BitMaster

To exclude Windows being the root cause for those BSOD's and failed booting attempts, obtain a bootable Linux on a USB or even CD/DVD ( slower than USB ) and see if that OS will fire up and behave normally. If it does, it is likely a UEFI-Security/non-CSM thing prohibiting your Windows to boot properly. If Linux does work normally, use it to save your data from your drives ( documents, pics, videos, etc etc ) to a Fat32 formatted drive ( exFAT will not work in Linux ! ) or send it via LAN to another NTFS drive on a proper Windows machine. THEN, reinstall your Windows with your Bios being reset first and make sure your Bios is set to UEFI ( secure boot ) and not to CSM before you install. The reason for UEFI and not CSM is that once Nvidia will allow SAM ( as AMD has done with their GPUs ) you will likely also need to have Windows in UEFI mode, CSM would not allow you to use that feature. Before you install Windows, my advice is to use Linux on USB thoroughly to test your new RAM config. There are certain things you can do to test your RAM with Linux, Google has a nice set of tools that you can use. I recommend Ubuntu or Mint ( derivat of Ubuntu ). here is a link telling you how Google's stress test app works: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?73665-Our-preferred-memory-stress-test edit: If you are new to Linux and don't want to ruin things by mistake, DISCONNECT your drives from 12V before booting Linux. Then test the rig thoroughly and once you feel safe to handle it, shut it down, connect the drives again, boot back to USB-Linux, rescue your data if needed and then reinstall your Win10 with UEFI.

Win10 Defender and multiple Backups in various cloud services and HDD

Start all over and remove the 8GB sticks. Insert ONE of the new kits ONLY in the outlined slots ( 2 and 4 ) and see if that will boot at 2133MHz or 2666MHz. If they do not boot at those speeds then you are out of luck. If they boot, use them for a day or two and see if they BSOD at standard speeds and Volts. Then do the same with the 2nd new kit, remove the 1st one and plug second kit in, proceed as above, do not use XMP yet. If both kits work on their own, try each kit again separatly, apply XMP and see if that works. You can up the Volts to 1.40v if needed, I would try with 1.375v first and see if that helps them to fire up. If you manage to get that kit working, do some test bench runs and see if it is stable. If yes, take that kit out and test kit #2 the same way. If they do work as well, then insert all 4 of them, up the Volts if needed (often needed with 4 modules ) and see if they boot. You may change the slots ( kit#1 = slot 2+4 & kit#2 = slot 1+3 ) between the kits but DO NOT mix the kits themselves. Do not apply XMP right away when you boot the 2 kits, stay at 2133/2666 and 1.20v + a little more, say 1.25v if needed. If they boot and keep stable, try XMP and up the volts again if needed to post in Bios. If all fails, return the 2 kits and buy a new kit of 4 modules, best if listed in the QVL.

+1. Could make a difference with 16GB if you hit the ceiling and need to swap hundreds of MB If you buy new, I would still consider NVMe over Sata SSD, unless you aim for 2 or 4TB where the price difference still hurts somewhat.

Back to the OT, does it pay t split OS and main APPS like DCS, Steam folders and likes. From my point, a slave fixing machines for others, customers and family & friends, yes, it does make sense if the shit hits the fan and you need to reinstall the OS for whatever reason. It is not a mandatory thing but splitting it up can make that much easier if you have to troubleshoot a system. Disconnect the APP drive, only leave the OS active, and you won't by mistake or any other glitch wipe DCS, Steam...or your personal files. I highly recommend not to share the OS drive with important Apps and Files. The other, speed related, question has lost most of it's importance. Back in the days of HDD's, maybe even pre S-ATA drives, it did REALLY impact performance if you kept it all on a single drive, you gained so much performance by splitting it up. Well, with SSD and NVMe this need has almost vanished but if you want the last 1% as said before or if you multitask while flying DCS ( Stream, have 20 tabs open in Chrome, anything that needs constant data I/O and the OS managing it it MAY pay to have them separate. Here is where SSD and NVMe are miles apart. I use a lot of VMware and believe me it does matter A LOT if you use SSDs or NVMe in the world of Multi-OS's running on one system and hammering your I/O...agreed, this is not a common scenario but when the I/O is hammered and the pipeline usually longer than QD1 it does matter if you have 100k or 750k IOPS and if you have 560MB/sec or 3500MB/sec or even more with Gen4. Looking at the prices of NVMe now, I don't see why you should buy into Sata-SSD if you can afford NVMe. You can start with 1 NVMe and if you think or know it will work better some time down the road with 2 of them, ADD one. The only big downside I have with NVMe is: It is THAT much harder and more time consuming to attach them to another system to rescue data etc.. You either need the correct external NVMe case or put it in your rig the proper way. With a Sata-SSD that is a lot simpler and faster. I personally run DCS from 3 Sata-SSD Samsung 2x850 Pro & 1x860 Pro 256GB in an insane Raid-0. The performance scaled 100% with each drive added and I think I may add #4 soon as I need more space. I also plan to buy a 2TB Samsung NVMe this year and move DCS and VMware machines to that drive instead of the RAID-0 as it is THAT much better in VMware with 3-5 virtual machines running. DCS is just fine on my Raid-0 but I do not own syria map, maybe that map shows the limits of current Sata, might well be. I like fast throughput, always took the better systems like SCSI and SAS in the past to obtain that edge over ATA but with Sata-SSD and NVMe it got so much cheaper to be at the very top of performance. CPU, GPU and RAM got so fast, you gotta feed that pipeline or much of that power is lost when your Data Path becomes a bottleneck again, which doesn't need to be with NVMe, especially Gen4.

Not actually correct, it is NOT the amount of modules that matters here but the amount of Ranks. 2 sticks can be as fast as 4 sticks IF the 2 stick setup ( say 2 x 16GB ) consists of DUAL RANK modules, which most older 16GB sticks are. In the past year new IC's have emerged that have double the capacity which means you can get a SINGLE RANK 16GB stick if you don't watch out what you buy. The good thing is, with those new IC's you can now get a 32GB Dual Rank stick and achieve a total of 128GB if needed. So one could get a 2 stick 2 x 32GB DR kit and also keep the door open to add another 2 sticks later on. That said, think twice before you plan to add RAM later on. It has never been easy to add modules to already existing modules. Not even the same brand and model will be a guaranty that it will work. You would need the same production week or day to have a high chance of succeeding. In addition, the amount of available DDR4 sticks to choose from will dramatically go down over the next 18 months ( likely your upgrade window, time wise ) as DDR5 is on the merge and production will mainly shift to those and high end sticks of the DDR4 era will likely be stopped in production. They will provide the JDEC specific versions, 2133 and 2666, for years to come but I would not bet on getting a matching pair of 3200MHz Brand-XYZ with 18-blablabla specs, that is likely not the case from what we have seen over the last decade with DDR, DDR2, DDR3, DDR4 and now DDR5. Tbh, I would not pick a 750w PSU and stick with a 850w to stay on the safer side, it can become borderline if you need to run the system at full-tilt throttle. The GPU will be around 300-350w under load ( also in DCS )and can under certain conditions reach up to 500+watts, the CPU can take A LOT more than what the TDP tells you. If you run ANY of the stability tests it will tax CPU and GPU to 100% and may cause the PSU to get near it's safe limits. With 100w more on your side you should be safe even when running a stability tests for hours and hours. Seasonic Prime Platinum or Titanium would be my pick. With the setup you have you will likely consume 300w GPU + 50w CPU + 50w board and drives = 400w. Add another 10% safety margin and you are pretty much at 50% load of a 850w PSU. 50% load is where a PSU runs most efficient and the coolest. With Platinum grade you will only produce 7-8% heat ( 92-93% eff. ). Say 8% of 425w is roughly 40w heat generated by your PSU. With a Gold PSU it will not be that much more but I would not consider Gold as good enough for such a rig. The quality of a PSU is hard to see from the outside. Take warranty period as a measure. Don't buy below 7 years ( Gold ) and try to get 10-12years if possible ( Platinum and Titanium ). The parts used to build the better ones cost more, last longer and foremost put LESS STRESS on the components. BTW, a 3600 CL16 is about as low latency as a 3200CL14. The difference comes to light when you move larger amounts of data, then the higher numbers ( 3200 vs 3600 ) wins the race. The CL value could be seen as a drag race, quarter mile or Traffic light sprints, the MHz value stands for the long run, NY to LA...as an analogy. You need both being good to win the overall race. 3600 CL16 is the sweet spot.

I dont have GF Exp installed as well and also suffer this problem on a 24/7/365 PC, which in fact costs me considerable money at the end of the year It used to get fixed by deinstalling GF Exp and unplug any controllers. It's a MS-Nvidia issue they know about for years! That is the bad part, they know it and dont fix it. Never had any sleeping issue with my own Mac or any Mac I have sold & serviced. Apple can do it, cmon MS and Nvidia !

Rare but can happen is that your board did not fully clear the registers when you cleared CMOS/BIOS. I have had boards in that needed Battery, RAM, CPU!! and all the rest taken off and then fire it up, short the pins and put a Quarter or 50€cent coin in the battery tray for 10 minutes. On one of my own boards coupke years back it ~somehow~ got back to life... strange things happen sometimes. Might wanna give that a try, blank board clearing cmos. Happy New Year 2021 & Stay Safe

Nvidia Card + GF Experience and any kind of game controller connected are well known to cause Power Settings to go nuts. Deinstall GF Experience and see if that alone helps, if not, you will have to unplug the controllers and see if that helps. I have the same issue and it sometimes works as planned...and sometimes it just won't go to sleep, regardless if controllers are attached or not. I have no GF Experience installed anymore and over the last year the problem got more serious, it's a hit & miss with this BS OS called Win10. Try to google your problem, you will see, there are many people having the same issue.

Disconnect all Sata drives and try if it boots to the point where it says "No operating system found" and stops. If it does that, one of your drives went bad, connect 1 by 1 then to find which one. It is no bad idea to take all peripherals out of the testing, use as little hardware as possible to see if the error goes away if stripped down to the bare minimum.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

I'd move DCS to the Samsung drive and be done. Apropos Adata... read that article linked in that thread, you might get shocked

Nice ! If I was air cooling I'd likely do the same, cheap & efficient. Heck, one could split the duct ( in CAD ) to blow cold air over RAM, VRM, GPU and CPU.

You should buy the Samsung KIT and not the SSD drive alone. The KIT comes with an EXCELLENT USB-3.0 adapter that I use myself. It's only a few € more but you will get an adapter that is well made and does work as intended. It works with any 2.5" drive, HDD or SSD, that I have tested it with and that have been quite a few over the last years. Check the online offers for the Kit "with" the Adapter included, they are available. * They are called "Starter Kit", those have the USB adapter enclosed, Amazon has them btw.

Disable Messaging in Windows 10 to kill the problem at the root. ...and why can you click anything "Windows" while in the Mirage if you are using fullscreen ? That can only mean non-full-screen mode and won't be solved by turning All Messaging to OFF

You need that to configure it. Check the MS Store, Realtek Audio Console is its name, its a blue icon. At my Mac right now so can't look it up

My understanding is that we are running against an engine wall, you can only achieve what your CPU allows ( IPC x clock speed ). A better GPU does lift your max LOD setting as it is usually not CPU bound but FPS wise you need a CPU first place that can push the limits and then a GPU that can actually use that to give you more FPS, vice versa, a future CPU with unheard performance will allow better FPS when your frame time suffers in your current rig even without a better GPU and will also give you more overall FPS if you also have a future GPU that could make use of such a CPU that can cut frame time to a maximum value that would always allow very high fps. Unfortunately, the CPU is the first step to take and there is none in sight that could remedy the engine limitations. Maybe with new CPUs in 2 years with matured DDR5 at very high speeds we can push harder against this engine wall but it won't come tomorrow. I keep my rig as it is and will not invest in any new hardware unless I need to for other reasons or hardware failure. Actually, I stopped flying DCS for now as I am busy with my life and only occasionally fire it up to touch base and not to forget how to fly. Maybe in 2-3 years I come back as an active Pilot. For now, I enjoy Nürburgring Nordschleife maybe once a month in a Porsche GT2 or GT3 but that has nothing to do with DCS or ED, it's a personal decision based on how much I want to invest time wise to have fun and some distraction from raising two kids, 3 and 5, on my own, that takes 105% of my energy and I couldn't fly and fight even if I wanted to, it's way too much brain juice that I don't have anymore with 51. That and knowing throwing money at software limitations has limited success. But hey, if you got VR smoother ( as it was your GPU bottlenecking ) and some better overall experience, that's what counts ! Have fun

Have you got Realtek HD Audio Manager showing up in your system tray? It's a Speaker icon.

That's as well true. What matters here is that people have been fooled. Honesty is a rare treat.

You will need to DL Realtek HD Audio Manager. That tool allows splitting channels up into individual streams. The bad thing is, that got complicated. Check if your MB vendor still has it in the driver package ( used to be like that prior to 1909 or 2004, cant remeber when it stopped ). Nowadays, it comes via Microsoft Store. Google how it is handled with your board's soundcard. I had LOTS of trouble with that on my recent installs. Either MS Store hung up or some other BS went on. Win7 was much more straight ahead when it comes to drivers and how things are handled over many years, with Win10, prepare for changes happeneing twice a year, round about like that. That is my biggest issoe with 10, it is not consistent over the years and vendors keep struggling to keep pace and once your board is 2 years old, gues what, no more updates !.

True too, but bear in mind the most expensive endavour would be to buy cheap first, then loose data and then being forced to buy the real thing. Heck, even a Samsung or Intel 905p can die in a matter of hours or days if you are unlucky, but betting on the cheapest horse if you have a critical undertaking ahead of you was never a good idea. Fast, cheap, reliable :: PICK ANY TWO another valid approach to that dilemma.

Wich tells me, we are still a mile away. 15,5ms on the deck cries for that engine overhaul, ... or a 5nm +30%IPC +20% clockspeed CPU which is not gonna happen anytime soon. I am afraid neither will be a new stable DCS engine. Back to square one.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/adata-and-other-ssd-makers-swapping-parts Eye opening article

You may very well need to rest the Bios the hard way if it still will not boot after making sure as said above that the modules are all inserted properly. To reset the Bios fully,: - unplug the PC from AC - wait 30 secs for caps to drain empty ( might wanna push the start button a few times too ) - put the CLEAR CMOS JUMPER in the CLEAR/SHORT position ( look into youtr manual if unsure where and how ! ) - take the battery out - shorten the battery tray's + and - with a coin or s screwdriver ( Metal ! ) by touching both + and - poles in the tray for 1 minute ( 10 sec usually does it, but play safe ) THEN - put jumper frpm CMOS CLEAR back to normal position - insert battery - BOOT IT UP Other things that may give a hint. - CLEAN all dust out of your PC and from all RAM slots - insert only ONE module and try to boot. You can alternate the modules and slots to find the culprit slot or module - disconnect all hardware not needed to boot the board: any drives ( NVMe / SSD / HDD / DVD ), All peripherals but keyboard ( Display, all USB except KB, Monitor, Sound cables, etc.. make the I/O panel BLANK, take GPU and any other AIB out ( you do NOT need a GPU to boot a PC ). Work slowly and have a concept, follow it, take notes if needed, make a pause when you get frustrated and then get back to it following a logical plan ( take all out you dont need: 1 RAM in (any) 1 Slot + CPU is all it needs to boot the beast !! ) Take it easy and slowly

I stopped reading this throughly because this thread has drifted into bashing and use of not-so-nice words. If you want others to contribute, calm down all, stay with facts and RESPECT other's point of view and budget. The facts for either side are printed many times on countless pages throughout the web. Let's play it nice guys. Bit