Mr. Fox

I have one 1TB SSDs in old Seagate SATA enclosures that had cheap and small HDDs in them that I took out and threw away and they work to my satisfaction. The Seagate enclosures are made better than the cheap garbage empty enclosures on Amazon. They have been very reliable even though the original drives were discarded. You can pick us old USB drives like that super cheap at garage sales and don't have to care about the drives inside being too small or even functional.

Indeed. That is why I am going to RMA these. They were cheap enough that losing $32.50 x 2 wouldn't be the end of the world, but if I can't use them as intended then I want my money back. I would have been OK with them being slow and not performing at advertised speeds because they were so cheap. And, I would be OK with using them in USB enclosures. Not being sure they would continue working from one day to the next is the problem here. I am glad I decided to punish one of them to see if it would stand up to the abuse.

Some people are really snobby when it comes to storage and think they need to buy only the best and most expensive name-brand storage to hold files. I think that is true and super important to store crucial files that would be painful or even devastating to lose. You need that as well as backups. I don't have terabytes of files like that and none of those files are gigantic. And, because I make Macrium Reflect images, losing a cheap drive holding an OS isn't even something I care too about much. But for disposable junk like games and benchmark screenshots and files that don't matter in the grand scheme of things I think it is kind of silly to waste lots of money on overpriced brand name drives. Kind of like paying extra for fancy toilet paper that you are going to use to wipe your bottom and flush. Nope... I don't think so. Cheap and big is the way to go.

Yes, that is my preferred way of doing it. I've done it both ways and it randomly succeeds and randomly fails. I will go back to using my affordable and ever-reliable 2TB Silicon Power NVMe drives for my game libraries. I will just spend a little more and replace them with 4TB drives later on. 2TB is just too small if you install lots of modern AAA game space hogs. It's ridiculous how much space some of them gobble up.

Nothing. I spent a long time searching and even the brand is unidentifiable. As much as I thought it was going to be usable for the intended purpose it will not be. I'm going to have to RMA them. They were both working acceptably as noted, but after a significant round of strenuous workout the one I decided to punish is failing. Now it cannot be formatted and has unusable space on it. And, now Macrium cannot back up to it, so they're junk. Got to love China crap. Sometimes it works out OK and sometimes not. After running a diskpart "clean all" command (writes zeroes to the entire drive) it has a 2MB area that is not accessible and it formatted as a "Basic Data Partition" and cannot be reformatted. Reliability would always be a concern. I ran another clean command on it and reclaimed the space and it reformatted properly and I could create a Macrium Image. I think it could live with the slowness for simple file storage and disposable data like game libraries, but I think reliability is too sketchy at this point. I would always be wondering when it would stop working.

Nothing on it says Samsung and the label is made to look very similar. I don't care about that. China will be China: The land of shady business and scammers. They cannot be trusted at anything. They're both definitely 4TB. The speed is Gen 1 not Gen 4. But that may be a firmware issue because some reviewers posted screenshots showing advertised Gen 4 speeds. Honestly it's twice as fast as a SATA SSD so for cheap storage in a 4TB capacity I'm not going to complain about the speed. It doesn't need to be fast to hold files and twice as fast as SATA SSD is it good enough for $32.50 if it is durable. I plan to use it for installing a buttload of games not for important data. I'm going to test one of them inside of a USB 3.0 NVMe enclosure and I bet the read and write speeds are going to be the same as in a PCIe 4x slot. These are not something you would want to use for sensitive or important data, but for something like a large drive to install games or use in a USB enclosure it's OK. Much faster than SATA or normal USB flash memory for smaller file transfers. I can transfer a 30GB Macrium Reflect image to it with acceptable speed, but a 60GB file slows down about half way through. The cache probably is too small. But, honestly for $32.50 I can't complain as long as it doesn't die unexpectedly. Had I paid $100 for it that would be unacceptable. It does not perform at the advertised Gen 4 speed, but I do not need it to for how I plan to use it.

I have a couple of these cheap $32.50 4TB NVMe out for delivery today. It will be interesting to see if they are good or garbage. They look like counterfeit Samsung NVMe but I don't care what brand, fake or not, as long as they work as intended. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806361905543.html I have been rocking a high-end ASUS 4K 144Hz monitor for a good while now and while it produces gorgeous images and games look super nice on it, I am still having a very difficult time liking 4K for normal daily use. The scaling sucks with any setting other than 100% and the rendering of text leaves a lot to be desired. Applications like CPU-Z and GPU-Z with lots of text are especially ugly-looking. Productivity apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and web browsing look like pure crap at any scaling other than 100% and some things are just too small to be a pleasant reading experience at 100% scaling. IMHO, 2560x1440 is still the all-around best resolution for everything. Just set it to 100% scaling and everything is perfect-looking all the time. I always hated 4K laptop screens (and still do) because they are pretty miserable products to use, but even a 27-inch 4K screen a couple of feet away from my face is less pleasant to look at than 1440p.

Well, that wasn't a great use of my time this evening. I must have already applied it before and forgot. I don't remember when, but I hardly ever use my laptop. Since I tore it apart I had to apply it again. Didn't make a huge difference... 3°C on CPU and 1°C on GPU. Still runs like a hot turdbook. But, I digress... it is a hot turdbook. Oh well. Que sera sera. Glad it's not that important. It does last longer than normal thermal paste does on a laptop, so I will give it that much. Glad I popped in here right before hitting the sack. Nice to see you, Brother John. Looks like that one is a lot better than the other one. I got all my money back from NewEgg, Amazon (finally) and Central and decided to hang it up rather than keep rolling the dice. Four turds in a row was too much. I've got good CPUs samples already and one incoming from Germany so I'm done rolling the dice in the lottery. From now on I will overpay a little bit for a used CPU that has SP ratings and a VF curve I can see before I buy. That seems to be the safer play. I think I am going to skip a few generations now (famous last words). This seems like it is getting more expensive, like everything else, and it was already expensive before. Plus, I hardly ever bench anymore so I'm not having as much fun as frequently as I used to, which makes it even more expensive because I'm not getting the same amount of pleasure/use out of the process. Have a good night. Glad I might have pointed you in the right direction. I hope you can figure it out. Well... you wouldn't expect me to find something nice to say about AMD, but I don't mind casting stones at Intel either when they deserve it. That is a really huge problem on Intel-powered laptops as well. They've taken the castration to the next level on turdbooks. You don't own them, they own you. Our friend Joe (Trafficante, aka USMC362) from the old NBR forum bought a 14th Gen Intel turdbook and it is power-locked like a big dog. ThrottleStop performance cripple reasons light up like a Christmas Tree and there is nothing you can do to work around it. It's unlocked and you can overclock the crap out of it while idling, but as soon as you put it under load the clocks fall, it hits the fused power limit and it runs like garbage. It just sucks. In part because it's an ASUS turdbook, but they all suck now.

I suspect it has something to do with the platform rather than the CPU/iGPU. Lenovo probably put some kind of limiter in place. Maybe a power limit on the chip includes the CPU and iGPU combined? When you run benchmarks does the CPU behavior change? What about the Physics and Combined scores in something like Fire Strike? Do those go down with the iGPU overclocked? What does HWiNFO64 show for total CPU Package Power run both ways?

While I don't agree with all that is being said, I do agree that CPU degration is generally due to absurd abusive behavior and not "normal" overclocked benching. Running long and repeated sessions of severely stressful things like Y-Cruncher, Furmark, OCCT and Prime95 to "prove stability" is just stupid and unecessary. Doing that can degrade CPUs and GPUs even if they are not overclocked. It makes no sense. Same can be said of running excessive amounts of SSD benchmarks. They are only covered under warranty for so many write operations and they wear out. All you are doing to chewing up the drive and memory. If you run an SSD benchmark, you know what your drive is capable of. No need (or benefit) to run it again and again. If your system passes a memory test without error and you haven't changed anything, no need to run it again and again unless a new problem surfaces that needs to be investigated. If your CPU can pass Cinebench and you can run all 3DMark benchmarks, and play games for hours without a hiccup, it is stable. No need for Prime95, OCCT and Furmark. All those do is prove that if you run abusive test routines your system won't be stable. And, it is not healthy for the parts to do that to them over and over again. It is kind of like walking into a room and you start screaming at a person for no reason. You push him around and call him names, maybe punch him and keep screaming at him. If he doesn't react or he remains pleasant then he is stable. If he reacts in a negative way, screams back or returns the punch then he is unstable. If your assault hurts him physically or emotionally then he is defective. I don't think so. Any unpleasant reaction should come as no suprise. That is unwarranted abuse, and it is very different than challenging him to a race, a test of knowledge, or a contest of strength or skill.

Welcome back. Cool analog gauges. Would be nice to have them mounted in a combined console instead of separate. Would be cool attached to the bottom or top of a monitor. It looks like the lighting changes from green to red based on the temperatue or load. Other than that insanely overpriced EVGA open frame tubular bench I don't think I have seen gauges for PC like these before. I like them, too. Very nice.

Happy Easter, everyone. He is risen! Here is some humor for you. Good thing Tony and Alex are friends, LOL.

Probably not if it is weighed in ounces/grams, is 3mm thick, uses a USB charger and has a TGP of 15W.

AMLO needs to do the same thing we need to do. It's time that both of our nations take this problem seriously. Our future and survival as neighbors depends on it. Seal the borders. Enforce the law. Give the orders. Fire at will. Shoot to kill. Dead trespassers can't commit crimes against the citizens of our nations. Protecting our borders and all who legally reside within them is the responsiblity of our military and Commander-in-Chief. Our incompetent loser POTUS needs to be court martialed. His dereliction of duty is a breach of trust and a betrayal of every legal inhabitant of this nation.

Those are all Dell products, so refresh is the only alternative since upgrades are out of the question.

I honestly don't believe it is split that even, but the narrative is spun in a way that creates that impression in an effort to normalize the abnormal and make the unacceptable more palatable. I think the population that holds a traditional perspective on things is more like around 80%. The concentration of corruption is in the entertainment, government, public education and technology sectors and there is it probably like a 90% concentration of corruption. The army of lefty trolls on social media also helps create an impression of normalcy, but they are a minority of the population. They're just part of the cluster of idiocy that does consitutute a larger percentage of those that waste a significant percentage of their time with social media. The unfortunate part is the brainwashing effect it has on the young and stupid.

I do not believe there are any trustworthy politicians. Some are obviously far worse than others, but all are beholden to campaign contributors. Even those that I prefer and would vote for. One thing is for certain. As long as there are woke lefty, freedom-hating, anti-American, anti-family, taxes-r-us, open border devil-worshippers holding office things will only continue to decline. When they hit the bottom, they just dig deeper and lower the bottom. A nation divided will not stand, and nobody wants to stand with the abnormal extreme left whack jobs. Some of this (especially the first two) is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. Abuse the legal system and fabricate lies to wrongfully prosecute and steal from those you disagree with... A call to pull our heads out... too many won't. Too many are more worried about the color of the car to pay attention to the dangerous road they are traveling. They be driving off the cliff before they realize the problem wasn't the color of the car. Thanks, Joe... Build the wall. Empower the border partrol. Enforce the laws already on the books. The use of lethal force will stop it. The problem at the Mexican Border is not the people of Mexico. It is the cartels, criminals, drugs, human trafficing and people not from Mexico that are illegally entering.

https://hwbot.org/submission/5522789_ | https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/6740847 https://hwbot.org/submission/5522800_ | https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/compute/5232934

I do not run air cooling on my desktops. CPU, GPU and RAM are liquid cooled on both of my large desktops and my mini-ITX system has the CPU liquid cooled. I suppose if I got ambitious I could try some on my A770 one of these days. It still has the stock thermal paste.

It's actually easier to take apart my cell phone, LOL. I have replaced the glass back on my OnePlus 8T twice in the past year and it's easier to do that than it is to replace thermal paste on a laptop, which is actually kind of absurd when you think about that. It's glued together and not supposed to be user-serviced, but it still requires less time and effort. And, yeah... having a glass back on a cell phone is about as idiotic as an idea could possibly ever be. Ludicrous. crApple made having brain damage and doing stupid stuff very popular.

Maybe one weekend when I don't have something that needs to be done I will tear apart my Precision 7720 and put some of the PTM 7950 termal paste I have on it. That's why I bought the PTM 7950 to begin with. I just haven't mustered enough desire to be bothered with the hassle. Whenever I need to use it I am always "impressed" by how hot it runs. I should put some on my wife's laptop (Eluktronics Mech 15). That sucker has always been a hot mess. It takes a lot for me to feel motivated to work on either one. The Mech 15 is much easier though. Just a few screws to remove the bottom cover and everything is accessible. But, it's demoralizing working on laptops to me now. The Dell, of course, makes everything much more of a pain in the butt than it needs to be. Everything involves lots of unnecessary screws, cables and foolish rigmarole. Build quality 10/10. Intelligent, user-friendly design 1/10.

The reason IC Diamond and PTM 7950 work so well is they are thick enough to fill all of the gaps and help make up for poor contact. Coincidentally, that is also the reason why liquid metal often does not work well for laptops. The poorer the fit of the heatsink, the more beneficial IC Diamond and PTM 7950 will be. What they lack in thermal conductivity is made up for in enhanced contact. I would not worry about that. Tearing the thermal pad doesn't matter and your installation should work as well as if it looked pretty. Once it melts it will work the same as if looked like a perfect CGI rendering from the start. How it looked before it melted will be irrelevant. Very simple. I got fed up with the crappy control-freak shenanigans and the shift in focus to thin and light dung, long battery life, low power consumption and castrated firmware and poor quality control. Once I dipped my toe back into desktop waters there was no going back again. There was a period of golden years for laptops, where they came within striking distance of an air-cooled desktop performance, but that era came and went. BGA ushered in the era of disposable compromised filth. Now laptops are only a marginal improvement over a cell phone with a keyboard. They might perform better than a cell phone, but they're designed in the same pathetic manner. Using a touchpad is as miserable as a touch screen. The only benefit in my mind is a larger screen and a real keyboard. If you're going to connect an external monitor and keyboard, then you may as well have a decent desktop to connect them to. Use the turdbook when your external monitor and keyboard are not available. Leave it turned off the rest of the time. That's how I roll now... only when necessary. Never because I prefer to. The friendships that were built when laptops were respectable have lasted and I will take them to my grave. But, the original reason those friendships were formed is as dead as a doornail now.

I used to run distilled water with an antimicrobial additive. I cannot identify any benefit to that. Automotive coolant is a superior alternative. It requires no maintenance. I have a laptop that I use once in a great while. I sometimes forget that I have it. I don't hate laptops as much as I do smartphones, but I do find both are pretty miserable products in general. I won't use either one if I have access to my desktops. Neither of them will be replaced until they stop working because upgrading either one is a waste of money. I won't even use my smartphone for text messaging if I am at a computer because I loathe touch input so much. (I use Google Messages on my desktop instead of the phone.) The idea of owning a touch screen laptop makes me feel like punching someone. That looks nice, bro.

Aim to Head always has sensual cover art. They probably get YouTube subscribers for no other reason. Seems to be common with Techno artists in general.

Fans wear out, but 2 years isn't very long.