Computer Repair Store is dumb

[ramman20001]

So recently my brother brought his pc into a store because whenever he would boot games it would crash, then said they fixed it, he brought it back home and they crashed still. I said he should get a new Mobo and new CPU (fx 8320e) which he did, and when we did so the computer would work but still crash in games... We brought it back to the computer place to see what to do and they leave us a message after going through the PC, the GPU is a gtx 960 btw, I have used it on my pc to see if that was the problem and it worked fine, What do you guys think? here is the voice mail he left... https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6r3_gjBbCHrbmloeVY4V3FDb28

EDIT: For those asking for specs...
CPU: Was: amd a10-5800k, Now: fx-8320e
GPU: Was: Idk, something bad... Now: gtx 960
Ram: 8gb dims of some pre built stuff
Mobo: gigabyte 970- gaming sli
Power supply: Corsair 430w builder

 

[rwayne]

Okay...First of all...This is one of the coolest posts I have ever seen on Tom's Hardware. Never before have I seen a post where a voicemail was posted.

Second off...After listening to that voicemail I have very little confidence in the tech on the phone. That is ridiculous to suggest that AMD cards work better with AMD CPUs and Nvidia Cards work better with Intel CPUs. It makes a great story those companies holding grudges against each other but they would never do it as it is a bad business practice that would only hurt them.

This guy is living in the past and does not seem to be very change oriented as he is still referring to AMD cards as ATI cards. AMD purchased ATI over 10 years ago! The name ATI has not been used in a really long time. No Radeon cards have 'ATI' written anywhere on their package.

So he said the video card is the problem but I never heard him say in the voicemail that he swapped out the video card to determine it was the root cause of the issue. If you know someone with a functional video card I would ask to borrow it to see if games are playable with it. If so then the video card might possibly be the problem. But I definitely would not blindly buy a video card from that tech since he appears not to have done the full troubleshooting to determine the video card is the rootcause

Can you explain further to us what your brother is experiencing? Is it like going to a black screen or the blue screen of death after launching a game for like 2-3 minutes? Do you get a lot of static coming across the speakers when it crashes?

Again. Excellent post!

 

[ramman20001]

Well he is saying that the games (csgo, tf2, h1z1, etc) will crash after a an inconsistent amount of time. Sometimes, 2 minutes, sometime 1 hour. The way it crashes is semi-inconsistent as well. Sometime the game will full crash straight to desktop, or sometimes it will black screen, forcing him to restart his computer because he cannot use any other apps. He does have access to my old gpu a gtx 760 which works fine.

Okay...First of all...This is one of the coolest posts I have ever seen on Tom's Hardware. Never before have I seen a post where a voicemail was posted.

Second off...After listening to that voicemail I have very little confidence in the tech on the phone. That is ridiculous to suggest that AMD cards work better with AMD CPUs and Nvidia Cards work better with Intel CPUs. It makes a great story those companies holding grudges against each other but they would never do it as it is a bad business practice that would only hurt them.

This guy is living in the past and does not seem to be very change oriented as he is still referring to AMD cards as ATI cards. AMD purchased ATI over 10 years ago! The name ATI has not been used in a really long time. No Radeon cards have 'ATI' written anywhere on their package.

So he said the video card is the problem but I never heard him say in the voicemail that he swapped out the video card to determine it was the root cause of the issue. If you know someone with a functional video card I would ask to borrow it to see if games are playable with it. If so then the video card might possibly be the problem. But I definitely would not blindly buy a video card from that tech since he appears not to have done the full troubleshooting to determine the video card is the rootcause

Can you explain further to us what your brother is experiencing? Is it like going to a black screen or the blue screen of death after launching a game for like 2-3 minutes? Do you get a lot of static coming across the speakers when it crashes?

Again. Excellent post!

 

[USAFRet]

Wow...that is some quality commentary from the guy at the store.
I don't think I'd trust him to screw in a lightbulb.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Me: Boss, you know this is a load of crap, right?
Boss: Do I care? Just bump up sales!
Me: We bump sales by serving our customer base. Not screwing them over!
Boss: Do you like your job here?
Me: (under breath, NO!) Of course I do!
Boss: Then try and sell him on the damn ATI graphics card!

-Wolf sends

 

[Deverick37]

Haha awesome post! Can you list all of your components?

 

[Supermuncher85]

As someone who works with hardware for a living I call 100% *.

Although AMD is a pile of * compared to intel CPU wise right now, there is ZERO correlation between AMD video cards not working with nvidia and using AMD cpu's.

But to put things in perspective as someone who works in tech
1.) reinstall windows if not done so.
2.) check all the components independently
(yes we do this meaning test the ram, cpu and gpu separately which I doubt they did)
3.) if they tested all the parts and still can't find the problem find a better place


(Mod Edit - While we agree with your sentiments, please watch the language, OK?)

 

[ramman20001]

Done

Haha awesome post! Can you list all of your components?

 

[ramman20001]

Lol, thank you

Me: Boss, you know this is a load of crap, right?
Boss: Do I care? Just bump up sales!
Me: We bump sales by serving our customer base. Not screwing them over!
Boss: Do you like your job here?
Me: (under breath, NO!) Of course I do!
Boss: Then try and sell him on the damn ATI graphics card!

-Wolf sends

 

[g-unit1111]

Second off...After listening to that voicemail I have very little confidence in the tech on the phone. That is ridiculous to suggest that AMD cards work better with AMD CPUs and Nvidia Cards work better with Intel CPUs. It makes a great story those companies holding grudges against each other but they would never do it as it is a bad business practice that would only hurt them.

Absolutely! Anyone who says that AMD cards work better on AMD processors or that NVIDIA cards work better with Intel processors has *ZERO* clue what they are talking about! I would expect that guy to do this:

:lol:

 

[Colif]

i guess there aren't any organisations that represent repair stores so no standards to uphold or a way to keep knowledge current without paying for the training or keeping an eye on the industry. It also doesn't help many of the customers have no clue either, and don't know enough about what is true. It leaves space for people that know a little to tell people who know nothing, what they need to do (in some cases, I can see myself being guilty of that).

Since most people don't know enough about PC's it means the repairs they ask to be done are probably fairly straight forward and a store with out dated knowledge can survive quite a while.

I assume with social media how it is now, the few people who know better can inform those who don't, if they are listening.

I have had troubles with repair shops before and last time I had to find a better place, i looked on local PC club web sites for a reference as if they can't tell me who to choose, they can show you who to avoid. There isn't a great choice where I live, but I have a reliable choice now if anything goes wrong I can't figure out myself.

 

[13thmonkey]

90% certain it's a PSU problem, although maybe not as the 760 has a higher draw than some 960's at load (v odd that).
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960,review-33113-9.html (3rd graph, not the 2nd).

And if the card wasn't dead before the 'reflow' it will be now.

 

[13thmonkey]

i guess there aren't any organisations that represent repair stores so no standards to uphold or a way to keep knowledge current without paying for the training or keeping an eye on the industry. It also doesn't help many of the customers have no clue either, and don't know enough about what is true. It leaves space for people that know a little to tell people who know nothing, what they need to do (in some cases, I can see myself being guilty of that).

Colif, you know 'a lot' i'd wager more than 80% of most tech store people (as do most of the 'names' here), how much paid training have you done to maintain this, if you've got the instinct (which anyone who is good here has) then keeping up to date is easy, there is no excuse for this guy.

 

[Colif]

Perhaps he just burnt out, I do this as a hobby whereas he does it for a living. He may have loved it at first, he might still but be too busy to keep up with everything. He might just prefer Nvidia over AMD.

I haven't had any training on PC for about 16 years, i don't need it with google and fact 99% of problems people have aren't unique and often other people have had exact or similar enough before

 

[13thmonkey]

Perhaps he just burnt out, I do this as a hobby whereas he does it for a living. He may have loved it at first, he might still but be too busy to keep up with everything. He might just prefer Nvidia over AMD.

I haven't had any training on PC for about 16 years, i don't need it with google and fact 99% of problems people have aren't unique and often other people have had exact or similar enough before

Precisely, so for a business there is no excuse with 5 mins of research you can fill gaps in knowledge as you find them. If you are burnt out, stop.

 

[rwayne]

He does have access to my old gpu a gtx 760 which works fine.

Works fine in your computer or his? I would let him borrow it for a full week and have him do a lot of long gaming sessions with various titles to see how it responds.

This is an excellent time to do it also as most people will likely have some extra downtime due to the holidays.

My suspicion is that it is either the video card or the power supply. I would try the GTX760 first

 

[Rocky Bennett]

Reading this whole thread including the hardware specs, my suspicions are the PSU might not be up to par.

 

[sheriff12]

I'm not sure if this will help but, have you checked to see if all of the drivers are properly working. Sometimes with certain games, they require additional drivers to run them. Good luck!

 

[kitekrazy]

90% certain it's a PSU problem, although maybe not as the 760 has a higher draw than some 960's at load (v odd that).
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960,review-33113-9.html (3rd graph, not the 2nd).

And if the card wasn't dead before the 'reflow' it will be now.

This, I don't know how they missed that. The 8300s use 125 watts. No headroom using a 430W PSU.

 

[marcusad]

I've had similar troubles in the past. I ended up getting a larger power source (750 at the time) and it stopped my crashing problems. Maybe he could borrow a higher rated power source from the 'techie' support guy to see if this fixes the problem. I can't think of anything else other than testing system ram. But I am by no means a pro, just an amateur pc guy.

 

[snkeii]

if your running a 430w psu its in dire need of a boost.
i had something like that a few years ago happen to me after a system upgrade. its been so long now that i dont remember exactly what it did but it screamed video drivers or card.
after reinstalling win xp half a dozen times only to have it flake out again i started pulling and swapping components. turned out it was a faulty ddr2 chip. after removing the offending memory (even halved) it fired up and ran great.

 

[zthomas]

Well he is saying that the games (csgo, tf2, h1z1, etc) will crash after a an inconsistent amount of time. Sometimes, 2 minutes, sometime 1 hour. The way it crashes is semi-inconsistent as well. Sometime the game will full crash straight to desktop, or sometimes it will black screen, forcing him to restart his computer because he cannot use any other apps. He does have access to my old gpu a gtx 760 which works fine.

Okay...First of all...This is one of the coolest posts I have ever seen on Tom's Hardware. Never before have I seen a post where a voicemail was posted.

Second off...After listening to that voicemail I have very little confidence in the tech on the phone. That is ridiculous to suggest that AMD cards work better with AMD CPUs and Nvidia Cards work better with Intel CPUs. It makes a great story those companies holding grudges against each other but they would never do it as it is a bad business practice that would only hurt them.

This guy is living in the past and does not seem to be very change oriented as he is still referring to AMD cards as ATI cards. AMD purchased ATI over 10 years ago! The name ATI has not been used in a really long time. No Radeon cards have 'ATI' written anywhere on their package.

So he said the video card is the problem but I never heard him say in the voicemail that he swapped out the video card to determine it was the root cause of the issue. If you know someone with a functional video card I would ask to borrow it to see if games are playable with it. If so then the video card might possibly be the problem. But I definitely would not blindly buy a video card from that tech since he appears not to have done the full troubleshooting to determine the video card is the rootcause

Can you explain further to us what your brother is experiencing? Is it like going to a black screen or the blue screen of death after launching a game for like 2-3 minutes? Do you get a lot of static coming across the speakers when it crashes?

Again. Excellent post!

I say your power supply is to low.. these cards need juice.. 450 isn't enough.. doesn't matter if the card is AMD or intel.. video cards need the extra power.. also had to upgrade my power supply after upping the size of my card.

 

[zthomas]

90% certain it's a PSU problem, although maybe not as the 760 has a higher draw than some 960's at load (v odd that).
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960,review-33113-9.html (3rd graph, not the 2nd).

And if the card wasn't dead before the 'reflow' it will be now.

This, I don't know how they missed that. The 8300s use 125 watts. No headroom using a 430W PSU.

I once took in my puter for a cleaning, and had them wipe the trojans off my drive.. after picking up the machine and got it home and hooked up.. I found half my ram had disappeared.. my puter turned dog slow..

 

[KingDWS]

Games and a few other programs tend to push systems a lot harder than what 99% of what users do. So you find once you are out of the program your problem can't be replicated.

Right now there is a issue going around with AMD (yes I still say ATI even 10 hears later too) and Windows 10. There is a memory leak either caused by win10 or the video driver. It will cause you to loose video (black screen) or more common to crash out to desktop. The odd time a total lock up after crashing out to desktop. AMD has been issuing new driver updates every few days for the last few months. The latest video driver seems to have tamed the beast. This started after a win10 update a while ago. So one day you had a perfectly stable system and the next you spent more time locked up or rebooting. The update made a minor ram leak issue turn into a major ram flood. I suspect it was from some part of the win8/win10 upgrade that is the actual underlying culprit. It showed up as low memory pop ups, or the crashes, or high cpu and disk usage.

AMD just issued a driver about 3 days ago that finally stopped it on my machine. So I would suggest making sure windows and all drivers are updated, then go to AMD and get the absolute latest drivers. Your psu is marginal but that crashes things out differently. I upgraded mine from 430 to an 850 and it did nothing but run a bit quieter as the fans weren't working as hard. I upgraded from 12 to 24 go of ram, and my video card has 4gb of vram. I also went registry hacking and slashing trying to eliminate any extra programs, drivers, and settings hoping to catch the one cause etc. Of course nothing really helped until the latest incremental video driver update. So cross your fingers and update ;-) ATI ATI ATI!!! ah the good Ole daze with lifetime warranty lol

 

[scout_03]

i would suggest not to trust this repair shop first try to use another psu in system the cx430 is a bit low also you write that ram came from a prebuild system memtest them .