PC Pc Gaming/building thread

[dwwaino]

I real FML moment.

Have recently been receiving messages from various games that I need TPM 2.0 and secure boot.
And the messages vary. Some will threaten an inability to play, or a set day where these would need be rectified to play said game.

Mine was based around the bios version.
So I updated the bios and then returned to a blank desktop and all my taskbar pinned programs missing.

Couldn't find desktop manually as it gave a 'one drive' missing message for the drive location. Re-subscribed to one drive (begrudgingly) and still nothing. Then saw that the drive that contained desktop was missing.

Went into bios and saw that my x16 pcie slot had defaulted from the bifurcation settings I had for my NVME hyperdrive.
... and problem solved.

Now I have a month of that one drive garbage

I consider myself pretty competent with tech but a lot of this TPM, secure boot, bitlocker etc stuff I find a bit confusing and I don't know how regular normies manage. I had to enable secure boot to play BF6 and I'm too scared to turn it off if I ever need. My drives have locks on them which I always assumed was Bitlocker but apparently Windows Home doesn't have Bitlocker as that's for Pro so I've got some other thing. At no point has Windows ever told me about recovery keys (unless I missed it) and it was a random Reddit thread I was reading once to locate my recovery keys from my Microsoft account should I need them. I found them but nothing about it was intuitive.

This has sometimes made me wonder if it's worth getting into systems admin as a career as it's probably one area of IT that AI won't be able to manage.

 

[dav3]

This has sometimes made me wonder if it's worth getting into systems admin as a career as it's probably one area of IT that AI won't be able to manage.

Depends on how much you hate your life and mental health

I'm currently sysadmin for our servers, Active Directory and Azure, SCCM, Intune, ServiceNow (f**king complex IT ticketing/management system), print management, and god knows what else. The only good thing is that AI shouldn't affect it in a meaningful way, and people still need to manage the AI infrastructure.

 

[dwwaino]

Depends on how much you hate your life and mental health

I'm currently sysadmin for our servers, Active Directory and Azure, SCCM, Intune, ServiceNow (f**king complex IT ticketing/management system), print management, and god knows what else. The only good thing is that AI shouldn't affect it in a meaningful way, and people still need to manage the AI infrastructure.

I've spent over 20 years on the tools and I know I can't keep at it forever. My bro in law recently got a nice job at a big bank working as support for payment terminals and just by the nature of their work he works close to the support and system admins. It sounds like something that might suit me in the later half of my working years. What level support does your particular role fall under? Or does system admin just come under it's own category? I always thought if it were something I'd ever consider it would be the goal of level 3 or 4 support only because I need to be stimulated. It's why I picked an electrical trade and why I've done things like a programming cert.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Depends on how much you hate your life and mental health

I'm currently sysadmin for our servers, Active Directory and Azure, SCCM, Intune, ServiceNow (f**king complex IT ticketing/management system), print management, and god knows what else. The only good thing is that AI shouldn't affect it in a meaningful way, and people still need to manage the AI infrastructure.

ServiceNow is the devil.

 

[Over The Post]

Welcome to my nightmare.

We had a meeting today on making documentation changes using CoPilot (eg corporate docs are updated, let CoPilot decide what's changed and incorporate it in local docs). IT AI evangelist was all keen on letting CoPilot directly upload stuff into SharePoint. We quietly disabused him of that notion.

We may need to pay for a CoPilot upgrade so it can work directly within Office365 rather than munging files that need lots of manual fixing. Early days and I'm sure with the right tweaking of prompts we can get something working but it will take some experimentation.

I didn't let on that I'm only using CoPilot to generate funny images of chimps at work while at home I'm interfacing with Grok to help me run Claude and MoltBot on a dedicated Ubuntu box.

 

[dav3]

What level support does your particular role fall under? Or does system admin just come under it's own category? I always thought if it were something I'd ever consider it would be the goal of level 3 or 4 support only because I need to be stimulated. It's why I picked an electrical trade and why I've done things like a programming cert.

I'm in the fun position of working in an under-resourced state government department, so I'm basically level 2 and 3 (while also having to cover level 1), manage a number of platforms for the business, while being severely underpaid for the privilege. The whole place is a shitshow, the current plan is to do as much ServiceNow work and courses as possible and get the f**k out of here.

 

[dav3]

ServiceNow is the devil.

Yeah it hurts my head, especially since the whole platform was dumped on me having barely touched it before. Really powerful platform but convoluted as all hell.

 

[dav3]

View attachment 2517528

Welcome to my nightmare.

We had a meeting today on making documentation changes using CoPilot (eg corporate docs are updated, let CoPilot decide what's changed and incorporate it in local docs). IT AI evangelist was all keen on letting CoPilot directly upload stuff into SharePoint. We quietly disabused him of that notion.

We may need to pay for a CoPilot upgrade so it can work directly within Office365 rather than munging files that need lots of manual fixing. Early days and I'm sure with the right tweaking of prompts we can get something working but it will take some experimentation.

I didn't let on that I'm only using CoPilot to generate funny images of chimps at work while at home I'm interfacing with Grok to help me run Claude and MoltBot on a dedicated Ubuntu box.

Yeah SharePoint is woeful, especially when people try to turn it into a fully functional EDRMS.

I have to say, the O365 CoPilot stuff is quite cool, and I wouldn't mind looking at Agents if I ever get the time.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Yeah SharePoint is woeful, especially when people try to turn it into a fully functional EDRMS.

I have to say, the O365 CoPilot stuff is quite cool, and I wouldn't mind looking at Agents if I ever get the time.

IT told us (before I started) we had to use SharePoint to store everything. Then we started to experience all sorts of issues with shit getting deleted by itself, slow refreshes etc, we get in touch with IT and they're like why are you storing all your stuff here, these files are massive, SharePoint wasn't designed for this, and we were like because you farken told us to. A bit of back and forth and we're back to using a shared network drives and there's been no issues since

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Laptop specs confuse me so I'm coming here for advice

Looking at a new laptop for my wife. She needs it for work so it has to be Windows, can't be Mac or Chromebook or whatever, for her work specs-wise it doesn't have to be anything special, she's a primary school teacher so Office 365 and web browsing probably the most intensive tasks she'll use it for, she also uses a Cricut Cutting Machine, especially around Christmas time, like printing labels for drink bottles as Christmas presents for the kids in her class. For gaming, she plays Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition (with me!) and Sims 4 (she has a 1080p monitor she'll be plugging it into when at home, so max settings at 1080p), so if it can run these games at max settings at 1080p that would be perfect, while also being portable enough to take to work.

Hoping to get something for a maximum of $1000, but I dunno if that's possible so could go a bit higher if I have to.

Thanks!

 

[Over The Post]

Just specced a PC and Grok's confident prediction of $3800 tops has become $4900-$5300 based on increased RAM and NVMe disk prices from the beginning of the year AND he forgot to add a power supply. Component prices are going up like bitcoin - hopefully they'll fall just as quick.

 

[Xtreme]

Just specced a PC and Grok's confident prediction of $3800 tops has become $4900-$5300 based on increased RAM and NVMe disk prices from the beginning of the year AND he forgot to add a power supply. Component prices are going up like bitcoin - hopefully they'll fall just as quick.

The pc I got in August last year is $400 more expensive now compared to back then. I modified it by adding a new ssd - adding another close to $400 spending on it. Had I waited all those months later, I'd have spent under/over $4,500 on a system not really worth $3,500 lol. Hate tho think what $10,000 systems are worth now!

 

[dwwaino]

Laptop specs confuse me so I'm coming here for advice

Looking at a new laptop for my wife. She needs it for work so it has to be Windows, can't be Mac or Chromebook or whatever, for her work specs-wise it doesn't have to be anything special, she's a primary school teacher so Office 365 and web browsing probably the most intensive tasks she'll use it for, she also uses a Cricut Cutting Machine, especially around Christmas time, like printing labels for drink bottles as Christmas presents for the kids in her class. For gaming, she plays Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition (with me!) and Sims 4 (she has a 1080p monitor she'll be plugging it into when at home, so max settings at 1080p), so if it can run these games at max settings at 1080p that would be perfect, while also being portable enough to take to work.

Hoping to get something for a maximum of $1000, but I dunno if that's possible so could go a bit higher if I have to.

Thanks!

I was going to say to just get the cheapest "gaming" laptop you can find because they're usually spec'd really well for general use. Then I just saw that they must be affected by the same component price increases. Usually you can find the Asus TUF A15 for around $1200 on sale but I can't find anything even close at the moment. Otherwise sub $1000 I don't have any specific examples but AoE2 is CPU intensive so you can something with an igpu that's either an i7 or Ryzen 7 with 8gb of RAM and an SSD it should do the job. I don't know about "maxed settings" but running AoE2 DE on an igpu definitely doesn't look to be any major issue according to Google.

 

[blackshadow]

I’ve got my Unraid server really humming- added a new ARC310 GPU and Weber from 16 to 32TB RAM.

Running Jellyfin and the arr stack with newsgroup access and some n8n automations - will transfer a few things from my VPS and dump it.

 

[dwwaino]

As RAM prices stay stupid I checked my exact 2x16gb 6000cl30 kit that I bought in 2024 for $188. It is now $1069.

 

[HirdyLannister]

As RAM prices stay stupid I checked my exact 2x16gb 6000cl30 kit that I bought in 2024 for $188. It is now $1069.

I didn't realise it was that bad...

 

[dwwaino]

I didn't realise it was that bad...

Yeah it's nuts. I only checked because I saw 2x32gb kits that didn't even look like they had binned timings for around $1500.

This is what I have. There is nothing special about it at all but the price is absurd. I read an article yesterday that some brands might entirely pull out of consumer electronics because things like memory prices are destroying their margins.

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/memory/ddr5-desktop-memory/99784-f5-6000j3038f16gx2-tz5n

 

[dav3]

Yeah it's nuts. I only checked because I saw 2x32gb kits that didn't even look like they had binned timings for around $1500.

This is what I have. There is nothing special about it at all but the price is absurd. I read an article yesterday that some brands might entirely pull out of consumer electronics because things like memory prices are destroying their margins.

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/memory/ddr5-desktop-memory/99784-f5-6000j3038f16gx2-tz5n

That price kind of is....

https://www.pccasegear.com/products/59374/g-skill-trident-z5-neo-32gb-2x16gb-6000mhz-cl30-ddr5-expo

 

[dwwaino]

That price kind of is....

https://www.pccasegear.com/products/59374/g-skill-trident-z5-neo-32gb-2x16gb-6000mhz-cl30-ddr5-expo

Gee whiz. A bit of a discrepancy there. I didn't even check other retailers as those two especially are usually pretty similar. I just went into my invoice from back then and clicked through.



Even on $799 that's still an over 400% increase.

 

[dav3]

Gee whiz. A bit of a discrepancy there. I didn't even check other retailers as those two especially are usually pretty similar. I just went into my invoice from back then and clicked through.

View attachment 2530713

Even on $799 that's still an over 400% increase.

No doubt prices are mental these days, but anyone in the market for new kit should definitely be looking everywhere because there will be some big pricing differences out there.

 

[dwwaino]

The standard US unit of measurement

 

[Art Vandelay_]

As RAM prices stay stupid I checked my exact 2x16gb 6000cl30 kit that I bought in 2024 for $188. It is now $1069.

2026: When selling computer RAM can buy you a house...

 

[dwwaino]

2026: When selling computer RAM can buy you a house...

 

[Xtreme]

I've been seeing the black screen/reboot issue (during some games) more frequently the last few weeks, versus the last few months... whenever the last time I whinged/moaned about it on here (checked - Septemberish)

I'm leaning toward it being caused by the PSU itself (or the PSU cables) causing the issue. It's just a semi educated guess. I've tested the ram and the GPU as best I can. I might research other SFX PSU's and try a different one to see if I get a different result.

 

[dav3]

Well f**k woke up this morning and found my PC off and refusing to turn on, and a burning smell coming from the PSU, I unplugged my GPU and could get the system powering up with my old 750W PSU, so it's bye bye 12 month old Corsair RM1000x.

I got it online from PC Case Gear so warranty may take a while, I reckon I'll just go grab a HX1200i and be done with it, it's an expensive beast but I can't see anything I like the look of that I can go grab today.