The PC thread

[faizoff]

New Ryzen Zen 3 chips announced today, available Nov 5th.

Ryzen 9 5950X   16c/32t   $799
Ryzen 9 5900X   12c/24t   $549
Ryzen 7 5800X   8c/16t   $449
Ryzen 5 5600X   6c/12t   $299

Going to see how reviews show their performance and how prices settle down in a few months, maybe mid next year. I'm leaning so much on the 5950X now. Was thinking of getting the 3950X.

Will have to see how board compatibility works.

[Bolsters]

Trying to replace the SSD in my laptop but nothing is ever easy is it.

Cloned the old SSD boot partition to the new SSD which was plugged in via a SATA USB adapter. All went well. Put the new drive in and it doesn't boot. BIOS doesn't even recognise it, it's as though it does not exist. Put the old one back in and it works, new drive still works on the USB adapter.

Both drives are SATA III so I don't believe a BIOS update is necessary. I can't figure out if there is a newer BIOS available anyway, everything online says the last version for this laptop was 1.02.17 but MSInfo32 says my BIOS is version 4.5.6.

No idea what to do.

[faizoff]

In my personal experience I've had very little success with cloning software, something always is an issue. I'm assuming it's windows 10 and you used Acronis?

The BIOS not recognizing the cloned drive could be a few things. If you check in Disk Management, do both old and new SSDs show the same partition segments? The boot drive typically shows 4 areas. System Reserved (Basic Data Partition), EFI System Partition, Boot Partition... something along those lines.


Your BIOS also might not show the drive itself and might have an option to just show Windows Boot Manager, if you plug in the cloned SSD do see at least that option?

FYI to get accurate BIOS version, I'd prefer to use a tool like CPU-Z to report the specific version. System info might just mention the generic version.

[Bolsters]

I'm assuming it's windows 10 and you used Acronis?

Windows 7 and Macrium Reflect.

I quickly figured out MSInfo was worthless, ended up just rebooting into the BIOS for the version. There is a newer one but when I tried to flash it I got an error about not having enough memory. So I gave up for the day. Had my dinner and played a game, I'll get back to it tomorrow.

If you check in Disk Management, do both old and new SSDs show the same partition segments? The boot drive typically shows 4 areas. System Reserved (Basic Data Partition), EFI System Partition, Boot Partition... something along those lines.

There's two partitions on the system drive, one of them being the System Reserved and then the main partition. I made sure it cloned both.

Your BIOS also might not show the drive itself and might have an option to just show Windows Boot Manager, if you plug in the cloned SSD do see at least that option?

I don't remember seeing anything specifically referencing Windows in the BIOS, there was just the generic boot order priority list. I also made a Macrium recovery USB before doing the swap and it did not appear in the list of devices when booting off of that either.

[faizoff]

Sometimes in the BIOS instead of showing the SSD drive name it will show Windows Boot Manager or Program.. but I think that is a windows 10 thing IIRC.

Not sure what to say other than I have had no success with cloning software doing a flawless transfer. If I'm placing a new drive, it's going to get a new full format and fresh windows install. Sorry that's not much help but that's what I've always done.

[Bolsters]

I got around to it today. Remade the boot USB to use a different version of DOS, which allowed me to update the BIOS. Now the new cloned drive is in and working.

[faizoff]

Awesome, glad that updating the BIOS was all that was needed to make the cloned SSD work. What SSD did you switch to btw?

[Bolsters]

Nothing special, just a WD Blue. I upgraded because the original SSD is a little over 8 years old and was getting close to the point of not being able to rewrite the flash memory.

[cramx3]

Nothing special, just a WD Blue. I upgraded because the original SSD is a little over 8 years old and was getting close to the point of not being able to rewrite the flash memory.

8 years is a long time, you got your moneys worth

[faizoff]

Nothing special, just a WD Blue. I upgraded because the original SSD is a little over 8 years old and was getting close to the point of not being able to rewrite the flash memory.

8 years is indeed a very long time for an OS SSD, longest I've had mine is 6 years.

[faizoff]

So guess who officially transitioned to 4k land... this guy.

Got a  32" LG 4k monitor. This thing is sweet and everything looks small on my 27" monitor now.

[ReaperKK]

Oh thats really nice! What kind of panel is that?

[cramx3]

Very nice, I stopped by a friends new place this afternoon and saw his large curved monitor.  Looked really nice in person and makes me want one.

[T-ski]

Suggestions for a solid, budget friendly laptop? Looking to get one for our 13 year old. It will be used for schoolwork, minor gaming, chatting with friends, etc.

After a little research I've realized there are about 500 different options, so if you could help me whittle it down it'd be much appreciated.

[Puppies_On_Acid]

Suggestions for a solid, budget friendly laptop? Looking to get one for our 13 year old. It will be used for schoolwork, minor gaming, chatting with friends, etc.

After a little research I've realized there are about 500 different options, so if you could help me whittle it down it'd be much appreciated.

How much are you wanting to spend on it? And what types of games will be played on it?

[T-ski]

Suggestions for a solid, budget friendly laptop? Looking to get one for our 13 year old. It will be used for schoolwork, minor gaming, chatting with friends, etc.

After a little research I've realized there are about 500 different options, so if you could help me whittle it down it'd be much appreciated.

How much are you wanting to spend on it? And what types of games will be played on it?

Would like to keep it under $500. He's big into roblox right now, doesn't really play anything else. Nothing needed for hard core gaming.

[Puppies_On_Acid]

Suggestions for a solid, budget friendly laptop? Looking to get one for our 13 year old. It will be used for schoolwork, minor gaming, chatting with friends, etc.

After a little research I've realized there are about 500 different options, so if you could help me whittle it down it'd be much appreciated.

How much are you wanting to spend on it? And what types of games will be played on it?

Would like to keep it under $500. He's big into roblox right now, doesn't really play anything else. Nothing needed for hard core gaming.

This laptop would be up to that task, and I've had good luck with Acer Aspire laptops in the past. Plus it has one of AMD's newest gen laptop CPU's in it, which are really nice. It also has a builtin webcam and backlit keyboard, which are both "nice-to-haves."

It is a little over $500, but once you drop below the 500 pricetag, you start to make too many sacrifices and compromises. Such as dropping to 4gb of ram, instead of 8gb. Or having a really low end CPU. Etc etc.

[faizoff]

Oh thats really nice! What kind of panel is that?

It's a VA panel. I didn't want to go all out on a curved IPS nano panel just yet. Those things look amazing. Was aiming for a decent price for a 32" 4k model.

Very nice, I stopped by a friends new place this afternoon and saw his large curved monitor.  Looked really nice in person and makes me want one.

I've seen and worked on a curved monitor and they are very nice. When I replace the old 27" model I'll probably spring for a curved high refresh one.

[faizoff]

Suggestions for a solid, budget friendly laptop? Looking to get one for our 13 year old. It will be used for schoolwork, minor gaming, chatting with friends, etc.

After a little research I've realized there are about 500 different options, so if you could help me whittle it down it'd be much appreciated.

How much are you wanting to spend on it? And what types of games will be played on it?

Would like to keep it under $500. He's big into roblox right now, doesn't really play anything else. Nothing needed for hard core gaming.

This laptop would be up to that task, and I've had good luck with Acer Aspire laptops in the past. Plus it has one of AMD's newest gen laptop CPU's in it, which are really nice. It also has a builtin webcam and backlit keyboard, which are both "nice-to-haves."

It is a little over $500, but once you drop below the 500 pricetag, you start to make too many sacrifices and compromises. Such as dropping to 4gb of ram, instead of 8gb. Or having a really low end CPU. Etc etc.

Since you appear to be our resident laptop expert, a friend of mine from the UK was asking me recs for a laptop for the soul purpose of 4k video editing. His plan is to install DaVinci Resolve for the editing. His budget is around USD $1500-2000. Got any suggestions?

[Puppies_On_Acid]

Suggestions for a solid, budget friendly laptop? Looking to get one for our 13 year old. It will be used for schoolwork, minor gaming, chatting with friends, etc.

After a little research I've realized there are about 500 different options, so if you could help me whittle it down it'd be much appreciated.

How much are you wanting to spend on it? And what types of games will be played on it?

Would like to keep it under $500. He's big into roblox right now, doesn't really play anything else. Nothing needed for hard core gaming.

This laptop would be up to that task, and I've had good luck with Acer Aspire laptops in the past. Plus it has one of AMD's newest gen laptop CPU's in it, which are really nice. It also has a builtin webcam and backlit keyboard, which are both "nice-to-haves."

It is a little over $500, but once you drop below the 500 pricetag, you start to make too many sacrifices and compromises. Such as dropping to 4gb of ram, instead of 8gb. Or having a really low end CPU. Etc etc.

Since you appear to be our resident laptop expert, a friend of mine from the UK was asking me recs for a laptop for the soul purpose of 4k video editing. His plan is to install DaVinci Resolve for the editing. His budget is around USD $1500-2000. Got any suggestions?

Hehe, I wouldn't say I'm an expert on laptops, but I do know PC hardware and stay on top of all the latest stuff. My expertise really lies in custom desktop workstations and gaming pc's. That knowledge can translate to laptops for the most part though.

So DaVinci Resolve is a tough one for laptops, but with a $2000 budget it's actually fairly doable. Resolve highly leverages GPU memory, so for 4k video editing having a Quadro GPU that has at least 6GB of RAM is the most important thing. You could probably get away with 4GB, but editing 4k video could have you running into "out of video memory" errors. The next important thing is having at least 16GB of system RAM, and then lastly a decent 6-core or higher CPU.

Fortunately you can get all that just under $2000 https://www.newegg.com/star-grey-metal-asus-studiobook-w700g3t-xs77-creating-designing/p/N82E16834235501
You can also add/upgrade the RAM in this laptop up to 64GB if needed.

[faizoff]

Thatnks for the input! I did recall that Resolve leans a lot more on GPU than CPU. I'll forward that option to him and see what he thinks. I think he's pretty much clueless on the hardware side of things which is why he asked me.

I've been keeping up with the hardware side of things only the past six months ever since I got the itch to upgrade my decade old PC. But laptops I have no clue in terms of reliability, support or overall performance.

[orcus116]

I'm likely going to be building a new PC in the near future and while I've been an Intel guy my whole life I'm hearing the AMD Ryzens are pretty good and potentially a cheaper option. Any thoughts on those vs the new Intel chips?

[Puppies_On_Acid]

I'm likely going to be building a new PC in the near future and while I've been an Intel guy my whole life I'm hearing the AMD Ryzens are pretty good and potentially a cheaper option. Any thoughts on those vs the new Intel chips?

I currently use AMD CPU's exclusively for gaming and workstation applications. Intel is so far behind on anything meaningful it's hard to recommend them for anything. The early reports on the AMD Zen 3 cpu's coming out soon have them surpassing Intel's fastest chips in single threaded operations and since they have been destroying Intel in multithreaded operations for almost 4 years now, there is no reason to even consider Intel right now.

[orcus116]

That's the general sense I'm getting since it's been years since I've even looked into a new computer. If I'm on a little bit of a budget what's the best bang for my buck with futureproofing in mind?

[faizoff]

I've been more or less in the same situation as you, I've been pretty much an Intel guy my entire life. I typically bought only laptops with AMD cpus as they served the best value. Now I don't like to be a one company vs the other company guy, I always get what serves the best value to me with whatever tech purchase I do.

The last time I upgraded was in 2011. Apart from the occasional SSD and HDD upgrade I never upgraded the other main components. This year I've done what's mostly a transition upgrade, get parts when you see deals on them. I fixed a price point for each component and bought one that fit the bill.

AMD has definitely turned the tide and have positioned themselves very well at the moment. Not that Intel are terribly lagging, people online will tell you that they are way behind. And on paper yes they definitely are. But in reality if you got an Intel CPU and it's comparable AMD CPU and you used them side by side you probably won't notice any difference.

Reason I went with AMD was I will not upgrade for another 10 years or whatever, so right now they have the better features in an overall package, more cores on the CPUs, PCIe 4.0 support for GPUs and NVMe SSDs. Even though currently you won't see any benefit of those technologies, they are actively being developed to push them further and further where I truly feel you'll see a difference in another 2-3 years.

That said, the new Ryzen 5000 series are to be released next month but they are being marked up price wise and stock of them during launch day/week/month is most likely going to be scarce.

I think for a good budget build for gaming and productivity a Ryzen 5 3600 paired with a B550 board will give you the best bang for the buck. They are quite good for future proofing for at least 5-6 years at the very least in my opinion. With that you're freed to spend more on other components that you may value like GPU or monitor etc..

I think Intel will catch up and come back in a bigger way as they have all the capitol in the world to make it happen. It just might take them another 3-4 years at the least. So for now AMD offer the better overall option.

[Progmetty]

I would look at the Asus Zephyrus

Hello folks, typing to you from the above mentioned Asus for the first time 
Thanks again for all the recommendations and discussion!

[Progmetty]

I extended the life of my wife's 11 year old laptop by putting an SSD and free upgrade to windows 10 from 7. Win 10 runs a lot lighter than win 7 and even boots up much faster. It's still got legs for a Toshiba Satellite 2009 laptop.

Dude I've been meaning to ask you about that! Now that I got this Asus I'm trying to get the old 2010 Toshiba Satellite to just barely function so the kids can do school stuff on it. After all these month of struggling with it; I still haven't been able to pinpoint the exact problem, I've done a fresh Windows 7 installation and the problem went away for a week or so then returned in full force, which prompted me to give up and finally get the Asus.
The problem is that the computer slows down, not your usual too-many-apps-on kinda slow down that old computers struggle to handle, but a slow down that goes to a halt, not a total freeze, you can still see and move the mouse cursor, just nothing responds and you hear an odd clicking noise from a piece of hardware inside, to me it sounds like something that's trying to spin but is unable to, but then again I have zero diagnostic experience when it comes to hardware.
Here's where I'm going with this though; how did you diagnose that the problem was the hard drive? You were obviously confident of your diagnosis enough to buy a new drive, I'm interested in venturing with the purchase and the attempt to replace it myself using youtube tutorials but I'm trying to be sure of what the problem is.

[faizoff]

By your description it sounds like the mechanical hard drive inside the Toshiba is dying. In my case I just went ahead and replaced the existing mechanical drive since the SSD will always be faster. It's fairly easy to replace a HDD in the Toshiba, I can help if you decide to replace it, plus there are a ton of youtube videos on it.

Another possibility could be the CPU is overheating as I've had that happen too. I once had to dismantle everything and clean the dust out from inside the chassis. I only did it that one time and it was good from then on.

In your case I would most likely think it's the first scenario where the mechanical HDD is dying. Probably cheaper and easier to get a small 256 GB SSD and replace it and reinstall windows.

[faizoff]

I would look at the Asus Zephyrus

Hello folks, typing to you from the above mentioned Asus for the first time 
Thanks again for all the recommendations and discussion!

Dang that is a beast of a laptop.

[Progmetty]

By your description it sounds like the mechanical hard drive inside the Toshiba is dying. In my case I just went ahead and replaced the existing mechanical drive since the SSD will always be faster. It's fairly easy to replace a HDD in the Toshiba, I can help if you decide to replace it, plus there are a ton of youtube videos on it.

Thanks! I may just take you up on that, or at least double check things from the tutorials with you.

In your case I would most likely think it's the first scenario where the mechanical HDD is dying. Probably cheaper and easier to get a small 256 GB SSD and replace it and reinstall windows.

I see. So any 256gb SSD or there some hardware compatibility elements I need to be aware of?

[faizoff]

I see. So any 256gb SSD or there some hardware compatibility elements I need to be aware of?

I should think so. If your Toshiba laptop is like the one I have, it should accommodate this drive (just using as an example) It's pretty much the standard. Anything that is 2.5" and marked as SATA should be compatible. You can double check when you remove your current HDD and see if it has the same ports as the one I linked.


The one I plugged in my laptop is this drive.

[Progmetty]

This guy has my exact same laptop and the disassembly looks like a genuine nightmare!

[El Barto]

This guy has my exact same laptop and the disassembly looks like a genuine nightmare!

I might have missed a post somewhere, but are you sure it's not just a Windows problem? Seems to me that if you're willing to replace the HDD in the thing, then you're willing to start from scratch with a fresh install of windows. I'd probably do that first and see if that doesn't resolve things.

Also, when helping a coworker with his laptop that was running stupidly slow, the first thing I did was run chkdsk on it. Took 24 fucking hours, but found and marked plenty of bad sectors and the thing ran great afterward. Just a thought.

[faizoff]

This guy has my exact same laptop and the disassembly looks like a genuine nightmare!

Holy shit that is a pain. Mine was much simpler, remove two screws on the back and take out the panel, remove another 2 screws that held the drive with a frame. Unplug drive and replace. put screws back. That one looks more elaborate.

It might be worth also doing a chkdsk like Barto suggested, even though you did a fresh install, it's probably good to get it done and check just in case windows can fix the sector errors itself.

[Progmetty]

This guy has my exact same laptop and the disassembly looks like a genuine nightmare!

I might have missed a post somewhere, but are you sure it's not just a Windows problem? Seems to me that if you're willing to replace the HDD in the thing, then you're willing to start from scratch with a fresh install of windows. I'd probably do that first and see if that doesn't resolve things.

Also, when helping a coworker with his laptop that was running stupidly slow, the first thing I did was run chkdsk on it. Took 24 fucking hours, but found and marked plenty of bad sectors and the thing ran great afterward. Just a thought.

I've done both those things, I ran the chkdsk, found a few errors and fixed it, then installed fresh Windows 7. Problem went away for a week or so then came back full on, that's another part of why I can't really pinpoint the problem, but what faizoff said about the hard drive wearing out makes sense.
At this point I've got nothing to lose with the Toshiba except the $50 I'll spend on the SSD that may not solve the problem, but I'm almost certain I'd rage quit that disassembly/assembly a bunch of times heh