stryk

That's not how this works... you need something driving the display. If there is picture on your screen, there is a driver running on your operating system (be it windows, macos, linux, whatever). Even on the default installation there is still a display driver running. It may be a generic one just to get the system booted, but it's still there. The system has to know how to interface with the GPU somehow, that's what the driver does. Without a display driver there would be no display (unless we're talking about 1960's/70s VT terminals). My issues are (i think) being caused by the latest, up-to-date drivers from AMD. I don't know exactly what, yet, but until then I have an $850 fancy PC gaming graphics card that can't play any of the games you would buy an $850 card for, because it's only stable on the default windows (old & probably generic) display driver.

..... how can you have a display without any drivers running? That doesn't make sense. Let me rephrase: It's currently on a barebones absolutely fresh install of windows 10 x64. absolutely nothing installed outside of whatever windows drivers are installed by default. The issues stated (hard lock-ups) arise after installing the latest drivers from AMD. I thought that was pretty well documented in the OP?

Didn't see the edit. But it is stable, at this point, with the default windows driver. in the original post, under 'troubleshooting done so far':

And I thank you. However that isn't really a solution to the problem, nor it is ideal for a gaming machine.

Which is who knows how old? No thanks, I didn't pay $850 to do that.

I'm in the process of putting together a new rig, and getting hard lockup/freezes (ctrl+alt+del does nothing, it just locks up, have to cut power to reboot). Here is currently what is connected to the system (it's in the test-for-POST stage, sitting on the mobo box): CPU: AMD Ryzen 1700X CPU Cooler: [air] CoolerMaster MasterAir MA610P RGB fancy thing that sucked to install because the wiring for the fans is almost unreachable when you have non-presidential man-sized hands. Mobo: MSI X370 Gaming M7 ACK (latest BIOS as of time-of-post installed) -- WiFi card that came with the mobo is not installed at this point, for troubleshooting purposes I did a fresh install without the WiFi module installed to eliminate the need for Windows to install drivers for it, in case that may have been the root cause. Memory: 4x 8GB Corsair LPX 3200MHz (these modules are on the QVL for this motherboard) GPU: Gigabyte RX Vega 56 PSU: Corsair HX750 Gold (the semi-modular model) Storage: Boot drive is a WD Black 512GB M.2 NVME, and an ADATA SX7000 512GB M.2 NVME is in the other M.2 slot So, a fresh barebones install of Windows 10 x64, I'm talking downloaded the ISO from microsoft, flash it to a USB thumb drive and installed (luckily with USB 3.0 and M.2 NVMe this only takes about 5 minutes, because I've done it 6 or 7 times at this point). Absolutely no other software installed other than the latest AMD drivers and whatever drivers Windows installs by default. I'm getting hard lockups/system freeze shortly after logging in to windows 10. Hard lockups - the whole thing just freezes, no ctrl+alt+del, no nothing. I have to cut power either by shorting the Front Panel power pins on the mobo or turn off the PSU. Event viewer, to my knowledge (navigating those logs is a goddamn mine field), isn't reporting anything substantial -- unless I'm looking in the wrong category (I've checked System Events, and the general Critical one -- i forget what they call that). The only thing it reports is the unexpected shutdown, at least that I can find. May need some tips & tricks for where to look in Event Viewer as it's not user friendly in the least bit. Troubleshooting done so far: I let Memtest86 do an 8-pass RAM torture test last night, it reported 0 errors, so I don't think it's bad memory modules. Burned about a half an ounce of very good weed contemplating how I'm going to explain to my old lady that the $850 graphics card I bought doesn't work, and that I may not be able to use it, and Newegg may fight me about returning it. I might be homeless next week, in which case none of this will matter. I booted to an Ubuntu 17.10 Live image and it functioned fine, idle and under a load, for 3 hours without freezing. This leads me to believe it's a software issue -- either Windows 10 shenanigans or with the AMD Windows drivers. Currently I'm letting it idle after a fresh install of win10 BUT NOT installing the AMD drivers, to see if I still get a lockup. So far (almost 6 hours and counting) it seems to be OK. No freezes or lockups. Having an $850 video card with no drivers is pretty pointless, though. Currently the connected display is a big beast of a monitor (HP Omen 32), connected via DisplayPort. During troubleshooting I've tried connecting it via HDMI instead, and tested having freesync both on and off. Also tried a totally different display that does not have Freesync. Nothing had any effect, still locks up with AMD drivers installed. Via the process of elimination this is leading me to the conclusion that the AMD drivers for vega are... well, shit. Or they're just buggy. But, they could be shit. Now look, I'm OK with Linux, as a matter of fact that's my OS of choice, but this is supposed to be a gaming machine -- I paid thru the nose for the damn card. unfortunately for gaming -- if you want to play the newest titles, Windows is your only option realistically. I say this as a somewhat experienced Linux user and fan of that OS, but for gaming it's just not the best choice (hopefully this changes more quickly with the advent of Vulcan, etc.). I'm curious if anyone else has had any issues with the x64 Win10 AMD drivers & AMD RX Vega? And if the GPU drivers are indeed the problem... what is the end-user recourse here? There isn't another option (at least on Windows) is there? If anyone has any advice, troubleshooting tips, commands to run, logs to look at (event viewer tips would be appreciated, I am not well versed with that tool), etc. ANYTHING ... I'm listening, and it would be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I'd be very much interested in this to turn it into a very nice HTPC box. Thanks for the giveaway & good luck to everyone!

Dell warranties are transferable, with some exceptions (e.g., when past and new owner are in different countries there's some additional red tape and maybe fees associated, also EqualLogic products can cause issues, but this particular switch is not EL). I have been through the "asset transfer" procedure a few times before, it's actually quite easy. See http://www.dell.com/support/assets-transfer/us/en/19#/Identify for more info on that. It was given to me as payment for some work I did for a local insurance business. It's worth far more than I would have charged for the work, and they know that, but I don't think they had any real use for it either. I was told it had been in their supply closet, still in the shipping box, for the better part of 2 years. It was given to them by their new parent company back when they were acquired.

So I was given a Dell PowerConnect 5548 managed 48-port GbE (plus 2x 10GbE SFP+ ports) switch. It's brand spankin' new, never been unpacked or used, and is still in the box from Dell (it still had the packing slip and everything). I peeped the service tag on Dell's website and it's under warranty until April 2041. Wikipedia says the guts of it are Marvell tech. I really don't have a need for it. I mean, I could come up with a reason to use it, but just to play around with more than anything, though. Honestly, I'd rather get some cash out of it -- and give someone that actually needs it a decent deal (and get myself a fancy new video card and maybe some groceries, but mainly a new video card because who needs to eat, yea?). Problem is, I can't gauge what they go for, money wise. Prices on eBay vary wildly from $700 (used) to $2k (new). Amazon third-party sellers aren't any better. Apparently, Dell has moved on to newer and shinier things, I sure as shit can't find a listing for it on their Business shop site. Does anybody have an idea of what kind of price range these things go for? TIA

Awesome to see you guys (and gals who have to put up with said guys) reach this crazy milestone! Congratulations! I am happy for you, excited for you, and - if i'm honest & truthful - a little bit jealous of you. :rolleyes:

Welp, that puts that to bed. Thanks for the link to the article, sir or ma'am!

So, I've got one of the new 20th Anniversary Edition Pentium G3258 chips on the way to play around with. I'm interested in overclocking the piss out of it and giving it to my dad, he really needs a new PC. I've got all kinds of spare parts laying around, everything is taken care of save for the motherboard and air vs. AIO-water cooling decision. Does anyone have any suggestions for a Z97 board to use with overclocking the G3258? I'd prefer to keep it in the $90 - $120 range. Here's the spec rundown of what I have laying around that I am planning on throwing together: CASE: Phanteks Enthoo Pro CPU: Pentium G3258 (Unlocked) COOLER: TBA (depending on the motherboard, either a good higher-end air unit, or a decent AIO water cooler. something capable of handling the extra OC heat either way) MOBO: ??? RAM: 2x4GB G.SKILL Sniper Series 1866MHz (1.5V, 9-10-9-28) STORAGE: 256GB Seagate 600 Pro SSD, 256GB Samsung EVO SSD, 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM PSU: Corsair CX500 GPU: AMD R9 270 (ASUS Direct CU2) OPTICAL: LG M-DISC DVD-RW 5.25" drive For the mobo, i'm gonna need plenty of SATA 6Gbps ports, and as many USB3/2 as I can get for the price range. Has anyone played around with the G3258? Any advice would be welcome, I'm considering all suggestions. Thanks in advance for any ideas

Where is the eject button for the slimline optical drive? Or, at the very least, an "extension" to the outside of the panel with a little plunger or something of the sort on the inside of the panel to press the eject button on the physical drive itself? Are you relegated to ejecting through the O/S only??

My first guess would be the BIOS not recognizing your system drive as bootable. Did you reconfigure all your BIOS settings after you flashed to the new BIOS? First thing I would check is that your boot drive is set to AHCI mode.

MOBO: ASUS M5A99X EVO R2.0 Something weird happened this morning when I turned on my PC, and I've never had any issues with this board until now. When I powered on - it goes into BIOS screen without prompt or any user input. All boot options are gone, save for a few UEFI boot options of USB drives I have plugged in. Looking through the BIOS: under SATA config - All my HDDs/SSDs I have installed are recognized there. However, Under the "Boot" tab, the only options for Boot Order are the UEFI choices for a couple USB drives -- nothing else. Also, the BBS boot configuration, which is usually right underneath the boot order options, is gone in it's entirety! It's not even greyed out or anything, it's simply not there at all! At first (after the WTF!?) I started through some troubleshooting. I thought maybe it could not be detecting a CPU fan (oh noes! did my H90 pump die!?) -- but no, all fans are accounted for in their places within the BIOS. After that I thought maybe the USB drives are conflicting somehow so I unplugged everything non-essential and rebooted... same thing. Now I'm starting to sweat it a little more. I decided to shut it down, turn off the PSU switch, and let it flush all supplemental power and hopefully reset itself. When I powered back on - it booted normally and right into Win 8.1. I looked through the ASUS AI Suite utility's sensor apps and everything, and for whatever reason my fan profiles in fanXpert had disappeared. Great! I set them up again. At this point I decided to shut down normally from Windows. Upon reboot -- oh noes again! Right back into the BIOS with no prompts or inputs. Luckily it just so happens that there was a BIOS update that was newer than I was using, but it seems minor and the only additions to the changelog are compatibility fixes with some external USB devices. I decided to flash it and update the BIOS. Went smoothly with no issues and instead of restoring the previous settings after the flash I went ahead and did a fresh, virgin setup of the BIOS and got everything set back up again. Seems to be running like new again (i've only had the board for a few months, and like I said I've never had any problems with it before now). I've rebooted several times and i have not run into this issue again, yet. I'm unsure what to expect. If this were the late 90's I would hazard a guess that the CMOS battery was going out or something along those lines, but to be honest I don't even know if modern motherboards use that stuff anymore. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what happened, or maybe have run into this issue before themselves? Thanks guys & gals - any help is welcome.