pio

Only reason I said please keep it away from hardware is simple.......can you imagine trying to buy a USB cable if we start confusing genders in tech? Person goes to BestBuy: "Yeah, I need to buy a USB extension cable" "Okay do you need a male or female end?" "Well, my cable identifies as a female" "Okay so you need a female cable then?" "No, I didn't say that." "So you need a male cable then?" "No, it identifies as a female. What goes with that type?" "-_-" I could write paragraphs about how putting "gender inclusive" terms doesn't make any sense in hardware communities. A stick of RAM doesn't care what clothes you have on, same as I don't care. Yes, we've had "feminine" and "masculine" cases, LED light colors, and plenty of other "gendered" pieces of equipment over the years. That's part of the joy of building our own equipment though, right? Having the option to choose what our gear looks like. The term "gender inclusive" however, has a very specific meaning from the United Nations. And I, for one, believe that it has absolutely zero business being used in this type of context. Social issues? Fine, go for it. That's a whole different argument. Tech issues? Nah, keep it out please.

You need pagefile on modern systems anyway. Back in like the XP days and Vista days yeah you could run without. Some programs and games crashed though without one, and some crashed if it wasn't the right size either. Pagefile is also actually serving a purpose, with the PC Power settings. When you have your rig "sleep" it has to write everything from RAM to local storage anyway. Pagefile helps make that transition to sleep much faster since you'll already have some of the stuff in pagefile already. As others said, best to just let Windows handle it. I know, I know, I hate letting Windows handle stuff on its own too lol. If you were running 7 or older I'd tell you to manually set it to 1.5x the amount of RAM installed and call it a day (say 6144MB if you have 4GB RAM for example). That way you still have a page file, and its of the appropriate size so nothing throws a fit. But on a modern system (8.1 and newer)? Nah, just let Windows handle it lol.

Bruh..... Picture related, case is over 20 years old: Or how about this one, that's over 25 years old? Please, keep your weird gender "identities" to yourself. K, thx. This isn't the place for that kind of conversation.

My old Opteron 165. 1.8GHz, little sucker did 3.0-3.1GHz stable depending on the motherboard, and could do nearly 3.4 on a suicide run. Was my first ever 3GHz, and also it was dang near 100% overclock when running benches on it. My original 001 chip off the wafer Athlon II x4 630 that unlocked L3 cache and clocked to 4.5GHz right out of the box would be my next one. My first 4GHz chip ever. It didn't last long though (VRM fire). But dang if those full fledged Phenom II quads weren't all that bad at all overclocked highly.... My Athlon-XP 2600+ Barton was a neat one too. Was 333 FSB (166 double pumped) x 11.5 multi. Easily just bumped the FSB up to 400, and I had a chip faster than every Pentium 4 on the market, and every AthlonXP since the highest was a 3200+ (at 2.2GHz), and my 2600+ Barton was clocked at 2.3GHz. It was like having a 3.4-3.5GHz P4 at the time. My Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips honestly weren't anything much to talk about. Same with my C2D / C2Q setups. None of those setups were anything special that others couldn't do. But the 3 examples above, really were kind of special to me.

Been running GPU's since GeForce 2 / Radeon 7000 days myself. I too, have NEVER had an AMD / ATI driver flat out kill hardware. That 196.75 driver did ruin probably about a dozen G92 cards in my house though back in roughly 2007 / 2008 when that driver released. However, I DO have issues with "current" AMD drivers for legacy cards like the HD7970 and R9 290x. They completely gimp perfectly capable older cards anymore. That does kind of suck. My 5700XT works beautifully though, as does my RX 580's. I just find it frustrating a 290x doesn't work in 2022 with official drivers, but yet an R9 380 or 390 works just fine. It's the same dang card! GCN came out with the 7970. There's no reason some GCN cards get updates and others don't when they're functionally the same. Meh...youtubers rant about this enough as is though..... Maybe AMD will change that with a future "final" driver. I doubt it though. I really probably should get off my butt and install the latest modded drivers for those cards on the systems they're in. Supposedly the modded drivers make RDR2 and Crysis Remastered enjoyable on even a 7970. By all means, it "should" be capable enough to play modern games (on low / medium). /rant

Fan assembly arrived from China to California just yesterday according to tracking. So it'll probably be a few more days to get here. Says I "should" have it in hand by April 12th. I probably could pull an old RX 580 out from storage and stuff it in, but then I have to mess with drivers again lol. My internet is currently running at 0.8 Mbps down, so I'm not exactly keen to be downloading big driver packages for the time being either. Working on that too. -_- Apparently I'll be having to use hotspots from this point on, CenturyLink DSL is about a joke. The 290x I should have back online as soon as the fans arrive. I can update ya'll here. Putting an RX580 in will require faster internet. That will PROBABLY take me longer than getting the fans repaired at this point. Stuff has happened since the fans died, hence why internet is an issue now. Whateves.

Hey now......I'm rocking a 6.5" subwoofer right now too. Haven't you ever heard its not the size of the ship but the motion in the ocean? Same thing holds true on subs, although size doesn't hurt.

Don't forget 196.75's that killed entire fleets of G92 cards...... NVIDIA retracts WHQL-certified “GPU Killing Drivers” BRIGHTSIDEOFNEWS.COM Recently, nVidia posted a WHQL driver “Release 196.75”. The driver brought WHQL-certified support for nVidia ION, recently renamed... Seriously, both sides have driver problems. Pick whichever card fits your budget, has the features you want, and just be careful what drivers you use lol. Goes for both sides of the fence. I had experienced G92 failures with the above driver, and never again did I just blindly trust a driver on release from either company. Lost too many cards that day.

Glue her up then! E6000 works absolutely wonderful. If it can handle glueing the surround and cone together on a Sundown X15 (look em up), it'll handle your little Tang Band 6.5.

A bike patch? No, lol. If you punched that big a hole in it, its probably gone. Which is good news for you, that means you can buy a real subwoofer now. You CAN use some e6000 glue. You can find it at Walmart or any crafting place. That's what speaker builders use to hold the speaker together when they build it (well, for custom recones, not sure if its the same for manufacturers or not). However the e6000 glue is only going to hold if the material itself is still there and not too floppy.

Curious because I know there's a few people here living rural, does anybody have any recommendations for LTE home internet options? I've just about exhausted all the easy to find options. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile say there's "no service available" for their "home internet" options. They do allow me to use hotspot here though. The problem being, hotspot packages that I can find all have a data cap somewhere, best being about 150GB. I've read of a few other companies like Ubifi and apparently sim cards on ebay that offer truly unlimited data. TLDR: Does anybody know of a good (preferrably Verizon based) LTE home internet "hotspot" option for a "heavy" data user?

Do extremely heavy dressers on 4 separate feet ruin the floor? Legitimate question, as I've never heard complaints personally about it. 70 pounds across 4 spikes, assuming absolutely perfect weight distribution is only what, 17.5 or so pounds per spike? I doubt that'll get through the carpet, the pad, and into the sub flooring. I could be wrong........ As an alternative, you could use some heavy wood, like 1" high density fiberboard, or MDF if price is vastly different these days. Maybe even double layer it so its 2" thick. Bolt your spikes down to that wooden base, say at 12"x12" or whatever size you make it so they're stable, and then to the speakers. Now its not the spikes hitting the floor, but a solid 12x12 base (or bigger / smaller depending on speakers). Honestly you could just about have Home Depot cut the pieces to fit, take it home and screw it and glue it yourself if you don't have wood working tools on hand. Grab some rhino liner or paint if you don't like the naked MDF look. Or even some carpet and carpet glue. Lots of various options for a finish. You mentioned stone slabs, is there any particular reason one couldn't run a drill bit through the stone slab? Could drill a hole, run a couple bolts and nuts through it into your speakers (or spikes + speakers), and then use some thick furniture pads on the bottom of the slab so the bolt head doesn't throw it off balance.

Will consider it. I kind of enjoy having it on my own gear to be honest, and I've already got the perfect DNS reserved, had it for a few years actually. Only real 2 reasons why I'm hesitant lol. I'll see Monday how badly that upload speed limits me. On something like a Gmod server, it shouldn't be too terribly bad.

I've got a Gmod server I wouldn't mind sharing with the community. I'm being downgraded to 768k upload speeds on Monday though. I intended on expanding to a Beam-MP server as well on it, but again the upload speeds might kill any good gaming I can do on the network now.

No need to wait. Plenty of "thicc" phones out there already, just check out modern dumb phones and how they're making a comeback in 2022 lol. I just want the pod racer cooler. That's all.

Like PCSarge said above, DDU full clean AMD / Nvidia drivers from your system in safe mode. Make sure you do it in safe mode (and then reboot after cleaning). Get your new drivers installing IMMEDIATELY after your reboot, before Windows decides to grab a driver from Win Update. If you're still having problems, try the BIOS switch. If you're still having problems, you might've gotten unlucky with a bad card....RMA it. There is absolutely no excuse for the problems you're having with that card, I agree. I just don't think its necessarily a driver problem, its more likely a card problem or BIOS issue. I'll happily take it off your hands for the right price though. I'd rather see you keep it and enjoy it though. One thing not mentioned lately either, you can also make sure that your motherboard BIOS is fully up to date as well. Might even check the firmware on your GPU, and see if there's any updates to that from the manufacturer too. Sometimes odd issues like these pop up, and they've already been addressed with BIOS updates for board or GPU. I have a 7970 that wasn't working (correctly) on any machine that lacked UEFI. Found out it needed a later BIOS revision installed to enable both BIOS and UEFI operation as the card released as only UEFI at first. I've used just about every ATI / AMD GPU to date (except current high end). Now, if you were complaining about AMD's "final" drivers for older cards, then yeah I'd agree with you on driver problems. No reason a 290x shouldn't be at least usable today, and with MODDED drivers they are. But their current gen lineups? No, they take pretty good care of ironing out MOST issues on current generation in their drivers. Not saying it doesn't happen, but actual driver problems tend to be more rare than a google search might lead you to believe.

Wanna ship me that Voodoo I know you have on hand? If so, I'll buy a 486DX2 rig to put it in. For real though, I can't even get this stupid Socket A to recognize drives yet. Haven't even started on the 2 older ones I have on hand yet.

Yes, because we totally need a new PSU standard to deliver a whopping 600w to a GPU........ It's not like we don't have that capability already with 650w+ units being capable of 650w+ on the 12v rails alone or anything. Obviously if you have a higher TDP GPU, you're going to need more than a 650w unit, but still. My Seasonic 1000w is absolutely MORE than capable of this. It just doesn't have the fancy pants new 12 pin connector, that's all. The article states that there's also new efficiency standards with the new ATX spec on idle and low usage scenarios. Okay.....but we have that already...... Leave it to Intel to decide the standards for us, even though we've all been on the same standard for 20 years. (Yes, I understand that the original ATX standard is Intel's standard) What does this ACTUALLY mean though? Does it mean we're going to see a drastic increase in GPU power consumption, something we haven't seen to date? We already know they're reaching the limits of the die sizes. So maybe since they can't make things smaller, maybe now they'll start getting bigger and more power? Or is it just a way to sell more PSU's in an inflated market? Guess we'll see when future GPU's start popping up. Until we have GPU's actually pulling 600w+, then personally, I feel this new "standard" is a little silly, and telling somebody to hold off on buying a PSU in anticipation of these is even worse.

Bust it out and join our cpuz bench off! Oldest I've gotten going so far has been my 939 opteron 180 set up. I haven't been pushing people to enjoy old rigs or anything...... Nooooo.

He has to stick around for a little while since I've got dinosaur hardware that he wants me to bench off.

Want!!!!!!! Seriously, I just want the cooler. I can hardly tell a difference with modern NVME drives, but man I want that pod racer cooler.

Time travel back 20 years and buy yourself one of these Thermaltake 12v cig lighters........ (Why the odd rotation......ugh) Nah but seriously though, as others already said, its your "Earth Ground". Have you ever seen a household lamp connected with 2 prongs instead of 3? There's your answer. Yes, it will work. HOWEVER, that "earth ground" is there to keep your chassis of your device (in this case your AC to DC power supply) from becoming the ground and electrifying it. If your home wiring has earth grounds already, you probably should use it as a safety measure. Some homes still do not have the ground wire though. Either way is fine. If I was wiring something custom up to AC power though, I know I'd want that ground wire in tact, just in case.

I don't have any unfortunately. Did this a few years back, 2019 I think? But its this cooler here off the Nitro 5: The factory heatsink on my Aspire 3 was aluminum and only had 1 fan on it. I don't have it on me anymore, and the laptop is put up on my shelf of junk until I get around to replacing the battery again lol. The Nitro was solid copper with 2 fans on it, rated for a higher TDP / wattage. It fit, so I put it in there lol. My particular model Aspire 3 came with the 2500u in it, and its identical to the Nitro that had the 2500u / 2700u + GTX 1660 or whatever GPU it was in there. Wired in the second fan to a USB header 5v and put it on a toggle switch so I could turn it on or off (full speed only for the second fan). Used liquid metal for TIM (VERY carefully surrounding the area with tape). I was hitting about 61*C full CPU load, and in the low 70's p95 + furmark load with the CPU locked at 3.6GHz and the Vega 8 locked at 1.2GHz.

You can force the Vega 8 to stay at 1200MHz, just like the CPU can be stuck at 3.6GHz on the 2500u. I think its called Ryzen Adj or it might've been Ryzen Controller. I forget, I'd have to hop on my laptop and find out, but the battery is dead lol. Yeah, don't use it on a laptop unless you are 110% sure the laptop's power setup and battery can handle it. Found that out the hard way. Killed my battery, actually dead, in just a few months of my laptop being overclocked. I have a 45w laptop, with a 150w power brick, upgraded battery (well it was new), and upgraded CPU / GPU cooler on it. Took the parts off an Acer Nitro to put into my Aspire. (Grabbed the screen too) Thought that was enough to handle it fine. Turns out, the DC plug / jack on the side is only rated at 45w though. So even though everything ELSE can handle the load, my DC jack cannot. -_- As such, it burned out the battery from being drained faster than it was being charged constantly.

I have a modded Acer laptop with a 2500u in it funny enough. Once setup and overclocked, that darn thing does things I never expected to see a budget laptop do! Your rig should be handily beating my laptop, looks like it probably is. So yay! The GPU in the 2500u is just BARELY underneath an RX 550 in performance, and your CPU is definitely stronger even with the 2500u at 3.6GHz speeds.