PC Tech Thread

Thanks @duncs,
yes please @soul drop me a message and we can have a chat :)

So, gigabyte mobos have weird system fan pin outs and it’s taken me hours of poking around to get the new case & fans behaving properly but it’s now very quiet 🥳. Realised something was wrong when I unplugged the PWM feed cable to the fan hub and everything got quieter!

Next step is replacing the 2x HDD with a bigger SDD - had no idea they were so loud until I unplugged them. CPU cooler is stock but it’s almost silent at idle. Speaking of which, system draws 72w at idle and PSU fan is nowhere near turning on.

Good timing then!

Any idea on value?

Found this on eBay which is essentially the same build with a different case / water cooling / ram config but that seems extorionate. Assume that's largely down to warranty / new etc.

This seems more realistic.

Yeah, that first one is just plain extortionate. Nothing about it warrants the asking.

I'd guess yours would perform about the same as this
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-gamer-intel-core-i5-9400f-8gb-ddr4-6gb-evga-rtx-2060-240gb-ssd-1tb-win-10

That has a faster and larger SSD, and more RAM. So probably ~£150 extra worth of stuff there. But then yours is a nicer build, posher motherboard and water cooled.

Bit of a guess, but that 2nd eBay link price minus the usual ebay fees?

Seems fair. I'd say £700 + postage works.

Too rich for @Albb so if anyone else is interested...

Thanks Tim, your is an amazing machine.
I dropped a msg to my big bro who was into PC a while ago and suggested to go for the MSI previously posted by @Velocio.

Thanks all :)

Not opening this, it'll shame me into upgrading my 2500k

No plans to retire my i5-2500k which I think is 10 next year. Just given it a new lease of life with an RTX2060s and 4k screen.

Problem is, if you upgrade the 2500 then you'd need a new motherboard to go with it. Then you've got new RAM
then...
then...

it's new PC time basically. And I expect yours is still pretty quick.

I had a 3700K which was plenty quick enough. Only upgraded when I found a stupidly cheap (for the spec) Alienware R7 on the ouetlet with an 8700K and 1080Ti about 18 months ago.

Fusion 360 is saying my graphics driver is outdated and may be unstable.

When I was trying to use sketch(?) originally I checked for updates and nothing seemed important to update.

Bearing in mind it's not my laptop, so wouldn't be able to (or want to) do a fresh W10 install in the event of a fuckup, what are the downsides / risks to updating any drivers?

Also these are the specs F360 said I have, just in case anything looks out of place.

[GPU Information]
GPU Device: AMD Radeon(TM) R7 M360
GPU RAM: 2048 MB
GPU Driver API: DirectX 11.0
GPU Driver Version: 15.200.1045.0
GPU Driver Date: 06/23/2015

[Graphics Effects Settings]
Anti Aliasing: On
Ambient Occlusion: On
Object Shadow: Off
Ground Shadow: On
Ground Reflection: Off
Selection Display Style: Normal
Transparency Effect: Better Performance
[Limit effects to optimize performance]
Off

@chez_jay overclocked? I was only messing about the shame though I do wonder when it'll start to be a bottleneck. I have fancied giving a try at those 5GHz numbers that used to get banded about at release though.
@duncs the snowball-upgrade effect is exactly why I still have this cpu!

So my Thunderbolt 3 dock arrived and I eagerly stopped work to wire it up and great success it was recognised and installed itself as soon as I plugged it in.

Then I crawl under the desk to get the usb cables of the devices i want to run from it, plug them in, reboot aaaaaaand it's a paperweight.

no sign of life whatsoever from the device which powers on when you connect the thunderbolt cable which is not coming up in os x or win 10, the power supply is all good as connecting usb devices to the hub powers them up.

about 30 minutes on the online chat and I'm packing it back up into the box and submitting a return request through amazon and I broke my lockdown streak of not having set foot in a building other than our own since it began dropping it to the post office.

now to wait for amazon to receive the item, refund me and then i can re-order and start the process over. just need to hope they dont run out of stock before then.

Legit sympathy. I hate stuff like this.

I've been trying to get some video signal into a monitor for ages - the monitor (SmallHD Focus) has a proprietary connector shroud and I really didn't want to buy extra HDMI cables having not had any income since January because of this covid lark.

Had some existing cables and tried shaving off the shroud with a scalpel to fit them into the small space - slipped and chopped through cable - twice. Eventually got something to fit (basically down to my last spare HDMI)

SmallHD > hack-job Micro HDMI to Type A HDMI > Blackmagic Bidirectional SDI/HDMI converter > SDI into camera and/or video switcher. Power on... nothing.

Bit the bullet and ordered a proprietary SmallHD cable. Repeat set-up. Power on. Nothing. Though I did see something for a flash - hope. Maybe a power issue? Not enough juice into the converter? Knocked SDI cable by mistake - screen flashed again. Replaced SDI cable. No video signal but I can see a multiview screen from the video switcher (ATEM TVS HD). So SDI was part of the issue but still no video signal from a camera or from switcher...

Read manual: only accepts HD output, so outputting 4/6K video won't appear on screen. Would have worked (albeit with an insecure SDI) from the outset.

Yep I think it's 33% faster than stock. I just used the motherboard auto-OC thing with a normal air cooler. Surprised it was that effective.

Other fun aspects of getting this setup off the ground.

Bought an audio interface... had to bootcamp into windows as it didnt work on mac

bought an xlr mic which I saw numerous people say would work just fine with the audio interface pre-amp... had to buy a £60 widget to fix the woeful performance... from germany.

Bought a wireless keyboard with dual win/mac key layout for boot camp, made sure it was one that would let me switch inputs... soon realise pairing to same laptop doesnt switch inputs correct, liked the keyboard though, had to buy a second one so i have one mac, one windows.

I wanted to run 2 different 4k inputs to 2 different outputs but didnt want to buy a 4x2 matrix as the proper 4k ones are too pricey and i didn't mind if both outputs were the same, so i get 2x 3m, 2x 0.9m and 1x 0.3m high speed hdmi cables, 2 in 1 out manual switch and a 1 in 2 out signal splitter, intending to run inputs into switch, single output into splitter and then splitter outputs to tv and capture card... 30cm cable doesnt support hdmi 2.0 fully so buy another one, still no dice, realise the 2 in 1 out switch also misrepresented its 4k capabilities with some terrible wording, replace that, STILL NO FUCKING JOY, plug output directly into new switch immediately works, check specs for 4k splitter... another mealy mouthed non-statement about compliance in the product q&a... order another fucking splitter.

bought battery powered led light panels with usb charging... dont work off mains power... bought some long usb charging cables... wont even turn on while charging... bought proper lighting.

I'll add this is after doing a shit ton of research on each item before purchase. companies are just shite at being honest about what their products really do.

Haven't read in detail yet but this looks very interesting for people wanting to do any streaming/upgrade their webcam set up that own a Canon EOS camera.

https://www.newsshooter.com/2020/04/29/canon-eos-webcam-utility-beta-software-lets-you-use-your-camera-for-live-streaming/

HDMI stuff is really bloody annoying, particularly once you start adding things like amps in.

My Virgin box passes a 2.0 signal to my amp, my TV is only 1.4 so it doesn't work. As the Virgin box only sees the amp you can't change the output.

Had similar issues with Linux machines where you end up with the fun and games of cloning EDIDs and shit.

And, as you say, the stuff on Amazon and the like is just entirely inconsistent.

**SOLD**

Hi all,
due to the fruitful advise from @Velocio I have upgraded to a gaming PC (MSI :) FTW). Therefore, I am now disposing of my previous gaming laptop.
It's not a rocket but has served me well and it is now a surplus that my Miss suggested to sell asap.

Specification:

HP EliteBook 840 G1 Laptop i5 1.9GHz 8GB 128GB SSD 14" Full HD 1GB GFX Win10 Pro

more spec here: https://support.hp.com/ee-en/document/c03961746

I will provide the original charger.

Asking 100£ posted to UK mainland (paid 180£ on 30/07/2019).

Happy to provide pictures/more details via PM,

thanks buddies

1 Attachment

Had a go yesterday with the new MSI baby suggested by @Velocio,
what a rocket :D
thanks all for the good tips!
wallet empty but kiddo-in-me happy !

Prob not the right time to be selling this sort of thing... but have a space Pok3r 65% or whatever Mech keyboard if anyone is interested?

>>>>>>>>>

my dad has a USB with c. 6k photos with a lot of duplicates. Is it worth using a dedicated dedupe utility? i had considered some kind of script to delete all files ending in ")".

CCleaner has an option to find duplicates on a nominated drive.