PC Tech Thread

This used to be common, but flash memory has been so cheap for ages that you can genuinely get legit 16/32GB drives for pennies.

My work gets 32GB drives direct from China for less than 50p/piece for ‘throwaway’ use, and they work fine. Not seen any fail yet.

I want a cheap laptop for web browsing, zwift, and occasionally playing older games (Civ V/VI kind of era, nothing new). I’d like to spend under £300 but I could stretch that a bit if necessary. I think I’d like 14” or smaller - although this is mainly for sofa time it would be nice to have an option to take it in a backpack.

I’m well out of date on tech. Is it a terrible idea to pick up a refurb off eBay? Looks like Thinkpad T480 or a Dell Latitude could be an option, plenty with 16Gb RAM and SSD and an 8th gen i5 or i7 available.

I've got a t480 and it's good. Came with a touchscreen too. I think it was 160 when there was a voucher for 25% off as an eBay promo

Dell XPS 13 also a decent option

Anyone looking for a high-spec Thinkpad?

I've got a surplus to requirements Thinkpad P15v Gen 3 spare, it's an upgraded model with:

CPU: 12th Gen Core i7 12800H
GPU: Nvidia T1200
32GB DDR5 RAM
1TB NVME SSD
Thunderbolt 4, HDMI2.1, fingerprint reader, IR facial recognition reader, blah...
Win 11 Pro

Really good nick, couple of years old.

£700, offers?

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I have a Gigabyte GTX 1650 OC low profile going spare if anyone would like it for cheap before I stick it on ebay?

Its the best version of the card, with the higher clock speed and GDDR 6 (there are a lot of worse versions with the same name, thanks nVidea) - ideal for a SFF machine as it has a half height PCI adaptor included. I also repasted it with Noctua thermal paste and added nylon washers to increase the clamping force of the heatsink, all of which dropped the temps by approx 10c . I Would also be ideal for transcoding in plex etc It doesnt need any external power supply so you can convert a cheap office pc into something more useful had it in my HP 290 G1 SFF machine which is connected to my TV which was perfect for some sofa gaming.

I've been very happy with it, and I've only changed cards to be able to use DLSS.

Just swapped one of my servers over from a midi tower case to a 4U rack case.

Fuck me if everything(*) worked first time. I did cut myself on a sharp bit so that small blood sacrifice usually does the trick.

* 10 years old or so. 4 core i7-4820K. 32GB RAM. Running VMWare ESXi 6.0. 2 x 120GB SSD. 2 x 2TB SSD. 1 x 4TB HDD. Had to bodge the SSDs in only screwed in on one side so I've ordered a proper mounting bracket for it and will fit when it arrives. Replaced the fans with some nice silent BeQuiet things.

Next step is to migrate it (and the VMs) to Proxmox.

Then I've got another of the same 4U rack cases to transplant my dev midi tower machine (24 core i7-13400K, 64GB RAM, 2TB NVMe) into. Then I need a few more bits and bobs (PDU, rackmountable switch, etc) and I can rack it all up along with my rack mountable UPS.

^needs pics

Before - behold ALL THE DUST:

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And, yes, the two 2TB SSDs were just loose in the case. Meh.

Also added two 80mm case fans at the back and replaced the original 120mm fan at the front with BeQuiet fans.

That became:

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The SATA drives are held in my a single screw each, which is far from ideal, and the extra SATA power cables are a mess, so I've ordered a couple of these things to help tidy it up and mount them properly. I've also also got some shorter SATA cables that I can use to cut down on cable flappage.

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The fuck off big cooler just fits in the case. Maybe not quite but the lid is on.

Id say you have the cooler in the wrong direction

Almost certainly, the MOBO was just lifted from the previous machine and dumped in this one. I'm not bothering to fix it though, this machine doesn't get particularly hot. CPU usage is <10% the majority of the time.

If there's a thermal problem I'll buy some more paste and reorient it.

Any suggestions for Windows software for backing up the OS drive, preferably whilst Windows is running.

Windows Backup?

I don't think that backs everything up. I just want an image I can restore

Clonezilla. Not whilst Windows is running.

Windows has an option to maintain a restore image, as well as backup/file history

Just upgraded my CPU on my gaming pc from an AMD 3600 to the 5700x3D. Going to squeeze out as much time out of my Am4 motherboard as I can before I need to upgrade. Haven't had a chance to run any games yet (downloading the new Indiana Jones game on Games pass at the moment). However it's noticeably zippier just in windows, opening up utilities etc what I wasn't really expecting. Got it for about £170 in the Black Friday sale so I think it's a bit of a bargain.

I've not actually swapped out a CPU for a long time so was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to just whip one out and drop the new one in. The cooler was a little trickier!

Nice one. I've done this twice over the years.

My PC is circa ten years old, possibly older and originally had an Intel Core i3-3240 . It was getting a little creaky and I had added as much RAM as the Motherboard could handle so in December 2020 I found a 2nd hand Intel Core i5-3330 online for I think £35. It had a 12 month guarantee so I took a chance and four years later it is still working.

However with the onset of time this too was getting a bit creaky so I saw an Intel Core i7-3770 on the CEX website. Again it is 2nd hand but for £27-95 incl postage it was worth a shot.

Fitted in in minutes and again the PC is lovely and smooth again.

Would anyone like an AMD 5600x before I pop it on eBay - Used for just under a year, boxed with a brand new OEM cooler