Darkroe

I actually tried using a hair dryer (same principle) for about 10 minutes; forgot to mention that. Same issues as before. On the bright side, the GPU looks very clean now.

In my experience its the cpu that has trouble with ram. I have an MSI b350m mortar that would not play nice with a 1600 and 2400g (both first gen) but it has been running a 2600 without any issues on 3000mhz dual channel ram.
 
What motherboard does your friend have exactly? It might be more expensive, but maybe it's better to get a 2000 or 3000 series cpu. 1000 series has tons of ram issues.

The only port the Acer monitor uses (the one Windows can't use as a second monitor for some reason) is an HDMI port, which worked fine until the incident, and still works fine if the Acer monitor is the only one connected to my GPU
 

Fun Fact: Ended up having D.O.C.P. / X.M.P. profile instability with my RAM (both kits (I have 2 now); tested them individually). Monitored things and I noticed voltage randomly dipped at the exact moments of instability. At stock BIOS settings, this was not an issue; voltage was consistent. Updated BIOS to the most recent version, same issues. Decided to get the extra CPU cable, just because. Instability is now gone. Voltages are consistent. I don't understand xD.
 
Looked a little deeper online about voltage drops on the Crosshair VI Hero and saw that it is a rare issue some of these motherboards face, and that plugging in the 4 pin CPU connector fixes it in nearly all instances of the problem. People mentioned LLC, but I don't know what that is (yet; after my finals I'll teach myself what that is).
 
So conclusion: The power supply does support the extra CPU cable, and for some reason having it plugged in fixed D.O.C.P. / X.M.P. profiles and manual overclocking stability issues. 

Even pulling similar parts on pcpartpicker, I couldn't beat the price. Decent deal while it lasts. RAM's only 3000MHz, but for anyone looking to just get a computer to game on really well at 1080p or even 1440p, this seems decent.
https://www.newegg.com/skytech-st-blaze-ii-0007-ne/p/N82E16883289042?Item=N82E16883289042&cm_sp=Homepage_SS-_-P0_83-289-042-_-04092020&quicklink=true

Ah darn, they figured it out. Right as I was about to complete the order their "authentication" page redirected to their homepage and when I went to check my cart it was gone and now there is no "add to cart" option. Oh well xD. Was fun trying :P

Either that or everyone beat me to it and bought them out of stock :P

Well you can probably email their PR team or something idk.

In my experience, CS can and will transfer you very far up the chain if you sound professional, respectful, and explain yourself well.

their pr team is a good place to start.
and honestly in this day and age, reaching out on twitter could get you pointed in the right direction

Intel and nVidia have sponsored educational programs here. Mainly to get games optimized for their hardware. But hardware companies are different. Sponsorship is all about can they get something out of it. If you can show that their brand gets well represented, then you will have chance for making deal.

This really shouldn't seem like that great of a deal.  A good price, and a fair price certainly, but it shouldn't be shocking.  I guess the fact that it is though shows how out of whack some things are right now, mainly RTX cards (but of course they have been since launch).

That upgrade gave you over 575% performance improvement...Holy moly

I'm not sure exactly, since I bought it used.  The GTX 1070 was released in May 1016, so that old at a maximum.

Collection wise...
 
GTX 670
GT 610
GTX 465
9800 GT
6800 GT/Quadro
6200 (OG PCI)
GF3 Ti 500
 
RX 560(1024sp) 4gb
RX 560(1024sp) 2gb
R7 265
R5 240
HD 4250
HD 3870x2
HD 2900 XT
X800 + X800 CFE
Radeon 9100 (OG PCI)
Radeon All in Wonder

Currently have an RX580, but before that I used a GTS 450 which I used from launch until about a year and a half ago!

Before you get started, a word of warning: I've owned three 960s, two 2GB models and one 4GB. They're all dogs when it comes to overclocking. The best I've had was getting the 4GB model to +47MHz on the core and +100-ish on the memory before my all-time favorite Overwatch match, where my screen went mostly black aside from red outlines of people shooting at me--and I still got play of the game on a Junkrat tire. Adjusting voltage did nothing for me on any of those cards.
 
The general idea behind overclocking is to take the core speed up as high as you can get it before it becomes unstable, then bump up the voltage and try moving it up again. As long as your thermals are in check and you're ok with the amount of noise coming off of the card, you can take the voltage all the way to the max the program allows. NVIDIA's vBIOS isn't going to let you take voltage dangerously high. Once you've maxed out what the core can do, you start tweaking memory speed. I've seen a lot of claims that on Maxwell cards, like the 960, memory speed isn't as important as core, but I beg to differ. I got better results out of a high memory overclock and no core than I did the other way around--not that either was sustainable for long. Also, take your card's power limit as high as you can so it pumps more energy in and keeps it at a higher speed.
 
Run about 5 minutes of Kombustor after you have your card's overclock settings where you'd like to test them. This will give you a quick hit of intense workload to see if you're getting artifacts or crashing, and will let you see how your temperatures are under full load. Don't run Kombustor or Furmark for extended periods of time, as those are not designed to be long-term test programs and you can damage your card at the temperatures they create. Once you've wrapped up your 5 minutes with safe thermals and no errors, open up Unigine Heaven or Unigine Valley, set it to the detail and resolution you intend to game on, and let it run for however long you want (the longer the better). This is a good real-world simulation for what your 960 will have to do when gaming, and if you get errors, artifacts or a crash, you know that you need to dial back the overclock. Take your memory down a step first, then your core, then repeat until you're stable over a long-term Heaven run. Once you're stable over a long-term Heaven run, my suggestion would be to start dialing your voltage back using the same method: take it back a notch, Kombustor, Heaven, stability check, if stable dial back another notch. In the case of my 4GB 960, it didn't need any additional voltage to hit that +47MHz result, but dumping extra voltage in did nothing to improve its results or stability.
 
Once you've got everything where you want it, Firestrike makes a great final test. Let it run a few times, then let it sit, then run it a couple more times, and follow that general pattern for a few hours. If it holds up to five minutes of Kombuster, eight hours of Heaven and 3-4 hours of cycling Firestrike like that, you're probably as close to stable as you'll get.
 
Until you play Overwatch, the screen goes black and you just start randomly firing grenades off in every direction because you can't see.

Hello all! 
I figured like many I would "show off" my personal rig I built back on Dec 25, 2015. It isn't anything to write home about, but it has done all I have asked and more.
Here are the specs: (listed by the prices I paid at the time, not current values)
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant Type Item Price CPU AMD - FX-6350 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor $135.99 CPU Cooler Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler $24.99 Motherboard Asus - M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard $83.99 Memory G.Skill - Ripjaws X Series 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory $51.99 Memory G.Skill - Ripjaws X Series 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory $51.99 Storage SanDisk - SSD PLUS 120 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive $44.99 Storage Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $44.99 Video Card EVGA - GeForce GTX 960 2 GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card $219.99 Case Thermaltake - Overseer RX-I ATX Full Tower Case $64.99 Power Supply EVGA - 600B 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply $49.99 Wireless Network Adapter TP-Link - TL-WDN4800 PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter $35.99 Case Fan Thermaltake - Pure 20 LED 129.63 CFM 200mm Fan $14.99 Case Fan Thermaltake - Pure 20 LED 129.63 CFM 200mm Fan $14.99 Fan Controller NZXT - SENTRY 3 Fan Controller $29.99   Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts     Total $869.86   Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-01-09 19:51 EST-0500    
I mainly use the system for 1080p gaming, browsing the web, streaming games I play, and editing videos / digital artwork. 
On 3DMark I obtain scores on FireStrike ranging from 6000-6350 depending on whether I overclock the CPU and GPU.
All in all, I love my first build and look forward to making a new build (once I have enough of that ever so important resource, MONEY).
 
Let me know what you all think! 
 
-Darkroe
 
P.S.:
In case you were curious, I am using a Logitech K120 Keyboard and a Logitech M510 mouse. 
I also bought an additional 8 GB of RAM, 200mm fans, Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, and NZXT fan controller 1.5 years after building the system in Dec 2015, so at the time the system was ~$730. 

Some sellers put listings up for various products but rather than deleting the listing, they'll simply raise the sell price substantially.
 
For example, a seller may have received a pallet of computers with that particular motherboard, and made a listing for this motherboard at a store and paid the listing price. Let's say he sold almost all his boards.
He knows he's going to receive 5-10 more pallets of used computers within 1-2 weeks and chances are some of those computers on those pallets will have the same motherboard model, so when he sold the last motherboard he actually had, rather than delete the listing, he'll mark up the price by a lot until he actually has the new pallets of computers in his warehouse and he can count the number of motherboards of same model.
 
This way, his listing remains online, it's scanned by search engines, it has views in the online store, people see the feedback he received from selling the original batch of motherboards, and the potential downside of having a ridiculous high price is extremely small..  and he doesn't have to pay a second time to list the new batch of motherboards, changing the price down is free or cheaper than making a new listing. 
 
If someone is stupid enough to order a board at that ridiculous price, he can go on eBay or somewhere and actually order a board at lower price and reship it to that buyer, or he can simply cancel the order of that buyer. No harm done.
 
So just because you see your board model at a high price, don't assume that's a valid seller and a valid listing, and always keep in mind that ONE listing doesn't mean a majority... if you see 10+ sellers selling your motherboard model at an inflated price, then you can safely say your motherboard is of that value.
   

Hello Everyone!
 
I am new to the forums and figured what better way to start than posing a question:
 
Recently I was curious to see how the parts in my now 3 year old budget PC were holding up. At first, everything seemed normal for the price histories. My FX-6350 Vishera AMD processor was worth less, same for my DDR3 16 GB 1600 MHz GSkill RAM, 1 TB HDD, 120 GB SSD, and Chassis. My graphics card's price history was another story, but we all know about the price spasms of the crypto-currency surges, so I ignored that outright. My power supply stayed about the same, but that was also expected. What was NOT expected wad the ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 motherboard I purchased for ~$90 is now being purchased for ~$400 new. Used is almost $210. 
 
I simply don't understand this jump. Looking at camelcamelcamel.com for price history, I saw the price spiked slightly after February 2017, right around the release of AMD's Ryzen series processors. However, this still makes little sense to me. My motherboard does not accommodate the AM4 socket, or DDR4 RAM for that matter, so why would its price shoot so high when it is not compatible with new technology? Am I missing something? Any reply would be great; I am curious to know why this happened.
 
I couldn't find a better place to post this than in General, so if there is a better place to post it please let me know!
 
Hope everyone's computers run as smoothly as they desire :)
 
-Darkroe