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[Aklyon]

Well theres not exactly much choice in terms of apple laptop. Last I'd seen you have tiny mac, bigger mac, and too-thin mac.

[Thief^]

Talked with my brother, he says all he did was put the laptop in his backpack before going on the plane. He says when he got off the laptop wouldn't turn on.

He did try charging it right? Did he try using it in a foreign country with a higher voltage that destroyed the charger?

People take laptops on planes all the time, it wouldn't just break like that.

[BigD145]

I take far flimsier electronics on planes, stuffed under the seat at my feet. A laptop will not break under those conditions. It sounds more and more like your brother just wants an Apple computer, full stop. End of story. Won't someone be merciful and give it to him?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

First World Problems

[MarcAFK]

I destroyed my third laptop within 5 years a few months ago. I have a gift.
Today I ordered a second hand one on eBay. I'm having buyers remorse already. I think if I wasn't waiting 2 weeks for it to arrive I wouldn't be getting stressed, too much fun to be had blowing stuff up in immersive sandboxes.
Still I think it wasn't such a bad deal, what I've been using lately has a decent i7, only 4gb ram and a gtx 820m, any problems it has are probably from lack of ram, though it seems to get pretty hot too. Does ok with fallout 4 and really only struggles from the ram shortage.
I should be fine with the 970m I'm getting but kind of regret how much I paid for it really, dispite saving a good $1000 from what a new laptop of that kind would cost.
Anyway, has anyone used an external GPU attached by HDMI or thunderbolt? It seems like a decent way of getting an old laptop to perform well, you lose about 10%'of the potential straight away and maybe a quarter if you use the laptops onboard monitor, but on the plus side you don't have the potential severe heating problem a laptop gets when the GPU is working at maximum.

[chaotic skies]

Does anyone know what settings to use to record 480p in OBS for uploading to youtube? Mainly worried about video, but audio would be helpful as well.

[NullForceOmega]

A couple of months ago I upgraded my old GTX 465 videocard to a GTX 980 ti, as well as changing out my old generic 8GB RAM for two 8GB G skill Ripjaws (my mobo supports 16 GB RAM), and mostly there have been no problems, but occasionally the videos card won't activate on startup (there is an audible beep when the card powers up that does not happen in these instances, and the screen remains on standby with 'no signal' displayed.)

The only thing I can think of right now is that my PSU (750 watt) might be inadequate, but the system normally runs fine on this PSU, and according to the documentation on my other components a 750 should be fine for this setup, it just occasionally won't start the video card (which also claims a 750 should be adequate).  The tower has been cleaned out several times since the upgrade (including today) so I'm not sure what is happening here.

Should probably ask the actual question here:  Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be happening here?  I'd prefer not to have to buy a new PSU, but that is a possibility if necessary.  It should also be noted that when the video card refuses to start the tower is generally running at 20-30 degrees c

[Thief^]

What's the power supply? If it's not a reputable brand it may not actually be 750 watts and could be much much lower. This is unfortunately quite common...

[NullForceOmega]

Corsair, everyplace I've looked has 4.5 to 5 star ratings for it, and when it starts the video card (which is the vast majority of the time) it runs perfectly.

Edit: the only complaint I can find about the PSU is that it's fan is noisy (and mine used to be until it wore in a bit.)

[Thief^]

Corsair should be fine.

Is there possibly a fault with the ram? I've had a similar fault recently, and I ended up just backing out the ram upgrade.

EDIT: Also check if there are any bios updates available for your motherboard.

[NullForceOmega]

My mobo is the next item getting replaced (along with the processor come taxtime next year), it's an older ASUS that is no longer supported.  The RAM is running clean and normal.

Whoops: I was thinking of my old PSU, the current PSU is a Thermaltake 850 watt, I just checked the reviews and it has extremely high ratings as well (in fact, the above statement about the noise was about this PSU, not my old Corsair.)

Been going over every kind of system report I can generate (with trustworthy programs) and I can't find anything wrong at all (except this asinine USB device that someone failed to properly eject when I had it checked out for a hard-drive failure more than a year ago.)

[MarcAFK]

This is a really stupid suggestion, but try unplugging the video card and checking the connector and socket is completely clean, try running some paper over the pins. Also swap the 2 ram cards. I know it's stupid but I had a P4 mobo once that had random boot problems and just doing that with the ram fixed it.
The ghost in the machine can be fickle. Though it was probably the edge connectors there too, does anyone remember NES carts?

[NullForceOmega]

I've done all of that, twice, the computer is behaving itself right now, but that is always a temporary situation.

[i2amroy]

Stupid question, but you did download and install the actual 980ti drivers from the NVIDIA website (or tiny disk) like the little booklet that came with it said to right? The default windows drivers for that particular card were pretty bad ones last I checked.

Another stupid question, but have you double checked to make sure your mobo slot is actually up to par? You need a PCI Express-compliant motherboard with one dual-width x16 graphics slot, and if it's only x8 or something that could very likely be causing some problems.

[NullForceOmega]

Mobo supports the card, I checked everything before purchase to be sure I wasn't wasting money now to waste money later.  Yes all drivers are up-to-date and for the correct model (had a little bit of a headache with that, as I couldn't just use Experience to do the update, so I am absolutely certain I've got the right ones.)

It really looks like to problem is somehow related to the PSU, it might have to do with how the unit is mounted, Thermaltake obviously wanted its exhaust upwards or sideways, but my case only allows it to be mounted exhaust-down.  It seems like dust might actually be causing the issue, as using some compressed air to clean it out has caused it to power correctly every time.

I don't have any idea how to effectively dust protect the unit tho', with its exhaust pointed down (into the case) it means that any particulates in its intake area will end up inside its housing.

[gimlet]

You can get anti-dust mesh for pretty cheap (like $5-8 max for some big enough to cover PSU area) - they call it "dust filter" or "fan filter".  I also have a room air filter, 'cause otherwise stuff gets covered in dust pretty quick here    And just commit to dusting out the case periodically I guess.