Any PC Builders Out There?

Sounds like my old pc from 2005-2006.

AMD X2 3800
2gb Kingston ram (4x512mb sticks from 2 different brands, because I was cheap)
Nvidia 7600GT 256mb
250gb pata hd
creative xfi fatality xtremegamer
logitech z5500/g15 keyboard
Antech Earthwatts 500w power supply

2 of the 512mb sticks of ram and the keyboard were purchased from Circuit City. Remember that place? lol.

I dropped out of the PC game and switched to Mac not long after. Technology was progressing so fast and components were quickly outdated.

SLI technology with 2 graphics cards. Yeah, wasn't going to do that.

 

Anyone used bhphotovideo for pc components?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/browse/desktop-components/ci/30908/cp/9581+24607+26337+30908

 

I've used them a ton for photo/video/audio. Reputable company. They ship fast, assuming you don't try to order during shabbat or a holy holiday. It's also nice because they aren't a marketplace like newegg or Amazon, you're buying directly from B&H every time. No weird gray market or possibly counterfeit items.

 

Multiple monitor stands.

I use three 27” Apple Thunderbolt monitors and one 44.5” curved monitor. I need the Apple monitors for Mac work and I use the curved monitor for gaming. Do any one you use a three wide with fourth on top desk stand and if so could you make a recommendation please.

 

Curved gaming monitor recommendations too please.

 

What are you upgrading from?

 

AMD 9000 series card delayed until March. Rumor is that it's because nVidia pricing of the 5070 is all over the place, with the FE being significantly cheaper than what the AIB cards will sell for, and AMD wants to get the pricing on their cards right.

 

3080

 

Building a PC has been a fun adventure for me (knowing very little about tech before, and knowing barely more today lol). As I should've probably expected, I face different issues and challenges trying to really fine tune my machine to my liking, and I've definitely learned some things I'll most definitely do different on the next build. I built my PC about 2.5 years ago, and I've quickly learned that trying to keep softwares and drivers up to date is a real pain in the ass sometimes lol. Not so much difficult, but moreso that some updates just simply suck and cause issues that weren't there previously. All that being said, I've chased issues that I can only diagnose as competing softwares, all trying to fight for control over fans and LED's, a questionable GPU, and an idiot trying to fix things he doesn't know how to fix .

Lately, when I power down my PC, it turns off completely, yet the CPU pump and fans (All corsair) remain on (kinda..). They change color (to indicate ICUE has stopped running), they stop spinning, then they start back up, flashing/blinking red (obviously a Corsair warning, thinking the pump is failing, likely bc it has no power/no pump RPM). For whatever reason, something is keeping the PC "on" to some extent, and I have no idea why. I'm not sure if this all started after an ICUE update or an update to some other software/driver, but my only fix is to power it down, then hit the switch on the power supply to completely cut power. I've been through a handful of ICUE versions to try and remedy, no help.

My GPU has also started to make me suspicious. There have been a handful of occasions (all randomly) where the PC would fully boot, but my MB LED indicator for VGA (I think?) would remain lit, indicating it couldn't detect a monitor/display. I could hear the audio of windows booting, but had no display (on either screen). Cables are definitely good, and the only fix I've had for that was to either unplug the power supply for about 15-20 mins and reboot, or remove/reseat the card (worked most of the time). Lately, I've noticed my GPU temps are high in game too, and GPU fan RPM's are screaming. I thought this may have been software related (a new software taking control and using different curves/max speed to achieve cooling), but purely guessing. I uninstalled everything (Gigabyte Control Center/RGB Fusion, MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner overlay) I thought could be competing except ICUE, but my issues still persist. This power thing and GPU temps could be a million things, but any thoughts from anyone? Is there something extremely basic I've overlooked that could be contributing to these things?

 

For the Corsair issue, does your internal USB header that the iCue unit is using support USB charging when the computer is powered off? I've never had an issue with leaving things like that, but I'm wondering if the Corsair stuff is sensing power and not shutting down because of that. I'd start by updating the pump firmware, there's been a bunch of updates, and then turning off any options in your MB related to USB charging or standby power.

For the power thing, try turning the slot you have your GPU in from PCI-E 4.0 to PCI-E 3.0. PCI-E 3.0 is more than fast enough for most cards, and I'm wondering if something is going funny in the handshake. I see you mention Gigabyte. Be aware that their GPUs are prone to damage near the locking part of the PCI-E connector. If it's begun to crack, you can get flakey GPU power which could be causing this. Be very careful if you're reseating the card regularly, as that can make it worse.

If your temperatures are high and the card isn't drawing that much power, it's time to re-paste. Get some Honeywell PTM7950 for the GPU, LTT and Thermal Grizzly sell a few different products that have it, and the correct thermal pads (or that thermal goo some people rave about, but it's messy). It's not a hard thing to do, just go slow and follow safe handling procedures for the card.

 

This was my first thought as well, so I made sure no MB related USB charging options were enabled. All corsair components in my PC have the most up-to-date firmware, so thats also not the issue. Its strange for sure, because it didn't always do this. Its obvious that something is detecting power, but because there is no power, the pump thinks its failing (everything starts blinking red to warn me).

Yep, Gigabyte unfortunately.. I haven't been happy with them (mainly their crappy software) for my GPU and MB. I'll definitely consider something else next time; although these little quirks aside, the performance is there and no complaints in that aspect.

I haven't looked into this, but imagine its no harder than thermal paste for the CPU I'll definitely look into this a little more. Its also very possible I'm overanalyzing temps/fan sounds due to so much change in the past few days. I should probably just keep an eye on it and see if its more of a constant issue or me being overly cautious.

 

One more dumb question for the tech-illiterate....
I order my new SSD and plan on installing it, but what is the easiest, dummy proof way to back up the current hard drive And then transfer all that to the new one?

 

It might be a “sleep state” related option in the BIOS. I can’t remember exactly what I changed, but I had to mess with a sleep state option to prevent my mobo from entering rainbow vomit mode on power down

 

Get a really big external SSD, copy everything to that's, then copy it to the new one you're putting in your computer. I do it mostly with laptop hard drives

 

I did check into this shortly after building my PC and disabled whatever option that was. Basically whatever the option was called that allowed for USB outlets to continue charging devices in a powered off state. I'll just continue to use the PSU switch to power off my PC fully if I never figure it out lol.

Edit: Gonna check into my Windows Power Options and make sure the Fast Startup option is disabled. I seem to remember turning this off before, but maybe it defaulted to enabled after an update

 

Well, problem solved. My 'fans remaining on after shutdown' issue has finally been resolved. Turns out, at some point along the way of installing/uninstalling Gigabytes shitty software/updating drivers, my BIOS must have been updated, because my ERP setting somehow became disabled.

As for my 'GPU overheating' issue, well... lets just say I'm an idiot. Admittedly, I have no problem saying I'm fairly new to the "PC building" world, and I still learn new things each day. I've installed/uninstalled a lot of software over the past couple years, chasing issues that come with trying to control too many damn LEDs through more than one software. They're always competing, so I'd just end up setting a static color in Gigabyte's software, deleting the software, and being happy with it (until it'd randomly decide to change back to unicorn rainbow vomit). I had also downloaded MSI Afterburner/Rivatuner overlay at some point and enjoyed monitoring my CPU/GPU temps and usage. At some point, the overlay stopped working and I didn't really care to fix it. All that being said, each time I'd download Gigabyte software, it seemed that my GPU fans would go crazy (as if it were operating on a different fan curve now, basically 0 RPM/extreme RPM, no in between). I recently updated my afterburner/rivatuner overlay, got it set up and began to monitor temps. This is when I began to see high GPU temps (94-96 C) sustained while gaming. Well... it all turns out, that I had no idea there were multiple temp sensors in GPU's, one being the "hot spot temp". Lets just say the temp I've been monitoring was this hot spot temp, climbing to 90-96 C each time I gamed and thinking my GPU was running really hot. Turns out, my GPU is at a fine temp (50-70 C) under load, and its completely normal for the hot spot to see those temps. And I'm still fairly certain that the Gigabyte software is to blame for the GPU fans running max RPM. I've since uninstalled everything aside from icue and AMD software, and all seems to be well. Turns out, AMD Adrenaline has a pretty nice overlay that I actually prefer over the rivatuner one! At least I've learned a few things along the way from trying to monitor my PC health

 

I had a gigabyte 3060ti and can confirm, gigabytes software is trash. I'd open it to set the color on the card and then immediately fully exit it afterwards. I've yet to see a good piece of software for controlling every piece of RGB I have without consuming an excessive amount of resources. Seems most have issues with the ram sticks I'm using, and it's always been a struggle to get fans to consistently come on or off when going in and out of sleep states. I've basically given up at this point haha MSI's dragon whatever sometimes works for me, but I have an MSI mobo

I use adrenalin for my current card and it's been surprisingly solid, no complaints there. Back when I mined on my video cards I was using afterburner and for that it was perfect, really easy to set up gpu memory overclocks and undervolts. Now that I'm done with that phase of life I don't use it anymore.

If I need to take a quick peak at system data and temps, I'll use HWiNFO64. Really, really useful piece of software.

 

Gigabyte's software definitely sucks. I have a Gigabyte GPU and MB, and everything else with RGB is Corsair, so I typically run into half of my PC being one color (bc ICUE works and is great) and the other half another color (bc Gigabyte RGB Fusion/Control Center sucks and doesn't work most the time). Unfortunately, my case LED's are controlled by the MB, so that means Gigabyte controls it. Fortunately, I've gotten rid of everything Gigabyte software related, and now fully rely on ICUE. The latest ICUE updates brought in a "plugins" feature, and can control my MB/GPU colors now. So I think all of my gripes are fixed (for now lol).

 

In my experience all softwares for RGB, mouse/keyboard, fans, etc is absolute trash.

 

OpenRGB is the only software that isn’t total trash, but being an open source project trying to interface with proprietary protocols, it isn’t perfect either. Worth trying, though. It aims to unify everything into one program.

Personally I stopped caring and faced my glass side panel against a wall