Prebuilt PCs...
I worked on 3 PCs last week (9-9-2024 - all remotely). Two prebuilts and a self-built PC. Prebuilts can be a good value. Seeing the stuff that gets sent out to paying clients tho...goodness. I'd never send something like that out, ever ever.
The first PC I worked on was built by a local company out in Sweden. The owner was experiencing PC restarts every few weeks. Only happened while streaming tho. Could play games just fine. Went through some TS, and asked for some photos of the PC. She needed a dusting, which she got. Whoever built it, decided it would be a great idea to use the second 8-PIN GPU cable as an anti-sag "bracket" by having it ziptied to the 24-PIN motherboard cable. The GPU isn't smol either, as it is a Gigabyte 3080 Ti Gaming OC. You can imagine my lack of suprise to see the 24-PIN cable slightly pulled out of the motherboard socket. Had the ziptie cut. GPU no longer sits at the thermal limit, and we are wating a few weeks to see if any more restarts occur.
The second PC I worked on was self bult. Internet speeds would randomly drop to around 100Mbps, from the regular 1 Gig speed owner was paying for. They confirmed that the old PC had no such issues using the same Ethernet cable. Tried various TS steps (updating BIOS, checking for OS/Ethernet controller updates, etc.). Owner decided to buy a new Ethernet cable to try just in case, and it appears that the issue has been resolved (been a week now with full speeds). 9-27-2024: Confirmed that the issue was a bad Ethernet cable. Issue resolved.
Third PC I worked on was another prebuilt. This time it was U.S. built by CyberPowerPC. Issue with this PC was BSODs (WHEA_Uncorrectable Error) and the Nvidia Container crashing. This would happen as often as every 2 - 5 minutes. Oh dear me....that sounds like a possible hardware failure! They'd already tried some software TS, including trying to "Reset" Windows. Can't update the BIOS as the ASRock motherboard is using a "custom" CyberPowerPC BIOS. Ughhhh. I have the owner take off the glass side panel and send me some pics. Decide to have them try pushing the 8-PIN GPU cable in further, just in case it was loose (starting to see a pattern here?). It is not loose. Have them check the 24-PIN motherboard cable next. It's also snug as a bug in a rug :3 We get to the 8-PIN EPS cable for CPU power. The owner tells me that "the top left one clicked when I pushed down on it". Aha! Had them remove the back side-panel so we can check that side of the cables. Turns out this PSU is non-modular and they shoved the excess cables into the spot you'd normally put a 3.5" HDD in. Except it's not neat, or tidy. It's worse than if a 5 year old worked on the PC. I died a little on the inside :( That is just too much to try and walk them through, so we pretend we didn't see that and get everything put back together. Turn the PC on and updated all the normal drives that don't auto-update. Lots of drivers from uhhhhh 2015. Yeah, 2015 drives in 2024. Nine year newer drivers, you love to see it. Did a restart and..."also good lord my pc booted fast". That's more like it! It's been 5 days since then and they've had 0 issues. 9-27-2024: No more restarts have occured. Issue resolved.