(PCGT VI) It's not just about hardware

Memento Mori wrote:So the Shadow Man remaster which has gone on Steam today apparently has some levels included which were cut from the original game. They're going to be patching in more bosses soon as well.

It looks awesome. Waiting for the PS4 version.

I have no idea why they bother with the unhackable claim as all it does is make sure someone hacks it even if it's just as a "screw you!".

Finiarél wrote:Think my CPU liquid cooled thing is playing up - It's recently started rattling. Ring customer service or tackle it myself? Obviously if it's goosed I'll look to get a replacement from the company.
Tried titling the PC in various angles to see if it was just some water bubbles trapped or something, but if anything that just made the rattling worse....

If it's under warranty just get them to deal with it, you'd be gutted if you accidentally did something to make it worse.

I had a similar problem recently, the pump on my CM 240 started rattling something awful. I fiddled with the RPM in my bios and found that it basically disappeared at around 70% while still keeping a reasonable temperature under load, so there it's stayed.

Peter Crisp wrote:I have no idea why they bother with the unhackable claim as all it does is make sure someone hacks it even if it's just as a "screw you!".

Sometimes it's an intentional way of endorsing something without endorsing it, like making a device really easy to unlock and put sideloaded/pirated software on.

"Oh hahhaah god company X is stupid, this device is so easy to hack and become the best piracy box!"

Company X who knew full well and allowed it in the first place *twirls moustache*


In this instance, they've taken a visible stance trying to stop crypto mining, while really just allowing it anyway and selling more cards.

That's not a growth wrote:

Finiarél wrote:Think my CPU liquid cooled thing is playing up - It's recently started rattling. Ring customer service or tackle it myself? Obviously if it's goosed I'll look to get a replacement from the company.
Tried titling the PC in various angles to see if it was just some water bubbles trapped or something, but if anything that just made the rattling worse....

If it's under warranty just get them to deal with it, you'd be gutted if you accidentally did something to make it worse.

Well that was easy. Sending out a replacement, Will then send a courier to collect the old one once I've installed it as I use the PC for work. Wasn't expecting that tbh

Victor Mildew wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:I have no idea why they bother with the unhackable claim as all it does is make sure someone hacks it even if it's just as a "screw you!".

Sometimes it's an intentional way of endorsing something without endorsing it, like making a device really easy to unlock and put sideloaded/pirated software on.

"Oh hahhaah god company X is stupid, this device is so easy to hack and become the best piracy box!"

Company X who knew full well and allowed it in the first place *twirls moustache*


In this instance, they've taken a visible stance trying to stop crypto mining, while really just allowing it anyway and selling more cards.

Especially when they "accidentally" release the unfettered driver to allow people to work out how to bypass it.

New CPU cooler came, fitted it, no noise. Nice.
Turned it on following day and the clicking has returned, Unplugged each fan and the noise still carried on. Someone said it could be the PSU Fan, but now I'm bricking it thinking it's the GPU.

What gpu is it that you have?

Is is one of the passive ones till it hits a certain load like the Strix?

ASUS tuf 3080.

Rattle stops periodically and then kicks again. Under no load or anything, just browsing the internet.

Finiarél wrote:ASUS tuf 3080.

Rattle stops periodically and then kicks again. Under no load or anything, just browsing the internet.

Unlikely to be GPU then? You looked at the fan curve on afterburner or something? Mine doesn’t spin at all until it hits 45c. Which is doesn’t on internet.

Some of the fam curves have them spinning 20% at 0c and then ramps from there.

PSU sounds like a likely culprit. Mine has one of these no spin fans unless it’s loaded.. not sure how that fan curve works.

On the whole I'm really liking my new Xbox Series controller which I grabbed to replace the aging 360 one I was using after over 15 years of dedicated service, but there are some annoying deadzone/sensitivity quirks with it that have been frustrating me over the last few nights.

I'm not sure if it's to do with my settings, the specific games, or the controller itself but the sticks feel very "mushy" in many first person games that were previously very crisp and responsive with the old controller. I played some Dishonored last night and the input deadzone seems massive in a way that it never did before which makes tight control feel impossible, something that really screws the game over. It takes a considerable amount of movement from the resting position before anything is registered, but then when it does start moving it seems to accelerate way to quickly! Tried it on a few other games with similarly annoying results.

I tested the actual inputs of the controller independently and even the tiniest bit of movement is being registered so it seemed like the actual controller is behaving fine which was reassuring. So it felt like it must be something to do with the games themselves or the settings for the controller in Steam. Looking at the profiles between my old controller and the new one I can't see anything specific that I've got configured differently between them - they both have the deadzone set to 0 in Steam and all the other settings seem comparable, so I don't really know why the games themselves would be behaving differently. Only explanation I can think of is that the new controller is capable of much finer output and so it's taking a stronger push to produce a value high enough to exceed the actual games configured deadzone. Fortunately after much digging around I discovered that Steam has a setting that allows you to compensate for a games excessive deadzone which finally seemed to brings things back into a more responsive place which was great!

But I'm hoping I don't run into the same issue on non-Steam games where I won't have that luxury

Jenuall wrote:On the whole I'm really liking my new Xbox Series controller which I grabbed to replace the aging 360 one I was using after over 15 years of dedicated service, but there are some annoying deadzone/sensitivity quirks with it that have been frustrating me over the last few nights.

I'm not sure if it's to do with my settings, the specific games, or the controller itself but the sticks feel very "mushy" in many first person games that were previously very crisp and responsive with the old controller. I played some Dishonored last night and the input deadzone seems massive in a way that it never did before which makes tight control feel impossible, something that really screws the game over. It takes a considerable amount of movement from the resting position before anything is registered, but then when it does start moving it seems to accelerate way to quickly! Tried it on a few other games with similarly annoying results.

I tested the actual inputs of the controller independently and even the tiniest bit of movement is being registered so it seemed like the actual controller is behaving fine which was reassuring. So it felt like it must be something to do with the games themselves or the settings for the controller in Steam. Looking at the profiles between my old controller and the new one I can't see anything specific that I've got configured differently between them - they both have the deadzone set to 0 in Steam and all the other settings seem comparable, so I don't really know why the games themselves would be behaving differently. Only explanation I can think of is that the new controller is capable of much finer output and so it's taking a stronger push to produce a value high enough to exceed the actual games configured deadzone. Fortunately after much digging around I discovered that Steam has a setting that allows you to compensate for a games excessive deadzone which finally seemed to brings things back into a more responsive place which was great!

But I'm hoping I don't run into the same issue on non-Steam games where I won't have that luxury

Not sure if you saw but I had problems when I bought my Elite controller too: the moulding around the face buttons is slightly too large so sometimes presses on the A button don't register. MS controllers remain the best out there ergonomics-wise but they do have quality control issues.

Tafdolphin wrote:

Jenuall wrote:On the whole I'm really liking my new Xbox Series controller which I grabbed to replace the aging 360 one I was using after over 15 years of dedicated service, but there are some annoying deadzone/sensitivity quirks with it that have been frustrating me over the last few nights.

I'm not sure if it's to do with my settings, the specific games, or the controller itself but the sticks feel very "mushy" in many first person games that were previously very crisp and responsive with the old controller. I played some Dishonored last night and the input deadzone seems massive in a way that it never did before which makes tight control feel impossible, something that really screws the game over. It takes a considerable amount of movement from the resting position before anything is registered, but then when it does start moving it seems to accelerate way to quickly! Tried it on a few other games with similarly annoying results.

I tested the actual inputs of the controller independently and even the tiniest bit of movement is being registered so it seemed like the actual controller is behaving fine which was reassuring. So it felt like it must be something to do with the games themselves or the settings for the controller in Steam. Looking at the profiles between my old controller and the new one I can't see anything specific that I've got configured differently between them - they both have the deadzone set to 0 in Steam and all the other settings seem comparable, so I don't really know why the games themselves would be behaving differently. Only explanation I can think of is that the new controller is capable of much finer output and so it's taking a stronger push to produce a value high enough to exceed the actual games configured deadzone. Fortunately after much digging around I discovered that Steam has a setting that allows you to compensate for a games excessive deadzone which finally seemed to brings things back into a more responsive place which was great!

But I'm hoping I don't run into the same issue on non-Steam games where I won't have that luxury

Not sure if you saw but I had problems when I bought my Elite controller too: the moulding around the face buttons is slightly too large so sometimes presses on the A button don't register. MS controllers remain the best out there ergonomics-wise but they do have quality control issues.

Ah yes I do remember you mentioning that, did you manage to get a replacement or has it settled down now?

I don't think there is actually anything wrong with the controller, like I say I've got an input testing tool up and the sticks all register as expected with even the smallest amount of movement being picked up, it just seems that when actually in games a larger deadzone is being applied than there used to be on the old controller which is a bit frustrating.

As I say it seems to be easy enough to compensate for in Steam games through the controller configurations options that offers and I'm hoping that games outside of Steam either work fine or I can find a similar way to tweak things to resolve it.

I need to actually test it out in more games as I've only tried it on a handful and it may turn out not to be a problem anywhere else.

I use my DS4 controller a lot (most recently, forza horizon, division 2, squadrons, control). All fine. The only game the controller has been dog gooseberry fool at was cyberpunk at Christmas. The DS4 seems to work well with minimal tweaking, maybe just looking with games and gamepass games specifically?

DS4 Windows has been flakey for me for a while which was one of the factors in updating to a newer Xbox controller.

I hate the sticks on the DS4 as well.

Jenuall wrote:DS4 Windows has been flakey for me for a while which was one of the factors in updating to a newer Xbox controller.

I hate the sticks on the DS4 as well.

For Steam games at least I don't think you need DS4 Windows anymore.

Lagamorph wrote:

Jenuall wrote:DS4 Windows has been flakey for me for a while which was one of the factors in updating to a newer Xbox controller.

I hate the sticks on the DS4 as well.

For Steam games at least I don't think you need DS4 Windows anymore.

Yeah it's native in Steam which is nice, if they let you okay Game Pass games through Steam it would be a big win because the controller support and customisation in Steam is fantastic

DS4 Windows worked well enough...when it worked. More often than not I'd have to go into Device Manager and enable my controller from there, and when I tried to get it to work through bluetooth it absolutely shat the bed and almost never worked. Wanting to stream PC games to my PC made me upgrade.

And my A button is still a bit dodgy, but I've gotten used to hitting it in a certain way so it always fires now. The controller remains strawberry floating amazing apart from that.

I bought the Hori PS4 mini pad for my PC recently as it was cheap and seemed like a good option for my son to use as it is quite compact. I also got a bit sick of my Steam Controller configs always being wrong (they never used to be but I didn't use my Steam kit for a few years and the new Link firmware seems to have made everything weird - shame as it was a perfectly fine controller for most games).

DS4Windows is a pain in the arse to get working isn't it? I needed to reinstall a couple of times and read a few troubleshooting guides. Weirdly, Windows would recognise it and register button presses, and it worked with Untitled Goose Game on Epic, but even on Steam support was patchy. Working fine now and it's great. Looking forward to trying Fallen Order again as it played like dogshit on KBM (although I believe it's one of those games you've got to "git gud" at).