u/SQUID_Ben

I’m an early-career IT professional with around a year of hands-on support/infrastructure experience and a relevant degree. I’m currently choosing between two offers and I’m struggling to decide whether the extra money and faster learning potential of an MSP is worth the additional stress and unpredictability.

Factor	Job A MSP	Job B Internal IT
Starting salary	25% higher than internal	25% lower than MSP
Commute	4 minutes to work	15 minutes to work
Work environment	Multiple customers, different environments, tickets, SLAs	One company, one infrastructure environment
Context switching / chaos	High	Lower
Ease of first few months	Probably harder	Probably easier
Documentation / process consistency	Some concerns based on what I’ve heard	Appears considerably more structured
Technology variety	Very high: M365, endpoints, networking, servers, different customer environments	More focused on one enterprise environment
Troubleshooting growth	Likely very fast because problems vary constantly	Still good, but more repetitive
Path toward sysadmin	Clear internal progression seems possible	Also possible through internal infrastructure/network teams
Project exposure	Support engineers can apparently participate in infrastructure/projects outside normal tickets	Enterprise projects exist, but unclear how involved junior support is
Travel during work	Some regional customer visits, potentially using my own car with compensation	Some travel between company sites, less usual
Fit for my current confidence level	Technically I think I could manage, but the unpredictability worries me	Much safer environment to ramp up in

The biggest issue is that if both jobs paid the same, I would probably choose Job B because I prefer its structure and predictability.

I’m also aware that some of this may just be impostor syndrome. I can troubleshoot reasonably well, but when I see the breadth of environments an MSP supports, like networking, M365, AD, endpoint management, authentication issues, different customer setups, etc. I start questioning whether I’m ready for that level of context switching.

For people who have worked both MSP and internal IT: would you take the MSP role at this stage for the faster exposure and extra money, or take the structured internal role and build deeper fundamentals first?

This is kind of some huge impostor syndrome or something having a bite at me and I hecking hate it. I feel completely lost.

Please someone help me get onto the right track... because my mind is apparently playing with me at this point.

I'm early in my IT career with around a year of hands-on support/infrastructure experience and a bachelors in IT engineering.
For context, I am in Europe.

I currently have an offer for an internal IT support role at a larger company. It seems fairly structured, with an internal team and potential paths toward systems administration or networking.

I may also have an opportunity with an MSP.

The MSP appeals to me because I assume I'd get exposed to a much wider range of environments and technologies and probably learn faster. Long-term I don't want to stay in basic L1 support, I'd like to move toward infrastructure, networking/cloud, automation, or something more engineering-focused.

The issue is that the internal role is already a guaranteed offer, that's likely more stable, but in an unstable environment, so there would still be quite some stress. I wouldn't want to move into a potentially much more stressful MSP job for the same pay.

If the MSP paid roughly 20–25% more, I'd seriously consider it.

My concerns are mainly:

• Too much basic onsite support instead of real infrastructure work
• Getting stuck doing L1 tasks for too long
• A lot of driving between clients
• The first few months being very difficult while also being on probation
• More stress without enough career or financial upside

For people who started their career at an MSP: how long did it take before you felt reasonably comfortable and independent?

And would you choose a more predictable internal IT job, or take the MSP route for faster learning if the pay was noticeably better?

Sveiki / Labas braliukas!

I’m planning a drive up from Lithuania to near Ventspils.

I’m a bit anxious about uninown city driving and want to completely avoid driving through Liepāja. At the same time, I absolutely want to avoid any unpaved or gravel roads.

Looking at the map, it seems I can take the A11 up from Lithuania, then detour inland slightly onto the A9/P111 through Grobiņa to loop north and bypass Liepāja entirely.

A couple of questions for the locals who know these roads:

1. Is the P111 from Grobiņa up towards Ulmale/Pāvilosta fully paved and in decent condition? No surprise gravel stretches or major roadworks?
2. Alternatively, is driving straight through Liepāja on the main transit route quiet enough that I shouldn't worry about it?

I really appreciate any tips, road condition updates, or advice to make the drive as smooth as possible.
Paldies / Ačiū!

Specs:

• Ryzen 5 5600
• Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE
• RX 7600 bought separately on the aftermarket
• Corsair CX550
• G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB 2x16 GB DDR4-3600 CL16, F4-3600C16D-32GVKC
• Old Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB 2x8 GB DDR4-3000 CL16, CMK16GX4M2D3000C16

The PC was built during winter 2025. The G.Skill kit was bought in September 2025. The GPU is the only part I bought separately from another seller.

For quite a while I was getting constant Access Violation crashes in completely unrelated games. Arma Reforger, Arma 3, Resident Evil Village and even Door Kickers 2. I also recently got a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSOD, so I finally ran MemTest86.

With the G.Skill kit running XMP at 3600 MT/s, MemTest found 434 errors in about 25 minutes. I disabled XMP and tested it at the default 2134 MT/s. It still found 13 errors in roughly 2.5 minutes. A lot of them kept appearing around the same 0x536BE... address range.

So yeah, that kit is fucked.

I removed it and installed my old Corsair 2x8 GB kit. MemTest did not find any errors during the time I tested it. I then booted Windows using the Corsair RAM. Did work as usual, for a bout 10 minutes.

While sitting in Windows, the PC suddenly black-screened. Monitor lost signal, keyboard appeared to lose power and Reset did nothing. This same kind of black-screen hard lock had happened about a week earlier too. The first time it booted normally again after a forced shutdown.

This time, pressing Reset gave me three beeps. Pressing it again gave one short beep. I forced the system off and powered it back on. Fans spun normally, but there was no display and apparently no POST. The board has no useful debug LEDs or code display because that would apparently be too convenient.

Then the troubleshooting started.

I removed the CMOS battery for about five minutes with the PSU disconnected. Before clearing CMOS, the Gigabyte logo lighting was off. After clearing it, the logo lit up again, but the screen stayed black. On another attempt the logo did not light again.

I waited about five minutes in case it was retraining memory. Still nothing. When I held the case Power button, the power LED started blinking rapidly after about two seconds, but the PC never actually switched off. The fans stayed spinning constantly. It looked like it was trying to turn on and off, but only the LED was blinking.

I removed both the GPU and RAM and tried booting. There were no memory beep codes at all, even though the motherboard speaker had worked earlier. That made me think the motherboard, PSU or CPU was dead.

I disconnected the case Reset switch. Then I disconnected the case Power switch too and started the motherboard by briefly shorting the correct PWR SW pins with a screwdriver. It powered up normally that way and the LED stayed solid, but I still no beeps.

I then installed one known-good Corsair stick in A2 and put the GPU back in. The GPU fans cycled three times, followed by one long beep and two short beeps, which is Gigabyte’s graphics initialization error. The GPU had been seated properly before all this, so this is my mistake. I had removed it during troubleshooting. The first time I reinstalled it, it apparently did not fully latch. I pushed it down again while it was still in the slot, specifically listening for the PCIe latch to click. It clicked.

The PC immediately POSTed and I am now back in Windows.

So the temporary GPU beep was almost certainly caused by me not fully clicking it in during the first reinstall. It does not explain the original Windows black-screen or the first no-POST situation because the GPU had not been touched before that happened.

Right now the PC is running with:

• One Corsair stick in A2
• The second Corsair stick still removed
• XMP disabled
• Reset switch disconnected
• Power switch disconnected
• PC started using the motherboard pins

One more thing I noticed is that one rear motherboard USB port is physically faulty. A connected device disconnects and reconnects if the plug is moved. I still need to confirm it with another cable/device, but it seems specific to that port. I have stopped using it.

The Event Viewer export I checked was from before the troubleshooting started. It contained an old Kernel-Power 41 with BugcheckCode 0 and no WHEA boot errors. There were no WHEA-Logger events, AMD display-driver resets or useful hardware errors around the crash. Mostly the usual DCOM and Windows garbage.

My current plan is to back everything up, reconnect the Power switch by itself, leave Reset disconnected, then install the second Corsair stick separately. After that I will run a full MemTest on the complete Corsair kit. The G.Skill kit is getting RMA’d regardless.

What the hell would you suspect here?

The G.Skill RAM is obviously defective, but the black screen also happened with the Corsair kit installed. Could a motherboard or CPU memory-controller problem damage or destabilize one kit while another appears fine? Could the faulty rear USB port point toward a motherboard issue? Or does this sound more like a separate GPU/PSU fault that happened at the worst possible time?

At least the motherboard and CPU are alive, which is more than I thought an hour ago.

Specs:

• Ryzen 5 5600
• Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE
• RX 7600 bought separately on the aftermarket
• Corsair CX550
• G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB 2x16 GB DDR4-3600 CL16, F4-3600C16D-32GVKC
• Old Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB 2x8 GB DDR4-3000 CL16, CMK16GX4M2D3000C16

The PC was built during winter 2025. The G.Skill kit was bought in September 2025. The GPU is the only part I bought separately from another seller.

For quite a while I was getting constant Access Violation crashes in completely unrelated games. Arma Reforger, Arma 3, Resident Evil Village and even Door Kickers 2. I also recently got a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSOD, so I finally ran MemTest86.

With the G.Skill kit running XMP at 3600 MT/s, MemTest found 434 errors in about 25 minutes. I disabled XMP and tested it at the default 2134 MT/s. It still found 13 errors in roughly 2.5 minutes. A lot of them kept appearing around the same 0x536BE... address range.

So yeah, that kit is fucked.

I removed it and installed my old Corsair 2x8 GB kit. MemTest did not find any errors during the time I tested it. I then booted Windows using the Corsair RAM. Did work as usual, for a bout 10 minutes.

While sitting in Windows, the PC suddenly black-screened. Monitor lost signal, keyboard appeared to lose power and Reset did nothing. This same kind of black-screen hard lock had happened about a week earlier too. The first time it booted normally again after a forced shutdown.

This time, pressing Reset gave me three beeps. Pressing it again gave one short beep. I forced the system off and powered it back on. Fans spun normally, but there was no display and apparently no POST. The board has no useful debug LEDs or code display because that would apparently be too convenient.

Then the troubleshooting started.

I removed the CMOS battery for about five minutes with the PSU disconnected. Before clearing CMOS, the Gigabyte logo lighting was off. After clearing it, the logo lit up again, but the screen stayed black. On another attempt the logo did not light again.

I waited about five minutes in case it was retraining memory. Still nothing. When I held the case Power button, the power LED started blinking rapidly after about two seconds, but the PC never actually switched off. The fans stayed spinning constantly. It looked like it was trying to turn on and off, but only the LED was blinking.

I removed both the GPU and RAM and tried booting. There were no memory beep codes at all, even though the motherboard speaker had worked earlier. That made me think the motherboard, PSU or CPU was dead.

I disconnected the case Reset switch. Then I disconnected the case Power switch too and started the motherboard by briefly shorting the correct PWR SW pins with a screwdriver. It powered up normally that way and the LED stayed solid, but I still no beeps.

I then installed one known-good Corsair stick in A2 and put the GPU back in. The GPU fans cycled three times, followed by one long beep and two short beeps, which is Gigabyte’s graphics initialization error. The GPU had been seated properly before all this, so this is my mistake. I had removed it during troubleshooting. The first time I reinstalled it, it apparently did not fully latch. I pushed it down again while it was still in the slot, specifically listening for the PCIe latch to click. It clicked.

The PC immediately POSTed and I am now back in Windows.

So the temporary GPU beep was almost certainly caused by me not fully clicking it in during the first reinstall. It does not explain the original Windows black-screen or the first no-POST situation because the GPU had not been touched before that happened.

Right now the PC is running with:

• One Corsair stick in A2
• The second Corsair stick still removed
• XMP disabled
• Reset switch disconnected
• Power switch disconnected
• PC started using the motherboard pins

One more thing I noticed is that one rear motherboard USB port is physically faulty. A connected device disconnects and reconnects if the plug is moved. I still need to confirm it with another cable/device, but it seems specific to that port. I have stopped using it.

The Event Viewer export I checked was from before the troubleshooting started. It contained an old Kernel-Power 41 with BugcheckCode 0 and no WHEA boot errors. There were no WHEA-Logger events, AMD display-driver resets or useful hardware errors around the crash. Mostly the usual DCOM and Windows garbage.

My current plan is to back everything up, reconnect the Power switch by itself, leave Reset disconnected, then install the second Corsair stick separately. After that I will run a full MemTest on the complete Corsair kit. The G.Skill kit is getting RMA’d regardless.

What the hell would you suspect here?

The G.Skill RAM is obviously defective, but the black screen also happened with the Corsair kit installed. Could a motherboard or CPU memory-controller problem damage or destabilize one kit while another appears fine? Could the faulty rear USB port point toward a motherboard issue? Or does this sound more like a separate GPU/PSU fault that happened at the worst possible time?

At least the motherboard and CPU are alive, which is more than I thought an hour ago.

Specs:

• Ryzen 5 5600
• Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE
• RX 7600 bought separately on the aftermarket
• Corsair CX550
• G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB 2x16 GB DDR4-3600 CL16, F4-3600C16D-32GVKC
• Old Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB 2x8 GB DDR4-3000 CL16, CMK16GX4M2D3000C16

The PC was built during winter 2025. The G.Skill kit was bought in September 2025. The GPU is the only part I bought separately from another seller.

For quite a while I was getting constant Access Violation crashes in completely unrelated games. Arma Reforger, Arma 3, Resident Evil Village and even Door Kickers 2. I also recently got a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSOD, so I finally ran MemTest86.

With the G.Skill kit running XMP at 3600 MT/s, MemTest found 434 errors in about 25 minutes. I disabled XMP and tested it at the default 2134 MT/s. It still found 13 errors in roughly 2.5 minutes. A lot of them kept appearing around the same 0x536BE... address range.

So yeah, that kit is fucked.

I removed it and installed my old Corsair 2x8 GB kit. MemTest did not find any errors during the time I tested it. I then booted Windows using the Corsair RAM. Did work as usual, for a bout 10 minutes.

While sitting in Windows, the PC suddenly black-screened. Monitor lost signal, keyboard appeared to lose power and Reset did nothing. This same kind of black-screen hard lock had happened about a week earlier too. The first time it booted normally again after a forced shutdown.

This time, pressing Reset gave me three beeps. Pressing it again gave one short beep. I forced the system off and powered it back on. Fans spun normally, but there was no display and apparently no POST. The board has no useful debug LEDs or code display because that would apparently be too convenient.

Then the troubleshooting started.

I removed the CMOS battery for about five minutes with the PSU disconnected. Before clearing CMOS, the Gigabyte logo lighting was off. After clearing it, the logo lit up again, but the screen stayed black. On another attempt the logo did not light again.

I waited about five minutes in case it was retraining memory. Still nothing. When I held the case Power button, the power LED started blinking rapidly after about two seconds, but the PC never actually switched off. The fans stayed spinning constantly. It looked like it was trying to turn on and off, but only the LED was blinking.

I removed both the GPU and RAM and tried booting. There were no memory beep codes at all, even though the motherboard speaker had worked earlier. That made me think the motherboard, PSU or CPU was dead.

I disconnected the case Reset switch. Then I disconnected the case Power switch too and started the motherboard by briefly shorting the correct PWR SW pins with a screwdriver. It powered up normally that way and the LED stayed solid, but I still no beeps.

I then installed one known-good Corsair stick in A2 and put the GPU back in. The GPU fans cycled three times, followed by one long beep and two short beeps, which is Gigabyte’s graphics initialization error. The GPU had been seated properly before all this, so this is my mistake. I had removed it during troubleshooting. The first time I reinstalled it, it apparently did not fully latch. I pushed it down again while it was still in the slot, specifically listening for the PCIe latch to click. It clicked.

The PC immediately POSTed and I am now back in Windows.

So the temporary GPU beep was almost certainly caused by me not fully clicking it in during the first reinstall. It does not explain the original Windows black-screen or the first no-POST situation because the GPU had not been touched before that happened.

Right now the PC is running with:

• One Corsair stick in A2
• The second Corsair stick still removed
• XMP disabled
• Reset switch disconnected
• Power switch disconnected
• PC started using the motherboard pins

One more thing I noticed is that one rear motherboard USB port is physically faulty. A connected device disconnects and reconnects if the plug is moved. I still need to confirm it with another cable/device, but it seems specific to that port. I have stopped using it.

The Event Viewer export I checked was from before the troubleshooting started. It contained an old Kernel-Power 41 with BugcheckCode 0 and no WHEA boot errors. There were no WHEA-Logger events, AMD display-driver resets or useful hardware errors around the crash. Mostly the usual DCOM and Windows garbage.

My current plan is to back everything up, reconnect the Power switch by itself, leave Reset disconnected, then install the second Corsair stick separately. After that I will run a full MemTest on the complete Corsair kit. The G.Skill kit is getting RMA’d regardless.

What the hell would you suspect here?

The G.Skill RAM is obviously defective, but the black screen also happened with the Corsair kit installed. Could a motherboard or CPU memory-controller problem damage or destabilize one kit while another appears fine? Could the faulty rear USB port point toward a motherboard issue? Or does this sound more like a separate GPU/PSU fault that happened at the worst possible time?

At least the motherboard and CPU are alive, which is more than I thought an hour ago.

This is not tech support, it's a question.

What is the most stable driver?
After a recent full Windows reinstall my PC forced Adrenalin and the latest driver onto my PC, games immediately started crashing and I just recently experienced a full crash where my screens went black and USB devices started power cycling. The PC is new, it's not a hardware fault. This didn't happen on older drivers, so the question is simple, what are you guys running and what is the most stable driver?

Sveiki!
Kaip žinau čia visai daug tokių kaip aš “ityšnikų”. Pats už men baigiu IT inžineriją kolegijoje.
Gal kuriam teko studijuoti kibernetines saugos magistratūrą? Gal turite kuo pasidalinti?
Pats esu iš kolegijos todėl magistratūrai beveik visur reiktų papildomų studijų, o MRU/VTU/KTU siūlo skirtingai.

Ka galit patarti? Gal tiesiog eiti i kursus ir nesivarginti su magistru? Ar apsimoka? :)