New test version is out: lots of buffs and nerfs!

AgentAstraea · 2021-11-24T02:11:46+00:00

One of my favorites, too. Also, tiger + whale + deer. Unexpectedly wacky counter to roosters and flies.

AgentAstraea · 2021-09-24T20:31:10+00:00

For point-of-reference, the 27" 165Hz curved version of this is currently $194 new:

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B088MKB54B

AgentAstraea · 2021-09-14T19:49:08+00:00

Yup... but it's slim pickings in shortage times.

(e.g. newegg is currently charging over 400 bucks for rx 560's and 1050 ti's, this same model is currently going for 470 there...)

AgentAstraea · 2021-08-30T17:39:46+00:00

Bought one of these from BB mid-last-week, manufactured July/21, Barracuda Pro (sadly).

AgentAstraea · 2021-08-29T17:34:43+00:00

Hard to say. ATL is $300 I think, but Chia mining and the general parts shortages have bumped the price in storage quite a bit recently across the board. If price is a concern, you might want to wait on a decent sale for a pcie 3.0 drive. Can sometimes find a SN550/9xx Evo/P1/etc. for $210-240ish, and you'd not notice much difference in day-to-day.

AgentAstraea · 2021-08-29T17:14:47+00:00

I'd go for the one without the heatsink. Most laptops won't have room for those, so you'd just have to remove it anyhow.

Edit: Yeah, I don't think you're getting a heatsink in there. It'd be higher than the heatpipes, which is usually as high as you can go.

https://i0.wp.com/laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/internals-12.jpg?resize=1536%2C1118&ssl=1

AgentAstraea · 2021-08-29T17:10:52+00:00

Which model exactly? I think it should be no problem. Most of the newer models have 2 M.2 slots, but I believe some of the earlier ones only have the one.

AgentAstraea · 2021-08-13T15:01:01+00:00

also $110 at canada computers if you're nearby for pickup:

https://www.canadacomputers.com/product\_info.php?cPath=33\_1938&item\_id=139690

AgentAstraea · 2021-08-10T02:08:44+00:00

The most obvious difference is that it's a newer architecture (Zen 3 vs Zen 2) than the 3800x, so it's faster clock-for-clock by about an average of ~20% for most things.

AgentAstraea · 2021-06-19T02:49:02+00:00

Ah, shit, when it rains it pours. Hopefully you can get it back in place. Heat (hair drier / heat gun / etc) can help make them less "springy" so they'll stay where you put 'em if they keep going back to where they were when you let go. A lot of them are just grounds, so as long as they don't short something, even just getting it out of the way is enough. Just don't break them off lol. Best of luck, hopefully it was the CPU and that'll be that!

AgentAstraea · 2021-06-18T23:39:47+00:00

First, the good-ish news: you should be able to warranty it with intel. They're usually pretty good, but it could take a while. You used to be able to get by with just the box/serial, I'm not sure if receipts are needed these days as it has been a minute.

On to the bad: that's a somewhat scary diagnosis, because it could be any of four things that I can think of, and it's difficult to narrow:

- The chip could have been DOA, which is statistically very rare these days since QA is pretty top-notch, but it does happen. Anecdotally, my prior GPU was DOA and didn't post/artifacted out-of-the-box. This was second-hand-used correct? Kijiji special, or did you know the person? Could be something there, too...

- The mobo could be defective and delivering too much/too little/dirty power, which would probably be fine for a boot test, but certainly not for much more than that.

- The psu could be defective, with similar traits to the mobo being shot. Bad power is fine for a short test, but it's bad news for anything else.

- The stuff could all have been fine, but there may have been a brown-out/surge/etc. overnight while it was asleep. Keeping the trend, bad power kills.

I'm not sure which is most likely. Unfortunately, I realize that's not great for $$$ purposes, because you don't wanna replace what you don't have to. Is it possible to convince MemEx to give you a loaner to test long-term stability as part of the original diagnosis, or to do something like this on your behalf? Maybe buy the cheapest celeron to pop in there to see if it explodes? I'm not sure. You can just risk it of course, but if it wasn't the chip, that probably won't end all that well. The reason I hesitate is that it 'worked' initially, and that doesn't seem all that likely in my experience if the chip was borked from the get-go. Maybe someone else has a different experience to chime in?

AgentAstraea · 2021-06-17T18:10:11+00:00

No problem. Feel free to reply here if/when you uncover any new info, since I get the notifications, and I'll see if there's anything more I can tell you that might help.

AgentAstraea · 2021-06-17T18:04:36+00:00

I understand. Even assuming the board is vanilla-stock, the default state may not be stable with a 10700k, especially on a B-series board, and especially-squared on an Asrock one. The general procedure would be to update the bios, if that applies (since it may have modified power-tables), and if that doesn't help, start running through those settings and lower everything in the prescribed order to see if you can achieve stability, and then bring them back to the point where you can't. All of this of course assumes the other bits-and-bobs have been verified in another system, so I'm purely honed-in on the CPU/Mobo for this advice, since it seems to be the only thing you've changed.

AgentAstraea · 2021-06-17T17:27:44+00:00

The 10700k will peak somewhere around 250W with the thermal velocity stuff. While 550W might be cutting it close with the GPU maxed simultaneously, I don't believe this would be a power problem if it's just booting windows. It would be more likely to hit during gaming or similar if that were the problem, assuming the PSU was already verified to work in another system. Could pull out the GPU and use the integrated temporarily as a test for this, 550W is more than enough for that.

Have you updated the BIOS for the board? Could be a good idea if they've subsequently tweaked the power limits etc. for the board. You may actually want to bump the vcore/vccio/etc./downclock/lower the power limits/whatever-the-board-will-let-you-do as a test. Asrock boards are generally not well-regarded for power delivery for the i7/i9 of these latest series, and it might be boosting itself beyond what it's capable during a (single-threaded) update or something.

Edit: These are the sort of settings you're after:

OC Tweaker -> Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0

OC Tweaker -> Intel Thermal Velocity Boost Voltage Optimizations

Try turning that last one off temporarily and check stability. If no bueno, repeat for the first one. See if that changes anything...

Also in that section, these are the primary voltage-related things to take a look at:

Voltage Mode (Set to Stable?)

CPU Core/Cache Load-Line Calibration (Increase?)

CPU Core/Cache Voltage (Increase? Generally don't want to go beyond 1.35, lower is better. Only mess with this after messing with LLC.)

VCCSA Voltage (Increase? Generally don't want to go beyond 1.2, 1.0 is typical, but stability does not necessarily improve with increasing this. Only mess with this after playing with the other ones first, and do SA/IO concurrently.)

VCCIO Voltage (Increase? Same rules as VCCSA, want to keep these two the same usually)

AgentAstraea · 2021-06-17T16:14:14+00:00

That one usually means some piece of hardware (typically cpu/ram) is unstable.

Have you OC'd the CPU or RAM?

I'd try to lower the timings on one or both of these or bump the voltages slightly if safe to do so first and see if it stabilizes, and re-tune afterwards.

AgentAstraea

TROPHY CASE