cucubits

I was open to the possibility that LM might have had something to do with this but no, that wasn't it. If LM would've been the culprit, we'd have seen the laptop start acting up a long time ago. I applied it almost 3 years ago and I knew what I was doing. I didn't use too much and I protected the sections around the CPU/GPU very well. Started with healthy layers of conformal coating. The chances of something shorting out components around there were extremely low. I also knew this would be used as a desktop ...laptop only. It never moved from my desk. Having said that, I cleaned up the heatsink and dies really well and applied LM again. I still had some of the original Conductonaut left. I should've done this a long time ago. With the fans also cleaned up, fresh LM, it's like a whole new machine. Way more quiet and so far I couldn't push CPU/GPU temps above 75C but I did only fire up FarCry6. It never ran at these low temps in-game before. Now for the fun part. We did figure out the problem, and by we I mean you guys and me being a knucklehead for having ignored one specific advice. Yes, I finally connected an external monitor and it works perfectly fine. No issues, no artifacts on wake, nothing. As soon as I switch to its display, it goes crazy again. Easy to replicate, after every sleep/wake cycle like before. Now that we narrowed it to the display, I started poking around it and pressing/touching the lower section of the laptop screen does actually make a difference on how the artifacts show up. The bezel on the bottom of the screen is also pretty toasty but I never touched that area before so I don't know if it's normal. From some pics online it looks like it has a 40pin connector on the back of the screen. I did not disassemble it, the bezel is full of "don't touch" metallic tape under the plastic cover. I didn't want to mess with it but I may as well try, maybe I just need to re-seat the connector, if it's a connector and not soldered on. I could also just buy a replacement display, but, to be honest, I always wanted to move to an external monitor and 24'' vs 17'' is quite a compelling argument towards just buying a nice 144hz monitor. Right now I have my 24'' work monitor hooked up and while it's working fine, it is only 60hz which is quite noticeable in games. So yeah, that's where we are now 🙂

Found the paste, started taking it apart. Maaan, liquid metal after about 3 years looks nasty. Completely dry and it left almost like a rough crystalized surface on the heat sink. It's late now, I'll sleep on it and figure out a way to clean it off tomorrow... likely dremel or sand it off while trying to keep the surface straight. I might apply something else when I put it together... I doubt the surfaces are going to be good enough for LM this time.

It's been quite a while since the last update on this story. Sadly it looks like this problem is not one of those that goes away if left alone for long enough. I tried. 😆 The laptop was off for over a month during our move and I just unpacked it a couple days ago. Slightly different symptoms now. It does the usual screen goes crazy routine when waking up but it lasts much longer than a few seconds. Last night it would do it constantly for over a few minutes and it did not stop. I powered it off. When powering it back on, it worked for a while, I even started a game but after about 10 mins of playing, it slowly started showing worse and worse lines/artefacts to the point the whole screen filled up. I had to power it off again. Strangely, during a reboot the screen was showing these lines right from the start - this is also new - and I would assume this rules out software. Windows wasn't even loaded at that point. My plan for now is to take it apart, clean it and re-apply thermal paste. The problem here is that I can't find it. Haven't unpacked all the boxes and I have no idea where I stashed my paste, lol.

Any mention of the Witcher 3 next gen patch that's been on/off the news for some time now? I'm still sort of waiting for that before replaying the whole thing...

Whoa! These prices are insane! I'm in a similar boat, with my laptop on what feels like its last leg and I'm considering building a desktop next. I've been on gaming laptops for over 10 years now. In a previous lifetime, over 15 years ago, I used to work for a company and I was building PCs. All the high end components would cost not even a fraction of what I see here now. This market (like others too) went properly nuts. A high end GPU would cost at most 400-500E, high end mainboard, maybe 200-300E at most. A 100E PSU would be considered an expensive one. I'll probably start building up a list of parts, just for fun initially, although (this is for another topic) my main goal will be slightly different. I'm going to look for the absolute quietest build possible while still beefy enough to run everything for a few years... Good luck with your build! That monitor looks awesome!

Thanks! So far we love it here. It's so great to be able to open the windows in the morning and feel the cold, fresh air come in. In a way we don't need to get used to the cold yet, it's been unexpectedly warm here since we arrived. Local friends keep telling us it's much warmer than what Seattle usually sees this time of the year. Also, there's no AC (yet) in our apt here so it did get pretty toasty on some days. We still can't believe we can see mountains when we look outside... we've been in TX for almost 10 years. It's so good to be in a new place away from all the "flatness" and summer heat. I also get way too excited when I think about how close we are to ski resorts and bike parks around here. Before, we'd have to drive almost 1000 miles to get to a decent ski resort or downhill bike park in the summer.

Hei guys, finally getting back online! Today I fired up my personal laptop for the first time in about a month. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with it, it feels it's been so long 🙂 We made the move from TX to WA and slowly getting settled in. Been thinking about what to start playing now that the dust started settling and the pile of moving boxes is somewhat smaller. The 2k mile long drive was very interesting and ...surprisingly empty. There were long stretches of highway with nothing which reminded me so clearly of Death Stranding. So yeah, I may or may not post in off topic some more details and impressions about all this moving experience but for now, looking for ideas what to play next. - obviously high on the list is Death Stranding - I miss Cyberpunk - the long drive also reminded me in some parts of Fallout 4, which I loved but never ended up finishing. - The Witcher 3 is always on my radar, I just never get motivated enough to actually resume it. It's been so long, I might as well start from the beginning.

I must be having a brain malfunction. I can't figure it out... what does COH1 mean? 🙂

Those Jupiter pics are amazing. Never knew it had rings... I can't wait for it to get pointed at other more familiar targets too. Had a silly thought... wondering what would happen if they pointed it towards earth, what sort of resolution images would it get. Similar to our usual satellite images or way better/worse?

After a long break I felt the need to get back to some BR action. Installed Ring of Elysium but it's 100% bots only all the time. Sad this game died, it was fun in its prime. Installed PUBG - surprisingly still fun. Not ideal for new-ish players as there's no skill/level based matchmaking and most of the time you run into die hard veterans but it's still fun and not that hard to get some kills.

Right as I was leaving today I saw a neighbor doing exactly this. It was perfect timing as I saw that indeed one of these containers would fit in front of our garage. Never heard of these pack rats but I'll look them up. PODS would be similar: EDIT: disregard this particular company. It's horrifying to read this bad of reviews.

I keep coming up with very much non-notebook related topics 🙂 This is mostly a question for my US friends. Looking for recommendations on moving companies. The internet is full of these but if I start reading reviews, I won't pick any of them. This is for a long distance move (2000 miles) and considering we have 2 cars, I'd much like to avoid driving a U-Haul truck. On the other hand, we don't really need "full service" movers, we are boxing up everything ourselves. We're disassembling all the furniture too so really we only need loading - delivery - unloading. A few I already researched: - U-haul truck which pulls a platform with one car + wife driving the other car: a little over $3000 + hotels for 2 nights + gas for the car being driven. Not ideal as I'm not sure how to stay safe with all our things moving across the country. - PODS: these seem cool, they drop off a makeshift shipping container like thing, we put all our stuff in, and they deliver it to the new location. For our particular move we were quoted $3500. - American Van Lines: they seem to have good reviews and are well known. For a rough estimation of how many boxes we will have, they quoted us about $4500 So far no replies from others I contacted but I should have some numbers soon. Any suggestions of other companies to try, or if there's anyone here with some sort of truck, let me know!

Finished DEHR today... for the n-th time. Crazy how much replay value this game has. For the whole thing I didn't have a single boring moment and I kept finding new paths, new toys which I missed on my previous playthroughs. It really is a masterpiece and I'm so mad they're not working on a new one... I had forgotten about the post credits scene. Hearing the original theme, and page's voice made a glorious and nostalgic experience. I loved the original one so much as well. Considering moving on to Mankind Divided. It's been a couple years since I played it last, but it feels more "fresh" in my head so not sure...

Cool, this is in line with my findings as well. Yes, I started the original and it's awesome. I love finding completely different ways to complete missions than I did in the past. One example, for one of the early missions where you need to sneak in the morgue under the police station, my usual way was (as hinted by Sarif) to go in through the roof and sneak my way in through all those glorious ventilation shafts. However this time, I decided to start with the front entrance lobby (was completing a side quest there) and upon talking to the desk clerk, I convinced him to just let me in. Suddenly the whole building was friendly and I could just walk right to the objective. I'm sure everyone knows this, just something that seemed cool to me 🙂

I had to look up what SFF means in this context, lol. I've been on gaming laptops for about 9 years now and I'm sad to say I'm on my last one. Build quality just seems to have gone down over the past few generations so I'm looking for alternatives. To answer the question in the title, I think it depends a lot on what you need the PC for. If it's gaming, then probably a SFF PC is not a good option. For me gaming means high end parts and good/quiet cooling. If it doesn't need to be portable, a good quality full size case is probably a better choice.

I actually had a tough time deciding if I want to try the director's cut. I read that they got rid of the ever-present yellow filter and made some changes to the boss fights. Otherwise reddit and reviews say it's worse because it's based on an earlier release. Is this true? What did you think of the director's cut compared to original?

Even in texas they keep telling us it's hotter than usual... the whole climate is going nuts. The whole planet is slowly turning into two seasons, extreme heat and cold.

I love my Nest too. Remote control is the best, whenever we are away for a few days, I can set it to keep eco temps, for example in the summer let the apt get all the way 80F and a few hours before arriving home, I just open the app and set it to our usual 76F. It does have one annoying thing but it's partly my fault. I had an "offer" from our electricity provider that if we opt-in some stupid energy saving program, we'll get some discount. Now I can't disable that and because texas can't get their act together and fix the power grid, with all the above 100F days, we get a bunch of these events when the thermostat wants to change temps to "save" the grid. Screw that, I need to keep my eye on it and when it does this, I have to set it back to our usual temps...

Got a bit burned out with Star Citizen because of the upcoming database wipe. We're going to lose all the ingame currency and ships I spent a bunch of time grinding for... so not particularly motivated to play anymore. On the other hand, I reinstalled and started yet again Deus Ex Human Revolution. I love this series so much. This time I started on the hardest difficulty and looking forward to another great playthrough. It's been just enough time that I don't really remember all levels.

Sadly no updates on this. I have been away for a while so the only new thing I tried was a clean GPU driver reinstall (ran DDU before) but it still happens. Same as before, only when waking up from sleep, only for a few seconds and then it's all fine.

It really is mindblowing what JWST can do. Can't wait for them to publish images taken of more known targets or something I have shot to see so much close up details...

Probably the title could be something like "games worth replaying". My answer is short and comes to me without thinking: DeusEx series. All of them. Half-Life (all 3) are a close 2nd and very high on my all time favorites but don't have that much replay value with varied approaches as DeusEx.

No change. Besides this morning at the first startup which was clean, then throughout the day, every time it came out of standby, it did the thing again. Every time the same way, a few seconds after coming out of standby. Unfortunately I don't have time to deal with this for the next week or so. Please do keep suggestions coming and we'll figure this out eventually.

No backup, I usually disable system restore - please don't ask why 🙂 I did finally update the nvidia driver, it's been quite a few months since I did that and this morning when it came out of standby, it seemed fine. More testing to follow but it's possible it was just something corrupt.

Yeah, if it gets to that, I'm not even considering replacing the motherboard. Not really sure what to try next... still no luck booting from the USB drive with mats but I think I know why. I can't find a way to disable EFI boot from the bios. There is no CSM/legacy boot setting. I did find "Secure Boot" but it still doesn't work if I set that to disabled. It's pretty strange it does this only when coming out of standby/powering on. Once the artefacting goes away after a few seconds, it all works, doesn't do it again. Also, it does this only after it's been off for at least a few mins. If I just hit sleep/power off/on, it will work fine. If I wait a few mins before powering it back on, it does it again. I really don't want to take it apart to replace the thermal paste but it may come to that...