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deanb
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The Games You Bought thread didn't seem like the place to post an update on this so I guess this one will do. So earlier tonight I finally got another one of those random restarts while playing FFVIIR, this time with both Afterburner and GPU-Z logging the GPU's power draw. And.... yeah, I've got nothing lol.

 

I suspected this might happen but if it is indeed a transient power spikes knocking out the system then whatever protection is shutting off the PC (the PSU's OCP is what I'm thinking) is doing so before the power actually gets to the card, or at least before the sensors can pick it up.

 

So I won't be able to actually catch one of these until I swap the PSUs, it seems. I searched in Afterburner's settings a little bit more and was able to tweak things to make it easier. I set it up to play an alarm if the GPU's power draw goes above a certain threshold. I've seen the card go as high as 380W (this thing is supposed to have a TGP of around 320W lmao), so I set the limit to 400W. So at least I'll be able to just play without having to constantly look at the graphs on my second monitor.

 

Also, I already posted this on discord already but after some fucking around with reinstalling iCue and Armory Crate and going back 2 versions with Nvidia's drivers, I was finally able to sync my RTX 3080 with the rest of my RGBs!

 

GCUPUf4.gif

 

I was kinda bummed out when it turned out not to work (my Asus motherboard worked so I expected the GPU also would) but I looked online and it turns out it was a recent nvidia driver that broke the plugin for everyone. It was just bad timing on my part lol. Now I just need to get more fans for my case... For the extra airflow, I swear!

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I don't have a cool gif to post, I'm just going to post a boring components list for my recent rebuild:

 

CPU: Core i5 12600k

GPU: MSI Geforce RTX 3080 10GB

RAM: 32GB Kingston DDR4 4000MHz (though I haven't been able to get it higher than 3600MHz for some reason...)

Mobo: ASRock Z690 Phantom Gaming 4

Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2

 

I did finally adjust my mouse and keyboard LEDs so they match the blue from my PC tower.

 

*Edit - pics

 

PXL_20220713_122235110.NIGHT.jpg

PXL_20220713_122456362.NIGHT.jpg

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RGB bros! My mouse is synced with the rest but my keyboard is a stupid Logitech so it's on its own. I'm planning to replace it with a Corsair eventually, in no small part so I can finally get Logitech's garbage app off my PC for good. My current keyboard is working fine, though, so buying a new one really isn't a priority. 😅

 

Also yeah I might as well do a components list too:

 

CPU: Core i9-12900K w/ H100i Capellix Elite AIO cooler

Mobo: Asus ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming Wi-Fi D4

RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator DDR4

GPU: Asus ROG Strix RTX 3080 White Edition

Storage: m.2 SSD x2, 2.5 SSD x2

Monitor: ASUS ROG Strix 27” 1440P, 170Hz, G-Sync

Case: Corsair Crystal Series 680X Smart Case

Speakers: Audioengine A2+

 

I only mentioned it for the GPU but basically everything that I could get white is white. Except for the monitor, which I found out like last week that the exact same model now comes in a white variant...

 

ZOor7KH.gif

 

Anyway, here's a better view with some actual light and a more camera-friendly RGB profile:

 

vZrAO7L.jpg

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My case lights don't change, they're only blue. My mouse and keyboard are both Logitech ones that have adjustable colors, so I messed with that until it matched the blue from the case. If the case was color-changing I wouldn't be able to match them.

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I haven't been able to figure out how to sync the lighting on my setup,  motherboard, gpu and monitor don't play nice with my RAM lol, so I just match the colours best as possible and leave it at that.

 

If I could get everything to work I wouldn't mind switching to a corsair mouse and keyboard (whenever they're on sale), just to have everything nice and synced. :P

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19 hours ago, TheMightyEthan said:

My case lights don't change, they're only blue. My mouse and keyboard are both Logitech ones that have adjustable colors, so I messed with that until it matched the blue from the case. If the case was color-changing I wouldn't be able to match them.

 

Ah ok, looking at it again I see now they're just LEDs in the fans. My first PC's case was like that and I hated it lol. But that was only because back then I would leave my PC on overnight and it was in my room so... I don't do that anymore but even if I did I can just turn the light show off now.

 

14 hours ago, MetalCaveman said:

I haven't been able to figure out how to sync the lighting on my setup,  motherboard, gpu and monitor don't play nice with my RAM lol, so I just match the colours best as possible and leave it at that.

 

If I could get everything to work I wouldn't mind switching to a corsair mouse and keyboard (whenever they're on sale), just to have everything nice and synced. :P

 

Are they all the same brand? If you have Corsair stuff you just need to install iCue. It's pretty straightforward to use. But from what I understand, different brands are notoriously difficult to get working together. So syncing them may not be possible. I lucked out because Corsair and Asus at least try to play nice with each other.

 

It's still fickle as hell, though. Like I said, all it took was a new driver from nvidia to make iCue stop detecting people's RTX cards. Armory Crate (Asus's software) needs to be installed for it to work and depending on what order things start once Windows starts, sometimes it wouldn't sync right and my motherboard wouldn't listen to iCue. Sometimes Armory Crate would also cause the sync to fail on my RAM (at least, the internet told me it's due to Armory Crate; could easily just be an iCue issue), so they would get stuck on a color and not update anymore. That may have been due to me messing something up with my installs (or something else going wrong), though, because ever since I wiped everything and rolled back nvidia's driver to make the GPU work, I haven't had any issues. Actually scratch that, writing this made me look at my PC and the RAM is stuck right now. 😅

 

-------------------------

 

Small update: the power graph in Afterburner has its Watt axis max out at 300 by default, so most of the time the graph would just be an horizontal line, which made it kinda difficult to notice quick jumps. I messed around with the settings some more and was able to set it to a higher value. Which let me notice that the card's power draw jumped to like 400.8W for like a second while I was playing earlier. Not long enough to trip the alarm I set up but at least it tells me the card is indeed prone to random power spikes, even if that one was tiny. I'm cautiously optimistic that once I put in the 1200W PSU in I'll be able to catch a bigger spike sooner or later.

Edited by toxicitizen
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Mother board, GPU and monitor are all ASUS, RAM is Corsair, I know you're supposed to be able to get them to play nice through iCue, but it keeps getting stuck or not syncing properly whenever I try to set up stuff through it, gave up on it and now I just set up stuff through Armoury Crate and iCue separately lol.

 

I need to take some time to properly figure out this stuff and set everything correctly, if I had RGB fans it'd be a higher priority, for now it can kinda wait. :P

 

Mouse is Logitech and keyboard is HyperX and those are screwed, there's no way to get them to work with other stuff, they work well right now so no desire to get anything new, but I'll likely go Corsair next. :P

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I posted a while ago in Games You've Bought about the racing wheel and stand I got a few weeks ago (pic is from when I was first testing the wheel, I apparently forgot to take one after I got the full stand for it, but it gives you an idea of the setup, the only difference being the length of the stand forced me to pull the chair back even more):

 

R8WE5UT.jpg

 

It's been great, a ton of fun, but it's been niggling at me how far back I have to sit from the screen, it takes away from the feeling of actually driving the car. So, last week I ordered an extendable wall mount, and it got here and I installed it yesterday (top pick is grainy because of the light enhancement, it was shot under the same lighting as the bottom one but I wanted to show the mount):

 

iPQ2etz.jpg

 

pNeWuvz.jpg

 

Now it's almost like a real simulator (minus the moving chair, because even "entry level" ones cost like $3k 😅). Was playing with it last night, and it's nuts how much a difference it makes moving the screen closer, feels almost like you're actually driving. It's fantastic.

 

And even when it's not extended, it looks really cool to have the TV just floating there. 😁

 

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Yeah, I'm only sort of casually into racing games but I bet a setup like that makes them even more fun. Can't justify investing that much for a genre I barely play, though. If I'm gonna shell out for an expensive peripheral, it's gonna be a fight stick. And even then I'm really hesitant to drop that kind of money because what if I don't like it. 😅

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8 minutes ago, Mister Jack said:

I could never really get into driving games but I bet having an actual wheel makes a huge difference. I imagine it must be like the difference between playing Guitar Hero with a guitar vs a pad.

 

That's a perfect comparison, honestly. Even though I love racing games I always thought wheels were overkill, controllers were fine, but then my brother in law had me try out his setup, and a week later I'd ordered my own. 😅 Once I'd experienced it I just couldn't go back.

 

1 minute ago, toxicitizen said:

Yeah, I'm only sort of casually into racing games but I bet a setup like that makes them even more fun. Can't justify investing that much for a genre I barely play, though. If I'm gonna shell out for an expensive peripheral, it's gonna be a fight stick. And even then I'm really hesitant to drop that kind of money because what if I don't like it. 😅

 

I'm the opposite, I barely ever play flight sims, though I imagine with a stick and this extendable TV it might enhance the experience. The Logitech Extreme 3D Pro is only $20 right now on Amazon and I was already considering getting it to dip my toes in a bit.

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Fight not flight lol. As in fighting games. 😂

 

I imagine a flight stick would absolutely enhance the experience no matter what, yeah. But with a fight stick I'd be basically throwing all my muscle memory out the window. So I'd essentially be starting over from almost zero. Knowing myself, that alone would frustrate me more than anything lol.

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2 hours ago, toxicitizen said:

Fight not flight lol. As in fighting games. 😂

 

I imagine a flight stick would absolutely enhance the experience no matter what, yeah. But with a fight stick I'd be basically throwing all my muscle memory out the window. So I'd essentially be starting over from almost zero. Knowing myself, that alone would frustrate me more than anything lol.

 

I own multiple arcade sticks and I can tell you that it really just comes down to personal preference. I absolutely would not recommend getting one if your motive for doing so is to get better at fighting games, because the whole "sticks are superior" argument is a meme. There are plenty of EVO winners who used the regular old controller. If you just want a more faithful arcade experience, though, then I totally get that. You just gotta pay attention to what kind of parts the stick you're buying is using because they make a huge difference. My first stick was actually a customized Street Fighter stick that swapped out the Hori internals for Sanwa parts and it's been going strong for many years now.

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1 hour ago, Mister Jack said:

 

I own multiple arcade sticks and I can tell you that it really just comes down to personal preference. I absolutely would not recommend getting one if your motive for doing so is to get better at fighting games, because the whole "sticks are superior" argument is a meme. There are plenty of EVO winners who used the regular old controller. If you just want a more faithful arcade experience, though, then I totally get that. You just gotta pay attention to what kind of parts the stick you're buying is using because they make a huge difference. My first stick was actually a customized Street Fighter stick that swapped out the Hori internals for Sanwa parts and it's been going strong for many years now.

 

Yeah, that's kinda why I'm so hesitant. I want one because it seems like it would be fun but if I'm gonna invest into a fight stick I'd like to get a decent entry-level one, at the very least. And I can't really justify dropping 150-200$ on something I may not end up using all that much. Especially considering how much I like the fighting pad I'm currently using. It wouldn't just have to be fun to be worthwhile, it would have to feel better for me than the fighting pad.

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  • 1 month later...

Some PC updates.

 

RGBs: So I mentioned that reverting to a months old nvidia driver allowed me to sync my GPU with the rest of my RGBs in iCue. Well, Spider-Man forced me to update my driver because it was having graphical glitches on the old one. So for the last couple months I've been keeping an eye on r/nvidia whenever a new driver version comes out because that's where I found out it was driver-related. Conversation about this particular issue seemed to have died down, so today I went back to google to see if anything new came up. And, well, yeah... 🤦‍♂️

 

Turns out this entire time the issue could be fixed by running iCue as administrator. Setting it to always run as admin breaks the "launch on startup" option, so I have to start it manually every time but hey, at least I'm back to having a fully synced up PC!

 

Random restarts: These happened very unpredictably so I'm really hesitant to claim anything definitively but I haven't had a single one since upgrading to a 1200W PSU. IIRC I only ever experienced them with FFVIIR and I was almost done with it when I did the upgrade but I finished it without experiencing any more and I've since spent a significant amount of time playing other demanding games without any issues. I can't rule out the possibility that there was something about FFVIIR in particular that taxed my 3080 in a weird way but otherwise I'm pretty sure Ghostwire Tokyo, GotG and Spider-Man were all more demanding since I played them with RTX on.

 

So hopefully both of these issues are solved permanently!

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  • 10 months later...

image.png

 

It's not entirely like this as the GPU has been replaced (presumably that was the part that was cream crackered) but it otherwise pretty dang close. Nice bright white. Looks pretty slick. Has a glass side panel (wasn't expecting it, but hey ho).

 

Specs as follows:

 

Case: FRACTAL POP SILENT CASE TG (WHITE)
Processor (CPU): Intel® Core™ i5 14-Core Processor i5-13600KF (Up to 5.1GHz) 24MB Cache
Motherboard: ASUS® PRIME B760-PLUS D4 (LGA1700, PCIe5.0, USB 3.2)
Memory (RAM): 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (1 x 32GB)
Graphics Card: 8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4060 - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive: 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
Power Supply: CORSAIR 650W CV SERIES™ CV-650 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable: 1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste: STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card: ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card: ONBOARD LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card: WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0

 

Gonna transfer my Blu-Ray drive over at some point too.

 

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