The unimportant news thread

drogulus · June 26, 2020, 08:31:30 AM

Quote from: greg on June 26, 2020, 07:01:31 AM
Pretty sure I've heard the clicking before years ago at one point. I have two external drives but am trying to replace them by putting stuff on flash drives. No moving parts, no clicking, much safer. I would have done this a long time ago but it has taken so long for really large capacity flash drives to either exist or be affordable. Of course, there's also SSDs, but cables suck.

Flash drives suck worse. The best one ever, the Samsung CZ80, is no longer made.

What capacity do you need, and what's the budget?

greg · June 26, 2020, 08:45:34 AM

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on June 26, 2020, 07:48:54 AM
Any idea roughly how large the flash drives can be these days? And what kinds of prices for a reliable brand?

PD

Search Amazon. SanDisk seems to be an okay brand... just avoid cheap Chinese stuff. 256 gb is like $30-50 nowadays. 1tb is like 100 or 200 bucks, years ago when I wanted one there only existed one model and was crazy expensive, I think over $500.

Quote from: drogulus on June 26, 2020, 08:27:23 AM
I do discs and downloads of movies and TV. Often the files are very gigantic, and instead of choosing from available smaller ones I like to squinch them myself. It's a hobby of sorts, and a way of learning how to manage the total size of the archive without losing quality.

I ripped the BD box set Of The Wire which is 598 GB. Now I'm working on the project of slimming it down. Even saving 100 GB of HD space is a good thing, and I should be able to do that without any noticeable degradation in VQ. In some cases getting rid of foreign subs and alternative soundtracks saves lots of space, too.

If you're doing that then... yeah, flash drives wouldn't really be enough.

drogulus · June 26, 2020, 09:12:50 AM

I have the best file player in the free world (made in China by communist elves), and I like to re-watch old favorites from time to time, on my own schedule and not subject to the whims of streaming services. Therefore I need to continually add to my collection, and that means I need more space. Some comes from more and ever larger hard drives and some comes from re-encoding what I've got.

drogulus · June 26, 2020, 03:30:54 PM

Samsung MUF-256AB/AM FIT Plus 256GB - 300MB/s USB 3.1 Flash Drive

This would be good for a laptop.

Pohjolas Daughter · June 26, 2020, 03:35:18 PM

Thanks Greg and Drojulus!

PD

drogulus · June 27, 2020, 12:30:52 PM

Another thing about video encoding is I don't like to fuss with subtitles and some files/disks have a bunch of them. So what I do is remove all of them unless there's a forced track, one for foreign audio. That one I burn to the file so it will play on any device anywhere.

greg · June 27, 2020, 01:18:12 PM

Speaking of computer issues, I'm diagnosing computer issues so I can finally get my workflow going again for my music production... and music will be the most important thing I create, most likely, so kinda important...

Bought a new power supply, $200... but thinking it's incompatible with my old video card, possibly? And also it seems that wasn't the cause of the issue...

The root problem I was having I've finally narrowed down to only 2 likely things, but there was another possible problem causing another problem which started the whole thing... basically that probably might have been the CMOS battery, which I replaced. The voltage it was showing on my multimeter was exactly .1 volts above the number where it starts going bad, so if it's that close, on the fence, how do I even know for sure that was the cause of the problem? (resetting clock)

Having to breadboard the motherboard to work on this... fun weekend.

greg · June 27, 2020, 07:00:21 PM

Well... replacing the CMOS battery really does fix the clock on Windows.

Too bad the extra issues I have now make zero sense. The "no video output" issue was apparently improperly seated RAM? But when I started having that issue, I hadn't even touched the RAM. That's fixed now, but after hooking up the graphics card again, I can't get that to work, only onboard graphics are working, and that is unacceptable.

drogulus · June 27, 2020, 08:01:22 PM

Quote from: greg on June 27, 2020, 07:00:21 PM
Well... replacing the CMOS battery really does fix the clock on Windows.

Too bad the extra issues I have now make zero sense. The "no video output" issue was apparently improperly seated RAM? But when I started having that issue, I hadn't even touched the RAM. That's fixed now, but after hooking up the graphics card again, I can't get that to work, only onboard graphics are working, and that is unacceptable.

I'm hopeless with the physical side of fixing things. I'd probably take it out and put it back in. If I got a black screen I'd curl up and die, then I'd shut down and plug the monitor into the mobo HDMI and reinstall the graphics card drivers and make sure the card was enabled in Device Manager.

greg · June 27, 2020, 10:11:39 PM

Quote from: drogulus on June 27, 2020, 08:01:22 PM
I'm hopeless with the physical side of fixing things. I'd probably take it out and put it back in. If I got a black screen I'd curl up and die, then I'd shut down and plug the monitor into the mobo HDMI and reinstall the graphics card drivers and make sure the card was enabled in Device Manager.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking into... thing is, when trying to connect the GPU to the PSU, nothing will start... if GPU is inserted but not connected to the PSU, the fan will spin like crazy...
that's where I left off today... still leaves some room for more testing, at least...

greg · June 27, 2020, 10:12:32 PM

People Who Like Dark Humor Are More Intelligent, Study Finds

https://www.studyfinds.org/study-dark-black-humor-intelligence/

Wasn't this a widely shared study a few years ago? Seems familiar...

drogulus · June 28, 2020, 06:22:43 AM

When I bought my PC 2 years ago I installed a graphics card I chose because it was the most powerful one that didn't need a power connector.

greg · June 28, 2020, 12:12:34 PM

Whoa, didn't know there were GPUs that didn't even need a power connector. That would make things simpler. Though probably none of the really good ones have that feature.

Mine is the GTX 760, was great, though not the best when I got it 6 years ago.

So I'm almost there... got my GPU back up and running with my new PSU, and everything is fine... except nope. The fan noise is insane now, it's about to take off to orbit.

So how did I solve 2 of the 3 issues I was facing during my repairs. Absolutely no idea what the solution was, since I tried multiple things each time... seems that's the only way to fix anything- reading forums about one thing at a time to try to understand what's wrong (and therefore what the solution is) seems to not do the trick, you gotta screw around with everything at once.

And no, my GPU never had this fan problem before...

drogulus · June 28, 2020, 02:24:57 PM

The GTX 1050 Ti benchmarks better than yours and doesn't need a power connector.

greg · June 28, 2020, 03:25:22 PM

Quote from: drogulus on June 28, 2020, 02:24:57 PM
The GTX 1050 Ti benchmarks better than yours and doesn't need a power connector.

Thanks for the suggestion. The whole day is gone and no solution, not sure what else to try. It does detect when the cables aren't connected, the HDMI is plugged into the GPU (instead of motherboard), and the programs that let you change fan speed won't even allow me to change it (apparently a common problem with no software-related solution). Besides the crazy fan noise everything is totally fine. (also my PSU, new one and old one, are both 650W which is well over what is needed).

I might end up updating the graphics card, and something better that also doesn't need power connectors would be perfect. So looking into this...

greg · June 28, 2020, 07:52:21 PM

Ordered this:
https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gtx-1650-super-ph-gtx1650s-o4g/p/N82E16814126357?nm_mc=otc-hatch&cm_mmc=vendor-nvidia

The GTX 1650 Super is basically the best GPU you can get under $200 new. It's funny that the original 1650 was a complete bust (bad deal for the price), but then they release this "Super" version which is actually good.

(there's a comparison tool you can use, and I've ran it to prove this statement... and plus, it just outright embarasses my current 6-year old GTX 760 GPU).

It does have one connection for PSU, but not sure if it's needed or not... regardless, it's just one 6-pin connection, thankfully (my current GPU has an 6 pin AND an 8 pin, so it increases the variables of what could be the problem with more connections).

Getting it in a few days, hopefully this will do the trick.

Todd · June 29, 2020, 04:40:34 AM

Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown mistakenly included in BET Awards 'In Memoriam' segment

drogulus · June 29, 2020, 07:03:19 AM

Quote from: greg on June 28, 2020, 07:52:21 PM
Ordered this:
https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-gtx-1650-super-ph-gtx1650s-o4g/p/N82E16814126357?nm_mc=otc-hatch&cm_mmc=vendor-nvidia

I saw that one after my last comment. I see its Passmark score is 7800.

drogulus · July 06, 2020, 11:30:43 AM

I now have 4 8TB HDs in my system. One is for general use, and the 3 others are for Movies, Collections, and a separate one for 2160p, so I won't mistakenly include them when loading a portable drive for someone who can't play them, and for other reasons I haven't thought of yet.

greg · July 06, 2020, 12:42:56 PM

Quote from: drogulus on July 06, 2020, 11:30:43 AM
I now have 4 8TB HDs in my system. One is for general use, and the 3 others are for Movies, Collections, and a separate one for 2160p, so I won't mistakenly include them when loading a portable drive for someone who can't play them, and for other reasons I haven't thought of yet.

That's quite the amount of space. Still waiting for my GPU... Covid delays, maybe.