Methanol Ethanolovicz

My brother was recently putting his computer away and allowed me to take his Vega 56. It's a Sapphire Pulse model. I swapped it with my 1060 3G, uninstalled the old drivers using DDU, and tried playing some games. The first weird thing was that the FPS I was getting didn't seem to be any higher than on my old card, and the games would sometimes stutter terribly, especially upon entering a new location. Then, after playing for about 10 minutes, the screen goes black, forcing me to reboot the PC. I've tried to look for a solution. Some people seem to have similar issues, but with some differences. First, most of them had Gigabyte cards, which apparently had some sort of widespread manufacturing defect, and had reported having their system crash completely and the fans on the graphics card ramp up to 100%. Mine keeps the fans running at the same speed, and the system appears to be still running since I can hear some of the game's sound effects even with the screen black. I have tried multiple things people in those threads suggested, for example, uninstalling the drivers and instead using those auto-installed by Windows, increasing the power limit, running two separate power cables, or lowering the GPU clock speed, with no success. I also thought about reinstalling Windows, but my brother says he's also had these issues, only his PC wouldn't crash as quickly or as frequently, so that's probably not what's causing the problem. Here are my system's specs: ROG Strix B350-F Gaming Ryzen 5 1600 Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 56 Pulse Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 2x8 GB 2400 MHz Seasonic M12II EVO 620 512 GB NVMe SSD, 2TB HDD For now, I have swapped the card for my old 1060, but I'd be very happy if I could use the newer one, especially since the 1060's 3 GB VRAM is rather limiting in modern games. Any ideas?

I've been using this fake mechanical Genius K10 keyboard for almost four years at this point. It has a 5-zone RGB lighting, replaceable keycaps (which have only now started to show wear around the edges of the most frequently used ones), quite a decent build quality, and accompanying software that allows you to remap the function keys (although it's kinda crap and never seemed to be working correctly). Back then, it set me back about 25$. I'd say the mechanical feel is quite good too. It feels tactile and certainly a lot better than your average mushy membrane keyboard or other mem-chanical keyboards (my brother, for example, has the Cooler Master blue-like keyboard, which Linus reviewed a couple of years ago, and it feels vastly inferior to the K10). That said, the Genius keyboards seem to be of questionable quality too. Many reviews for other models complain about the whole keyboard not working, and I've had the same experience myself when I bought a K6 as a Christmas gift for my father and had to return it after only about three months.

Some time ago, my speakers started making obnoxious, beeping-like sounds. It's a quite old Genius SW-HF 5.1 5000 set, and since I didn't know at which point it started doing it, I thought that the amplifier broke down. The sound was so annoying that I haven't turned it on for several months and was using my crappy headphones instead. Then I saw the latest Techquickie episode, where James explained that one of the advantages of fiber optic cable is that it doesn't suffer from interference. I realized that hey, my router is sitting right next to the subwoofer, maybe that's what was causing it, so I tried putting it further away. The issue was gone. Now, my router has always been there and was causing no issues, but a couple of months ago, my old one stopped working, so my ISP swapped it for their latest type. Had I know that's when the issues started, maybe I would've realized that the router was interfering with the amplifier a long time ago. I kinda feel like an idiot, but I'm also glad that I can use my speakers again. Thank you, guys!

Come on guys, say something...

Hey there! So, after several years, I finally decided to buy an SSD. I decided to go with Adata XPG Gammix S11 Pro 512 GB, which has TLC cells, pretty good read/write speeds, sufficient lifespan, and great reviews. I was planning to allocate about 100 GB for the OS, an undisclosed amount of data for HDD caching and leave the rest for programs that I use the most. Do you think this is a) possible, and b) worth it? If so, which caching utility would you recommend? Based on Linus' video, I was planning to use Primocache, but I'd like to know if there's a cheaper alternative. (I'd use AMD's StoreMI, but I have a B350 board with 1st gen Ryzen, so that's not an option for me) Thanks in advance!

Yeah, it worked through a USB 2.0 port, probably because the phone doesn't support USB 3.0. Furthermore, it wouldn't work through the front ports, so I had to use the rear ones. (which is not unusual, I couldn't even install Windows through them)

Hello there! I wanted to unlock the bootloader of my Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 (the global version, aka AI dual camera, the more confusing your naming scheme is, the better, right?). Not necessarily to flash a different ROM, but according to a tutorial I found, it is possible to enable Camera2 API, which is, for some reason, disabled on this device, despite being enabled on most other, often even cheaper devices. Doing so requires an unlocked bootloader. I've done everything according to this tutorial (https://c.mi.com/thread-1635834-1-1.html), up until the step where you connect the phone to your PC. Unfortunately, the program was unable to detect my phone. The tutorial says that if this happens, you need to install the USB driver. So I've done everything according to this other tutorial (https://c.mi.com/thread-1625831-1-0.html), again, up until the step where you connect the phone to your PC. However, computer management doesn't detect it either. There should be an Android device under the other devices tab, but for some reason, all it can see is an unknown device, which is probably my old webcam, for which I don't have a driver either. Updating its driver with the file I got from the Xiaomi website doesn't work, obviously (but I tried anyway, just in case). Also, the MI unlock app has a driver install feature, which apparently does nothing. When I try to use it, it prompts me to connect the device. If I connect it while it's on, it says something, but closes immediately, giving me no time to read it, so I've made a screenshot before it did. It asks you to switch your device to fastboot mode and then connect it to your PC, which makes sense since the tutorial on their website requires this as well. Unsurprisingly, doing so does nothing and the app is still unable to detect the phone. Seriously, as much as I like Xiaomi, F them for this! Any advice on how to make it work?

Wowie, it actually works! Thanks, man!

Hello there, Last week I've retrieved my old steering wheel from my mother's house. I never really was into racing games, but I wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately, the manufacturer no longer supports this device, and the last official drivers I was able to find are for Windows 7, which I tried installing anyway. Everything seemed to work fine at first, even a website for testing peripherals was able to detect it. However, every racing game I've tried so far just crashes right after I run it, as well as some non-racing ones and even some apps, for example, Steam, for as long as the steering wheel is plugged in. Is there any way to make it work without trying to download drivers from one of those sketchy websites and hoping that it won't completely mess my PC up?

So we've tried running it on my PC. Since I didn't want to mess my own system or install multiple graphics drivers, I've swapped my primary drive for an old HDD I've had lying around and installed Windows 10 on it. The PC behaved just as my brother's, except that it didn't even load the OS this time, so even if I wanted to attempt fixing it myself, I wouldn't be able to do so.

Now that I come to think of it, I'd rather not undervolt it either. If there is an issue, I don't see a reason why I should try fixing it myself and hope that it will work for some time, when he can have it fixed under warranty. I'll test it on my PC tomorrow and see what it does.

I'd rather not replace the thermal paste, removing the cooler would most likely void the warranty. Besides, thermals were never an issue. But I might try undervolting it and see if it does any good.

Hey guys, My brother called me a few days ago, saying that his PC suddenly stopped working. He said that he got vertical bars, followed by a black screen, and had to turn it off. After he turned it back on, the PC was able to post, but would sometimes get stuck at one of the booting screens, which only had a flashing underscore at the top left corner. When it managed to load the OS, it wanted to run repairs. Once those were complete, the PC restarted, only to run the repairs again. If he chose to start the system normally, he would end up with a black screen. I thought that since the PC was able to boot into the OS, it wasn't caused by a hardware failure, but rather by a software issue. We've tried reinstalling the OS, which he was about to do anyway since wanted to switch to Windows 10. All went well, but once I tried to install the graphics driver, the screen went black again and wouldn't turn back on. I had to restart the PC, after which the same issues we've had before occurred, so we've tried removing the graphics card and used the integrated GPU on the motherboard instead. After this, the PC ran correctly again, so it looks like it was a hardware issue after all. What do you guys think about this? Could the graphics card be dying? He had it for just about two and a half year, none of the PCs I've used had them die after such a short time. I've asked him to bring it to me so that we can try it on my PC. Fortunately for him, it's still covered by warranty. His setup: Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 AMD Phenom II X6 1045T MSI Radeon R7 370 Gaming 4 GB RAM Seasonic S12II-520 WD Green 1 TB Interestingly, only the booting screen when the BIOS detects hard drives had a few colored pixels around the letters, but everything else looked just fine. Also, I wasn't able to open the settings, boot options, nor select how to start the OS with the keyboard he's currently using, and had to use an old one. (but it still sometimes didn't respond when I tried to access the boot settings)

Since my alarm didn't go off yesterday for some reason, I overslept and missed my maths exam. Fortunately, my teacher is a cool guy, so he allowed me to do it in the afternoon in his office, along with a distance learning student (I don't know if that's how you call it in English, but whatever). Part of the test was done on a PC. Since he only has one in his office, he lent me his laptop. Unsurprisingly, Windows 10 did what they do best - started installing updates in the least appropriate situation. Of course, he started cursing how Windows 10 sucks, and how Windows 7 was a million times better (which I agree with, btw). This reminded me of the issues I used to have with it. Before I built my Ryzen rig, I've tried Windows 10 on my old PC a couple of times during the time you could update to it for free. The PC consisted of Athlon 64 x2 6000+, GeForce 8500 GT, a generic Gigabyte motherboard, couple of old SATA HDDs (128, 256 and 480 GB. They were all split into at least two partitions since I took them from dead PCs, and was too lazy to format them), and 6 GB of RAM (all of the modules were different). I've had all sorts of weird issues with the OS. The most common one, which occurred every time I've tried it was that it couldn't install updates. Every time I've turned the PC on, it started configuring them, got stuck halfway through, and restarted after a few minutes. This process then repeated about 3 times, after which it gave up and said that the update failed and the changes had to be reverted. I then went back to W7 and gave W10 another try sometime later. This time, along with the aforementioned issue, the audio would stop working after the PC switched into sleep mode, forcing me to reconnect the speakers every time. Another issue I've had when giving it a third try (again accompanied by the first one) was that programs, which worked before, have suddenly not. I wanted to get some school work done one evening, so I fired up ArchiCAD. However, instead of the dialogue window reminding me that I'm using an educational version, I was greeted by an error message saying that this program was not designed to run on Windows. Within a couple of days, most of the programs I'm using started doing this, so I went back to Windows 7 yet again. After I've swapped the 8500 GT with an RX 470, I've decided to give it another try. Once again, the first issue occurred right after I've installed it. However, after a few days, parts of the OS itself stopped working. I was, for example, unable to access the settings, open the power tab or use Edge (not that I've ever used it for anything else than to install Chrome). I got sick of it after this, and have stuck to W7 for some time. Unfortunately, I was forced to go back to Windows 10 again after updating to Ryzen, because W7 doesn't support the AM4 platform and none of the USB ports are working during the installation. (I've heard that this can be solved by using an old PS/2 mouse since these ports should still work. Unfortunately, my Strix B350-F doesn't have one). At this point, the only thing left from my old PC was that 480 GB HDD, which I've still used as a primary boot drive, but I've still had issues during the updates. This persisted until I've swapped that HDD as well, after which it finally started working as it should. Does Windows 10 just hate old hardware, or what? Did any of you have similar issues?

I see. Now that I come to think of it, having a huge 32'' monitor with 1080p resolution would probably not be ideal, the pixel density would likely be pretty bad. So I guess I'll go for the C24FG73F. Or is there any other monitor at a similar price you'd suggest?