Sommanker

Hi, I'm having problems with the USB sound card that comes with the HyperX Cloud II. Essentially, when the headset (or my earbuds lol) are plugged into the USB sound card, I only get mono sound - identical sound in both ears. It's especially funny that Windows' 'Balance' settings (in the Levels tab in the headset settings through sound control panel) shows two sliders, one for left channel and one for right, but even if I drag one all the way to 0 I get the same sound in both ears, just at half the volume. If I plug it in directly to the laptop using the 3.5mm jack, I get stereo sound as normal, so I don't think it's a problem with system-wide settings or the headset. It's also not Windows-specific, since I have the same problem with Ubuntu (dualboot). It could be a driver problem, but there are no HyperX Cloud II specific drivers as far as I'm aware. I've tried reinstalling drivers to no effect. I think this has likely always been the case, it just wasn't a problem until I played PUBG for nearly the first time since getting them and couldn't tell left from right. Any ideas? Thanks Edit: forgot to mention, the mic acts like a mic and a stereo mix at the same time, all the time, on both Windows 10 and Ubuntu, without having changed any settings. Weird.

Hi, I'm looking at buying a new laptop suitable for gaming, but have a pretty small budget of around £550-600 - I can only really find laptops with GTX 1050s in for around that price (and slightly over), and to be honest I want something a bit more powerful than that. I was thinking that maybe it would be cheaper to buy something from last gen, say with a 970M or something. I don't want to buy used (or refurbished, for that matter), though, and obviously most places don't stock last-gen laptops like that anymore. Does anyone know of anywhere from where I might be able to buy a new laptop with something like a 970M or 980M in it within that price range? To be honest I doubt if what I'm looking for exists, but I can hope lol I'm in the UK. Thanks

I've ordered another battery from a different seller and I'm returning the first one for a refund. Hopefully this one will work Someone else suggested that if no batteries seem to be working, it's also a possibility that it could be my laptop's power circuit that's the problem? I'll update if I keep getting duds. Edit: Got another new battery, working fine so far

So I just replaced my laptop's battery. It had expanded and stuff and needed urgently replacing. It's an MSI GS40 6QE Phantom 028UK. However, it doesn't seem to be working properly. At first, if I unplugged the laptop, it would shut off almost immediately, at like 99%. I assumed it was because the battery hadn't reached full capacity, as I hadn't done the thing where I discharge and recharge the battery a few times which seems to be recommended. Obviously I couldn't discharge the battery by unplugging and letting it run down, since it would just turn off. MSI's MSI Battery Calibration tool, while the charger is plugged in, runs the battery down to <5%, and then up to 10% and then stops. I charged to 100% and ran that 5 times, and the laptop shuts off at around 80-90% now. I tested after only 2 calibrations and it shut off at 82%, and after 5 it shut off at 90%, so it doesn't seem to be having any further impact. The Battery Calibration did fail one time - it shut off when it discharged to 80% - I didn't include that as one of my 5 calibrations. I've experienced no problems when plugged in. Does anyone know what the problem could be / how I could diagnose / fix it? Thanks in advance

Alright, so I think it was out of warranty anyway, so went ahead and opened her up. Cleaned out dust from both fans, GPU temps are down by like 20 Celsius, CPU temps dropped by only like 1-2 degrees, but so far at least I'm having less problems with the CPU's clock speed dropping. It's staying at 2.3GHz+ and my average fps has increased significantly, don't know if it'll last though.

I thought that might be a good idea, but I'd have to break the warranty sticker.

Hi. I'm having issues with thermal throttling in my laptop, an MSI GS40 6QE Phantom. This has always been a hot machine, running at around 80 Celsius in games / under load, and at 60~ idle. More recently, though, the temperature has been increasing. Now, in games, like PUBG and Overwatch, the CPU temperature stabilises at 88-91 Celsius, causing the CPU to thermal throttle, a lot. I'm using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to monitor this: upon starting a PUBG game, for example, my CPU temperature shoots up to 88-91 Celsius, and my CPU clock speed gradually decreases, over the course of a minute or two, to around 1.6GHz from 3.1GHz and my FPS drops from 80-100 to 30-50. Occasionally, my clock speed drops to 0.2~ GHz for a couple of seconds, causing everything to lock up temporarily. I've tried disabling Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS, to no effect, and I've just undervolted the CPU using the Extreme Tuning Utility (-1.5V - can't go any further), also not having much effect at all. Maximising the Turbo Boost Power Time Window appears to have helped a bit, but doesn't solve the root of the problem. MSI Shift Mode is set to Sport, and I'm using the High Performance Windows power profile. Since it's a laptop, I can't exactly upgrade the cooling; so I have no idea what I can do about this. I can say that pointing an external fan at it, while successfully cooling the keyboard, did not impact the CPU temperature. Any suggestions? Thanks