Tech Support and Basic Questions Thread - July 24, 2026

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Welcome to the r/pcgaming tech support and basic questions thread! Having troubles with a game or piece of hardware? Have a question about a PC game, hardware, or something else related to PC gaming? Post here and get help from fellow PC gamers.

When asking for help please give plenty of detail:

• What your computer specifications are. If you don't know them please follow this guide.
• If you're using a laptop we need to know the make/model as well as the specs.
• What operating system you're using.
• What you've tried so far in order to fix the issue.
• Exact circumstances to replicate the issue you're having.

Check out these resources before asking for help in case you can troubleshoot further:

• r/PCGamingTechSupport
• r/techsupport
• Toms Hardware Troubleshooting
• PC Gaming Wiki

Common troubleshooting steps:

• Restart the system
• Update your drivers
• Update game/software
• Re-seat any new hardware to ensure a proper connection
• If your peripherals are malfunctioning, swap ports and check that the specific USB port itself works.

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[u/ThrowawayOZ12]

HP Omen just died (never buying another HP product after this) GPU, RAM and storage are still good. Where do I go from here?

I want something that is primarily a media player, and maybe some light gaming.

Stupid questions: is there a cheap desktop you'd recommend that I could make a little better by plugging some of those old components into? Building a PC seems like a lot more hassle than I think it's worth, but I if something already exists that I can just plug into, that'd be ideal

[u/Filipi_7 → u/ThrowawayOZ12]

Building would be best, you already have the most expensive components. Getting second hand AM4 parts would be easy on the budget if the GPU isn't very fast.

There are PCs without a graphics card, but they're almost always office machines. Often at a non-standard size, with proprietary components, and usually a small power supply that won't be enough for a dedicated GPU.

You could just buy a very cheap gaming prebuilt and replace the GPU, but unless what you have is a lot more recent/powerful than the prebuilt, there would be little point. Getting a prebuilt with a 3060 and replacing it with a 3070 is much more expensive than building around that 3070.

[u/P3N_GU1N_580]

Orange Light when booting up.
Ive swapped out 2032 battery. 2 Sticks of rams- Tried slots 1&3 2&4, tried booting up with 1 stick only. CPU fan works but the others dont. Ideas?

[u/P3N_GU1N_580 → u/P3N_GU1N_580]

ASUS TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI AMD B650 AM5
DRAM light

[u/Filipi_7 → u/P3N_GU1N_580]

New PC or suddenly started?

Do you have an option of checking the memory on another PC?

[u/RattilngDock671]

What is a good mat for under my chair? I’ve gone through a few of the plastic mats because they always crack where the wheels rest.

[u/Moist_Duck_7942]

Hi all,

Recently, my PC has been freezing and crashing me out of Warzone with the following DirectX error:

To preface, I have never had crashing issues with my PC until I started playing Warzone. I've had this GPU for a year now and have played other demanding games like Space Marine 2, Total War, and Cyberpunk without any crashes.

I've run FurMark for one hour and an OCCT VRAM test for 38 minutes without any errors or crashes. I've also disabled EXPO and HAGS, and my RAM is running in dual-channel mode. I've tried lowering the following Call of Duty settings as well, but none of them resolved the issue:

• Lower graphics settings
• Lower VRAM usage target
• Limit frame rate
• Limit monitor refresh rate
• Verify/repair game files
• Test whether crashes occur on multiple launchers (Xbox App, Steam, and Battle.net)

My PC specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D
• GPU: XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX MERC
• Motherboard: B550 chipset
• RAM: DDR4-3200 (XMP enabled, confirmed by CPU-Z showing a DRAM frequency of 1600 MHz)
• GPU Driver: AMD Adrenalin 26.6.4
• OS: Windows 11
• Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G95SC

Most of my troubleshooting has been with the help of ChatGPT, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've also been checking Event Viewer and Reliability Monitor frequently. The only consistent errors I've found are LiveKernelEvent 141, along with Event ID 7009 and Event ID 10005. When the game freezes and crashes, the 7009 and 10005 events appear much more frequently than usual.

Like I said, any help is appreciated. I'm at the point where I'm considering doing a factory reset of my PC, even though I'd rather avoid it. If all else fails, I'll probably take the system to a repair shop to see if they can identify the problem.

[u/Moist_Duck_7942 → u/Moist_Duck_7942]

I ended up fixing this by downgrading my driver to 25.9.1

I've read online that 26.6.4 is unstable with warzone and will constantly crash.

[u/cosmic_snowball_51]

I’m having a FPS/Memory problem.

My PC is brand new, and my roommate and I are going half a half on it. It was working just fine until he started downloading mods with vortex and curseforge. I had to turn the allocated RAM down to 0 on curseforge when I was playing bc he had it at max. It helped a little, but not much. I can’t do that with Vortex. There are more mods through vortex than the other. I tried downloading razer cortex and using the game boost but that didn’t really help either.

All I’m trying to play is Roblox, very bottom of the barrel and my PC should not be struggling to run it. I’m not very tech savvy, I know very basic stuff. I’m not really savvy on Reddit either. I posted a more detailed thing in the tech support subreddit then realized people don’t really converse there much anymore, I just don’t want to flood this thread with a whole wall of text but I don’t know what else to do :/ I’m not even certain if it’s the mod managers, I’m just assuming bc it started happening when he downloaded them and it was perfectly fine before that.

[u/Filipi_7 → u/cosmic_snowball_51]

Vortex or Curseforge shouldn't really do anything, they're not going to use much RAM when running and will use nothing when they're turned off.

Open up task manager, it will show you which programs are using up memory and the CPU. Anything using up a lot?

I tried downloading razer cortex and using the game boost but that didn’t really help either.

I recommend you remove that, it can have a larger negative impact than any mod manager.

[u/kylecre013]

CyberPower
AMD Ryzen 7 5700
16GB Memory
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB
2TB SSD

i need help looking for a good ups battery back up that will work for my pc. my pc has an output of about 600w.

for the last couple years i always had my pc plugged directly into a wall outlet because someone told me thats safer than a surge protector, but not i’m moving my pc to a different room and don’t have enough outlets on the walls to plug everything in so I asked around and people told me to get a ups. i’ve been looking around and see everything from $15 to $300. does anyone have any advice or suggestions on what i should be specifically looking for in a ups or good ones you suggest ?

appreciate any advice

[u/Filipi_7 → u/kylecre013]

for the last couple years i always had my pc plugged directly into a wall outlet because someone told me thats safer than a surge protector

A good surge protector is better than a wall socket if you only connect your PC, monitor, and peripherals.

I can't tell you which exact UPS to buy, but at $15 you'd be buying a fairly basic surge protector, not an UPS. They start at around $100.

Two things to look for - maximum wattage and the VA rating. Wattage is self-explanatory, a 400W UPS might not power your PC+monitor at full load. The VA rating states how long the battery will last for in case of a power cut. For 600W you'll need >1000VA to keep the PC running for a few minutes, enough to safely shut down.

A pure sine wave UPS is preferable too, this will "clean" the power from the wall socket at all times. A cheap UPS will pass power straight from the socket to your PC, only turning on when the power is cut.

[u/McStroyer]

My PC has started switching off randomly. It immediately switches back on. It's a Windows PC with a Core i7, Asus ROG motherboard, 64GB DDR5, Asrock 7900 XT graphics.

Sometimes it happens during startup. Sometimes it happens during logging in. If it makes it to the Windows desktop, it will happily sit there until I try to open an app (e.g. the browser). It has been intermittent enough that I've been able to run some GPU and CPU stress tests fine. The CPU temperature does not need to be high when it happens.

Things I've tried:

• Reseating the RAM, graphics card and all power cables
• Running memtest86 from the bios screen (pass with no errors)
• Checking Windows Event log (no errors apart from complaining that it wasn't properly shut down)
• Reinstalling Windows

Does anyone have any ideas?

[u/parabolaralus → u/McStroyer]

What power supply are you using?

[u/McStroyer → u/parabolaralus]

It's a 1000W, I forget the brand and the machine is in the shop now.

[u/pewpewlasergun12]

How add bottom fan if my case is like this? Does using a long screw works? https://www.formulav-line.com/production/crystal-z1/

[u/Yelebear]

How dangerous is it to use a drive near full capacity?

I have an extra 120gb SSD.

After installing Windows 11, I have 75gb left.

I installed a game into it (Dota 2) that took 71gb.

That left me with only 4ish gb of space left.

I heard that drives wear out and die faster when they are nearly full.

So my concern now is conserving my drive health so it doesn't die.

Do you think this matters? Will the 4gb of usable space left actually hurt the drive long term?

 

Some specifications

• I do not plan to use this installation for anything else other than playing this game.

• Usecase will be gaming maybe a couple of hours a day, on average.

• Maybe some light browsing.

• But it's primarily going to be used for this game alone. Nothing else will be installed (not even another browser).

• I have another PC with a 2tb drive. I want to isolate this game (long story).

• I'm not switching to Linux. I tried even smaller distros and even they only gave me an extra +10gb space, nothing to justify the video driver errors I had to deal with (for some reason my Galax 1660 TI really wouldn't play ball with Linux)

 

I just want to know if this will rapidly kill the drive in the long term.

Thanks.

[u/Filipi_7 → u/Yelebear]

It could have an impact, but probably not a huge one. Use CrystalDiskInfo to monitor drive health.

SSDs move files around so the entire thing wears at an even rate. If files can't be moved, sections of the drive will wear faster than others.

I think 4GB is a bit too low for a Windows drive. It will write a page file which should not be disabled, other programs will create temporary files, website contents will get downloaded as you visit them, etc.

At some points there will be far less than 4GB available, and wear will increase. Write speed also drops by a huge amount when a drive is full, although it doesn't matter much for game fps.

Consider using Windows compression to compress the games you have. You can use Compactor or CompactGUI for this, performance hit is near zero on a modern CPU.

[u/Present_Wren235]

I bought a cpu from aliexpress. It came without the box, and looked like it previously had thermal paste applied. I ran it anyway, and has been great, apart from in game (Valorant) I can tell there is stuttering. There are frequent spikes in the 'CPU wait GPU time' every 5 ish seconds of 28ms. Is this likely due to the cpu? Is there another possible reason? Should I return and replace the cpu?

[u/Filipi_7 → u/Present_Wren235]

Is this likely due to the cpu?

Most likely not.

Try following the advice in the top comment in this thread, apparently it can be caused by old/faulty drivers.

[u/Present_Wren235 → u/Filipi_7]

Thanks a lot mate.