Lunaak

Hey all, So I've been using a RTX 2070 Founders Edition card for a few months now just fine, but things have quickly gone south. I was playing the FFXIV Shadowbringers early access all Friday without issue, but I started to notice potential artifacts and a frequent blinking/flickering on the whole screen every few seconds last night. The game crashed not long after with a "Fatal DirectX error", but booted back in just fine. Now, firing up the game (or any game) this morning results in a crash about 20-30 seconds in. It happened with FFXIV, the game's benchmark, and Overwatch the moment I reached the character select screen. it's tough to get temp readings when games don't last long, but they seem fine for my confined Node 202 case. My GPU would usually hold at 80c when gaming just fine, but I can't play long enough to get it to heat up now (it won't go over 55). CPU is around 60-70. Not sure if it's worth mentioning my GPU goes far above its rated boost all the way to 1905MHz, but I assume this is just because it has the temp headroom before crashing. I've updated to the latest Nvidia drivers, but nothing has changed. I'm wondering whether it could be a power delivery issue or whether my RTX 2070 is just about to join the rest of the RMA pile. Specs: Gigabyte GA-AB350 Gaming WIFI Ryzen 5 1500X RTX 2070 Founders Edition 32GB Crucial Ballistics 2666Mhz DDR4 memory Fractal Design Node 202 Integra 450w PSU Windows 10 64-bit Any help would be greatly appreciated! The Shadowbringers story is so damn good and I don't want to have to play the rest on my crappy laptop. Thanks! EDIT: I've uploaded a camera video of the artifacts in-game and uploaded the single-frame screencaps to Imgur. Don't watch it if you don't want FFXIV: Shadowbringers spoiled for you. I lowered the core clock through MSI Afterburner to avoid the 1905MHz boost it's reaching. I feel it got a little further before crashing, but it still happened after plenty of artifacts. I've also DDU'd the drivers in safe mode and used May's WHQL drivers in their place - no change. I can say it didn't happen when running a 2D sprite-based game like Recetear, though I didn't test for long. I'd love for this to just be a PSU issue, but I have no way of testing right now. Can't even get an SFX replaced on a Sunday around here. The card itself was pre-owned (boxed) from an eBay seller. Wonder whether to take it up with him or just try to get the thing RMA'd by Nvidia if it comes to it.

Just going to update this. I found a local office clearance dealer who gladly brought both the Aeron and Humanscale Freedom Headrest for me to try out. Was originally quoted £300 for the leather Humanscale, but he brought a black fabric one and dropped to £250. Pretty happy with it so far. Can't quite find a position that doesn't hurt my ass after a few hours yet, but it's certainly helping my spine/posture. Thanks for all the help!

Thanks for this. Looks like I'll be waiting a little while longer until I can get this doozy. Can hardly fault what appears to be god's gift to asses everywhere. If the aeron doesn't satisfy me, clearly nothing else will.

That seems to be the going recommendation. I don't know how I'd feel spending that much on a chair no matter when I manage to do it, but could you direct me to some pointers about the different sizes of that chair? I'm seeing a few used/refurbished around the web, but they're mentioning A or B sizes. Given that 18 year life you're talking about, I imagine even a used one at half price is a good deal. Sooner the better when it comes to fixing the posture issues I'm getting from my current chair, right?

Well they SAY that, but what really makes them great for gaming over another comfortable chair? Way I see it they're just "gaming" because they look like a seat from an expensive car. Just a looks thing. It's just far easier to find recommendations for/against these well marketed "gaming" chairs over yet another seemingly random office chair that may or may not be far comfier in the long run, you know? And as for retail, yeah we don't have much in terms of that in the UK. Most Staples stores didn't last long when they tried to open up over here, and a stockist like Overclockers only have 1 actual retail location in the entire country.

No way for me to try any of these out. UK has very few retail spaces for stuff like this. IKEA would be the only option, and none of their chairs are worth looking at from what I can gather

So after getting baited yet again by a cheap reclining seat on eBay I'm finally ready to think about spending more than £200 on an office/gaming chair. After being uncomfortable in my current chair for months, I finally figured out that it's probably because its max seat height of about 50-51cm is around the minimum height of most other chairs on the market. This means my arms are constantly at a terrible angle when using my keyboard/mouse on a standard IKEA linnmon desk, and the high (unadjustable) armrests can never really reach desk height. So I've spent my Sunday looking at new chairs. I don't have the cash to drop on a Hermann Miller of any kind. These "gaming" chairs are actually starting to look like a solid investment, but I need your suggestions to guide me in the right direction. I like high backs and welcome a place to rest my head, and armrests seem like a great idea. But I'm not sold on the look of these gaming chairs at all. Luckily, I found most of those beneficial features on this rather generic Ergonomic Mesh Executive Chair by Home and Haus on Wayfair for half off its apparent £300 price tag. Now, I can knock another £15 off that with a discount code, but now I really need to figure out whether something like this mesh office chair is worth buying over a brand of gaming chair plenty others in similar situations have probably opted for over the years. Do I get this ergonomic option or go with something like the Noblechairs Epic for almost double the price? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

I suppose that's true. I know I'm not exactly the target audience for an NVME drive, but when they're so much faster at the same price in the particular instance, it's difficult to see why I'd get a traditional SATA M.2. I'm not even sure I'd bother migrating Windows to use it as a boot drive; I just need more space for games honestly - though I guess the standard SATA drives become the bottleneck when transferring currently installed games to the NVME, so I wouldn't even really push to those speeds then, huh? I hear they make good content creation drives, though, and while I'm not exactly in that field right now, it would be nice to know I'm somewhat equipped for it should I find the inspiration to give it a shot. I only ever hear comparisons go in favor of SATA when there's a large price difference, but that's not the case here.

That's the best answer I could have hoped for, thanks! So I guess that means the Crucial P1 is the clear choice here. Now I just have to work out the thermal issue. I had no idea M.2 drives got so toasty before looking into all this.

Another solid point. Looks like the 2080 Ti has only just managed to push pass 3.0 x8 (1-3% gains). Doubt I'm buying one of those (maybe a 2080), so hey ho. As for a cooler, I don't think it will fit in the Node 202, but it's something I can look into. Thanks!

That actually really helps!

I currently have 3 drives (2 SSDs, 1 HDD) crammed into a Node 202 on a B350 motherboard with a Ryzen 5 1500X. The two SSDs are fairly small, so I'm looking to finally populate my board's single M.2 slot with a 1 TB SSD, but the slim price difference between SATA and NVME M.2 drives has me all confused. Looking around on Amazon right now, I can get a 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO SATA M.2 for about £125, or a 1 TB Crucial P1 NVME M.2 for about £1 less. I actually have both Crucial and Samsung brand SSDs in my system already, and while I've had less trouble with my Samsung, the theoretical gains of Crucial's NVME is throwing me off. While I think most would say it's a no-brainer given the identical pricing, the sudden realization of PCI-E lane saturation is confusing me. I currently have a GTX 1060 3GB in my board's sole x16 slot, but I hear concerns that adding an NVME drive could cut into that lane allowance while going for the SATA M.2 could kill off my final unused 4th dedicated SATA socket. My board manual says the M.2 socket is "socket 3, M key, type 2260/2260/2280 SATA and PCIe x4 /x2 SSD)" and that the PCIe x4 part will "vary by CPU". My other concern is that the Crucial P1 apparently thermal throttles at around 60 degrees. Given it'll be crammed into the Node 202 for a few more months before I'm able to switch back to a case with better airflow, I think there's a good chance that might become a problem given it won't have a fan pointed at it. So the question is; which do I go for? I'd like to futureproof with an NVME given it's the same price, but I don't want to eat into the limited lanes I have for when it comes to upgrade my GPU.

Ok so my monitor mount arrived and proved once and for all that I need the plate shown in the image above. I've contacted Samsung and they don't provide replacements or alternatives on any of their 3 spare parts website/services. I really need this plate and can't find a way to source one. Anyone got any ideas? We have a 3D printer in the house but there's no design available to replicate the plate and we can't fashion our own without having another to base it off from what I know. Any help would be greatly appreciated

I can't even begin to think how I would fashion my own vesa plate

Hey everyone, Just a quick query! I'm wondering if anyone knows of how to get hold of a replacement VESA mounting plate for the particularly popular (I assume) Samsung C24FG70 monitor. The default arm/mount it shipped with is pretty cool, but unusually large, and I need to swap it out for a 2-screen desk mount after downsizing my desk area. Problem is, the monitor apparently shipped with a mounting plate that must be attached in place of the default arm to make it VESA (75x75) compatible and I seem to have misplaced it. I've opened a support ticket with Samsung to get their advice on the matter, but I assume they'll take a while to get back to me given the time of year. If anyone has any knowledge of third-party solutions etc, that would be great. I don't know if the mounting plate is some kind of proprietary piece or not. I'm not very well versed in VESA mounting anything at this point. Here's a picture of the mounting plate I found online. Thanks,