Any PC Builders Out There?

RoG Ally Counts right? Few months back on OfferUp I came across a beat up RoG Ally Extreme for for $150 and said what the heck I got time to kill. Screen was aftermarket, poor quality, busted, dirty as heck, wouldn't post, ect ect.

When I got it home I cleaned it up and removed the awful aftermarket screen, after opening up the device I took it all apart while cleaning the gross shit from inside and ended up partially reassembling it and correcting some connection I was finally able to get it to boot.



After getting it to boot I \assembled everything again expect for the screen and was able to get into bios and reinstall windows on the device from cloud (note how nice and not gross it looks now) lol



I ended up contacted ASUS after I got this far after I checked warranty and since it was still covered when I messaged them they gave me the runaround for a few days but in the end they ended up sending me a whole new panel from the warranty claim (I'm pretty sure it was partially thanks to Gamers Nexus too, the warranty I was trying to complete with ASUS was during the time ASUS was getting major pressure for denying or asking customers to pay for parts that were defective).



After getting it in I took apart the ally and transferred everything to the new front housing/screen and redid the cloud recovery OS install to make sure it all ran well.


After all of that I was happy with the end result, essentially a new ally and then I got started looking into mods and ended up going and doing a battery mod to increase the life of it x2 with the 90wh battery mod. (stock battery is 40wh)

I ended up printing a new rear housing the new bigger battery out of green PLA-CF and got all the parts transferred over from the stock back with a nice test fit


Now the case comes back off, I ordered a OEM asus battery off ebay for $30 that goes into their Ally laptop line so battery connector is same and all, easy one for one swap after taking wrap off the battery cell and holding over the laptop battery sells into a singe stack and wrapping it with electrical heatshrink.


After all that I closer her up, plugged it in and bam charging light on, everything all good!



Here is the battery life improvement in performance mode on the Ally.

Before


After

 

Just wanted to update everyone who has a 13th or 14th gen Intel CPU with the flaw....while Intel doesn't advertise it or make it super easy, they will replace your chip for (almost) free with a little effort on your part....
I just completed my bios update and was able to get a new processor (14900K) from intel for free due to the instability flaw. I had no issues the first 6 months then it started to crash in certain games. (Helldivers, Forza, and BF2042), then I started to get random BSOD. I would bench test it and it would always pass 100%, I then would use the Intel Extreme tuner to dial down the Performance Ratio down by 3 and it never crashed after that. I finally contacted Intel customer support (online) and opened a ticket and after several rounds of questions they agree to send me a new CPU. You have to pay $25 out of pocket for processing and then you must pay $600 for the replacement CPU, which they will fully refund once they receive the old/damaged one back. No BSOD and running at full ratio, so I guess I did have flawed CPU. And yes it runs hot (but not as much before), but seems to have gone down after reapplying thermal paste with the Noctua brand. On the bright side of things, I have been playing Stalker 2 on epic settings and have zero problems and everyone seems to have a ton of problems playing it.
Pro Tip: when cleaning up the old thermal paste, use the silver intel disk for packaging as tray to clean your pump head on so no debris falls into your case.

 

What websites does everyone buy from besides Newegg for PC parts? (motherboards, ram, cpu, ect)

Maybe it's just me, but Newegg's website keeps freezing up 2-3 clicks into searching for parts. It's been several years since I've bought components, but I recall Newegg being one of the top vendors.

I want to do a Ryzen 7 or 9 build for gaming.

 

Starting a new PC build since it's about time for one and since I'm in no rush I'm having fun with it by only going for parts I can mostly getting open box/ebay/marketplace/ect deals to see how much I can save vs retail. So far I've gotten 2 core components and some fans for the build and saved a good amount just with that.

Microcenter, Amazon, B&H are the big ones or the manufactures site. If you're lucky enough to have a microcenter nearby too it's nice going in and getting the combo deals and price matches too.

I haven't used Newegg ever since they had that situation where they gave over customer info to States for tax purposes.

 

AZ used to have Fry's Electronics, but they closed in 2021.

I'm currently looking at a few cases from Antec, NZXT, and Thermaltake. Some of the pre-built options are decent too.

Stuff adds up quick.

 

I've had great success with buying cases on Amazon, but depending on what you're looking for you can go through Best Buy as well.

Fry's has been gone for some time now but BB will still carry the popular stuff in-store.

 

Man Fry's used to be fun years back. Here where I live Frys was right down the road from Microcenter so it was awesome having both options before they closed down and they turned it into a car dealership lot.

Fun fact before the Microcenter was there it used to be a CompUSA store at the same location!

 

I usually end up getting some parts from newegg and some from Amazon or ebay. No issues with newegg just stick to the well known sellers.

 

I hope you know about https://pcpartpicker.com/
Directs you to Newegg, Amazon or B&H and you can compare who is cheapest, but they are all pretty much the same price. I try to go with Newegg to support the little guy, but the main reason is pre-black Friday, they will put a lot items on "Price Protection" which means if they sell it any lower on Black friday they will automatically refund the difference. They have also honored 100% customer satisfaction guarantee without any hassle several times in the past for me.

I have no trouble with their websites, try a different browser or a different computer

 

Costco has this prebuilt one on sale until 12/29/24.

https://www.costco.com/msi-aegis-zs...per---windows-11-home.product.4000308016.html

Thoughts?

 

Are optical drives still a thing with PC's these days?

 

Not really, and if you needed you could buy an external optical drive for a mere $20-30.

I have one that came in handy when I pulled old data off some burned discs I found.

 

Considering the 4080 is like half the cost honestly not too bad. I priced out the build using mid MSI parts and came to close to the same price range.

 

I think you could build this system for only slightly less. I have the 7900X processor which has been rock solid. It looks to be a good 1440 gaming rig and is overkill for everyday computing.

 

Yeah, my newest case doesn't even have a slot for one. I have a good BluRay burner from a previous system I might put into an external enclosure. I have had one in my cart for a while but haven't pulled the trigger.

 

Yeah my current 3 cases don't have any bays for one either.

Think the last case I owned that did have a drive bay was my 2015 build using a Fractal Design Arc Mini

 

I have the smaller North case and it’s really nice.

 

Finally getting around to doing something with the server I bought months ago.
I got Truenas Scale installed and started the setup process and realized that the raid card has to be flashed to an IT mode to allow the computer to see all the drives instead of a virtual drive.
So I’m in the process of flashing the card and all but I’m also trying to figure out how to add a boot and cache drives.
From my research I can put an LSI card in and I can boot from that, I have some old Samsung 1TB SSD’s that I can use for boot and cache SSD’s.

I also think I’m going to upgrade RAM, and possibly the PSU’s and CPU’s.

 

So yes this is a somewhat pathetic entry here. I understand I'm not the builder a lot of you guys are. But I ran across this case for cheap, and it had a window, and then I found these stupid fans, so.. about the time I built this I sold my house, let the new owner take over fairly quickly, and have been waiting to get into the property I bought. So wires all over the place blah blah blah. Kind of soothing going to sleep at night with the ambience the lights add.

 

Don't stress over it

Computers are ridiculously easy to build...they go together in 5 minutes and you can't really mess it up

It's cable management that takes some time/experience to learn

As you do it more often you start looking at aftermarket cables for longer or shorter lengths, getting cables without the extra pigtails, and more

Decluttering does help to not impede airflow though, especially when cables can get caught up in fans but again, you learn that stuff as you go and do it over and over