The Problem
As you may already know from following me on twitter or other social networks I have had some computer problems for the last few weeks. Though really the problem has been happening for months now. It seems to have started with one driver update from AMD.
Back in May I believe it was, AMD pushed a driver update for my radeon rx 480 graphics card. I had lots of Blue screens and freezing that day and I finally found out they were just bad drivers and I updated them to a version that AMD pushed out quickly that fixed that. Well that seemed to fixed my problems for awhile but I was still getting blue screens and freezes once and awhile.
Then June came and these problems seemed to get worst. So I started trying to figure out the problem, thinking it was the Graphics drivers I started trying to find my last stable drivers from AMD but after awhile I started noticing that no mater what driver I installed the compute just kept blue screening and freezing. That is when I thought maybe it wasn't the graphics card and started looking at my other hardware.
I did a diagnostic on the memory, which came back fine. Then I checked my hard drives, and that came back fine. Finally I thought it might be something with my BIOS so I looked into how to update that, and I updated it. Updating my BIOS was the most nerve racking thing I have ever done with one of my computers. Ive always seen it as a “if it ant broke don't fix it" thing. But I thought maybe it was broke and I did it anyway. I installed everything needed and found an update to the BIOS and installed it, lucky the computer didn't freeze or blue screen during this process. Which wasn't something I thought of until it was half way threw doing the update. Well the computer restarted and I herd the fans going full blast. Then it restarted again and I just had a blank screen. I thought I had bricked my computer at that point, but I decided to plug my screen into the HDMI port on the mother board and I was able to see again. I just had to change some settings so my graphics card worked again.
Once I got that figured out I tested out the computer to see if things were fixed. Well I streamed for about an hour and it seemed fixed. I was happy and went to bed. The next day I woke up and decided to stream heroes and10 or 15 mins in the same freezing and blue screening was happening. At this point I just had no idea what was going on with computer. I finally started googling and looking on AMDs message boards to see if anyone else had this problem. Well I found a few that had similar problems and it seemed it had to do with there power supplies. But I didn't want that to be the problem also I thought Ive had this graphics card for almost a year with no problem until that driver came out.
Well after a few more freezes and blue screens I finally decide to get a new power supply. I opened up the case to see what it could handle and it turned out it could handle a max of 600W, in doing research of my graphics card I found out my graphics card could suck down a max of 545W. Things slowly started to become clear to me what probably happened that lead me to that point.
I didn't do the full math put if my graphics card was at max pulling down 545W plus whatever my CPU, RAM, hard drives, and other USB devices were pulling I'm sure that was more that 600W. Though it handled this with no problem for almost a year I'm sure this caused something in side to burn out and what was causing the freezing and blue screens. When I ordered the new power supply I ordered one that could handle up to 1000W I felt like that should be enough.
Well I got the power supply and installed it in the PC to find out that I need a 4 pin connector it only had 6 pins. So I’m waiting for a adapter. I ordered one and it’s coming from China it will take 8 to 15 days to get here. I didn’t notice that when I ordered it. When I found this out I canceled the order and ordered one from amazon I should have that one at the soonest Friday or at the latest next Wednesday.
Back to my Mac
Since I figured out it was the power supply I started using my Mac Mini again. On my PC I could play World if Warcraft and other Blizzard games at 95 FPS at the top graphics settings. Lucky my Mac Mini can play WoW but at the low setting and I get 5 to 10 FPS. I feel like the worst part of it is that I recently joined a new guild but I don’t want to do anything until the PC is fixed. I don’t want them to think I’m horrible because I can’t see some of the shit on the ground or move in time to avoid stuff.
Outside of that I don’t mind using my Mac Mini daily again it’s a little slow even for everyday things but I get to use Mac OS and I love that. The other problem is I haven’t been able to record any videos or stream. I miss that more than anything.
Hopefully this nightmare will be over soon and I can get back to my videos. It’s just the waiting that is killing me. This all may seem like a first world problem, and it is but I still wanted to share this story. I also thought one of my blogs was a good place to bitch.
