PC Tech Thread

I'm after a monitor, big, that I can comfortably watch telly on from a sofa about 2 metres away.
Preferably with a silver edge.

And someway of getting audio from an Apple TV to my amplifier.

Still need a dual monitor wall mount

i recently installed a logitech webcam and skype on my pc
it seems to have slowed down noticeably ( well, a little bit ) since this happened
anything i can do to remedy this, are processes for either running in the background that i can stop

not sure why these two have had an effect ?

Did you install the logitech software too? You don't need that, make sure nothing is running on startup too. Run 'msconfig' to fiddle with the start up

Will be putting up some parts for sale soon. Matx build bits, case, EVGA modular psu, gigabyte 250 Mobo, fans, WiFi and bt card, Corsair h50 cooler, looking for around £175 I think.

In the market for a dual monitor setup, any recommendations ideally looking for around 22inch as this will fit nicely on the desk. Mostly used for work but would like to be able to do so post processing of photos so a decent screen would be good. Trying not to break the bank .

dell ultrasharp

Ha! I came here just now to ask this very thing. Need a second monitor for the office for design stuff. Dell Ultrasharp it is.

At home I've got two Dell Ultrasharp 23" monitors mounted on one of these:-

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/arctic-z2-basic-monitor-arm-for-upto-27-monitors-tilt-swivel-pivot?v=c

which keeps the desk (Ikea Galant) free of cables.

I built a gaming PC years ago (2010), it hasn’t seen any gaming use since probably 2013 and just gets used for web browsing/office functions now. The GTX480 in it has eaten itself (artefacts on screen during boot process then Windows fails to load).

Any advice on what I should replace it with now I’m not fussed about gaming performance would be great - I’m looking to spend the minimum possible. It was top spec at the time - i7, triple channel RAM etc but I’ve completely lost touch with PC tech now so don’t know if the motherboard will handle modern GPUs.

Aren't the integrated graphics adequate for what you use it for?

There’s no integrated graphics on the motherboard - it’s a Gigabyte x58a-ud3r.

Look at one of the new AMD APU Zen chips?

IG would be on the CPU - any i7 of that vintage which wasn't a 'K' as far as I'm aware. However a quick google says your motherboard doesn't support it anyway.

You can pick up an nvidia card for as little as £30. No idea what their limitations are, but it's hard to imagine any card not being capable of what you need.

Thanks very much all - that makes sense on the CPU front, I guess things have moved on a bit from the IG motherboards I messed about with in the mid noughties.

I’ve had a very kind offer of an old card from someone on here which I will follow up, but I’ll look into the options suggested if otherwise.

on the advice of the forum I bought a zoostorm pc in jan 2013
it's been great but went pop a day or two back am in the market once again for a pc box doesn't need windows just decent speed, internet connectivity and large storage for my photos and cd's

page 26 or so were the recommendations

happy to go with zoostorm again

any recommendations

purchased a 2nd hand Lenovo laptop for £60 as a stop gap which actually seems to be ok, connected up to a decent monitor it might work, but it does seem a little slow

bump

must have sound driver installed so I can listen to music via an external speaker

When you say "went pop" what actually went?

Would it still do the job if you repaired it?

it just wouldn't switch on one morning, i'm thinking the psu, fan was making a noise recently, although it still seemed to be running at a normal speed, it needed a sharp tap on the fan housing to stop the noise, I guess hitting things isn't always the answer

i'm sure the c drive is fine and the light still comes on on the monitor and inside the pc

there is a place round the corner that said they'd take a look / diagnostics check
just wanted to have some ideas lines up in case they aren't able to fix it

having read that back maybe not psu as light are still coming on inside, but it won't make any signs of life when I press the on button

Have you opened a pc before? I can talk you along the basic checks if you want to narrow it down?

It could be the psu put out a surge and knocked out the ram/cpu/mobo/gpu, some signs of psu life don't mean it's fully alive.

Usually best to strip the extras off so it's just psu+mobo+cpu+1x ram and then see if it will boot into the bios/uefi, I wouldn't even plug a hdd in for this part. If it does great most of the modern ones will have psu voltages so you can see if the 12v is 12v, 5v is 5v and 3v is 3v.

If it makes any beeps as it starts they can be error codes, some motherboards also have little led status lights or even an lcd that can display an error number.

Any suggestions for a bluetooth adaptor for my media pc?

Main use would be for listening to videos with bluetooth headphones so no lag is important. Using with Ubuntu and Kodi.

Need so wisdom from the hive mind

I have two desktop and a laptop, the laptop and one of the desktop are running windows 10 Home and the other desktop is on Windows 10 pro and all on the same network.

The problem is as follows

1. Desktop running home can see both the other two machines, under explore/Network
   
2. Laptop and desk running Pro can see each other but not the desktop running home.
   
3. Laptop and desk running Pro can both ping the other machine
   
   

Have done some investigation but as yet to find a solution, any ideas?

Can you be a bit clearer about what can ping what, and whether each is on ethernet or WiFi? Call them DP, DH, L for short.