Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

Moggy, if you think about it, you don't *need* a start guide with these kinds of systems. Just plug and go. That's the beauty of it.

Robear wrote:

Moggy, if you think about it, you don't *need* a start guide with these kinds of systems. Just plug and go. That's the beauty of it.

I know but when I unboxed it it felt underwhelming compared to when I unboxed my Alienware laptop a few years ago

Meanwhile, I'm struggling with adding a second nvme drive. I followed this video

even bought the same hardware and it's not being seen in Windows or the BIOS. So far I've tried updating BIOS, swapping the two nvme drives (putting the boot drive in the PCI card and the new drive on the mobo), and even just putting the new drive on the mobo. In all cases it's not being recognized.

A fairly common problem, apparently. My next attempt is to put the new drive on the mobo and boot to a USB and then use Windows to format and partition the drive. Assuming, that is, the BIOS will recognize it. But I need to get a 8GB USB drive first.

I guess I can also try unplugging the second SATA drive that came with my build to see if that helps.

I've been holding off copying over / downloading my games as I was going to put them on this new drive. It's been a frustrating morning...

Oh yeah, ETA: How do I get and redeem my code for Guardians of the Galaxy game? I see the line in my order but don't seem to have received any other info about it.

Huh. I am thinking of adding in an NVME drive too. Is it on the approved list? If so, Support will probably help you with it.

It is possible you got a bad NVME drive Moggy. Do you have any way to test it on a different system?

Gaald wrote:

It is possible you got a bad NVME drive Moggy. Do you have any way to test it on a different system?

I can try the interface / drive combo on my old computer - that's still running

Moggy wrote:
Gaald wrote:

It is possible you got a bad NVME drive Moggy. Do you have any way to test it on a different system?

I can try the interface / drive combo on my old computer - that's still running

Well, the drive is fine. Just happily installed Windows 11 onto it from the USB. Then swapped it back into the PCI card and it's invisible again.

At this point I think I'm going to have to pass on my plans to add a second nvme drive using an interface card. Damnit! I just don't like the idea of installing my games onto my boot drive.

There are 2 2.5" bays at the bottom, so I can always add a Sata SSD, I guess.

Nothing wrong with a large(r) capacity sata SSD...

Robear wrote:

Moggy, if you think about it, you don't *need* a start guide with these kinds of systems. Just plug and go. That's the beauty of it.

My first PC came with instructions that read "if it fits, it probably goes there."

I bought a PCIe 3.0 NVME card which has worked great, and for only $13. It is only PCIe 3.0 so I didn't get an NVME that does 7Gbps but the WDBlack I have in there now can do 3Gbps which is plenty fast.

M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter with Aluminum Heatsink Solution

Edit: they make a dual one too but it probably shares bandwidth (which might be ok since you don't read or write to both at the same time most of the time).

Dual M.2 PCIE Adapter for SATA or PCIE NVMe SSD with Advanced Heat Sink Solution,M.2 SSD NVME (m Key) and SATA (b Key) 22110 2280 2260 2242 2230 to PCI-e x 4 Host Controller Expansion Card

Moggy wrote:

Well, the drive is fine. Just happily installed Windows 11 onto it from the USB. Then swapped it back into the PCI card and it's invisible again.

At this point I think I'm going to have to pass on my plans to add a second nvme drive using an interface card.

I'd guess that your PCIe card is just bad, or otherwise having some compatibility issue.

If it were me, and having the second M.2 drive was important to me, I would try another card from a different manufacturer. The cards aren't very expensive, and you can always return it if it turns out to not be a solution.

kazar wrote:

I bought a PCIe 3.0 NVME card which has worked great, and for only $13. It is only PCIe 3.0 so I didn't get an NVME that does 7Gbps but the WDBlack I have in there now can do 3Gbps which is plenty fast.

M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter with Aluminum Heatsink Solution

This is the one I got

Maybe it is a bad unit. I can vouch that it does work, well when it works.

I think the last test would be to put the drive/card combo in my old rig and see if it's recognized.

I have ordered a new card - for $13 it's worth a shot and same day delivery!

Moggy wrote:

I think the last test would be to put the drive/card combo in my old rig and see if it's recognized.

I have ordered a new card - for $13 it's worth a shot and same day delivery!

Unfortunately, it was recognized

Going through a Windows 10 Disk Management reformat to see whether that will help it be recognized. I might as well copy some data onto it as well, just in case I get lucky

Not feeling it, though. Seems like the R10 just doesn't want to recognize the card in BIOS. Despite Youtube videos and much web commentary to the contrary.

Have you checked your manual to see if certain ports get disabled when the on-board m.2 slot is in use? They usually disable some SATA ports, but they could possibly be disabling one of the PCIe slots.

I would really like to see CPU and motherboard makers stepping up the number of PCIe lanes they are giving us. AMD is doing ok, but as more and more stuff starts connecting directly to PCIe (Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 4 all allowing access to PCIe) they need to support more lanes by default without requiring we step up to the workstation grade Threadrippers or Xeon-W CPUs and compatible chipsets.

Rykin wrote:

Have you checked your manual to see if certain ports get disabled when the on-board m.2 slot is in use? They usually disable some SATA ports, but they could possibly be disabling one of the PCIe slots.

I would really like to see CPU and motherboard makers stepping up the number of PCIe lanes they are giving us. AMD is doing ok, but as more and more stuff starts connecting directly to PCIe (Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 4 all allowing access to PCIe) they need to support more lanes by default without requiring we step up to the workstation grade Threadrippers or Xeon-W CPUs and compatible chipsets.

I was going to make the same suggestion. On my older X370 motherboard, this was definitely an issue-- you could either use the NVMe slot and lose 2 SATA 6 ports, or lose NVMe is you used the SATA 6 slots.

That's not so much a problem with the X570 board (or at least, my X570 board), but I'm not sure about losing PCIe lanes....

Halp!
Just got the memory sticks i ordered a couple weeks ago, installed them all ok but now the xmp profile thingie wont OC the RAM up to 3000 as I had it before the upgrade. Any thoughts or hints? The four sticks are equal, bought exactly the same type of ram, same brand same color even.

which ones did you get?

kazar wrote:

which ones did you get?

Tforce vulcan 2x8 gb Ddr4 3000 mhz cl16-18-18-38 1.35V
If I remove the new sticks I can load the xmp profile without trouble and get to, windows, just tried it right now.

Edit: seems like both new sticks are to blame. Tried each one solo and they both do the same, won't go work over 2400mhz no matter where you put them. Le Crap le sighe le pupú. Won't be able to return them, so yeah, I'll have to put up with slower but bigger RAM from now on. Original sticks work as intended, these new ones do not. Crap crappity crap.

I hate to say it but there are a lot of fake RAM sticks out there.

You can try giving them a little more voltage, if your motherboard allows it.

I'd see if giving it 1.38V or 1.4V lets you achieve a higher clock speed with those sticks.

For safety, I won't recommend going above 1.4V. If it were me experimenting with my own fussy RAM sticks and accepting the risk myself, I would see what I could at least get them to boot at with 1.5V. That's the max voltage allowed for XMP certification - beyond that, you're into actual overclocker territory, and chip quality matters a great deal.

I'd at least try and contact the seller and manufacturer, might come to nothing but there's little harm in the attempt.

Thanks for all the pointers peeps.

*Legion* wrote:

You can try giving them a little more voltage, if your motherboard allows it.

I'd see if giving it 1.38V or 1.4V lets you achieve a higher clock speed with those sticks.

For safety, I won't recommend going above 1.4V. If it were me experimenting with my own fussy RAM sticks and accepting the risk myself, I would see what I could at least get them to boot at with 1.5V. That's the max voltage allowed for XMP certification - beyond that, you're into actual overclocker territory, and chip quality matters a great deal.

What would be the risk in doing that? could it *burn* the sticks, or the motherboard doing so just to check? could it work for a while but later stop working and inflict damage on the components?

There's no real risk at 1.4V or below. That's why I picked 1.4V as the stopping point. You're still a good ways away from danger at that point.

Realistically, 1.5V doesn't represent much danger either, but running at 1.5V 24/7 could put certain chips closer to the borderline. At 1.5V, you need to start being mindful of cooling. There's plenty of overclockers running 1.5V 24/7, but we're not trying to be overclockers here. We just want to see if a mild voltage boost allows those chips of yours to get to the speed that they're rated at.

Going above 1.5V is when you start to get into an area where, depending on the chips, you could introduce damage running at that voltage for long periods of time. Even that is highly variable from chip to chip.

DDR4 is supposed to be able to tolerate spikes to 1.9V without being damaged. You're unlikely to cause any damage from just booting your system with your RAM's voltage set anywhere beneath that, but running RAM long-term at a voltage exceeding the XMP certification limit (1.5V) definitely risks damage to the RAM. So we're not going to exceed the limit or even get that close to it.

Like I said, try 1.38V, and try 1.4V. See if you can get the chip above 2400. If you can get them to 3000 at 1.4V, that's a voltage you should feel plenty comfortable running the RAM at going forward. It very well could be that those chips need juuuuust a little more juice to reach their rated speeds, and that's all we're going for here.

*Legion* wrote:

There's no real risk at 1.4V or below. That's why I picked 1.4V as the stopping point. You're still a good ways away from danger at that point.

Realistically, 1.5V doesn't represent much danger either, but running at 1.5V 24/7 could put certain chips closer to the borderline. At 1.5V, you need to start being mindful of cooling. There's plenty of overclockers running 1.5V 24/7, but we're not trying to be overclockers here. We just want to see if a mild voltage boost allows those chips of yours to get to the speed that they're rated at.

Going above 1.5V is when you start to get into an area where, depending on the chips, you could introduce damage running at that voltage for long periods of time. Even that is highly variable from chip to chip.

DDR4 is supposed to be able to tolerate spikes to 1.9V without being damaged. You're unlikely to cause any damage from just booting your system with your RAM's voltage set anywhere beneath that, but running RAM long-term at a voltage exceeding the XMP certification limit (1.5V) definitely risks damage to the RAM. So we're not going to exceed the limit or even get that close to it.

Like I said, try 1.38V, and try 1.4V. See if you can get the chip above 2400. If you can get them to 3000 at 1.4V, that's a voltage you should feel plenty comfortable running the RAM at going forward. It very well could be that those chips need juuuuust a little more juice to reach their rated speeds, and that's all we're going for here.

Thanks Legion, I was able to reach 2666 mhz but it bluescreened shortly so went back to 2400. Can't say that the new RAM is forfeit or fake as the package is exactly alike to the first pair I bought originally, I did noticed that the sticks weren't safely nudged into the plastic holder and were shuffled a bit, still safe apparently but not as they should have been packaged, so my guess is that I received somebody's already rejected RAM, I don't see the sticks freeing themselves in the trip so they must have been like that when my order was processed. So yeah, not much I can do now, returning them isn't an option as the cost of is probably no worth it (I don't want to end up paying a hundred bucks for relatively cheap RAM) I'll make do with them as is and have slightly slow RAM that I should have, it is not that big a deal I guess.

Classic scam, sorry Feeank.

Well, I ended up not going the APU only route, and instead of building it myself, I got my son a prebuilt (so I wouldn't have to sell a kidney to get a serviceable GPU).

One of the
Lenovo Legion

IMAGE(https://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/BestBuy_US/images/products/6476/6476710_rd.jpg;maxHeight=640;maxWidth=550)

We got it through Best Buy on a Cyber Monday deal, so instead of the $1250 price tag, we go it in the $8XX range, with a 1660 Super GPU, so that should keep him going for now in his animating and gaming.

Now to check out Microcenter for a decent monitor deal.

I hope this isn't off topic and I hope it's a small issue. About two weeks ago, I started to get Disk Write Error messages when Steam games would update. After a few tries, they would usually resolve as normal, but today I have three games that can't update. I've scanned the disk and de-fragged it, but I'm not sure what else to do. None of my three drives are full, so I'm not sure what is going on. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Natus wrote:

I hope this isn't off topic and I hope it's a small issue. About two weeks ago, I started to get Disk Write Error messages when Steam games would update. After a few tries, they would usually resolve as normal, but today I have three games that can't update. I've scanned the disk and de-fragged it, but I'm not sure what else to do. None of my three drives are full, so I'm not sure what is going on. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Uh oh. Sound's like you're starting to get bad sectors. I'm assuming this is a spinny disk? I'd run CHKDSK on the disk to search for and mark bad sectors.

I'd also take this as a sign that you should be replacing the disk sooner rather than later.

Moggy wrote:
Natus wrote:

I hope this isn't off topic and I hope it's a small issue. About two weeks ago, I started to get Disk Write Error messages when Steam games would update. After a few tries, they would usually resolve as normal, but today I have three games that can't update. I've scanned the disk and de-fragged it, but I'm not sure what else to do. None of my three drives are full, so I'm not sure what is going on. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Uh oh. Sound's like you're starting to get bad sectors. I'm assuming this is a spinny disk? I'd run CHKDSK on the disk to search for and mark bad sectors.

I'd also take this as a sign that you should be replacing the disk sooner rather than later.

No, actually. This is a fairly new SSD I installed a year ago, if memory serves. I didn't think this sort of thing could happen if the drive integrity was good out of the box.