Luxzio22

1. So you're planning to downgrade monitor resolution from 1440 to 1080p to get get higher framrerates? What refresh rate are you hoping to achieve? I think it would be best to decide everything else based on that. 2 and 3: Unfortunately I don't play them but most competitive shooters are built and optimized for insane framerates already so I think you should only proceed with upgrading once you have decided on the resolution+framerate you want to achieve and finding out what the bottleneck is in your current system. So I recommend you run your most played games on your current system at your desired resolution and graphics settings and check the framerate, CPU and GPU usage with Afterburner (tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H23FSEybZsk). If you see your CPU usage is 90% or higher but GPU usage is lower, then that game is CPU bottlenecked meaning the CPU isn't powerful enough and is holding back performance at those settings. If the GPU usage is high but CPU usage is low then the GPU is the bottleneck and it means the GPU isn't powerful enough at those settings. If both are high then both the CPU and GPU are struggling to run the game. You can also check RAM usage but since you have 16GB already I don't think you'll be limited in that regard unless you're doing something intensive in the background like streaming or rendering. Different games will behave differently so remember to test on all the games where framerate / better performance is important to you. Once you have a better idea of where your hardware limitations / bottlenecks are, it will be much easier to decide what part to upgrade. Given how balanced and relatively powerful your current system is, I think you should be able to play esports games without much issues at all so I think it'll be worth upgrading only if you have both a strong desire for a particular performance level (ie framerate and graphics settings) and understanding of current limitations. This chart may be a bit outdated but it contains GPU performance numbers in CS2, though do keep in mind they're running it without a CPU limit: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/counter-strike-2-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html

I understand, its very interesting how much you can learn from a simple oddity on your system. Thanks for the app recommendation, I installed both separately but will check with GParted just in case. Thanks, I'm still getting the hang of stuff so its still above my level but hopefully I won't need to learn from experience too soon

For a start, you can clarify a bit more about your needs, budget and what other components, if any, you may be willing to upgrade. 1. Which resolution are you gaming at? 1080p? 1440p? Or the old reliable 720p? 2. Are you considering only upgrading the GPU? Many games today are very CPU-reliant and a CPU upgrade could help improve performance much more efficiently than a GPU upgrade since you might be CPU-bottlenecked. 3. Which games are you looking to play and what framerates are you hoping to achieve? If you're playing something with insanely high framerates like Rainbow Six Siege or Doom Eternal, you might not even need an upgrade. Are you looking to use more ray-tracing in games? Cards around RTX 3060 12GB price-range in the US market are the AMD RX 7600 8GB which has slightly lesser non-RT and much worse RT performance but is cheaper, the RX 6700 XT 12GB which has better non-RT performance, is slightly worse in RT, is more power-hungry and the RTX 4060 8GB which is better in non-RT and RT performance. The only thing to consider with the 4060 is the lower VRAM but that shouldn't be concern if you aren't doing something very reliant on it like AI-stuff or hardware-accelerated software non-gaming software. But even then the CPU might be a better part to upgrade so please do answer the above questions so we can help you better.

That's a relief, I thought they'd be invisible to each other since they were on different drives and I installed Linux only after disconnecting the Windows drive. Thankfully I installed them completely separately; making sure the Windows drive wasn't even connected to the mobo while Linux was being installed. What's the strange thing is that Windows can't see my Linux drive in File Explorer, only in Disk Management. I think it will require formatting for Windows to be be able to access and store data on it. Which it doesn't need to since its a dedicated Linux drive I won't be storing important data on but its still interesting how it doesn't seem to work both ways, at least in this individual setup. Though I don't know if they are on the same EFI partition, is there a way to check? I think there is a limit to what will be tolerated since I actually opened up an image file and was still able to boot into Windows afterwards without errors. What I didn't do is modify or delete a file in the Windows drive. Even as a noobie, I can't imagine Windows will be able to handle a file being deleted while its unbooted. Would it go the Recycle Bin in Windows or to the one in Linux Mint? There's probably something in the background regulating this because it didn't ask for the password when I stumbled across it. I wonder if it has something to do with boot priority set in BIOS. Yup, its interesting to see and learn stuff like this so I'm glad I finally decided to get my feet wet on Linux. Fingers crossed the next steps also come this naturally. Yes that sounds like a threat becomes plausible once you have a system like this. Thankfully I'm more careful on Linux than on Windows. I didn't know about AV on Linux or the mount command either. I guess that command is how so many distros specialize in data recovery. If only I'd known about it before I nuked my malfunctioning, unstarting Windows drive and wiped my Dark Souls savefiles. Thankyou Eigenvektor, zinco and goatedpenguin for all the information!

I have a dual drive, dual boot setup installed like the one described here (plays at the correct time): https://youtu.be/KWVte9WGxGE?si=SOfRDuPsi6Wy5aFa&t=447 Basically I have Windows 10 installed on a 1TB HDD and I installed Linux Mint on a cheap 256GB SSD after disconnecting the HDD so Mint wasn't able to see it when it was being installed. I shift between them by selecting the boot device in BIOS and don't see GRUB's OS selection screen ever. The problem is that I'm still learning Linux and don't know if something's gone wrong. Today I was browsing the Mint file system after running sudo apt upgrade and update and I saw the Windows HDD show up in it. I was able to see the three disks / partitions in the Windows drive and was able to open them and even access the files I had on my Windows drive in Mint. I don't recall the Windows drive being visible before and now the three partitions in that drive are showing up on my Linux Mint desktop. So my question is: Have I done something wrong? The reason I configured it like this with two drives is so Windows and Linux could stay separate and unknown to each other. Now I'm afraid that I run the risk of something messing up when I run updates on either OS. Have attached screenshots below. Thanks for your help. EDIT: added filesystem screenshots from both OSes.

I once used Mint years ago but I've forgotten the little of what I leaned back then. I tried out PCLinuxOS XFCE edition and it doesn't seem to be installing correctly because it takes a long time to boot. It also doesn't seem to be using all of the HDD space even though I asked it to and it shows me a ''0kb'' folder aside from the system folder and the DVD drive, which I'm guessing is where the rest of the drive is hidden. I tried right clicking it and it seems there's no way to format it. Since this is effectively my first time using Linux, wouldn't Arc-based distros be too much? I also considered antiX but it only has the Fluxbox DE and two other window managers like the one you suggested. Are window managers very difficult to use for beginners? Will I be lacking in stuff I'll need to do basic stuff with them when compared to a traditional DE? My first priority with this laptop is clearing plenty of space and moving important files from my main PC onto it as backup. Thank you for your help!

Thank you both for the information, I wasted some time in BIOS before understanding fastboot might be in Windows settings and finally found it and disabled it and a lot of other stuff in the process as well. Turns out the laptop never was really properly shutting down and only going into sleep or something similar. Now all I got to do is choose a distro; any recommendations?

Hello everyone, I'm in the process of installing Linux on an old Asus X553M laptop and I've already disabled secure-boot and enabled CSM to allow booting from a pendrive. The machine is still running Windows 10 and I've found 2 ways to access BIOS: one is to shift+restart and enter BIOS from the Windows advanced startup menu, and this is what I used to disable SB et all. The other is by using the method described here: https://errorsdoc.com/support-for-asus/asus-laptop-bios-keys-for-bios-setup/ (the first one, just below the table) where I have to shift+shutdown and press the F2 key then power back on with the F2 key. According to the linked article, the BIOS key for the X553M is Del but that doesn't work. I also tried mashing Esc while booting and that doesn't work either. Seeing how both of the above methods I tried are Windows-dependent ways to get into the BIOS, is there a way to enter the BIOS without using windows? Is there some feature I'm missing to enable to allow me to access BIOS by mashing a BIO-key on startup? Also, what are your recommendations for a a distro with the XFCE desktop? I check distrowatch and no distro seems to have XFCE as their flagship. I'm currently thinking PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE or Linux Lite in that order because I don't want a distro that's tied to / dependent on another one (like Linux Lite is to Ubuntu). I want XFCE because it seems to be the desktop designed for lower specced machines and this laptop has 2 cores and 2GB of RAM. Thank you all for your advice and input!

My friend owns this mobo: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/PRIME/PRIME-B350M-A/ which he uses with an R5 1600, GTX 750Ti and 8GB of RAM (everything's at stock). He's been using it for 4+years now but has had the problem of the cmos battery not lasting more than 3 months at best. The first battery that the board came with lasted more than year but every one after that hasn't lasted more than 3 months. Recently he bought a new one to rule out battery error and even that ran out in 2 months. A picture of the battery he used is attached below. I'm 99% sure he's using the correct type of battery. So what could be causing it to drain so fast? From my experience, a mobo may not need a battery change during its entire lifetime, let alone one every 3 months. I checked the BIOS and drivers page and there doesn't seem to be anything mentioning a fast-exhausting battery or a fix for it. Any advice?

Yeah punish people for their leaders' sins, good idea. I'm sure the the average guy on the street is better poised to take on and overthrow the internationally designated Badman no.1 than the overnight peace activists and their governments (the ''Free World''). Its sad to see people turn on eachother over governmental decisions no one had a say in and play into the hands of the propaganda machines their governments set up. All the while million dollar corporations make brownie points from appealing to the shallow understanding of these people by throwing their Russian and Belarusian customers under the bus. #IstandwithgoodPR I guess. Truly a sad state of affairs when we'd rather side with equally ignorant, paranoid and delusional governments or friendly neighborhood corporations than our fellow man.

Now governments regulating these kinds of practices I'd support. At this rate, we'll probably go back to Gutenberg presses or wood block printing in our lifetimes. Who in their right mind would accept being nickel-dimed for printing a document FFS.

Yeah, ''review bombing'', the term industry shills game journalists invented for when people call out massive fails by developers and but its easier to defend them as victims than criticize the hand that feeds. The point where I feel like I could spend upwards of $90 and still have no idea if I'm getting everything is the point where Gabe's idea of offering a better service has been forgotten.

I had the same problem after reconnecting my fans to tidy up. Does your system start and then shut down or just refuse to start at all? Mine would start (fans would almost start moving) then stop as if a power limit was reached or something. Turns out the problem was that the fans were connected to the wrong headers from the case and switching them around solved the problem. You may have done something similar and connected Fan A headers / cables to Fan B's.

What did they say? I was an FF user too until they cancelled their CEO over a political donation he made years ago. I use all of them, except Opera I guess: Vivaldi - daily driver, steam, youtube, forums, researching. Use DDG when possible, google when it fails Edge - work email, flicker, Linkedin Chrome - Prime Video, online registrations Brave - for potentially shady stuff

Sorry, I don't understand. You mean 1080Ti or 2080Ti? And what is IHR?