PC Tech Thread

I thought about tape but any tape strong enough to stop it moving would be fairly bulky (it turns off if it moves a bit so needs to be secure).

It's a cheap X220 that I picked up on ebay for £50 so I'm really just wondering if gluing it could damage it in some way, I could always use a stanley knife or something to try and get it off.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Lenovo-Thinkpad-X220-X220i-Battery-Lock-Clip-Buckle-Battery-Fasten-Grip/282068840968?hash=item41ac9cf208:g:Nw8AAOSwmtJXYR6F

Cheers, that would be a goer if I could find a cheap UK option. Will have to get googling.

Hot glue gun, in the seams will hold it firmly, is non conductive and fairly easy to remove.

Does anyone recognise this logo?

Trying to find out what the case is.

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Looks like a knock off Maserati logo

Googled trident logo pc case... Neptune is the brand apparently

Googled trident logo pc case

I'd never have thought of searching using the description: thanks!

It's one of the cheapest pc cases you can get £15-20 often with a nasty psu that will catch fire if it fails ready installed. Logo is totally generic chinese factory oem so you will find it under loads of names. I'd not expect much inside, when I was on a computer forum ages ago people would build with these and the cheapest mobo+cpu bundle deal then a really awful gpu that didn't use more than the 500w psu.

Seems I didn't do to badly then, considering my departing neighbour chucked it out: ASRock AM3+ mobo (not sure what the CPU is), Gigabyte R7 370, 4GB stick RAM, 500GB HD and a Cooler Master B700 PSU.

If it boots up "windows key+pause/break key" will bring up some system info with what the cpu is.

Thanks, but for some reason he stripped the CPU cooler and I don't have one that fits, so I'll leave it for now.

Does anyone want some DDR2, before it goes in the recycling? 2 x 2GB and 2 x 512MB sticks.

You might want to run something like HWMonitor if it does power up and see if the rails on the psu are what they say they are.

Might have overclocked it and killed the cpu.

Does anyone make a half height sound card that has an optical (S/PDIF) output that does DTS/pro logic? Asus seem to make one but the driver support seems very poor, people recommend using 3rd party etc.

External soundcard?

Already have a usb one, from startech, since going to W10 I've had to drop the sample rate to 16bit from 24bit which is annoying me. Only people who seem to do an external card that meets the above criteria is creative and they're software is generally rubbish unless it's changed since I last had one of their sound cards.

My old MBP is starting to feel a bit old and crap but I need to keep it around purely for Sketch...

Thinking of building a workstation for heavy lifting and gaming though. Just specc'd this up and it came to £1,180. Got an old 20 inch 1680 x 1050 screen which is pretty decent but it may also be an excuse to buy a new telly if I can put it in the living room...

The storage isn't finalised – I'm dabbling with the idea of getting something cheaper like a Samsung EVO or Sandisk for bulk storage and then something baller like a 960 pro for boot/programs... Would probably add another couple hundred, though.

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Honestly I'd look at maybe stretching to a nvidia 1060 for a little more future-proofing. You could always half that RAM for now and look at buying 2 more sticks of it later if you need. You also may need a 750W PSU.

I'd be tempted to go with the i7 8700. Only an extra £50 or so but the 8th gen ones are benchmarking as a lot faster. (You may need to change the motherboard as well).

Cool, ok. This comes in at £1407.
RAM should be fine at 16GB. I've never had page-outs with that much and probably won't any time soon.

Still need to get a keyboard and mouse. And windows... Ugh.
It's a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than an iMac, even without that gorgeous screen.

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An alternative for exactly the same price (after 12% off with a code)
http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/desktops-and-all-in-ones/new-alienware-aurora/spd/alienware-aurora-r7-desktop/d00awr707

Has a 8700 rather than an 8700k, but has a 1080 rather than a 1060.

Anyway, the Dell's seem to be fairly reasonably priced - not really much of a premium over buying the parts yourself.

Yeah but that case... Good shout though.

The TDP and £ I started with has crept up quite a bit. Every. Time.

I had a go at a similar build on Novatech, main differences are a much beefier GPU, faster RAM, although less of it, bigger SSD, slightly more powerful PSU:

Corsair Carbide Series 200R Mid Tower Case
Unit price £60.47 inc

Crucial MX300 1TB 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm Adapter) SATA 6Gb/s Internal Solid State Drive - Retail
Unit price £263.27 inc

Corsair RMi Series RM850i ATX Power Supply
Unit price £147.49 inc

Intel 8th Generation Intel® Core? i7 8700K 3.7GHz Socket LGA1151 (Coffee Lake) Processor - OEM
Unit price £345.98 inc

MSI B250M PRO-VDH Intel B250 (Socket 1151) Motherboard
Unit price £70.03 inc

Corsair Vengeance LED White 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit
Unit price £209.02 inc

Total £1099.25

Thinking an 8700 over the 8700k as I won’t be overclocking anything and would like to keep the noise/heat in the sweet spot. One is 65watts tdp, the other is 95 for a difference of 0.1ghz at base clock.

Realistically, for work, a GTX1080 won’t save me any time over a 1060 and I’m not that avid a gamer.

1060 is already starting to get a bit long in the tooth, also if you ever want to get into VR the 1060 will manage but only just.