PC Tech Thread

Good news, do you ever use it at relatively close range? I'm worried about picture degradation at close quarters because of the increased angle to the edge of the screen.

I'd be wary of TVs if colour accuracy is a concern.

I've never noticed and when I've been trouble shooting (macOS instal) I'm usually 2 feet or so away from the screen. W10 in 4K is pretty glorious. As is macOS. I know a few people who use TVs and recommend them, unless you are doing anything design related then as per above, do not trust the colours.

I am tempted to think the same, but then I read this which made me think it might not be such a problem. I also have an Eizo at work which would probably be used for checking work for the minute anyway.

Edit: should probably just go for the AOC QHD thing I've been eyeing up which seems like good value

What work do you do? TVS are always a bit "ultra" imo colour sharpness and contrast wise. Saying that my TV is a Shit better than my piece of shit dell 4K monitor I have at work. Also looks better. Can't stand all the plastic gubbins that are PC monitors.

3D visualisation, so mostly CAD/ 3DS stuff with a bit of Photoshop at the end. Some guy round here is selling that Samsung for £270, at which price I should probably just buy it and see how it works out.

Any suggestions for cloning an OS onto a larger SSD (and possibly one from larger to smaller).
OS is Windows 10 but obviously happy with liveCD or whatever. Cheers

@aggi: I used EaseUS Todo Backup as per this guide: https://www.howtogeek.com/97242/how-to-migrate-windows-7-to-a-solid-state-drive/

I didn't need to migrate to a smaller partition, but presume if that is not covered, you can do it easily enough by shrinking the HD partition first.

Any recommendations for a decent 4k 27/28" monitor for development and movies/xbox one duties?

just installed a fancy new monitor arm to get my current 24" dell into a comfortable working position but the resolution is pants and makes working on it alongside my retina mac a pain in the arse.

ideally after 2 displayport 2 hdmi or 2 of one, 1 of the other in either configuration would work. built in speakers would be a plus too.

Cheers, looks fairly straightforward.

Had no luck previously getting openVPN to work on the RaspberryPi, but have on my PC. Can I route all traffic from 'certain' programmes though the VPN connection and everything else through the regular one, or is this a non-starter?

HP Envy. Looks dead nice. Matches new MacBook colour wise.

That looks stellar. Going on the "to buy later on" list.

If you're doing it through the OpenVPN client then you should find people doing this elsewhere. Of the top of my head, I would guess the hosts file is your first port of call.

Spent almost all of tuesday tidying my networking kit (modem, edgrerouter, toughswitch), nas & mac mini server into a small data cabinet to keep it all nicely contained.

Was super fiddly as the sides/back of the cabinet are non-removable and the patch panel rows use keystone clips which are held in place by about 1mm of plastic so even with super short cables in the back even the slightest pressure knocks them out of their holes. I'm not too ashamed to admit I fully lost my rag and was punching the sofa while shouting cunt at the top of my voice after it came upclipped for about the 20th time after I'd finished screwing it all into place.

so the goal of being able to patch things around easily did not fully come to fruition as those cables will never be touched again unless it's life or death now. but at least I can get to them if i absolutely must.

happy I did it though as moves all of the hardware boxes and rats nest of cabling out of my work area so have a ton more space and means I can easily cover the front window to prevent light pollution when anyone is using the sofa bed in the same room as it was like trying to sleep in a disco before.

if we ever move anywhere bigger I'll get a 19" rack and repurpose this for a slightly different use.

Neat, but hope you have checked for overheating with the door closed - although I guess there's only about 60W peak there.

it's been fine so far but generally i'll only have the door shut if we have people round as it's in the living room.

i recently bought a set of hole saws so if it's a problem i'll empty it out again (*sob* ) and cut some ventilation holes in the back/side

I want to make games moar bettar on my PC, but it appears from cursory glancing at benchmark tables that to get something that would be a significant improvement over my ageing Nvidia 680 i'd have to spend £300+. Is that right? Or am I misreading all this?

Can I get anything that's going to give a big performance jump for under £200?

Yeah totes wrong fam. Grab a second hand 970 or a new AMD 480 for around 200. I haven't actually checked benchmarks but 6xx is dead old...

I'm (still) looking at getting a PC desktop for doing 3D visualisation stuff... Trying to get as much bang for my buck as possible by checking out dell refurbs and HP education discounts but came across this bundle which seems far better spec than say HP's Envy at £500 more?

https://www.freshtechsolutions.co.uk/pre-built-custom-pcs/27-tft-computer-packages/intel-core-i7-4790-2tb-ssd-16gb-1600mhz-gtx-1080-8gb-storm-b-windows-10-27-monitor-keyboard-mouse.html

Any advices gratefully appreciated.

Look at the video card hierarchy tables on Tom's Hardware to get an idea of how different models stack up across generations and Nvidia versus AMD.

Ubuqiti networking gear is hackable using a dodgy URL thanks to a 1997 vintage version of PHP, apparently:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/16/ubiquiti_networking_php_hole

According to the comments this doesn't apply to the EdgeMax router or the Wi-Fi APs that use the Uni-fi controller (hopefully).

Think I need to spend some time tidying up my network and power cables and the rest of it, all a bit of a mess at the moment.

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Why not just build your own? That things hideous.