snowfox99

I looked at the BIOS update changelog for that MSI motherboard, and the most recent revision mentioned something about "fixed SATA definitions". Flashed that and I was good to go. Still odd that one specific drive tripped it up when three other identical ones didn't, but, whatever, I'm just happy my data is safe.

I looked at the BIOS update changelog for that MSI motherboard, and the most recent revision mentioned something about "fixed SATA definitions". Flashed that and I was good to go. Still odd that one specific drive tripped it up when three other identical ones didn't, but, whatever, I'm just happy my data is safe.

It could also be an issue with the drive that W10 is installed on, what does CrystalDiskInfo say @m33rak?

Do you need a PC right now? Because Ryzen 3000 series is around the corner and it's looking like it'll provide a massive perf bump over current gen stuff.

Keep in mind Zen 2 chips will work fine in current boards, so he may not be too bad off buying a higher end board and APU now, reselling just the APU, and holding on to the board.

Yeah, I'm gonna second @Stormseeker9 here. You absolutely won't have a bad experience with current chips, and if you really need/want a PC right now, I would say go for it.
 
But if you CAN wait, it will most certainly be worth it.

Yeah, I'm gonna second @Stormseeker9 here. You absolutely won't have a bad experience with current chips, and if you really need/want a PC right now, I would say go for it.
 
But if you CAN wait, it will most certainly be worth it.

Yeah, I'm gonna second @Stormseeker9 here. You absolutely won't have a bad experience with current chips, and if you really need/want a PC right now, I would say go for it.
 
But if you CAN wait, it will most certainly be worth it.

Sounds about right for a stock cooler. If you want to bring them down you can pick up something like a Cooler Master Hyper 212 (under $30) but as long as everything works and it's not thermal throttling I wouldn't worry too much.

IMO, you can have just as much fun with a $30 used Wii from a garage sale as you can with a $10K PC setup.

sure, the PC will let you play wayyyy higher-end and more graphically intense games, but a measure of "fun" in gaming has nothing to do with the graphical caliber of the games you play or on what hardware you run them on.

Straight DVI to VGA won't work in their case as that's a DVI-D port, they'd need an active adapter.

You can pick up a cheap DisplayPort to VGA adapter fro Amazon or Ebay, should work fine.

I would pick a 1440p high refresh monitor over a 4k 60hz one in an instant. Everything just feels so much better, even web browsing and basic desktop use, and ESPECIALLY gaming. Also, a game running at 1440p on a native 1440p monitor will look significantly sharper than a 1440p game upscaled to a 4k monitor.
 
The only exception I would say is if you wanted to focus on visual content creation like photo or video editing, in which case yeah the extra res will probably be helpful.

You can pick up a cheap DisplayPort to VGA adapter fro Amazon or Ebay, should work fine.

I'd estimate that the cost of the custom components required to make something like that work (basically an entire motherboard that fits in a pcie slot) would be as much or greater than just buying a seperate entry-level motherboard.

Your card is probably fine, once you start seeing artifacting just dial it back down to the point where the card was working fine. Once you find a safe point where the card seems stable, run a stress test like Furmark overnight to ensure it won't crash.

Just add a second one, Austin style

Just add a second one, Austin style