Computer advice needed

vanity | 12-03-2021 | chuckles

[ShadowAce]

I *thought* my ears were burning.....

[Openurmind]

Lol... In my mind you are famous for that quote Sir. Honestly one of the best quotes on the topic of Linux I have ever read. :)

[gr8eman]

IMO it’s either the drivers need to be reinstalled or a compatibility issue or bad card. If reinstall doesn;t fix it you may have a bad card.

[cymbeline]

“there is no real replacement for the human ear.”

I can see that when it comes to tuning the remaining notes in the tempered scale, but you can’t set that first note unless you have perfect pitch or whatever it’s called, and I’ll bet a lot of very good musicians don’t have perfect pitch.

So, bottom line, most people need to start tuning with a tuning fork or something that will do, say, A 220.

[Openurmind]

I understand. :)

[Pollard]

They PC manufacturer might have new device drivers for windows 10. Check their website.

[logi_cal869]

Do you have an open slot? (I presume not a laptop)

Get a sound card and dump using the embedded hardware.

[logi_cal869]

I just read your comment about the USB speakers making the noise, too.

Swap the PS first.

[chuckles]

see #16.

[chuckles]

see #16.

[chuckles]

see #16.

[logi_cal869]

Nice. Complex setups require more effort...and more information.

[Paul R.]

A “late” question: (I estimate I have 1/2 your computer knowledge. Others please chime in too.)

You said you’d added a PCIe card to run your hard drives. I’m in the process of upgrading an Acer AXC-704G-UW61 for my wife. I have an SSD to add to it, up to 16 GB RAM (max it will take), and am thinking about adding an internal USB hub.* The cpu is only a Celeron N3050, soldered in, so, that’s an ultimate limiter. However, my wife doesn’t do much cpu intensive stuff — limited temporary memory and the sluggish HD (my “good” machines all have SSD’s) is almost always the choker @ present.

However, the motherboard Acer plopped in these is actually a laptop mb and can handle only 2 drives**: Since I want to leave the HD in as the data drive, that means there’d be no controller for the DVD +/- RW drive, which my wife uses a lot.

One fellow on You Tube added an internal USB 2.0 hub, then ran a USB 2.0 to mini-SATA cable to the DVD player/writer. That adds USB ports as a bonus, but, I am wondering how well this will work (to run the DVD player/writer?)

HWinInfo reports my current SATA speed at 6GBs, so, there’s no reason to add a PCIe controller card to try to improve speed to the HD or soon to be installed SSD. But, what would be the cheapest sufficient way to run the DVD player/writer? Add a SATA 3 controller card anyway?

*There is no USB3.0 header, tho’ 2 USB 3.0 ports in the rear are soldered onto the mb. There are USB 2.0 headers that can be “intercepted”, so to speak. Additional USB ports of either type would be useful.

Possibly a card to add USB 3.0 ports would make sense, an then run one of those ports to the DVD player/writer via an adaptor cable?

**Note that there is only one expansion slot on the mb - that PCIe slot. I suppose I could search to see if somebody makes a combo PCIe internal USB 3.0 ports + SATA drive controller card, if such exist at a reasonable price. I can always punch out a knockout & run a USB 3.0 cable or two out the back of the machine.

Thoughts and suggestions?

Thanks!

[Paul R.]

You Tube commenters indicate that increasing the RAM > 8 GB on this machine won’t speed it up over what 8 GB will do, due to the CPU becoming the limiting factor. But, would increasing the RAM to the max of 16 GB on this machine decrease writes to the SSD (once also installed) compared to 8 GB?

[chuckles]

I have no idea how fast a Celeron N3050 is, but you say it's soldered in. I'm just gonna jump on that without reasoning as time for a new MB. All the rest of the stuff you typed means nothing if you cannot expand to do what you want. I'm so tight I pinch a nickle till it farts, but at some point you just have to live like you want to and looking at what you are trying to plan just won't get you there. You can go to ebay and get a half decent MoBo for $150 that will do pretty much everything you need.

Instead of buying memory and add in cards for the old Acer, invest your money in a better board.

I just retired a board that overclocked to 3.8gbs, but it had a 2 core D950 Intel in it. I had 1 pcie slot filled with a video card, but I needed 3 screens so my other video was AGP. There was literally no more slots and everything was overclocked. I bought a SATA drive that was SATA 3 running 1.5gbs. I then acquired a junker from a neighbor that threw it in the trash. It was an HP 580t with a missing Hard drive. It had 5 PCIe slots so I filled them up with left over cards I have laying around. They only thing I had to buy was a $23 SATA 3 card that runs at 6gbs. The other thing is a video card to get my 3 screens. I then transferred my 6 hard drives into the HP. Having filled this machine, I discovered the sound was messed up that I eventually fixed. Now for less than $100 in cards, I have a decent machine( for the kind of work I do) and have moved on from my old box.

You might surprise yourself what is for sale on ebay instead of fretting over trying to dress up a box with a soldered in CPU. The people that toss around words like Rysen 7, 32 gb of memory and Nvidea 3000 something are gamers that inherited their money. They are the same people that toss the old machine and buy a new one so someone like you and me can render video and write emails and read FR.Many machines today don't even have a DVD in them.

[Paul R.]

Well...

Basically all my wife needs to do is have MS Word running, maybe Irfanview, and several browsing windows (not more than 1 running vids at a time.)

And not have the machine take a full minute to open another browser window... Or take 5 minutes to boot up. (That’s what’s happening on her old Dell machine despite all my efforts to clean it up. The plan is to get her going with this machine, then use Win 10’s “fresh start” function to reinstall itself minus any gunk, in the Dell, stick a SSD in it (it is already maxed out at 4 GB RAM), and see if it’s good enough for my daughter to do homework and such on. If not, we might try Linux in the Dell for kicks.

The ACER is in fact brand new (but slightly “old stock”, as I’d stashed it until I could get around to working with it. The intention was always to at least add a SSD & likely some RAM.) I’m typing on it right now, so, as a test, ATTM I have 9 browser windows open, 2 playing vids, and a WordPad window going, plus the machine is downloading Windows updates. The last You Tube vid window took ~2 seconds to open. This is without the SSD in yet, and running 4 GB of RAM.

I conclude the CPU is not complete junk (gamers would surely disagree) and with a SSD and 4 GB of RAM most people noted some improvement — so I think we can get what we need with the mods discussed. I figured I didn’t want to spend over $100 on mods (the machine only cost me $65 on clearance!) The RAM if I only add another 4 GB only cost me $23 and the SSD was $29 (Black Friday). If I stick in a full 16 GB of RAM it’d be $45 for that, IIRC. (I’m losing track of my Black Friday deals without looking at receipts.) (I’ve for now stuck the 16 GB in my HP laptop, which frees up 2x 4 GB sticks from the HP.) I just need to know how best to get the DVD player / writer in this Acer going nicely after that 2nd SATA connection is tied up with a HD.

And, it’d be useful to know if RAM over 8 GB would likely improve the life of the SSD.

Maybe someone knows...

At this point I have 2x of 4 GB of laptop RAM and 3 SSD’s looking for a home.

Not that I disagree with you about eBay. I have 3 HP business desktops with i3 or i5 processors in them, all upgraded with SSD’s, and my HP8460 laptop now has the 16 GB of RAM and a SSD. All were eBay purchases.

[chuckles]

One thing to find out is how much memory your MB can recognize. I had 4gb in it but it could only use 3gigs no matter how much you put in. That’s the Bios limit on some older machines. If it will see 8gb, that’s all good. Add on boards can get you where you want to go. You can even put a Hard drive card in to get your DVD in. How many slots do you have left and are they all PCIe? another thing to look at is how fast is your network running? I went from 10mbs to 300 mbs and my network card ran about 50mbs until I put the new machine on the network. Then it ran 250mbs. That will load things much faster even with slower machine. You need a gigabit card for that.

[Paul R.]

My OP indicated that the RAM max in this machine is 16 GB. (Per Crucial scanner). Since then I went ahead and added 4 GB for a total of 8 GB.

I suspect more RAM won’t help speed much, once the SSD is in as the boot / programs drive, but it might reduce writes to the SSD?

All the machines on Ethernet show a nominal network speed of 100 Mbps (limited by the router, I’d guess). Actual Internet speed (per Ookla’s Speedtest) on THIS machine just tested @ 41 Mbps download, 49 Mbps upload. I also just checked our fastest machine: 80 Mbps download, 73 Mbps upload. (Initial speeds are higher on both, then slow a bit part way into the test. I believe we are paying for a nominal 100 Mbps - so, “speed not guaranteed”, the result is ok, and plenty fast for anything we will do.)

Cold boot-up is presently 57 seconds (as long as no update “stuff” is going on — it took forever to get the machine fully Windows 10 updated.) There appears to be some Startup garbage from Acronis running — I made the mistake* of taking PNY’s advice to use a free version of True Image for the SSD cloning. So, I need to kill that.

*Long story - I ended up using Macrium Reflect.

The HDD is now cloned to the SSD, so, now it’s time to make the swap. :-)

Really, it may be that the single PCIe slot is this machine’s biggest limitation, for what we want out of it, but, at least @ present it is open. Since I’ll want to get a USB 3 hub to plug in the back anyway (only 2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 2.0 ports on the machine, and the mouse and keyboard are USB, I can likely run the DVD player / writer off a USB 3.0 to mini-Sata adaptor cable fed through the back. Huge speed is not needed there...