What laptop do you have?

[Mechatrommer]

...but a desktop PC is far better in almost every other way.

he certainly doesnt need features of a PC workhorse

What features? A laptop and desktop are the same thing, just different form factor. The only thing I can see a laptop suffer with is games..

see? all you see is games, and whats written on the pamphlet... thing is quite hard to explain, sort of you have to feel it to know it, none is written on papers. to give an idea, is when you need many things connected to your workstation... printers, stylus pen, wireless keyboard and mouse, a decent hi-fi system, big monitors etc (has been mentioned actually several times at the top). but i guess your requirement is small so a laptop may fit your bill... not to mention a highly customized and specialized system on the cheap, that i guess you are not very good at anyway...

A decent laptop can run any engineering software or general programs.

todays laptop may run everything that is installed in my current PC plus more at faster speed, but that is not the point...

As I said, if you're encoding, rendering or compiling 24/7 get a xeon workstation, no point in putting so much heat stress on a laptop.

todays laptop may do that as well, its just a matter of comfort..

You can easily get an ultrabook with an 8 threaded i7 and a mid range gpu. It costs more than an equivalent desktop

yeah but that is not the point. my current system is 4 cored and most of the time i only need one...

and isn't glued to your desk.

the point of a PC is to be "glued" to a bench with other peripherals, so when you are ready for work, you can go there with everything ready... but maybe thats not you... its like one guy have a glued office on a land with everything inside, and another guy with his "moving office", that like to move everything everywhere, or just only a few to move... i guess you are the 2nd type...

First of all, how old is your motherboard, model? Does it support uefi boot at all? Did you set the right settings in the bios?

New x99 system, every component obviously supports UEFI, as windows boots without CSM. I have tried every combination in the bios and every combination of creating bootable media. I boot off the USB stick and get to the menu to select the distro and it just freezes. I can boot with CSM enabled and secure boot disabled, but I shouldn't need to or want to, because it makes dual booting a pain.

i dont quite understand whats this UEFI thing, it just came to my attention few hours ago when i tried to clone my asus pc OS and SW to another my custom (clone) pc just to realize from google that the Win10 key number is stored encrypted in this UEFI thing. all i know is its a higher level bios that is programmable by OS, well thats dangerous! anything programmable by an OS is just as programmable by a virus! no? well, thats not my main point. my main point is i dont know what exactly the practical application of this UEFI thing, what i know is now my custom pc (probably non EUFI chip) is running Win10 32 or 64 bits with legit key number bought from somewhere last night. now they both the asus (EUFI'd bios boot chip) and the cloned pc are good to go, there are only 2 things to take care now. one is my smaller atom "mini-pc", and another one atom netbook for my kids and wifey. i'm reformatting them all... and my 2nd point is i remember installing a linux variant in another partition and boot switchable from windows partition. no EUFI, very old system. can run both, so i'm not sure what importance to your problem or how you did it and failed, i'm not generation X so i'm not sure. btw, the linux was long gone as it has no practical application for me. me Wingows boot only...

And even then I run into trouble. I'm not the only one with this problem. Others with a different motherboard run into the same issues. Asus has no idea how to design a working board. I've had 5 asus boards over the years, all with different and stupid problems.

its ironic to think how people made mistake from step #1 and keep doing it till step #5. and now came to the conclusion to what this thread is all about. i believe the wise suggestion would be.... Not-An-Asus laptop... if i am you, i prefer the answer Not-An-Asus-All-in-One-PC and i'll make custom carrying case for it along with full old qwerty layout and wireless mouse. any finger tap mouse, that square flat area at the bottom of the laptop's keyboard, deserve its place under the truck's tyre if its for serious work, but too many times i'm unable to do that because if i do, all the laptop will go along which at least can do some usefull task ... here it goes, i'm too tyred from reformatting job, i need some sleep.. ymmv...

[Muxr]

Where do I begin:

- My laptop is a Haswell i7 Mac Air, dual core 8Gb of RAM and 256 SSD. Used mainly for work travel and when I am not at my desk. The battery life is insane and two years later still going strong. 12+ hour battery last time I checked. Pretty overkill for anything I use it for, most of my work is done in an IDE and Terminal windows remotely which are both light.

- My main workstation is a Mac Mini, quad core i7 (they don't make them in quad anymore): 256 SSD + 2TB external fusion drive, 16Gb of RAM. I prefer the workstation over a laptop because I never shut off my computer, and I like all the USB hubs and hard wire connections to stay connected. This thing is silent, uses very little power and very little space, which I need for all the test gear. I've had it for about 4 years now, probably the longest primary computer I ever had, the best computer I own. It's connected to a 30" HP high res monitor, and a light vertically mounted 27" IPS panel (AOC, I bought it because it was light for the swing arm). Little fun tidbit, the OS partition on it is probably 8 years old now. This was a time machine restore from my previous Mini, and I just kept upgrading without ever having to reinstall and start from scratch.

- Then I have a collection of Wintel computers I've put together myself. An i7 4770k water cooled with a GTX 980 video card, 16Gb of RAM and 512 SSD for gaming. Which I power on maybe once every 6 months, to try out a new game as they come out. The older I get the less I game, but every once in awhile I get the urge so I have a gaming Windows machine just for that purpose. Not a fan of console controls.

- I have a pair of Vmware ESX hosts, i7 quads with bunch of RAM and HDs for testing for work. I got bunch of Linux VMs running on them. This is unrelated to electronics, this is for my real job.

- A little Intel Nuc, just a Linux server to help keep my network fast (dns resolver), it also blocks ads for anyone on my network. It's specced pretty modestly, was pretty cheap. I think it has like 4Gb of RAM and like a 128G mSata SSD disk.

That's about it. There is probably another 3-4 decommissioned computers I haven't mentioned.

I prefer OS X to just about any other OS. The main reason is keyboard shortcuts, for instance CMD-C, CMD-V (copy and paste) doesn't overlap with Terminal commands ctrl-c and ctrl-x. Just about anything on OS-X is CMD-<some key> so it's really easy to tab between aps and just navigate without ever using a mouse. The other reason is that it's Unix. Since I write software for Unix systems all the stuff runs natively on it. I used Linux as my primary Desktop OS for years, but OS-X is best of both worlds, a lot of the commercial software runs on OS-X plus you get all the goodies from the Linux ecosystem as well.

With that said if you are into Electronics, Windows is probably still a king there. I purposely avoid tools which require Windows, but it's impossible to avoid them all. I still have to drop to Windows in a VM for FPGA programming for example. With mapped drives it's not a big deal.

[Armxnian]

see? all you see is games, and whats written on the pamphlet... thing is quite hard to explain, sort of you have to feel it to know it, none is written on papers. to give an idea, is when you need many things connected to your workstation... printers, stylus pen, wireless keyboard and mouse, a decent hi-fi system, big monitors etc (has been mentioned actually several times at the top). but i guess your requirement is small so a laptop may fit your bill... not to mention a highly customized and specialized system on the cheap, that i guess you are not very good at anyway...

You can connect all of those things to a laptop just as easily. Every printer in use today has wireless capability, and it performs very well, especially in a home environment with little interference. So does every stylus, keyboard, and mouse. You can get wireless speakers as well. Or you can just use your headphone jack or output the sound to an external dac using USB or HDMI. With thunderbolt currently at 40Gbps and doubling in bandwidth every generation, having multiple high resolution monitors connected to a laptop is a trivial task.

todays laptop may do that as well, its just a matter of comfort..
yeah but that is not the point. my current system is 4 cored and most of the time i only need one...
the point of a PC is to be "glued" to a bench with other peripherals, so when you are ready for work, you can go there with everything ready... but maybe thats not you... its like one guy have a glued office on a land with everything inside, and another guy with his "moving office", that like to move everything everywhere, or just only a few to move... i guess you are the 2nd type...

Performance per dollar is the biggest advantage of a desktop, and you say that's not the point? How do you compare the versatility of something you can pick up and go to a 50lb box with 10 wires attached to the wall.
You highly exaggerate the amount of effort it takes to setup a laptop as a desktop. You need 1 cable for an external monitor, and 1 cable for your USB hub which houses your wireless dongles and everything else you need. I keep my current desktop on my desk, because even with filters, it sucks up all the dust on the floor. So if anything, a laptop would take less space in my room and on my bench. I agree a laptop would make little sense if you never have a need for a computer outside of your room, but I don't think that's the case for most people, especially students, where laptops are not only helpful, but sometimes required for classes.

i dont quite understand whats this UEFI thing, it just came to my attention few hours ago when i tried to clone my asus pc OS and SW to another my custom (clone) pc just to realize from google that the Win10 key number is stored encrypted in this UEFI thing. all i know is its a higher level bios that is programmable by OS, well thats dangerous! anything programmable by an OS is just as programmable by a virus! no? well, thats not my main point. my main point is i dont know what exactly the practical application of this UEFI thing, what i know is now my custom pc (probably non EUFI chip) is running Win10 32 or 64 bits with legit key number bought from somewhere last night. now they both the asus (EUFI'd bios boot chip) and the cloned pc are good to go, there are only 2 things to take care now. one is my smaller atom "mini-pc", and another one atom netbook for my kids and wifey. i'm reformatting them all... and my 2nd point is i remember installing a linux variant in another partition and boot switchable from windows partition. no EUFI, very old system. can run both, so i'm not sure what importance to your problem or how you did it and failed, i'm not generation X so i'm not sure. btw, the linux was long gone as it has no practical application for me. me Wingows boot only...

If dual booting, it is ideal to not have to change your bios settings every time you want to use another OS. Some OS's perform better with some settings, and others do not even work on those settings. You can use a VM but that's beside the point.

its ironic to think how people made mistake from step #1 and keep doing it till step #5.

There are a million different vendors for each component. When all the "enthusiasts" flock to one specific item, it's hard to not bandwagon when you haven't tested everything yourself.

[Vgkid]

For me,a Dell Inspiron 1525. A computer i kind of regretted getting at first, but ended up really liking. The only reason i did not like it was no dedicated gpu. I came from only having a desktop( which i upgraded almost everything in it) to only using a laptop. My next laptop will be a used mobile workstation Precision/W-series from around 2011/12.

[Armxnian]

Just a quick update, continue with the laptop discussion 

Threw this thing together in 2 minutes using some spare parts. The entire thing is smaller than the power supply...


Booted Fedora on my first try, and every try after that, with every bios setting combination, including CSM disabled and secure boot enabled.

Something this piece of garbage failed to do.

[wraper]

Something this piece of garbage failed to do.

I just wonder, are you crazy or what? First you blow away a lot of money on over-engineered x99 mobo, DDR4 RAM, CPU, 1kW PSU and water cooling, then say this thing sucks and you need a laptop  .

[wraper]

BTW is this Define R5 case? Looks very similar to mine.

[Armxnian]

Something this piece of garbage failed to do.

I just wonder, are you crazy or what? First you blow away a lot of money on over-engineered x99 mobo, DDR4 RAM, CPU, 1kW PSU and water cooling, then say this thing sucks and you need a laptop  .

Let's see you keep your sanity after trying to boot an OS for a week.

BTW is this Define R5 case?

Yes it is

[eugenenine]

Just bought a Dell Latitude E6230.  Have a Dell Latitude D430 and a Dell Latitude C400 on the workbench.
I will sometimes think I should build a nice desktop but realize for the same $300 I can just get another used/refurbished business grade laptop and use it for another decade so I can't seem to bother building a desktop.

There is a quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines so I don't bother withe the inspiron's any more.

A Raspberry Pi and Pi2 are my internal and web server which sync all my important files across all three laptops and my phone and tablet.

Whatever you do, don't ever waste the $ on an Apple product.  No point in paying 4x the cost for lessor quality.

[wraper]

Let's see you keep your sanity after trying to boot an OS for a week.

At least you have a workaround and also can partially change the hardware (motherboard). BTW GPU also might cause this issue. If it's BIOS is not UEFI compatible, motherboard most likely will start in legacy mode.
If you are "lucky" to get with such incompatibility with a laptop basically all you can do is to replace a whole laptop.

[encryptededdy]

A Latitude E7450. Prefer business laptops due to their quality and also pointing stick!!!!!! (even though the Dell ones are not as good as the Lenovo ones).

Only thing it lacks is a higher res screen... 1080p IPS is okay but I would like that new 2560x1440 OLED panel that lenovo is shipping... perhaps I will try to retrofit it.

[Armxnian]

Let's see you keep your sanity after trying to boot an OS for a week.

At least you have a workaround and also can partially change the hardware (motherboard). BTW GPU also might cause this issue. If it's BIOS is not UEFI compatible, motherboard most likely will start in legacy mode.
If you are "lucky" to get with such incompatibility with a laptop basically all you can do is to replace a whole laptop.

The culprit was indeed the GPU. I figured it out when I could boot using the igpu on my spare build, and also a spare 750ti. But when I tried with the 980ti, it failed.

I tried the 750ti in the x99 and it booted with CSM disabled and secure boot enabled. I was also getting lag in the bios. Sometimes it was so much that it as unusable. The lag seems gone with the 750ti.

How is a 980ti UEFI compatible with windows but not in the bios or any linux distro, wtf? I flashed a custom bios to the GPU a while ago, but have since reverted to the official one from gigabyte. Could this have screwed something up?

This damn GPU has caused me so much pain. It's going out the window unless I can fix it somehow. GPUZ reports that the GPU is UEFI compatible.

Maybe I can keep my desktop but also get a laptop. It was my original plan anyway 

[wraper]

You can check by running GPU-Z, there is uefi checkbox shown near to the vbios version.

[Armxnian]

You can check by running GPU-Z, there is uefi checkbox shown near to the vbios version.

I already mentioned in my previous post that I checked that. It's the reason why I ignored the GPU. Any other suggestions?

[wraper]

You can check by running GPU-Z, there is uefi checkbox shown near to the vbios version.

I already mentioned in my previous post that I checked that. It's the reason why I ignored the GPU. Any other suggestions?

Try some other bios from techpowerup https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=&manufacturer=Gigabyte&model=GTX+980+Ti&interface=&memType=&memSize=

[Selectech]

Asus UX305CA { Skylake } with 8G ram, 256G SSD, Win10 X64.
Love it. Light, no fans, long run time on bat.
My 3rd Asus, still have the others as test machines, one is 4 yrs old, one is 6 years old. New one was a Christmas present.

[Armxnian]

Try some other bios from techpowerup https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=&manufacturer=Gigabyte&model=GTX+980+Ti&interface=&memType=&memSize=

Tried both, plus the one on the gigabyte site, plus another custom bios from oc.net. But they're all based on the same official bios from gigabyte, except the older one which is a sample bios on techpowerup. None of them made any difference. If you google 980ti uefi, you will find a couple of threads, some with users with the same exact problem as me. The good news is that I've found the problem, bad news is that I doubt this is fixable. I don't even think a new card will help, unless it's from a manufacturer whose last firmware revision wasn't from half a year ago...

since your claim that a pc is useless in the OP, so this thread is not entirely for a laptop ... btw, fwiw, this is my machine, not much to see pretty much everything mainstreamed... currently opened to "synchronize manually" with my other stations. the my workhorse, not gamehorse... i guess this is the "definition" of "intellectual machine" rather than "game machine"..

Na I didn't claim a pc is useless. I claimed desktops are useless, but to be more specific, my desktop is useless, as it currently can't properly boot linux with the main gpu in it. So unless I get it somehow fixed, your 8 year old pc > mine.



If I'm going to keep my desktop, then I'll probably get something like a surface book. Specs are a bit low for the ridiculous price, but it doesn't really matter if you have a powerful desktop. Seems like good quality and good for note taking.

[Mechatrommer]

as it currently can't properly boot linux with the main gpu in it.

as said i made a linux partition years back i dont know, maybe you expect too much out of your water cooled machine, well as other have suggested, you can get one more machine specialized for linux and keep your gaming desktop peace, good luck...

[tszaboo]

Something this piece of garbage failed to do.

Feel free to send it to me. I pay half the shipping.

[mikeselectricstuff]

X220 - (for mobile use, not desktop substitute), with SSD, obviously.
I previously had an IBM Thinkpad with a similar small form factor which took a hell of a beating over the years, so replaced it with a new X220.
I really like the small size of the 12" form factor, the nice keyboard and IPS display.

[wraper]

Tried both, plus the one on the gigabyte site, plus another custom bios from oc.net. But they're all based on the same official bios from gigabyte, except the older one which is a sample bios on techpowerup. None of them made any difference.

If the PCB itself is a reference design, you could try BIOSes from another manufacturers. Though fan RPM very likely will be fucked up because tuned for particular cooler.

[Armxnian]

If the PCB itself is a reference design, you could try BIOSes from another manufacturers. Though fan RPM very likely will be fucked up because tuned for particular cooler.

The problem was with linux... a common issue with everyone who has a new gpu and is using a new kernel. 
You have to add nomodeset in the grub boot config.

Installed fedora with CSM disabled and secure mode enabled. Problem solved.

[Srbel]

What brand of laptop offers the best quality nowadays? DELL?

On the interweb, every site says different.

All I know is, most of today's laptops fail really quickly (in like couple of years). Mostly due to cracked solder balls on GPU.

[Srbel]

I am asking for my friend, actually. He can't afford expensive brands. I was asking about these "regular" brands (Toshiba, DELL, HP, Lenovo, Acer, MSI,...). Less than 500 euros price range.
From what I see, they are all dodgy quality.

[Armxnian]

I wouldn't say they're all dodgy quality on purpose. You can only do so much with $500. Lenovo has probably spent thousands of hours optimizing each system to save every penny. You get what you pay for.

On the flip side, the surface book seems really high quality, but I don't understand why it's so damn expensive. $1500 for a 256gb i5, which is $400 more than the pro 4 with student discount.

The chromebook pixel looks cool. But it's a grand and runs chrome OS... You can install Windows but the largest drive space you can buy is 64gb, which is ridiculous to put windows on.

The new xps 15 looks like a good value for the specs. But what use is an 8 thread cpu and 960m when I have a 4.3GHz 12 thread and 980ti at home... I would rather have the versatility of the surface books. Looks real good to take notes on in tablet mode.