Off Topic Thread V2.0

Recurve360 · 16-05-2016 12:07PM

Question about selling a GPU that buyer is complaining about.
A guy bought an r9 290(reference cooler) and 2 weeks later he is now complaining that it cuts out after about 3 minutes on a heavy load. He hasnt detailed the exact problem but says the screen goes black and he has to hard reset his pc to start it again. Any idea what this could be?

I had it in my main rig and it worked fine for me and i even tested it the day before I sold it and it played GTA V on ultra for an hour no problem. So really the card had no fault when I sold it and was fully functional.

Any idea what could be wrong or is it possible that hes trying to pull a fast one to get money back?
Iv suggested it may be a PSU or a driver issue. Iv asked him to send a screenshot of GPU temps but got nothing back so far.
He paid with PayPal, could they refund him from my account even though he has the item? I have proof of postage from An Post.

Is it possible that there was an underlying issue or more likely that his PC cant power the card or he bodged it himself?

MiskyBoyy · 16-05-2016 12:09PM

Recurve360 wrote:

He paid with PayPal, could they refund him from my account even though he has the item? I have proof of postage from An Post.

Afaik as long as you have proof of postage you're safe enough.

Serephucus · 16-05-2016 12:10PM

He bought it used. Whether it's something he did or not, this is to be expected. (If it is the card) it sucks that it died so quickly, but statistically it has to happen to someone that fast.

I'd get him to send a screenshot of Afterburner while gaming, see if he's overclocked the snot out of it, or if there's power problems, etc. If everything looks ok, get him to bring the card to you. If it works in your machine, it's his problem. If it doesn't... Well then you tell him the above.

Recurve360 · 16-05-2016 12:18PM

MiskyBoyy wrote: »

Afaik as long as you have proof of postage you're safe enough.

Yeah I have just standard tracking proof from An Post so ill keep a record of that

Serephucus wrote: »

He bought it used.

Cheers for that. I just kinda wanted to know what I should do on ethical grounds. Im trying to help him out to get it working and all but its a bit suspect that he waited 2 weeks after he got it to message me.

Cheers for the speedy replies guys

TerrorFirmer · 16-05-2016 01:39PM

Recurve360 wrote: »

Question about selling a GPU that buyer is complaining about.
A guy bought an r9 290(reference cooler) and 2 weeks later he is now complaining that it cuts out after about 3 minutes on a heavy load. He hasnt detailed the exact problem but says the screen goes black and he has to hard reset his pc to start it again. Any idea what this could be?

I had it in my main rig and it worked fine for me and i even tested it the day before I sold it and it played GTA V on ultra for an hour no problem. So really the card had no fault when I sold it and was fully functional.

Any idea what could be wrong or is it possible that hes trying to pull a fast one to get money back?
Iv suggested it may be a PSU or a driver issue. Iv asked him to send a screenshot of GPU temps but got nothing back so far.
He paid with PayPal, could they refund him from my account even though he has the item? I have proof of postage from An Post.

Is it possible that there was an underlying issue or more likely that his PC cant power the card or he bodged it himself?

That was a chronic problem with some launch 290's. I had two and both were affected - middle of gaming it would just cut to a black screen for no reason. Sometimes after 5 minutes sometimes after half an hour.

It wasn't until model number 3 that the issue went away for me. Not say that it's definitely what's happening here but just for consideration.

Solitaire · 16-05-2016 02:11PM

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That was a chronic problem with some launch 290's. I had two and both were affected - middle of gaming it would just cut to a black screen for no reason. Sometimes after 5 minutes sometimes after half an hour.

It wasn't until model number 3 that the issue went away for me. Not say that it's definitely what's happening here but just for consideration.

Its a widespread known issue for all 285/290/380s. Allegedly there's something wrong with the voltage control causing the driver to fail to restore power to the card after a period of undervolted reduced usage in-game transitioning to a max-frequency state. AFAIK the issue was fixed in later Catalyst releases, but became much worse after Crimson, and six months later still has not been fixed. Newer engines and anything Gamebryo- or UEngine-based is especially vulnerable for some reason, with lots of blame and buck-passing bouncing between Epic and AMD on the issue.

The buyer might be able to reduce the severity of the issue or make it go away entirely by "updating" to the last Catalyst beta, so long as the card is still good and its not a dose of static to the knee causing this. Of course this causes further issues in Win10, as the driver isn't WHQLd and something (hidden middleware? Windows? Raptr?!) will repeatedly uninstall the driver and replace it with old versions of Crimson. It actually did that to me as I was starting up a game last night. "Fun" happened. I was not impressed >_>

Xenoronin · 16-05-2016 03:42PM

WHQL certification is a long enough process for stable releases. Beta will not be certified and you install at your own risk.

MiskyBoyy · 17-05-2016 02:46PM

SterlingArcher · 18-05-2016 11:05AM

Looking on adverts at gpus was enough to put me off selling mine yet think I'll wait till I have a gtx 1080. Don't care about the loss not worth it dealing with timmys.

RoyalMarine · 18-05-2016 11:51AM

Moved to separate thread.

AlmightyCushion · 18-05-2016 12:08PM

So she gets a trip to Paris, an engagement ring and a MacBook Pro and you get socks and a 1080 in return. You're getting ripped off there. Ditch her. The money you save on the wedding can build the most awesomest computer ever. If I were you I wouldn't bother with going SLI. Going by benches I've seen the 1080 is pretty handles 1440p brilliantly. You could go with a 5820K. I imagine 6 highly clocked cores with hyperthreading would really help with your VMs. If you don't go with a second 1080 then you could easily get that, 32GBs RAM (maybe even 64GBs but I'm not sure of prices or if it's even worth it) and a good motherboard and still have change left over. I'd probably get a bigger SSD for your games drive with the size of some games nowadays 250GB will only be enough for a handful of AAA games.

TheDoc · 18-05-2016 12:11PM

SterlingArcher wrote: »

Looking on adverts at gpus was enough to put me off selling mine yet think I'll wait till I have a gtx 1080. Don't care about the loss not worth it dealing with timmys.

Buying or selling?

I bought a second hand 290 last year for what I felt was a good price, think it was like €220. If I was selling it to fund a 1070, probably look for €150 for it.

Adverts can be frustrating, but then I don't get that annoyed just telling people no. Some people feel the need to entertain every outragous offer they receive.

RoyalMarine · 18-05-2016 12:33PM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

So she gets a trip to Paris, an engagement ring and a MacBook Pro and you get socks and a 1080 in return. You're getting ripped off there. Ditch her. The money you save on the wedding can build the most awesomest computer ever. If I were you I wouldn't bother with going SLI. Going by benches I've seen the 1080 is pretty handles 1440p brilliantly. You could go with a 5820K. I imagine 6 highly clocked cores with hyperthreading would really help with your VMs. If you don't go with a second 1080 then you could easily get that, 32GBs RAM (maybe even 64GBs but I'm not sure of prices or if it's even worth it) and a good motherboard and still have change left over. I'd probably get a bigger SSD for your games drive with the size of some games nowadays 250GB will only be enough for a handful of AAA games.

Yeah that would be ideal

I've 2 512gb ssd's in my amazon basket which I think I'll pick up this week or next. (Not inclusive of budget for the main build)

I've moved my post to a new thread now though.

Recurve360 · 18-05-2016 04:12PM

TheDoc wrote: »

Buying or selling?

I bought a second hand 290 last year for what I felt was a good price, think it was like €220. If I was selling it to fund a 1070, probably look for €150 for it.

I bought my 290 second hand last year on Adverts for 210. Sold it 13 months later for 230... Definately dont take less than 200 for it because there fetching that and upwards even for reference models.

And on another subject I got sorted from my earlier post. Dude was trying to power the 290 off the molex pins using an Artic or other cheapo 700W PSU. His friend tested it using an Evga Supernova PSU and card was fine. Thanks for the advice guys

The Randy Riverbeast · 18-05-2016 11:25PM

A leg of my chair is broken so I either need to get used to slowly rotating towards the left or get a new one. Any recommendations? Nothing from ikea. I live in Galway and dont have a car. Wouldnt want to go above 150. Viking seems good but its tough to tell what a chair is like from just pictures.

AlmightyCushion · 19-05-2016 12:36AM

The Randy Riverbeast wrote: »

A leg of my chair is broken so I either need to get used to slowly rotating towards the left or get a new one. Any recommendations? Nothing from ikea. I live in Galway and dont have a car. Wouldnt want to go above 150. Viking seems good but its tough to tell what a chair is like from just pictures.

I got two of the Berlin chairs from Viking. I found them great and last I checked both are still working away despite them being about 6 years old.

Calibos · 19-05-2016 10:09AM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I got two of the Berlin chairs from Viking. I found them great and last I checked both are still working away despite them being about 6 years old.

Picked up one from Viking a few weeks ago to replace an ancient decrepit Woodies office chair.

Mixed reviews on Amazon for this chair (under different name)

Some loved it for its value even if its not soft leather. Some even disbelieved its leather. Others said the cushions flattened and leather split after a year or so.

I've only had mine a few weeks but I like it. Feels comfortable to me. The faux leather on the back and sides and the arm rests is soft, the armrests are wider than I expected and padded enough for me. The seat and seat back 'Real' leather feels harder and more 'plasticky' than the Faux ironically but it feels tougher and like it should last which is the other side of the coin. However, having researched lots of office chairs and seeing the price of a lot of them, I think these 65 odd euro office chairs look like great value

Given your 6 year checkup I wonder what kind of punishment the negative Amazon reviewers put them through to cause the cushions and leather to split so soon. 'Heavier' customers maybe?

I'm happy with my purchase anyway.

I've added some Vesa monitor mounts designed for poles to the arms of the chair as I will be mounting a Joystick HOTAS to the chair for Flight Sims and Elite Dangerous etc in VR. Thats what you see attached to the arms in the photo below. Those things nearly cost as much as the chair

MarkAnthony · 19-05-2016 11:40AM

O.M.F.G... HOTAS on the chair... great idea!!!

More pics please!

jayo26 · 19-05-2016 11:58AM

Any recommendations for a good wireless game pad? Im using the ps4 controller with ds4 tools but sometimes it drops connection was wondering is there something better out there other then that or the xbox controllers.

Calibos · 19-05-2016 01:12PM

MarkAnthony wrote: »

O.M.F.G... HOTAS on the chair... great idea!!!

More pics please!

Hold your horses! I've a lot on my plate. Waiting for my Rift, purchasing and building my VR PC, purchasing and building my media server, planning buttkickers for the chair and all the cabling, inset breakout panel for all the cabling and my Rift cabling built into the desk, etc etc blah blah.

My brain is buckling under the mental load!!

Heres google images of where I got the idea.

In a lot of those examples the Vesa brackets are orientated differently with the HOTAS velcro'd to the VESA mount plate itself. However, I found that the clamp parts projected into the seat/leg space and I worried I'd scratch my thighs off them if I didn't sit down carefully. Instead I rotated the clamps compared to most which actually meant they clamped around this chairs metal arms perfectly. The clamps no longer projected into the seat space, and the new orientation compared to those others means the articulation of the 'arms' of the Vesa mount and rotatability of the 'plate' are not rendered moot. They are now usable and I can swing the Hotas away to the sides and also rotate the plate and pivot the HOTAS down so the chair can now be pushed under the desk. All I need to do to enable all this is make a little platform for the HOTAS that bolts to the mounting plate rather than affixing the HOTAS directly to the plate like all those photo's.

Hard to explain in words. Pictures are better. Heres a crappy Paint diagram though.

The benefit to the way I have orientated the Vesa clamps and how I will mount to the plate is that I get to have the HOTAS in line with the armrests when in use which is the most ergonomic position, but I also get to be able to swing them out of the way to the sides when not in use, and also get to rotate them down so I can push the chair arms under the desk. The way others have these mounted the can either have them ergonomically at the end of the arms but can't swing them away or rotate them or they can rotate them but they are not positioned ergonomically for actually use. You may notice the angle would be slightly tilted towards the floor. I did initially articulate the mount to have the HOTAS level but when I sat in the chair I realised that when I tilt the chair back to a comfortable position with my feet on my footrest, the HOTAS is now level. Basically, the HOTAS mount looks tilted when the chair itself is level when not in use, but when I actually use the chair for Elite Dangerous, I tilt the chair back which levels the HOTAS....if you get me. This matches the pilot in ED much better as far as I can see.

Heres a photo of them articulated such that I could have mounted the hotas directly to the plate. However this was not ergonomic in practice as my arms were splayed outwards and with hands on the HOTAS my elbows are pushed into my torso. Having the HOTAS at the end of the arms and inline with the armrests is the ideal. Arms are suported and neither over extended or bunched up against your torso.

Bonus Pic

MarkAnthony · 19-05-2016 01:24PM

My Rift is in Tamworth at the mo! Any news on yours?

Calibos · 19-05-2016 01:51PM

MarkAnthony wrote: »

My Rift is in Tamworth at the mo! Any news on yours?

Ah Tamworth. I know you so well. Never been there but lots of my Amazon stuff tracks through there

I've been very ZEN about the whole 2 month shipping delays. Sure I don't even have my VR PC purchased or shipped yet (Waiting for Pascal info that might affect component decisions)

However, Tuesday saw a flurry of European shipment emails before they stopped again. Lots of those emails were for orders very close to mine and even later. I'm a 41 minute XXXX31XXXX 30/05/16 - 09/06/16 pre-order. Started seeing a few european 45-50 minuters orders ship. So My ZEN is gone and I've started checking and F5 ing my order page several times a day and am now gutted each time when it hasn't changed to 'Processing'.

TLDR. Who bloody knows!!

The Randy Riverbeast · 19-05-2016 06:37PM

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I got two of the Berlin chairs from Viking. I found them great and last I checked both are still working away despite them being about 6 years old.

Calibos wrote: »

Picked up one from Viking a few weeks ago to replace an ancient decrepit Woodies office chair.

Mixed reviews on Amazon for this chair (under different name)

Some loved it for its value even if its not soft leather. Some even disbelieved its leather. Others said the cushions flattened and leather split after a year or so.

I've only had mine a few weeks but I like it. Feels comfortable to me. The faux leather on the back and sides and the arm rests is soft, the armrests are wider than I expected and padded enough for me. The seat and seat back 'Real' leather feels harder and more 'plasticky' than the Faux ironically but it feels tougher and like it should last which is the other side of the coin. However, having researched lots of office chairs and seeing the price of a lot of them, I think these 65 odd euro office chairs look like great value

Given your 6 year checkup I wonder what kind of punishment the negative Amazon reviewers put them through to cause the cushions and leather to split so soon. 'Heavier' customers maybe?

I'm happy with my purchase anyway.

I've added some Vesa monitor mounts designed for poles to the arms of the chair as I will be mounting a Joystick HOTAS to the chair for Flight Sims and Elite Dangerous etc in VR. Thats what you see attached to the arms in the photo below. Those things nearly cost as much as the chair

That chair looks like it would do the job. Do you find the cushions soft? Im torn between that chair and this one that looks like it might be a bit softer.
http://www.vikingdirect.ie/catalog/catalogSku.do?id=3261822&pr=Q45&cm_sp=merchpromo-_-st2-_-chair

Viking seems to want my company name, Im assuming making something up wont be a problem. Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net is in business!

jonon9 · 21-05-2016 01:39PM

Hi guys Im in the market to building a new pc but I just noticed dabs is pretty much gone for the normal consumer so is there any other site that is decent in prices? in the market for a nice Radeon R9 390 DC3 OC Strix

Calvin · 21-05-2016 01:48PM

jonon9 wrote: »

Hi guys Im in the market to building a new pc but I just noticed dabs is pretty much gone for the normal consumer so is there any other site that is decent in prices? in the market for a nice Radeon R9 390 DC3 OC Strix

Maybe try Amazon.de or amazon.fr? That's where I got a couple parts from at decent prices.

wotzgoingon · 21-05-2016 01:58PM

What is the shipping price from overclockers.co.uk to Ireland does anyone know?

edit: nevermind, 36.95 sterling, daylight robbery.

MiskyBoyy · 21-05-2016 02:13PM

wotzgoingon wrote:

What is the shipping price from overclockers.co.uk to Ireland does anyone know?

Parcel motel?

wotzgoingon · 21-05-2016 02:18PM

MiskyBoyy wrote: »

wotzgoingon wrote:

What is the shipping price from overclockers.co.uk to Ireland does anyone know?

Parcel motel?

I was thinking about that.

But more thinking has led me to think properly that I cannot really afford a new monitor.
I was thinking about a 1080p 144Hz ,1ms, freesync monitor. Even if I had the money I don't think my graphics card would be able to run a 1440p, 144Hz freesync monitor. I have a 4GB R9 290.

Sonics2k · 21-05-2016 02:56PM

wotzgoingon wrote: »

What is the shipping price from overclockers.co.uk to Ireland does anyone know?

edit: nevermind, 36.95 sterling, daylight robbery.

If you choose the DPD option it should be a good bit cheaper. Was a few months back since I last bought from them but I think it was like €15

TerrorFirmer · 21-05-2016 03:26PM

Yeah postage from OCUK is usually about €12-15 for me and that would be with a lot of stuff.

Off Topic Thread V2.0

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