How I went from testing a fancy new graphics card to shouting at Windows 10

Sometimes at Ars Technica, a staffer has to call in "sick" for reasons other than illness, emergency, or hangover. Those are all poor working states, but I would argue that one is even worse: a computer meltdown.
Everyone on staff has suffered at least one of these (or its awful cousin, the ISP outage) and been left distracted or set back to some extent. But when the crash in question happens to the thing you're supposed to test? That's a problem.
And when it happens because you used official Microsoft downloads? Oh, that's an Ars article.

1809: The sign of the Windows Update beast

TL;DR: Everything on my end is fine, after some headaches. There's not enough here to declare that Microsoft has failed its every customer. But, seeing as this is a holiday weekend, I thought I'd use the slow-news opportunity to tell a slightly overlong tale of Windows woe. Methinks you'll empathize.
The trouble began when I returned from a mid-November trip and offered a sing-song "honey I'm hooo-oome" to my sweet, sweet baby: the Ars PC-gaming testing machine.
Some context: I've been a happy owner of a Falcon NW "Tiki" build for years, which I upgraded earlier this year because I'd anticipated the launch of new, consumer-grade GPUs. I wanted any new GPUs to be met by a beefier power supply, faster RAM, and a liquid-cooled i7 processor. This system upgrade certainly helped me review Nvidia's new RTX line of GPUs in September (with some exceptions, which I'll get to later).
Part of the upgrade process was a system wipe and fresh Windows 10 install, which I was happy to do—always a good excuse to back up files and clear some Windows garbage. That was in April, and while I've faced some UWP app-license headaches since, the system has otherwise been fine.
Thus, I was excited upon my return to see a major update queued for download: Battlefield V and its fancy-pants, RTX-minded "ray-tracing" update. (BFV has had a weirdly staggered launch, with some customers playing a full two weeks ahead of standard-edition owners, but we got in as early as possible with hopes of testing this RTX update and informing our audience of PC gamers.)
I got all of my PC-patching ducks in a row. New Nvidia drivers? Check. BFV and Origin client updates? Check. Windows Update, "check for updates?" Check. I was ready to trace some rays—and thus see what Nvidia's newfangled, super-sexy reflection pipeline would offer in an actual game, as opposed to pre-cooked demos.
Yet BFV's menus still had no mention of ray tracing, and jumping into a game showed no difference. Huh?
A quick peek at EA's announcements confirmed what was still missing: a jump to the latest Windows 10 build number. I was running 1803, but EA locked this update to Windows 10 build 1809. Hmm. That's a requirement I hadn't seen before.
I quintuple-clicked Windows Update's "check again" button in the hope of forcing an upgrade, but I was out of luck. Windows' default, staggered approach to official updates had left me out of the approved pool. Oftentimes, that's a good thing. I am glad to not have been part of the recent "official" wave that wiped users' My Documents folders, for example.
But this device is a testing rig, which means it's mostly free of valuable files. In the case of a full data wipe, I'd be more upset about having to re-download zillions of games' gigs (especially with a #%*$ing Comcast monthly data cap) than losing crucial data. Thus, I was ready to poke the ray-tracing bear.

“Undoing changes,” “undoing changes,” “undoing changes... ”

My first force-an-upgrade step came from the Windows Update Assistant, an officially advertised Microsoft download that confirms your system's specs and build version, then answers whether or not your PC is ready for the next Windows 10 build before beginning the download-and-install process. My PC quickly received the all-clear from this app. After a 10-minute data-download phase, the installer offered an expected "first of many restarts" notice.
Before going any further, I should note that I ran into one bit of Windows weirdness ahead of the upgrade process. In clearing out a few more gigs on my install drive, a paltry 256GB SSD, I tried to clear out prior Windows installs by digging through temp files via Windows 10's settings panels. There, I saw an option to recover 6GB of data that was devoted to "previous Windows install files." But doing this did two things: first, it left a "cleaning files... " message on my screen for over half an hour, and second, when the file cleaning was completed, the option to delete that data disappeared—but I had only recovered 1GB of data.
What happened to the other ~5GB? I couldn't tell. I no longer had a Windows.old folder lingering in my C: drive. And a dig through usual-suspect dumping grounds of "hidden" files turned nothing up.
Back to the Windows Update Assistant. When I told this upgrade tool to proceed, its first timing indicator got up to 80 percent before rebooting my system. Then, the restarted, low-resolution screens showed a meter that reached 17 percent before a sudden reboot. Another screen briefly flashed: "Undoing changes made to your computer." Reboot, and back to the prior Windows build, working as if I'd done nothing. I tried again, only to see the exact same percentage markers. Eighty percent, 17 percent, "undoing changes made to your computer."
The next step was to reach out to Microsoft customer service directly through Windows' help interface. My first chat with a customer service agent began with a stern reminder—and one I'd be remiss not to share with you—that I should wait until my Windows 10 system received an 1809 download through Windows Update. If I wasn't getting it yet, I should cool my heels. But my heels were hot, I insisted, and I was ready to use official Microsoft downloads to get to 1809 and its ray-tracing goodness.
After I politely asked if I had any official-download options, my first agent directed me to the Media Creation Tool (which had been advertised on the same site where I'd grabbed the Windows Update Assistant). This came in two flavors: an executable to launch on the existing Windows install, or a boot-disk creation process (which either farts out an ISO or a Microsoft-tailored flash drive). I was told to go ahead with either option, so I installed the MCT executable on the affected machine and rebooted.
This time, the install process got me to a reboot, but instead of a 17-percent crawl, it flashed the "undoing changes made to your computer" message for a split-second, then rebooted. After my BIOS loaded, the same thing: "Undoing changes made to your computer," insta-reboot. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Too mad at Microsoft to use Bing

After some furious Googling, I found a few troubleshooting recommendations for "endless Windows 10 reboot" woes, which all revolved around MCT's flash drive option. However, every possible step I could take using that utility—including repairs, system restores, and update uninstalls—failed with blank error messages. As in, I'd get a nicely phrased "unfortunately, this didn't work" message, followed by a "Log:" note that had zero text afterward. The log was a lack of a log.
With this information in hand, I turned to Microsoft customer service once more. Nobody had a clue where to go with my specific error state. The MCT made accessing a command prompt easy, but every command I entered turned up specific errors that indicated something wasn't loading or being recognized correctly. The language barrier with some Microsoft reps didn't help. Upon advising me to attempt a "custom install" via the MCT, one care agent informed me that "all of your apps on all of your drives" would be deleted by doing this. When I asked for clarification—are we talking about UWP apps, or every single x86 executable?—I received the same "all apps" guidance. (Of course, the answer was "no." My non-Windows drives would be fine, especially since I would be better served by unplugging unaffected drives before going forward with any changes to my C: drive.)
As of press time, I have yet to get a response from Microsoft about what it has tracked regarding the error I faced in terms of other users running into the same situation as me: finding my Windows drive unable to recover from an endless reboot loop, in spite of exhausting all troubleshooting options. We'll update this article with any response, but the Thanksgiving holiday will likely delay that.
My next step should have been to email my Windows wizard of a coworker Peter Bright. Instead, I got hung up on a question that Microsoft's reps failed to answer in a clear manner: was my ancient, paid Windows 8 license—which was upgraded to Windows 10 during its limited free period—in peril if I opted for a full system wipe? The answer, which took me way too long to figure out, was no. The license was fine, attached to my Microsoft account and mindful of specific hardware on my system.

Don’t you Windows, bro?

Things could have been much worse. Whatever this upgrade attempt did, it left my C: drive otherwise unscathed, so I used a SATA-to-USB cord to recover a few important files before formatting the whole thing and starting fresh. (One exception, of course, was my remaining UWP game data. There was no obvious way for me to copy-and-paste that stuff for simple backup's sake. So for now, I'm choosing to play the zillions of games that are easier to back up on PC than the likes of Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 4.)
But Microsoft customer service's cluelessness about this botched upgrade and a lack of guidance about recovering my drive's "trapped" data were both unsettling. If you're wondering, they came as a result of me asking stupid-average-consumer questions, not holding up my Ars credentials in a "do you know who I am?!" manner.
Before going ahead with a system wipe, I got on the line with the support team at Falcon NW, who reminded me that my Windows 10 install was fine, calm down, don't you Windows, bro? I was offered help getting all my drivers together, along with help creating a new, system-specific recovery disk. I'd normally say, "I got this," but I decided to let the people at Falcon remote-connect to my fresh Windows install and help me with motherboard-specific drivers and the like.
During this, I shot the breeze with Rob, my new best friend at Falcon NW's support center, and we talked a lot about Windows, PC gaming, Nvidia, the RTX series of graphics cards, and Battlefield V. I love talking shop with technical-support phone jockeys, and the chats always range from pleasant to revealing.

A pivot about my specific PC and heat dissipation

To pivot a bit: I mentioned issues with my Falcon NW Tiki system, and these came as a result of underestimating Nvidia's RTX design decisions. I didn't go into these when reviewing the RTX cards earlier this year, but two RTX-specific issues have made my Tiki—a handsome, heavy box designed to maximize performance in a relatively small form factor—less ideal for RTX testing.
First, the RTX 2080 Ti is recommended for systems with 650W power supplies, which I had thankfully opted for when upgrading the system earlier this year. As it turns out, a 650W limit is still a roll of the dice with Nvidia's highest-end consumer-grade card. Certain use cases, particularly VR, consistently result in my testing rig shutting down, even when I use the EVGA X1 software interface to underclock the 2080Ti. Testing other 650W power supplies with that card and my system hasn't helped matters.
Second, Nvidia's "founders edition" RTX cards don't use a rear-blower system to dump heat through the video-out side of the card (which all other recent GTX founders edition cards did). Instead, the newer cards have switched to a twin-fan system, which spits heat in all directions inside of a standard PC tower. I asked Rob from Falcon about this, knowing that Falcon recommends rear-blower cards for many of its PCs, and I could practically hear him shaking his head. He described conversations his team had with Nvidia ahead of the RTX founders-edition launch in which he informed Nvidia staffers that this design change would funnel an incredible amount of heat through its more efficient builds and, thus, expose motherboards and particularly water-cooling pipes to heat that they were not designed for.
Nvidia insisted to Falcon NW that the RTX cards would be fine in terms of heat dispersal, Rob told me. Apparently, Nvidia later flew one of its reps to Falcon's Oregon headquarters, where the techs showed exactly how destructive these twin-fan cards would actually be. (Falcon NW's systems are optimized to take outside air in from most of its vents, then spit it all out through specifically built pipelines.) Nvidia acknowledged Falcon's complaints at this point, Rob told me, but this guidance clearly didn't affect Nvidia's card designs. Should I wish to use an RTX card in my Tiki for more than an hour at a time, without cracking the case open and aiming an external fan at it, I'm going to need to swap to a rear-blower model. (In good news, Asus makes that kind as a variant.)

... Finally, Battlefield V and ray tracing

I bring all of this up because I finally, eventually got Battlefield V's ray-tracing version running on the latest Windows build, but I only got it going for a bit (ahead of last-minute Thanksgiving travel) and with the above headaches impacting my ability to test. Meaning—instead of a comprehensive and timely look at the world's first fully blown RTX-compatible video game—you're getting this cranky description of my personal PC woes.
Ray tracing, for the uninitiated, received an incredible explainer from our Peter Bright earlier this year. In short, this graphics pipeline for 3D software has existed for a while, and it has previously offered incredible light-bouncing and reflection possibilities at a massive performance cost. Nvidia's new graphics cards include a core dedicated to real-time ray-tracing performance, and at pre-release Battlefield V events, the company showed off some of the most incredible reflections and light-bounces ever seen in an action video game.
Which is why I was so willing to jump through hoops to see them on my own testing rig! Sadly, the first thing I discovered was that I couldn't run the new mode on an underclocked RTX 2080Ti, let alone a standard one, without crashing my specific system. (That's on me to solve, as described above.) The second thing, upon swapping to an RTX 2080 graphics card, was that the difference between turning ray tracing on and off was very, very noticeable... in the frame-rate department.
I have to point to Digital Foundry's very solid overview video about Battlefield V's ray-tracing performance on RTX-class cards, which goes so far as to spotlight some of the game's most incredible effects. The definition, breadth, and fidelity of reflections with DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) enabled, in buildings and zones that are designed with reflections in mind, are sheer stunners.
The catch: DXR makes frame rates plummet, whether or not a given BFV sequence includes insane reflections. My primary testing level, a campaign battle through a French forest, includes plumes of smoke, towering flames, and dense forest scenes that only rarely reflect off of puddles and lakes. When they do, the effect is unmistakable. But you have to stop actively playing this first-person shooter and slowly saunter like Winnie-the-Pooh to catch sight of them.
It didn't take a Pooh Bear to see frame rates plummet. On the RTX 2080 with DXR turned on, I saw rates dip below 30fps at 1440p resolution on my testing rig (i7-7700K, 32GB of DDR4 3000 RAM) at "automatic high fidelity" settings. The same automatic setting profile got non-DXR performance up to 60fps... at a full-fat 4K resolution.
As great as Digital Foundry's video is at singling out incredible moments, it only briefly explains how rarely these holy-cow moments pop up in an average BFV session (at least, as of press time). RTX players are going to notice tanking frame rates way more frequently than they are amazing reflections, primarily because the non-DXR version of the game includes a lot of clever screen-space reflections and pre-baked lighting tricks to look quite incredible for standard and console players.
EA and DICE have told Digital Foundry that DXR-specific optimizations are in their development pipeline, and I look forward to re-testing DXR early next year to see what this game (and others) have pulled off. For now, I would rather end this look at computer craziness with a thought that Rob, my pal at Falcon NW, casually offered during our chat.
"Remember when gamers couldn't shut up about really realistic water?" he said when I asked about his own tests of RTX graphics cards and Battlefield V. Rob went on about a mid-'00s wave of games that pushed ridiculous water and reflection effects, which looked great on the newest graphics cards for a few minutes... but then everyone disabled them anyway. We got a peek. We were tantalized by the possibilities. Then we turned off all the extra bells and whistles to get our frame rates back to a decent state.
"That's ray tracing right now," he added. And just look at how many games use incredible, realistic water simulations now, he added. When was the last time you went into a menu and disabled anything to do with cool-looking water?
RTX, then, is at least giving us a peek at a possible computing future where beautiful ray-tracing effects become so standardized that we leave them on—and get more interesting uses of the technology in future games. That, at least, is the dream that keeps us buying crazy graphic cards (and rolling the Windows 10 upgrade dice) in the near term.