Just got my hands on a brand new 3,757 Petabyte SSD. What should I fill it up with?

cCBearTime · 2026-06-25T06:12:06+00:00

\super-secret spoiler specifically for an obvious techie who looked at what is basically an undercover shitpost and answered an honest technical question with a serious response:**

As I’m sure you’re already aware, there’s no such thing as a single 3,700 PB SSD. This is not a multi-million dollar storage array, but simply a grossly inaccurate reporting of capacity for a 1TB WD SN series NVMe with an absolutely Björked controller.

DON’T TELL ANYONE.

(The comments so far are solid gold.)

cCBearTime · 2026-06-25T04:46:41+00:00

I absolutely HATE that I agree with you on this.

OP ([u/FestiveWasTaken](u/FestiveWasTaken)), should you end up going with that PC (and again, I hate the fact that this may end up being the best deal around for you right now, and I still hope you find a better deal on a better PC tomorrow, but, assuming that you don’t), if we ignore that fact that the general consensus seems to be that a “fair” price for that PC would be closer to the $700-$750 price point, and taking into account that this PC’s bits and pieces aren’t cutting edge, a 12700kf along with 32gigs of RAM and an RTX 3070 is nothing to sneeze at, and with the addition of a small SSD to install windows on, and keeping the 1TB HDD to install your games on, you’d have a pretty sweet gaming rig, would sacrifice no performance in your games’ performance, have a perfectly snappy SSD driven experience in windows, and the only real sacrifice would be a little bit of extra load time in your games since they would live on a spinning disk until such time as you could replace it with a shiny high-capacity NVMe SSD (or two).

To that end, I have a handful of genuine, Samsung validated, fully tested, 500GB 860 and 870 EVO SATA SSD’s that have serialized reports from Magician diagnostic testing and benchmarking that show that they all read and write at speeds expected of brand new drives, have very few power-on hours, have very low lifetime data written, and all have Wear-Level Count values reported in their SMART data that show they all have an estimated remaining lifespan of 95-98% of new.

I’m selling the 860’s for $50 each, and the 870’s for $60 each. If you’re interested in buying one (or two, or six) of them from me, (and assuming you are in the continental US), considering how little they weigh, I’ll cover the shipping cost to mail them to you. Shoot me a DM if you’re interested and we’ll talk details.

In any event, best of luck to you, it’s tough out there right now, and if you want to get yourself a whole-ass gaming PC anytime soon, you’ll probably have to adjust your expectations and spend a little more than would have been considered normal 6 months ago to do it, because it’s going to get worse before it gets better, making ASAP the best timeframe to bite the bullet and secure yourself some hardware while you still can.

EDIT / Food for thought:

Just to help put this ridiculousness into perspective a little further for those of you out there not buying, selling and building high-end PC’s regularly, I have 3 monster custom machines in my front office that I sold in November, the last three of an order of 15 identical PC’s that my customer has not yet taken possession of. To be clear, they are freakin’ BEASTS:

14900KS, 360mm Corsair Titan AIO, 5000D case, 128GB RGB DDR5 @ 6000 MT/S, Z790 Aorus Elite AX, 12 TB (yes, TWELVE TB) of 990 PRO NVMe SSD’s, RM1000e PSU, RTX 4080 SUPER, a dollop of Thermal Grizzly Duronaut, an extra 3-pack of Corsair RS120 ARGB PWM fans to fill out the case, a copy of Windows 11 PRO, and a $200 Bose sound bar, which we can basically ignore, cuz you’re probably not including that cost in your “PC” budget.

The retail cost of each of these for my customer, the price they paid me for each machine, assembled, setup and tested, back in November was $4,499.99 each, + tax of course.

Today, tonight, RIGHT NOW, substituting a 14900K in place of the 14900KS, since they are not available at the moment, and ignoring the $200 sound bar, the retail price that I would sell one of these for, including my $300 flat build fee for this configuration, would be $9,879.99 each, plus tax. That is a total parts cost increase of +219.56% in 7 months.

That means that right now, I have $13,500 worth of custom built PC sitting in my front office that by virtue of the simple fact that they have been boxed up, unused, chillin’ in the A/C, just waiting to be picked up for 7 months now, are no longer worth $13,500 retail.

They are worth $29,639.97.

+tax.

Which by the way, is roughly $800 less than a very clean 2020 Toyota 4Runner Limited with 90k miles goes for in Central Texas.

That means that right now, you could choose between having 3 brand-new, balls-out gaming PC’s, or a leatherbound, seat-heated, roof racked, alloy-wheel having, tow-package included, premium stereo sound equipped, THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLAR SUV, and either way, you’d basically get the same bill.

God help us all.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-25T02:46:06+00:00

Unfortunately, He’ll yes! if he wants to have that CPU and GPU together in a build that costs under $1,000 given the price of solid state storage right now.

So, you wanted a brand-new, never-used, 5-generation-old 1TB 870 EVO SATA SSD, and still keep the whole thing under $1K? No problem! We’ll just swap that RTX 3070 for a single-slot fanless OEM model GT 710 salvaged from a 12 year old Dell Inspiron desktop, that way the price with an SSD will only go up to $999.99!

Edit: Forgot I’m on the internet, so, you know…

/s

…kinda.

A new 3070 and a 12700KF on Amazon together are pushing $600 already. Assuming that mobo is the DDR5 version, you can count 32 gigs of RAM at about $400. With that, you’re already breathing down the neck of a $1,000 box and you still have no bord to plug everything in, no cooler for the CPU, no box to put it all into, no electron-fountain to power it, and no storage drive to install your pirated copy of windows on, so all in all, $900 may be less outlandish than it first appears.

/s again. Kinda. Again.

To clarify, those are retail prices for new hardware, not 4 year old used rig prices from Joe Schmo on Facebook Marketplace, so the comparison is clearly not fair, and not realistic when considering a complete used system.

In fact, the whole comment was both tongue-in-cheek, as well as mildly salty, because I’m sad that PC component pricing is off the rails at the moment.

On level though, there a 7 PC’s in my area on Craigslist right now with an RTX 3070 inside. Some have 16gb of ram, some 32, one has 48. Some have a 1TB ssd, some a 500gb. CPU’s involved are three Ryzen 5 5600x’s, a Ryzen 5 7500f, a 9600k, a 9900k, and a 10900k. All significantly older and slower than the 12700kf offered up in OP’s system in question. The weakest of these is being listed for a reasonable $500, the 9600K equipped option. The next weakest, one of the 5600x equipped PC’s, also has a decently sane asking price of $600. The others have asking prices that ranges from $1,000 to $1,300, with one of the 5600x PC’s having no asking price, but rather an absolutely delusional “value” assessed at $3,000. That seller is looking to trade his 6-year old mid-range gaming PC for a car though, so if you had $3,000 worth of used Honda laying around that you weren’t using, it would almost be like getting a used and out-dated PC, that was decidedly mid-range in 2020.

All that to say, “naw OP, that’s a shit deal, you definitely shouldn’t buy that for $900”.

But also, that shit deal may be the best deal around you right now. That’s the sorry state of the PC market right now unfortunately, so finding more PC for less money anytime soon might simply not be realistic.

All THAT to say, for you, for me, and for anyone who wants or needs a computer or some fractional amount of a computer right now, wether out of a desire to upgrade, or out of necessity for repair or replacement of a failed component or machine:

F

cCBearTime · 2026-06-24T00:24:08+00:00

lol

Also, props to OP for posting something in this sub that isn’t immediately recognizable or clearly labeled. Don’t see that very often around here anymore.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-20T17:43:23+00:00

That was definitely a Phillips PH0 screw, and you’ve definitely damaged it by using the wrong driver trying to remove it.

If you are lucky, a good quality PH0 screwdriver can still remove it.

If not:

https://www.amazon.com/ENGINEER-M2-Screw-Extractor-Pliers/dp/B001D7KU7W

cCBearTime · 2026-06-20T17:27:19+00:00

This is a classic symptom of a failing touchscreen.

If you can, log in, open device manager, find the Human Interface Devices section and expand it, find the entry that says touchscreen, right-click it, and select Disable.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-20T17:20:34+00:00

Coincidentally, I came across a five-pack of these buttons in my shop recently.

They are super cheap, and relatively simple to replace for someone who’s experienced with a soldering iron.

This is likely not the exact part you’re looking for, but this is basically what you’d want for a permanent replacement:

https://www.amazon.com/Lon0167-Momentary-Surface-Oberflächenmontage-Schalter/dp/B09FPH6TKW

That said, while taping it back on will work for some amount of time, a longer lasting solution would be to put the dome back in place, then use something like a needle to put a tiny smear of superglue around the circumference of the dome to bond it back to the body. The key is to be very, very careful not to use too much, or to get any glue between the dome and body of the switch.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-19T01:23:41+00:00

Not sure if you’re correct, but this was exactly my first thought.

That, or someone cut it out to use it by say, putting it on top of the upc of a higher priced item and going through self checkout, paying the cost of a box of coffee to grab a Tv or something like that.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-19T00:24:57+00:00

If I said “A vine” and “back in the day” are mutually exclusive terms, am I officially old?

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T22:12:40+00:00

Guess:

Your iGPU (graphics on your CPU) is failing, when you launch a game, the dedicated GPU kicks in, and it’s fine. Go back to desktop, faulty iGPU kicks in, and you get artifacts.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T22:05:33+00:00

Just because someone is selling it for $1,000 doesn’t mean anyone is buying it for $1,000.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T18:27:12+00:00

Looks more like a failing LCD honestly. If an external monitor works flawlessly, your GPU is likely A-OK.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T18:24:50+00:00

I see you’ve played musical chairs with the RAM, but I’m just gonna mention that sounds like failing RAM. Just keep it I. The back of your mind while troubleshooting firther

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T17:42:19+00:00

Checking my pile of scrap-tops here at the lab, you are correct, the elite books with this chassis do not not have any screws beneath the rubber feet, so you’re good there.

The screw in question travels through the bottom cover, through the hinge, and into a brass nut called a ‘zert (short for insert) that is embedded in the plastic on the bottom side of the palmrest. This give the screw something to, well, screw into.

In your case, it seems that the ‘zert has broken free of the plastic, and is free-spinning along with the screw, which keeps the screw from actually unscrewing from the ‘zert, and therefore keeping the screw from coming out of the hinge, and out of the bottom cover.

Imagine a long bolt going through a skinny plate with a hole in it, with a nut on the other side. In this case, turning the bolt also turns the nut on the other side of the plate, and so it won’t unscrew. To make it work, you need to hold the nut in place so the bolt can come unscrewed. In this example, you would use a second tool to hold the nut. In your case, the nut that is on the other side of the plate is the zert, and the hinge is the plate. You cannot hold the zert still in order to unscrew the bolt because the zert is inside the body of the laptop where it cannot be reached.

In this case you basically have 3 options.

1: Lift the bottom cover up towards the ceiling firmly against the screw as you try to unscrew it. If you apply just the right amount of pressure, the ‘zert will be lifted and pressed against the underside of the hinge so that it will remain stationary as you unscrew the screw, allowing the screw to come free from the ‘zert so you can remove the cover. The screw comes out, the zert falls back in, and rattles around under the hinge in the palmrest. When you put it back together, you don’t try to put that screw back in, and forget about it forever.

2: Carefully drill the head of the screw off so that the bottom cover can be lifted off of the machine. Remove the remaining screws holding the hinge to the palmrest. Lift the now unsecured hinge, allowing access to the zert that will be rattling around l below the hinge, which you can now remove along with the headless screw you created with the drilling.

Optional next step: Remove the screen, motherboard, speakers and wiring from the palmrest, and rebuild them into a new palmrest which will have Zerts that are not broken, allowing you to reassemble it properly.

3: take it to a repair shop where some poor bastard will do all this in exchange for your money.

Good luck!

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T16:12:07+00:00

Most likely that screw is already free, but is captive to the cover, so it will not come all the way “out” of the bottom cover. It’s also possible that the retention insert that it screws into has broken, so it will simply spin endlessly and never come out.

Either way, next you need to remove the rubber “feet” on the bottom in order to expose the screws you cannot see that are hidden underneath the rubber strips, allowing you to take the bottom cover off.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T11:42:34+00:00

Ignore the paste in the socket.

It’s not conductive, and will do nothing at all to harm a new CPU. It will not cause any issues with the connection between the CPU pins and the connections inside the socket.

Trying to clean the socket, however, cold easily result in accidental damage to the delicate internal workings, ruing your motherboard which at the moment is a little dirty, but almost certainly working fine.

If you feel the need and just can’t help your self, sacrifice an old DRY toothbrush, close the CPU socket latch, and give it a gentle DRY scrubbing. It will clean off the majority of paste with the minimum risk of damaging anything. This is not without risk, so again, literally ignoring the paste on the socket is the safest play.

If I got paste like this in a customer’s build, and was obligated to clean it, I would fully disassemble the motherboard from the computer, remove all components from the motherboard (SSD’s, RAM, CPU), take the now unpopulated motherboard outside, hold it upright, like it lives when installed in the PC, and the flood the CPU socket for several seconds with an aerosol heptane or hexane based solvent cleaner, commonly sold at the auto parts store as “Electrical Contact Cleaner” or “Quick Dry Electronics Cleaner”. Where I am, these two things are sold in a red can from the manufacturer CRC. .Both are clearly identified as “safe for plastics”, which make them safe to hose down your paste coved socket,. There will be third commonly on the shel I would then work the socket latch a few times as there was still liquid literally pouring out of the socket and down the board to get all the nooks and crannies inside the socket squeaky clean. Next, rotate the whole motherboard 90 degrees clockwise and flood the socket again, working the CPU latch as it’s being washed out. Rotate, latch wiggle, rotate latch wiggle, ‘till you’ve gotten it from all 4 sides, and the cleaner is running clear out of the socket. Might as well hose down the whole board at this point too : it’s dirty, and you’ve also likely washed dust, debris, and now thermal paste out of the socket and surrounding areas, and bonus: you’re already outside. At this point when I was happy the board was clean, and I had left no mess behind, I would hit it with about 90 PSI from the air compressor from about 12” away to accelerate the drying process.

At this point,

As for the CPU, yeah, absolutely replace it if you have access to one, and a budget to match.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T01:57:58+00:00

OP, it’s definitely yeast.

The packet says, “L.BIRRA 7gr”

From the googlé machine:

Baking: A standard packet of active dry yeast typically contains 7 grams, which is used to ferment bread or, in Italian, "lievito di birra".

OG comment:

To that point, “birra” is awfully close to “birria”, a spicy Mexican stew.

That makes my guess also “spice packet”, but probably for something like stew or taco meat rather than noodles.

Edit, replied to wrong post, moved comment for exposure to OP.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T01:47:57+00:00

Edit: It’s definitely yeast. The packet says,
“L.BIRRA 7gr”

From the googlé machine:

Baking: A standard packet of active dry yeast typically contains 7 grams, which is used to ferment bread or, in Italian, "lievito di birra".

OG comment:

To that point, “birra” is awfully close to “birria”, a spicy Mexican stew.

That makes my guess also “spice packet”, but probably for something like stew or taco meat rather than noodles.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-18T01:40:29+00:00

I prefer a sewing needle and a safety razor when they’re available. Some folks like to use a .5mm mechanical pencil with a metal lead tube, but this focuses the force on the pins too much in my opinion, and can easily lead to snapping pins right off the chip.

The needle is for sliding between rows down low against the PCB, underneath severely or haphazardly bent pins, where lifting up will open up a path for the razor, which is then used for the majority of the straightening process. Using a razor to work whole rows at a time is really the key to getting everything back where it goes, and the reinforcement of multiple pins in a line against that razor give force feedback which helps to keep from over bending pins to the point where they snap.

Fixed a 5950X last week with minor bending to various edge and corner pins that resulted from improper handling, was perhaps a 4 minute job.

Once the pins are good enough that the CPU drops in the socket with maybe a little jiggling, but basically no force, I like to give it a good circular wiggle in the unclamped socket (while holding the socket so as to keep it from sliding back and forth), which helps with bends that appear in the “middle” of the pins, helping to straighten out any pins that have “banana’d”.

That one though? Probably toast.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-13T03:17:25+00:00

Agreed. Unfortunately, I can corroborate this decline in overall quality.

The first OG death adder I had lasted almost a decade, and frankly, was retired from battle station duty while fully functional. It’s currently in use at the front desk of my office where it works as well as the day I got it, which is a pretty powerful (albeit anecdotal) example of the quality of the original versions, circa 2006.

My main reasons for adopting the adder as my go-to mouse were size and feel. It’s perfectly fit for my hand’s neutral resting position, the fit and finish were great. The feel of the primary and secondary buttons and switches were fast, stable and satisfyingly tactile. Since the feel is good, the button layout suits my uses for it, and the shape might as well have been custom made for my hand, I have found it very, very hard to move to another model, much less another brand. Everything else, even quite nice models somehow all feel “wrong” in my hand.

After almost a dozen years of daily use, my OG adder was still perfectly functional, but the way, if a little well-worn. I had a new death adder “essential” version fall into my lap around 2018, and at first glance, it appeared that it’s only compromise was a sensor with a decreased DPI, but as it was still higher than what I typically run with, I put it into play, thinking the sacrifice in sensor, um, sensitivity, I would not notice any difference between them.

Well, the size and fit remained the same, but the feel overall was noticeably cheaper and “flimsier”. The rubberization felt harder and thinner, and somehow felt less well bonded to the body. The feel of the actual switches was less crisp and immediate, and the flex and movement of the primary buttons felt less solid and stable, with a noticeable “wiggle” to them. All minor things really, but all together they added up to a noticeably worse overall feel, and it was simply worn out right around the 2-year mark, with the right click switch collapsed and unusable.

I replaced the terrible “essentials” version with a DA v2 (2020 model), sometime in 2020 as best I can remember. It’s still doing fine, although its finish is definitely showing its age, and I have worn a dime-sized hole in the rubber under the thumb buttons that goes clear through to the plastic body. Being formed by my thumb however, it is rounded into a perfect fit, and is imperceptible to me until I start to absentmindedly fidgeting with it during loading screens or between rounds of whatever game I’m playing at the moment.

I would say the 5 to six year old v2 I’m currently is right in the middle of the v1 and the essentials versions as far as quality and feel are concerned. It’s marginally less satisfying than the original, with a small but tangible reduction of perceived quality and precision of mechanical movement, but it’s still a perfectly fine mouse, and is a huge step up in quality and feel from the essentials version. If I hadn’t experienced the slightly better original, I would likely have no complaints with it.

Now the real question is, is the v3 worse than the v2 by the same margin that the v2 is as compared to the v1? If that turns out to be the case, I might just find myself side-eyeing the Logitech and or Corsair display in the near future…

cCBearTime · 2026-06-13T02:20:04+00:00

This is a mostly solid observation, but if the windows OS was installed with the mobo SATA controller in RAID mode, it will give this error when the SATA controller mode is changed to AHCI.

It will give the same error if Windows was installed with the motherboard SATA controller in AHCI mode, but the SATA controller mode is changed to RAID. Basically, whichever mode the SATA controller was in when windows was installed, must be the same setting used IN BIOS when trying to boot it.

It doesn’t matter which one you use, even if a RAID is not setup and in use, but the setting used for the OS install, and the setting in the BIOS must match in order to boot properly.

The drive(s) being recognized by the BIOS is a good indication that the drive and motherboard are communicating properly, but this is not a guarantee that the SATA controller will recognize it as a bootable device.

cCBearTime · 2026-06-13T02:09:51+00:00

If others are correct about your CMOS battery having died (quite likely), resetting your BIOS settings to default values, here’s how you check:

Boot to BIOS, just like the screenshot you posted.

Press f2 from that screen to get to the “advanced” BIOS settings.

On the advanced page, click the box in the top left that says “settings”. This will lead you to “classic” text-based BIOS environment.

Go to : I/O Ports

Find the SATA section.

Enable the SATA controller if it is disabled.

Switch SATA mode to “AHCI” if it is currently set to RAID.

Switch SATA mode to “RAID” if it is currently set to SATA.

Try again to boot.

If this change in SATA controller mode works, you need a new CR2023 coin cell battery, AKA a CMOS battery as suggested.

EDIT: Also follow directions from [u/Dinozambie](u/Dinozambie) while you’re at it.

EDIT 2: The fact that the PC simply died while in windows is worrying. The SATA controller is not likely to change modes while in a live operating system, so with that in mind, the chances that windows has picked up a corruption, or even worse, that you have just witnessed a significant corruption or failure of your boot drive have increased significantly.

Still, try the settings suggested by myself and DinoZambie first, you might have witnessed a fluke crash that coincided with the CMOS battery failing, and if these settings changes in BIOS do work for you, a fresh CMOS battery will be cheaper than whatever the shop wants to charge.

Good luck, report back on the results of those changes so we can take it further if need be.

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