Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

*Legion* wrote:

How the hell have you had so much bad hardware? Are you building it on top of a Tesla coil?

Rubber pants and no ESD bracelet?

Yeah that many problems is very unlikely to just be bad luck.

I paid almost zero attention to my 3900X HTPC build.. just swapped the entire 2600 and X470 motherboard out replaced it with the 3900X and MSI X570 and turned it back on.. I did re-install Windows 10 though as I went with one of the new Gen4 SSD's to take advantage of the latest NVME spec.

Updated the Bios and all latest Drivers and Windows 10 updates.

It's been rock solid since I got it on release day... and despite largely being GPU bound by the 2080Ti It still feels snappier and I'm getting better FPS in most games that I've played at 4K Ultra.

I was momentarily flummoxed since the X570 used an extra motherboard power cable over the usual 2 and I had to dig around for another cable in my bin of random cables.

The hard drives were definitely killed by Power Supply #2.

Power Supply #1 would not correctly power anything. Microcenter tested this and agreed it wasn't right, but I didn't get the info on exactly how so maybe PSU#1 was killing stuff too.

Swapping in PSU#2 and banking on the odds of getting two bum PSU's in a row as being astronomically low, we found the first motherboard also bad. Out of box bad or killed by PSU#1 or PSU#2? Who knows. Swapped out motherboard and cpu because Microcenter people apparently that's how they want to roll.

PSU#2 + Motherboard#2 didn't work. PSU#2 tested fine so swapped out for motherboard#3. Seemed to work fine until I got home and plugged into SATA hard drive, nothing. Montage of swapping out hard drives, bios nonsense, chipset nonsense, driver nonsense, PSU testing. Eventually a stack of dead hard drives convinced all involved that despite testing fine, the PSU was killing whatever it SATA'd.

So conceivably I got two bad PSU's in a row, and the rest were either casualties of war or like that first cpu might have been fine the whole time. Plus I got a comically large octopus of stapled receipts and plastic bags to make the cat happy.

Next time around, off the shelf builds I can verify work in-store is going to be an alluring option.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

A tale of woe.

Do you have a pcpartpicker list so I can avoid that PSU model?

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

So conceivably I got two bad PSU's in a row, and the rest were either casualties of war or like that first cpu might have been fine the whole time

Yeah I would be inclined to believe a couple of junk PSUs caused all the other issues.

I don't know what PSUs you bought, so this statement isn't directed at you, but this is exactly why I strongly suggest buying high tier PSUs, because a bad PSU can both wreck things and can throw out a bunch of red herrings and make certain things look faulty when they're not. Buying high tier PSUs doesn't guarantee anything, you can still get unlucky, but crappier PSUs make these outcomes significantly more likely.

1st PSU was a 850w Toughpower gold.
PSU's 2 and 3 are CorsairRMX 850x FM 80+G

Likewise in the motherboard swapout I went from MSI to ASUS.

I also never ruled out an ongoing Altered World Event in the neighborhoods between where I live and Microcenter.

Not new computer related but I was one of those holdouts who didn't do the free upgrade to win 10 from win 7. I ended up getting myself a new computer (with win 10) and handed down the old one to my wife.

Sounds like free windows upgrades are still a thing and with support being shut off in early 2020, I figured I would do it.

So that being said, any tips? There's actually not much on that computer, certainly stuff that can just be backed up to an external drive temporarily. My preference would be to just reformat, but then I can't "upgrade".

Has anyone done a win7 to win10 upgrade recently?

The Toughpower is iffy (Tier C) but the Corsairs are legit (Tier A).

Any chance Microcenter is pushing refurb stuff on you?

Also, any time stuff starts getting inexplicably weird, I look at the case. Any chance of shorts in your case?

My brother once had a build where the damn thing just kept tripping the "power" button and shutting itself down (what finally tipped me off is that, if the machine managed to get into Windows first, it would do an ACPI shutdown, rather than just cutting power). Removed the build from the haunted case and put it in another case, and the problem disappeared.

I always do my builds on a test bench before moving anything into the final case. I've never been able to justify buying a real test bench case though, so I took an old Antec case and tore it down to just its frame, added a power supply, and some brass standoffs, and made it a poor man's test bench:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/0ygTmaR.jpg)

One of the brass standoffs has a nub instead of the screw hole, so it holds the motherboard in place without me having to screw it in place if I'm just bench testing it and keeping it laying horizontally:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/qX6bScS.jpg)

Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get more of these standoffs with the little nubs? I haven't been able to find any. I'd love to have all the brass standoffs be this kind to make the board a little more secure when it's just laying on them.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Not new computer related but I was one of those holdouts who didn't do the free upgrade to win 10 from win 7. I ended up getting myself a new computer (with win 10) and handed down the old one to my wife.

Sounds like free windows upgrades are still a thing and with support being shut off in early 2020, I figured I would do it.

So that being said, any tips? There's actually not much on that computer, certainly stuff that can just be backed up to an external drive temporarily. My preference would be to just reformat, but then I can't "upgrade".

Has anyone done a win7 to win10 upgrade recently?

It’s probably easier than you are thinking, but there are a few potential catches.

Download the latest Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft and make a USB boot disk - the download tool will step you through it.

If you have a visible Windows 7 key somewhere you can boot from the USB, format and install fresh - just choose the edition of Windows that matches your key and/or enter the key when prompted.

If you can’t find the key, do an in place upgrade then reformat after install if you still want to. Windows will remember your entitlement on that hardware as long as it activated successfully after the upgrade.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

PSU's 2 and 3 are CorsairRMX 850x FM 80+G

I'm currently running the white version of this PSU, and love it!

*Legion* wrote:

Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get more of these standoffs with the little nubs? I haven't been able to find any. I'd love to have all the brass standoffs be this kind to make the board a little more secure when it's just laying on them.

Motherboard positioning standoffs. Ugh. I searched every so often for years. Wasn't able to find brass ones and got tired of using nylon pegs, so you know what I did? I bought long brass screws, screwed them into some regular standoffs, cut them, and ground the edges off.

China must be hoarding the entire supply of the damn things.

I just checked my organizer o' screws and I have a bunch of standoffs but yeah no nubs.

I know it sounds unlikely, but in the last 35 plus years, every single time I've walked into a small computer shop and *asked* nicely for a few mobo standoffs, I have left with a small handful. Sometimes I have been able to force a dollar on the guy, but more often they just wave me off. Worth a try.

We used to (and may still) have a monthly computer swap meet here where they just passed out bags of standoffs. I have never seen ones with the rounded tops before. I have seen ones with threads at both ends that could serve the same purpose, but I can't find them for purchase online either. Perhaps a standard one with a short length of threaded rod the correct size could be used?

*Legion* wrote:

Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get more of these standoffs with the little nubs? I haven't been able to find any. I'd love to have all the brass standoffs be this kind to make the board a little more secure when it's just laying on them.

https://www.amazon.com/6-32-Brass-Mo... maybe?

LouZiffer wrote:

Motherboard positioning standoffs.

See, I assumed that was a "thing", but no amount of searching yielded anything. I own just that one, and I'm not sure where it came from (probably from a case, many random ones have passed through my possession over the years).

Ugh. I searched every so often for years. Wasn't able to find brass ones and got tired of using nylon pegs, so you know what I did? I bought long brass screws, screwed them into some regular standoffs, cut them, and ground the edges off.

I thought about doing something like this, and now reading that someone else has searched and not been able to find them either, I think I will go ahead and do a workaround like yours.

AoiBlue wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get more of these standoffs with the little nubs? I haven't been able to find any. I'd love to have all the brass standoffs be this kind to make the board a little more secure when it's just laying on them.

https://www.amazon.com/6-32-Brass-Mo... maybe?

Those are regular standoffs. Those I don't have any trouble finding. It's the ones that have a nub sticking up instead of a screw hole:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/qpoTQc1.png)

Here, this might be easier to see

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gdXEYIN.jpg)

Digikey has male to male standoffs that are threaded on both ends, but they're stupidly expensive for what they are. Macgyvered ones are cheaper and better.

Corsair's cases used to always have the center standoff be one of the nub ones..made lining up and installing the motherboard super easy.. especially if you didnt want to lay the case down sideways or had a full build that you were swapping out motherboards.

*Legion* wrote:
AoiBlue wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

Speaking of which, does anyone know where I can get more of these standoffs with the little nubs? I haven't been able to find any. I'd love to have all the brass standoffs be this kind to make the board a little more secure when it's just laying on them.

https://www.amazon.com/6-32-Brass-Mo... maybe?

Those are regular standoffs. Those I don't have any trouble finding. It's the ones that have a nub sticking up instead of a screw hole:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/qpoTQc1.png)

Here, this might be easier to see

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gdXEYIN.jpg)

Ohhh. My bad.

What I was taught when I was building PCs as a job was that you only needed two of the metal standoffs on any given motherboard, and in fact that could be better, not worse. Brass is conductive, and each standoff is a chance of a short. I was having a real problem with Tyan boards dying (this was in the mid 90s), and those were some of the best quality boards made at the time. Turns out the clearances around their screw holes were really tight in that era, and it was easily possible to short a board that way, just screwing it down normally.

I've been using ASUS almost exclusively for the last twenty years or so, and I've been using multiple brass standoffs with their boards without a problem. But every time you use one, there's at least a chance of a short, where a nylon standoff will never do that under any circumstances. And I honestly see no real difference in mount quality between 6 or 9 screws (depending on motherboard size), versus two metal standoffs and either 4 or 7 plastic nubs. As long as the metal ones are in the far corners away from the back of the case, it should be perfectly solid.

If you're having a hard time getting a board seated, where you're having to really jam it in there, you could probably also do the screws in the close two corners to the back of the case, which would ease up compression on the rest of the board. But I haven't had that problem in a case in a long, long time. It used to be very common, but I can't remember the last time I saw that issue.

tl;dr: You shouldn't really lose anything using the plastic nubs, and gain at least a tiny bit of potential reliability. This might be more true with cheaper boards.

Alright, I think I've put together a build that I'm going to start purchasing parts for imminently, but I wanted a second (or third) opinion to see if I was missing anything major.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Kb6v6R

For instance, I have a compatibility note that "The motherboard M.2 slot #1 shares bandwidth with a SATA 6.0 Gb/s port. When the M.2 slot is populated, one SATA 6.0 Gb/s port is disabled." and I have ZERO clue what that means.

Prederick wrote:

Alright, I think I've put together a build that I'm going to start purchasing parts for imminently, but I wanted a second (or third) opinion to see if I was missing anything major.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Kb6v6R

For instance, I have a compatibility note that "The motherboard M.2 slot #1 shares bandwidth with a SATA 6.0 Gb/s port. When the M.2 slot is populated, one SATA 6.0 Gb/s port is disabled." and I have ZERO clue what that means.

It means that when you put your M.2 drive in its slot, one (out of the six) SATA ports on your motherboard won't be usable for other drives. It's complicated but basically even though M.2 uses a physically different connection than SATA drives and looks totally different, the data from them is still received by your system along the same "road" and so the M.2 drive being there takes up one "lane" on the road.

Since you'll still have five other ports for SATA drives useable and only the one other SATA hard drive in your parts list, this is nothing to worry about.

Thank you. Mostly for the "nothing to worry about" part.

Prederick wrote:

Alright, I think I've put together a build that I'm going to start purchasing parts for imminently, but I wanted a second (or third) opinion to see if I was missing anything major.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Kb6v6R

I'll set aside my Intel rant for now.

The main thing that struck me is, seems like a lot of money to spend to essentially end up playing games at 1080p and without adaptive sync. Am I missing something?

I used to think that it was important to have at least one metal screw connected to the motherboard to ground it to the case, but apparently while that is true, the current path is tiny compared to the grounding wires in the power cables. So now I'm less worried about getting brass standoffs.

*Legion* wrote:

The main thing that struck me is, seems like a lot of money to spend to essentially end up playing games at 1080p and without adaptive sync. Am I missing something?

Consider it a first draft. I'm happy to take any advice and make changes, I'm not buying parts for another week yet.

As Legion said, you are buying a PC that will game at 2k or 4k resolution (depending on the game) but your monitors are only 1080P. I'd suggest a single, larger 28" 2k+ monitor. Then, assuming you have a monitor already, use that for your second monitor (doesn't have to be 144hz like your main monitor).

*Legion* wrote:

I'll set aside my Intel rant for now.

Is the rant related to the red bar being better than the blue in virtually every way except for a few FPS on current thread-limited games?

peanut3141 wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

I'll set aside my Intel rant for now.

Is the rant related to the red bar being better than the blue in virtually every way except for a few FPS on current thread-limited games?

Yes, it is related to that.