Somehow the day got away from me and only fiddled around with my soldering gear, patching cords so I don't get electrocuted etc, tip maintenance, general futzing. Tomorrow, we ride! ... maybe.

Bought a RTX 4090, actually got it on sale for less than I bought my 3080ti for, sold the 3080ti which made the 4090 even cheaper, pretty much doubled my FPS from the 3080ti. Was a painless install too, just changed the cards over and booted up the PC, didn't even need to update drivers card just worked out of the box.

Actually got one of the few 3 slot 4090 cards too, its also smaller than most 4090s which will make it easier when I move it to my 5950x Mini-ITX build.

Currently typing about 2 murder mystery novels and a movie script just using my imagination. That and posts I've seen on Imgur (one about Casper that killed 8 of 11 coyotes, which is going to be a movie script and it's a work in progress, however, it needs to be 90-120 pages long) and this is all for fun and I figured I'd give them a shot.

Woohoo, soldered up my 4 pin PWM to 3 pin fan convertor board... looks a bit grim though... my favorite soldering iron of 15+ years turned up dead earlier this year, so I'm struggling to get used to alternatives. It doesn't help they're all about 1" longer from the handle, so all my wobbles are magnified that much more. The one I was using, I'd been used to having a small bead on the tip, helped start the heat transfer, and would pull off the same bead when you took it off. This one is a narrow conical, and although the tip wets it doesn't hold a bead and pulls off without, leading to much blobbier joints thus far. No pic though at the moment, my phone died. Anyway, should have picked a much easier project to relearn soldering with a "new" iron, I made this one on as small a piece of board as possible.

You know what though, this iron should be much easier for surface mount, since it won't drag the speck of dust part away with it. Though I did have a turn of the wrist pinch off maneuver with the other one.

Got too late to test it, besides wanna check it with fresh eyes tomorrow. Figure I'll try it with 12V, should go full blast, then apply 5V to PWM input and that should cut it off (Pulse is inverse so applying 100% mark then 100% space effectively) .... though wait a sec it's tied high... apply ground to it first to get full blast I guess.

Hokay, bench tested it. Fans go brrrrrrrrr.

Installed on card... waiting for lightning to clear out of the area before I fire up desktops though. Power blinks have killed stuff on me before, and even the more benign brownout is not something I want to deal with in the middle of trying to test something.

Don't really expect to be able to tell anything much from these pics, the circuit is the one previously linked, first post top of page, https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/so … pin-fan.115752/ hokay though I'll snarf it and upload it, in case it disappears in time...

Yay it works, but boo, it doesn't work. Turn on PC, fans on card come on, blow, begins loading windows, driver loads just before login screen, fans turn off... but that's fine, it's at like 18W power use on desktop... they'll turn on if I load it... and load it some more... and load it... crap, GPU-Z shows fan power demanded but it's not happening. Theoretically, top temperature for this thing is 83C... I am chickening out at 80, still no fan.... oddly, it seems to give the odd blurp at random times. RPM is showing wrong also keeps flashing up to 750,000, not sure if it's picking up EMI off the SATA cable or something. Have loaded Afterburner and put the fan slider up to 100... nothing.

BUT ... is it me or them? Lots of chatter about Asus 1060 cards being weird with the fans, and some special driver combo and moon/planet alignment required to get it working, *sigh* and since this is a used card, unsure whether BIOS fan profiles have been messed with.

Then also ... do I want to fix it on this test system? .. it's the AMD Athlon II X2 again running windows 7... I am putting this card in an M83 i7 4770 running windows 10, ultimately... do I assume this is normal stupid shit that is not worth the time to mess around with on this system and build out the M83 and deal with the problems there.

The known 1060 fan issues have been called system specific, it might not even do it in the other box. Or it might be a simple fix on this one and 3 years hard labor fix on the other. So I dunno, card can turn fan on, seen at boot, card can turn fan off, seen at login, in between, is that software snafu or hardware fubar ???

edit: just started wondering, did later series of cards start using 3.3V logic for their PWM signal??? I can't find any references or real datasheets for known fan models. Though since I have 4 pin fans known to be good for 10x0 series and later, I will try one on the header alone and see what happens. Also might just try the fans as is with the pwm header pin slid out, so I can assess max cooling potential.

editII: Had it on a ubuntu 22.x desktop the other day and the fans are turning there, not full blast, I wanna say about 40%, didn't have a doohickey lined up to check... (installs are 4 gigabytes of nothing these days, they used to be packed with utils on a CD install)

So for my 1060 fan control problem I've just been "letting it marinate" meaning not doing anything rash and seeing if understanding or amazing idea pops into my head about it. Meanwhile I come across things like this for the Asus Dual 1060s (Which this is one of) where users say this is normal behavior... (See image)

It is running a 3Dmark in that, not sure if 11 or Vantage, anyway, I know that while those test everything they don't actually go all the way for maxing power consumption/heat output, ~80% ish. I also know heatpipes "get going" above a certain temperature where the fluid is boiling and the sonic speed transfer fires up, so not sure if that's part of it. But dang, seems like a bit of a high temp to be playing around at... well at least when you're not sure if your fans are going to cut in and how quick they'll drop the temp.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-08-04, 17:52:

So for my 1060 fan control problem I've just been "letting it marinate" meaning not doing anything rash and seeing if understanding or amazing idea pops into my head about it. Meanwhile I come across things like this for the Asus Dual 1060s (Which this is one of) where users say this is normal behavior... (See image)

It is running a 3Dmark in that, not sure if 11 or Vantage, anyway, I know that while those test everything they don't actually go all the way for maxing power consumption/heat output, ~80% ish. I also know heatpipes "get going" above a certain temperature where the fluid is boiling and the sonic speed transfer fires up, so not sure if that's part of it. But dang, seems like a bit of a high temp to be playing around at... well at least when you're not sure if your fans are going to cut in and how quick they'll drop the temp.

Rerun with GPU temp on and GPU load on to see more detail. There is reasons behind these.

PS: heat pipes does not need so much temp to go live. Heat pipe keep working even 10C difference from ambient temp. In fact, Switch worked off 5c difference too.

What makes cooling "seemingly" work better is temp difference, more easier to radiate off as heatsink itself gets more hotter not the heatpipe. In other words fan speed is set too low for given temps or too small.

Cheers,

Finished setting up my NEW Daily Drivers and Home Theater Media Server.

I am using HP z440 Workstations loaded with Win-10-Pro ( $120 )
I have installed 64gb DDR4 ECC REG RAM ( $50 )
Nvidia Geforce Gt730 or 3060ti
Xeon 1660v4 ( 8-cores, 16-threads ) ( $50 )
Sound Cards - Creative X3 and Audigy 2ZS ( Motherboard has a ONE PCI Slot for sound card )
Blu-ray drives
LSI HBA SAS Controller with cables ( $70 )
And 8 large capacity hard drives in Media Server Build and 6 large capacity hard drives in Daily driver computer.
2tb Intel 670p Nvme SSD Boot drive ( $60 )

And I still have 6 Sata connections left on the Motherboards
And I can add More Nvme drives via a Quad PCIe Nvme Adapter.
So I have tons of room for more expansion.

This is most customizable and expandable HP Z series computer.
All you have to do is add an internal drive cage and LSI HBA SAS controller which I purchased on eBay for cheap.

These computers should lasts me 3 more years I hope.

These are the best deals on eBay right now as they are selling for about $100

They run and perform really good with Win-10-Pro
CPU Idles at 0-3%
Memory usage is 6gb with 58gb Available.

Each one cost me about $350 in parts not including hard drives and video cards.

NAS Parts Breakdown Cost:
HP z440 computer ( $120 ) eBay
Xeon 1660v4 ( $50 ) eBay
Internal hard drive cage ( $25 ) eBay
64gb 2133p ECC Memory ( $50 ) eBay
LSI 9300-8i HBA SAS Adapter with Sata Cables ( $70 ) eBay
Nvidia GT730 Video card. ( $50 ) ebay
Main Boot Nvme gen 3 SSD with PCIe adapter ( Intel 670p , 2tb ( $80 )
( NAS Grade Hard drives costs extra ) ( 8 x 20tb = 160 Terra bytes )

This will be my Last Full Size PC.
I am going to go all Nvme Gen. 5 Mini PC’s with an Nvme gen 5 NAS after this.

To break news to you:

1 and half years till Windows 11 in 2025, then needs new computer but you can use 10 but no updates and not secure, and lot of nags from microsoft to upgrade to 11 but your Z440 is one of found in unsupported list.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-08-07, 19:19:

To break news to you:

1 and half years till Windows 11 in 2025, then needs new computer but you can use 10 but no updates and not secure, and lot of nags from microsoft to upgrade to 11 but your Z440 is one of found in unsupported list.

Cheers,

Yes, So I have 2 more years of Win-10 support which if fine. By that time Nvme SSD price per Terabyte should come down
And I can build Super fast large capacity Gen 5 Nvme computers.

The motherboard support for Nvme gen 5 SSD is just not well supported right now and large capacity Nvme gen 5 drives are too expensive.

These HP z440 will run with Win-11 but the Hard drive Raid controller is not supported. Maybe someone will give it support later ?
But if you use Nvme 4x adapter you can have 4 Nvme drives in this computer. Also you can use a third part Raid controller from LSI or Adaptec which has plug-n-play support in Win-11. Either way I plan on using Mini-PC’s after this computer is Done. What is really holding me back right now is the Support and cost of Gen. 5 Nvme drives.

I was helping my mate with some new PC components today and noticed right off the bat that Windows -- the Pro edition, no less -- activated itself as soon as we connected to the net!

is this a thing now? Are motherboards aimed at DIYers shipping with Windows licenses baked into the UEFI? The motherboard in question is an Asrock B650M AM5 board, brand new from Newegg. The SSD? Also brand new, with no previous OS installed. I'm now wishing that I had paid a little more attention to the packaging before violently ripping it open. I'm 99% sure, though, that it was completely sealed. The UEFI settings, date & time were all set to factory defaults. There's no mention of an included Windows license anywhere on the box or in the documentation. Definitely bizarre!

Anyway, he's chuffed to bits because he hasn't purchased a license yet, and now it looks like he won't have to.

I bought a Logitech G502 Hero to replace the first new mouse I bought, in 2012. Cooler Master Xornet that was $15 on sale, USB Male connector finally just wore out, the contacts are barely there and missing in some places. Hopefully I can solder a new cable or connector onto it.

With Logitechs recent quality level I don't expect it to last 11 years, but man it is smooooth.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2023-08-10, 22:43:

I was helping my mate with some new PC components today and noticed right off the bat that Windows -- the Pro edition, no less -- activated itself as soon as we connected to the net!

is this a thing now? Are motherboards aimed at DIYers shipping with Windows licenses baked into the UEFI? The motherboard in question is an Asrock B650M AM5 board, brand new from Newegg. The SSD? Also brand new, with no previous OS installed. I'm now wishing that I had paid a little more attention to the packaging before violently ripping it open. I'm 99% sure, though, that it was completely sealed. The UEFI settings, date & time were all set to factory defaults. There's no mention of an included Windows license anywhere on the box or in the documentation. Definitely bizarre!

Anyway, he's chuffed to bits because he hasn't purchased a license yet, and now it looks like he won't have to.

I have had the same experience with Win-10 and 11 over the last couple of years. They just activate themselves.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2023-08-10, 22:43:

I was helping my mate with some new PC components today and noticed right off the bat that Windows -- the Pro edition, no less -- activated itself as soon as we connected to the net!

is this a thing now? Are motherboards aimed at DIYers shipping with Windows licenses baked into the UEFI? The motherboard in question is an Asrock B650M AM5 board, brand new from Newegg. The SSD? Also brand new, with no previous OS installed. I'm now wishing that I had paid a little more attention to the packaging before violently ripping it open. I'm 99% sure, though, that it was completely sealed. The UEFI settings, date & time were all set to factory defaults. There's no mention of an included Windows license anywhere on the box or in the documentation. Definitely bizarre!

Anyway, he's chuffed to bits because he hasn't purchased a license yet, and now it looks like he won't have to.

Run "slmgr /dlv" on admin prompt to see which type of license you are using.

Auto activation like this only occurs with oem licenses (should be "oem_dm") which is weird as, to my knowledge, single motherboards are not shipped with oem licenses. Maybe an entire Asrock pre-built could have an oem lic, but doubtful on single components like mobo.

If ths lic does not say "oem_xxx", it's retail lic and the board is definately not new (must be second hand with the previous owner having activated win 10/11 with it). If this is the case it could be deactivated anytime.. if the previous owner decides to transfer this win10/11 license to a new machine, or if microsoft deem it now invalid. No need to get a new one though until/if it ever gets deacitvated, but there is a large possiblity this could happen.

spiroyster wrote on 2023-08-11, 10:53:

Run "slmgr /dlv" on admin prompt to see which type of license you are using. […]
Show full quote

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2023-08-10, 22:43:

I was helping my mate with some new PC components today and noticed right off the bat that Windows -- the Pro edition, no less -- activated itself as soon as we connected to the net!

is this a thing now? Are motherboards aimed at DIYers shipping with Windows licenses baked into the UEFI? The motherboard in question is an Asrock B650M AM5 board, brand new from Newegg. The SSD? Also brand new, with no previous OS installed. I'm now wishing that I had paid a little more attention to the packaging before violently ripping it open. I'm 99% sure, though, that it was completely sealed. The UEFI settings, date & time were all set to factory defaults. There's no mention of an included Windows license anywhere on the box or in the documentation. Definitely bizarre!

Anyway, he's chuffed to bits because he hasn't purchased a license yet, and now it looks like he won't have to.

Run "slmgr /dlv" on admin prompt to see which type of license you are using.

Auto activation like this only occurs with oem licenses (should be "oem_dm") which is weird as, to my knowledge, single motherboards are not shipped with oem licenses. Maybe an entire Asrock pre-built could have an oem lic, but doubtful on single components like mobo.

If ths lic does not say "oem_xxx", it's retail lic and the board is definately not new (must be second hand with the previous owner having activated win 10/11 with it). If this is the case it could be deactivated anytime.. if the previous owner decides to transfer this win10/11 license to a new machine, or if microsoft deem it now invalid. No need to get a new one though until/if it ever gets deacitvated, but there is a large possiblity this could happen.

Hey, thanks for the tip! I no longer have the machine with me, but I'll ask him to take a look at that. I'm still super curious, as the last all-new machine I built -- an Asus AM4/5900X I pieced together for myself 2 years ago -- certainly didn't auto-activate out of the box.

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2023-08-10, 22:43:

I was helping my mate with some new PC components today and noticed right off the bat that Windows -- the Pro edition, no less -- activated itself as soon as we connected to the net!

is this a thing now? Are motherboards aimed at DIYers shipping with Windows licenses baked into the UEFI? The motherboard in question is an Asrock B650M AM5 board, brand new from Newegg. The SSD? Also brand new, with no previous OS installed. I'm now wishing that I had paid a little more attention to the packaging before violently ripping it open. I'm 99% sure, though, that it was completely sealed. The UEFI settings, date & time were all set to factory defaults. There's no mention of an included Windows license anywhere on the box or in the documentation. Definitely bizarre!

Anyway, he's chuffed to bits because he hasn't purchased a license yet, and now it looks like he won't have to.

Did he or you sign into a Microsoft account and the Internet while setting it up? The XPS 730X was a Vista machine, but when my dad signed into his Microsoft account during setup with Internet connection it auto installed 10 Pro and activated it, which I found odd.

Attempted to get my 980ti FE working. It blue screens during installing drivers, despite Nvidia driver setup identifying the card successfully. Windows insists that no display adapter exists.

Yesterday I decided to continue to dump all commercial Operating Systems on my at home machines. For the last year I have run OS X, Windows 10, and LInux Mint on a triple boot iMac late 2015 21.5" computer, and found that LInux Mint was the one I was happiest with.

Windows still pisses me off with having to dedicate cloud space to my product keys, and then losing them, constant advertising, constant huranging to give up Firefox for Edge, constant settings being changed back after updates, turning off automatic updates, turning ON automatic updates, and updates that behave like an unruly teenager - they do what they want, when they want, unless I constantly discipline it to do what I want. They also want you to buy O365 and engage in their cloud based Ecosystem via the "Windows Store" of "Approved Apps"....not much unlike....

OS X has massive shortcomings as well. It won't run 32-bit software, which is most of my games, and solutions to get around this 3/4ths of the time involve installing ANOTHER Operating System either on a VM or via Bootcamp (which does not always work), or forking out more $$$ for Parallels. It also takes 4x the time it takes to Install Windows and 10x the time to install Linux, and it's boot time pales compared to windows 10. Updates are about as irritating leading to the system hanging and popping up the "Force Quit" Menu after a time. Also, as much as this is a*nix OS, you don't really have as much control over it (without convoluted, long attempts to reverse what Apple did to keep computer illiterates illiterate), so I get irriated. The screensavers look nice though, and before you start altering things it does run okay though.

Linux Mint won out because I can run most Windows and DOS apps on it, it does not hurang me with advertising, or constantly tell me to sign up for some bloody "cloud" somewhere. My only problems with LInux Mint is the irritating USB filters in VirtualBox (I need to figure that one out, I Use Win2K in Virtualbox to manage my vintage PC Hard Disks), and it not wanting to read certain hard disks due to their DDOs, or having a FAT-16 partition scheme, plus a few audio guffaws. But I've decided, with as open as it is to user modification - it's better for the technical stuff I like to do, plus I always use 5-10 year old PCs anyway, including old intel-based Macs like the iMac. and best of all, it's FREE.

creepingnet wrote on 2023-08-21, 16:25:

Yesterday I decided to continue to dump all commercial Operating Systems on my at home machines. For the last year I have run O […]
Show full quote

Yesterday I decided to continue to dump all commercial Operating Systems on my at home machines. For the last year I have run OS X, Windows 10, and LInux Mint on a triple boot iMac late 2015 21.5" computer, and found that LInux Mint was the one I was happiest with.

Windows still pisses me off with having to dedicate cloud space to my product keys, and then losing them, constant advertising, constant huranging to give up Firefox for Edge, constant settings being changed back after updates, turning off automatic updates, turning ON automatic updates, and updates that behave like an unruly teenager - they do what they want, when they want, unless I constantly discipline it to do what I want. They also want you to buy O365 and engage in their cloud based Ecosystem via the "Windows Store" of "Approved Apps"....not much unlike....

OS X has massive shortcomings as well. It won't run 32-bit software, which is most of my games, and solutions to get around this 3/4ths of the time involve installing ANOTHER Operating System either on a VM or via Bootcamp (which does not always work), or forking out more $$$ for Parallels. It also takes 4x the time it takes to Install Windows and 10x the time to install Linux, and it's boot time pales compared to windows 10. Updates are about as irritating leading to the system hanging and popping up the "Force Quit" Menu after a time. Also, as much as this is a*nix OS, you don't really have as much control over it (without convoluted, long attempts to reverse what Apple did to keep computer illiterates illiterate), so I get irriated. The screensavers look nice though, and before you start altering things it does run okay though.

Linux Mint won out because I can run most Windows and DOS apps on it, it does not hurang me with advertising, or constantly tell me to sign up for some bloody "cloud" somewhere. My only problems with LInux Mint is the irritating USB filters in VirtualBox (I need to figure that one out, I Use Win2K in Virtualbox to manage my vintage PC Hard Disks), and it not wanting to read certain hard disks due to their DDOs, or having a FAT-16 partition scheme, plus a few audio guffaws. But I've decided, with as open as it is to user modification - it's better for the technical stuff I like to do, plus I always use 5-10 year old PCs anyway, including old intel-based Macs like the iMac. and best of all, it's FREE.

Buy a HP Elitedesk 8300 tower with i5 or i7. These have COA key burnt into the motherboard for windows 7 and 10 using win7 key COA. It can also can take XP due to XP drivers online at HP's but need COA for this.
It takes long video card if it has 1 6 pin plug. If you need use a GPU eg: GTX 285 for example, you have to go to Z220 using i7 ivy bridge due to dual 6 pin power connectors and yes, it will work with XP due to drivers too.

Not to mention these HP towers are inexpensive.

Cheers,