General PC Help Thread - OP updated with useful links - READ

[Meep]

Okay, so planning on replacing most of my PC next year as it is over five years old already. I have been researching Coffee Lake, which was fortunate as I did not previously realise it was not compatible with all boards with the same socket type. Apparently only 300 series boards will do. Going MATX this time as I never used the other slots anyway. So long as I have one spare PCI-e for maybe sticking an SSD there in future to improve over the SATA one I have.

Already replaced my GPU and can carry over stuff like the PSU and drives so only really need to replace the core system.

* MSI Intel 1151 Socket Z370 Chipset Gaming Pro Carbon AC D4 M-ATX Motherboard (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B075NHVPK3/ ... D3TA&psc=0)
* Intel 8th Gen Core i5-8600K Processor (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-BX80684I ... eywords=i5)
* Corsair CMK8GX4M2A2666C16R Vengeance LPX 8 GB (2x4 GB) DDR4 2666 MHz (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0123ZB990/ ... D3TA&psc=1)
* Fractal Design Define Mini C Tempered Glass (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fractal-Design ... tal+design)

I wish DRAM prices weren't being gouged so badly otherwise I would have upgraded to 16GB. Coffee Lake CPUs are also pricey but I think that is to do with Intel pushing the launch forward to compete with Ryzen. I may wait until March to see if they die down a bit.

[<]:^D]

why is that motherboard so expensive?

[Meep]

Haven't looked around that much. Doesn't seem to be that many Z370 boards around, at least not mATX models.

Hopefully there will be more choice soon when more manufactures produce 300 series boards.

Edit:
Actually, this looks promising: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B075ZP4GT9/ ... D3TA&psc=1

[Xeno]

It would seem that win10 is no longer locked to mobo and is attached to an ms account. I may be able to just install on a new ssd and log in to activate. Bloody hell MS may have actually have done something good, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[<]:^D]

i reinstalled Windows7 on a new mobo & cpu this year and it didnt even ask me to re-activate or any of that junk - thank God!

[Green Gecko]

Oooo good call, it could also be the fact I only have 32gig of ram. I best go download some ram from https://downloadmoreram.com/.

I am currently looking at how much hassle it will be to get my win10 transferred to a new system.

This fixed my iPad 2

[Meep]

Okay, so given the bombshell news regarding Intel, I have put my upgrade plans on hold. Does anyone with any experience with the Ryzen 5 1600X? Looks like very good bang for your buck.

The other side of this is that it means upgrading is now going to be put forward for a lot of people who are running older chips. Apparently anything before Haswell is going to suffer a major performance hit once Meltdown is patched.

[Xeno]

I am still looking at some benchmarks although a lot of them have said there are few overheads for gaming. I do have an 8700k sat on a desk right now and I am just waiting a couple of days to build my new system.

[SandyCoin]

My girlfriend is after a new laptop in the new year. Her budget is probably around £600-£700. Doesn't have to be a brand spanking new model, but I know she'd like a lightweight one. Her current one is a real chore to carry around, so she wants something nice and portable. Mostly for Word and internet stuff, so doesn't need to be too high spec. Just a reliable laptop brand that will last her a good few years. Any recommendations? I don't really know what laptop makes are good.

That kind of money should net you something from Asus that will last years, although you could consider an Apple refurbished 13" Macbook Air: https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/F ... el-core-i5

In terms of reliability my Macbook has lasted about 6 years with a few repairs/upgrades but now the GPU is dead (this is because Apple used discreet hardware that ran too hot and their electronics were not built to cope with the excessive heat for so long). The last Asus I bought in a similar price range for someone in 2013, I've not heard of there being any problems (and this is someone who still emails me for passwords to their accounts).

Sorry, I forgot to reply to this. Thanks for the reply though. Yeah, Macbook would be the obvious choice, but she's not really a fan of Macbooks. Never got on with them. We had a look at some in the shops and there are some that look promising, but hopefully cheaper online. I had avoided ACER (I think I read they weren't that great years ago), but the reviews for the Swift 5 look rather good. It's incredibly lightweight and portable which is I think her biggest need too. I'd be a bit weary of getting a refurbished one. What kind of warranties and support do you get with them? (if you know).

[Victor Mildew]

I keep reading about the stupid prices of ram etc at the moment so for a laugh I decided to look at my pc which I build just over a year ago.

I paid £190 for my 32gb of DDR4 3300mhz ram, the same stuff from the same supplier now being £380

My strix 1070 GTX is also £80 more expensive.

strawberry floating hell.

[Karl_]

A combination of Brexit and all of that silly Bitcoin nonsense has absolutely reamed our GPU and RAM prices.

[Meep]

I keep reading about the stupid prices of ram etc at the moment so for a laugh I decided to look at my pc which I build just over a year ago.

I paid £190 for my 32gb of DDR4 3300mhz ram, the same stuff from the same supplier now being £380

My strix 1070 GTX is also £80 more expensive.

strawberry floating hell.

Apparently Samsung at least are going to boost dram production by about 20% this year and the Chinese trading authorities have started an investigation into price fixing, which should hopefully ease supply and make manufacturers gooseberry fool their pants enough that they stop gouging their customers so much. I have put back building my new PC until May or June to after the Ryzen+ release and hopefully memory will have come down enough that I can get at least 16GB without selling a kidney.

Really glad I decided to upgrade my GPU last year. The same 1070 card I bought now as an £80 mark up on what I paid too.

[Lagamorph]

The 1080ti I got has already gone up by £75 since November.

Aren't Nvidia cards not even all that great for Bitcoin mining compared to AMD cards anyway?

[<]:^D]

yeah but the numpties looking for a quick $ dont know that

[Meep]

Not Bitcoin, no chance of mining that using non-specialised hardware for a profit these days. Probably anyone buying cards for crypto is taking aim at one of the newer cryptocurrencies or "shitcoin" floating around.

[Lotus]

A while ago I was using my PC and had a load of different programs open (as you do). I went away from my desk for a bit, and then came back to find that Windows (10) had done its helpful thing of deciding to restart without asking me. Consequently, when it restarted, it tried to recover everything and re-opened all of the programs. That was fine, but now any time that I either restart the PC, or shut it down and come to turn it on again, Windows tries to recover these programs. It's really bizarre, almost like it's not fully shutting down. Can anybody advise on what the issue might be here?

[Meep]

Weird. Maybe try disabling fast boot and shutting it down. From what I have heard, fast boot in Windows 10 works a little like hibernation in that a temporary file is saved to the system drive so it's possible it's holding something over that way.

[That's not a growth]

Both my laptop and desktop require me to sign in twice to get into a machine since the last update, which is annoying. I put in my password, or use windows hello on my laptop, and then it just goes back to the previous screen and then works on the next try. Bastards.

[Lotus]

Weird. Maybe try disabling fast boot and shutting it down. From what I have heard, fast boot in Windows 10 works a little like hibernation in that a temporary file is saved to the system drive so it's possible it's holding something over that way.

Okay thanks, I'll check that out.

[Frank]

Does anyone here know much about cleaning up the Registry?

Whenever I turn my Surface (Pro 4) off at the moment, I get the "This app is preventing shutdown" screen, but the app in question doesn't have a name (and nothing is actually running). After a bit of googling, it seems like it might be something to do with the Power Plans being corrupted, so I've just deleted the Power Plan that I made, reset the existing one back to default, and tried again, but it's still the same situation

But after deleting and changing the power plan and restarting, I get the ":( YOUR PC HAS RUN INTO A PROBLEM" blue screen, and it gets stuck in a restarting cycle of restarting, bluescreening, and then asking if I want to boot into safe mode. Eventually the bluescreen tells me it's got a problem with "ndis.sys", which sounds like it's a registry file?

Obviously I'm pretty clueless with the registry, so I don't want to go mucking about willy nilly and potentially ruining everything, so does anyone know the safest way of resetting the registry stuff without having to reset the whole computer?