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Blu-ray ripping
I am building a new PC to be used to rip a large collection of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, and I would like your thoughts as to which hardware would make the task faster.
I use a software package called Pavtube to do the conversion. The software has an option to speed up the process by enabling Nvidia’s CUDA cores on the graphics card. I see when I look at the specs of various Nvidia graphics cards listed on Pavtube’s website that there are different numbers of CUDA cores depending on the card – from 1,536 cores (GeForce GTX 1660 TI) all the way up to 4,992 (Tesla K80). Is this important? Would an even newer card – the RTX 2070 Super or RTX 2080 Super – be a better choice? Finally, would you recommend pairing this with an AMD Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 with 32MB of 3200MHz memory and a B450 chipset? MARVIN MALASKY
APC responds: One word of warning before we continue – Malwarebytes flagged Pavtube as a potential phishing site when we went to test it. If you’re happy with the product, then Malwarebytes is probably being over-sensitive. Otherwise, the good news is that Handbrake (https://handbrake. fr) now supports NVENC hardware encoding to h.264 and h.265 formats with compatible graphics cards: Nvidia GTX 1050+ (Pascal version), GTX 1650 (Volta), or GTX/RTX 1660/2060+ (Turing), all running the Nvidia driver 418.81 or later. You’ll also need to enable the options via “Tools > Preferences > Video,” tick “Allow use of the Nvidia NVENC Encoders.”
The NVENC codec makes a difference to ripping times, but the improvements aren’t anywhere near as spectacular in Handbrake as those claimed in Pavtube. Our test machine – X470 chipset, Ryzen 2700, 32GB RAM and Nvidia GTX 1660 Super – delivered improvements of between 15-25 percent in encoding times when choosing the NVENC h.264 codec. The more CUDA cores you have, the bigger the difference, but before prioritising a new graphics card, consider image quality and file size.
The good news is that the newer
Turing-based graphics cards do deliver good quality video; previous-generation cards produce visibly inferior movies. However, file sizes are significantly larger with NVENC encodings – up to twice the size. So your choice is simple: Faster encoding times or smaller file sizes.
With this in mind, we suggest you focus more on your other components. The B450 chipset and 32GB RAM is a strong base, but choose the Ryzen 7 over the Ryzen 5 – the additional cores will do more to reduce ripping times than investing in a higher-end graphics card; the x264 codec will produce smaller files and still be able to encode Full HD movies in around 30 minutes.
Display freezes
I’ve got a bizarre issue that started a few months ago that I’ve been unable to diagnose or resolve. My system freezes randomly, sometimes several times a day, sometimes not for a day or two, but eventually it hits, and my only recourse is to do a hard reset. There are some strange oddities about this I’ve never seen before. First, when it freezes, the sound continues – whether a game, YouTube video or whatever. The system is locked and unresponsive, but the sound carries on until I finally hit the reset button. I can’t find anything in Event Viewer and there is no BSOD or other error given.
Other peculiarities – which may or may not be related – are the fact various settings (RGB lighting settings via Aura; SB Connect 2 for my video card and sound card RGB strip) are lost after the reboot, plus I get random, intermittent sound stutters like a severe hiccup that last a second or two before going away – these seem to be tied to drive access, but I can’t tell for sure since they happen so quickly and are gone.
I’ve recently swapped out the motherboard with an identical model to resolve a separate issue, and I’ve done an in-place reinstall of Windows. I’ve tried removing the soundcard and used just on-board
sound. All drivers and the BIOS are up to date. Temps are fine according to NZXT CAM. Nothing’s helped. My system specs are: Intel i7 7700K (not currently OCed), Nzxt Kraken X62 AIO, Asus ROG Strix 1080 Ti, Asus Maximus IX Formula, 32GB G. Skill, five Samsung SSDs (1x960 Pro NVMe 1TB, 1x850 Pro 256GB, 1x860 EVO 2TB, 2x850 EVO 2TB), and a SoundBlasterX Ae-5 all plugged into an Enthoo Evolv (I mention that since I’m using their PWM hub, in case that could be a factor). Any ideas? It’s driving me crazy!
JOHN MEYERS
APC responds: John followed up his email with some more details – one of which was the discovery of numerous “Xvd” entries under Disk Drives in Device Manager. The Xvd entries are virtual drives created by Xbox Game Pass games installed through the MS store, which triggered the realisation that the issue began shortly after he first started using Game Pass on Windows. A further look in Event Viewer revealed a host of error entries referring to these drives – some referring to errors during paging operations, and others referring to “surprise” removals.
It seems far too coincidental that these problems aren’t related – a good description of what’s going on can be found at http://bit.ly/ MPClluminati – this would definitely place the stuttering issues at Game Pass’s door, and we suspect the display freezes may also trace back here too.
First, take a full drive image using a tool like Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/ reflectfree.aspx) – this gives you something to roll back to if the next two steps don’t work. Step one is to uninstall Game Pass to see if the problem disappears.
If this doesn’t resolve the issue, bite the bullet and adopt a nuclear approach to eliminate all potential software problems: Wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. If the problem goes away, keep taking regular drive images as you restore drivers, software, and so on – if the issue resurfaces, you’ll know to focus your troubleshooting efforts on whatever was most recently reintroduced. And if the problem remains after a fresh install, restore the drive image you took, and turn your attention back to the hardware.
One component you’ve not mentioned troubleshooting is the video card. Given the problems are with your display, it should be your next port of call. Reset any overclocks back to their defaults, and if necessary, remove the card and run from your i7’s integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 chipset, instead using the mobo’s own HDMI port to hook up your display. If it does, you’re looking at a possible driver problem (although the clean Windows install should have fixed that), or a failing graphics card, which will need replacing.
That said, before swapping to a new card, use Open Hardware Monitor (openhardwaremonitor. org) to check for voltage and temperature spikes that might indicate a problem with the PSU or cooling, and run a test with the built-in Windows Memory Diagnostic tool to verify that there’s nothing wrong with your RAM.
PCIe lane query
I recently upgraded to the Asus ROG Striz Z390-E gaming motherboard, which I’ll be transferring my i7-8086K and RTX 2080 Super into. My question is about the PCIe lanes and the differences between 4x, 8x and 16x. I’m planning to install two NVME M.2 drives – one for the OS, and a second as a game library drive. Can you please explain how these all work together?
CHRIS HUEBLER
APC responds: PCIe transfers data using serial connections known as lanes. Each lane contains two pairs of wires: One for sending data, the other for receiving it. The serial connection works in a similar way to a network, sending and receiving data in packets through each lane’s four wires. The number in 4x, 8x, and 16x PCIe connectors refers to the number of lanes in that PCIe slot (four, eight, and 16 respectively).
The speed of each PCIe slot is further determined by the version of PCIe supported by your motherboard: The Z390-E supports PCIe version 3.0, which means each PCIe 3.0 x4 slot can handle a theoretical maximum data throughput of 32 gigabits per second (4GB/s – gigabytes per second), or 8Gb/s (1GB/s) per lane.
How does this work out in real terms? Our X470 setup has PCIe x4 slots like yours, and his Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe drive benchmarks around 3.5 gigabytes per second (read) and 2.4GB/s (write). One of the reasons for this slower speed is because NVME slots transfer data through the chipset via a PCH (Platform Controller Hub) as opposed to the CPU.
Until recently, CPUs were hobbled by the number of PCIe lanes they could handle – your i7-8086K chip supports a maximum of 16 lanes, which is enough to run your GPU at maximum speed, but leaves no room for any other devices. While it’s possible to connect other PCIe devices through the CPU, this would force the GPU to run at half-speed to free up eight lanes for elsewhere.
This is why motherboards offer two types of PCIe slot: Those that run through the CPU (the Z390-E has two x16 slots for this purpose), and those that run through the PCH (the Z390-E runs an extra x16 slot, plus a x1 slot as well as the two NVMe slots). While PCHconnected slots aren’t as fast as those running off the CPU, the performance trade-off is far less than forcing your GPU to run at x8, as evidenced by our Samsung EVO benchmarks.