PC Tech Thread

So in trying to keep the costs down for my son's PC build, he's been looking at eBay for second-hand parts (like a GPU).

What we're finding is that these often seem to be going for silly prices, sometimes more than they can be bought new. Is this normal? Are there naive buyers out there or is something more fishy going on?

GPU prices often go crazy. Usually its a supply and demand thing.

In particular, a whole bunch of certain GPUs are bulk bought by cryptocurrency miners making it hard to get your hands on certain models as a gamer.

I suspect there are supply issues at the moment, hence the higher prices.

Makes sense, thanks (although the ones we've been looking at do show as being in stock, but maybe that's 'in stock' like Tredz's 'in stock'!)

Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about Laptops Direct refurbished laptops? They seem like quite good deals sometimes

Stock is all a mess atm, this video explains well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0whCHfejM18

Thanks for the link. Some interesting insights there (but boy does he like to talk!)

any recommendations for a program that will find and remove any duplicate files on my pc

been copying and pasting a lot of photos and music files recently just want to have a tidy up

Dupeguru seems decent when I've used it
https://dupeguru.voltaicideas.net/

If you have CCleaner installed that also does it but never tried that one.

I need (want) an HTPC, able to output 4k with maybe some transcoding. What would a good budget build be? I haven't bought any hardware in just shy of 10 years and I'm completely of touch.
My research is saying a Ryzen 3200G with a B350 mobo would be a good base?

the transcoding is the bit that needs grunt. alot of single board computers can do 4k 60fps no problem these days, BUT their cpu's aren't great for transcoding

I'd be tempted to just go lazy and get an Intel NUC. 8th generation intel or later if possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhkYcO1VxOk

Enjoyed this take down of Thermaltake

Well it's ugly as sin, but I think fairly good spec for cheap. I've just remembered I'm running SLI 960s in my main PC. Definitely overkill for what I'm using that for, so I'll transplant one of them. Not quite the bleeding edge of tech

RAM question.

I've got two DDR3 1033mhz 4gb sticks.

I've bought two DDR 1333mhz 8gb sticks

The motherboard can take 4 sticks (1333mhz max).

Is it better to have all four sticks in, or just the two 8gb ones?

Unless you'd benefit from having 24GB over 16 I'd just use the 8GB pair. What's the PC used for?

Mostly Photo editing (lightroom / photoshop), occasional use of 3d rendering software too.

I'm guessing that 24 is better than 16 for that sort of thing?

unless something's changed then it was always the case that mismatched RAM would end up all operating at the lower speed.
So you can have 16GB @ 1333MHz
or 24GB @ 1033MHz

so depends what you're being limited by atm

Turns out the existing ram is 1333 not 1033, so i guess that makes things better?

Yeah. You may still have a problem running all 4 at once as some motherboards are funny about running different pairs. But you shouldn't do any harm trying. It may beep at you and refuse to boot up with all 4 in, or reboot randomly, but you'll find out pretty soon and you can just take the 8GB out if that's the case.

Can always run a test
https://www.techpowerup.com/memtest64/

Ok awesome, i'll try later, hopefully all will be well.

Is five years viewed viewed as a reasonable life span for a HDD (on 24/7 in that time)?

Looking to replace a failed one and wondering whether to buy the same.

It's in the ballpark

It basically depends on how well made your HDD is.

https://www.prosofteng.com/blog/how-long-do-hard-drives-last

7 or 8 years ago the 2 year failure rate for SSDs was as high as 60% for some brands and was as low as 5% for others. I would expect that spinning disk tech is on the lower failure rate side of things just because they've been around for so much longer.

Look for the MTBF of the model. They may have multiple ratings for the same model, under different usecases.

Cheers. Given I tend to buy whichever is the cheapest from a reputable manufacturer it looks like 5 years is OK.

Conveniently it's also died slow enough to let me get the remaining "useful to have but not that important stuff" I had on there that wasn't backed up.