tippytipper

It's 24. They are limited by the alphabet and A and B are reserved for floppy drives I think. 24 also includes your C drive and what else you have mounted. But apparently there are ways to mount drives to directories on an NTFS volume kinda like you do in Linux. There's this stack overflow question that might interest you if you want to go beyond 24.

forgive the typos, this is a seriois occasion! *sniffles in grief*

Check the metal part to se if it is dirty or has fluff/dust. Do this on the computer as well.

You might have more options in Sound control panel. Worst case scenario, you might be able to adjust channel pairs volume.

I use Remote Utilities, it's portable and no admin rights needed.

I personally use Chrome Remote Desktop. Just connect using the internal IP
e.g. 10.0.0.126

Double Driver: http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm
 
EDIT: Seems their download page is down, but this works:
https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6179-double-driver.html#:~:text=Double Driver is a very,%2C date%2C provider%2C etc.

I have this card myself and can recommend it.......
 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07Z61JXK4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The chipset doesn't officially support any Xeon but people reported that one worked on their system:
https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Intel_(chipsets)/H57_Express.html
 
Might or might not be the same on yours.

i been pairing a gtx970 gamingx with i5 2500 non k , and upgraded to r7 1700, now i got a rx570 nitro, ( on par with 970) to pair with 2500 + 8gb ram on 4K tv.
 
not bad overall. may lag only in heavily demanding aaa titles, but thats rarely happening for a secondary pc. 
 
but consider used intel price vs new ryzen , ryzen 3100x /3300x is the deal
 

Someone correct me if im wrong, I'm certainly not an expert. Just using personal experience as im using the card. I have a 3200g with a 970 the card runs at 70-90% most the time and not run into any issues. However if your buying the cpu then a 3300x would get every last drop out of it for only a little extra. You would also have more scope if you decide to add a better gpu later on. 

CPU will not change much things on power supply demand. Don't worry about it. Afterall it's basically the same CPU that you already have, but 8 threads instead 4 threads. Which is enough to massively improve frames and GPU usage on every modern game.
 
About CPU, i7 880 is the best you can have on this motherboard indeed. But any i7 Lynfield would help a lot. Don't worry to much to buy the best, the difference is only few Mhz on the base clock. i7 760 have only 0.2Ghz less. It doenst make any real difference.
 

You can upgrade it to a i7 870 if you dont want to buy a motherboard and it's enough to keep GTX970 at 100% GPU usage most of the time even on modern games. If you're not sure about it, a Core i7 2600 or Core i7 3770 would do the same.
 
If you want a new system, Ryzen 3100 or 2400G would do the job, same for Core i3 9100F.

Forget about these bottleneck calculatores. It just doesnt work. It's a generic recommendation that most of the time it's just wrong. 

As far as I know Nvidia cards will refuse to work at less than x8.

It is a good option.
It will work. but it really limits it's performance, most modern motherboards have an x16 slot for a GPU anyways. 

Get a used prebuilt 

If you want to match a 970 on the cheap then old used hardware is precisely what you want to go for. That's a 6 year old GPU, almost anything current would be too much for it.

Comb newegg for i5 4th gen mid/micro towers can be found for $140-200 depending on the sale going on.  

Just add it to the host file as 127.0.0.1 releases.fontba.se

Next time I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard. It can do almost everything without pay.

EaseUS partition manager would do it fairly seamlessly, but you have to pay for it and it is only licenced to the first machine you install it on which kind of sucks.
 
Windows XP though?! In 2020?

This might be a bit of a workaround solution, but you could just sell the card and then buy another one used for the same price. All 970's generally go for the same price whether it's a blower card or something like an MSI card.

I would still suggest changing thermal paste on this card, themps may drop down few c .
Just follow the tutorial and you will be good tbh
 

I put an Accelero Xtreme III on one of my GB 970s. Nice and quiet and cools well. Had to repin the fan plug, and minor slit in the shroud to move the fans over a little, and minor mod of the ram sinks (which I could have left off), but that was easy to do, and the gpu controls it on board. AC makes it super long too, so make sure there is room.