Supercrumpet

Eyy nice seat choice! I interned at the company that manufactures the composite seat shells for the Pole Position, Profi, and a couple motorsports seats as well.

I've been keeping an eye on D4 as well, tried out the trial and got a druid up to 20 and also really enjoyed it. It has felt slow at times, but it's picking up a little more at level 30+. I'm definitely interested in trying the sorcerer next though, I almost always find builds that lean more towards glass cannon types to be more fun.

So I finally had time to look into this last weekend and just did what I mentioned in my OP to start: disassemble most of the PC, or at least the wiring, and redo it just the same as it was. Believe it or not, it works just fine afterwards. Can't imagine what it was exactly since everything felt secure before I unplugged it, but I'll take it. Runs and loads games fine, opens and moves files, all drives appear as they should, and shuts down/reboots and goes to sleep/wakes just fine. I should do some more drive checks this weekend though just in case. However... a new issue has appeared. I found that only some of my mobo USB ports, and intermittently front panel USB, actually work. Currently I jankily have 6 things hooked up to an active USB hub, all going through one rear USB port, and things work fine. All of this, combined with a few other previous issues that have somehow been miraculously fixed by unplugging cables and plugging everything back into the same place have me still a little suspicious of the board, but I'll be cautiously optimistic for the time being. I'd really like for this PC to hold together until sometime next year when I have a good opportunity to update to a more recent platform. Just in case though, I fortunately found an old mATX AM4 motherboard that I can use if I really need to, would just have to get some additional wifi solution. Stay tuned till next week when this PC inevitably craps itself in some new way lmao.

I don't think I'm too concerned about losing what's on them, but I'll keep that in mind if I remember that I do have something on there that I don't want to lose. I'd forgotten about that on AM4 though, good thing to know as well. Very interesting, good info. I totally missed that thread, thanks for bringing it up again! I haven't, actually never updated it. Just checked and it's 7C94v12, from August 2020. One of the earliest versions. Worth updating? I also went through my stash of stuff and found that I have an old MSI B350 mATX motherboard that's been chilling in its anti-static bag for a couple years. Guess I can try swapping that in too, likely also with a BIOS update.

Gotcha, I like that suggestion - I should definitely have some spare SSDs lying around from past upgrades.

Yeah the color scrolling does seem like a hardware thing, and Googling led me to find that it does happen on some rare occasions, and seems to typically be a hardware issue, but could also be software. Especially odd is that only happened once, and I can't reproduce it. It'd be pretty inconvenient to reformat since I have a bunch of racing sim-related software set up on there, and it's kind of a pain to set up and all play nice together. That being said, I know it'd do me a lot of good since it's been a few years since my last one, and it may be a requirement for this. I'm just really hung up on the fact that the BIOS doesn't recognize any of my drives. If nothing else changes, and I boot up with an installation USB, would the Windows install software even see the drives to put anything on? (Rhetorical question for me to find the answer to.) I've also considered creating a trying a USB Windows recovery drive. I'll try to get around to my first thought of re-seating everything tomorrow or Friday though.

Nope, it can always get to BIOS, I just didn't think to try that until after messing with unplugging drives. So currently, I think it's just reading the Windows Boot Manager partition of the C drive M.2, but it can't find the partition of the actual Windows installation. I forgot to mention in my OP, when I start it up for the first time, it has the Windows-generated messages of "diagnosing issues" and so on, so the boot manager knows something is wrong but can't seem to do anything about it. It just prompts me to restart and then goes into the loop I described.

So here's a fun problem that leaves me a little stumped. Happened yesterday evening, coincidentally on the same day I decided to be more active around here again. A little context and what happened so far: 1. Last weekend, I noticed Forza Horizon 5, installed on my D drive (2.5" SSD), had incredibly slow loading times. I tried a handful of fixes, none of which worked. I ended up reinstalling the game on my C drive (M.2 SSD) and this completely solved all issues. Based on this, and some other context from attempted fixes, I assumed this meant I had a dying 2.5" SSD, and would avoid using it as much as possible, and just upgrade/replace it over Black Friday. 2. Booted up iRacing yesterday and wanted to mess with some wheel settings in Fanatec software. iRacing and both pieces of Fanatec software are installed on my C drive. iRacing opened fine, but neither Fanatec software opened (stopped responding error before I could even interact with them). Decided to restart my computer. 3. PC refused to boot. The first time, one one monitor, I got the motherboard logo with the spinning Windows icon. On another monitor, I was getting cycling black, white, red, green, and blue screens with nothing on them. The third was blank. This continued indefinitely. 4. Restarted again. Only got the motherboard logo with spinning icon. Other two monitors blank. 5. Repeated restarts, each time unplugging my D drive, and then again with my 3 TB HDD backup E drive unplugged as well. Same results. 6. Checked motherboard bios. All three of my drives, M.2 or SATA, are no longer recognized. Only the Windows boot manager, or whatever it's called. Never had anything like this before, and I'm kinda stumped. Maybe it's the motherboard? Maybe one drive is faulty and messing up the whole thing? Maybe one drive somehow messed up the others? In the next day or two, I think I'm going to more or less disassemble the whole thing and then reassemble it to be sure nothing's come unseated since this is my portable PC that I drive around from time to time. Otherwise, I'm in need of some suggestions for things to investigate. Motherboard is an MSI B550M Mortar wifi, CPU is a 3700X. I may have a spare, compatible motherboard to try swapping out.

This is really interesting actually, and I'm glad it goes back more than just one generation.

Very interesting, it's always exciting to read about nuclear power related news. Scaling this stuff down has some really interesting implications and opportunities for sure.

Aw dang, looks like my folding rig was down for the weekend. Whoops. Great stuff as always though from everyone else!

This is honestly the first I've seen of this thread since I browse forums so sporadically, but this is really interesting to follow along with. I've thought about doing something similar for years but I've never been in a good position to. Maybe once I have the space to actually move around hardware like this, it could be an interesting way to make a buck on the side, and I've always enjoyed doing builds for friends and family as well. Keep up the great work, and I hope things keep trending positively for you!

A little unexpected to be honest, but very, very welcome for me.

Sounds good, thanks guys! I hadn't found a comprehensive graphic or list of what comes with the base game, very good to know. Also good to know on the controller. I'll keep thinking on it more.

So I've been following along with this thread for quite a while now, and you guys have passively made me pretty interested in flight sims lol. Couple questions: If I did pick it up during the summer sale on Steam, should I just get the base game and see how I like it, or is additional content really worth it? Additionally, do you guys use HOTAS controllers for this? I have a cheap one, but the convenience of a good 'ol Xbox controller is always tempting, and I'm used to it since that's all I had when I picked up Elite Dangerous. Never got used to HOTAS for that game.

In as CptAsian. Great prizes! Count me out of the running for the GPU though.

Lol right? imo kind of embarrassing on the drivers' parts. Like I get why they do it, but you'd think they would have the ability to not break the rules.

Ope, just missed this one again (but thanks for registering me automatically as usual lmao). Good stuff once again guys, lots of heavy hitting totals towards the top.

Ah, I hadn't seen either of those last time I looked. May order one in the coming days and we'll see what happens.

Where did you get the headrest from? I said I'd buy one for my Series 1 earlier in this thread, but my order was cancelled and I was refunded because they didn't actually have one in stock. That seems to be the theme for Series 1 headrests: they simply don't exist anymore lmao. Very very hard to find last time I searched for one.

Finally added, sorry for the delay. Looks fantastic, I love the plate paint!

Oh wow, I remember the big news when he joined up with Intel. I'm curious about more details with the startup he'll be working with. Didn't know about his health issues either, that's rough.

This badge also appears to no longer be working for myself and a few others. Perhaps something to look into.

Whoops, I just realized I never got this badge. Too late to add it to my account?

Congrats to all of the winners, and thanks to the sponsors and everyone that helped organize such a huge event for a relatively new community! Amazing stuff.