General Computer Thread

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Thanks. Might've already been set that way but I did it again.

If the behaviour doesn't happen every single time, I suspect there is a race condition in the operating system's software, possibly around the use of multiple cores in parallel when initialising networking devices. The service order should be adhered to but I guess it's considered efficient to start up different devices just in case and the first one to finish gets precedence for a while. I haven't found a way to disable WiFi completely on Apple devices other than removing the WiFi hardware card itself. I gather such Apple devices don't really have an equivalent of a registry - but instead use .plist preference files. I have no idea if those are user modifiable to disable WiFi - probably not worth risking with those.

 

[Santaman]

Cleaned the game and main desktop machine, rather dusty despite them both having dust filters, as usual I took out the fans and cleanes them with a soft bust instead of blasting them with air, going for a new graphics card for the game rig, will probably go for a Radeon RX 6600, not the fastest card but it is way faster than my rather dated GTX 1060 3GB, also it has 8GB VRAM so that's in any case a useful update.

 

[Amaris]

Cleaned the game and main desktop machine, rather dusty despite them both having dust filters, as usual I took out the fans and cleanes them with a soft bust instead of blasting them with air, going for a new graphics card for the game rig, will probably go for a Radeon RX 6600, not the fastest card but it is way faster than my rather dated GTX 1060 3GB, also it has 8GB VRAM so that's in any case a useful update.

Agreed. My tasks rely on lots of video memory rather than processing speed, since most modern graphics cards have ridiculous processor power already. My RX-580 has 8GB of VRAM too. Always a good decision to go for more VRAM.

 

[Santaman]

Graphics cards have come a long way indeed, also when it comes to powerconsumption and heat
I have a Geforce 7900GTS which was a high end card and that thing uses 81 watts tops, if you want a top of the line 3090Ti then it will pull 400+ watts..
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3090-ti-amp-extreme/38.html

 

[Amaris]

Graphics cards have come a long way indeed, also when it comes to powerconsumption and heat
I have a Geforce 7900GTS which was a high end card and that thing uses 81 watts tops, if you want a top of the line 3090Ti then it will pull 400+ watts..
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3090-ti-amp-extreme/38.html

I think back to my Oak Technologies EGA graphics adapter (256kb RAM), and how nothing in that entire system actually needed a fan. Now they all have fans that sound like jet engines even under a moderate load, and it's still not enough, and it draws enough power to run a microwave non-stop.

 

[Santaman]

I actually have two AMD Athlon 5350 machines with a passive heatsink on the CPU, just two slow case fans keep them cool, and yeah.. that's very unlike the gaming rig, 3 intake fans, 2 exhaust fans..

 

[Santaman]

I bought a Asus RX 6600 Dual Fan to replace the 1060 3GB of course I first have to find a display port or hdmi to dvi adapter cable since my screen is from 2009...

 

[Amaris]

I actually have two AMD Athlon 5350 machines with a passive heatsink on the CPU, just two slow case fans keep them cool, and yeah.. that's very unlike the gaming rig, 3 intake fans, 2 exhaust fans..

I miss my AMD K6-2 350Mhz system. Built it out of spare parts, the original motherboard and case being part of a Compaq computer. That little computer kicked so much ass. I had Roadrunner at the time, and a tech I knew kept telling me it was a waste because my system couldn't handle that kind of speed, and yet I never had a single issue with it. I used to obsess about fine tuning my system, and nowadays it's more like "does it work? Yes? Good enough."

I bought a Asus RX 6600 Dual Fan to replace the 1060 3GB of course I first have to find a display port or hdmi to dvi adapter cable since my screen is from 2009...

HDMI to DVI? I think I have one I can send you if you need it. My old HP monitor had a DVI on the back, and so I'd bought an adapter for it. This was years ago, but I'm sure I have it in my miscellaneous box in the closet if you need it.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I'm looking at this card for low power gaming at 1080p I have a Ryzen 5600G but for some games it doesn't quite do it as well as I like.

https://www.pccasegear.com/products/56948/powercolor-radeon-rx-6500-xt-4gb-rdna-2

 

[Santaman]

^^ Research well before going for that one..

HDMI to DVI? I think I have one I can send you if you need it. My old HP monitor had a DVI on the back, and so I'd bought an adapter for it. This was years ago, but I'm sure I have it in my miscellaneous box in the closet if you need it.

I'm afraid that would be rather expensive for you, I'm in the Netherlands, but thank you.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

^^ Research well before going for that one..

I have and so far I think it will meet my needs, why are there caveats with that model?

 

[Santaman]

Physical PCIE interface is only x4 so for PCIE 4.0 it is okay, if you have a mainboard with a PCIE 3.0 bus it will be crippled, so you need a mainboard with a X570 or a B550 chipset, if not speed will be crippled.
Also no support for AV1 video hardware decoding, no support for VP9/H.264/H.265 video encoding and of course it has only 4GB VRAM.

 

[Malicia]

Yesterday I created a zipped folder containing a few .JPG files to be emailed as an attachment and decided to encrypt it assuming it would ask me for a password and the folder could then only be opened by the recipient with the password. It wasn't sensitive data I was just curious to see if it would work. It didn't ask for a password but created a yellow padlock in the top right of the file icon. I went in to properties > advanced and disabled encryption of the file and the yellow padlock disappeared.

Since then whenever I create a file on the desktop it has a yellow padlock in the top right corner and I have to manually disable encryption for each file. It only happens with files created on the desktop or moved to the desktop and I can't work out where the global setting is to turn off encryption on Windows 10 Pro. I've checked Bitlocker which is turned off and there's only one account set up on the PC. I'm not having much luck finding a solution online and one idea I read is to enable and then disable Bitlocker but I would rather not do this. How can disable this global encryption setting I somehow enabled yesterday?

 

[Santaman]

I don't use Windows 10 but I DuckDuckGo'd a bit..
https://winbuzzer.com/2021/06/18/ho...ile-encryption-in-windows-10-ntfs-efs-xcxwbt/
Might be it was encrypted on a NTFS level, so maybe that link will help.

 

[Malicia]

Thanks for the link I'll have a read and wait a few days before I do anything. Whatever I did yesterday only seemed to affect the file and there was no delay so I don't think it encrypted the entire volume. It doesn't seem to be having any adverse effects it's just annoying when I can't work out how to change something and it seems like Windows 10 revels in that.

 

[Santaman]

I hope you'll figure it out.

 

[Kraig]

Thanks for the link I'll have a read and wait a few days before I do anything. Whatever I did yesterday only seemed to affect the file and there was no delay so I don't think it encrypted the entire volume. It doesn't seem to be having any adverse effects it's just annoying when I can't work out how to change something and it seems like Windows 10 revels in that.

I use 7-zip for file and folder encryption. Mostly for financial and tax documents. Any file with my Social Security number, Medicare Number, credit card numbers, bank account are encrypted. I also have pictures (jpg format) of documents I had to send to the Veteran's Administration (DD-214 for one) that I have encrypted copy stored on a flash drive.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Physical PCIE interface is only x4 so for PCIE 4.0 it is okay, if you have a mainboard with a PCIE 3.0 bus it will be crippled, so you need a mainboard with a X570 or a B550 chipset, if not speed will be crippled.
Also no support for AV1 video hardware decoding, no support for VP9/H.264/H.265 video encoding and of course it has only 4GB VRAM.

I'll keep that in mind...... My board is an Asus B450 prime so it seems compatible. I am using a Ryzen 5600G in this one and it's fun playing with that but there are a few titles it has issues with so I thought I'd give a new gpu a try since I kind of frakked my old one

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I'm so tempted to get this new LapTop.

The ASUS ZenBook S 13 OLED w/ AMD Ryzen 7 6800U

Spoiler: ASUS ZenBook S13 OLED in 4 colors

It even has the StarFleet like Chevron on the back!

There's the ASUS ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition, but it has Intel inside; and I refuse to support the convicted monopolist who mis-used their monopoly powers to enrich themselves back in the 2000's when they screwed over AMD with their illegal monopolist shenanigans used to consolidate their iron fist over the CPU market.

If only the ZenBook 14X OLED Space Edition came in AMD, I'd grab that in a heart beat.

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[John Clark]

I plan on sticking with my current laptop as long as I can (an old acer v3-551) because it does what I need to on a day to day basis, though I swapped out the DVD drive for a Blu-ray early on.

The desktop needs an upgrade at some point though. I use that more for gaming and the processor is a little old (FX-8350) and GT1060 card (6gb version).

It'll play most of the games I have quite well (though I'm not a 4k gamer so that helps) but there's a couple that are a bit twitchy at 1080. I know I'll need more when some of the future games I have an eye on come out.