Eric

I was in a chat group people on Steam to discuss the machines amongst ourselves, I believe we had over 120+ people confirmed with the same config: Intel Core i5 4570, 16GB of RAM, 1TB Seagate SSHD and Zotac reference GTX 780. I too remember hearing that were were supposed to be higher and lower end models, but I hadn't seen or heard about any of those from other testers. As far the CPU thermals go, they were completely fine, I don't recall specific numbers but it was well within what I would consider comfortable range for CPUs of that generation, the GPU is what struggled the most. with the plastic shroud cover on top, it would very easily idle at 60-65c with a fan speed usually in the 30-40% range and any gaming load promising it would hit 80c with a very particularly noisy fan, given that it was a blower style.

Hey! Finally a video I actually have some hands on experience with, for once. I was one of the 300 testers, I still have my box and the case for the Steam Machine, but I had to part it out because the SFX PSU died and I was using the Steam Machine as my primary PC, SFX PSUs were not cheap, so I ended up doing a case transfer with it. That led me to the issue you guys talked about in the video, the rear plate for the GPU. My 780 was listed as a Zotac model, so I actually got into contact with a couple of people over there, who were more than willing to send me the bracket for the 780 so I could use it in a normal case. There were some units made like this that were actually sent to game devs for testing/dev purposes, but the "300" units sent to the mostly randomly selected people and were sent in heavy wooden crates (photo 1),each have a small engraving on the lid of one of the specific vent holes, as there were 300 of them, the mark indicated which number machine you had, I believe mine was unit 094. (photo 2) I couldn't see the mark too well in your video, but you appear to have gotten one of the 300 beta units sent to a person. A couple of other things mentioned in the video: We were encouraged to open up the Steam Machine, even if you received one of these, doing any sort of reporting or actual testing was not required at all. I was involved with a Jira forum they gave us access to, to report any issues, but otherwise Valve was extremely hands off. I remember being told something to the effect of.. "the Steam Machine remains property of Valve, but it is yours to do with as you wish". This included some people who installed Windows on it immediately. Also, there was some thought given to a little upgrading, because the mount for the drives (photo 4) had an additional SATA power and Data cable routed to it, I expanded my Steam Machine with a 256GB SSD, but my model and many other testers came with a 1TB Seagate SSHD 2.5" drive. The whole top cover can be removed with only a single philips, they definitely didn't try to deter anyone from opening it up. As far the layout of the GPU goes, it originally came with a plastic top cover piece (photo 3), but the vast majority of testers I know actually removed it for far better thermals, but it would technically press fit against the GPU power cables and keep them in place that way. (I also still have the original SteamOS recovery stick that came with mine, if you want me to dump it or send it to LTT staff, let me know!) Here's a full imgur album I made when I received mine: https://imgur.com/gallery/5bnyi

I was interested in getting a type c "hub" like normal USB hubs look like, but there's a lot of junk in this area, from stuff being falsely advertised as being USB 3.1/ 10Gbps.

For years I remember wanting to make sure Type C would be on any future systems I built. "The port of the future" was something I heard repeatedly back then. I will admit most of my enthusiasm about it was for VirtualLink, which is now dead. I do play VR, but even my Index only uses a USB 3.0 cable to connect, I utilize many of the Type A ports in my system, but I pretty much always have the 2 Type C ports open. So I asking any of you, what do you typically use a Type C port for? Better yet, is there anything a Type C on your desktop has allowed you to do that you couldn't do with a traditional Type A port?

I'm a bit like MKBHD when it comes to this stuff, but I LOVE a red and black color theme. It just screams badassery. In other words, it's paintjob matches it's specs!

A few people from CyanogenMod, Steve Kondik (Cyanogen) and Koushik Dutta (Koush) did an Ask Me Anything earlier today on Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cyanogen_kondik_and_koushik_koush/ They answered quite a few questions today that gave us a lot information about the future of the Aftermarket Android OS. Today they also announced the start of CyanogenMod, Inc. http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a_new_chapter When questioned about how the plan to fund their efforts and more about hardware and the possibility of having devices sold with CyanogenMod installed on them: Also, more information about their installer they have planned, which if done correctly would allow even inexperienced users install CyanogenMod so long as they have a device that supports it. The also reaffirmed their position to keep their OS true to open-source and being friendly to Google How do you feel about an aftermarket version of Android possibly going more mainstream? If you'd never used CyanogenMod before, would you consider try it if the installer works well? Would you consider buying a device that has CyanogenMod preinstalled? If you want to find out more information about CyanogenMod, you can check out http://www.cyanogenmod.org/ or if you would like to contribute code, check out their github https://github.com/CyanogenMod

So hello! How are you all doing today/tonight?

Well... this is awkward..

NOTE: This is going to be a very long post... Will attempt to TL;DR at the end. So a few months ago, I had gone along with finally purchasing parts for my first entire computer build. Here's the parts list: Intel Core i5 3570K Corsair Hydro H70 CLC Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR3 (2x8GB) Asus P8Z77-V LK Motherboard XFX AMD 7970 Black Edition GPU. Ultra LSP 750w PSU. Before I get into this, I want to add that I checked the temps of everything during the course of all the issues. My CPU temp never went over 50c and GPU never above 70c. (The less important stuff: 2 1TB Hard drives, 1 Asus CD drive) The build went pretty good. I booted up and worked fine.. for about 3 days. After that, it would absolutely refuse to power on. I ended up replacing the PSU (with the same), which didn't help and so I replaced the Motherboard (with the same) and suddenly it worked.. for about 3 days. It froze while I was playing a game. The computer would not respond to anything. I would then flip the switch on the back of the PSU to turn it off. After letting it sit for 10-15 seconds, I would turn the switch back on and hit the power button- Computer turns on, No beeps, no video, but the Fans are all running. I looked up the issue on Google, and came to the conclusion I had some part that had failed and was preventing the machine to boot. So following many peoples recommendations first I reset the BIOS, which did absolutely nothing, I breadboarded the computer, on a box, with the absolutely minimal components. CPU, 1 stick of ram, (testing in all four DIMM slots, including the other stick) Mouse, Keyboard, HDD, Monitor. Turning it on had the same effect, fans would go, but no video or no beeps from the motherboard. Strangely enough, attempting to boot with no RAM would give the beep code for no RAM. Feeling helpless and tired, as I did not have any spare parts to test each individual component, I put the machine back together, but not before checking the CPU and making sure the connection was correct (which I believed to be okay, since it ran for 3 days before the issues arose) I basically ended up rebuilding the entire machine, Reseating the CPU, RAM Mobo (double checking everything) Reseting the BIOS. I left the GPU out of the rebuild since it wasn't necessary.. Once it was put back together, I figured I might as well give it another shot. I powered it on and bam, I got the beep code for saying there was no VGA detected, as I had not plugged in the video card at the time. So surely enough, I throw the video card in and it works. I got to use my computer again. Now.. After a week. Same issue. The Computer Freezes, Audio buzzes/stutters. Headache ensues. So I decide to do what worked last time: I took it apart entirely, breadboarding once again, testing the each of the RAM sticks in each of the DIMM slots, again, and again, felt defeated. I assembled it back together again, this time WITH the video card. No dice, I checked all the cables once more and then I noticed something odd with the USB header. The corner of the header cable that has no slot for pins, almost looked somewhat melted. I feared the worst, and checked the spot it had been plugged into. Fine. No issues at all. But me being the curious person I am, decided to boot it without the USB header plugged in. Beep. Computer powers on. A few more days pass. Computer freezes, audio stutters.. attempting to boot, no video no beeps. I have no idea what made me do this, but I unplugged the CD drive. I did NOT rebuild the machine this time. All I did was unplug the CD drive SATA/Power. It works again.. for a few days. Freeze. Audio Stutters. I totally unplug it from the wall, redo all of the PSU connections and even plug in the odd USB header and the CD drive, try it and it works. Here's where it works for about 2 weeks, and then the issue comes back to haunt me. Playing game: Computer then freezes and the audio begins it buzzing/stuttering. I just kind of stare at it for a minute, in disbelief, power it off. Unplug it from the wall. And just think for a solid 5 minutes. I plug it back in, flip the switch, and it works. This exact setup (where I unplug it from the wall after the issue and wait to fix it) has happened AT LEAST 5 times now and doing that has always fixed it, for the time being. Until a few days ago. It froze, so I did the usual, I let it run for about a minute, then powered it off, waited 5 minutes, plugged it back in, and tried to power it on. No dice. No video, no beeps. I take the lazy route this time, My motherboard has a MemOK! button on it, that supposedly allows the computer to boot if there's been some issues with it, or at least, that's my understanding of it. So I power on the computer, hit the MemOK! button the motherboard, and it turns off, then back on.. then off.. and it boots. I've done this the last 3-4 times, because just unplugging it and waiting was no longer working. I fear the worst. The stability of my computer seems to decrease every day and I can't identify the cause of the issue. Does anyone have any ideas whatsoever? TL;DR Built computer, worked good for 3 days, then no powering on, replaced Mobo and PSU, works again, now freezes with audio buzzing, fix by reassembling entire computer. Freezes again. Unplug random Mobo header: Works. Freezes, Unplug CD drive, Works, Freezes, plug Mobo header and CD drive in, Works. Freezes, Unplugs from wall, waits a few minutes, works. (x5) Freezes, Fix by using the MemOK! button on my motherboard.

I'm going to be getting a SSD soon for my computer upgrade, and I'm trying to figure out what would be best for me. I have applications installed across 2 hard drives on my computer, I have over 300GB of games installed across both drives. I know if I decide to use the SSD as the OS drive I'll have to reinstall Windows due to the size differences, Is the speed of an SSD vs SRT enough to invest in a larger SSD as an OS Drive? Or is the difference minuscule? If I do decide on SRT, does the size of the SSD make an impact as well? I think it has to be at least 60GB.

I'm looking forward to making this the best tech forum around!

Hello everyone! I figure since I had a question I'd share it and fill up this forum, maybe someone else had this question as well? My card is the GIGABYTE ATI 5770 1GB GDDR5. I have a 24" 1080p monitor I use for full screen applications like games and whatever else, but I also have a 22" 1680x1050 running at all times with it. Does having the extra monitor make an impact on the FPS/Performance of a game? I feel like this happens when I switch from my current setup (1920x1080+1680x1050) to my Sony TV (1920x1080) It feels as if games run a bit smoother. Is this just a placebo affect or could something else be affecting it? I should mention both my monitors and my television run at 60Hz.

I'd highly recommend getting TRIM. I'd explain it, but I think Linus can do it better. Also, SATA 1 isn't terrible, and with the SSD you'll be reducing seek times and load time regardless of whether it was SATA2 or not. I'm not sure you'll notice it unless you're transferring or working on very large files.

I'll have you know, League of Legends is usually abbreviated as LoL, due to the "of" being lowercase. Otherwise you'll confuse people into thinking you're typing Laugh Out Loud. Moving on, I don't think it's the best on PC EVER by any means, it may be one of the best MOBA/Action RTS for those new to the genre though. It's easier to pickup compared to something like Heroe's of Newarth or Dota/2. The jungle has changed a lot since the latest patch, I haven't noticed much of a difference while jungling. I main Lee Sin. Hunter's Machete + 5 pots and I'm good to go.

If it will invoke thoughtful discussion, I see no reason why it shouldn't be here. If it becomes a place for the trolls to troll, I'd say end it. It's a new forum, let's see how it goes for now.

I bought it based on a recommendation from a friend. Holy hell, I was engrossed. (It's also on Sale with BioShock 1&2 on Amazon for $10US, keys work on steam) I'm glad I had a controller to play it with, it really helped the clunky controls. I beat it the same night. It's nice to have a shooting game that's "grown up" so to speak.