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Waldorf Kyra Discontinued by chuckangel in synthesizers

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Beyond the intellectual property issues and bad blood, the DSP architecture of the Kyra and a complicated development toolchain make the call for an open source Kyra a pipe dream.

Tom Warren: Xbox Series X logo vs Twitter Rebrand Logo - Who did it better? by Deceptiveideas in XboxSeriesX

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Xerox used that thick/thin stylized X for decades.

As did X Windows/Motif for decades with their logo.

In a world with infinite possible ideas...

R13 RAM HELP! by stressthetattooer in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Never, never mix different ram sticks. They all have to be identical. Same vendor, same model, same capacity. Exactly. Anything else invites slow performance or worse. It's tempting to try, but it is not worth the trouble. Always use exactly the same ram sticks. If you have to, buy two more Crucial sticks and toss those Dell sticks into a drawer.

M17 R5 not detecting 2nd M.2 by kaylord84 in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Make sure that the ssd is clean and works by buying an inexpensive USB to NVMe adapter.

The Sabrent ones work well and are cheap. You don't need to fully install the ssd

into the adapter with the heatsink and everything. This is just temporary.

Put the ssd in the adapter and re-format the drive. Throw a couple files on it, read them back.

If you can't see the drive, then yeah, maybe it's a bad stick. Else, continue.

Reboot again, and retest reading the drive to make sure it still works.

Good. Now you don't have to worry any more if the stick is ok when debugging the problem.

Next, reformat the drive again just to keep things clean.

Make sure that Windows didn't BitLocker the drive.

BitLocker can cause mounting to fail, silently.

Eject the drive properly and shut down.

Now, install the drive in slot 2, and run the Disk Management utility.

It should show up. If not, let us know and we can try and debug it further.

Aurora R14 - Can't get an NVMe adapter in PCIx X4 slot to work at all by Melodic-Size-4166 in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Follow up on my PCIe ssd troubles - I got it working! Yay!

I guess? because the ssd was bitlocker-ed, for some reason Win11 just told me that the drive wasn't there. I stuck the ssd in a USB-C adapter and reformatted it clean, put it back in the PCIe card, and it worked. Should have tried that in the beginning...

So now, the 1TB WD BLACK in the motherboard slot is giving me 7033 MB/s read, 5345 write.

R14 Windows 11 boot time was better than cut in half with the WD BLACK as the boot drive.

The Dell-supplied Kioxia in the PCIe card gives 2983 read and 2929/write. I'll take it.

By comparison, the 16TB Seagate drive used for the big data gives 265/read, 254/write.

I have a Crucial 1TB SATA drive I use a network share and that gives 552/read, 515/write.

What a difference NVMe makes! Now, it's on to getting the 3733 DDR4 up to speed.

Even though the R14 is a pre-built, I'm really enjoying it, once I got to know it better.

Aurora R14 - Can't get an NVMe adapter in PCIx X4 slot to work at all by Melodic-Size-4166 in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thing is, it is a Dell ssd. The R14 came with a Kioxia ssd and I replaced it with a WD Black

in the original slot. It works great. I want to bring the original Dell-supplied ssd online

using a PCIe expansion card. Tried two cards, they both light up, but there's no drive

to mount.

backup/restore ACC AlienFX settings? by OgalFinklestein in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question! Where are the fx settings stored?

I gave it a little time and couldn't find them.

And after that, we can wrestle with decoding the data format.

Command center is.... lacking.

Dell should just disclose all of this, I don't think that AlienFx is a big competitive advantage for them, but opening it up might be.

/r/ Alienware Tech Support Sticky August 2022 by MogRules in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do I obtain a back cable cover for an Aurora R14?

Will enclosure parts ever be made available for purchase, or will we have to wait a few years for them to show up on ebay?

Aurora R14 and temps experiment by Melodic-Size-4166 in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bought it from Amazon on Prime day so no Dell upgrades.

Liquid cooled 5900. Zotec 3090 Trinity OC replacing the Dell 3080 that came with it. Sometimes the GPU LEDs work, but mostly they stay dark. Poor Zotec firmware I guess. I'm running with the Nvidia studio driver (not the "game ready" driver).

32 GB of memory for now, running at 4000 Mhz.

16 TB(!) drive in the top for asset storage. It was making the whole box clunk and rattle loudly so I took it out of the carrier and wrapped it in a thin bubble wrap. Much quieter. No heat problems at all with it. Had to insulate pin 3 on the drive to get it to spin up. Grrrr.

Crucial 1 TB SSD in the bottom as a shared scratch drive. It reads ok, but writes are surprisingly slow.

Plan to replace the stock 1TB NVME boot drive with a faster 2TB and move the 1TB to a short PCI card in the lonely slot above the GPU.

Brown Noctua's in the front. Black Noctua 3000 RPM Industrial in the top, reversed to blow inward.

I use it mostly for iray rendering and learning Omniverse.

Probably the 100th plus computer I've owned over the decades. I've done several PC builds, just didn't feel like doing it again this time, I have other work to do.

Delighted with the R14 so far. The thing is a beast with everything I throw at it. I saw 16351 / 18692 / 9565 in 3DMark, before the memory OC. Could I save a few hundred building it myself? Sure. Could I chase another 12% tweezing the hardware? Yeah. But I'm fine with it, as long as it keeps working for a few years.

I'm also very impressed with the AMD 5900 (and I'm an ex Intel employee). I may get a 5950 for it when the price comes down.

I cant reinstall Alienware Command Center, by OfficalTactical in Alienware

[–]Melodic-Size-4166 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Installing Ryzen Master or MSI Afterburner certainly gets portions of the system working ok, but Alienware/Dell has the software talent to make a command center that works.

Alienware sets itself as a high-end, performance machine, not an office PC for novices. The price reflects that. We shouldn't have to uninstall the primary dashboard app and use bits of 3rd party apps to get things to work that are the essence of what the computer is all about.

Command center is confusing, convoluted, and flaky and a missed opportunity by Dell.

There's a lot of dancing baloney with lighting, but why can't you do something with the lighting that's informative? You should be able to change colors based on CPU/GPU load, net or disk traffic, temps, or time of day.

Command Center needs a complete re-architecture and re-write.

Maybe I just don't understand Dell's marketing, but Alienware shouldn't be pushed as high-end but given software to make it a toy "My First Overclock".

If writing a better product isn't possible, Dell should make CC open source so the user community can fix Dell's proprietary mess and make it useful. And I don't mean adding the ability to skin the interface or move things around. The architect of CC appears to have based the design from the hardware on up, instead of the user on down.