[Rant] Tech Minor Rant Thread

figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
PatrThom said:
...and going by the pictures has to be either Gigabyte's B760M D3HP or B760M G AX motherboard (because white southbridge) but has to be the D3HP because it has 2x PCIe x1 slots listed in the specs (G AX only has one).
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It's a B760M C and I have updated the BIOS to the latest version.

I'll check on the rest of your advice after I shower and lie down for a while. Even after over a week of being sick, I took a turn for the worse today.

EDIT: the SSD is Western Digital, from memory, but I'll get you specifics later.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

-The i7 CPU on that deal is far better than the i5 in your current rig.
-GPUs are almost the same, but the second one is better.
-RAM is the same (possibly better, if your current rig has 4x modules instead of just 2).
-SSD is half the size, so you'll probably want to upgrade that to a PCIe 4.0 2TB at a later time, but PCIe 3.0 1TB should be enough for a while, so long as you're ok shuffling things back and forth to the HDD whenever you want to switch.
-WiFi is identical. Ethernet is faster, but don't know if you'll notice, depending on your router.
-PSU is 50W better on the MSI.

The MSI seems like a better deal all around (except for the SSD), though of course if you go for it I would make sure to check for that BIOS update right away if one is available. As far as MSI's reputation goes, they are middle-of-the-road for reliability.

--Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
The dud PC has gotten so bad that it can't even fully load the desktop, except in safe mode. A normal boot starts to freeze before the system tray icons load in, and bluescreens into a reboot shortly after. I can't even get it to restore Windows, it just says that something went wrong.

It runs in safe mode, though, seemingly indefinitely. At least that allowed me to check that none of my files remain on the drive (at least not obviously). Maybe I just wasn't spending enough time in safe mode for the instability to hit.

Maybe CyberpowerPC can figure out what component is causing all this havoc, when they try to refurbish it / salvage the parts, but I sure as heck have no idea what caused all this. Temperatures were fine whenever I checked. Chkdsk never showed anything but minor errors, and mostly nothing. Windows Defender never found any infected files. None of my data was lost, except when I wiped it to restore Windows to as pristine a state as possible. I had a couple of long stretches of stability to play Saints Row 2022 and Nobody Saves the World, and Saints Row only crashed on me once or twice (which is actually pretty damn impressive for a game known to be buggy and unpolished).

Probably should have run memtest on this one while it was stable. I did run that on the first dud, but didn't get any errors in the hour that I ran it.

Oh well. Guess I get my internet via my phone and Raspberry Pi for an estimated 5 - 7 days. ($24 for overnight shipping didn't seem like good value.)
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

At this point, I want to tear into it just for closure's sake, like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??? The computer specs show it is built primarily with off-the-shelf parts, none of which appear to be proprietary, so there is no good reason why it and its brethren should fail so frequently just because of whose name plate is attached to the exterior of the box. There has to be some common thread, and I'm willing to bet it's going to be a spectacularly dumb one, at that.

--Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
PatrThom said:
At this point, I want to tear into it just for closure's sake, like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??? The computer specs show it is built primarily with off-the-shelf parts, none of which appear to be proprietary, so there is no good reason why it and its brethren should fail so frequently just because of whose name plate is attached to the exterior of the box. There has to be some common thread, and I'm willing to bet it's going to be a spectacularly dumb one, at that.
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My pet theory, and it's based on very little, is that something went wrong with assembly/manufacture (newbie bending pins? A batch of bad capacitors? who knows.) A $150 instant rebate making an already good price into a too-good-to-be-true deal? Maybe CyberPowerPC knows there are issues, and they're trying to cycle units out as quickly as possible so they can get enough units back to refurbish in a large batch.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

I would propose that you are conspiracy theorizing...BUT I've already seen too many PCs where someone plugs every accessory into the same power rail, or tries to plug the MLB +4+4 power cables into the GPU's 8-pin connector (there's a reason it doesn't fit there, buddy!), or tries to connect the front panel audio to a USB header (doesn't fit there, either!) or plugs a PCIe card into a slot that specifically says "resources shared with USB ports 4&5, pick one" -- junk like that.

--Patrick
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
It doesn't even have to be every single unit. If, hypothetically, 10% of the units are faulty, that's still way above what I've read is the average (about 1 - 5% within the warranty period). Getting two duds in a row would still be a 1 in 100 chance, but far from implausible.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
figmentPez said:
Went ahead and ordered this one.
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While I wait for my new PC to arrive, I've got a janky temporary setup. I'm surfing the web on a Raspberry Pi 4, but since that can't play video and surf the web at the same time I'm borrowing a Roku from my parents, and it's plugged into an old monitor sitting on a stool next to my desk. Since the speakers on that monitor suck I'm using a bluetooth speaker with a line-in connected to the headphone jack on the monitor.

I think I'm past being sick, but now allergy season is hitting me like a sack of hammers. So I'm still suffering, but I'm also getting less sleep, and my anxiety is ramped up. Technically I've got more energy, but I'm not really capable of doing much with it.

Things are really not going well for me. I hope that changes soon.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
figmentPez said:
Went ahead and ordered this one.
Click to expand...
Still waiting on it to arrive. Didn't get a tracking number until the 27th, which then showed that it had already been moving around in Amazon's warehouses since the 25, making it's way from Hoboken, NJ to Katy, TX. There has not been any update since. Supposedly Woot/Amazon is handing the package off to USPS, but nothing has been logged.

Hopefully I won't be waiting as long as @GasBandit did for his PineTime smartwatch.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
PatrThom said:
At this point, I want to tear into it just for closure's sake, like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???
Click to expand...
Reddit recommended a thread to me, which had comments about updating the firmware on the WD SDD.

October 16: https://community.wd.com/t/critical...that-can-cause-bsod-on-windows-11-24h2/298372

SanDisk SSDs, Memory Cards, and Flash Drives for Your Digital Life | SanDisk

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your SanDisk or WD_BLACK products.
support-en.sandisk.com support-en.sandisk.com

The SSD in the model I had is on that list.

Wish I'd found this info before returning the PC.
 
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