• Re: Son's Computer Build Woes

    From rms@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 31 17:11:22 2024
    I think I've got it all working now.

    Wow! You really passed through a warzone in that build, with cuts &
    bruises to prove it! Hope your son appreciates it :)

    rms

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Rin Stowleigh@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 31 19:15:22 2024
    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 15:53:20 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    I think I've got it all working now.

    TL;DR:

    1. Don't buy cases with GLASS panels (I didn't even realize it was
    glass, the one I bought for me is plexiglass)

    2. F Google keeping your bookmarks in the cloud. (I've actually had it
    lose them all for people a couple times at work too!) Export them to
    back them up.

    3. F Onedrive taking over your filesystem (It's been working pretty well
    at work, but it was an unmitigated disaster on my son's personal PC)

    4. Don't buy a CPU with built in GPU if you can avoid it and you're
    planning to use discrete.


    The LONG:

    Putting it all together was pretty easy. I installed windows 11 pro.
    Updated all the drivers.

    I brought over what I could, but he uses FL Studio (Audio studio of some >sort) and that screwed it up where the most important plug in wouldn't
    work. Also got a bunch of errors that files weren't there when
    transferring the data.

    Wiped it, started over and brought very little over.

    Had an issue where Chrome wiped out all his favorites after he signed
    in. I tried to get the bookmarks from the old computer, but they were >missing from where I saved them on the desktop when I popped the drive
    in the new one, back and forth several times and I finally figured out >onedrive had somehow taken over his desktop, only the desktop wasn't
    there in onedrive, so the files just disappeared until I booted it back
    up. I eventually figured to put in in a folder on the root of c, and
    got them.

    Chrome would wipe them out though replacing them with nothing every time
    I tried. I loaded them up offline on the old computer, exported from
    them and brought them over, but somehow it picked up thousands of old >bookmarks and not the few he wanted. We ended up just deleting them.

    FL Studio also had to export all his plugins he wanted and he dealt with >loading them up. It was working.

    Somewhere in all taking the front panel off and on repeatedly the GLASS
    panel shattered into a million pieces when I placed it on the floor all
    of 1 inch below where I took it off. I got cut up and my arms and
    clothes looked like there was frost from microscopic shards of glass
    sticking to them. Most of it stuck to the thin flexible plastic that
    was on one side. I should've taken a picture, but wanted to get that
    out asap. I managed to slice both thumbs up getting it to the trash, an >invisible splinter in one, took me a good half hour with a magnifying
    glass and tweezers to finally get it out. My other thumb was slashed up
    and wouldn't stop bleeding. I took the bandaid off a couple days later
    and it started bleeding. Two days later I tried again and there was a
    tiny amount of blood that oozed out, but I left the bandaid off and it >stopped and finally dried up and just has a couple mm scab now.

    I cleaned up the rest of the glass after I'd gotten the splinter out and >bandaided the slashed thumb, and a shower seemed to get rid of the rest
    of the frost like shards on me without drawing blood.

    The case is now without front panel. I want another panel like that so
    I'm trying to decide between putting cardboard there or leaving it open.
    The place is a bit dusty and it's on the floor so leaving it open
    probably isn't the best idea.

    It's a very nice case other than that major flaw.

    A day or too later my son brings up that FL Studio is running a bit slow
    as is Roblock and getting jerky movements. Task Manager shows no
    issues, CPU, GPU, Memory, storage, etc all very low - with only FL
    Studio CPU was only 3 %. I figure it's the nextwork as we're running
    off wifi, but I run an xfinity speedtest and his latency is better than
    mine, and I don't think FLStudio should be using network. I turn off
    the wifi and FLStudio is still slow and jerky. After trying about 20 >different things to troubleshoot it I install HW Monitor. I see the m.2 >drive is running pretty hot, 57 degrees, I installed a tester, and it
    climes to 80 while testing reads. I look and and find the plate that
    came with the mb isn't even warm, after checking it out I think the
    plate doesn't even touch the SDD, I double up the thermal silicone so it >touches the chip on it, but it only makes about a degree difference.

    I order a cheap m.2 heatsink from amazon.

    Before it comes I poke around some more. I find the 6800 gpu is
    disabled and it's somehow using the garbage on the cpu even though hdmi
    is plugged into the gpu card. I realize the monitor hasn't come on off
    and on, and I've had to turn it off and fiddle with the power to it a
    couple times. It must've disabled from that. The power connectors
    don't seem to fit well. I'm not sure if that's the GPU card or the >Thermaltake PSU that's slightly off spec enough to not fit quite right,
    but I give it a really forceful shove, and it seems stable now. I of
    course had to unsinstall the GPU drivers and reinstall and restart to
    get them working, I then disabled the CPU display drivers and it's been >working fine since.

    I find it weird the "GPU" somehow didn't appear to be under load, but it
    was greatly affecting fps even in audio software. Maybe it was somehow >picking up the card GPU as not being under load even though it was
    saying it was disabled.

    I got the m.2 heatsink, installed it, and the heat dropped to 48 C idle
    and 61 C under test load, much better. From what I've read at least the
    one I have the WD SN770 shouldn't need a heatsink, but it obviously
    makes a difference in heat if not that much in performance, as the test
    still came out about the same on the transfer rate.

    I haven't used FLStudio in a long time (it's a popular DAW among
    younger folks just getting started, because its very video-gamey in
    its user interface -- the developers were originally video game
    developers and just migrated to audio software... it's kind of fun to
    work with in certain scenarios, and some famous artists like DeadMau5
    who I've never liked did get their start with it). I don't use it at
    all because it doesn't integrate well with pro-grade studio gear very
    well, but it has some things in common with other DAW software.

    If I knew you were building a system with audio production of any kind
    in mind I might have offered a few tips.

    One is, in general stay with Intel for the CPU/mobo. General
    experience across the board is better and I've read a lot of issues
    with AMD processors and their compatibility with certain hardware
    drivers like audio interfaces. Single thread performance and ram
    speed are important depending on what is actually being done with it
    (there are a lot of ways to make music and every workflow is
    different.. loading lots of samples needs a lot of ram and disk
    access while lots of soft synths will prefer CPU power). A lot of
    games in the last couple of years just seemed over-optimized for AMD
    processors and were giving benchmarks that gave false impressions...
    as an example look at the way Intel Core Ultra chips were recently
    panned upon release as being much slower than AMD, with Cyperpunk 2077
    being one of the main examples... then suddenly CDPR releases a patch
    for the game that boosts framerates something like 30% for Intel Core
    Ultra depending on the resolution and GPU.

    This doesn't mean AMD won't work or be viable or good for FLStudio
    especially if that's all he uses and he hasn't branched out to
    hardware audio gear... I haven't followed what they've done so for
    all I know they might be optimizing for AMD these days, but the
    software is written in Delphi (Pascal) so I doubt it.

    The first thing that comes to mind (and this may be really good news)
    is what ASIO driver is he using? The right one for his audio
    interface? And if his audio interface is the built in motherboard
    audio, that's probably his problem. Just get a decent USB Focusrite
    interface or something and have him switch to that for making music,
    switch back to Realtek mobo audio (or whatever chip is there) when
    playing games if there is an advantage to do so (probably will
    actually sound better through a good audio interface).

    And he may need to experiment with buffer size and latency settings
    for whatever ASIO driver he is using. I don't know how much of this
    is CaptainObvious info, it might be stuff he's already explored.. but
    yeah out of the box on a brand new PC, its probably going to be
    something like Realtek ASIO and that will certainly suck and spike the
    CPU meter.

    Just remember that in FLStudio and most DAWs, the CPU meter seen
    inside the software is not a representation of total CPU on the system
    or of what you'll see if you load Task Manager.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Xocyll@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 31 21:07:35 2024
    Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
    the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

    I think I've got it all working now.

    TL;DR:

    1. Don't buy cases with GLASS panels (I didn't even realize it was
    glass, the one I bought for me is plexiglass)

    it's not the worst thing ever.

    2. F Google keeping your bookmarks in the cloud. (I've actually had it
    lose them all for people a couple times at work too!) Export them to
    back them up.

    Export bookmarks to file, save file in many places.

    My bookmarks file goes back to at least netscape 3.

    3. F Onedrive taking over your filesystem (It's been working pretty well
    at work, but it was an unmitigated disaster on my son's personal PC)

    Disabled that shit during the first 10 minutes, no fucking thanks.

    4. Don't buy a CPU with built in GPU if you can avoid it and you're
    planning to use discrete.

    Have never bought a built in GPU; always a bad idea unless you are dirt
    poor and cannot afford better. And almost anyone can afford better,
    except stupid people and laptop users.

    The LONG:

    Putting it all together was pretty easy. I installed windows 11 pro.
    Updated all the drivers.

    My condolences. It is such a piece of shit, MS peaked with Win7.
    <snip>

    Xocyll

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dimensional Traveler@21:1/5 to Justisaur on Tue Dec 31 18:09:05 2024
    On 12/31/2024 3:53 PM, Justisaur wrote:
    I think I've got it all working now.

    TL;DR:

    1. Don't buy cases with GLASS panels (I didn't even realize it was
    glass, the one I bought for me is plexiglass)

    2. F Google keeping your bookmarks in the cloud.  (I've actually had it
    lose them all for people a couple times at work too!)  Export them to
    back them up.

    3. F Onedrive taking over your filesystem (It's been working pretty well
    at work, but it was an unmitigated disaster on my son's personal PC)

    4. Don't buy a CPU with built in GPU if you can avoid it and you're
    planning to use discrete.


    The LONG:

    Putting it all together was pretty easy.  I installed windows 11 pro. Updated all the drivers.

    I brought over what I could, but he uses FL Studio (Audio studio of some sort) and that screwed it up where the most important plug in wouldn't work.  Also got a bunch of errors that files weren't there when
    transferring the data.

    Wiped it, started over and brought very little over.

    Had an issue where Chrome wiped out all his favorites after he signed
    in.  I tried to get the bookmarks from the old computer, but they were missing from where I saved them on the desktop when I popped the drive
    in the new one, back and forth several times and I finally figured out onedrive had somehow taken over his desktop, only the desktop wasn't
    there in onedrive, so the files just disappeared until I booted it back
    up.  I eventually figured to put in in a folder on the root of c, and
    got them.

    Chrome would wipe them out though replacing them with nothing every time
    I tried.  I loaded them up offline on the old computer, exported from
    them and brought them over, but somehow it picked up thousands of old bookmarks and not the few he wanted.  We ended up just deleting them.

    Sounds like you should have wiped Chrome.

    --
    I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
    dirty old man.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Rin Stowleigh@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 31 21:32:01 2024
    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 17:41:39 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    On 12/31/2024 4:15 PM, Rin Stowleigh wrote:
    On Tue, 31 Dec 2024 15:53:20 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    I think I've got it all working now.

    TL;DR:

    1. Don't buy cases with GLASS panels (I didn't even realize it was
    glass, the one I bought for me is plexiglass)

    2. F Google keeping your bookmarks in the cloud. (I've actually had it
    lose them all for people a couple times at work too!) Export them to
    back them up.

    3. F Onedrive taking over your filesystem (It's been working pretty well >>> at work, but it was an unmitigated disaster on my son's personal PC)

    4. Don't buy a CPU with built in GPU if you can avoid it and you're
    planning to use discrete.


    The LONG:

    Putting it all together was pretty easy. I installed windows 11 pro.
    Updated all the drivers.

    I brought over what I could, but he uses FL Studio (Audio studio of some >>> sort) and that screwed it up where the most important plug in wouldn't
    work. Also got a bunch of errors that files weren't there when
    transferring the data.

    Wiped it, started over and brought very little over.

    Had an issue where Chrome wiped out all his favorites after he signed
    in. I tried to get the bookmarks from the old computer, but they were
    missing from where I saved them on the desktop when I popped the drive
    in the new one, back and forth several times and I finally figured out
    onedrive had somehow taken over his desktop, only the desktop wasn't
    there in onedrive, so the files just disappeared until I booted it back
    up. I eventually figured to put in in a folder on the root of c, and
    got them.

    Chrome would wipe them out though replacing them with nothing every time >>> I tried. I loaded them up offline on the old computer, exported from
    them and brought them over, but somehow it picked up thousands of old
    bookmarks and not the few he wanted. We ended up just deleting them.

    FL Studio also had to export all his plugins he wanted and he dealt with >>> loading them up. It was working.

    Somewhere in all taking the front panel off and on repeatedly the GLASS
    panel shattered into a million pieces when I placed it on the floor all
    of 1 inch below where I took it off. I got cut up and my arms and
    clothes looked like there was frost from microscopic shards of glass
    sticking to them. Most of it stuck to the thin flexible plastic that
    was on one side. I should've taken a picture, but wanted to get that
    out asap. I managed to slice both thumbs up getting it to the trash, an >>> invisible splinter in one, took me a good half hour with a magnifying
    glass and tweezers to finally get it out. My other thumb was slashed up >>> and wouldn't stop bleeding. I took the bandaid off a couple days later
    and it started bleeding. Two days later I tried again and there was a
    tiny amount of blood that oozed out, but I left the bandaid off and it
    stopped and finally dried up and just has a couple mm scab now.

    I cleaned up the rest of the glass after I'd gotten the splinter out and >>> bandaided the slashed thumb, and a shower seemed to get rid of the rest
    of the frost like shards on me without drawing blood.

    The case is now without front panel. I want another panel like that so
    I'm trying to decide between putting cardboard there or leaving it open. >>> The place is a bit dusty and it's on the floor so leaving it open
    probably isn't the best idea.

    It's a very nice case other than that major flaw.

    A day or too later my son brings up that FL Studio is running a bit slow >>> as is Roblock and getting jerky movements. Task Manager shows no
    issues, CPU, GPU, Memory, storage, etc all very low - with only FL
    Studio CPU was only 3 %. I figure it's the nextwork as we're running
    off wifi, but I run an xfinity speedtest and his latency is better than
    mine, and I don't think FLStudio should be using network. I turn off
    the wifi and FLStudio is still slow and jerky. After trying about 20
    different things to troubleshoot it I install HW Monitor. I see the m.2 >>> drive is running pretty hot, 57 degrees, I installed a tester, and it
    climes to 80 while testing reads. I look and and find the plate that
    came with the mb isn't even warm, after checking it out I think the
    plate doesn't even touch the SDD, I double up the thermal silicone so it >>> touches the chip on it, but it only makes about a degree difference.

    I order a cheap m.2 heatsink from amazon.

    Before it comes I poke around some more. I find the 6800 gpu is
    disabled and it's somehow using the garbage on the cpu even though hdmi
    is plugged into the gpu card. I realize the monitor hasn't come on off
    and on, and I've had to turn it off and fiddle with the power to it a
    couple times. It must've disabled from that. The power connectors
    don't seem to fit well. I'm not sure if that's the GPU card or the
    Thermaltake PSU that's slightly off spec enough to not fit quite right,
    but I give it a really forceful shove, and it seems stable now. I of
    course had to unsinstall the GPU drivers and reinstall and restart to
    get them working, I then disabled the CPU display drivers and it's been
    working fine since.

    I find it weird the "GPU" somehow didn't appear to be under load, but it >>> was greatly affecting fps even in audio software. Maybe it was somehow
    picking up the card GPU as not being under load even though it was
    saying it was disabled.

    I got the m.2 heatsink, installed it, and the heat dropped to 48 C idle
    and 61 C under test load, much better. From what I've read at least the >>> one I have the WD SN770 shouldn't need a heatsink, but it obviously
    makes a difference in heat if not that much in performance, as the test
    still came out about the same on the transfer rate.

    I haven't used FLStudio in a long time (it's a popular DAW among
    younger folks just getting started, because its very video-gamey in
    its user interface -- the developers were originally video game
    developers and just migrated to audio software... it's kind of fun to
    work with in certain scenarios, and some famous artists like DeadMau5
    who I've never liked did get their start with it). I don't use it at
    all because it doesn't integrate well with pro-grade studio gear very
    well, but it has some things in common with other DAW software.

    If I knew you were building a system with audio production of any kind
    in mind I might have offered a few tips.

    One is, in general stay with Intel for the CPU/mobo. General
    experience across the board is better and I've read a lot of issues
    with AMD processors and their compatibility with certain hardware
    drivers like audio interfaces. Single thread performance and ram
    speed are important depending on what is actually being done with it
    (there are a lot of ways to make music and every workflow is
    different.. loading lots of samples needs a lot of ram and disk
    access while lots of soft synths will prefer CPU power). A lot of
    games in the last couple of years just seemed over-optimized for AMD
    processors and were giving benchmarks that gave false impressions...
    as an example look at the way Intel Core Ultra chips were recently
    panned upon release as being much slower than AMD, with Cyperpunk 2077
    being one of the main examples... then suddenly CDPR releases a patch
    for the game that boosts framerates something like 30% for Intel Core
    Ultra depending on the resolution and GPU.

    This doesn't mean AMD won't work or be viable or good for FLStudio
    especially if that's all he uses and he hasn't branched out to
    hardware audio gear... I haven't followed what they've done so for
    all I know they might be optimizing for AMD these days, but the
    software is written in Delphi (Pascal) so I doubt it.

    The first thing that comes to mind (and this may be really good news)
    is what ASIO driver is he using? The right one for his audio
    interface? And if his audio interface is the built in motherboard
    audio, that's probably his problem. Just get a decent USB Focusrite
    interface or something and have him switch to that for making music,
    switch back to Realtek mobo audio (or whatever chip is there) when
    playing games if there is an advantage to do so (probably will
    actually sound better through a good audio interface).

    And he may need to experiment with buffer size and latency settings
    for whatever ASIO driver he is using. I don't know how much of this
    is CaptainObvious info, it might be stuff he's already explored.. but
    yeah out of the box on a brand new PC, its probably going to be
    something like Realtek ASIO and that will certainly suck and spike the
    CPU meter.

    Just remember that in FLStudio and most DAWs, the CPU meter seen
    inside the software is not a representation of total CPU on the system
    or of what you'll see if you load Task Manager.


    Most of that goes over my head as while my son is an audiophile I'm not,
    but it's working fine now. The actual problem was with the GPU drivers >getting disabled and it using the on CPU GPU (which even though
    benchmarks I see put it about as good as the GPU he had in the old
    computer, it's obviously much worse as it couldn't even keep up with >FLStudio.)

    We had installed something called ASIO4ALL as that was one of the >troubleshooting steps we came across. He hasn't played any games
    besides Roblox yet and didn't have any complaints after fixing the GPU
    issue.

    He originally wanted a Mac Powerbook last year, but didn't have enough
    money himself and at 3x+ the price of the computer I built him, I
    couldn't justify it at his age yet. Maybe in a couple years if he's
    still doing audio stuff and actually needs it (which I'm not sure of)

    After I wrote that, I remembered the ASIO4ALL driver, I think that
    gets installed with FLStudio and is probably the defacto solution for
    using a sound card inside the computer and more than likely works with
    most sound cards... the last time I used that I had an actual
    dedicated sound card (like CreativeLabs) in the PC so I didn't really
    think about that initially as a solution. Most of what I said will
    apply more if he ever gets to the point where he wants to plug a
    guitar, condensor microphone, or external keyboard (not just a MIDI
    controller but an actual keyboard like a synth that puts its audio
    through TRS jacks).

    Either way, there is always this balance between finding the right
    buffer size, the amount of tolerable latency, overall CPU usage and
    the crackles and dropouts that can happen when the buffer size is too
    low (versus the intolerable input latency of hitting keys when its too
    high).

    The complexity of dealing with latency only gets worse when you start
    dealing with analog instruments sending audio into the computer for
    conversion, not to mention latency from a midi keyboard to DAW and
    then the response from the actual instrument back to the DAW. But the
    software is getting better, to the point where you can quantize the
    final audio post production to the timing you wanted in the first
    place.

    Still no replacement for just playing real analog keyboard directly.
    Just voltage, no MIDI/ASIO/digital audio conversion latency bullshit
    or anything like that, just actual pure musical timing.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Anssi Saari@21:1/5 to Justisaur on Thu Jan 2 12:36:23 2025
    Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com> writes:

    1. Don't buy cases with GLASS panels (I didn't even realize it was
    glass, the one I bought for me is plexiglass)

    This is an interesting point. Turns out the transparent side panel
    option for my case is also glass. Good thing there's a definitely opaque
    sheet metal side panel too which I chose. Case is Define 7 by Fractal
    Design.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)