PC Tech Thread

Not really a huge concern for me, I'm not a gamer.

I guess I should look in to panel types and viewing angle as 43" at 1m away (ugh mixed units) will be nearing a 30° angle

one for the golf club thread, but work monitors are all 43" 4k in landscape and a 27" 1440p in portrait on each side. do not like it. OTT, too much artificial light

Input Lag and response time are the killers for using a TV as a monitor. Most modern TVs will be ok but there are some slow ones out there.

You might get away with a slow response time if you're just using it for browsing/spreadsheets/emails/etc as there aren't often wide sweeping changes to the screen.

Something with a lot of Input Lag will be awful to use as a monitor, the higher the input lag the greater the delay between you doing something (typing, moving mouse, etc) and you seeing that on the screen. Beyond a certain amount of lag things become horrible to use.

I use a 43" 4K monitor (Acer DM431K) as my desktop screen. It's about as wide as my previous 2 x 23" monitor setup was, but twice as high, so I have 4 times the screen real estate and no bezels in the middle. My eyes are about 80cm from the screen.

Takes a bit of getting used to, I tend to work in corners or thirds of the screen at any one time, rarely ever using the entire screen and never maximising a single window to take up the whole screen as that would just be silly (even sitting back 2m from the screen it feels too big to watch something in full screen mode).

But it means I can have a window for coding, a window for docs, another window for results of something, and then other windows elsewhere to keep track of slack/email/etc and they secondary ones are nicely just out of my main focus.

I did consider a 27" monitor in portrait to one side of this 43" in landscape, but haven't found a need for it.

Huh yeah, maybe it's overkill. I'm trying to replicate the 32 + 27 I have at work but angle to the edges probably reaches the limits of usability without a curve. 43 is just the biggest that will physically fit in the space. The Dell 40" curved 5k2k (wat?) ones look nice but pricey...£1.5k... and I doubt you could push that kind of resolution over RDP effectively. The appeal of the RDP clients embedded in the TV is strong but no idea what real world performance is like (although as I understand decoding is the easier bit).

Response time is probably worth considering actually, it'll be compounded by RDP over Ethernet which I've found to be fine, but on a monitor not a TV.

Yeah my primary use is 3D modeling/rendering so I will often have 1 or 2 viewports open, material editor, render windows and maybe a parametric editor, so the more pixels the better.

That model actual doesn't seem to expensive, will have to look closer at 4k monitors again.

That model actual doesn't seem to expensive, will have to look closer at 4k monitors again.

It was one of only a few 43" 4K monitors that was available back in late 2020 and not £££. I think I bought an ex-display model for ~£400.

Getting a good stand to clamp to the desk made a huge difference and means I can have it a bit further back than it's normal feet that would sit on a desk, also gave me a bit more space on the desk.

(Wall mounting wouldn't work as I use a sit/stand desk.)

I've got a Samsung TV with built in RDP. It's ok, not quite as good as RDP from my laptop but better than I expected

Had an unfortunate incident with my desktop PC and some water which was completely my fault. PSU, motherboard, cpu cooler, two SSDs, keyboard and probably the processor all toast.

Luckily I've got accidental damage insurance, but the loss adjusters opening gambit has been to ask for "a written repair estimate" and "a written suppliers report" for the damaged stuff.

I don't think any of it is economically repairable for a second, and have no idea where to go for this. It feels like doing the insurance company's job for them, plus I expect that given the time involved anyone who is prepared to do these would want to charge for them.

That aside, does anyone have any idea who would be good to approach about this? It would need to be somewhere not too far from E17 cos I'd need to take the bits to them...

Take it to your local computer / mobile repair shop, they'd probably be bloody expensive so it'll work out in your favour when you take the lowered settlement for parts only

Cleaning the interior of a computer. In the past I've used canned air but that seems a bit silly. I've also experienced fluid being created from it which freaked me out.

I've seen usb electric fans recommended to me in adverts this week. Anyone use one? Any good? Any brands to look for?

Compress your own air into a drinks bottle like some people do with DIY tubeless inflators?

Thanks. Though tbh I can't get my head around this but have just scalded my face with hot oil which may be interfering. I'll look it up this eve.

I mean... I just use a vacuum cleaner on the removable case grills and bottom of the case, and then a photographers sensor cleaner (the blow bubble thing) for around caps and chips, and an old make-up brush (never used on make-up as you won't want residues on things) on fan blades and heat sink grills.

I'm not trying for perfect, it doesn't have to look like new. I only try and shift the majority so that cooling works. That last 1% is also going to be back there in a day or two, it's clearing 99% of the dust that matters.

I'm also fine just taking things apart. i.e. the keyboard. No canned air, I just unscrew the top, pop-off all the key caps (they go through the washing machine), and again with the make-up brush and sensor blower thing.

Canned air always felt to me like a worse solution. It just blows stuff around, and in the case of some things can make stuff worse. It can blast all dust to the back of a heat sink where you can't remove it, or debris to under key caps where it causes problems.

Just never touch the small rounds caps on the motherboard, and never use a vacuum directly on the motherboard (you can, but the chances a split second uncontrolled movement boshes something is non-zero).

Anyone had any experience of using HDMI over cat6 aka 'HDBase-T'? I'm looking at this one, because of the integrated KVM although reliability looks a bit flakey from the reviews.

I got one of these a while back. Does a decent enough job for the price...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ColorCoral-Rechargeable-Computer-Keyboard-Detailing/dp/B08T12QV7Y/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=keyboard+vacuum+cleaner&qid=1664183912&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

I've got a couple of these (not that specific model, just HDMI over CAT6 extenders) and they are OK.

A bit picky about exactly what they transfer (one seems to strip out anything above stereo sound for instance, another doesn't like an SD signal) and occasionally flickers so you have to "re-pair" them. Hard to tell but I'd say picture quality isn't quite as good.

Why not just use remote desktop or similar?

I use these for work:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/HDMI2-0-Extender-Keyboard-Access-Extension/dp/B0876TTMJR/

They’re more expensive than the average Amazon trash, but they’re rock solid, pass everything, and the compression isn’t obvious. Work as well as proper KVM boxes from Adderlink etc that cost 3/4x as much.

The situation is a bit unusual, my house backs on to my work, host is my work PC in the office and client my own laptop (or whatever client I end up using), client display will be 4K. Management have previously expressed concern over connecting our own devices to the network, which is daft because people are using hamachi and I can see and access drives on the client using this over a VPN. Obviously an HDMI hook up would allay this concern, though does involve running a longer cable including drilling it though a wall.

Also I went down a rabbit hole reading about 4:4:4 croma and signal compression, although I'm sure the effect is probably unnoticeable in most scenarios.

I might just go the remote route first and see how that works out as it's the path of least resistance (assuming I can get management on-side)

Nice one, seems that brand features fairly heavily on ebay. It says the image compression is lossless, but it still compresses before sending right?

None of these boxes will be truly lossless; note they state ‘visually lossless’ which is a nebulous and meaningless term.

An uncompressed 4K@60Hz 4:4:4 signal needs 12Gb/s, and the signalling rate of the HDBase-T over CAT6A interface of that AV Access box I linked to above is 10Gb/s, and it’s simultaneously sending 480Gb/s of USB2.0, audio etc down that same interface as well. The video is compressed, it is lossy, but for most purposes it’s difficult to tell.

Good info, cheers. I was wondering if they'd done something clever with the direction of the signal but compression makes more sense. Have you ever done a side-by-side comparison with an RDP connection?

Also it would have to come into a socket, via patch cable to a different socket, then installed cable up to my desk (also cat6). I imagine there's a tripping point there somewhere that could mess up the POE function, though I'm not sure if that's strictly necessary or whether you can just power locally at both ends.

So they are OK with you running a physical Ethernet (not HDMI) cable directly to your home, as long as you promise that the office end of the cable is plugged into your work PC's KVM port and not an Ethernet port?

But it sounds rather like there aren't actually any controls to prevent direct connection of your untrusted home device to the office network, or setting up random VPNs?

So they are OK with you running a physical Ethernet (not HDMI) cable directly to your home, as long as you promise that the office end of the cable is plugged into your work PC's KVM port and not an Ethernet port?

These are all unknowns, just trying to work out all available options in order of PITA so hopefully they'll agree to let me do one of them. I can currently connect my home device via their supplied VPN client (Hamachi) although I'm not sure if they're really aware or care about this or the potential risk.

If you can connect now, and they don't care, not sure what the actual problem is that you are trying to solve?