PCs for dummies

[CorgiShinobi]

When you updated the driver, was it through Windows Update or with the drivers from HP's support site?

 

Granted the driver hasn't been updated in four years, so it's possible after subsequent Windows 10 updates that the driver is no longer compatible/recognized. Looking at it, I recognized the model and it's one of those "under $99" models that never really last; through function or support. Quite literally people will buy the printer once more to get more ink because it's cheaper than the ink cartridges. Sure they're sample cartridges, but those same people probably don't print as often.

 

If your father doesn't print in color, I almost always recommend a laser printer. It might be a high expense at first compared to inkjet, but the cost per page is cheaper. Most importantly, toner doesn't dry up and only goes bad if it's exposed to high humidity.

[MetalCaveman]

Downloaded the drivers from the HP site, yeah, I guess I'll help him look around for something new, though he does use colour for some things, so we'll see, still, it's definitively time for an upgrade.  

[TheMightyEthan]

Have you tried a blood sacrifice?

 

Seriously, printers are the least reliable piece of tech I've ever interacted with. I do not understand why no one can make a printer that works.

[MetalCaveman]

5 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Have you tried a blood sacrifice?

 

Seriously, printers are the least reliable piece of tech I've ever interacted with. I do not understand why no one can make a printer that works.

 

That might've worked...

 

I tried reinstalling everything from scratch today and... It works! The thing is alive once more!

 

Of course if it fails again I'm setting it on fire and buying him a new one, fuck dealing with this shit again.  

[Mister Jack]

Whenever you buy a new printer, which hopefully won't have to be soon, I've been pretty happy with the Brother printer I'm using. It feels a lot more reliable than my old HP printer ever was. I've only had it for about a year but at least so far I've experienced no problems so maybe it's just a brand to keep in mind.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I liked my brother printer while it lasted. Do hate printers in general though. Have to say  I do like HP instant ink so far - I chose the free option so can print 15 pages a month (miles more than I use) and never need to buy another cartridge. May be worth a look if your Dad's a light user.   I literally have given up on printing from my laptop at this point though and just email anything to my phone and it prints fine from there which seems a bit odd.

[Mal]

Am I silly for transferring most of my media files to an external HDD and trusting it to last? It was the easiest option since I wouldn't have to fiddle with SATA ports (I used all of mines) but I wonder... it would be a bummer to lose everything. I guess I need to join the last decade and look into setting up a NAS with RAID... 0? Other than that, I freed up space on my internal HDDs.

[TheMightyEthan]

I just had an internal HDD go bad, luckily not with anything on it that I cared about. It did spur me to rearrange my other more important files into a single mirrored volume so I have redundancy if one of my other ones die.

[MetalCaveman]

1 hour ago, Mal said:

Am I silly for transferring most of my media files to an external HDD and trusting it to last? It was the easiest option since I wouldn't have to fiddle with SATA ports (I used all of mines) but I wonder... it would be a bummer to lose everything. I guess I need to join the last decade and look into setting up a NAS with RAID... 0? Other than that, I freed up space on my internal HDDs.

 

You'll want to avoid RAID 0 if you're looking for redundancy/data protection, RAID 5 or 6 are your best bets for that stuff.  

 

For media files I also use an external drive, though I'm also thinking about turning my current PC into a home server once I build a new one, whenever that happens.  

[TheMightyEthan]

I look into NAS's from time to time, and am always put off by how expensive they are, even for an empty shell with no drives inside.

[Mister Jack]

19 hours ago, Mal said:

Am I silly for transferring most of my media files to an external HDD and trusting it to last? It was the easiest option since I wouldn't have to fiddle with SATA ports (I used all of mines) but I wonder... it would be a bummer to lose everything. I guess I need to join the last decade and look into setting up a NAS with RAID... 0? Other than that, I freed up space on my internal HDDs.

Honestly I just bought a big USB drive for like 20 bucks with the intention to replace it every few years.

[MetalCaveman]

Currently looking at the ROG Helios or the Lian Li O11 XL, anyone got recommendations for cases along that line/style?

[MetalCaveman]

On 1/12/2020 at 4:51 PM, MetalCaveman said:

Currently looking at the ROG Helios or the Lian Li O11 XL, anyone got recommendations for cases along that line/style?

Adding the Corsair 680X to the list.

 

Looking at some reviews, the main issue is the price, American price doesn't really compare with Mexican prices where all 3 are at about the same price, with the O11 XL being more expensive because it doesn't include any fans.  

[Mal]

I believe all those are high airflow cases, which is honestly the biggest thing for most people. Not everyone wants to do watercooling. So they're all good. As for the O11 XL coming without fans, I think it's because it was meant for watercooling but it does well with fans. This also allows you to get higher quality fans in that they run more efficiently, faster and/or quieter. 

 

I'm also personally looking for a new case as well. I'm tired of the plastic clips for the PCI slots in my case. I love it otherwise since it pushes enough air to keep things cool. Else, it's front IO leaves much to be desired now. I'm also debating about drive bays.

 

You can probably watch this for some ideas if you're not in a rush. I'm personally not in a rush since I tend to use a case for 5+ years so I want a good one.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Mal

[MetalCaveman]

Yeah, I'm in no rush right now.  My HAFX has lasted for almost 10 years, without any issues (other than a dead fan, but that's not that bad IMO), but I'm now looking to update my whole system, case included.  

[Mal]

I also have one of the HAF cases for about the same amount of time. They're so good but yeah, they're showing their age in specs and design philosophy. 

[deanb]

On 12/12/2019 at 2:41 PM, TheMightyEthan said:

I look into NAS's from time to time, and am always put off by how expensive they are, even for an empty shell with no drives inside.

 

Honestly they're a fab investment (though I'd be a bit wary on getting a "NAS hard drive", esp atm).

I've got one, and been able to access media files from my main tower, my phone, my laptop, login remotely. If I can be bothered to set up it can sync with cloud services too so I've a back-up-back-up.

Also not just a shell for hard drives, they do have actual processors and RAM inside. Mine is a quad-core intel celeron based one. On a regular PC it'd be shit but it's enough for the web interface, some automated services and transcoding media.

 

And if you've just got an old PC you can convert that to a NAS with free-nas (though I'd wager might be a bit power-hungry given your old PC likely an ex gaming PC)

[TheMightyEthan]

I do have an old HTPC that has been effectively replaced by my Fire TV Stick, so I've kind of turned it into a media server for the house. I just have it put to sleep most of the time, with wake-on-lan enabled so it'll come on when something tries to stream from it. That FreeNAS looks cool though, if I'm ever itching to do a computer project I might try setting that up.

[MetalCaveman]

 

 

This looks cool, and a nice mix of airflow and looks, other airflow oriented cases look... Not good, IMO, this one is a nice balance.  

 

Next thing, I'm looking at extra fans, if I do end up going for this case, it includes 2, but I'd like to swap those/add more. Part of me wants to go with RGB everything, Corsair LLs or something, part of me wants to go with something like the Noctua NF-S12, my HAF-X has 2 led fans, but these are the old style, with a solid colour, I do like how they look but do wish you could change the colour, one is red, the other one is blue.  I know Noctua is mainly known for silent fans, but noise isn't that much of an issue to me. Customization would be nice, but the NF-S12 also seem to perform better. What do y'all use?

 

Now that the GPU has been secured, it's time to get the rest of the thing, let's see how it goes.  

[Mal]

Holy shit @MetalCaveman, I can't believe I can say 3090 is fine even if it's serious overkill.

 

 

At least the 3090 has the extra 12GB of VRAM. I bet you can find uses for that. The 3080 TI should be a jump from the 3080 but not for the price of $1200 (3080 is $700). You just don't get the $500 worth of power over the 3080 lmao

[MetalCaveman]

Is there a way to check if an email was properly sent?

 

Sent an email with outlook (the website, not the client) and it gave me an error, said try again later, but if I check on the sent items folder, it appears normally, as any other sent email.

 

Been a while with no reply but I also don't want to resend just yet, specially if the first one did go through.

 

Kinda late to do anything about it other than wait though, this is going to be at the back of my head all weekend.

[Mister Jack]

Usually if an email doesn't send I think you're supposed to get an automated reply from the mailer daemon saying that it failed. At least that's how it always worked in my experience.

[MetalCaveman]

Having some issues with my graphics card, center fan keeps bouncing between 0% and 53%, noticed this because of the sound it makes (not loud, but with how quiet everything else is it is noticeable), opened GPU Tweak, which is ASUS included software and noticed that the GPU clock was stuck at max (19504MHz!), spent some time trying to figure out why it was like this when nothing else was running and I learned that apparently that's an nvidia issue when using multiple monitors with different refresh rates, setting all monitors to 60Hz allows the memory clock to now idle at around 810MHz. Really annoying though, now I have to choose between memory clock being forever stuck at max, or not being able to use the max refresh rate of my monitor and TV.

 

Problem now is, that didn't do anything for the fan, the side fans run at the custom curve I set up, those are fine, center fan is doing whatever it wants. I thought it may be a faulty fan but after looking it up it seems that other people have the same issue and that it may be related to GPU Tweak. Sure hope so lol, going to try some different software tomorrow after some much needed rest lol, and see how that goes, MSI Afterburner seems to be a recommended one, and there's another option that's just called Fan Control , I'll try with those and hope that it works, otherwise... Toast.

[MetalCaveman]

New PC is out of commission, has been for a while lol, been using my old PC and I'm surprised at how well it holds up, up until now I used it mainly as a streaming PC for Netflix, Spotify and other stuff, rarely using it for more than a couple of hours, but now that it's my daily driver again I'm happy to see how well it still runs. Main issue has been that it has Pop!_OS installed and this thing did not play nice with my speakers, true to its name, it had some really REALLY loud pops every once in a while. It's fixed now, kinda, still pops, but now it's a quiet pop whenever I start a new video or change songs, but nothing like before.

 

I could have just moved the GPU from this one into the other one, but I decided to try and use it as is, good chance to test this Linux distro as a daily driver too.