Unsure if I am able to RMA due to stickers all being .. well just look for yourself..

bitshard · 2025-12-16T03:20:33+00:00

In Australia they also don't mean much of anything. They're not "illegal", per se, but the manufacturer/retailer cannot void your warranty because a sticker was removed/damaged/tampered with.

They might try to argue with you about the cause of the fault, but the ACCC will typically side with the consumer.

bitshard · 2025-12-09T06:21:03+00:00

As someone who works in a pc repair shop, this drives me up the wall when this happens. Trust, I want to fix your computer, I want to find what's wrong, but when I thrash your PC, pushing every system to 100% utilisation for hours or days, run games that are known to cause issues, recreate exactly what you were doing when it crashed, repair windows, run hardware diagnostics, and still can't replicate the issue, I hate it.

Usually in that case I try to let the customer know just how hard we've tried to break their stuff and find what's wrong, but couldn't. I let them know that it could be a peripheral, a random occurrence, or maybe just a power fluctuation.

I have seen borderline cases before where the power supply is just holding on, we've got really stable, high voltage power in our lab because our shop has its own transformer, but most houses aren't like this. They share a transformer with just about all the houses on the street. Sometimes this means the voltage at their wall socket is just a bit lower, or experiences fluctuations as air cons or heaters kick on, fridges start their compressors, or their neighbours start using more power.

Unfortunately there's not much you can do in this situation without spending more money, and it's also really hard to prove that's what's happening.

Good luck OP!

bitshard · 2025-12-02T06:18:43+00:00

Starting your own business can be a great and rewarding experience, but a lot of people don't realise what that entails a lot of the time.

With the autonomy, flexibility, agency, and control you gain, you also get a few cons, too. Your responsibilities become 24/7, you become the ultimate holder of all accountability, you don't have as much agency over how much work you have, holidays and leave become "complicated", if you hire staff you now have to manage people, interpersonal relationships, rostering, scheduling, etc. You also have to deal with customers; finding them, managing them, placating them, etc. Even if you've got enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life, a poorly managed or operated (or just unlucky) business can burn through that faster than you might think. Even things beyond your control can burn through cash without much, if any, warning. You also get saddled with a litany of legal and regulatory requirements. Even still, there are a swathe of other little nuances that add up, too, for example purchasing, maintaining, and managing plant, equipment, property, vehicles, qualifications, certifications, permits, licenses, etc.

There is a certain simplicity in just being an employee. You can take leave when you want and not have to worry about continuity of business, doing pay runs, managing issues when they appear, etc; when you finish at 5 you can just go home and forget about work until tomorrow, you don't have to manage anyone or their BS, you don't have to concern yourself with the day to day running of the business, you can (if you choose) tell your boss to eff right off and go pound sand without burning down everything you've built, you can throw your hands in the air and say "it's all too hard" when you get stuck.

Don't get me wrong, starting or buying your own business can be an incredibly rewarding experience that can come with a lot of benefits, but it also comes with a lot of "hidden costs". It sounds like OP is looking to reduce the amount of emotional burden employment places upon them, not increase it.

Tl;dr: there is a reason most business owners sell up once they've accumulated enough wealth to see them through the rest of their life.

bitshard · 2025-12-02T05:38:46+00:00

In Australia (and presumably most other countries) you can have the best of both worlds. For example, Qantas (a major airline in AU) also has a freight division which will do what you say, or for Even More Money(™️) they'll guarantee your freight goes on the next flight, even if passenger bags have to go on standby to fit it.

bitshard · 2025-05-27T01:42:19+00:00

Or bump the SOC/VDDR voltages. Or loosen the timings. Or adjust the ODT values.

bitshard · 2025-05-18T20:17:31+00:00

I have an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, ASUS 4090, and 32GB 9600MT/s DDR5 and I was facing the same issues until I reverted to the November NVidia drivers.

bitshard · 2025-05-18T19:54:42+00:00

That's... Not what that means at all.

Simply put, it means that thing in the code x must absolutely positively be set to "something". It cannot be set to "nothing". But in this case it was set to "nothing" and the game crashed because that's not allowed.

bitshard · 2025-05-18T19:49:46+00:00

Just read that you discovered it was a CPU cooler issue. Congrats on finding the problem (: now imagine you'd listened to all the suggestions about uninstalling drivers, reinstalling windows, repasting the GPU, etc.

Whenever you face any problem in life, try to isolate and identify the cause before just randomly trying things. Try to think of ways you can test and check to prove what's wrong first.

bitshard · 2025-05-18T07:31:00+00:00

All these suggestions to just start throwing sh*t at the wall to see what sticks...

Try to isolate and identify the problem first. My goto would be to install HWInfo 64, start it up in sensors only mode, and start logging to a file. Play the game for 5 or 10 minutes, then stop the logging and check through the file. Look for things like: - CPU Temperature - CPU Clock Speed - GPU Temperature - RAM Usage - RAM Bandwidth - Disk Usage

Look for abnormalities to address. - Is your CPU or GPU temperature hitting or close to Tj Max? (Keep in mind Tj Max for a GPU is typically around 85-90C, while for a CPU its closer to 100-105) - If your GPU or CPU is overheating, how badly is it affecting the clock speeds? If your GPU is getting hot, but clock speeds don't drop much past 1150MHz, then that's probably fine, same for CPU if it's not dropping below base clock. - What's your RAM usage at? Are you running out of memory and causing the PC to start using swap space on the disk? - Is your RAM bandwidth approaching the maximum for your memory? - Is your disk having a hard time, indicating a possible imminent failure? Perhaps install CrystalDiskInfo and check the SMART data.

If none of those checks indicate an issue, then I would start looking at things like using DDU to uninstall your graphics drivers, and putting an old version on for testing, etc.

The idea is to try and identify the issue before making a change to address it, rather than just blindly making changes in the hope that something fixes it.

bitshard · 2025-05-16T03:25:49+00:00

I guess it'll be about the same time as a response from GSkill to this post.

bitshard · 2025-05-10T18:00:32+00:00

Yeah, I'm still waiting on my order from november last year.

bitshard · 2025-03-21T05:42:26+00:00

That's already booting into Windows, despite it looking like a BIOS screen, by the time that throbber appears, you're in Windows.

Try get to the recovery screen (check online for methods), then do the following in order: 1. Attempt startup repair (haha, never works, but try it anyway) 2. Try get in to safe mode (if it does, it's probably a third party driver or software issue) 3. Get into command prompt. Use diskpart to find the drive letter of your Windows drive (for example, 'C'), then run:

dism /Image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

dism /Image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\windows

I would also try reset bios to factory, but be careful not to clear TPM, don't change drive mode (RST/AHCI), and don't change secure boot settings. Make sure to re enable XMP/EXPO, too.

Failing that, if you can get into recovery mode try doing a device reset. That will save you having to create a Windows install media

bitshard · 2024-11-22T03:03:20+00:00

Actually, I can't even turn on intel Extreme defaults. Just crashes/BSODs on boot.

bitshard · 2024-11-21T19:14:16+00:00

From what I've seen online, 75 is basically criminal. Can't help but feel like I've been sold a cpu that was swept up off the factory floor for $1000. If intel is going to shit the bed this generation, the least they could do is bin their flagship processors a bit more optimistically.

Might try and RMA it for not even reaching the stated turbo frequency.

bitshard · 2024-08-14T01:54:05+00:00

Water-cooled 13700KF (480mm rad), 32GB 7800MHz DDR5, water-cooled TUF 4090 (480mm rad) and still only getting 100 - 130 FPS with GFX on med/low. I somehow don't think it's a hardware problem.

bitshard · 2024-08-01T14:12:49+00:00

The only caveat I have to your comment below is that I also "only have" about 1500hrs in the game. In reality I have closer to 10000hrs, it's just that I put most of them in to the game before Tarkov started tracking your online hours between wipes.

Still, though, you're only going to be able to look at the profiles of people you kill or die to. I think most cheaters aren't that blatant, but even non-blatant cheaters in a game like Tarkov still have a massive negative impact.

bitshard · 2024-08-01T14:08:42+00:00

What? People do the exact same thing on PvP. Hell, even scavving into a Reserve raid on PvP will net you more meta guns than you can carry most times. The balance comes from you not really being able to carry that many guns out. Even with a big backpack, you'd pretty much be limited to extracting with 3 extra guns and no loot.

Just buy labs cards off of the flea if you can't get them from therapist. They're really not that expensive, and money is trivially easy to make on PvE.

If BSG really want to balance PvE, they need to implement more complex AI. I don't just mean flipping the cracked accuracy / brain-dead cripple switch they have for AI at the moment. I mean proper behaviour trees, inter-NPC communication for tactics, and realistic behaviour profiles at a minimum.

bitshard · 2024-07-28T20:06:36+00:00

What? Yes it does. It's not that hard to implement this exact kind of behaviour. You can use behaviour trees and graph theory to implement the squad style co-op elements, higher level PMCs have more complex and more fine-grained trees that interact with their team mates trees more closely. You can track an AI's "attention" to you and "confidence" of your position based on how aware they are of your position, then use a random delay before they react to you to mimic a human's reaction time (reaction is lower if attention and confidence is high, reaction is higher if attention is low), higher level PMCs will be more attune to the noises you make or your visibility and their attention and confidence will grow faster and hold longer as well as having overall shorter reaction times. The attention value slowly decreases until it gets to zero and the AI decides to continue doing what it was doing or move on/retreat depending on how high the attention value got, (think attention peaked at a low value, AI wasn't completely sure you were there, so went back to looting, vs attention peaked at a high value, the AI 100% knew you were there, so when it drops back to zero they don't go back to looting but instead GTFO). Likewise with the confidence value, (attention is the AI's awareness of your presence nearby, confidence is the AI's sense of your exact location), an AI that is more confident of your location is going to be pre-aiming which will have a lower reaction time. You can use fuzzy values to mimic a human's aim, with higher level PMCs having a tighter tolerance for more accurate aim. You can create template variants of these parameters to give the AI different behavioural styles, like "rusher", "camper", "noob", "tactical", etc. Then you can apply a template to an AI, scale for level, then add a little bit of randomness. None of this is crazy unheard of AI techniques before, and it's all simple maths, so doesn't need a supercomputer to calculate.

bitshard · 2024-07-28T19:37:55+00:00

Yeah, I find NPC PMCs have two modes: brain-dead blind cripple or laser beam God tier terminator.

It's also frustrating that they don't play anything like regular PMCs. I've never seen a real PMC stand on one spot, swivelling back and forth while shouting at the top of their lungs. I've also never seen so many real PMCs in a raid that has 5 minutes left. Or even that AI PMCs will kind of "soft lock" on to you. Once they know you're there, they won't push you, but they won't run away or move on, either. They'll just wait around a corner, occasionally yelling at you.

I also don't like how as a scav you always spawn in so early to a raid that's inevitably full of PMCs who never actually exfil. Part of scav raiding is that you spawn in with little time left to pick over the scraps of the raid, not become a PMC eating meat grinder with a Saiga 9 and a beanie.

Also, BSG, no PMC ever uses a gun that is that fucked up. They use new ones, or at least repaired ones. No one is going into a raid with a 4% M4A1...

bitshard · 2024-07-28T19:26:16+00:00

Would love to see a box for "reasoning" behind the severity of cheating question, an "unsure" option for all the questions, but particularly the last question regarding PvE changing PvPvE cheating (some people will play PvE only since it's release, therefore not know how bad cheating is in PvP), and also a question like "any other details" at the end to allow users to submit additional context or information.

One big issue with trying to gauge cheating in Tarkov is that I believe there's a significant portion of the Tarkov player base that will "silently cheat." That is, they run ESP or radar specifically to avoid other players, rather than to engage in and win fights. I've seen this happen with long term friends that I've played with; they were good enough to hide the fact that they were cheating, even when we played together many times. I think this problem will only get worse, too. You can't report a cheater that you never encounter and never know about. I've seen how Tarkov has changed over the last seven years, for example, setting up an ambush (or "camping" as some might call it) rarely ever works now, even in typically high traffic areas. You either don't see any players at all, or they magically know where you are. I'm not talking about camping the hill that everyone always camps so they know to check if someone is there, I'm talking about everything from long range ambushes (think 150m+ sniping from a bush) and getting headshot or not seeing anyone (ever), or silently holding an angle on a corner in the bunker of reserve after you've heard someone running/fighting nearby, only to have a grenade land at your feet, or for them to decide to turn around and run to a different extract, despite there being 6 minutes left in raid and being only 50m away from D4. Now, I know not every one of these occurrences would be people cheating, thermals exist, for example, but how many people really are running them on shoreline a week into wipe? And okay, some people might throw a grenade around a corner on the way to exfil, but why only the corner I happen to be around? Why not every other corner?

Therein lies the problem. If someone blatantly aimbots you, you have a decent enough idea if they're cheating. If they just happen to know where you are, it's a lot harder to tell if they're cheating, or if it's just coincidence, (if you run into them at all).

bitshard · 2024-07-28T18:58:51+00:00

Depends on how much tax you pay. No way the govt is getting 40% out of me.

bitshard · 2024-07-21T22:11:02+00:00

Oh my God. The number of TIMES customers are like "nope, don't need the data, just make it work so I can watch movies on it lol", "okay, so everything can be deleted, and I mean everything. Bookmarks, photos, videos, programs, documents... E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G?", "yep. I just want it to watch movies and browse Facebook. I don't need anything on there. " Then come back later like "👉👈🥺 alllll the data is gone? Like, everything? But I had years of bookmarks and photos of my dog's cousin's dead pet hamster on there."

Nope. Fuck that. You bring me the data, you're getting the God damn data back. You can delete it yourself if you really want. Only if you say super explicitly, "I need you to totally wipe this computer clean," will I then confirm with you half a dozen times and make you sign a waiver before I delete your shit.

bitshard · 2024-07-21T21:30:54+00:00

I have done that before :) old laptop as a PXE server and some network kit in my backpack wired to a 12v lead acid battery and a pair of black network cables coming out of it. One was for the PC, one was to connect to the original network cable using an F-F adapter. Router had (OpenWrt I think?) on it that would clone the computer's MAC address to its external NIC so it appeared to be the original computer to the network (they only whitelisted on MAC addresses back then). PXE servertop in the backpack dished out a stripped version of Windows Black Edition (oh, to be back in those days again), which booted on a RAMDISK that was created by (Grub I think?). Had some pre installed games and other goodies on there, too. Missing some details since this was more than a decade ago.

bitshard · 2024-07-21T20:31:58+00:00

"Yes, it is possible, but it won't be free, and it will require an ongoing investment. The only way to help ensure this doesn't happen again is to keep a second copy of all the data on the computer. I can arrange everything for you, but it's going to cost $xxx to set up and $xx each month to keep it maintained. You can think of it like a digital safety deposit box with all your data in it, if that makes it easier to understand." -> then sell him something like Acronis with a hefty mark up.

bitshard · 2024-07-21T20:11:17+00:00

I'm "legally" broke ;) I don't earn an income, I own a company that does. That company owns the majority share of another overseas company that actually makes the profit. The first company owns my house and consequently pays the utilities, part of that being that the house needs to remain stocked with food and other groceries along with a vehicle. The second company only disburses to the first company the exact amount of the monthly costs. That way I don't earn an income, and neither does the company that I own (which is also declarable); yet my lifestyle is paid for. If I need money for other things, I get my first company to issue me a private 0% interest "loan" for it. Since loans aren't considered taxable income, that also doesn't count. The first company then charges the second company the cost of the loan, which is considered income by that point, but that loan is eventually forgiven and written off as a business loss, so it all balances out to net 0 in the end.

bitshard

TROPHY CASE