PC Tech Thread

Prime day will be on 24 March (I think) so if you're not desperate then wait.

I paid £170 for this

Lenovo Q27q-1L 27 Inch Wide Quad HD (1440p) Gaming Monitor (IPS Panel, 75Hz, 4ms, HDMI, DP, AMD FreeSync) - Tilt Stand, Iron Grey https://amzn.eu/d/8DjqM02

If you can find this or a substantially similar one I'd recommend it. My OH uses it with an Anker hub and M2 MBP. Goldielocks size for home. Looks fairly nice and from my research asking on here 2560 x 1440 is fine for 27" - I think the size is an important consideration as having it at a size where you won't see the benefit of 4k means you effectively get a "better" resolution for your money... if that word salad makes any sense.

Personally I find having built-in speakers semi useful, as you can pop a Chromecast in the back and use it as a TV now and then.

Kodi runs happily off networked drives too - I have it on a Shield (but could as easily be a fire stick or chrome cast or similar) but all of the media sits on a NAS (but could just as week be an old laptop sitting in a cupboard).

I'd try and go for WQHD (2560x1440) over standard HD (1920x1080). There's a considerable difference in screen real estate (an extra 75%).

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/monitors/101/336/2308#t18.f15=2560x1440%2520(WQHD) has a 27" Cooler Master one for £140. No experience of this monitor myself. 100Hz refresh rate is good. HDMI/DP should be easy to connect to both with the right cables.

Today only deal though...(I trust Scan, have spent thousands with them over the years.)

Hmmm.... I do have a spare OK-at-the-time-but-old laptop with a broken screen.

It's the overall UI/UX(?) though. I want something that just turns on when I press the remote and doesn't need trouble shooting.

You know what, I'll just wait till we agree on the design of our TV unit, I've built it, and we've bought a new TV. Then I'll lobby for a Shield only to be shot down because the TV is a smart one.

It's a shame people say the Apple TV gets all funny with Kodi's sound, as the remote and interface is great. Although I guess you've then got the risk of Apple introducing some bullshit down the line.

i have a 4k chromecast I keep meaning to list for sale. With remote. Probably looking for £30 for it...

Have you looked at LibreElec? It's a Linux distro built specifically to run Kodi only. Install that on your broken laptop and use it as the media centre.

Cheers. I'll have a look.

Considering selling my GPU
Asus GeForce RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC 10GB GDDR6X
it's had a very easy life

eBay seems to be asking ~£450-500
Any interest around £400? (/lemme know if wildly unrealistic)

The trouble with the cheaper android based stuff is that they run out of storage and memory. If you have a big library then they really slow down.

LibreElec ran fine on one of my PCs for a while. I imagine a Pi 4 would be fine to run it nowadays too.

If the TV is smart, then sideload kodi, and use it to access a samba / NFS share on the laptop. No need to play with librelec.

Dumb TV.

I think what I'm hearing is that I should keep the firestick (using the regular apps for streaming and Kodi for stealing) and remember to periodically clear the cache.

Then save up for a Shield for when we get a new TV at some point.

Funny how the Shield seems to be the only really good product that gives you everything you want.

Do all your "purchasing" on the laptop, or on a machine that saves everything to the laptop. Kodi on the firestick is just a thin client then.

Is there anyway of properly using wildcards with Windows Explorer search?

I want to search a a drive for any Jpg in a certain folder within the subfolder structure. It pretty much goes

D:\ client name \ project name \ Final images \ file name.JPG

Where all the italics names are changeable and the bold 'final images' folder always stays the same.

Probably a better way but you could just do something like this from a cmd prompt:-

cd /D D:
dir /B /S | find "Final images"

Kodi bloats pretty quickly though. My Kodi on my Shield takes up about 3GB, not really sure why, assume it must be all the thumbnails, etc.

No issue on a Shield or a pc, not great for more limited devices.

It is strange that there still doesn't seem to be anything to compete with the shield even though it's 4 years old now.

I'm surprised there isn't a remote friendly Linux distribution out there somewhere.

I use Kodi on a Raspberry Pi and can use my TV remote with it, the HDMI-CEC thing seems to work ok

I have an spare HDMI-CEC thing if anyone wants it cheap

Has anyone got a charger for a 1724 surface laptop thing.

Want to see if the thing works before buying a charger.

Thanks. Tried and failed. Ended up using Everything which is turns out has loads of handy functions and can index network drives.

I might have if it's the same as other surface devices. Do you know what it's meant to look like?

Is that the docking station thing?

My nearly 14 child wants a mini PC

This one specifically

https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-mini-it12-mini-pc

i7 1tb SSD 32gb RAM

Discounted price makes it seem a good deal

I asked the use case:

"Blender, animation, digital drawing, schoolwork" + needs to be Windows

Is this suitable? Anything better out there? Any issues, like overheating, with a mini PC?

1 Attachment

£500? Oof. Why a mini pc and not a laptop? What about a used SFF PC like someone suggested to me for media player purposes? I got one for like £85 that runs sweet but for video shit you could get one with beefy gfx card and lots more RAM.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256449703700

You can get a refurb Dell G15 11/12 Gen laptop with RTX 3060 GPU for that kind of money.

I guess not a laptop, as they have a little Chromebook for school.

Think I'd prefer new as it is a gift