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About a week ago I purchased a used Gigabyte RTX 2080 Windforce off Facebook Marketplace for $450. The seller provided video footage to me of the GPU in a system working so I trusted the seller. When the RTX 2080 arrived yesterday, I opened it up and threw it in my system to test it out. Booted into windows with no problem. I then installed the latest Nvidia drivers and opened Minecraft RTX for my first test. Once I loaded Minecraft RTX in my GPU fans immediately went to 100% and at that moment I knew something was not right. I opened up MSI Afterburner only to see throttling clock speeds of 1500Mhz and a GPU temperature of 89 degrees. It doesn't take a computer wizard to know that those temperatures show that something is seriously wrong, so I pulled the GPU out of my system and noticed some blue aftermarket thermal padding squished in between the cooler and PCB. I then knew that whoever previously owned this GPU messed up the thermals pretty bad so I decided to take the GPU apart. Following an easy disassembly guide, I split the PCB and the cooler only to find this: https://ibb.co/JHBpC2x What a mess! whoever tried to thermal pad this RTX 2080 had no idea what they were doing. Not to mention that the seller never mentioned any thermal issues OR that the GPU had been tampered with. Upon closer inspection, we can see what is undoubtedly the main thermal issue https://ibb.co/P9b49N6 https://ibb.co/5hdVGMp The previous owner had attempted to use a thermal pad instead of thermal paste. Speaking of thermal paste, it was everywhere. https://ibb.co/MND6zGG Apparently whoever decided to thermal pad this Graphics card thought that the extra high-temperature thermal paste would make a difference for low-temperature thermal pads. In this image here: https://ibb.co/P9b49N6 on the right you can see that the market blue thermal pads are way too thick and likely the reason the previous owner put a thermal pad on the IHS to actually make contact with the cooler because without the thermal pad on the IHS it doesn't even touch the cooler. Either way, this GPU was a mess. I ordered thermal grizzly padding in the correct thickness as a replacement and I will repaste the IHS with some KPX paste I have lying around. What a disaster, be careful what you buy! By the way, this is what it is supposed to look like stock... https://ibb.co/p1Sy8Ss

Dear forum, dear internet I just wanted to quickly share my experience with getting an MSI AMD Radeon RX 570 to run in my Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H rev. 1.0 mainboard. This forum seemed to be about right TL;DR: Take screenshots of your current BIOS settings. Update GA-Z77-D3H to the beta BIOS release F23b. Restore settings to what they were before the update manually (beware of the SATA controller's IDE mode! Make sure it's set to AHCI). The story in all it's glory: I had been running a GTX 980 with this Mainboard paired with an i7-3770k for years and bought myself an MSI Radeon RX 570 4G OC because I felt that AMDs Linux drivers were superior. After installing the new GPU, the computer would boot, the GPU's fans would spin up, but there would be no video out from the GPU. Video out on the iGPU however worked flawlessly. So I started diagnosing the problem at hand: The BIOS itself was updated to the latest stable release F22 and I couldn't find any option to list installed PCIe devices to see wether it even detected the new GPU. When running the lspci command on my Fedora Linux installed, it didn't list the new GPU. So I desperately turned to our Overlord Google and quickly found out that Gigabyte mainboards proved to be rather picky with the GPUs they wanted to work with, and also that Gigabyte seemed to abandon their mainboards rather quickly. So I decided to take the risk and upgrade my current BIOS release F22 to the latest available beta (released in 2014...) F23b. Unfortunately, all the settings were defaulted after the update... (Note to future self: ALWAYS TAKE SCREENSHOTS OF IMPORTANT SETTINGS, YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW!) Thus I had to set all my overclocks, UEFI, SATA and pheripherial settings again. So please keep in mind the saying "Do as I say, not as I do" and review and screenshot your BIOS settings before every update! To every reader who made it this far: You're awesome! Grab yourself a refreshing/reheating drink And don't forget: Backup your data. RAID is not a backup. An untested backup is no backup at all.

The Story: So. I'm on a Gigabyte AX370 Gaming K7 motherboard. Originally I was waiting on a BIOS update in order to actually OC my RAM, because RAM OC wasn't happening at all on the release F2 BIOS. On the 7th of March, Gigabyte released BIOS F3. I flashed to it, and was stoked to see that XMP worked immediately, 2933 on my Trident Z RGB DIMMs. However, I tried overclocking my CPU with Ryzen master control. This sent my computer into an F9 error code bootloop. (F9 errorcode = No recovery module was found) To break out of the loop, I had to smash my restart button several times until it finally broke past the F9 code. However, I couldn't boot into Windows after this. TO fix this NEW issue. I flashed back into the old F2 BIOS, and flashed back to F3. I am now in windows after a system restore that corrupted my profile and i had to do some nasty regedit stuff just to get back into my profile and out of a temp login. WARNING: AFTER FLASH TO F3 DO NOT USE RYZEN MASTER CONTROL AT ALL. Doing so will botch your BIOS in such a way that XMP will no longer work. At all. even after a reflash. (Still unsure if I've wrecked my board just trying to get back into windows) Additional Findings: Once you have flashed to F3, You can not flash back to F2, and boot into windows. You will freeze on the windows execution screen 100% of the time, no matter what settings you tweak in BIOS or if you load back to Optimized Defaults. In my case, 6GB of my total RAM has also gone missing (I'm supposed to have access to 16GB, I have access to 10GB however). I am still unsure if this is a side effect of the BIOS, or if I've wrecked my board. In the mean time. I'll be waiting on a new BIOS update that hopefully resolves these issues. If it doesn't. I guess I'm RMA'ing this board. I'm pretty sure I'll still be covered under the warranty due to this being a BIOS issue, rather than a hardware issue.

The Windows 10 store version of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will not work with the Steam version So I can't say I didn't saw this coming eventually: Microsoft is basically segregating PC gaming even more. They're not only making Windows Store exclusive games (though some have found their way to other stores afterwards) But now a 3rd party Windows Store game is intentionally crippled: I hold the controversial opinion that people should still not update to Windows 10 (even though us Windows 7 are 8 users are the minority at this point) and it's precisely because I know that whenever Microsoft "gets it right" with an OS this is immediately exploit it to their advantage and this Games For Windows Live levels of stupidity is basically Microsoft 101 for you: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. They're only "interested" in PC gaming all over again basically to try and fuck with Valve. Which would be fine if they tried to do so on a more legitimate level but instead they're turning a free and open platform into and even worst walled garden not unlike xbox live. Yes I'm sure many will claim this is technical and not intentional but I still think that if they wanted they could have addressed any potential technical limitations before they started pushing so hard for their store. Source: https://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/the_windows_10_store_version_of_call_of_duty_infinite_warfare_will_not_work_with_the_steam_version/1 UPDATE: It looks like Activision chose not to implement their own multiplayer code at all for a multiplayer based game and instead implemented Steamworks and Microsoft Store online API thingie to do the multiplayer, which is baffling and profoundly stupid even for Activision but still apparently what happened http://www.windowscentral.com/call-duty-coming-windows-store-not-without-some-drawbacks

Just used the uninstaller to remove it as the folding wasn't starting on my cpu and was going to try a re-install to see if it fixes it. I also checked the box to remove data. The uninstaller seemed to have taken this as permission to DELETE MY ENTIRE DOCUMENTS FOLDER, WTF!!! Couldn't even stop the uninstall with right click and close, but I didn't try using end task and it was too late by that point anyway. So I am now currently running a recovery program to try and get all my files and save games back. Hopefully I will be able to get everything back. Rather furious right now

Ok, this will seem a little weird but this is a bit of a PSA for r9 380 owners, including myself. So this PSA is for r9 380 users who suffer from: black screen constantly on games having to revert to Catylist 15.11.1 r9 380 hardlocking, only able to reset system with a hard reset odd performance in games Having to lock the Gpu clock to keep the card stable. If these problems sound familiar, well you've come to the right place. I was suffering from these problems myself and i have an XFX r9 380 Black edition, (Refrence pcb) So does this story sound familiar? You build your system, it works for a few months then out of nowhere, bam! Your system starts to lock up in games, causing a loss of input to your monitor and only way to fix it is to hard reset the psu? Well follow these steps Check gpuz and make sure that what it says matches up with what the card isthis may seem a little odd, but upon RMA'ing my 380 and talking with some people over at XFX, my card had a R9 380X BIOS! so this answers if the card runs odd in some games and having to lock your bios BLOW OUT YOUR PC, DUST IS A PAIN!! Now, this seems a little obvious but even the smallest amount of dust can cause issues!!! I got my card back and i put it in, but i was still loosing output. So i tinkered some more and decided to blow out my system EVEN IF YOUR SYSTEM LOOKS CLEAN IT MAY NOT!! I have filters on all of my fans and still there was a LOT of dust in my system, i made sure i targeted the pcie lanes, cleaned it out and your problems should go away, feel free to go back to crimson 16.10.1! my problems have vanished and the card runs faster then it did when i got it. Since it is a refrence pcb it is possible amd accidentally messed up bios's when they shipped a batch of cards out, this could be why they are staying tight lipped! So if you need more help comment down below!

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/gigabyte-aorus-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-extreme-11g Just saw this while visiting Massdrop.

I changed out the HDMI cable going to my main monitor today because my dog chewed through the old one. So after doing this I boot up and play some Overwatch, and it feels super choppy and terrible. I'm getting 100+ FPS, but something is really wrong. Tried a couple other games, same thing. Checked Nvidia Control Panel and everything seems fine, so next I try a reboot. That doesn't initially fix the issue, but then I look in Nvidia Control Panel again... and my display is set to 30HZ! I KNEW IT! I am 100% sure that it said 60Hz before that reboot. Changed the setting back to 60 and now everything's fine again. So yeah, PSA: Apparently swapping out an HDMI cable can swap you to 30Hz, and Nvidia Control Panel will lie about it.

I bought ASUS ROG X470-F Gaming motherboard for my high-end 2700x Ryzen build. It works pretty well but I figured several frustrating issues with it after 5 months of usage that I would like to share with community here. This is a high-end ROG motherboard and I expected quality for the money. Apparently this is not the case with ROG brand anymore. There are hardware and software issues with this motherboard and it is nearly impossible to reasonably explain it to anyone on the Asus team. 1) Support team responds according to their standard answer sheet and is not helpful at all. And trying to post anything on official ROG forums is a tough quest. User is required first to PM some dude on the forum in order to get your profile verified to be able to post. I did. I never got verified. Just being able to find his profile and message button took me some time. 2 No proper VBE (VESA BIOS Extensions) support. This is especially annoying with ultrawide setups. Latest motherboard BIOS still does not have proper VBE support and will not properly detect your GPU until after OS boots up. Meaning that every time you boot it looks like your OS is having seizures because of re-scaling. And forget about nice looking smooth boot loaders like Clover. I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows. And this frustrates me every time I have to watch my PC boot. 3) RAM OC is unreliable. I am not very well experienced with this, however sometimes mobo fails to boot with XMP profile enabled, and motherboards leds indicating RAM failure. Boots up after few restarts, sometimes resetting all the settings back to defaults. RAM sticks are ok. Tested with AsRock motherboard. 4) Terrible ASUS software. System monitoring and control. Asus AI Suite is terrible and there is no SpeedFan support for this motherboard and only option you are left with is purchasing Argus Monitor. Software that comes with the motherboard is terrible. Other than ASUS AI Suite not being able to properly install itself (sometimes some of the utilities are missing even tho I use same installation package and tick same options) it is also caused my PC to crash. I get BSODs with latest AI Suite for my motherboard. Downloading newer AI Suite for higher tier mobo fixes this particular issues but comes with other problems like not being able to take full control over your fan speeds. Advertised AI Quick Charge just doesn't work. I've tried multiple different versions. It just sits there in your trays with disconnected icon over it. Other people reported this on the internet. But ASUS just doesn't care. You bought the product already. ASUS Aura has major security issues and has been used by cheaters to execute malicious code in games. Any game using EAC (pretty much every Unreal Engine 4 game) will not launch unless you manually kill LigthingControl process from task manager. According to EAC team, Asus have been informed about the issue and have done nothing. Some rant. Idk why business still insist on using proprietary software solutions for motherboard software. It gets outdated very quickly, they never fix the bugs and/or listen to the community feedback. And even every software iteration is often exclusive to one specific motherboard which means using newer versions for other same chipset/line up motherboards does not often work. I owned Gigabyte motherboard before and it had similar issues with the software, however I found a workaround by using newer version of software intended for other motherboards on same chipset. However once product was officially out of life cycle you basically receive no more updates for the motherboard software and often manufacturers purge/remove download links and files. I expected quality from the pricy ROG brand. Product quality, after sales support quality and software quality. Apparently I expected too much. So after 5 months I can't use any of the advertised ASUS features like quick charging and RGB control or even monitor/control my system sensors without help of paid thirty-party software. Definitely do not recommend. 190521032541.BMP

(TLDR; Update your bios before attempting anything. This sounds obvious but a lot of threads in my google adventures clearly didn't do this first. Also this is a gamble, so if your board doesn't support it then a bios update first will really save you some hassle.) I just spent a few hours straight with a Z97-A motherboard and the absolute AWFUL hoops I tried jumping through just to figure it out. So I hope this helps, cause I was kicking myself for too long with the simplest solution. First, I installed my drive, no problem. It didn't show up in bios or windows, but I found that I needed to change a setting in the bios to enable m.2 compatibility as opposed to pci-e x2 mode. After that windows detected it, so I went ahead and cloned my drive. After rebooting and trying to boot from it, I realized it still wasn't there in the bios. So I did some searching. Most people said that z-97 doesn't support booting from NVME, only some boards do, etc. So now I'm really panicking. I turned off secure boot and CSM in bios and was able to install windows from a USB drive. Except it wouldn't continue the install, it would only loop in bios and restart the USB drive's installer. At this point I had no idea what to do. The drive showed up in windows just fine so I could load it with programs and everything. Format it and assign it a letter. I just couldn't boot from it because the bios wouldn't recognize it. The BIOS So I updated my bios and BAM it showed up instantly, finished windows installation and loaded fine. So I thought okay, now I'm going to wipe it and re-clone my current boot drive. BSOD right away. So It doesn't like being cloned, but it worked with a fresh install. So now I'm here on a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and it's running flawlessly. So if you're doing this, make sure you've updated your bios, and that your windows install is fresh for the sake of compatibility.

(Posted this before on the Phones & Tablets subthread, but I decided to make another one on Tech News to spread the word around more quickly. There will be changes between that post and this one) If you're one of the owners of Google's latest Pixel 3 and larger brethren, the 3 XL, you might want to baby the crap out of it at least for now. That's because despite the ample time period between the phone's unveiling and launch alongside the 2 week period since the phone officially went on sale, getting the Pixel 3 repaired is proving to be quite a bit challenging, moreso than many owners seem willing to put up with. On 9to5Google, Kyle Bradshaw's wife recently dropped her Pixel 3 XL by accident without a case. As such, the only option they had since they did not opt for the accidental damage protection plan was to head to a uBreakiFix store to get it fixed (uBreakiFix is an official repair partner for Google's Pixel line). However, three days after the damage assessment, uBreakiFix called them up to inform that they don't have replacement parts yet for the Pixel 3 and that there isn't yet a solid timeframe (on their end) for when these parts will arrive. There's no real timeframe as to when these parts will arrive, so if you own a Pixel 3 or 3 XL, it's probably best that you put it in a good case if you haven't already. I know not everyone likes the idea of cases but given the current situation, I don't think it's a wise bet to risk it. If you opted for the $7/month accidental protection plan, however, you should be able to get a replacement device shipped. Sources; 9to5Google Reddit #1 Reddit #2 Reddit #3 D13H4RD's opinion

An article on The Register serves as a good Public Service Announcement (PSA) on why we should maintain local & backed up copies of movies and music purchased in digital format. Essentially, what has happened is that a biologist found out that three movies he had purchased through iTunes had disappeared from his library. When inquiring with Apple as to where his movies had gone, he learned that Apple had lost the licensing rights to those movies. Basically, if he had not downloaded and saved a copy on local storage, he lost those movies completely. Apple did offer up something in the way of recompense in the form of four movie rentals up to $5.99 a piece, however that was more a discretionary offer. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/12/apple_film_rights/ So this serves as a good reminder that no matter which platform you purchase your digital content on, it is worthwhile to download a local copy to storage and not just count on having it available and retained in the distributors system. Reminds me that I should probably see about getting more space on my NAS at home.

Committed to the feedback from PC gamers Microsoft has decided to renew their efforts to bring great entertainment efforts to the platform (For really reals this time) So we know bring you Quantum Break directly through Steam....only without DX12....and you need a motherfucking 1080 to barely be able to maitain 60fps on 1080p: http://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/quantum_break_s_steam_version_runs_terribly_on_pc/1 So be warned just stay away and whatever you do don't put more than 2 hours into it if you preordered so you can refund.

I've been running a 3930k for 4 and a half years now with this cooler: http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX36377 Doesn't seem so bad, right? Not super cheap, mounted well, decent enough airflow, good paste, blah blah blah... At idle, the 3930k on this cooler sits around 42-45 C. At half load it'll jump into the 75-80 C range. At 100% load it will throttle from a 42x multiplier to a 37-39x after about 10 minutes. Without any overclocking (38x multiplier) It will sustain a 100% load for quite awhile before throttling but it will do so around the 85 C to 90 C range. Tj Max is 91C on this CPU. If you're running a CPU that pumps out a lot of wattage, especially if you're overclocking it (this can touch 200w at 100% load with a 43x multiplier), throw on a higher-end CPU cooler. I don't have any hard and fast recommendations other than the fact that the one I linked just isn't cutting it. It really seems like, for an E-series CPU you'll need a cooler with more surface area to heat up and remove heat from the CPU than a midrange CPU cooler can provide. Naturally, because it's running so hot, it's also a very noisy PC once you have any load. Do yourself and your ears a favour and throw a high-end cooler on an E-series chip.

http://www.modders-inc.com/psa-cooler-mounts-can-damage-skylake-cpus/ I am currently planning on building a Skylake PC. Because of this article I am thinking that I am either that I am going to go for a Haswell build or an AIO cooler. Please be aware if building a New PC or upgrading.

Was seeing these ad's pop up everywhere. Please don't fall for this. The pricing is outrageous. https://www.cuttingedgegamer.com/index.html

Hey there, Just sharing something that I encountered yesterday... My mother brought home an unmarked 32GB USB flash drive from work (not hers)... I opened up the drive in Linux and I see the files fine, etc. The drive was apparently 'Write Protected', so I went ahead and tried to take the files off for reformatting... As the files were transferring, there were a lot of I/O errors that popped up... I became suspicious then... It's either a loop-write firmware (like what they did on the fake eHDDs) or factory rejects that got into the hands of someone else... I was also unable to format the drive without encountering errors... The owner apparently got the drive for ~300PhP (approx 6USD) from a sidewalk vendor... I also have this 8GB Kingston DT101 (that's what the device told me) whose R/W speeds are less than acceptable... Same source, but I didn't buy it myself... tl;dr Don't get cheap drives from dubious sources... You might get low quality, outright defective, or fake stuff...

With the Summer sale almost certainly around the corner (heavy rumours for tomorrow) I thought i'd do a small PSA-ish thing on the sale Step 1: Make sure you're ready. Step 2: Set yourself a budget, usually a small amount ($20-25 usually) in your wallet should suffice. Step 3: Buying games. Here's a handy flowchart : Follow this to the letter. DO NOT BUY GAMES THAT ARENT ON THESE DEALS UNTIL THE LAST DAY. Step 4: Make your money last. Get only the games that you think you'll play. Step 5: Buy all of your games as gifts. That way you can either gift them, or let them sit in your inv until you want to play them, having them in your inv gives you the ability to trade for bigger and better games. Step 6: Vote on the community choice as much as you can! Even if you own all of the games, many don't, and you know which is your favourite. Vote for that one. Step 7: Enjoy! Sit back, relax, and watch the prices drop I know many will be veterans of sales, but it's nice to remind ourselves! Feel free to post the games you got too! And if you're looking to trade a game for a game please make sure to follow this thread and fill in the template below in your reply: Steam ID: Game(s) willing to trade: Game(s) wanting to trade for: Still available: [Y/N] Change the [Y/N] once a trade has been completed, or you've decided to keep it. No point in spamming each other for games that we don't have.

Hi guys, This reddit post was recently found by me, and I thought it was important since I see a lot of people using this mining pool already. The reason them having 25% share of the Network hash rate is a bad thing is that, if they conspired with some other pool, they could easily have over 50% and control the flow of LTC. This was a problem with BTC mining some time ago, when a single pool was almost at 51% of the total network hash rate and had to be throttled to prevent them causing double spending. Which basically means they could decide how much BTC anyone got. It's more complicated than that, but you get the idea. You can use wemineltc, but just keep aware of how much of the total network hash rate your pool has and try to avoid bigger ones to prevent any of them from having too much of it. This won't cause you to make any less LTC. Wemineltc isn't the bad guys, but at the same time, we don't want them to have the power to become the bad guys. That'd be bad. Mkay? Thanks, Vitalius

Hi everyone, I did a search on this and didn't find much about it, so I just wanted to make a sort of general public service announcement regarding large posts. I'm not a mod or anything, but I see people not using it, so I assume they don't know about it. There is a spoiler tag in the forum. You might see it sometimes. Sadly, I haven't found a button for it. If there is one, it'd be great if someone could point it out. Basically, to use it, just type spoiler surrounded by brackets (These []) at the beginning of what you want in the spoiler and the same thing with a / at the beginning of spoiler at the end of what you want in the spoiler. Example: [spoiler]*massive post with images and videos*[/spoiler] What the example produces: This makes threads easier to navigate and at the very least hides massive walls of texts. The main problem is when people *quote* these posts without using spoilers. I often put any large post I quote into spoilers or cut down the post to what I want to talk about/address. People who post large images or videos, it'd be lovely if you put those in spoilers by default (when you post them) to save whoever quotes you's time. If there is actually no button for this, one should likely be added at some point. Not sure, haven't seen anything on the forum suggestion thread about it. Thanks, Vitalius P.S. Mods feel free to do whatever with this post. Edit: There is a spoiler "button". Look at the third post of this thread.

Hi all, We're still experiencing issues with Microsoft email domains dropping validation emails and password reset emails. Please generate a support ticket or contact a staff member if you're having issues with resetting your password or validating your account. If you can't access your account, please contact forum@linusmediagroup.com with your username AND email address. This issue affects all Microsoft email domains (.co.uk, .de, .com etc.) Thanks!