GeekNights Monday - Scott's Crashy Computer

Does “giving it some love” always translate to “it was turned off for some period of time?”

No. Giving it some love translates to opening it up and messing with it. One time it was reinstalling the OS.

That also translates to powered-off time.

My k7 at RIT that got crashy was less crashy if I turned it off for a while.

I still think you should just run a Linux livecd with a benchmark program and see how long it goes before crashing (if at all).

I will do that eventually.

Just leave it going while you’re at work. In the worst case scenario, it starts a fire and burns the apartment down.

Well, someone just dropped a few places on my list.

I thought they were just going to release microcode fixes for the CPUs.

There are layers and layers to all this shit. Meltdown basically hit intel and not amd, and only on certain workloads. Specter on the other hand is pretty weird voodoo where you have to recompile things with some new flag. Then some Linus Torvald ranting about Intel’s particular fixes. Maybe there was microcode things too. Either way, waiting for this to be fixed in silicon might be three to five years, but then you might still have problems because now everything has been built with new compile flags, etc, etc, etc. Also it points to how shitty so much anti-virus software is because it can brick machines if it isn’t safe for this update, something something.

End of the day it probably shouldn’t affect your decisions unless you know why it does (saw some major performance losses for some things reported in the cloud computing world), though maybe throw AMD a bone for doing something right in the meantime? Threadripper is also pretty cool if you somehow have a use case for it.

This stuff is deeper than I ever went in terms of CPU architecture. It’s at the line where I understand the scope and basics to a degree, but not enough to explain it to anyone without definitely being wrong about at least two things.

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Oh, also my computer has been turned off many times. Pretty much whenever I travel anywhere.

Not testifying that any of this is true, just saw the first couple comments and thought someone else might look:

Just FYI, in our lab we aren’t seeing more than maybe a 5% performance hit on our patched Intel ESXi hosts. And frankly it’s difficult to say if that’s from the patches or just the typical increase in load (we’re always adding things to our lab, it’s the nature of our work).

Welp, I got one blue screen so far.

Also, my individual applications keep crashing.

Coins look like they are crashing too.

According to http://canibuyagpuyet.xyz/ I still can’t buy a GPU yet.

I’m going to spend some money on new living room furniture first. Then I’ll get a new PC. I’ll just stick the 1070 in it if I still can’t buy a GPU then.

Check local craigslist?

Someone’s getting out of the mining game I guess.

All the 1080 in NYC craigslist are crazy price. I’ll still wait for 1180, or even 1280.

Or someone robbed the shit out of a miner.

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So last night I decided to clean my desk and also move it around to experiment with other furniture arrangements. I put everything back and turned the computer on. My mouse was going CRAZY. It would basically get locked into one position. You could move it, but then it would snap back to that position very quickly.

Ok, restart, still broken. Try mouse on HTPC. Works fine! HAHA! Try a backup mouse on the computer, it’s also broken! I guess the problem is computer, not mouse.

I shut down, wait awhile and turn computer on again. Mouse works! But then after a little bit it goes crazy again. Ok, clearly I will reset windows. This computer is crazy recently anyway.

I go to reset windows. First I disconnect all my hard drives except the windows drive because I don’t want to risk losing their data. The computer restarts and the menu for resetting shows up. I can’t do anything. The keyboard is not on! WTF! I go to the BIOS and change the settings for the legacy USB mode. Still can’t reset computer! Keyboard and mouse still not active during the windows install sequence.

Ok, I unplug all the USB stuff except keyboard and mouse. Restart. Aha! Everything is working nicely (except my disconnected drives). I do some process of elimination. Both my monitors are USB hubs. Apparently if the second monitor’s USB hub is connected… Oh. That’s where the Wacom tablet is connected. /sigh I am the dumb.

Ok, so now I go to reconnect my drives and restart. I also discover there was a completely random extra SATA cable in the case. /shrug

Uh, Windows isn’t seeing the drives. Maybe I got the SATA cables wrong? I swap them around. Same deal. Windows can’t see my non-windows drives anymore. Tried going to storage manager. Maybe the drives are there, but just aren’t assigned properly.

The storage manager won’t open. There is an error when I try to open that or the device manager or any kind of management.

So I go to reset Windows. Oh wait! Keyboard still not recognized! Can’t reset! Can’t open storage manager.

I really did not want to buy a new PC until they came out with chips that have fixes for spectre and meltdown, but at this point I’m left with no options. If I can’t access my other drives where all my data is, I can’t use the PC. I’m sure an 8700k will still be plenty fast enough. And the 1070 I already have will also carry me for years. I’ll just wait to get a 1160 for the HTPC, which is now relying on its integrated Intel GPU.

Extra fail: A dead pixel appeared on the left monitor when I moved the desk, and I can’t fix it. It’s bright white and very prominent :frowning:

If you are indeed looking for a new PC and do want a GPU, the NZXT BLD service is only $99 and you can pick and choose all kinds of parts at MSRP, including GPUs.

Its a far cry from the discounts and deals to be had last year but might be a viable option today.

Ryzen 2200 and 2400 just came out and amazon has them at $99 and $169. Pretty decent for a budget build, and has integrated graphics so if you plan to later migrate to a new system you can still keep using them in an htpc or something perhaps.

Nah, I’ll just newegg/amazon like always. Will anyone watch a stream where I assemble it?