Thedudely1

Alright well that makes sense. I thought it was strange that it would still work fine with different connectors though. Thanks for the tip!

So, about a month ago my PC suddenly started crashing in games after about 5 minutes. The screen would go black, but there would still be sound playing normally. CTRL+ALT+DEL could not bring it back. I uninstalled the drivers with DDU in safe mode, reinstalled the latest drivers, and I got the same problem. I forgot to mention that yes, I did also disable my overclock, and I even tried lowering the power limit to 50% and nothing changed. I figured my graphics card was on its way out. It's an MSI GTX 1060 6GB that I bought new about 6 years ago. Out of curiosity I connected a spare 2 molex to single 8 pin PCIE power connector I have and everything works just like normal, even with my overclock and increased power limits and I've been using it for the last month problem free. After switching back to the original PSU 8 pin connector, the problem came back. Any thoughts? I have an i5 11400 and an XFX 550W 80+ bronze power supply that's about 9 years old.... TLDR: games crash when not using molex adpter for GPU power, they don't crash and work perfectly while using molex to 8 pin power connector.

There's nothing wrong with saving some money and getting the i5 8400 with the 1060!

I currently have two GPUs in my main rig. One is my main GPU (GTX 1060) and the other I use for mining 24/7 (RX 580.) Yes, mining. Please don't crucify me. I have two monitors and they're both connected to the 1060 and none of the IO on the 580 is being used. The problem is that when I am mining on only the 580, YouTube videos refuse to play until I stop mining and games like Wolfenstien 2 first give me some AMD driver error, then launch using the 580, and after about a second of game play, my whole screen and everything in Windows seems to crash and refresh. Before I had the 580 in my system none of this was happening. It seems like certain applications are trying to use the 580 as a render-er instead of the 1060, which is my display adapter. Any thoughts? Thanks.

I wouldn't play at that. It's my ten year old sister it has to please. If the lows were around 20FPS and I caped it at 30, then I doubt she'd notice the difference. I'd see what I could do once I had it.

I'm not sure it is as bad as you think. Yes, the GPU is shit, but, at least from what I can tell, the other specs are at least somewhat viable today. It doesn't have any RAM limitations really, and the CPU is still decent I'd say.

Yeah that's what it seems like. Really though, it just need to be able to hold a frame rate of over 20 at the lowest settings. From what I can tell, it can do that.

Okay, so let me explain the whole situation. Recently, my little sister started getting into Overwatch. She uses my desktop and my Battle.Net account all the time to play it. This would be fine, but she is constantly nagging me to be able to use my computer. She's ten by the way. Yes, I know some of you may say she's young to be playing Overwatch or to have her own computer, but I'm not here asking about ethics. Anyway, I was thinking she could get her own computer. So my first thought was to buy some real cheapo, old desktop for like $10 USD and put in either something like an RX 460 or an older card that can play games decently. That would be fine, but currently she doesn't have a desk or any room for a desk, because we're selling our house. Besides the desk too, she would need a monitor. Then, at some point she'd probably need to get a microphone and a web cam and all this other stuff, that although I don't care about having some of it, she's used to using iMacs and would expect to have some of that stuff. So one day I was at school and I started thinking about the laptops they have. They technically have a dedicated GPU, have a first gen i5, and run Windows. They come packed with a webcam, microphone, WIFI, Bluetooth, speakers, and a Windows 7 license that I assume I could use. So it would be the whole package. They're Lenovo Thinkpad T410s. They have an Intel Core i5 m560, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an Nvidia NVS 3100M. So the specs aren't anything great, but in terms of everything but the GPU, it's considerably better than any new laptop you could buy for <$150 and, for the price I would offer for it, is way cheaper. The GPU is the only part that worries me. It's kind of shit. It's slow and it only supports up to DirectX 10.1. But all she needs to run, at least for now, is Overwatch, which requires at least DirectX 10.1. So this is getting long, but I'll make a TL;DR at the end. My High School uses a lot of Chromebooks, however a few classes still have some 2010-ish era Windows laptops, these Thinkpads included. So, from what I can tell, they're trying to phase out the Windows laptops and the classes that have them hardly use them, because the teachers just request a Chromebook cart when they need them. So I was thinking that I could ask my teacher if I could purchase one of the laptops for something like $20 from the school. I really don't know what she'd say. I can see it going either way. I'm sure they're trying to get rid of them anyway and they have so many of them, so I'm betting I could get one for a good deal one way or another. No matter the GPU, for $20, that would be a steal, but it needs to be able to play Overwatch at some level. One more thing about the GPU is that the Nvidia NVS 3100M that's in there, is still getting driver updates for Windows 10 and will continue getting them for another year or two, I believe. I think it would be a good idea to atleast try and get one of these laptops, but I also am worried that I'm trying to convince myself that I should, because I'm curios. Should I attempt to buy one of these Thinkpads from my High School for my little sister to play Overwatch and hopefully have it be her foray into using computers other than her iPad? Thanks for taking the time to read this, I know it's long as hell. TL;DR: My ten year old sister needs a cheap computer to play Overwatch. A desktop could be the way to go, but currently isn't optimal. My school has 2010-ish laptops that I could attempt to buy for ~$20. Should I attempt to buy one for her to play Overwatch? It's fine if it runs at the lowest settings, it just can't be trash. Thanks! School laptop specs: Lenovo Thinkpad T410 CPU: Intel Core i5 M560 GPU: Nvidia NVS 3100M RAM: 8GB of DDR3 (Not sure of speed) Hard Drive is 140Gb or something. Not that great, but sufficient for our use. I attached a picture of the Windows Experience Index score, because it's the only performance measure I had easy access to. Thanks a lot!

Yeah, very true. I think that's what we're going to end up doing. Thanks!

Make sure the power settings are set "High performance" for when the laptop is plugged in and running off battery, assuming you're using Windows.

My friend has an HP Envy M6 laptop that shipped with Windows 8, I believe. Although, he upgraded it to Windows 10 when that whole fiasco was going on. I've heard different things from different people about weather or not he would be able to use the Windows key from his laptop on his desktop. Obviously, not with the intention of using both simultaneously. I've heard that the key is bound to the motherboard of the laptop and may not be used anywhere else, but I've also heard that you can call Microsoft and tell them that you got a replacement motherboard and that allows you to use the key on any new computer. Anyway, can he use the key from his laptop in a fresh install in his desktop? Thanks! TL;DR: Can you transfer a Windows key from an HP Envy 6 laptop for use in a self built desktop? Only using the key in one computer at a time, of course.

I have an 60Hz Acer IPS monitor something that I've been running at 71Hz for about a year now and I've had no problems. For me, the only problems I had was trying to find the right refresh rate to run at.

Well to be honest, I really don't know how much bandwidth graphics cards actually use from a PCI-E slot. However, I have an R9 290X running at PCI-E 2.0 X8 speed and although I haven't run any benchmarks comparing it to PCI-E 3.0, it still runs really well and I don't think it's losing much if any performance.

Well this thread is long since active, but a while ago I managed to "fix" the problem without changing any hardware. I figured I should just close the thread for anyone who may come across it. As it turns out, there is some weird problem between my make of graphics card and motherboard. Using a different graphics card model fixed the problem. I was never able to test my 290X in another system, but considering I've been threw two brand new cards, I don't think it's my card specifically. Anyway, however weird it may seem, after changing my motherboards PCI-E version from 3.0 to 2.0 or 1.0, it completely fixed the problem. I've been running with my motherboard's PCI-E slots set to 2.0 for a few months now with no problems whatsoever. It's probably worth mentioning that my motherboard had it's top PCI-E slot ripped off by the previous owner too, so that could be causing some weird problems. I can't explain why changing the PCI-E version fixed it or if it will work for you. All I can say is: anything that taxed my GPU beyond browsing the interwebs or things of that nature would cause my graphics card to start acting up, causing several app's UI to crash. I trouble shot this over the course of about a month on and off, but after changing my motherboard's PCI-E settings from PCI-E revision 3.0 to 2.0 or 1.0, the problem disappeared completely. Yes, I made sure that was the only variable I changed and going back to PCI-E 3 caused the problem to occur again. You can read the rest of the post for more details. Hope this saves someone some grief!

Are the parts put together? Jkjkjkj. Actually though. Just make sure all the power connectors for the PC are plugged in all the way like the CPU power and things like that. On my first build I forgot to switch on the power supply before trying to turn it on, so do that. Also, watch a build tutorial and make sure you didn't forget to do something.