PC Master Race

I have an MSI MAG x870e Tomahawk WiFi mobo, and the temperature LED is just, like, SO bright.

I don't see an obvious way of changing its brightness or turning it off in the BIOS, so I'm thinking of cutting a 1"x0.5" rectangle of ND-8 photo gel and electrical taping it to the light.

Anyone know of a better way?

Hi. I plan to upgrade my cpu from ryzen 5 5600x to ryzen 7 5800x3d. At first i asking chatgpt is my motherboard asrock B450m steel legend support 5800x3d or not. The answer really make me confused. It say related to bios. At first it said not compatible then second time asking it say compatible. Can i get everyone expert who know a lot more about pc. Is my bios ready for 5800x3d?

From msinfo32: BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. P10.31, 8/22/2024

Thank you

Specs: CPU: Rysen 5 7600 GPU: RX 7700 XT RAM: 32 GB DDR5 5600mt/s Mobo: B650 Eagle AX Case: H5 Flow RGB Cooler: Arctic Freezer 36 A-RGB PSU: System Power 10 750w

I have a B450 motherboard, 16gb DDR4 3200 RAM, 1660 Super gpu and a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU. I don't plan on updating the GPU this time, because I don't play a lot of games that require anything more, I'm playing a lot of older titles currently. The problem is this also makes me feel like I shouldn't update the pc at all.

I think I mostly just want to mess around with a decent home lab, but because I dont have an intended use case I'm struggling to justify. I also had parents who don't like to spend money on this sort of thing and I've got their disapproving voices in my head.

The plan is to upgrade to a 5900XT and 64 gb of ram and probably run a lot of virtual machines in a little lab environment but I'm not sure how often I'll have them all running so it could be overkill. The upgrade is about $700 all up too so not small but not too much. I know I'm extending the lifespan of a computer instead of e-wasting the entire thing but I'm still a little apprehensive.

Good idea or nah?

P.S. I run Linux Mint on all my machines if that somehow changes anyone's mind or is somewhat helpful? Can't let the arch users be the only ones to announce.

Edit: thanks for the replies. I went to bed so I'll try to reply to people as today goes. Thanks for the ideas and the one person who asked if I was a sex worker, you've made me laugh and think.

Okay I need some ideas. Firstly, this is a work computer and I do not have admin privileges. Second I'm doing this solely for my convenience.

We have a Dell Latitude 3540 and I'm running a generic second monitor that we happend to have around. We do not have a docking station, so we're using a spare Samsung K550 Soundbar to upscale the resolution on the second monitor through the ARC TV HDMI port. So it's, HDMI out from the laptop to the sound bar and then ARC HDMI out to the monitor. The issue, the sound bar goes to sleep after 5 minutes of no sound and I can't disable the auto off feature. This shuts off the feed to the second monitor and it doesn't resume automatically. I think if I can find some kind of timer that will send some sort of sound to the bar every 4 1/2 minutes or so, then it will stay active. I don't know how to do this. Does anyone have suggestions? TIA Tug

Built this while shopping for a new monitor last month. PCPartPicker has a nice tool to find monitors, but it was missing things like rtings.com scores, number and type of ports, live prices, so I decided to build one.

Writing this down because I'm not the only one having trouble with the unusual CMOS battery holder of certain HP OEM boards, in my case a HP Dorado OC Rev B motherboard from an Omen 30L or Omen 25L PC. Their battery holders are weird compared to others in that one cannot just push some lever to release the battery (cf. this Reddit thread). It turns out that the correct method apparently is to just wedge the battery out from below (there is ample of room between it and the board to fit a tool), as is shown in this video from minute 40:00 onward. It seems that a bit of force is actually necessary:

https://players.brightcove.net/1160438706001/ByLWUi0A_default/index.html?videoId=ref%3AREFIDNS35791002

(The video is linked on HP's support pages here (under "Service & Repairs (2) > Removing & Replacing Parts: OMEN by HP 40L Gaming Desktop PC"), so it seems to apply not just to Omen 40L's, but in fact also to Omen 30L's. The CMOS battery holder of my 30L does in fact look identical to the one from the 40L in the video. Everything at your own risk, obviously.)

For me, it worked like a charm and didn't even require as much force as I feared.

Im using PieFed https://join.piefed.social/ and i was very happy that it supports this Font by itself. I always download it and use it everywhere. Just download and click install, that works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

I didnt find a relevant PC instance so lets just say: Console Peasants cant even change their Fonts! xD

https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/

Sorry to have to make a post about this but it’s one of those things you need to be familiar with and I’m not.

I’m looking to upgrade from a 2060 Super to a Radeon as I’m mostly using Linux now. I’m not too fussed about buying new and I’d like to keep the cost down but if I’m changing I’d like to by something noticeably better than what I have. Any idea what’s a good buy in the market right now? I don’t care about ray-tracing.

Hi all. I know this isn't a support community, but Lemmy is only so big so I hope it's ok if I post about this here.

I have a a Dell Inspiron 7375 laptop. The processor is a Ryzen 7 2300U. It only has integrated graphics. It was purchased new in 2018. Right out of the gate brand spanking new, it would frequently BSOD at seemingly random times, even when the laptop was not under any noticeable stress...just browsing the web watching YouTube videos or even editing Google Docs.

Most of the BSODs would state "video TDR failure", but others happened as well (don't remember them all, sorry. Dell Support was never able to figure solve my problem...especially difficult to the intermittent nature

However, I found that I could help alleviate 90% of the issue by limiting the maximum processor state in control panel to 80%".

Fast forward to today and I upgraded my setup and no longer need this laptop. I installed Linux Mint on it and find that the system will randomly freeze up until I power cycle it just like when I first got it for Windows. Ubuntu yields the same issue. I have not tried many other distros.

Again, I found out that the problem was resolved by downloading a software tool to manually limit the clock speed of the processor. However, I do NOT like the idea of relying on a random third party software tool that may eventually break.

There is no way for me to underclock the CPU in the BIOS.

The internals are not dusty and have been cleaned with compressed air.

I would like to give my laptop away to a relative and would like to keep Linux Mint on it for them.

Is there a better solution to my issue without relying on software that may stop working in the future? What would be the cause of the laptop freezing unless the CPU is limited, even as a brand new system?

Thanks all.

I needed a PSU that was efficient at 20W and so I consulted Wolfgang's PSU Low Idle Efficiency List, because it was one of the first results on YouTube. However, the first thing you may notice is that the reports it links to are no longer in the same place on Cybenetics' website. If you manually check the PSU model on their website, you actually get different numbers for 20W. After having this revelation, I scraped the entire website and found that Wolfgang's data is no longer current. I don't know why after a second evaluation Cybenetics had different results, but am inviting you to ask with me.

Here are the top 150:

European here. I'm pretty content with my setup (Ryzen5 3600XT, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060... I play in 1080p) for the games I'm playing at the moment, and I don't plan on playing many AAAA games in the future. BUT. With the recent tariffs flying around, China denying rare earths, etc etc I fear we might see an increase in hardware prices like we had with covid, so I was thinking on upgrading at least CPU+VGA; more than FOMO let's say is Fear Of Being Overpriced. What do you think, should I upgrade now that things looks a little more relaxed? Will the whole mess involve only the USA or everyone cause globalization?

Found in small ads. Dude has options.

I haven't gotten the habit of doing it and it never got bad but I'm starting to notice some subtle spots in it if I shed light into the monitor. I remember a while ago (not on Lemmy) seeing people joking their monitor messed up after trying to clean it up and it just stayed black on some parts and some people were pointing out it's the way they probably cleaned their monitor so ever since this honestly put the fear in me of not worrying about cleaning it but now I guess I have to. What is the proper way to clean the monitor? Should I avoid what chemicals or chemicals altogether and only water and with/on what?

34" UW with a portrait 27" on the left, PC on the right.

gamers nexus just dropped a 3 hour video where they talk to various companies involved in the consumer PC space, some of whom really open up about their costs and economics and how operating in america just isnt feasible under the current tariffs

So I've been planning this upgrade for a while but wanted to wait for the right price.

Before my upgrade I had a i3 12100F and a RTX 3050 8GB. It was a decent rig, and good enough all but the latest games at 1080p. However I do video editing and wanted to get more RAM on my GPU and more core would help with some games and workloads.

So I waited for the right parts at the right price. My first good luck came in the form of a $170 discount on a i7 12700KF. I paid $270.08 CAD with tax and shipping. For single threaded workload (read FreeCAD) it didn't do much but for games it was a smoother experience and so far nothing has ever maxed out the CPU outside of Shader Caching.

But the upgrade I was keeping an eye out for was the GPU. 8GB of VRAM is just enough for what am doing. However I really wanted 16GB. I was aiming for the RX7600 XT, however $450-$500CAD for it was too much for me to stomach. With no real used options I tried looking for a RTX 3060 12GB. For the same price and no performance difference it's not a good choice new... but used it's frequently $350CAD. However I got it in my head I wanted it for $300CAD. I kept seeing it creep down to $330-$320CAD, and was tempted. But I held since it wasn't an urgent upgrade. Then I found it, a Zotac 3060 12GB for $288.27CAD with tax and shipping. Scooped it up immediately and it finally arrived today.

My upgrade total was $558.35, and the result was actually pretty nice. From a quick comparison from running some games and video renders before and after the upgrade. For games I saw +20FPS improvements in modern games and for games getting 200FPS I saw my GPU utilization drop from 100% to 70%.

For video editing it's very interesting. My render times dropped by 20-30 seconds depending on the video and number of effects. However after reviewing my hardware utilization, it seems like the software may be bottle necking me more than the GPU. Or maybe it's a RAM issue.

Regardless I am very please with this upgrade, epically the price for this upgrade. Outside of more RAM, I don't think I'll be doing anything else with it for a long while now.

I just saw this and felt I should share it. I'm sure most people here wouldn't fall for it but it can't hurt to make sure 👍

Edit: I just wanted to add, I have no idea what this tried to copy. I'm using Firefox on Linux which is perhaps why it didn't make it to my clipboard 🤷

up to 80€ for Digital Games up to 90€ for Physical Games Meanwhile Nintendo is richer than ever...

TL;DR - reflashing the BIOS saved my old Desktop

This is a short tale from a corrupted BIOS in a MSI Tomahawk B350 Motherboard from 2017

On March 24th I used the computer to play some games and browse the internet as usual then gracefully shut it down. On the next day I tried to turn it on again, but the computer did not make it to POST verifications. No chance to get in the BIOS, no beeps or display at all. Nothing. The components were energized, all lit up on their leds, but nothing else.

Checked the MB debugging leds and I saw that they got stuck on “VGA” and did not get any further progress. So I tried to switch my current VGA with an old VGA card that I have. Same behaviour in the MB leds. Since I didn’t know if the old VGA was ok, I gave the MB diagnosis a credit.

As it is an 8 year old Desktop, maybe removing all attached cards/memory and cleaning up everything could help. Reattaching everything together can solve some problems, sometimes. However, I got the same MB leds behaviour.

Even trying to boot the PC up without any attached cards (only memory) lit only the same VGA led on the MB. Sigh… the MB debug led is wrong…

After a brief internet search I found similar problems with the same MB in the MSI forum where the problem was a corrupted BIOS chip. The problem in the forum was solved by reflashing the BIOS.

It all looks easy, however my MB does not have the external button to flash the BIOS (btw I discovered this was a thing looking for my problem in the forums).

So I had two ideas: Buy a new MB that supported my 8 year old setup OR try to reflash the BIOS with basic components for 1/6 of the new MB price.

After watching several bad and precarious videos in youtube about corrupted BIOS recovery (most of them in PT-BR my primary language (hue)) I bought a CH341a usb stick with an 1.8V adapter.

They come with a “double clip” that eliminates the need of removing the chip from the MB to read/write. And since I don’t have a hot air station to unsolder the chip, using the clip looked like a good plan.

The plan was to mount every component and, using the double clip, read from the chip, save it locally as some sort of backup (even though it was corrupted) and then write the most recent BIOS update of my MB to the chip. The most recent BIOS could be downloaded from the Support section of my MB page in MSI website.

When CH341a usb thing was finally delivered to my address I gave it a shot.

I mounted the CH341a and the 1.8V adapter in the correct pin orientation (regards to the bad youtube videos) and using the Linux app IMSProg I was able to find my chip specs and see a green “Connected” in the status bar of the app!

From here it all went as planned - I was able to read the old BIOS binary and save it locally to a file. Using xxd to compare the headers of the new BIOS with the extracted one I saw that they were nearly identical. This gave me hope!

I had to rename the new BIOS to a .bin extension so that the IMSProg could find it and open the file. After opening the file in the app I hit the automatic options: erase, program and verify. The process took a while but was finalized with a successful message.

After putting all Desktop pieces together the boot sequence completed and I was able to see the Windows login screen again :’-). Unfortunately my grub had gone away, but this is a tiny detail.

I Hope this text gives you courage and ideas to solve these awful problems that appear out of nowhere.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26820841

Please feel free to lmk if this isn’t the right place to be asking.

I can’t seem to find any other laptops that use a similar rubberized coating to what the thinkpads have. Do any exist out there?

I think the thinkpads are great but I don’t care for the trackpoint.

Thanks!