laptop problems

I've owned probably more than 25 PC's since my first one in 1982 and since I've worked in the semiconductor industry all that time and have a background in electronics I've modified most of the PC's but only ever built two of them. Prior to my last build in January 2016 my only other complete build before that was in 2003. Since the desktop I built in 2003 I've only used and purchased laptops since then until the desktop I built this year for 4K video editing.

I have about 8 functioning PC's at the moment -- 2 desktops and 6 laptops. I could completely retire most of my PC's as some of them are going on 15 years old and way under-spec by today's standards, but I hate to throw away things that work.

Up through the beginning of the 2000's the biggest maintenance issue I had with my PC's was HD's failing on me, but for most of the last decade or more I have only had one HD failure -- prior to that I'd had about 10 HD failures. I've never had a GPU, CPU or RAM failure in 34 years.

In case anyone is interested in building a PC, particularly a higher end one for gaming or video editing I have a build series on Youtube you might want to check out.

4K Video Editing PC Build Overview --
Components and preparation --
Component Install 1 --
Component Install 2 --
Component Install 3 --
Wiring 1 --
Wiring 2 --
Wiring 3 --
Setup and Optimization --
Issues --


Brian
 
Real men build their own computers, that's also why i have never owned a laptop.

Okay i did not build my first PC ( DX2 66 MHZ ) but from the following 700 MHZ machine i have, and i even started overclocking back then too.

Only hardware i had fail me is some factory watercooled OCZ memory, o and i had 1 PSU blow up on me, why i dont know worked fine for months after i took it apart and crome plated it along with all the rest of my case.
But one night it went bang like a .22 going off 😱

O yeah and i just have a old 250 Gb WD disk die on me, not in a running setyp, but i had 2 of them in a old setup and then i wanted to use one of them, but while lying in a storage box it seem to have died, the other of the 2 disks work just fine.

Being a overclocker you would think i had killed a lot of CPUs and motherbords and ram or GFX cards, but thats not the case, and i was the kind of guy that would have no problems soldering additional components to my motherbord or grafix card.
 
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Well, as I said, I've modified most of my PC's and laptops going all the way back to the very first IBM PC with dual floppies and 48KB RAM. My first PC, the very first IBM PC, had a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU -- my current PC has an Intel i7-5820K running at 4.4GHz -- about 1000x the clock speed and more than 1000x faster when you count the more efficient CPU design.

I mention in my PC build series that if you're only going to use the PC for web browsing or other basic PC work you're better off buying a pre-built then building your own particularly if you don't go crazy going with a lot of options that can really drive a pre-builts price up. Although I've been using PC's for 34 years and generally get an above average one I'm not a gamer and didn't need the hottest PC around so buying was the better route. OTH, if you need the power for gaming, or video editing, then buying a pre-built can actually be more expensive then building. Most PC makers offer higher end PC's and usually the starting price is pretty good, but by the time you add up all the options you want/need you're often better off starting from scratch and building with a exact set of components you want.

I've gotten a lot more involved with video in the last 9 months or so and with my DJI Inspire 1 Pro drone recording 4K video it takes a pretty beefy PC to handle that so I wound up building one for that purpose. My new PC has:

1. Thermaltake Core V71 case
2. Thermaltake TPD-0750M power supply
3. ASUS x99 Pro/USB 3.1 motherboard
4. Intel i7-5820K CPU (overclocked)
5. G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series DDR4 RAM, 32GB (4x8) at 14-14-14-34 timing
6. EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Hybrid Gaming GPU with water cooling
7. Corsair H100i GTX CPU Water cooling
8. Samsung 950 Pro PCIe M.2 SSD 512GB mounted on ASUS motherboard
9. 2x WB Black 6TB HD's for image and video storage
10. LG Electronics 14x SATA Blu-Ray re-writer
11. BenQ PV3200PT 32" 4K monitor at 60Hz

I've overclocked both the CPU and GPU but in both cases I did not push the OCing as I wanted/needed a PC that was quiet and reliable.


Brian
 
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