Debeant

Right. I'd be a nervous wreck working on a 3090. I'm scared to mess up my $600 2070. (the darn thing is going for more now used than I paid new for it!)

Thanks. I wasn't certain. I'm going with a custom water cooling system with an EK Water Block. Heat isn't the issue, noise is. I can get the temps down in the 50s during heavy gaming workloads, but that requires a very aggressive and noisy fan curve--loud enough I can hear it while wearing headphones. I doubt it will be an issue. The only time it gets that hot is when I'm playing something like CP 2077 with ray tracing on and using the stock fan curve.

So, I'm not happy with the performance of my GPU's cooling solution. The fact that I can hear the fans over my sound bar (and even through my earphones sometimes) is disturbing, especially considering I've got some mild hearing loss. (~35 db loss in both ears in low range hearing) If I leave the cooler fan curves stock, the GPU stays mostly silent but will get up over 80, and won't boost past about 1860 MHz (eVGA 2070 XC Ultra, for the record). So now that we've covered why I'm water cooling (performance increase with noise reduction), here's what I'm concerned about. I don't know what kind of thermal paste to use. I've got an EK-Classic RTX 2080 +Ti water block coming in (it's supposedly compatible, the eVGA card uses a reference 2080 board) and I don't know if it comes with a thermal paste solution pre-applied or if I'm going to have to buy some. And if I should have to buy some, what kind should I get? The best my research can tell me is Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut should be good enough, but I really have zero experience with water cooling, and the only experience I have with disassembling a GPU was purely so I could scavenge the copper from the cooler/screws for another project I was working on.

Second board and second chip. Both are out of warranty anyway. Other board chip combo acted the same way. It's fine once I set the voltages and clock speed manually, but if anything's on auto the voltages are through the roof.

downloaded and opened HWinfo64. CPU Core Voltage (SVI2 TFN) reads as staying above 1.45 on a very regular basis and has a max in the 2 and a half minutes of monitoring of 1.506 v.

All the offsets are positive. I do not have an SVI2 reporting in any monitoring software, however, the motherboard sends that specific sensor data to vcore according to my research. The BIOS is up to date as of last week.

First off, components: 1600X, Asus ROG B350-F Gaming Motherboard, 16 GB G.Skill Ripjaw RAM 2400 mhz, eVGA RTX 2070. Now that that's out of the way, I'm trying to figure out why my motherboard is pushing so much voltage to my CPU. It's almost fried my 1600X--I'm going to have to replace it. I started having stabilty issues recently, and pulled up HWMonitor and CPU VCore regularly was sitting at 1.49v with occasional peaks to 1.55v. Motherboard was set at auto voltage with no overclock. Okay, so... whatever. I tried to turn the voltage down to 1.375 in the BIOS, but that isn't an option because the option is auto or offset. No straight manual setting. Okay, so I go for a +0.0625 offset, to keep the stability. It's unstable at stock clocks. The only way to keep the voltages under the 1.5 is to manually lock the multiplier, however, even at +0.125 (1.4v) the chip is unstable at stock speeds (3.6 ghz). If I set the multiplier to auto, I keep getting these crazy voltage numbers regardless of what I set the voltage to, but the machine is more stable. What I want to know is if I'm doing something wrong. I'm going to have to replace the CPU. This one is fried if stock clocks require over 1.45 at a minimum for just stability at almost idle (2-3% usage). I'm planning on going to a 3600, but the casual overvolting of the CPUs by the mainboard has me deeply concerned.

A modern LCD panel is thin--absurdly thin to be frank. And an LCD panel with a 16:9 ratio is not going to take up the same space as a panel of the same width with a 4:3 ratio, freeing up a lot of space that could be blocked off with metal or a 3-D printed piece that could conceal a battery. Nobody's saying you'd have to have a super-powerful laptop to make this a sleeper, either. Something capable of running Windows 10 would be more than enough for a laptop like this to be a sleeper--nobody would even expect that. That aside, there is a frightening amount of space on the inside of one of those old laptops, especially like one that was in the video--it had the power supply internally, after all. I know the issue isn't overall space, but the dimensions not allowing the board to be placed. However, there are other options--Zotac has a number of options for fairly powerful high-efficiency PCs, and then there is the Intel NUC which uses a laptop processor paired with vega on-board. The mainboard from that would likely fit comfortably in the particular laptop I'm looking at in the aforementioned video. I'm well aware of the problems with doing the project. I was just asking if there was anyone who'd actually tried doing what I'm talking about; and if they had, I wanted to see pictures because I think that kind of stuff is awesome. Finally, don't assume I don't understand old technology--my first computer was a Toshiba 8086 IBM clone. I've been messing around with this stuff since 1995. I just never really messed around with the portable side of the technology.

Modern screens tend to be thinner and wider, and I'm sure that with some finagling, you could put the battery in the top half of the clamshell given that about 1/3 of it won't be needed for the screen anymore. As far as space goes, I'm sure there's a lot more space in a classic laptop than in a modern one. A lot of those laptops were more than an inch thick, and modern laptops are considered thick these days if they are more than what, 1/3 of an inch thick? I'm not saying it would be easy, but... well, it'd be possible. Just something I was thinking about when I saw the "gaming on an old laptop" video being advertised.

So, I'm wondering if anyone's ever decided to try and cram modern guts into a truly old-school laptop (think mid-90s grey bricks) as a portable gaming sleeper? I know I don't have the technical know how, but I'm sure someone out there has the money and proper insanity to do so.

There are LED controllers out there that offer the same capabilities, though I'd be the first to advise against using it for your case. It's not really built with an eye towards RGB, like some of the showcase cases are out there. The only reason I swung for RGB this time was because I got tired of using this old chinese steel case I had. It was decent, and temps were under control even with a Phenom II 1045T and Radeon 4850 (later upgraded to a 460 GTX), but I felt I needed a new case when I built a new computer.

I don't know about your motherboard, but the one I have can change the colors of the LEDs based on CPU loading and temps. It is an option. Edit: not saying it's a requirement, though. You do you--that's what makes this a fun hobby.

You can set RGB to be white, you know. Yeah, they can be tacky. I don't really like the effects, but It's cool to change the colors to match up with holidays. Red/Green for xmas, Orange for Haloween, Red, White, and Blue for patriotic holidays, right now It's kind of a light blue because of the season, being ice/snow season and whatnot.

First off, I'm putting this in this section because I don't know where else to put it. If I'm wrong, please move it. Now, onto what I want to sort of rant about: one thing I don't understand is the hate for RGB. I mean, I get that it's something that not everyone enjoys, but there are people who are violently opposed to RGB like they're Inigo Montoya and RGB has six fingers. Glass sides are a fairly common and acceptable feature on cases these days, and that used to be a bit contentious. Part of what makes this hobby fun is the sheer variety of what you can do with cases. (backstory: I shared a pic of my rig on a social media site and a few people were calling it a POS because of the lights) But eh, whatever. Rant over, I guess.

I don't know about all that. I REALLY want to max out this game in terms of graphics. It looks absurdly pretty with ultra quality. Edit: if the 1160 doesn't come out, I'd pony up for the 2060.

Yeah, I figured as much. Still faster than the 1050 Ti I had in the system last year. I'm thinking I might go with that rumored 1160, or barring that, I might just pony up for the 2060.

From what I can tell, it was definitely the driver. I updated it and it seems like the game runs way smoother. At the very least, the game can run at high settings at 60 fps. Usage seems to be about 75% now. I tried Ultra, but the game tanked again at ultra settings.

Sorry for the double post. No thermal throttling, hottest temp I get is about 65 on the GPU (CPU stays well below 60), the Ram is dual channel, and no, I am not overclocked.

I have, although looking at it, the drivers were from last May. I've updated them.

System specs, so we can go ahead and get this out of the way: Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B350-F GAMING CPU: Ryzen 5 1600X Ram: G.Skill Flare X DDR4 16 GB kit (2400 mhz) GPU: NVidia GTX 980 4GB SSD: Sandisk Ultra II 500 GB Now, the issue I'm having is when I'm playing Forza Motorsport 7, I'm getting weird framerate lagging occuring at random intervals. You'd think with the setup I've got, It'd be more than equal to something an Xbone could manage, but it's not. The game will get moments when it can't even run the home screen at more than 45 fps at 1080p. it just does not make sense to me, because part of the reason I built this computer was to run FM7. Now, when it runs at full speed, it runs great. Even at 1080p 60hz it runs 24 cars on track on high or ultra settings using about 90% of the GPU. But then something happens and I'm at 100% utilization with 45 fps and unpredictable stuttering rendering the game unplayable. Am I doing something wrong, or is it something related to poor programming on the game developers part?

Not trying to replicate that at all. As far as graphics, the Ryzen 3 2200G is an APU and the onboard graphics should be able to handle 4k video playback comfortably. Just to clarify, I'm only looking for 4k video--not looking to play games in 4k. Even with current gen graphics cards it's difficult to hit super-high frame rates at 4k. I'm not looking to completely cheap out, but this is one situation in which I REALLY don't want to spend a penny more than needed because of the use-case. If I want high end gaming, I've got my main PC after all. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

That's not an option. I'd like something that can handle 4k playback and emulation of at least a GameCube.

So, I learned a lot of painful lessons recently about low-quality motherboards. However, I'm looking to make a low-cost PC for my TV, because I don't like watching TV shows on my desktop. I figured I'd use one of my mistakes to salvage some of the parts I bought. I've got an R3 2200G that I'm going to use to make a small HTPC. I don't care about OCing the device, so I'm comfortable with using an A320 chipset. Basically, I'm wondering if the Asus A320M-A is going to be reliable enough, or should I consider other options? ASRock as a manufacture is out, sadly (I bought an AB350 Pro4 and it nearly fried my 1600X--not overclocked, it provided like 1.52v on auto). Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

So, I've been thinking about upgrading my graphics card from a 1050 ti to something that's at least a bit more meaty, such as an RX 580. the problem is, with the current market I don't know if it'd be a smart use of money, what with the price fixing scandal going on and rumors of a new Nvidia series rumbling. Would it be worth the upgrade now, or should I just save my money? I want to run my games at high and ultra quality at 1080p, but at the same time, I don't want to waste money.

... Yeah, What they said. If I'd saw this earlier, I'd have warned you off of anything that even has a rumbling of bad VRM. Besides shortening the life of both the CPU and the board itself, they can lead to terrible instability. I couldn't keep my Ryzen 5 1600x running for more than about 5 hours because of VRM headaches--basically, the VRM would spike voltages high enough to cause a BSOD and the computer would reset only to do it again in a few more hours. Good choice, going with Asus. I've had good luck with them over the years.