PC Tech Thread

I bought such a thing... HDMI external small monitor, trivial to carry, battery powered or AC adaptor.

One of these: https://www.lilliputdirect.com/lilliput-339-high-definition-field-monitor a Lilliput 339

£130, and good enough for connecting to Raspberry Pi's, rack servers, switches, and other such things.

It's resolution is 1280 x 800, which at 7" of screen is pretty high and thus you do get a full desktop in a small screen.

I also threw in this monitor stand so that it can be freestanding (or I'll bend the stand to balance it in an empty 1u, etc.) https://lilliputdirect.com/vesa_75_stand

What you're looking for is called a "Field monitor".

Check that your server supports 'lights out management' / 'out of band management' or if it can be enabled or added with a hardware module.

If it does, like my HPE Microservers, you can do everything (control power, view startup info, manage BIOS) from a remote machine and don't need a monitor at all.

If it doesn't, the cheapest solution is to plug in a desktop monitor you already own. The next cheapest is to get the crappiest second hand monitor you can find or scrounge.

Specialised kit is much more expensive.

Cheers, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for but hoping for something a fair bit cheaper. I'll have a look what else is out there but good to know it's a thing.

@chez_jay my "server" is just a standard machine so doesn't have any of that extra stuff (from what I remember at the time the motherboards offering such things were pretty expensive). It would also be useful for occasional use with a raspberry pi.

My current monitor is pretty weighty and clamped to the desk and the server is also pretty substantial and access isn't that easy. I thought about a cheapo secondhand monitor but I'd probably end up storing it in the loft which makes it a bit inconvenient.

Have a look on FB marketplace, there are a few there around £80. I've been looking for something similar but which needs to be thinner than your typical field monitor, and USB-C power deliver would actually be welcome in my case. Thinking of this one but not sure it's bright enough for my purpose:

https://magedok-shop.myshopify.com/products/8-9-inch-1920-x-1200-ips-usb-c-hdmi-portable-monitor-089a

Cheers. The Magedok ones look tempting but could end up pricey with shipping and taxes.
I went for this in the end https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089K1GBLL

I added 128GB of RAM too.

Final build is here...

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor (£549.75)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (£89.99)
Motherboard: Asus ProArt X570-CREATOR WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard (£437.02)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (£304.80)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (£304.80)
Storage: Seagate FireCuda 530 4 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£599.99)
Video Card: Asus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB TUF GAMING OC Video Card (£1488.41)
Case: Fractal Design Torrent RGB ATX Mid Tower Case (£238.04)
Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power 12 750 W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£169.51)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OEM 64-bit (£124.37)
Case Fan: Fractal Design Prisma AL 103.85 CFM 140 mm Fan (£33.45)
Total: £4340.13
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Except I avoided Amazon and couldn't complete check out with AWD IT due to them requiring me to provide age (which I wouldn't do). So mostly from Scan and Box.

Comes out around £4.5k when avoiding the cheaper, unethical or dodgier retailers. Which I'm fine with.

couldn't complete check out with AWD IT due to them requiring me to provide age

That's weird, did it say why? I'm sure I didn't have to do that when I bought stuff from them a few months ago.

They're using Klarna as the payment provider, Klarna is a credit agency and so even if you don't need credit they're basically getting permission to do a background check.

Looks like I paid with Paypal so didn't need to do that.

Nope, tried that too... it's all part of Klarna checkout now, even the PayPal part... as Klarna will collect data and build a credit profile anyway.

Basically Klarna is super dodgy stuff, building an entirely new credit database by seducing merchants with cheaper checkout, and customers with a catalogue style credit arrangement (pay over 4 years, this £4k machine is only £172 per month! * APR 20%), and in the meantime using non-credit customer transactions to flesh out the database more.

You probably didn't realise you entered your date of birth, because it's on their checkout near name and phone number (for delivery purposes only) and it's before payment method is chosen.

You probably didn't realise you entered your date of birth

ok boomer

I'm gen X thanks.

So it does. I seem to remember I ended up buying the stuff at about 2 in the morning so it is very possible I didn't notice.

ok boomer

lol... says Grandpa from the Silent Generation.

Somehow I am a millennial.

New computer up and running for a couple of days... it is a beast.

Compared to my various other computers, as a comparison point the time to start OBS with my profile of 2 high quality cameras and an overlay:

• 2017 £2k Thinkpad X1 running Linux: 40 seconds, definitely not smooth once running
  
• 2019 £3k Intel MBP running Mac OS: 45 seconds, not smooth once running
  
• 2020 £1.8k HP Omen off-the-shelf gaming desktop running Windows: 1 minute-ish, smooth-ish once running.
  
• 2022 £4k AMD 5950x rig running Windows: 2 seconds and buttery smooth.
  
  

And this machine is like this across the board.

Fire up Dota... up and running in 1-2 seconds and very very smooth and at the highest possible graphics settings.

Similar for every other game I have installed: Elden Ring, Hell Let Loose, Life is Strange, Dota, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed II... it's all instant.

Approx 150 open tabs across Chrome and Firefox... no perceivable lag anywhere. Tabs in Google Docs that were idle used to take 10 seconds to render and become active after being asleep for a while... I now switch to them and they feel like they were always active.

Thunderbolt is indeed Thunderbolt... the CalDigit TS3+ is fully recognised.

In fact I only have 2 cables fully leaving my PC... the power cable, and a USB-C cable that goes to the CalDigit and then connects to about 15 devices through various USB connections. The PC is configured such that the GPU DisplayPort output loops into the motherboard and is sent over the Thunderbolt connection.

The machine is nuts.

Final build:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/buro9/saved/jpq3wP

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus ProArt X570-CREATOR WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
Storage: Seagate FireCuda 530 4 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: Asus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12 GB TUF GAMING OC Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Torrent RGB ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power 12 1000 W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully Modular ATX PSU
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OEM 64-bit
Case Fan: Fractal Design Prisma AL 103.85 CFM 140 mm Fan

I do turn off all the RGB lights though... never liked that, and it's under my desk so fairly pointless.

I did a user benchmark score for a laugh, https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/50984280 and was in some other tabs whilst it was running. It still reports it as being a UFO in every category. The only weak thing in the entire system is that the RAM isn't quite the fastest out there. But at this point I'm well into diminished returns as the spend for the lower timings couldn't yield a perceivable benefit... especially when I have so much RAM that less needs to be swapped out.

Jelly. My work PC saga goes on. Someone insisted on getting a quote from the leasing company, they're supplied by Lenovo and they sourced a machine with a much lesser CPU than the Ryzen; only scored marginally higher than my current i9-7900x even though it's in the thread ripper pro range.

My biggest argument for buying out right is that under current tax law you can claim 130% of the value against corporate tax. It's called super-deduction, so as long as you're paying corporation tax more than a few grand you're effectively getting paid to take the computer. Same applies to servers too, a good time for companies to upgrade.

Finally fired up Elden Ring too... damn, what a lazy PC conversion. I spent a good 5-10 minutes trying to work out what key on my keyboard was Y because it sure as hell wasn't the Y key. And it turns out all in-game instructions are written for a console controller. I have died 3 times and I've barely managed to walk out of the first building (no baddies around, just couldn't control the character). Unsure whether I care to spend time trying to master this when I have so many better games that feel better on a PC.

is it silent?

It's such an ugly looking game with really amateur graphic errors, don't really know why anyone would spend time exploring it. I only killed some giant Knight in a tutorial cave and then got out into the landscape and it's totally off putting. Only positive is that at 1440p it runs with only 50% GPU load.

almost.

The 2 fans in my NAS are audible so I can't really hear the PC. But if I'm playing games then the fans in the PC do become audible. Through normal use (even with OBS and lots of other stuff running) it's effectively silent.

it is a beast

Not dissimilar experience from my new not-quite-as-fancy-but-still-pretty-fancy build
i7-12700k, 3080, 32GB RAM, 2TB 980 Pro
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/50991778

interestingly the report seems to think my CPU is throttling

GPU running better than most benchmarks, CPU running worse than most

Thunderbolt

It seems like a thunderbolt PCI card may be the way to go - I have too much crap sticking out the back of my PC at the moment.

(Rather than swapping out the TUF x570 plus that I have for the ProArt X570-CREATOR. which would be more expensive & waaaay more faff.)

You should check whether it would work.

One of my gripes with the Intel gaming rig I had before was that it had USB-C but not Thunderbolt and worse was that Thunderbolt PCIE cards only work if the motherboard has the necessary chips to understand it. Not really sure what the limitation is, but this is why I overspent on the ProArt X570 to be absolutely sure the thing works.