PC Tech Thread

^ What you use a Google search on...

ha!

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/10/02/intel-labels-ultrabooks-failure/

semiaccurate :)

ah right.
looks like I can get a little laptop with an SSD for about 400 squids.
cheaper than when I were a lad!

You could get a new battery and SSD to put in your current machine for 1/4 of that.

trudat.

Depends what you end goal is. There might be other flakey stuff in the laptop. Old connectors limit you to capacities made at the time, etc. (ie. IDE rather than SATA sockets). Blah blah etc

yeah. I would like to add stuff to it, to fix it up, but i don't want to spunk wads on a buttload of stuff that would be useless once the motherboard, screen, or dodgy chinese battery explodes.

Just speculative post, was wondering if anyone had an old i5 hanging around? Looking to build up a pc on the cheap.

Bought a cheap Win 8 Pro for £50 from Tesco becuase the Win 8.1 Pro is free...

Win 8 was £25 direct from Mickeysoft though wasn't it?

Only for the first few months

Yeah, missed that one because I wasn't too sure about Win 8 and I liked Win 7.

However all the blurb about 8.1 has convinced me to give it a go.

I've got Win 8 on another laptop here. Might chuck 8.1 on but mate reckons it's just minor tweaks - Start button loads app page rather than being Win 7 style Start Menu that I like. Something about the way the app page scrolls vertically too. Other than that I'm not sure what you get in 3+ Gig of download.

I'm more interested in Visual Stupido 2013 - is it any faster? What new shit does it have?

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24571219

Right nerds, I feel the need to upgrade something. I need a larger external HDD so I'm going to grab a 4TB drive with an eSATA connection. Should be much faster than USB, etc right?

This card works with my mobo: http://www.frys.com/product/5174926

Is there anything better out there or anything I should be aware of before purchasing?

Or this, cheaper option: StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Controller Adapter Card: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Also, do I need a Northbridge fan?

South Bridge deals with this, if you haven't a fan on that it would probably help.

North Bridge deals with CPU, RAM, etc.

Either of the cards above would work, but you need to make sure the power supply you give to the external drive is a clean source. I.e. if you're not using a caddy with a clean supply, then come off of the internal PSU and use an extender rather than try and use a power adaptor.

Sorry, the Northbridge question was an entirely separate question to the external drive thing. I know what it does. Your old machine has a fan on it, it was noisy, I wondered how much it was actually needed - never having had active Northbridge cooling on anything before. I found you had a fan speed controller on it and dropped it rather than turn it off.

I've gone with a WD Red drive in a Icy Block enclosure and that cheap eSATA card. Why the clean power supply issue? Is the caddy likely to be more sensitive to power fluctuations? It should have a decent power supply on it (it better, at £50-something just for a caddy!)

For future-proofing you might want to consider an eSATA card that has a port multiplier on it (lets you run several devices from the same port) and an external enclosure for the drive. This will cost a little more upfront, but will be much easier to add drives for high speed access to your porn at a later date.

Or for super-nerd points: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5956/qnaps-jtb400-a-byod-4bay-thunderbolt-enclosure

Bought a cheap Win 8 Pro for £50 from Tesco becuase the Win 8.1 Pro is free...

You got a link for this? Quite keen to stick it on something but not keen to pay top whack. Ta.

For future-proofing you might want to consider an eSATA card that has a port multiplier on it (lets you run several devices from the same port) and an external enclosure for the drive. This will cost a little more upfront, but will be much easier to add drives for high speed access to your porn at a later date.

Yeah, I noticed you need a port-multiplier to run most of the 4-bay offerings via eSATA but I don't think that will be an issue for quite some time so this will do for now. I've already got quite a lot of storage at my disposal this is just an option for something faster than my NAS that hopefully doesn't need rebuilding every few months.

Or for super-nerd points: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5956/qnaps-jtb400-a-byod-4bay-thunderbolt-enclosure

I checked out the QNAPs but they were getting 'spensive for what I need. I was also looking at ioSafe's fireproof and waterproof enclosures. They sound sweet but until the Thames floods properly I think I'm ok.

I checked out the QNAPs but they were getting 'spensive for what I need. I was also looking at ioSafe's fireproof and waterproof enclosures. They sound sweet but until the Thames floods properly I think I'm ok.

More just a nerd thing. Quite nice having consumer-grade equipment that can use optical cables for longer runs to hide the noisy spinning disks in a cupboard somewhere. Bit of a waste of money at the moment still.

You got a link for this? Quite keen to stick it on something but not keen to pay top whack. Ta.

Tesco has run out of stock and I'm not sure you can buy win 8 anymore now that win8.1 has been released.