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#cyberpower — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cyberpower, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Decided it was time to get a #PCUpgrade and we're still in an age where the only realistic way to buy a GPU for a reasonable price is in a box that also contains the entire rest of a computer, so for the first time since my first self-built PC in the 90s, I started looking for a systems integrator to build me a new box. My main criterion was an AMD build for CPU and GPU. Nearly every integrator was only offering Nvidia GPUs, so I ended up going with #CyberPower.

    What a goddamn comedy of errors. All seemed to be going well at first- I was asked if there was anything special they could do in the build and as I had plans to add more storage asked them to please prestage a SATA power and data cable to a 2.5" drive mounting point. "OK", I was told.

    Fast-forward to yesterday, the PC arrives. Yay. Yay?

    Not so yay.

    As I'm removing it from the shipping box (which was gashed; thanks UPS), I hear a loose screw bouncing around inside the chassis. So I crack it open to remove the shipping foam and hunt down the errant screw, and find the following:

    • Many loose connectors, including but not limited to the AIO pump
    • The SATA connectors were not prestaged
    • I paid a $20 line-item for "professional cable management" which apparently was code for "instead of a loose rats' nest of cables crammed into the drive cage, we will give you a very tightly zip-tied bundle of cables that are not routed though the conduit built into the case but just strapped to the motherboard tray and a rats' nest in the drive cage. This was mooted by the fact that I had to cut out all the ties to be able to reach the loose connectors that needed to be properly seated.

    A couple hours later, woo, time to fire it up. No POST, or so I thought. Turns out it was only putting out video signal from the motherboard and not the GPU. Fine. But no BIOS setting I configured would give me a video signal from the GPU.

    Okay, I'll deal with that after I get the OS set up. So I let it boot to the M2, and start the Windows OOBE, and... bluescreen.

    Reboot. Blue screen.

    Hm.

    Reboot again, blue screen again. Check the BIOS- nothing super-hot, all temps look nominal; no overclocking is set up. As I'm staring at it, it spontaneously reboots again.

    So I spend a couple hours pulling the PSU from my current, working, computer, and swap it into the new one in case it's a power issue, but no joy. Booting Linux from USB also throws a kernel panic within 90 seconds.

    So I throw the original PSU back in, and just in case the seeming brick of a GPU is the problem, pull it out. No change.

    If this is the state of buying a supposedly ready-to-use gaming PC these days, no wonder consoles and Steam Decks are so popular.

    At least they replied to my support email in which I requested they either replace the machine or refund my order. Looks like I get to try another builder, presuming the refund actually comes through in a reasonable time.

    Can anyone recommend another integrator I could look as I really would rather not spend the time building it myself this time around due to the "Getting A GPU While Not Being An OEM" tax that is still being levied.