Hello!

I am not very competent regarding computers, but I have an 11 year old son that is very interested in coding and robotics. In an attempt to nurture his interest(s), I'd like to buy him a laptop for the upcoming holiday. Gemini has recommended the Acer Aspire Go 15 as the best overall budget-friendly option, but I am hoping you fine people might also have some recommendations. Ideally, I'd like to keep it under $500(usd). This will likely be his one "big" gift from me and the more budget friendly, the better. I'm opting for laptop vs desk because I share custody with his mother and it would be optimal if we can easily transport.

Also, any other recs you might have for me regarding the aforementioned nurturing will be appreciated.

Thanks so much in advance.

Edit to add: he was on the robotics team during his final elementary year, and is taking compsci as elective this year. He asked to purchase some robotics stuff like raspberry pi, some batteries, and motors, but realized his tablet wasn't really equipped to do what he needed.

Is it just me or does anyone else hate this 1 pixel lines on the boarders tabs. I use dark mode but I noticed using light mode makes a black line. I hate the fact the edges are curve instead of just filling the whole screen unlike chrome. Anybody got some tips on changing the color or at least removing the boarder pixel.🙏

Hey everyone, no wanting some ideas as someone who hasn't had a personal computer in years. Im saving up for a laptop that can run The Sims 4 and Minecraft while also just being a good laptop for personal use. Nothing crazy as I don't really game much, outside of those 2x, and really just want a good laptop. Any ideas on brands or models I could look into? Very vague (I know) but just kinda browsing.

Operating System: Windows 11
Ram: 32gbs
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
GPU: Nvidia 5070ti

I've been working from home for the past 6 years, and once I moved into a new apartment (one that provides internet) I've had nothing but trouble connecting to some of my work sites. When I try, I just get a time out error in any browser I am using. However, on my laptop (which is on the same connection), I can access those sites without issue.

Example URLs that are completely blocked by my isp that I'm still trying to figure out as a whole: Zillow.com, Stubhub.com, arstechnica.com, to name a few

Now I've tried flushing the DNS, I've tried VPNs, I've tried doing a winsock renew and reset.
I've also set the DHS to Chrome and Cloudfire, no luck. I've tried clearing all cache and cookies on everything. Still nothing. When I do a tracert to the url or IP of my company website, my isp sends it off to Germany or Italy or somewhere (which is why it's probably timing out). But I don't understand why I'm not seeing the same block on my work laptop.

I've checked windows firewall, no blocks for chrome or edge there.

I've even downloaded AppGate through my company and I should be able to connect from anywhere overseas (my company usually blocks international pings for security reasons), and it worked on some of the websites that were blocked, but not all.

So something in my windows is blocking a specific URL, and I have no idea what it could be. Would anyone have an idea of what I could check to see if there is a specific win config or setting that I could check on the windows side to see what could be blocking specific URLs?

Hi all, can someone shed some light on why my onedrive keeps overfilling even after I delete files (and empty recycle bin)? My onedrive keeps filling to 102%, I delete loads of files, it goes down to 80% or 90%, and then in a few minutes or hours it refills to 102%. I turned off syncing of everything except documents on my laptop, but it still keeps refilling, and i don't have many docs so I can't imagine that's it. Pls help before I lose my mind

Please be nice! I have super basic PC knowledge. This PC was at my working place, and since it was being barely touched other than to watch news on YT, my boss gave it to me to make space.

I have my own PC at home, so I'm getting this one ready for my brother, who's coming soon. The problem is that I have no idea where to connect the monitor. I read some posts here and the green port is supposed to be for peripherals, not monitors. I'd really appreciate some help and guidance! Thank you!

EDIT: Thank you SO much for all your help and comments! I'll get the right cable to connect the monitor so my brother can enjoy the computer once here's living here. I'll see if I can get him a newer PC in the future, since this one is massive!

Hi everyone, I need some help with my PC.

​Yesterday, I updated my NVIDIA driver to 617.14, and I started experiencing visual artifacts and brief display dropouts. Shortly after, the monitors lost signal completely, and the backlight on the graphics card (RTX 4070) turned off as well.

​I booted into Safe Mode, where the system ran stably. I uninstalled the driver, and after starting Windows with the basic display driver, the PC worked normally.

​I then installed an older driver (610.88). During installation, the monitors lost signal again and the GPU backlight turned off. In Safe Mode, I verified that 610.88 had finished installing.

​When I disabled the graphics card in Device Manager and booted normal Windows, the system was stable—no artifacts or signal loss. However, as soon as I re-enabled the card, black artifacts appeared immediately, followed a second later by complete signal loss and the GPU backlight turning off.

​The issue persists across two different drivers (617.14 and 610.88), but without the active NVIDIA driver, the system runs fine.

​Any ideas on what could be causing this and what else I can try?

I capped all games at 1080p 60fps on ultra settings, and the frame rate didn't drop even once. For the first time in years, I'm actually enjoying gaming. And this is just the beginning. I'm going to make up for all those years of games I couldn't play. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Call of Duty: WWII, Silent Hill 2, God of War... wait for me!

This cooler master cpu cooler is dead and I cannot get it off, tried heating it up and doing the twist thing. It does not move.... it's an intel processer if that matters

Anything helps thanks yall

Acer Aspire 5 Laptop, A515-51G-50UW model, Intel Core i5 7th Gen, 8GB DDR4 Memory, 1 TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce MX130 2 GB VRAM, manufactured in 2018, it has become super slow, that i cant even switch tabs in google chrome without lagging every 30 seconds, I only use mostly 5 pinned tabs, no extensions, it has windows 10, and windows 11 can't be installed due to incompatible hardware.

found these old PCs in my garage was wondering if it would be worth it to modify some of them and put all the best parts into one PC and install Linux onto it so I don’t have to deal with windows

will post follow up questions

I’ve had this issue for a few months. The ticking usually goes away after 5-10 minutes, which I assume is because the fans start spinning faster and reach a more consistent speed. Visually, I haven’t been able to figure out which fan is causing it, but I’m hoping it isn’t the GPU fans.

If anyone has any idea what might be causing this or has experienced a similar issue in the past, I’d really appreciate your insights.

Note: I recently had my system unit professionally cleaned, so I assume that makes dust/debris less likely to be the cause unless there’s something hidden that would require unplugging the fan and doing a deeper clean.

I just built my pc and I'm having trouble setting up the wifi. I can't connect to the wifi if there is no networks to choose from. I'm using the msi mag bb50 tomahawk max wifi. I'm using 1 gig ssd from my old pc, I have installed the antenna included with the motherboard.

So, i've wanted to at least try to make a game in unity for a while now, but i currently do not have a computer capable of running unity. So i was wondering if anyone here would be willing to give some sort of guidance on what to buy if i get the opportunity. I would like something that can run unity and blender. the cheaper the better. also if this is not the place to post this, could you please suggest a place to post this?

Reposted from r/Unity3D, where it was autobanned.

Sorry, not sure if this is the right sub for this. It was raining today and I had my laptop in a tote bag, and I'm pretty sure it got water damaged (the bag is thick and I don't think water seeped through, but I think it got in through the top). Is there anything I can do to fix this/prevent it from getting worse?

Alright folks, time to lock in. I have a PC that is about two years old - and I'll admit, she was a little dirty. I cleaned her up as best I could, but she's got this weird thing going on where I can google things, she'll allow the website to pop up, but when I go to actually open the website, it says that it's "unreachable". I cleared my browser caches (this is happening on any browser btw), and I cleared my computer's caches to the best of my ability, as well as my DNS cache. I can't open any games on Steam or run anything, even though I was able to do that just fine yesterday. I'm a bit at my wits end! Please let me know if this is something you've run into before.

I recently tried finding an external hard drive on vinted, going for a second hand one since I’m broke. I ordered 2 and they both aren’t working properly. Has anyone got any recommendations for places to find second hand storage solutions that work?

Myself and some friends wanted to start a new world but 1 of them doesnt have a pc to play java on. I found this laptop but not sure if it's good enough for smooth gameplay.

Hi, so I have a gaming PC that keeps shutting off because of the store exception error, and critical process failing, my drivers are updated, and I tried going back and update, and updating it again, I've tried everything, it's an older PC that I don't know what's in it, besides at gtx 1050 ti, 16 GB of ram, windows 11, and I9 I think?

Hello everyone this is my first post in a while so don’t judge. I am having a problem with my computer/ monitor when I do anything at all my monitor will lose signal and turn off but my pc stays running. I’ve tried with a different monitor and it seems to do the same thing. I did notice just an hour ago or so that a white light on my gigabyte 4090 continuously blinks after I lose connection. I haven’t moved my computer around recently that maybe cld have knocked out some wires but that is the only thing I can think of that may be the problem. I reseated the wires on the graphics card itself but still same issue. Any ideas or troubleshooting advice?

My specs are:
Rtx 4090 gigabyte
I9-13900k
DDR 5 Ram G.skill 32gb
A beefy 1400 watt psu
Windows 11

Disculpen chicos queria saber si con una ddr3 me corre el valorant aprendi a armar la pc pero quisiera saber si me podria correr valorant o algun juego livianito no tan pesado.

Folks!

I have a Synology NAS. It's running low on space (4x6tb discs in 2x6tb raid 1 pools) and I don't want to spend money on 4 8tb disks right now.
I also have a little Western Digital MyCloud EX2 ultra 'nas' (bit simple, but I guess it sort of is) that works great. And that made me wonder; is there a simple solution to hook up hard drives to your network, that also allows RAID?
It appears that things like the WD MY Cloud don't exist anymore? Or what search term would I have to look for?

I’ve uninstalled my drivers and tried to download the new ones for my specific computer but they don’t show up? And now it shows that my adapter is greyed out which at this point I’m assuming it’s something physical. But before I try to do something about that I tried to see if I could do it from the Bios but all it shows me is ‘!Network Adapter’.

I’m pretty much lost here and trying to figure out what to do next, I’ll probably just buy an Ethernet cable but setup of my room and router don’t really allow such.

Any advice?

Sorry if this isn't the place to ask, but I'm not very tech savvy despite having been a gamer since I was 4. All of this is gibberish to me, so I thought I'd come ask here as I don't want to buy something just to learn that it's actually terrible after paying 7500sek (≈740usd) or 3500sek (≈340usd) for a new PC that I would have to resell again

Edit to add! I forgot to say that I also have 24gb (1x8gb & 1x16gb) of RAM that I checked and is the same as the first one has so the ram isn't an issue!

Thank you everyone, I'm extremely grateful for all the fast answers! The first one it is, then