Reviews for the first wave of the 8GB GeForce 4060 TI are now up.....

https://videocardz.com/156089/nvidia-geforce- … -review-roundup

Desoldered a southbridge from a motherboard and the deep 0 ohm short went away.
Not interesting to solder a spare as it'll cost as much getting a new board (cheap G41M).

Donor board for components, as I have the bordview schematics I have the list of components that are in.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2023-05-25, 12:44:

Reviews for the first wave of the 8GB GeForce 4060 TI are now up.....

https://videocardz.com/156089/nvidia-geforce- … -review-roundup

Hmm so I look at those reviews, see Intel Arc A750 right beside it +/- 5% variation, but available at 60% of the price, and I think, "Damn, am I really thinking about buying an Intel GPU??"

I'm already using an Intel GPU. My main computer is running integrated graphics. I'm not a gamer (and even when I did play games, I didn't like any of the new ones), and I don't do CAD stuff at home.

I found some drivers that technically work for my old StarTech SVID2USB2 in Windows 10. The SVID2USB232 drivers actually support the older eMPIA USB chips used in those low-end USB video capture devices, but the video is stretched horizontally by duplicating columns, which results in something resembling '90s laptop LCD scaling. The old Windows 7 driver still works on my laptop with fully updated Windows 10, but only through AmaRecTV for some reason. That's good enough for me.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-05-26, 14:41:

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2023-05-25, 12:44:

Reviews for the first wave of the 8GB GeForce 4060 TI are now up.....

https://videocardz.com/156089/nvidia-geforce- … -review-roundup

Hmm so I look at those reviews, see Intel Arc A750 right beside it +/- 5% variation, but available at 60% of the price, and I think, "Damn, am I really thinking about buying an Intel GPU??"

When you see what Intel is doing for retro gamers with DX9 support, it is a no-brainer to have an Intel gaming GPU system in your collection.

lti wrote on 2023-05-26, 18:32:

I'm already using an Intel GPU. My main computer is running integrated graphics. I'm not a gamer (and even when I did play games, I didn't like any of the new ones), and I don't do CAD stuff at home.

Yah I was mildly impressed at HD4000 up integrated graphics compared to their GMA crap.

Yesterday bought an Acer AX1930 SFF system for about the price of two big mac meals. Dude seemed to think it had a "quad core" in but nope, dug into it and found boring old Pentium G620 socket 1155. References, Acer themselves even, seem to be confused about what chipset it should be, H61 express or H67.. Since I see H61 on labels on the board Ima go with that. I'm sorta not annoyed too much about the CPU being lowest possible, gives you the excuse right. If it had been upgraded to low i5, you'd be thinking, "Well it's kinda good, but could be better, but it's like 70% of best, so is it really worth spending money to upgrade?"

So, looking into stuffs, guaranteed to work I think is the i7-2600 as it was offered in the range. "Ideal" might be a Intel Xeon E3-1275 v2 ... leaving 1-200mhz on the table to get the highest end intel HD graphics, because that would liberate the expansion slots. Has a GT710 in which ain't super, but aight for media and going backwards a bit for games. Users have claimed to get 22nm ivy bridge CPUs working, but I dunno how working that is, whether the higher versions of SSE4 are properly working etc. Acer etc just say "unverified" etc. BIOS is supposed to be AMI BIOS, I haven't patched in microcode since Tualatin era stuff, so rusty and don't know the tools for this era. ASRock look like they support everything on everything, so might be a good place to snarf donor BIOS from. Seen mentions that H61 is supported by coreboot, so dunno if I want to even contemplate the roll your own approach. Too much braining, when brain out of service some days.

Not seeing the huge price differential you get between C2Quad and Xeon equivs between sandy/ivy i5/i7 and Xeon E3s, though that looks to be because the consumer CPUs seem reasonably priced at this point in time. Woohoo, arrived at something at the bottom of the curve for once 🤣

So, easy out is to scratch up a 2600 for cheap, complicated solution is to try any 3rd gen Ivybridge, (none in 1155 format here to try) where the hard way gets better, longer lasting feature support. Seems a bit of a wash in performance otherwise. Strangely sandy beats ivy on a couple of basic integer/fpu I have seen. Ivy also gets better grunt per watt of course, the 2600 will be 95W and the E3 77W which is worth a consider in a tight little box.

Might get to a local recycler tomorrow that was advertising pick and mix 2/3 gen CPU for cheap. See what's there.

Enjoying listening to 1990’s Music in my Small home theater setup. Reading lyrics and fine tuning AVR settings and Speakers.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2023-05-28, 20:14:

Enjoying listening to 1990’s Music in my Small home theater setup. Reading lyrics and fine tuning AVR settings and Speakers.

What are your AVR and speakers? Mine has JBL 120Ti mains, a single JBL 4410 for center, Celestion 5s for surround speakers, and JBL LX44 for surround-backs --all have titanium dome tweeters, which are great for action films. No Atmos, though. Not interested to jump the AVR upgrade bandwagon.

I have an inexpensive setup I have been working on for years.

My best devices are:

AppleTV 4k ( $120 at Costco )
Sony 4K Blu-ray player ( $200 Costco )
65” 4k TV ( $599 Costco sale )
Klipsch theater front speakers and center channel ( $500 )
Klipsch 12” Subwoofers ( 2 ) ( $150 each at Costco sale )
Klipsch cinema 400 sound bar ( $200 Costco )
Onkyo 6050 AVR ( $399 Costco sale )

Currently setup in 5.2.2 Surround sound Dolby Atmos.
And
Klipsch Sound bar is 2.1 Dolby Digital DTSx

I purchased a Super cheap AVR receiver from Costco the “Onkyo 6050”
It really cheaply built and I only bought it because it was $399 and good receivers are expensive and in short supply during Covid lock down.
I wanted to upgrade my old receiver which did not have HDMI 2.1 and I wanted Dolby Atmos.
The Onkyo works good but it’s just really cheaply built. If I knew how cheaply built it was I would not have bought it.
It is currently working okay and Sounds quality is really good especially in Dolby Atmos. I don’t recommend it however because of its cheap quality and I don’t know how long it will last as these Receivers run very HOT. Get a Used or NEW Denon or Marantz AVR instead.
Maybe next Black Friday I will buy a good one.
I am using cheap bookshelf speakers as surrounds. Which work great as surround satellites. You don’t need expensive Speakers for surrounds.

I am going to upgrade everything to Klipsch bookshelf speakers because for Movies and Music I like Clarity and horns of the
Klipsch speakers. I have the 2 Klipsch subwoofers for bass so I don’t need speakers with allot of base.

I currently have about $2000 invested in this entire system.

I really started getting serious about this during Covid lock down
Thats when I purchased most of the devices at Sale prices.
I don’t want to spend much more because it’s loud enough.

I don’t need Super loud Speakers because my neighbors would kill me.
It’s very loud already and the Subwoofers SHAKE the entire house. We have a Wood Subfloor.
I just want better Bookshelf speakers for Clarity and Detail.
The bookshelf speakers I have right now have a Mellow easy on ears sound for hours of enjoyment but I want more Clarity and Detail
In Movies. I don’t have room for tower speakers. Its a small room.

I have a klipsch cinema 400 sound bar hooked up to my AVR using TOSLINK cable for Everyday TV. When I watch Movies or Listen to Music I turn off the Sound bar and turn on the Surround sound. I mainly use the Sound bar for Everyday TV because I don’t want to disturb the entire house with loud home theater speakers.

If you are just starting out in Home theater I recommend you Start with an AppleTV 4k. This thing is great and affordable. The preferred Movie and Music Streaming device for Home theater enthusiast.

Have been "doin my resurch" on the H61H2 board in that acer and discovered they put it in another model Veriton X2611G which does support 3rd gen and apparently Xeon, need one of the 5/13 BIOSes from that and I should be golden, or at least silver with a slight tinge.

Struck out with that recycler, didn't seem to be open today, (Canada, holiday was last week) bay doors of their industrial unit closed and no lights.

Considering I've got the idea of using this thing as a HTPC, I might pivot to hunting low watt CPU, because guess I don't want WHOOSHHHHHH over the top of movie etc.

Replacing the LCD on my Dell Latitude E6440 (this is it's test drive). The original got cracked. I forgot how fast of a repair man I am at laptops, about 35 minutes later, I had the screen swapped, and the webcam and bezel xferred over from the original screen. The whole thing feels a lot more solid as well. Had to bend the rear charcoal gray aluminum coverplate back so now my battery sits right now and latches in fully. It took quite a hit last weekend.

I spent the weekend building, burning, and dialing in stability and performance for the new dedicated gaming machine. Most of the time was spent with the memory. The CPU I just bumped up BCLK to 102MHz, set PBO to 90 Level 3, Infinity Fabric to 2000MHz, and the 7900 I left as is - it's fast enough. DDR5@6166MHz 30-36-30-34

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was unplayable... unplayable I tell you on a 208o Ti! Benchmarks revealed:

410fps 1080p CPU bound (lowest preset).
310fps 1080p (highest preset)
235fps 1440p (highest preset)

Did you try moslo ? 🤣

Looks like a neat little cube, did it get you worried whether everything would fit?

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-06-20, 03:46:

Did you try moslo ? 🤣

Looks like a neat little cube, did it get you worried whether everything would fit?

No, I checked dimensions before buying; plus, this is this is the second time buying the case, so I had an idea of what I can stuff inside. The bigger issues were concerning this teeny, tiny, ITX motherboard:

A) Impossible to reset the BIOS during tuning with the Graphics card; installed it blocks the jumpers to short and the battery is buried under the rear fan.
B) I could not install any NVMe drives because if any of them ever fail or I want to make a change, I would have to take the entire system apart and remove from the case, and even the tower cooler. So, 2 SSDs and 1 HDD were used to spread I/O. Plus, there's a 5TB HDD USB3 drive attached for backups.

I did not think about these when I bought it, and I didn't have these issues on the last ITX because A - I used an AIO keeping upside NVMe accessible, and B there wasn't a gigantic plate covering the entire board preventing removal of the NVMe on the backside like this board has. Lesson learned for next time.

I upgraded a Windows 11 Home laptop to Windows 11 Pro. This was a lot easier with Windows 10. Before you just typed in the key, and it upgraded; not this time; or at least for this laptop (LG Gram). It kept giving me an invalid key error. I know the key was good because I just pulled it out of the sealed OEI envelope and scratched off the 'scratcher' to reveal the hidden portion of the key. I tried SLUI/SLMGR and CHANGEPK commands, with a few reinstalls attempting to SHIFT+10 the commands before login, (which never prompts for the key since there's a 'Home" key in the EFI), but nothing worked. I finally resorted to DISM, which I hadn't done regularly since the days of XP/2003 and Vista/2008. I removed all indexes in the WIM except for Pro, copied the updated image over to the USB key, and I was then able to get 'Pro' installed and activated.

Examining the Second Generation gaming storage drives...

SteamGames drive - Western Digital Blue Slim 1TB - WD10SPCX
* deleted the SteamGames drive partition
* created a new NTFS partition on the former SteamGames drive (forgot to zero-fill the drive...)

OS drive - Western Digital Blue 1TB - WD10EALS
* imaged the Windows 7 partition on the OS drive to the former SteamGames drive
* deleted the OS drive partitions (Windows7, Windows10)
* zero-filled the OS drive
* error-checking the OS drive [am here now]

Yeah, the old Western Digital drive (WD10EALS) drive does not seem to be well... quite functional otherwise. No reallocated sectors either, just a LOT of hours on the drive. This drive is in a SATA drive enclosure and is connected via an eSATA port to my laptop. During scans, the drive would hang at around 15% (edit: actually 13%) for ~3 minutes before continuing, and now I found out that the drive goes from ~81MB/s and just straight slows down to ~7MB/s at its lowest when the scan to the drive reaches around 50%. (Sis and I actually caught the drive transferring at ~5MB/s at one point while using the Windows10 partition.) It also hangs a bit in a few areas. After this, I will have to examine the drive on a proper desktop setup. The other Western Digital drive (WD10SPCX) seems to be fine.

Edit [1:56 PM EDT]: WD10EALS now has 1 current pending sector. To be honest, I was expecting that at some point...
Edit [2:04 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - 2 current pending sectors.
Edit [2:17 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - 6 current pending sectors. Sis and I came to the consensus that we were glad we moved off the drive as soon as we did.
Edit [3:12 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - 19 current pending sectors. Scan speed is pretty much normal again. The area that was the Windows10 partition had issues; seemingly the first half. The second half seems fine...
Edit [6:25 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - a zero-fill now brings the Current Pending Sector Count to 0 but Reallocated Sector Count remains at 0. Had a Western Digital 80GB portable external drive do this a few years ago; after a few passes with no noticeable improvement, I shelved that one for like two years and it fixed itself (?!).
Edit [8:21 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - Slows down a bit in a few areas rather than outright hanging this time. An improvement.
Edit [9:58 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - Drive is in mostly working order now. Better outcome than its same model sibling, which has over 500 reallocated sectors and has failed SMART some years ago.

AmiSapphire wrote on 2023-06-30, 16:48:

Examining the Second Generation gaming storage drives... […]
Show full quote

Examining the Second Generation gaming storage drives...

SteamGames drive - Western Digital Blue Slim 1TB - WD10SPCX
* deleted the SteamGames drive partition
* created a new NTFS partition on the former SteamGames drive (forgot to zero-fill the drive...)

OS drive - Western Digital Blue 1TB - WD10EALS
* imaged the Windows 7 partition on the OS drive to the former SteamGames drive
* deleted the OS drive partitions (Windows7, Windows10)
* zero-filled the OS drive
* error-checking the OS drive [am here now]

Yeah, the old Western Digital drive (WD10EALS) drive does not seem to be well... quite functional otherwise. No reallocated sectors either, just a LOT of hours on the drive. This drive is in a SATA drive enclosure and is connected via an eSATA port to my laptop. During scans, the drive would hang at around 15% (edit: actually 13%) for ~3 minutes before continuing, and now I found out that the drive goes from ~81MB/s and just straight slows down to ~7MB/s at its lowest when the scan to the drive reaches around 50%. (Sis and I actually caught the drive transferring at ~5MB/s at one point while using the Windows10 partition.) It also hangs a bit in a few areas. After this, I will have to examine the drive on a proper desktop setup. The other Western Digital drive (WD10SPCX) seems to be fine.

Edit [1:56 PM EDT]: WD10EALS now has 1 current pending sector. To be honest, I was expecting that at some point...
Edit [2:04 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - 2 current pending sectors.
Edit [2:17 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - 6 current pending sectors. Sis and I came to the consensus that we were glad we moved off the drive as soon as we did.
Edit [3:12 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - 19 current pending sectors. Scan speed is pretty much normal again. The area that was the Windows10 partition had issues; seemingly the first half. The second half seems fine...
Edit [6:25 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - a zero-fill now brings the Current Pending Sector Count to 0 but Reallocated Sector Count remains at 0. Had a Western Digital 80GB portable external drive do this a few years ago; after a few passes with no noticeable improvement, I shelved that one for like two years and it fixed itself (?!).
Edit [8:21 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - Slows down a bit in a few areas rather than outright hanging this time. An improvement.
Edit [9:58 PM EDT]: WD10EALS - Drive is in mostly working order now. Better outcome than its same model sibling, which has over 500 reallocated sectors and has failed SMART some years ago.

Run gsmartcontrol on this one, it is tiny program in seconds can display SMART attributes and look for uncorrectable sectors or other errors. If there any, toss the hard drive and get another.

Cheers,

I return; the drive has no UNCs (uncorrectable sectors).

Saturday, I plugged in the 1TB Western Digital WD10EALS to the old Second Generation gaming build to scan the drive, and the 13% hang (hang at 139GB event) does not occur on that setup, just the usual slow sectors, primarily at where the Windows7 partition was. That drive no longer exhibits the 5MB/s behavior after the first zero-fill. Then, I connected that drive to the main NAS, formatted it and mounted it. After that, I ran a Long Test, which passed. Most of that day was spent messing with the 3x 2TB drives with the old NAS data on it until Sunday rolls around.

Sunday (yesterday) was spent migrating the main NAS to another board, as even running a routine consistency check would hang the system. Before this, I managed to knock over the 1TB Toshiba drive to the floor while data was being written to it! (Specifically, imaging an 80GB SATA drive.) The drive is surprisingly fine; its raw G-Sense Error Rate went up as a result, though. After the migration to the new board, I manually ran a consistency check, and it does not hang the system this time.

Monday (today) was spent getting the old 3x 2TB drives running on a different system... then I re-discovered my old temp XigmaNAS boot drive of when I migrated to larger 4x 4TB drives, making this task easier. While setting that up, I managed to knock over that very 1TB Western Digital WD10EALS drive to the floor while it was running! (To be honest, I should've relocated it temporarily.) Surprisingly, THAT drive is fine as well. This makes a total of three knocked over drives, of which three are still functional.

Both NASes are now running, but rest is needed.

1smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE amd64] (local build)
2Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
3
4=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
5Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Blue (SATA)
6Device Model:     WDC WD10EALS-00Z8A0
7Serial Number:    WD-WCATR1604140
8LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2af47082e
9Firmware Version: 05.01D05
10User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
11Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
12Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5319
13ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
14SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
15Local Time is:    Mon Jul  3 13:09:27 2023 EDT
16SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
17SMART support is: Enabled
18
19=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
20SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
21
22General SMART Values:
23Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
24                                        was completed without error.
25                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
26Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
27                                        without error or no self-test has ever
28                                        been run.
29Total time to complete Offline
30data collection:                (15960) seconds.
31Offline data collection
32capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
33                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
34                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
35                                        command.
36                                        Offline surface scan supported.
37                                        Self-test supported.
38                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
39                                        Selective Self-test supported.
40SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
41                                        power-saving mode.
42                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
43Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
44                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
45Short self-test routine
46recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
47Extended self-test routine
48recommended polling time:        ( 185) minutes.
49Conveyance self-test routine
50recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
51SCT capabilities:              (0x3037) SCT Status supported.
52                                        SCT Feature Control supported.
53                                        SCT Data Table supported.
54
55SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
56Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
57ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
58  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
59  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   181   169   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       3916
60  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age   Always       -       3621

61  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
62  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
63  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       74281
64 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
65 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
66 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       598
67192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       169
68193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       3451
69194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   102   087   000    Old_age   Always       -       45
70196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
71197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
72198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
73199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
74200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   196   138   000    Old_age   Offline      -       874
75
76SMART Error Log Version: 1
77No Errors Logged
78
79SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
80Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
81# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%      8711         -
82# 2  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%       498         -
83# 3  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%       106         -
84# 4  Conveyance offline  Completed without error       00%         0         -
85
86SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
87 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
88    1        0        0  Not_testing
89    2        0        0  Not_testing
90    3        0        0  Not_testing
91    4        0        0  Not_testing
92    5        0        0  Not_testing
93Selective self-test flags (0x0):
94  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
95If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

Alienware Area 51 A11b bios successfully flashed to the XPS 730x. RX 480 4gb installed, and everything just works fantastic now. Guess it's time to try out a Xeon on it xD