General computer talk/advice

And the best part is that it doesn't feel cheap or poorly built. It's a wonderfully built budget gaming laptop and I love it.

 

Hmm, you know when I tested Comodo firewall and uninstalled it, that made a big mess of my windows services. I thought I had sorted it all out, but no, again I had to fix new issues, NLA service was not starting again, opened msconfig and found out it was disabled in selective starting, date matches to uninstallation date of Comodo firewall. That is really nasty, not really sure how that could of happened, but put it back on again.

Hopefully it now stays on as Office licensing among many other things is not working without it.

 

I'm eating my words a little bit here, but reality is reality.

It seems that my Nitro 5 has a factory defect. Something either in the charging circuit or the battery itself isn't functioning properly and it refuses to charge. However, I'm not mad, I'm not salty at Acer and cursing them and not "VOWING TO NEVER BUY AN ACER PRODUCT AGAIN FJSJDLSODWJEJJDWKF" because I'm a realist, and it's okay.

Here's why it's okay. Computer hardware is notorious for DOA. You etch nanometeic traces into an almost pure element, you're bound to have a DOA product or two. And that's okay. I'm not like many in the world, I do not expect perfection (eventhough I am a mild perfectionist in some instances). The system is otherwise fully functional and fully stable with typical gaming laptop temperatures and an undeniably beautiful IPS display, there's just a battery issue. It's a warranty thing, they'll fix it, then I'll have 100% of a laptop instead of 50% of a laptop, all for nothing to fix and nothing on shipping.

Acer Support was very kind and mildly helpful and extremely understanding and lord knows the same can't be said about other support lines (*cough*Samsung*cough*). I still love modern Acer products and still highly recommend the Nitro 5. I still say go and buy one. Why? Becasue when looking for troubleshooting steps and potential fixes for this little issue, information was a touch hard to find for the Nitro 5 specifically, meaning it's uncommon.

 

It seems that my loan GTX 1080 has some small issue, it has 3 fans, but only two spins. Card is about 2 months old, Gigabyte Gtx 1080 8GB OC

Temps seems to be okay, heatsink has heatpipe, so that first heatsink is placed on GPU core and it has directly one fan over it, which is not working, then middle fan is like 1/2 over GPU core and 1/2 over other heatsink, then there is one fan over that 2nd heatsink. Appears to be dealing with the heat just fine, but perhaps running with bit faster fan speeds.

Internet did say that re-seating the card might help, but that did nothing and there is no space in case to try another slot, there is riveted drive slots and 10mm too little space because of that.

I did set fans to 100% with manual setting, but no luck getting that one fan to spin, not even if I put it spinning with a finger. There is very small nudge when booting up PC though, so I guess it just has bad motor or poor electrical connection some place. Not much experience from these cards.

I had no issues running Tail of the dragon for two runs on high, GPU fans were running quite a bit though, but temps were alright, so I guess I keep running it until friend comes back from China and he can deal with warranties etc.

Not really sure if I want to buy this card, I guess depends what he asks from it, but would need to do warranty on it first for sure.

 

A lot of cards by design don't spin up more than 1 or 2 fans unless they need to. For example, my MSI GTX970 came with big stickers covering the card warning people that one of the fans won't spin and that it is normal. To prevent getting 5 million customer support messages.

 

I think it should spin up when I set fan mode to manual and to 100%? Or then it only spins after temperature goes over certain threshold and fan control has nothing to do with that fan, is it that way with yours?

I just was playing ECA with Bolide, High details and all checkboxes checked, except dynamic reflections off, solid 60fps with 47C GPU temp when room temp is above 30C. GPU load around 50%, that is some serious computing power.

In Blender I set GPU rendering, 200k tris of AM exported vehicle I can perfectly well rotate and it is pretty much instant, I guess one could in theory sculpt in real time rendered view.

 

I have not tried manual fan control on mine. So can't say. Sounds dumb, but have you read the manual? Maybe check the Q&A section of the cards website to see if it's a common question.

If possible without disassembly, it might be worth checking that the GPU fan cables are correctly attached to the card and are not loose.

 

Manual had nothing on it, Q&A is like C/O has asked to FAQ to be placed, summer trainee gets assigned to job and does laziest job anyone can do, I mean they really can't be serious, yes this is all of FAQ:


Trying to find how fans should behave from internet seems quite a challenge, but I have found out indications that in this model all three fans should be running, however that is from thread where one guy had middle fan to die and other two were running.

Cables can't be seen at all, those are hidden so well that one would need to take thing apart to see them.

Terrible blurry video, but in this video that fan at the connector end is working, on card that is in my computer, that one is not spinning:

 

Found out that the tablet i bought, for copying video from an action camera... has USB 2.0!!

WHYYY! USB 2.0 on a 2017 device, with a processor that HAS SUPPORT FOR USB 3.0 BUILT IN!

I honestly don't know what to say, i bought this as a laptop replacement, but the keyboard case i bought (cheap aftermarket) hasn't got wrist rests, so it's an ergonomic nightmare, and hence i can't even type on it properly.
USB is only 2.0, so speed is slow as a snail. (my OnePlus 5T is like this too!! so annoying to have UFS storage but limited by USB 2.0!!).

I honestly don't know what to say, my dream tablet is now spoiled, useless now.

I made the mistake again... USB type C doesn't mean anything. it's still the same old slow 2.0

I am so annoyed, laptops from like 2010 have had USB 3.0..
Why can't a £300 tablet have it

 

what tablet?

 

Huawei MediaPad M5

I thought it had USB3.0 and literally everyone on XDA did too.. Then I emailed Huawei and it's USB2.0! Even notebookcheck's review on it said that it was USB3.0 compliant.

 

I have a gtx 1060 6gb I want to build around for beamng mostly, will i5 8400 and a 8 or 16 gb of ram be good bang for the buck build for beamng or should I aim for anything better?

 

Get fastest single core speed CPU you can afford and you should get pretty much what performance you can get from the BeamNG currently. That means, makes sure to get K model of CPU.

With 1060 keep dynamic reflections off and it should do fine as gtx 1080 with dynamic reflections off tops at 80% GPU load when in Eco mode (under clocked), that is 60fps with single car.

With Coffee Lake i5 model you get also to run as many cars as i7 Skylake, based on what I have read.

However if your budget could get to i5 8600K that would be best without spending arm and a leg for i7 8086K that is ultimate CPU for BeamNG at the moment, AFAIK.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8400-vs-Intel-Core-i5-8600K/3939vs3941

When BeamNG will get single core load optimizations, situation might change, but right now, with i5 8400 you would probably still be limited by single core processing power more than your GPU.

 

I don't mind Acer, but on the low end you still have to look out for if they have snuck in a TN panel at 1366x768 or a bad hard-drive. I know someone who bought 3 laptops, and all 3 hard-drives failed within 3 months. Not too good. But thankfully now OEMs are shifting toward eMMC instead of the awful 5400RPM hard-drive for boot drive, and leaving the 2.5in bay empty (yay upgrades).

 

lel i wish i wasnt broke i wouldve got a used aleinware

 

And wasted your money in the process

 

i'm really on the fence about whether to buy a laptop or not to replace my 2010 macbook air. It's old and rickety and a Core m3 would be soo nice (have an atom laptop but it's had better days) but maybe if i wait longer then there will be chinese amd raven ridge laptops. (my budget ). But then again i keep thinking, do i get a cheap laptop that won't last that long, maybe 4 years or do i splurge and save up and have a laptop that lasts for years to come. Here's a little list of requirements:

Necessities:
Long battery life, 6hrs plus please
BRIGHT IPS screen, 350nits and above, and no 1366x768 (1080p or higher) good contrast ratio too (above 1200:1)
USB C charging, so i can charge from a powerbank. (this is at the top of the list of necessities tbh)
Touch screen, or good trackpad (i can survive a bad trackpad if there is a touch screen)
Good media capabilites (Kabylake's Full Hardware decode/encode HEVC, VP9)
8GB or more RAM

Luxuries:
Good graphics performance, i'm not talking about GTX levels, rather MX150ish will be nice as it will run games well (at low settings).
Quad core CPU (again good for gaming performance and megatasking).
2in1, 180degree hinge i'm ok with, but 360hinge is a luxury
Storage expansion capabilities (M.2/2.5in bay etc.)

Cool, but not necessary:
USB 3.0 SD card reader
HDMI 2.0 (doubt it's going to come in my price range).



and that's about it. I can live with Intel HD, but i don't really want to unless the rest of the machine is good. GPU performance is a luxury imo.

All that, for below $800.. i don't think so

Keeping this copy and pasted in a notepad document for keepsake, i wonder if a laptop will ever reach these targets.

 

God pocket 2
Although that's nota serious suggestion. I think it technically meets requirements though

 

it's good, but i forgot the crucial size 12-15in laptop.
But the GPD pocket 2 is a very interesting machine, it is a gaming laptop, but not what you think

 

I kinda want a pocket 2 but it's not actually a device I would use so I'm passing