Anyone else go through a bunch of poor QC hardware recently?

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chameleoneel

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Sapphire Pulse 6700XT I bought April 21st from Roguecast. I didn't open for about 5 weeks, trying to get other stuff. I finally opened and.....it had wildly erratic gpu clocks, never comes close to the 2424ghz game clock advertised, causes the lights to flicker in two different houses when I turn the computer on, occassionally my monitor will cut out for a split second and show a line of static on the screen. Needless to say.....games do not run smoothly.

May 22nd. Silverstone SX750 Platinum v1.1, 750W SFX Fully Modular 80 Plus Platinum Power Supply. Amazon posting even said "new batch" right in the title. Seemingly implying "improved".

The moment you applied any sort of load, the fan would instantly jump to 100% (super loud) and the power supply would get very very warm. The fan would never spin down. You had to shut the computer down to get it to stop.

I also went through 4 USB capture cards.

The 1st one was a $30-ish dollar generic, which was related to a wave of youtuber videos, showing that they were actually decent, no frills devices. Well the one I got wouldn't capture smoothly, for even a few seconds. Felt warm to the touch.

2nd, I tried an EVGA XR1. It would capture smoothly for maybe 30 seconds, and then it would constantly, randomly drop frames. Felt warm to the touch after only a couple of minutes. I also tried a few different cables, as some user reviews said the included cable was too cheap to power it sufficiently.

3rd I got an Avermedia Live Gamer Ultra from Amazon warehouse. It would capture smoothly for about two minutes, then it would become a slideshow. The OBS preview window would also have a rythmic wobble to it.. These have a cooling fan in them. On their site, it shows a 3d render of the supposed insides. A heatsink, with a fan embedded into it.
Well I shined my flashight into the unit and there is no heatsink. just the fan sitting on top of the chip (there is a very thin plate between the fan and the chip). The fan also made a buzzing noise. Not loud. but annoying if its on the desk in front of you.


4th, I thought ok, maybe the amazon warehouse item I got was a return. So I bought a brand new Avermedia Livegamer Ultra. It was worse. would only capture smoothly for about 1 minute. OBS preview window would show the same rythmic wobble. Fan had a loud whistle to it and was also making very slight contact with something inside the unit. causing a very slight clicking sound. Also no heatsink in this one. Same thin plate with fan on top.

These 4 were all ordered early to mid May.
 
have you confirmed its the gpu in any way? tried another gpu or psu?
edited speeling
 
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pendragon1 said:
have you confirmed its the gpu in any way? tried another gpu or psu?
edited speeling
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Tried with 3 different CPUs and two motherboards (i7-10700 and i7-11700, both in the same mobo. Now using a Ryzen 5950x and of course, a new mobo for that). I tried 3 different power supplies. 3 different cases (so, its not shorting on a case). 2 different monitors.

I have an RTX 2060, which this was meant to replace.

Also, I moved to a new place. Renting a room in a very nice, 4 year old house. Lights also flicker here, when I turn the computer on, with this GPU. The house I was living in is old an shitty. I thought there could be a possibility that house couldn't handle a mid/high computer. (its not the only or even the main reason I moved, though!).

At both houses, tried $20 power strip, straight to outlet, and a hospital grade power strip.

Only thing I haven't tried different is different RAM and storage.
 
Have you checked or had and electrician check for neutral/ground crossover in your panel and outlets? Causes massive inductive kick when fridges ,disposals ,and dishwashers fire up their ac motors.
 
learners permit said:
Have you checked or had and electrician check for neutral/ground crossover in your panel and outlets? Causes massive inductive kick when fridges ,disposals ,and dishwashers fire up their ac motors.
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chameleoneel said:
Also, I moved to a new place. Renting a room in a very nice, 4 year old house. Lights also flicker here, when I turn the computer on, with this GPU. The house I was living in is old an shitty. I thought there could be a possibility that house couldn't handle a mid/high computer.
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two places, same issue.

op, and it goes back to normal with the 2060?
 
learners permit said:
Have you checked or had and electrician check for neutral/ground crossover in your panel and outlets? Causes massive inductive kick when fridges ,disposals ,and dishwashers fire up their ac motors.
Click to expand...
pendragon1 said:
two places, same issue.

op, and it goes back to normal with the 2060?
Click to expand...
Yeah so I put my 2060 in last night and....was dissapointed to find that the lights also flicker at my new place, when I turn the system on. So....I guess Portland area has poor standards for electrical work, eh?!

Otherwise, yes, the system works as expected. Happily resumed streaming Portal 2 last night, for a couple of hours. Other games tested also working fine.
 
chameleoneel said:
Yeah so I put my 2060 in last night and....was dissapointed to find that the lights also flicker at my new place, when I turn the system on. So....I guess Portland area has poor standards for electrical work, eh?!

Otherwise, yes, the system works as expected. Happily resumed streaming Portal 2 last night, for a couple of hours. Other games tested also working fine.
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sounds like you need a good ups to level it out and rma the gpu.
 
Lights flickering when you power up your pc? Yeeesh, thats kind of scary. Id be really worried about how hot the wires inside the wall were getting. Does your psu power cable heat up?
I agree, a ups at the least but an electrician is a must. If your leasing/renting it shouldnt cost you anything to have the outlets and wiring tested.
 
learners permit said:
Have you checked or had and electrician check for neutral/ground crossover in your panel and outlets? Causes massive inductive kick when fridges ,disposals ,and dishwashers fire up their ac motors.
Click to expand...

hititnquitit said:
Lights flickering when you power up your pc? Yeeesh, thats kind of scary. Id be really worried about how hot the wires inside the wall were getting. Does your psu power cable heat up?
I agree, a ups at the least but an electrician is a must. If your leasing/renting it shouldnt cost you anything to have the outlets and wiring tested.
Click to expand...
I'm renting.

I guess I can grab hold of my PSU's power cable tonight, while running a high load on the computer. See if it feels..warm? hot?


Are there some other ways I can test things in terms of the house wiring being a problem? Because I have a feeling my property owner might be skeptical over my PC versus his 4 year old house.
 
the house is fine, its just the sudden load dipping things. my a/c unit causes it too.
 
I dont know much about electricity in the home but i do know that flickering lights when you turn something on usually mean the circuits overloaded or the wirings messed up. Thats why i said to feel the psu cable(had a bad experience in an old home). Maybe try a different outlet on a different circuit. If its only 4yo theres probably too much running on that circuit ie fridge, ac etc...
 
Sounds like bad wiring or a bad ground to me.

I'm in a house that was built in the 60s which I have redone a bunch of the wiring on. Lights never flicker even when I turn on high powered stuff.

When we moved in there were something like 4 rooms on a single circuit... Was blowing fuses all the time.
 
capture card updates:

I got an Elgato HD60-S used on Ebay.

I had a bear of a time getting it working properly. But, I did get it working properly!

It does not like my USB headset. With that plugged in, the capture card pops and cuts audio constantly. Its possible I could manually tweak IRQ reservations to fix this. But I'm working around it for now, by using regular headphones and utilizing the mic on my webcam (which I use to show myself during a stream). (I actually have a proper vocal mic which I may try at some point.)

I fixed the sound but, the card still was not capturing smoothly. Especially not at 60fps. It would basically bog down once on screen motion hit a certain speed. I was using Soulcalibur 6 training mode and repeating the same combo over and over. That game is interstingly difficult to capture with good quality. And training mode allows me to focus down on very specific aspects. SC6 has become a very good tool for tweaking quality settings for streaming.

There are some hidden advanced USB settings in the official elgato software, which can help with the bogging down. Also, the card has two different entries to choose from, in OBS. They both performed differently. I thiiink one of them performs better than the other. But its real tough to say. but they definitely behave differently. Elgato's documentation acknowledges the two different entries/modes. But.....says little to really clear up what the difference is. Other than saying one technically uses less resources and is meant for people who run multiple capture cards on the same computer (god I can't imagine setting up multiple. One has been horrible!)

strange thing is, the official elgato software is fine. I can capture 100% smoothly in there. But I could not in OBS.

And then......one time I accidentally left the official elgato catpure software open---while I tried to capture with OBS. And its......100% smooth now in OBS. For some damned strange reason, its 100% smooth in OBS, if I leave the Elgato software open at the same time.

I have no idea, but it is rock solid, now.


During all of this (the course of a week or so) I ordered another EVGA XR1 to try out. Its a lot better than the first one. And by that I mean, it doesn't completely freeze up into a slideshow. But it doesn't capture 100% smoothly. It has a strange repeating pattern of slow down where it repeats some frames or something, about every second. It could actually not be too noticeable, during some normal, erratic gameplay. But some slow, smooth camera pans over fighting arenas in SC6 revealed it clearly. And then repeating the same combo in training mode, also got me 'trained' on the warble pattern. But If I just starting playing, it wasn't 100% noticeable.

It gets really warm.

Anyway, sending it back to Amazon. I got the Elgato working 100 so, I'm good now for capture card business!
 
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Capture card Updates:

The last EVGA XR1 I bought------I forgot to send back. So....I guess I will have to try my luck with getting a functioning replacement from EVGA. I tried using it the other day, with a different computer. This one is an intel based laptop. The pattern of repeating frames is less apparent, but still there. And it completely overheated and froze up after about 20 minutes of streaming gameplay from my Nintendo Switch. Unplugging and replugging would not allow me to resume streaming. It was totally overheated.

EVGA released a new USB capture card product called the XR1 Lite. It skips the RGB, external controls, and the analag audio input/output. They are very low cost. I bought one direct from Amazon to see if the hardware is revised/improved at all.

My Elgato HD-S is still working well, overall. It did freeze up one time, after about 1.5 hours of streaming. But unplugging it and replugging it, allowed me to resume streaming. It has otherwise completed about Ten 1.5 - 2.5 hour streams, with no issues.
 
EVGA XR1 lite have gone up $10 since yesterday. Likely due to a high profile youtube review releasing today.
 
hititnquitit said:
Lights flickering when you power up your pc? Yeeesh, thats kind of scary.
Click to expand...

No, it's just a matter of you not understanding what's going on.

Computer power supplies have fat line capacitors used for smoothing the AC input. When these capacitors are discharged and you plug the power supply into the mains, they will be basically an infinite load or dead short for a few micro seconds as they charge up to their working voltage. This spike rapidly falls off to virtually nothing but leakage current of a few micro amps once the capacitor is charged. You may notice that when you plug in a laptop power brick IEC plug that it'll make a popping sound, this is what's happening.

But this heavy current inrush will drag the mains voltage down, which is important for the next bit.

Modern LED lighting in the race to the bottom has done everything to shed cost and make cheaper to produce. The solution that the industry has widely accepted are what is called capacitor droppers. Basically they'll put the LEDs directly on the mains and use a capacitor to limit the current to the LEDs. But due to the fact that LEDs are ridiculously sensitive to voltage fluctuations, any change in the mains voltage, no matter how small, will cause them to flicker or change intensity. Another cheap method is using specialized linear drivers to switch in sections of LEDs depending on what part of the sine wave the mains is on, and these flicker even worse. Incandescent filament bulbs are far less sensitive to voltage fluctuations, and you wouldn't likely notice any change in brightness unless there was a sustained peak load that dragged down the mains voltage for a longer period of time.

Any heavy load is going to make the lights flicker, it's not limited to computer power supplies.
 
received an ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 a few days ago. the front NVME mounting screw is about 1mm too far from the NVME port, for my Samsung 970 pros. the screw does not secure the drive at all. Installing the heatsink pushes the drive downward, flexing it into a back-bow.
And the rear NVME mounting screw is not aligned with the NVME port, causing the drive to be crooked.

RETURN INITIATED
 
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chameleoneel said:
Capture card Updates:
......

EVGA released a new USB capture card product called the XR1 Lite. It skips the RGB, external controls, and the analag audio input/output. They are very low cost. I bought one direct from Amazon to see if the hardware is revised/improved at all.
Click to expand...
Capture card updates:

I didn't ever try the EVGA XR1 Lite. I sent it back, unopened. Because.....Asus released the ASUS TUF CU4K30. It costs about $200 but...will pass through 1080p 240 input, 1440p 144. And supports 1440p 60 and 1080p 120 capture. Rare features for cature cards. Especially the 1440p support. Even just 1440p passthrough is difficult to find. Let alone 1440p capture!

it works great. It gets fairly warm but....no performance issues.

I still have a faulty EVGA XR1 (1 of 3 which I tried) which I forgot to return and missed the window. I have initiated an RMA with EVGA. We'll see if they give me one which does not have issues.
 
Got my advance RMA for the EVGA XR1 capture card. I will test tonight or tomorrow.

Asus TUF CU4K30 capture card still doing great!
 
Replacement EVGA XR1 sent direct from EVGA: doesn't get as warm. but....still doesn't capture smoothly. similar to last time, drops or repeats a frame or two, about every second. Sometimes and dumps a few frames. It also didn't like the HDMI cable I've been using with my ASUS TUF cap card, for output from the card to my monitor. Wouldn't display an output at all. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
 
I've been having issues with my Ryzen system, which I think may be the motherboard. ROG STRIX B550-I GAMING I bought earlier this year in May/June timeframe. A couple of months ago, the front panel USB started disconnecting/connecting constantly. I have it disconnected, now. as no amount of bios clearing/bios updates, or driver updates, has resolved it. I recently had an intel build in my case and there were no USB issues. Which led me to let slip some negotiations I had in trying to sell my Ryzen CPU and mobo combo.

and now I'm experiencing an issue which seems pretty common across the internet with Ryzen systems and seems to be fixed by a motherboard RMA:

several times a day, Windows will become mostly unresponsive. Usually while browsing the web. The internet stops working, start menu won't respond. can't click on anything. Except I can move the mouse and open net browser tabs. But the tabs don't load. This lasts for about 8 seconds, each time.

However, no issues running games, Cinibench, etc.

I did a completely fresh install of windows. Not even a "reset". I backed up my data and did a totally clean install. the issue presists.

gonna send communication to Asus today, to try and get an RMA.
 
chameleoneel said:
Replacement EVGA XR1 sent direct from EVGA: doesn't get as warm. but....still doesn't capture smoothly. similar to last time, drops or repeats a frame or two, about every second. Sometimes and dumps a few frames. It also didn't like the HDMI cable I've been using with my ASUS TUF cap card, for output from the card to my monitor. Wouldn't display an output at all. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Click to expand...
EVGA asked me to send them some capture footage for them to review. I sent them some FF7 Remake footage captured from the PS5 version and some Zelda Skyward Sword HD, which is the recent Switch Remaster. Both games are known to run at a silky smooth 60fps. The capture footage is really bad.
 
chameleoneel said:
several times a day, Windows will become mostly unresponsive. Usually while browsing the web. The internet stops working, start menu won't respond. can't click on anything. Except I can move the mouse and open net browser tabs. But the tabs don't load. This lasts for about 8 seconds, each time.
Click to expand...
ive had that happen several times with the 11 beta. restarting explorer va task manager got things working again. hasnt happened in a while though..
 
pendragon1 said:
ive had that happen several times with the 11 beta. restarting explorer va task manager got things working again. hasnt happened in a while though..
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I don't need to restart any processes----as it always goes back to normal. But there are frequent bouts of a few seconds, where I must wait for it. sometimes it will happen a few times, in a few minutes. sometimes I can go a couple of hours without it happening.
 
chameleoneel said:
and now I'm experiencing an issue which seems pretty common across the internet with Ryzen systems and seems to be fixed by a motherboard RMA:

several times a day, Windows will become mostly unresponsive. Usually while browsing the web. The internet stops working, start menu won't respond. can't click on anything. Except I can move the mouse and open net browser tabs. But the tabs don't load. This lasts for about 8 seconds, each time.

However, no issues running games, Cinibench, etc.

I did a completely fresh install of windows. Not even a "reset". I backed up my data and did a totally clean install. the issue presists.

gonna send communication to Asus today, to try and get an RMA.
Click to expand...
This was fixed.

The problem it turns out, is that the SSD's were timing out, due to power management. I changed AHCI Link Power Management to "DIPM" mode and its all good now.
 
chameleoneel said:
EVGA asked me to send them some capture footage for them to review. I sent them some FF7 Remake footage captured from the PS5 version and some Zelda Skyward Sword HD, which is the recent Switch Remaster. Both games are known to run at a silky smooth 60fps. The capture footage is really bad.
Click to expand...
Been back and forth with EVGA on this capture card for several messages, now. And sending a couple more examples of footage.

They have been very nice to work with. and this last time around, they authorized an RMA of the RMA replacement capture card. Heheh.
 
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