General Computer Thread

[Santaman]

I have made the switch to Linux a few years ago for everything except gaming, I mainly use Linux Mint, at the moment you have the 19.x series and the newer 20.x series, both are LTS versions which means they'll be updated and improved upon for 5 years, Linux Mint 19.3 will still be supported until 2023, 20.0(x) until 2025.
As for desktop options, you've got three flavours, Cinnamon which is one of the best user interfaces I've ever used, Mate which is based on Gnome 2 in layout and if you have an older and slower computer you can use Xfce which is a lightweight desktop environment.
For gaming I have a Ryzen 2600X with Windows 8.1 running it, my main desktop is a Ryzen 2200G.
I use it on quite a few machines, a Sempron 145 single core, an old Athlon 4450e and Athlon 5350 machines so it works pretty well with older hardware, these usually have the Xfce version, I also have a FX 4300 which is fast enough to use Cinnamon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint
https://linuxmint.com/

 

[Marc]

Late to the thread. I have an HP Envy Model 700--327c. I clone my OS HDD every week with Macrium Reflect. I use three 2 TB SCSI drives internally and I have two more 2 TB SCSI drives externally that I clone with the one internal Win 7 OS 2 TB HD drive. One clone is from two Wednesdays ago, the other is from the most recent Wednesday. I've stayed with Windows 7 professional Service Pack 1. The extra 2 TB HDD internal drives are copies of each other and contain music and video. My video card provides 3840 by 2160 pixels to a 43 inch UHD LED TV that I use for a monitor.

64 bit OS, 16 GB ram, Intel Core i7 4770 CPU @ 3.4 GHz.

I do not want someone else deciding on software updates for my computer. If windows 7 stops working, I'll switch to Linux before I install another Microsoft OS.

nice that you've got all those backups but where's the offsite copy?

 

[Kraig]

My Backups to the OS drive aren't in the computer. They are in my safe. I perform backups using a USB 3.0 connection and a HDD docking station. Full backup takes about 30 minutes. When the backup is finished, I box the hard drive in the original packaging and put it in a fire proof gun safe.

 

[Santaman]

AMD released their 5000 series CPU's, from what I've seen so far they're quite impressive, many improvements to cache architecture and also improvements to the FPU/ALU core itself.
I assume they'll be faster than my AMD Sempron 145..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Are printers designed by the devil

Was playing up giving error messages, but once I started looking at upgraded model it starts working flawlessly.

 

[Santaman]

I have no idea.. but my Epson is evil.. it doesn't like to print, messes up the paper so it jams the whole thing and so on and so on.. but at times it just works flawlessly, I bought it when it was on sale and with another action on top of that lower price so I got it for 30 euroes, that was more than a decade ago, usually a refill of ink cartridges are more than the price of the printer..
It is also a liar and a cheat, it will nag at you for new cartridges while the "old" ones have barely be used and all kinds of other bullshit to make you buy more ink, I just ignore it..

 

[Marc]

I have no idea.. but my Epson is evil.. it doesn't like to print, messes up the paper so it jams the whole thing and so on and so on.. but at times it just works flawlessly, I bought it when it was on sale and with another action on top of that lower price so I got it for 30 euroes, that was more than a decade ago, usually a refill of ink cartridges are more than the price of the printer..
It is also a liar and a cheat, it will nag at you for new cartridges while the "old" ones have barely be used and all kinds of other bullshit to make you buy more ink, I just ignore it..

Not sure why my mother--in-law kept buying HP printers. things were hungry for ink and you paid a price for it.

She's now go an Epson that's got the big reservoirs that you fill from bottles and so far she's on her batch of ink where as the HP would be demanding new cartridges.

Unless you need the colour, inkjets can be a pain so I'm happy with my HP Laser multifunction which is out of warranty so I just by the cheap toner cartridges Amazon.

Though the scanner has taken a pounding in recent times when I put through about 1500 pages.

 

[Santaman]

I'm sure in my case it is some driver thing, the really old drivers were much more realistic when it came to how much ink is left in the damn cartridges and also when it is connected to my Linux main machine it never nags about the ink.

 

[JRS]

My about 4-5 year old Acer Predator started to show its age, so last week I decided to order a new computer. Since Acer has served me without issues so well I decided to get from the same brand.
So I got the Predator 3000 with these specs:

intel Core i7-10700, 2.90 - 4.80 GHz,
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super, 8GB GDDR6
16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 2666MHz (maks. 64GB)
1TB SSD (PCI-E M.2 2280)

On my second day using the new rig, I have ran to an odd issue right with my CPU, mainly to do with temperatures.
When I started to download ( yes, download) Star Trek Online to the computer I noticed the fan speed and sound increasing. This seemed odd to me because the previous game I downloaded ( The Division 2) did not create such effect.
I checked the system temperature using the in computer PredatorSense software. The temperature went up to 84C but the CPU load did not go above 15 percent even. Certainly this is not normal, I mean its just download from the net.

When I started playing the game my fan sounds again became very loud and my temperatures during the 20 minute gaming sessions went between 80C and up to 99C. This seems very odd considering its 10 year old game and it ran well on my old computer even. I tried The Division 2 and my fan sound became loud but CPU temperatures were not as high but still around 75-80( I did not experience this loud fan sound when I first time tried this game on the new computer).
I have tried to Google the issue but besides "buy new fan and apply new termal paste" I have not found much help.
So what might be causing these issues? Is it a fan issues or something wrong with the CPU?
Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful. Thank you.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

My about 4-5 year old Acer Predator started to show its age, so last week I decided to order a new computer. Since Acer has served me without issues so well I decided to get from the same brand.
So I got the Predator 3000 with these specs:

intel Core i7-10700, 2.90 - 4.80 GHz,
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super, 8GB GDDR6
16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 2666MHz (maks. 64GB)
1TB SSD (PCI-E M.2 2280)

On my second day using the new rig, I have ran to an odd issue right with my CPU, mainly to do with temperatures.
When I started to download ( yes, download) Star Trek Online to the computer I noticed the fan speed and sound increasing. This seemed odd to me because the previous game I downloaded ( The Division 2) did not create such effect.
I checked the system temperature using the in computer PredatorSense software. The temperature went up to 84C but the CPU load did not go above 15 percent even. Certainly this is not normal, I mean its just download from the net.

When I started playing the game my fan sounds again became very loud and my temperatures during the 20 minute gaming sessions went between 80C and up to 99C. This seems very odd considering its 10 year old game and it ran well on my old computer even. I tried The Division 2 and my fan sound became loud but CPU temperatures were not as high but still around 75-80( I did not experience this loud fan sound when I first time tried this game on the new computer).
I have tried to Google the issue but besides "buy new fan and apply new termal paste" I have not found much help.
So what might be causing these issues? Is it a fan issues or something wrong with the CPU?
Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful. Thank you.

No way in hell that should be happening just for downloading that particular game or even running it. Sounds like something is wrong with the internal cooling itself. Can you claim a service or RMA for this that should not be happening. I'd understand if you were doing lots of rendering or such but not for those games.

 

[JRS]

Sounds like something is wrong with the internal cooling itself. Can you claim a service or RMA for this that should not be happening. I'd understand if you were doing lots of rendering or such but not for those games.

Thank you for the quick reply :-)
Yes, it's definitely cooling issue.
I still have the warranty of course still and l maybe will propably contact Acer support about it later. I know there is no official repair be store in my city though.
The other option would be to take it to a local repair shop, let them figure out the issue and even replace the stock CPU fan something bit better.. but naturally l would loose the general warranty then.
It's good l didn't take my old computer to recycle yet.

 

[Santaman]

Sounds like either the CPU cooler isn't seated properly or there is no/too much/too little heatpaste used on the CPU, there is always a possibility that the cooler became unseated during transport.
Your CPU is only a 65 watt part so the CPU cooler shouldn't ramp up like that and your chip shouldn't run that hot.

Installed Linux Mint 20.0 on my main machine, so far so good, no issues whatsoever, this is as usual a LTS distro so it will be supported until 2025.
For this machine I am using the Cinnamon desktop environment which is very nice, everything is where you expect it to be and it works very smooth.
The machine is a Ryzen 3 2200G APU with 8 Gb RAM so nothing special.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Linux always seems to run super fast compared to windows. I put Mint on my laptop and it loaded up in only a few seconds compared to windows 10 which took around 20 seconds.

 

[Santaman]

I don't use Windows 10 but I am hearing from other people that do use it that it has become bloathed, Windows nowadays seems to focused on "features" not on quality.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Microsoft keep installing crap, including creepy monitoring shit, that you don't want with every update so you have to spend time removing said crap and retuning the system. The updates also seem to be timed to cause the most inconvenience. It's freaking annoying.

 

[Marc]

Your CPU is only a 65 watt part so the CPU cooler shouldn't ramp up like that and your chip shouldn't run that hot.

well it is an intel chip and they've been screwing up with their TDP and throttling in recent times

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

well it is an intel chip and they've been screwing up with their TDP and throttling in recent times

Poor Intel

 

[Santaman]

well it is an intel chip and they've been screwing up with their TDP and throttling in recent times

That is true and at 14nm+++ an 8 core chips is pushing it on that node, nevermind the 10 core chips, but that thing shouldn't run that hot although I've looked up the machine and the cooler is one that is about the size of the stock cooler and it is a rather cramped machine so that is probably the reason why it is so loud, small fans need to have a higher RPM to be able to push air around enough.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Does anyone here know the Australian computer market much?
I've been on google and on the phone but no luck trying to source a 24 to 27 inch monitor with speakers.

 

[StarCruiser]

There aren't very many of those on the market even in the USA. I'm not sure if they even exist now.

Now, some good quality Flat-screen TVs will have decent speakers and can be used as a monitor...