing else agreeing with that, no GPU mem usage, low temps, etc.

It's an M.2 drive and the board supports PCI-E drives. Should work fine. Multiple other posts in LTT confirming it, ex. https://linustechtips.com/topic/735222-are-nvme-ssd-supported-by-z170-pro/ The BIOS menu screen shows advanced mode. F7 to get to it. https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/Z170-PRO-GAMING/E10719_Z170_PRO_GAMING_UM_V2_WEB.pdf Page 2-33 as they number it. Look under OnBoard Device configuration in the Advanced mode menu for it.

Just making sure, but does it show in the advanced mode that it is set to M.2? (M.2. and SATA Express SATA Mode Configuration)

I imagine that most motherboard manufacturers have already realized they have to beef up their manufacturing just like GPU partners realize the cards vs. gravity battle is growing increasingly ludicrous (hence the silly but almost necessary now supports, braces, etc.). Easy way to fix it though. Go back to the old days of it not being called a tower. Turn the chassis on its side. Probably wouldn't work all that well with most current towers though...metal bending, would probably short something. Definitely don't put a monitor on top of that flimsy sheet aluminum or tempered glass.

Though the first gen Steam Deck seems to have had an impressive amount of QC. I fully agree though...even though I still have first gen Ryzen. Usually holds true for just about any product, but doubly so for anything promising a grand new innovation (and absolutely anything in the auto industry).

I admit I've never built in a micro ATX case. Will a standard ATX PSU fit in that case? Edit: did a bit of research, answered my own question. Thanks for the build idea!

We had already planned to give the money to him via gift card as we weren't certain if he wanted a laptop or the desktop. As of now, we still don't know. It's idle fancy because he doesn't know we plan on helping him out. If he goes desktop, I'm thinking I'll buy the card outright or ask him what he wants to do at that point. He may have already made decisions on what he would want if he had the money; once he finds out he suddenly has the means he may ask for something more specific. More than likely though I would just add more funds on top for the GPU.

For those that enjoy tech drama, this is the best you can get for something that doesn't involve the entire Artesian story or anything involving Steve from GN being salty.

Yes, I understand. I mentioned the iGPU in passing that we COULD go that way with the limited budget, but I refused the very idea just based on the fact that the man wants to game too :P. I fully admit I didn't factor Maya in there, but my 3070 surprise after the fact would work then.

Budget (including currency): $900 (possibly not including GPU) Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Level design, probably light 3D modeling, coding/compiling, occasional gaming on a range of titles. To be blunt I'm not sure what programs he used in his courses, but Maya/3dsMax for examples. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Possible we can get a slight discount on CPU through friends. GPU could be provided separately. I am curious if it would be possible to get something mid-high range with space to grow for $900 with 32GB RAM and a decent GPU (though I'm laughing just thinking about the prices of GPUs with the upcoming 4k series cards). Honestly haven't even factored the monitor into the price, but a decent monitor is usually not insane unless you need full G-Sync, etc. Background if interested: We have a friend that is a recent grad with a B.S. in CS on an education track/program that focused in game design. He is still facing issues finding entry-level employment with a reliable company in the gaming space, a fair number of applications falling through, but he's still trying rather hard. Originally this was meant to be a congratulations gift (i.e. hooray, you got a job) but now it's more of an encouragement and something to keep his university training fresh, maybe brush up a portfolio of works to present to potential employers and/or develop his own indie game. He's expressed interest in building a desktop himself as his personal computers have always been laptops but he needs more power than a budget laptop for development, which is another reason we thought it'd be nice to try and toss some funds together for the purpose of a BIY desktop PC. Figure that a decent laptop would work, but if we're aiming for letting him build the system himself with $900 (what we've got so far), something like this minus the GPU. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/y4btH2 Maybe I'd surprise him with a $500 3070 or 6700XT afterwards. I'm somewhat against a 2k series (1st gen of new tech is usually lackluster, and the ray-tracing/DLSS of the 2k series vs. 3k series shows). An iGPU might be enough for a low-end indie title, but I'd feel like I'd done him a disservice, especially as a gamer. We could shave down things like M.2 SSD to SATA 2.5", X570 -> B550, things like that, but I want to make certain he has enough to grow into (and also, he's a gamer, so something better than a potato). I'm looking for opinions, alternative builds, etc. A little bit over's fine too. If worst comes to worst, we'll give him the funds via gift card and provide all these suggestions directly. Also, hey, any entry-level/new-grad game design job leads would also be appreciated.

Odd...my 960 M.2 lets me view the SMART details. Doubt a firmware update would help...probably wouldn't want to try until you had a clone/backup anyway. The SMART output on Samsung Magician gives a bit more info on each variable. Not sure if that's a Admin thing or not available on 970. My guess is that it's marked bad specifically because you're above its critical threshold for available spare blocks. I've tried finding firmware details (i.e. what do the individual firmware versions fix) but I can't find them...and all firmware updates are done through the Magician software. If it's failing because it has no more spare blocks though, probably hardware. I'd ping Samsung directly and see what they said, but I'd still take a backup/clone ASAP.

What does the Samsung-specific software Magician say? Side note: If you're within 5 years, you're within warranty. https://semiconductor.samsung.com/resources/data-sheet/Samsung_NVMe_SSD_970_EVO_Plus_Data_Sheet_Rev.3.0.pdf Not sure if this is you or not, but someone else with similar issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/xggxjc/failed_samsung_ssd_970_evo_plus_1tb/ Considering the circumstances on other reports sound the same, I'd say probably? RO mode, clone, warranty if you can. Most bad 970 reports I can find seems to point to running out of spare blocks.

Shouldn't be a problem unless the PSU doesn't work on your voltage/frequency. Edit: Looks like you're pretty much the same as the US there. No worries.

When it's peaking to 100% have you checked the task manager or resource monitor to see what's pegging the CPU?

Those boards have LED diagnostics I think. See searching for that and observing the board when it's started helps. Ex. https://manualsdump.com/en/manuals/intel-s5000psl-s5000xsl/110436/108 Also, considering what you're planning on using it for, why not some flavor of Linux?

PSU? When it locks have you tried Win + Ctrl + Shift + B to reset the display drivers?

Sorry I haven't responded in some time; I haven't been on the site in a while. Based on it behaving the same in BIOS, I agree that it's definitely a hardware issue. Only other thing I can suggest is get someone else to disassemble/repair it or take off that backplate. Usually there's some type of cosmetic covering and screws around the bezel somewhere. Considering it was fine until you connected it to your TV, it might be the GPU and not the display...in which case I think you would be replacing the system board. Could you test with an external monitor, something other than the TV?

https://parts.hp.com/hppartsIGSO/PartsGuider.aspx?mscssid=476A0947897949C1BBC616E45E314509

You've already tried the few hardware things I can think off. Various sites suggest turning off anti-aliasing to see if it behaves better and turn off ShadowPlay. There's a registry fix that seems to be an option listed in multiple sites as well. If you're using DirectX 11 and the game has an option to use DX9, does it behave better if you use that? DXGI is used by DX10, 11 and 12, so theoretically if that's the only problem you shouldn't have an issue on DX9 I'm thinking, but I'm just hypothesizing here.

Just going to shotgun a bunch of ideas: Considering the backlight works without issue, it isn't likely to be the inverter. Considering it spontaneously started happening it likely isn't cable end unless (very unlikely) the cable somehow partially disconnected just right. (I saw a lot of odd issues working escalations at a company that rhymes with Smell) Any chance the cable is damaged near the hinges? Does the screen display behave differently if you move the display hinge/position? Any change if you lightly tap on the back cover starting from where the cable enters the back area? Moderately risky depending on how the display portion is constructed, but if you pop off the backing of the display area, Also, randomly stupid thing to try to be super sure it's not somehow software related, but if you go into the BIOS, does it also cut off? While it's happening in windows, does resetting the graphics driver make it behave differently? (Win + Ctrl + Shift + B).

Tried reseating the display cable (from MB to display)?