Been Out of Action (PC Failure)

[StormILM]

Yep, for over a week now (since right after I got the JF-17 installed and flying), my still new (year & 4 month old) Dell XPS 8930 took a sudden and not so dramatic dump. I walked out of the room and it was one and working, came back in and to a black screen and thought I had a power failure (a loose cord/cable/surge protector, etc). Checked everything, PC refused to start, totally dead other than a flashing amber light on the power button. I called Dell Premium Support and started the ball rolling and after over an hour on the phone with them, no joy, the power supply BIT wouldn't even cooperate! They were as stumped as I was. At first they were going to send me a shipping box and pre-paid FedEx Express label to bring the PC into their depot in Texas for repair but then they called me back to tell me they were sending a field technician at the beginning of the week with parts they suspected that needed to be replaced. The tech didn't get to me this past Monday due to one of the parts not arriving at their depot so they rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon. The tech arrived that day/afternoon and replaced the Motherboard and Power Supply but guess what, the PC still refused to start!!! He called Dell field tech support, all of us were still stumped. At that moment, we decided to overnight the PC to the repair depot. FedEx picked up my PC on Thursday afternoon, it was received at the depot in Texas early yesterday morning, they notified me of receiving and initiating diagnostics and repairs and that they were going to expedite things as fast as possible. I was told 4 to 10 days. This afternoon, I was surprised when FedEx delivered my PC back to me! That was under a 48 hour turnaround door to door.

It's good to go, more or less a factory fresh PC. I did loose my data which was on the system at the time but that's okay, everything is backed up. I usually save everything using Acronis True Image but I also manually backup most things on my storage drives.

Dell repair depot did not explain what they thought may have been wrong. Since a new MB and Power Supply had been installed, the depot also went ahead and replaced the CPU as well. Prior to this failure, I had experienced the widely reported "5 second freeze" issue with my OS where the Keyboard, Mouse and all functions related to the OS would freeze for 5 seconds and with no particular time interval or pattern. Many reported that the cause of the freezing had to due with a bug in W10 which was related to the Power Management Settings but no matter what recommended fix I tried, the problem persisted as it had since this past May. Not sure if this failure was related or not or maybe the freezing was the CPU going bad? I can only suspect. As a precaution, I am not going to use my Acronis restore to set it back to where it was, just going to fit everything back on section at a time even if it takes me a bit. I see in just over one week of being out of action, I have missed a good bit already but will get caught up soon enough.

BTW, I will be soliciting advice of some of your PC builders soon, I am going to build another PC for performance for DCS, P3Dv4, and the forthcoming MSFS 2020 and use this PC as a backup mirror (as much as possible) and as a primary coms device.

Anyhow, just wanted to chime in after my brief absence and why, hope everyone as doing well and I look forward to getting back up and virtual flying and interacting here soon.

[rvn817j]

Good to hear you're back up. Take a serious look at AMD CPUs now. The Ryzen 7 3700X / 3900X are the price performance leaders. I'm "lovin'" my 3700X , 570X chipset M/B and RX5700 graphics card combo. The price performance on these components is fantastic.

[StormILM]

Good to hear you're back up. Take a serious look at AMD CPUs now. The Ryzen 7 3700X / 3900X are the price performance leaders. I'm "lovin'" my 3700X , 570X chipset M/B and RX5700 graphics card combo. The price performance on these components is fantastic.

Thanks for those specs. Will certainly give them a look. RV-8 owner/pilot? Sweet! I got a little stick time in an RV-6 back in the early 90's which was owned by a local fellow EAA member. Fun little aircraft!

[scotth6]

Yeah, great to hear you're back up and running again with not too much down time (relatively). I am pretty happy with my current system. It cost me a packet as everything was pretty new tech when I built it around Christmas last year. I'm sure a lot of the prices will have dropped by now already, or they will over the next year or so if they have not yet. I spent a fair bit because my previous PC was about 7 or 8 years old (although I still have it and it's working well) and I thought it was about time to get something new to run more things comfortably on VR, and run sims smoother in general. I also thought that getting the latest available tech would future proof it a bit. It's not invincible against everything, but I can run almost everything with pretty good frames now, including P3DV4 with high settings, hi res airports, study level aircraft, live weather and a good amount of AI.

Here are my current specs:



https://i.imgur.com/hkSf6MA.jpg


Cheers,

[Phantom88]

Glad you're back up and in the game Storm,Great to hear you're Positive Dell Support story also.
I once had a similar problem but it was indeed a Power Supply issue so easy fix.
My current rig is a Cyber Power build from Newegg....I'm extremely Happy with.

[rvn817j]

I will also put in a positive word for Newegg! I've been buying components from Newegg for many, many years and have never had a bad experience! I will put my current specs in my signature. (Been "brewing my own" for a number of years and enjoy swapping components in and out...I suppose that's why I have 5 or 6 desktop boxes operating on various TVs around the house!)

Storm - Think about the "brew your own" solution because of the flexibility to "mod" after you've done it.

(I will also admit, I haven't broken down and purchased a good set of rudder peddles....too expensive....HA! Another admission...as I get up in years, I tend to fly RW less, under 10 hours in the RV-8 this past year. Now it's cold and snowy in MN and the hangar has no heat....too cold.)

[wombat666]

I've built my own systems for 20+ years and it is satisfying, occasionally frustrating, but really just a case of working out your requirements, talking to suppliers and fellow enthusiasts and always reading manuals, magazines, as well as asking around support forums.
My (almost) completed i9 system should handle most things I can throw at it, but as Scott6 mentions, cutting edge tech costs.
A lot!!
However, IMHO it is better to play the long game, the end result tends to stay with most power demanding applications over a decent time frame.

My 'new' specs..............:pirate:..................which should be up and operational in a couple of weeks.


Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X D-RGB Galaxy Silver ATX Case Tempered Glass
ASUS ROG Rampage VI Extreme Omega Motherboard
Intel Core i9 9960X
Corsair CMT128GX4M8X3600C18 Dominator Platinum RGB 128GB 3600MHz DDR
ASUS Turbo GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 11GB x 2 in SLI
Corsair RM1000i 1000W Power Supply, White, OEM Packaging
Corsair Hydro H100i RGB Platinum SE White
Samsung 860 EVO 2TB M.2 (SATA) SSD x 1
Samsung 860 PRO 2TB SSD x 4
Pioneer BDRXS07TUHD Black Slot Loading External BluRay Writer

[scotth6]

Daaammmn Wombat!!! That looks expensive.... but awesome. 2 x 2080Ti, the i9-9960, and 128GB of RAM!!! I never even thought of putting that much RAM in a PC. Very nice.

[wombat666]

Well Scott, I looked at the MoBo and it has 8 little slots for RAM so I thought I'd better fill them up!
Wretched excess I know but it's like cars.....how fast you go depends on how much gelt you spend.
:biggrin-new:

[rvn817j]

Wombat - That is one heck of a system! I would just like to have your graphics card budget for my entire next build (~$2400?).

(Btw, I'm so environmentally conscious, I re-use my cases! Rip out the guts, try to sell on Ebay, and replace with new! Or is it economically conscious...lol.)

[wombat666]

Jay, given the exchange rate of the Pacific Peso they did cost: not much change out of A$4000.00.
I should add that I had to use this specific model because they so much smaller than the usual heavy hitters, the Rampage VI board is very highly specced and almost physically too small, bloody Graphic Cards are becoming too fat!
After thinking long and hard about running a single 24GB nVidia GeForce RTX Titan I gave up on price and the sheer size, I'd be needing to stay with my giant Corsair Obsidian 900D Full Tower case and that wasn't part of Plan A.
I need lots of pixel power for my photography (another great pastime that really soaks up $$$$ bigtime!) so that's the justification I use on my wife..........:encouragement:
Must say that these are probably the neatest and best quality cards I've used, if they perform as well as they look I'll be a very happy wombat!
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/721x772q90/921/lmwOa5.png

[rvn817j]

Wombat - I'd be interested to hear your DCS / P3Dv4 FPS (and settings) with these awesome graphics cards. (I have been very excited about the performance I'm getting with my "meager" components (best I've ever seen in many years of "simming"), so I'm wondering if a step up in graphics card is in my future. I run my sim computer on a 4K TV.)

Storm - Let me know if I can give you some additional information to assist in your sim enjoyment!

[wombat666]

Would you believe that I'm waiting for three Phanteks SSD drive trays (A$36:00) and an ASUS ROG GeForce RTX NVLink Bridge (A$179:00 Ouch!!!) to arrive, hopefully in the next few days.
Almost as frustrating as the four Silverstone Combo SATA Power/Data Adapter units that were 'at the supplier' for over eight weeks!
:banghead:
I could fire everything up and temporarily run on one M2 SSD and a single RTX 2080 but that isn't part of Plan A! (Or Plans B, C, or D!)
To round out my learning experience I'll be installing W10, not an item I'm looking forward too, but I think it will maximise all the newer kit.
Watch this space.
:encouragement:

[StormILM]

Wombat, I have always marveled at your rig specs (past and current). I am back up and running, got my spare SSD's installed last night. Good news is that all of my DCS and P3D installed files were still on them so I save them before wiping/reformating the drives (to get a clean start). I re-installed DCS and will soon P3Dv4.5, HOTAS drivers back in. My rig specs are in a Dell XPS 8930: i7-8700K@ 3.7Ghz (Turbo Boost). 32Gb RAM, GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb. W10x64 Pro OS on an M2 SSD 1Tb, Samsung 860 1Tb & 850 500Gb and on board storage HDD 2Tb. My rig gives me flawless high FPS with DCS and 30 to 50+ on P3Dv4.5 depending on the scenery and models used with REX installed. Of course the new rig will be higher end and my own build. I have had great luck with the Samsung EVO SSD's, a noticeable difference in file access performance.
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=72952&stc=1

[rvn817j]

Storm - Those are highly reSPECtable specs! And that does it for me, I'm done pinching pennies, I'm getting the RX5700XT I've been eyeing and those Crosswind rudder peddles...lol. (After Christmas of course.)