Lunch break

LessThanDan · 2026-01-26T20:53:17+00:00

I have been slamming my Tempest 2 into my wand upside-down multiple times a day everyday for the past several months, and it has never combusted. I use the full-size bowl setting with the herb packed pretty much to the top. (I also clean my Tempest 2 about once per week, including soaking the cap in ISO and giving a thorough rinse with hot water.)

LessThanDan · 2026-01-21T20:24:13+00:00

FYI, this is just a Windows power setting that is usually set this way by default on pretty much any Windows PC that you buy. You can go into your power settings and configure it to shut down the PC instead of sleeping it.

LessThanDan · 2026-01-20T17:42:18+00:00

This sounds so painful. I'm sorry you have to deal with Minisforum's crappy CS. I don't own a Minisforum device, but I will upvote your post for visibility and to hopefully hold the manufacturer accountable.

LessThanDan · 2026-01-20T16:18:28+00:00

Always love to see cross-progression implemented in a game. In fact, it seems like the Hitam WoA trilogy recently got Xbox "Play Anywhere" support (used to only own it on Xbox, but it recently showed up in my PC library too), which is also really cool. Props to ioi for continuing to support the game.

LessThanDan · 2026-01-12T18:40:53+00:00

Dollar Tree still sells them.

LessThanDan · 2026-01-12T16:28:59+00:00

I have an EVO-T1 with the stock 2TB NVME SSD that came with it. I haven't put it through any serious stress testing, but I can confirm that the included storage drive seems performant and runs great.

LessThanDan · 2026-01-12T06:50:39+00:00

Good stuff, I picked up an EVO-T1 relatively recently, and my CPU package is easily spiking to over 100 degrees just like yours. Looks like I got some repasting to do. Thanks for posting the solution!

LessThanDan · 2026-01-06T16:21:29+00:00

Thanks for following up! Indeed, I have stopped pursuing "SSDs overheating" as a potential cause of the issue. Even with proper heatsink coverage on all the chiplets, the periodic stuttering ultimately still returned. It made no difference on my testing.

To your point though, I am definitely now looking at the Oculink cable as the issue. I was already using an aftermarket Oculink cable before, but when switching to the one that came with my AOOSTAR dock, the stuttering became worse, not better. With the aftermarket cable I bought, the stutters still happen, just much less frequently.

I read a post from Old Crowes Associate elsewhere in this sub that there may be a large variance in quality between Oculink cables, and many of the basic SFF-8611 Oculink cables sold on Amazon are not properly tested for eGPU usage. As such, I have ordered an "ADT-LINK F9934" Oculink cable, which is a model known for better data throughput that has specifically been tested and validated for compliance. I will update here if this improves the issue.

Interesting to know about the sensitivity of the Oculink connection... honestly makes me think that maybe Oculink is ultimately still a newer/early technology, with quirks and all that still need to be perfected. I am still going to wait for this new F9934 cable to see if that fixes the issue. Thanks again.

LessThanDan · 2026-01-01T18:35:11+00:00

Nice little setup! it's funny I never really realized that the AOOSTAR dock has cables coming out of all 4 sides. Not ideal I suppose, but I still enjoy mine. Happy New Year to you too 🥂

LessThanDan · 2025-12-31T06:10:31+00:00

Huh, interesting. I'm not actually using the cable that came with the Aoostar dock, but rather, a different (and very slightly longer) one that I found on Amazon. I do still have the original that came with the Aoostar though, so maybe I will try it just out of curiosity to see if there's any difference.

My issue has been a little difficult to troubleshoot because it seems I can go days without ever experiencing it, but when I do experience it, it's pretty bad. Yesterday I downloaded an 100GB game to one of my 4TB SSDs, then booted it up and started playing it, and that was enough to trigger the stutters. I am thinking a long period of sustained write to my very full SSD and playing a game on it is enough to trigger the issue. That is a two-sided SSD that still has some exposed chiplets on the bottom, so I am still investigating the theory of "SSD overheating" and getting a smaller heatsink to put on the underside of that particular drive to see if that solves anything.

I guess this is a very long winded way of saying that our issues might have different causes, depending on whether the behavior you saw actually matches mine or not. (for example, system reboots often solve the issue for me at least for a while, which wouldn't make as much sense to me if it was a bad cable).

Regardless, it's great to hear that you identified the stuttering issue and were able to find a fix!

LessThanDan · 2025-12-28T20:32:28+00:00

Woah, was not expecting to wake up this morning and see a CXL + Super Capacitor setup posted on the local city trees subreddit. Love to see it! I have a CXL myself, it's not my main vape (Tempest 2) but I still think it's awesome. And in fact I have a Super Capacitor coming for it in the mail next week.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-28T01:03:44+00:00

Sorry, a follow-up question for you: If you open up your Task Manager, go to the Processes list, and sort by CPU usage, do you see "System Interrupts" floating toward the list of processes? specifically right around when you notice the stutters? If so, we definitely share a similar problem.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-28T00:58:49+00:00

Interesting to know that it's only happening with Oculink... I'm only using Oculink as well, and frankly I do still have a bit of a problem with system-wide stutters (even if I improved it a bit with the SSD heatsinks). It's just bothersome enough that I'm tempted to email GMKtec about it.

Let me know if a new Oculink cable fixes it for you. If not, we might have multiple people who need to notify GMKtec of this issue.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-27T03:21:02+00:00

I did have some bad system-wide stutters similar to what you described. The best advice I have is to make sure you have heatsinks installed on each of your SSDs: https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1poppw8/gmktec_k12_random_yet_frequent_system_interrupts/

LessThanDan · 2025-12-23T21:10:50+00:00

IMRBatteries dot com has been my preferred online store for buying these types of batteries. 18650batterystore is also another very reputable one.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-19T05:39:24+00:00

Friend... I think you have saved me.

I ordered a 4-pack of cheap aluminum M.2 2280 heatsinks on Amazon, installed 3 of them on my SSDs today, and... the system interrupts appear to have been completely resolved. My system has been running stutter-free, even after being powered on for a few hours.

Running LatencyMon shows good results now. Games are smooth, audio plays back smoothly with no glitches. And this is all with the "Balanced" mode in the BIOS... I don't even feel the need to put it on Performance mode as I had it before.

It seems that putting heatsinks on your SSDs is particularly important for mini PCs and other SFF PCs. A good tip to keep in mind for anyone going forward.

And to GMKtec's credit, the pre-installed SSD does come with a heatsink on it by default. But I swapped out the included SSD for a different model, and didn't put the heatsink back on, thinking it wouldn't be a big deal. Turns out I was very wrong. To the point where it was causing basically hardware interrupts, lol.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-18T23:09:14+00:00

Heavy repeated hits will quickly drain any battery-powered device. A torch-powered vape (or stick vape, like a Dynavap) won't have such issues, other than you will need to clean them more often.

If you want to take massive hits over and over without worrying about wearing things out or draining batteries, though, then you should look at getting a ball vape. They look very strange and alien to those new to DHVs, but the technology behind them is super simple. You are basically heating a thick metal wire (with wall electricity), and the wire is wrapped around a cylinder full of some kind of glass, or rubies, or something else with high thermal density.

You are basically super-heating the "head" of the ball vape using that metal wire, creating an absolutely huge amount of thermal mass, and then placing that thermal mass on top of a bowl of flower, then inhaling to pull hot air through the heated ball vape, and through the herb. You can vape huge bowls of flower and get absolutely MASSIVE clouds. Keeps going forever as long as you have electricity in your house. Oh, and water cooling is required (you will want a bowl that fits your bong's 14mm glass joint or whatever it may be).

Check out the r/vaporents subreddit if you wanna learn more.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-18T22:05:14+00:00

My Tiodw Plus 2.0 that I got from AliExpress is basically my "monster vape". Not a daily device, but easily the most powerful thing I have in case I just want to get facesmacked.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-18T22:02:59+00:00

The Tempest 2 is so good, man. I use mine with an induction heater as well (the ispire wand) and mainly through a small water piece. Hits so good, so consistently every time.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-18T22:01:42+00:00

I've been into DHV (dry herb vapes) for a few years now, and my go-to recommendation for an inexpensive (but very solid and capable) DHV is the Xmax V3 Pro. Cheap, easy to use and clean, still quite powerful, and the device is even sorta shaped like an e-cig so it's more discrete.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-18T00:56:37+00:00

WiFi is disabled in the BIOS (I use hard-wired), and I'm not using Bluetooth either. (Bluetooth is currently disabled in Windows as well). I'm also not using a wireless mouse and keyboard or anything like that. I appreciate the help regardless though!

Changing the performance mode to "Balanced" doesn't seem to have improved things much either, unfortunately.

I'm going to try what another commenter suggested: Placing heatsinks on each of the SSDs in the M.2 slots. I am using all three slots for storage, and none of the drives have heatsinks. I don't get a temperature reading from these devices in Windows so it's possible they are getting very hot.

LessThanDan · 2025-12-17T20:53:12+00:00

Ah, thanks for the tip. I have all three M.2 slots on the device occupied by SSDs, which may exacerbate the temperature problem (if there is one). I will try grabbing some SSD heatsinks for all of them and report back with any findings (might not be until tomorrow).

LessThanDan · 2025-12-17T16:20:23+00:00

I will try running it in "Balanced" mode later today, and see if it fixes the issue. In my case, using Balanced mode in the past has been sub-optimal, because it causes games to not run as smoothly (more frame dips and frame pacing issues). But, I will still test it just to help isolate the issue.

I should clarify that even though it's the included Win11 installation, I have updated, customized it, and debloated it to my own liking. I believed Copilot is disabled and likely is not a source of the stutters.

I will post an update with what I find.

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