deferentlemur

Repasting the TIM and a full wipe and reinstall of the driver, or even Windows, might go a long way toward a fix. For what it's worth, every GPU generation in my memory has claimed 2x improvement in leaks, but in reality reaches 15-30 percent performance improvement at best. The best advice I can give is that if you are happy with your current performance (if the GPU gets working correctly), how much is an upgrade worth to you? Arika S raises a good point; any hardware will be superseded in 6 months. Bottom line is, do what will make you happy, and be confident in your decision. Then you'll be satisfied with whichever route you choose.

Agreed, that's a lot of switches. Is QoS active on them? it may think a PC is gaming and re-allocate bandwidth. Although this case seems extreme. Are the switches well-aged? The seemingly randomness of the problem makes me wonder if there is an intermittent hardware fault. It might help to test with one switch at a time in the network, and see if the fault persists.

HeroRareheart, I think I can help with a few of the questions you raised. I also have a CV1 Rift and have run into the same port problems. For the HDMI, I am using a passive DisplayPort to HDMI adapter without any problems. Mine is Insignia. Short black cable with a plug on either end. Regarding USB, for mine I just plug into whichever ports are available, including USB 2.0. Admittedly that is purely anecdotal, and I am running 2 instead of 3 sensors. In theory, even a usb 3.0 hub on a 3.0 port has more bandwidth than multiple 2.0 ports, but I don't know how polling rates or other factors would affect that. So you may be able to use your 2.0 ports without issue, it's worth a shot at least. As to the GPU, you should be fine with the 980ti. Maybe a repaste is in order, given its age. I used my Rift for a long time on a 1080 and 4790k. So, comparable GPU and less CPU than you have now. I definitely had to turn down graphics settings in-game to get a smooth framerate, and also needed to let the alternate frame interpolation do its work. I don't remember if that setting was in the Oculus settings or nVidia control panel. Sorry, no input on the space issue, I have always used mine seated. Good luck!

Budget (including currency): flexible Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Forza Horizon 5, Elden Ring, GTA V, and of course Hello Kitty: Island Adventure or WoW Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Hello all! I want to extend my gaming desktop from the "office" room into the living room and a small barn. For a while I have been using the in-home streaming options from Steam, nVidia, Parsec, etc., however these experiences have had enough quirks that I don't want to rely on them for a permanent solution. My interest straddles a few topics, so this seemed the most appropriate sub-forum in which to ask. Regarding the living room, it is close enough that I should be fine just by running HDMI and usb through the walls. it is less than 50 feet of up/down/left/right runs, so direct cabling should be sufficient. Will also run LAN cable for a wifi access point. The barn is giving me more planning troubles. It is 130 linear feet from my PC, although I expect 250-300 by the time I make all the runs. My intent is to extend HDMI and USB over LAN by using this: Amazon.com: AV Access HDMI USB Extender(HDBaseT) KVM, 100m/330ft 4K 60Hz 1080p 120Hz Over Cat5e/6/6a/7, Keyboard+Mouse+HDMI+USB, 4 Ports USB2.0, No Signal Loss and Latency, RS232, POE, Independent EDID Management : Electronics To summarize the listing, it is a TX/RX pair that sends up to 4k60 (4:2:0) and USB 2.0 up to 100m/330ft over cat 5e or above. I do want the USB access so I can use a keyboard/mouse/controller. My intent is to use this and a direct-bury cat6a cable to get out to the barn. The distance to the barn is within range, and the TX/RX product will work on a network over an unmanaged switch and requires 1Gb/s. I would also want a wifi AP in the barn, so I think I would need at least a 2.5Gb switch on both ends connected by the cat6a, and plug the TX/RX boxes and AP into those. Topics that I know very little about are long-ish range networking, network switches, and AV setups, so I wanted to ask for more knowledgeable opinions on my proposed solution. And I am of course open to solutions that I haven't yet discovered or considered. Any thoughts? Thanks! - Jonathan

You are probably better off trying it on your own. In my experience with IT departments, they may not want to spend the time doing it, or be able to do anything without step-by-step instructions in front of them. It really depends on if they are your buddies or not. A virtual machine is essentially an operating system that runs within your main operating system. Performance is slightly degraded, but the advantage is that you can have a full-blown Windows installation available in whatever version and with whatever software your company requires, without having to limit your main OS, in case you want to take advantage of your hardware that is unsupported by your company OS requirements. In short, your IT guys can mess around however they want without disturbing your personal stuff. I have had good luck with Oracle's VirtualBox software. It essentially creates a disk image file that the program treats as a drive to load the virtual OS from. There are a multitude of tutorials available that teach its setup and use, I would watch/read several of them before starting to make sure you understand how it works.

Since it is a fresh install, how long has this activity been occurring? The reason I ask is that Windows does a lot of background work all by itself. Things like updates, antivirus scans, disk defrag and indexing, etc. I have had systems that were sitting at idle and suddenly the fans start going crazy. Inspection of the task manager revealed Windows services doing maintenance stuff. Chrome even has its own background malware scanner now. You could try going to Control Panel > Power Options > Edit Plan Settings > Change advanced power settings, scroll down to Processor power management > Maximum processor state, and change it to something like 10 percent. This will limit the max processor speed commanded by Windows. That way, no matter what background services are going on, the processor shouldn't heat up. This will identify a Windows versus firmware problem. Don't leave the setting there permanently, it's just for troubleshooting. If the above steps do not reduce the CPU speed to maybe 800 MHz or so (visible in task manager > Performance tab), then there is likely a driver issue. You could try manually removing the drivers in device manager, and either letting Windows install its own validated drivers or get them straight from the AMD website. Another quirk I have encountered in the past, and may or may not apply, is that things can get weird after a BIOS update. I have always been able to fix this by going into BIOS and restoring the default settings, or whatever option yours presents to you to return to the default state. After doing that and a restart that always fixed it for me.

Systems with high power requirements can still charge from USB-C, although the charging speed will be reduced if the port doesn't provide as much power as the native charger. Also, there are a number of low-profile chargers on Amazon with interchangeable tips, but I don't know of any with greater than 100 watt capability. I just realized I didn't address your original comment. Charging is possible via multiple ports if the system is built to support it (remember that Asus behemoth that requires two power bricks, and a Pelican case to transport it?), but I haven't seen any actually set up that way for USB-C. It would be a fiasco for manufacturers to start requiring multiple charging connections. I have no doubt the eventually all laptops will SUPPORT USB-C charging, but I don't forsee them actually REQUIRING it, except for lower-power systems. Except Apple products. Who knows what they will try to get their customers to do.

Glad you found a solution. Have you considered running your work OS in a virtual machine? That would allow your work IT to do whatever they want with it, but you can still take advantage of the GPU if you want.

You have several options. If Windows 7 Pro is installed, you can log into it remotely via another computer or phone app, as long as it is already set to allow RDP connections, then change the display settings. You could try entering your password blind, then try the projection hotkeys once logged in. If you haven't already tried it, you could connect the monitor AFTER the system has booted, and hopefully Windows will automatically detect that and activate the monitor. FYI, Windows will probably still black out the monitor until logged in, at which time you will get an extended version of your desktop, and can then set it to only show on the monitor. Just right-click on the desktop to open the display settings, then Windows+arrow keys to move the window into view. Another option is to put the drive into and boot from a different system, install Teamviewer, and set it to allow unattended login. Reinstall the drive in the laptop, login via Teamviewer, and change your display settings from there. Hope some of that helps, good luck.

Agreed, you won't surpass 6 hours maximum unless you get one of the very few laptops with GPU and U-series CPU. If 6 hours is ok, look at MSI, Asus, and Razer. If you want more, you can probably get an ultrabook (HP Spectre, Dell XPS, Asus Zenbook) with modest specs and run an eGPU and still stay within your budget. I ran into the same issue, where most laptops I found with real GPUs had power-hungrier CPUs. Also, be aware that battery life will plummet once the GPU is in use, regardless which way you go. So if you plan to game on-the-go, have your charger handy. Also, nVidia geforce experience defaults to 30 FPS on battery (don't know if that is in the driver as well), so in the long run it may not hurt to carry the charger anyway.

True. it will probably cost $100-$200 (USD) more to do an eGPU compared to internal dedicated. I was thinking more about spreading out the cost, The problem is that "gaming" laptops typically come with H/HQ-series processors, which use a lot of power. The MSI Stealth series, and Razers, do a good job with power management and can probably get you 4-6 hours of light use, but the costs are 2-5x your stated budget.The HP Spectre 15" and Asus 14" Zenbook-something-or-other can be had with a MX150 gpu and 8xxxU series processor, but the MX150 is good but probably won't be relevant in a year or two. And both are double your stated budget. I should probably plug my Acer Nitro Spin 5, since it sounds like you have the same requirements as me when I needed a new laptop. It has an i7-8550U CPU and GTX 1050 4GB, and costs $800-$1000 USD, if you can go a little higher on price. I get 6-10 hours from it depending on what I am doing, it handles any games or compute tasks I throw at it, and I am surprised at how happy I am with it. The cooling design is a complete joke, but I posted a writeup somewhere here about the work I did to fix that.

Download any free monitoring app that will log its data. I'm thinking Fraps, but I'm not sure what it logs, never used it that way. Then load up the data in a spreadsheet (ie. Excel, Google Sheets, OpenOffice, etc.) and calculate the average. Or calculate manually from the log, but that's more data point to sum than using a spreadsheet.

You can do this, however I would second (third, fourth?) the recommendation to get a USB drive and make an install drive for the laptop. Modern Windows (7+) installs only what it needs to run on the hardware on which it is installed. It is pretty good about loading on-the-fly what it needs to run if the hardware is changed, but I have still run into compatibility problems and long-term stability issues when making significant hardware changes. Especially if switching between generations, such as 4xxx to 6xxx Intel CPU and motherboard, for example. If you do go this route, make sure to remove old drivers once the drive is back in the laptop. This can be done via Device Manager in Windows. It's pretty easy, plenty of internet search results for guides. Nirsoft's DevManView can also help speed up the process. You MAY run into issues getting Windows to boot/load, I have encountered that in the past. Nuking and rebuilding the boot sector will definitely fix the problem, but it can usually be fixed more easily via the Windows recovery built-in boot repair. Both options will however require an install drive from which to load recovery if you do have booting problems.

The 7300 HQ has 4 cores/4 threads and 6 MB cache, while the 8300H has 4 cores/8 threads and 8 MB cache. The real-world result is that the 8300H will feel more responsive. As far as if the cost is worth it, you will have to decide that for yourself. If you are doing scientific/mathematical/engineering work, you probably won't see much difference, as those applications gobble up enough resources to effectively negate the hyperthreading of the 8300H. In contrast, if you tend to have multiple browser tabs open while simultaneously working in Word while also having an Excel spreadsheet and several PDFs open (been there, done that), you will see a noticeable, but not epic, performance improvement and responsiveness when switching between apps. As for having the 1TB hard drive, that is another personal choice. In my experience, I never considered additional storage as a selection factor when choosing a laptop, but after having laptops with and without it I appreciate not having to always carry an external hard drive with me. But that all depends on how much data (or Steam library) you intend to have. GeneXiS_X is dead-on about the repaste and undervolt. I have repasted and undervolted multiple laptops (and self-built desktops, lol), and each time seen a significant improvement over the stock setup. This is only becoming more relevant with the trend toward thinner devices. While most devices are adequate out of the box, the roughly three hours invested in repasting and finding a stable undervolt will provide appreciable benefits in performance and fan speed/noise reduction, if you choose to do so.

Thanks. I tried to make it thorough enough to be of value to those with experience in cooling mods, but not so much to discourage newcomers from trying to get the most from their system. You raise a good point about the paste, I was completely surprised by how bad it was. I previously repasted a 1.5 year old 6200u and a four year old 4700HQ, and the paste on neither one of them was as bad as this stuff which was only around three months old.