General PC help/advice (3 Viewers)

[Invincible]

Depends on your cooling and what stuff you're powering as well through the PSU. I would go with 750w at least. Rated gold or better.

 

[Taorminator]

Depends on your cooling and what stuff you're powering as well through the PSU. I would go with 750w at least. Rated gold or better.

Could you please explain me more about that? I am building a PC now and was planning to use a 600w bronze PSU with a gtx1080 (180w) and I5 8600k. I don't plan any crazy overclocking for now but consider it in the future with upgrades to the cooling. What's really important to consider when choosing a PSU? What I understand so far is that bronze/silver/gold ratings are for effenciency and I've been told anything above 600w was overkill and doesn't justify the price gap.

I am really interested in your advice

 

[Invincible]

Just do a quick google-picture search for "PSU efficiency" and you'll see that most PSU's are most efficient between 50 and 70% load.
While going double of what you need in the end is indeed overkill, you also don't want to run your PSU at nearly full load all the time because you're not getting what you're paying for.
Example: You need 550W to fully power your PC - with a 650W psu, the PSU will most likely draw nearly the full power, 650W from your power line. So the additional 100w which are drawn fro the line are converted to heat.
With a 750W PSU, you're nearer to its sweetspot, so it will draw less power while still giving you the same output.

And what you also need to consider: The components of the PSU degrade faster the more you stress them, especially the elco's. PSU's are known to loose power output over time. Some sources say it's 5% a year, some say it's 10%.
Even if it is 5%, that will bring your 600W PSU down to less than 520W output in about 3 years.
I learnt that the hard way, when my old 650W PSU suddenly couldn't supply enough power anymore after a few (5 or 6) years. I took a wattmeter and you may guess it: Less than 500W left (it died four years ago and was pretty cheap when I bought it - so a good high quality PSU might not degrade as fast).

In addition, you can use a PSU calculator, like this one: http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

 

[Taorminator]

Just do a quick google-picture search for "PSU efficiency" and you'll see that most PSU's are most efficient between 50 and 70% load.
While going double of what you need in the end is indeed overkill, you also don't want to run your PSU at nearly full load all the time because you're not getting what you're paying for.
Example: You need 550W to fully power your PC - with a 650W psu, the PSU will most likely draw nearly the full power, 650W from your power line. So the additional 100w which are drawn fro the line are converted to heat.
With a 750W PSU, you're nearer to its sweetspot, so it will draw less power while still giving you the same output.

And what you also need to consider: The components of the PSU degrade faster the more you stress them, especially the elco's. PSU's are known to loose power output over time. Some sources say it's 5% a year, some say it's 10%.
Even if it is 5%, that will bring your 600W PSU down to less than 520W output in about 3 years.
I learnt that the hard way, when my old 650W PSU suddenly couldn't supply enough power anymore after a few (5 or 6) years. I took a wattmeter and you may guess it: Less than 500W left (it died four years ago and was pretty cheap when I bought it - so a good high quality PSU might not degrade as fast).

In addition, you can use a PSU calculator, like this one: http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

Thank you man! That's a lot clearer to me now thanks for taking the time!

 

[Laiders]

So I got an MX 500 SSD. Now trying to get a clean install of Win 10 and getting into a mess.

I put the installation media on a USB and the first time (booting I think from the automatic non-UEFI option) it came up with an error message saying there was a corrupted installation file.

I tried it again with the UEFI boot option but then got into problems with having an MBR partition table and needing GPT. Followed instructions to format in diskpart but now it gives an error message when I try to use clean/delete/convert to GPT commands.

For now I've booted off the old drive and downloaded EaseUS to try and wipe and format the new drive, but not sure of the best way to go about this. Should I try and convert it to GPT in diskpart and use UEFI or install without UEFI?

 

[Cluck]

First things first, have you disconnected all hard drives, except the SSD? This is quite an important first step.

As for UEFI or not, it depends on support from the motherboard. If it supports it, it should pick it automatically - in all honesty, this is something I've never had to think about. If in doubt, try downloading the Windows 10 media and recreate the USB stick again (maybe try a different stick).

 

[Laiders]

I had just the SSD connected.

Now seems to have gone wrong, the EaseUS program says there's an error trying to format it. It wouldn't let me delete partitions/format in the Windows installer either.

What's the easiest/most fool proof way of wiping and formatting this new SSD to have another go at installing from fresh?

 

[Cluck]

Windows 10 should give you the option to delete any partitions on the drive when you go to install onto it. If that isn't working then I'd suggest one of these possibilities:

1. The drive is faulty
2. Your USB media is faulty (the USB stick itself, the download from Microsoft or the creation of the media)
3. The cable isn't connected properly

 

[Laiders]

Cheers Cluck, I'm trying to format the drive using diskpart, seems to be working at the moment and creating a new installation media on a different USB stick.

I've got the SSD plugged into a different SATA cable now (had to switch them around to get my old primary HDD plugged in again). The SATA port on the motherboard that the SSD is plugged into should not be significant (I'll have only the SSD connected when I try and install Win 10)?

 

[Laiders]

All sorted now. I think it was a dodgy USB.

Rather usefully it automatically activated Windows when I logged into my account. Rather creepily it's brought a photo in and made it my wallpaper, I'm sure it wasn't even on my PC before, no idea how it got it!

 

[Michael]

Call me the Necromancer
Does anyone now, how I can adjust my mic in the windows settings to be less sensitive (something like the activation volume in TS)?
I recorded/streamed my last races with GeForce Experience and can hear my breathing all the time...pretty annoying.

 

[m4nu]

Call me the Necromancer
Does anyone now, how I can adjust my mic in the windows settings to be less sensitive (something like the activation volume in TS)?
I recorded/streamed my last races with GeForce Experience and can hear my breathing all the time...pretty annoying.

You can change the activation in teamspeak itself... I do not think GeForce Experience has such settings... But I do know you can adjust such things in OBS Studio

 

[Owfier]

You can change the activation in teamspeak itself... I do not think GeForce Experience has such settings... But I do know you can adjust such things in OBS Studio

Shadow play does have some kind of setting, but not very in depth and from what I can tell they barely change anything.

 

[FuBii]

do you have a separate/ dedicated sound card? if so you'll find you can change the settings for this in the software, though do be aware of updates as it'll reset. mine does this frequently re-applying the mic boost to +30db

 

[Michael]

I have a headset with built-in USB soundcard. I have no prob with the volume, just the pick-up threshold is too low. Seems like I have to switch to OBS again.