PC Build Thread - 2020... and beyond!!!

[LadyGeek]

My new Intel build is up and running!

The liquid cooler was a fun challenge. Not only for installing the integrated radiator / fan assembly, but detangling the wiring. The fans (and pump) are wired for both RGB and Adaptive RGB (ARGB) lighting. I decided to go with RGB. I connected the fans to the dedicated motherboard RGB connector via a 4-to-1 cable harness (3 fans + pump RGB). If you want ARGB, the appropriate USB adapter and cables are supplied.

I'm glad the motherboard was designed for liquid cooling, as it has a dedicated "Pump" connector which has a higher current output than the other fan connectors. I plugged the pump connector into that, and the radiator fans into the CPU_Fan connector via a 3-to-1 fan harness adapter cable.

Here's what I ended up with:



The aluminum heatsink (stamped "Lightning Gen 4") just above the GPU is covering the first M.2 slot. I have my Samsung 990 1 TB SSD mounted there. Not shown is a SATA SSD mounted on the backside panel. (While I was waiting for parts to arrive, I consolidated my dual-boot Linux / Windows configuration into a single drive on my old PC. I then cloned the contents onto the new Samsung 990 SSD.)

Note the Y-cable harness on the power connector. These cards draw a ton of current and must be fed using two PCIe power cables. The Y-cable was supplied with the card.

The GPU support bracket is just below the GPU marked as "MSI". It's attached across the top of 4 slots and is held in place by the slot screws.

Just below the support bracket is the aluminum plate heatsink (stamped "Lightning Gen 4") covering 2 additional M.2 slots.

This view gives a different perspective.



At first power-up, everything turned on as expected. Except there was no video output whatsoever. After waiting a few minutes deciding how to proceed, the PC booted into Windows 11. I'm guessing it just needed the extra time to configure itself.

I then noticed that my keyboard was not being recognized at boot. That's a major problem, as you are blocked from doing anything. Can you enter BIOS? Nope. Unplugging / plugging in later worked fine, but nothing was recognized at boot. The mouse was OK.

After losing a few hours on this, Google finally came up with the answer. MSI has a known problem of finding keyboards over USB 3.0. My motherboard back panel has 6 USB ports. 4 x USB 3.0 ports and 2 x USB 2.0 ports. The panel isn't marked for that, but if you read the manual and see the picture which shows the mouse and keyboard connected to the USB 2.0 ports (the black colored ones), you'll quickly understand why they did that. I plugged my mouse and keyboard into the USB 2.0 ports and the keyboard worked (along with the mouse). Frustrating.

The other frustration was Windows 11. When the drive was on my old PC, I did a clean install and activated the license using my existing Win 10 product key. After moving the SSD to my new PC, Windows 11 refused to activate. Long story short, I got it activated via phone. Tip: Use a cellphone. After entering those 9 groups of 6 characters on the keypad, Microsoft will text you with the corresponding 9 groups of 6 characters which validate the activation.

I had to do this twice because Microsoft wanted to know how many copies use this license. I mistakenly answered "1" but they really meant how many other copies are installed. This time, I answered "0" and my license was activated. The license now shows in my Microsoft account.

[Rex66]

I pretty much use just liquid but not sure why since air is so close in performance.

I don’t use the anti sag brackets but maybe I should.

Yep reusing a license is a pain to get straight.

I’ve only done amd lately but usually the memory timing makes the the initial boots slow and then there is a bios setting to improve that.

[LadyGeek]

At low loads, the cooler fan noise is quite a bit less than my prior build which was a Noctua air fan. I haven't stressed it at high loads yet, but I'm betting it will still be more quiet than air cooling.

[tuningfork]

The first POST of my AMD 7950X build also took several minutes with a black screen. I had read about it beforehand so I just sat patiently until the BIOS screen finally appeared (whew!). I haven't researched it, but it makes sense that it's due to using conservative memory timings to help ensure the first startup is successful.

I had issues on an older computer with the USB keyboard not being recognized by the BIOS. It had been working for years, then suddenly at boot I started getting the beep-code saying there's a problem with the keyboard (I always liked the very old systems that would halt with the message "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue" ). The keyboard would work in Windows but not in BIOS. I have no idea why it just suddenly stopped seeing the keyboard during startup. I could get it to work by plugging the keyboard into one of the front USB ports. Not a desired configuration, but an ok compromise since I rarely needed to go into BIOS. I guessed it was the motherboard slowly degrading (it was almost 10 years old) telling me it was past due time to build a new computer.

[Mudpuppy]

The other frustration was Windows 11. When the drive was on my old PC, I did a clean install and activated the license using my existing Win 10 product key. After moving the SSD to my new PC, Windows 11 refused to activate. Long story short, I got it activated via phone. Tip: Use a cellphone. After entering those 9 groups of 6 characters on the keypad, Microsoft will text you with the corresponding 9 groups of 6 characters which validate the activation.

I had to do this twice because Microsoft wanted to know how many copies use this license. I mistakenly answered "1" but they really meant how many other copies are installed. This time, I answered "0" and my license was activated. The license now shows in my Microsoft account.

I wonder if this is related to a similar activation issue people have been reporting recently. The crux of the issue is Microsoft changed the automatic activation method to no longer allow Windows 7/8 license keys to activate new instances of Windows 10/11, since they're no longer supporting free upgrades from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10/11. But some people with activated upgraded systems found that when they changed certain hardware, like the motherboard, their previously activated version of upgraded Windows 10/11 no longer worked and refused to reactivate. Here's an article from The Verge on this issue: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/239 ... grade-keys

Anyways, I wonder if something similar prevented the automatic activation of your upgraded Windows 10 to Windows 11 license once you moved it over to new hardware. Although another, easier, explanation is that Microsoft thought your old system was still active and that two separate systems were trying to use the same license key. Key lesson there is to probably do the Windows install on the fresh hardware and have a partitioning / drive scheme that would allow you to copy the data separately from the operating system.

[Mudpuppy]

I had issues on an older computer with the USB keyboard not being recognized by the BIOS. It had been working for years, then suddenly at boot I started getting the beep-code saying there's a problem with the keyboard (I always liked the very old systems that would halt with the message "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue" ). The keyboard would work in Windows but not in BIOS. I have no idea why it just suddenly stopped seeing the keyboard during startup. I could get it to work by plugging the keyboard into one of the front USB ports. Not a desired configuration, but an ok compromise since I rarely needed to go into BIOS. I guessed it was the motherboard slowly degrading (it was almost 10 years old) telling me it was past due time to build a new computer.

That reminds me of my own "fun with I/O" recently. On my old system from 2011, I'd forgotten that I'd plugged in a USB mouse when the previous PS/2 mouse was getting too unreliable, but I'd never unplugged the PS/2 mouse. Well, a few weeks ago my cursor starts moving randomly on its own and I couldn't get anything other than right-click to work on the USB mouse. When I plugged in a new mouse to the front USB ports, I had the same issues. I pulled the whole computer out, started unplugging all the USB devices, and then realized the cats had dragged the PS/2 mouse to the floor and wedged it under some furniture where one mouse button was continuously being pressed. The random cursor moving was probably from the cats playing with the PS/2 mouse or when I bumped against the furniture. Unplugged the PS/2 mouse and all was back to normal, although I really do need to upgrade that system at some point.

[LadyGeek]

The first POST of my AMD 7950X build also took several minutes with a black screen. I had read about it beforehand so I just sat patiently until the BIOS screen finally appeared (whew!). I haven't researched it, but it makes sense that it's due to using conservative memory timings to help ensure the first startup is successful.

Thanks! I feel much better now.

I had issues on an older computer with the USB keyboard not being recognized by the BIOS.

That reminds me of my own "fun with I/O" recently.

OK, I'll add mine. What I didn't say earlier was that I had actually gotten my keyboard recognized by the mobo's USB 3.0 ports. How? I have a hardware engineering background and realized this is a timing issue. (Of course it is...)

So, all I needed to do is introduce a timeout delay. How? Easy. I had two USB keyboards and plugged them both into a mobo back panel USB 3.0 port. Sure enough, it bypassed one keyboard - but not the second. I was in.

In hindsight, I honestly didn't know the difference between the back panel USB ports and later realized they both were on the USB 3.0 ports. After figuring out the port issue, I plugged the mouse and keyboard into the dedicated USB 2.0 ports and the keyboard worked at boot.

I wonder if this is related to a similar activation issue people have been reporting recently. The crux of the issue is Microsoft changed the automatic activation method to no longer allow Windows 7/8 license keys to activate new instances of Windows 10/11, since they're no longer supporting free upgrades from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10/11.

You might be right. I've had that license for quite some time and it's possible this was an upgrade from Windows 7 (Windows 8 was a non-starter for many, including me). My Win 11 clean install on my old PC required me to enter the product key, which was accepted.

I then installed the old SSD into the new PC (Samsung 980 PRO 1 TB) and cloned it to the new one (Samsung 990 PRO 1 TB). I then moved the old SSD back to the old PC, so only the Samsung 990 was in the new PC. My old PC was not powered up, so there's no chance of Microsoft seeing this older copy.

With a single shiny new copy of Win 11 in my new PC, I followed the troubleshooting steps to activate the license (I changed the hardware... this is the computer I'm using now.) but it wasn't accepted. Phone activation was my last try.

[rob]

Heads up that MSFT... finally... fixed that bug in reassigning Win10 digital licenses (the ones orig sourced from win8 but got the free upgrade) after hardware changes... Was finally able to get my new guts activated after a few weeks of trying (and several useless conversations with MSFT support).

Now I can auto hide the task bar and change my &% background image

[LadyGeek]

I put my new PC through its paces in Linux. My folding@home app had the CPU on its virtual knees. GPU loading was moderate, but that's all I could get with this app.

In Linux, I use psensor for temperature monitoring. The CPU peaked at 77 deg C, GPU was 61 deg C.

My UPS monitored the power draw. It peaked somewhere around 580 W. I'm sure there were higher peaks not reported. This includes 23 W for the display.

My UPS is rated for 810 W max, so this is just under the limit. I had chosen to not replace this UPS (1350 VA) with a higher capacity one (1500 VA). So far, I think I'm OK.

I should mention that the liquid cooler and chasis fan noise is almost inaudible when the CPU is operating with no load (just running the OS). At full loading, I'd say the noise is not as loud as my earlier air-cooled build.

The BIOS is configured for "Smart fan" cooling. It modulates the fan speed based on temperature (vs. a constant RPM).