What's your latest tech purchase?

[RJARRRPCGP]

You simply have have the luck to get all the boxes ticked - close range, no interference.
No kids? The moment a game console with four controllers is fired up, bluetooth devices tend to shrivel up and die.


Oh, i posted in the GN thread and forgot here: I got a new modem/router for $20 second hand.

It's a fairly tall, but nice looking ADSL2+, VDSL, or gigabit cat5e router. (not my pics)

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My ISP has a little oddity, in that when you change modems over, it takes 15 minutes for the swap to happen. Some technical reason, you get downtime if you swap.
Thing is... i was getting a 25/5 connection solid, instead of my expected 60/20... while "disconnected"

Removed the phone cord from the wall. Connected.

Factory reset so i could log in, check the stats. "Backup 4G modem activated, check connection"

Turns out these are only sold and used for Telstras top tier plans, with 4G instant backup so they can cover up all their outages. The owners are meant to return these, or they face a $200 fine if they dont stay on their 24 month contract.

So either the previous owner pays a $200 fine, or they give me free 25/5 internet for upto 24 months. I guess i wont be stuck offline any time soon.

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My only irritation is that I'm capable of syncing at 84, sync at 82, yet get 55-70 depending on the modem. Why the gap, guys?

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I'm wondering if the "coding gain" option also applies to VDSL. If not that far out, try a higher value and run a speed test, everytime!

 

[plastiscɧ]

Fake capacity SD cards are extremely common, and this is undoubtedly one of them. It will start disappearing data after its actual capacity fills up, which is going to be somewhere in the 4GB-32GB range. You might think that that makes it still a decent deal - the problem is that you have zero control over when it starts making stuff disappear, and there is zero chance of recovery.

Thanks for that warning! i will cancel the deal then. i thought 15€ is not that much to cry about... but to waste it for 100% is not my intention. this is not what i wanted.

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okay. it was like a pregnancy.... 9 month long but i did it. i bought the silver case.

 

[AusWolf]

okay. it was like a pregnance.... 9 month long but i did it. i bought the silver case.

I've got the same attitude towards the Silent Loop 2. It's been in a "maybe later" phase for a couple of months now - and it'll stay there for at least another month.

 

[plastiscɧ]

I've got the same attitude towards the Silent Loop 2. It's been in a "maybe later" phase for a couple of months now - and it'll stay there for at least another month.

Buy it. it is worth the money. and the vents are much more silent as noctua.... in Adolf-brown... (sry i had to make this SICK comment) haha

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And:
Yes I know it too well! It's not like I already have a case of this company ...!

but the big I find mega. I was always too stingy. AND one reason why it has become, is the fully modular construction. down at the power supply is always a panel attached to the most manufacturers is fixed. however, I have a dark power pro 12 that looks so fantastic, I think, that I have made it an absolute condition to be able to remove just this panel to be able to look at the PSU ... do not pay 400€ (black brushed aluminum case) to hide it.

 

[AusWolf]

Buy it. it is worth the money. and the vents are much more silent as noctua.... in Adolf-brown... (sry i had to make this SICK comment) haha

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And:
Yes I know it too well! It's not like I already have a case of this company ...!

but the big I find mega. I was always too stingy. AND one reason why it has become, is the fully modular construction. down at the power supply is always a panel attached to the most manufacturers is fixed. however, I have a dark power pro 12 that looks so fantastic, I think, that I have made it an absolute condition to be able to remove just this panel to be able to look at the PSU ... do not pay 400€ (black brushed aluminum case) to hide it.

Adolf brown, LOL!

Well, I'm stingy too. Actually, it's not that I'm stingy in general, but since I've spent a shitload of money on my computer since covid hit (including building a completely new 5950X system from ground zero just because why not, and then selling it part by part because it never reached 30% usage), I'm trying to be more careful now.

Part of me wants the SL2 because I love watercooling. Another part of me says it's wasted £110 as games won't benefit from the added power headroom on my 11700. I'm already running it at a 125 W PL1 (which it doesn't even come near to during gaming) with a Shadow Rock LP. On the other hand, if it can theoretically do 4.4 GHz all-core, then why shouldn't it (even though it's pointless)? First world problems...

 

[plastiscɧ]

Adolf brown, LOL!

Part of me wants the SL2 because I love watercooling. Another part of me says it's wasted £110 as games won't benefit from the added power headroom on my 11700. I'm already running it at a 125 W PL1 (which it doesn't even come near to during gaming) with a Shadow Rock LP. On the other hand, if it can theoretically do 4.4 GHz all-core, then why shouldn't it (even though it's pointless)? First world problems...

ye but it has got fancy lights too! and looks better than such a big "Kaventsmann" as cooler inside the case.
And yes its cooler than pure air.

Actually, it's not that I'm stingy in general, but since I've spent a shitload of money on my computer since covid hit

Same here! for sure 7000€ the past two years. otherwise the money would have been lost in a night club for alcohol..

so i see it as an investment i use every day with pleasure

 

[AusWolf]

ye but it has got fancy lights too! and looks better than such a big "Kaventsmann" as cooler inside the case.
And yes its cooler than pure air.

True. The thing that attracts me in its fancy lights is that they're controlled by the motherboard through a standard ARGB plug - unlike nearly every other brand with their USB cable jungle and software puke.

Same here! for sure 7000€ the past two years. otherwise the money would have been lost in a night club for alcohol..

so i see it as an investment i use every day with pleasure

That's true as well. I would have spent my money on hotels, petrol and flight tickets. Now I have a PC that can laughably endure through the component shortage (unless it goes on for 5+ years or something).

 

[micropage7]

just add more ram for my old laptop, usually i try to find 2nd hand stuff coz cheaper, but now the difference between brand new and 2nd hand just about $1

 

[The red spirit]

I remember listening to music on my first ever mp3 player at 128 kbps. I had to save space to fit as many albums as I could into its 2 GB storage. Only later did I realize how crappy it sounded. With better mp3 players and bigger storage, I started using 256 kbps. Nowadays I'd say 192 kbps is the bare minimum, 256 is OK, 320 is the best practice. If some music really grabs me, I try to get it in flac, though I have to use my headphones at high volume to notice any difference - and even then, it's not much.

320 kbps mp3 is quite pointless. Even more if it's vbr. At that point it is close to lossless audio and sounds nearly indistinguishably. I can't actually tell a difference. 16/44.1 CD audio is within 700-1200 kbps. Unless you deal with legacy equipment that is limited to mp3 only, nowadays it's better to convert music to AAC or Opus. Both sound better than mp3 at lower kbps and are known to have superior efficiency.

 

[AusWolf]

320 kbps mp3 is quite pointless. Even more if it's vbr. At that point it is close to lossless audio and sounds nearly indistinguishably. I can't actually tell a difference.

... yet it takes up considerably less space and is compatible with nearly every device out there. That's the point of it.

Unless you deal with legacy equipment that is limited to mp3 only, nowadays it's better to convert music to AAC or Opus. Both sound better than mp3 at lower kbps and are known to have superior efficiency.

I haven't tried playing AAC in my car, but I don't think it would work. As long as 98% of my music is in mp3 (and the remaining 2% in flac), I'm fine.

 

[plastiscɧ]

... yet it takes up considerably less space and is compatible with nearly every device out there. That's the point of it.


I haven't tried playing AAC in my car, but I don't think it would work. As long as 98% of my music is in mp3 (and the remaining 2% in flac), I'm fine.

as long you hear stereo-sound it does not that big matter.
so that 320 is enough, goes to high quali. 280 is the normal case.
or did this change during the last decade?

 

[The red spirit]

... yet it takes up considerably less space and is compatible with nearly every device out there. That's the point of it.


I haven't tried playing AAC in my car, but I don't think it would work. As long as 98% of my music is in mp3 (and the remaining 2% in flac), I'm fine.

My quite old Sony NWZ-E443 MP3 player supports AAC. It also supports WMA, but doesn't support Opus or lossless formats. AAC should be reasonably supported nowadays, it's pretty well known mp3 killer format. Opus doesn't have much recognition and it's not much better than AAC and sometimes is worse than AAC by a little bit. It's a bit odd why it didn't succeed and is poorly supported, considering it's royalty free format and anyone can implement it if they want. mp3 wasn't until patent expired relatively recently. AAC is like opus, free to use, but was patented. AAC is default format for Apple, Nintendo, Youtube, PS4. It's certainly not obscure. Opus, ogg Vorbis never had much popularity, despite being created by FLAC creators.

Edit:
Never mind, Youtube uses Opus now. Quite recently they used AAC.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

My quite old Sony NWZ-E443 MP3 player supports AAC. It also supports WMA, but doesn't support Opus or lossless formats. AAC should be reasonably supported nowadays, it's pretty well known mp3 killer format. Opus doesn't have much recognition and it's not much better than AAC and sometimes is worse than AAC by a little bit. It's a bit odd why it didn't succeed and is poorly supported, considering it's royalty free format and anyone can implement it if they want. mp3 wasn't until patent expired relatively recently. AAC is like opus, free to use, but was patented. AAC is default format for Apple, Nintendo, Youtube, PS4. It's certainly not obscure. Opus, ogg Vorbis never had much popularity, despite being created by FLAC creators.

Edit:
Never mind, Youtube uses Opus now. Quite recently they used AAC.

Vorbis saw basically no consumer adoption (sad face), but is very frequently used to store game audio.

 

[plastiscɧ]

Edit:
Never mind, Youtube uses Opus now. Quite recently they used AAC.

i thought AAC is an apple format they invented. mp3 is older i guess. or am i on the wooden way?

 

[The red spirit]

Vorbis saw basically no consumer adoption (sad face), but is very frequently used to store game audio.

Yea, UT 2004 saved music in Vorbis. But at the same time, it is just too similar to AAC. So one of them had to go.

i thought AAC is an apple format they invented. mp3 is older i guess. or am i on the wooden way?

Apple uses it, but no they didn't make it. It's a big collaboration of many corporations and it was approved by MPEG people (mp3 creators). You are mistaking it with ALAC or M4A.

 

[oobymach]

Fake capacity SD cards are extremely common, and this is undoubtedly one of them. It will start disappearing data after its actual capacity fills up, which is going to be somewhere in the 4GB-32GB range. You might think that that makes it still a decent deal - the problem is that you have zero control over when it starts making stuff disappear, and there is zero chance of recovery.


I got one of these myself last week - finally making some use of my spare 500GB 960 EVO. Orico M2PV-C3, very happy with it so far. Got pretty stable 700MB/s copying a large game folder (30GB or so, large files only), with a more complex transfer seeing some drops into the 300-or-so range due to lots of small files. Didn't try copying from it. Either way, great performance for 270SEK (~€27). I was thinking of getting the USB 3.2g2x2 20Gbps version, but ... it's more than 2x the price (nearly 3x) for performance that I'll likely never be able to make use of. Not worth it.

Most of the casing is plastic, which is perfectly fine even if it doesn't feel very premium. What I like is that the heatsink screws down on top of the drive rather than sliding in, meaning that it's actually possible for it to meaningfully contact the thermal pad and controller and not get damaged or crumpled during installation or removal. Got it off Amazon, the only weird thing was that it wasn't retail packaged but came in a collection of transparent plastic bags. Seems like someone is bulk ordering Orico products and reselling them for cheap. I've gotten several Orico products off AliExpress with reasonably nice packaging earlier, but in the end it doesn't matter I guess - just a bit weird.

Very nice, I've got my eye on the asus enclosure but no matter how fast the enclosure if your port is 10gbps actual transfer maximum is 1250megabytes per second so I don't think we'll be making full use of even gen3 drives yet.

How hot does your enclosure get? Mine gets mighty hot on long transfers even with a mod to make the chips contact the casing, hoping the larger asus and faster speed will eliminate the heat issue.

 

[plastiscɧ]

eliminate the heat issue.

send your nano-SSDs to me. i'll make them unique, for sure. for 2€.

 

[Mussels]

I'm wondering if the "coding gain" option also applies to VDSL. If not that far out, try a higher value and run a speed test, everytime!

I'm unsure what that is - i have no options like that

I managed to disable wifi entirely and get myself CLOSE to the advertised speeds, pretty sure a housemate was torrenting and either lied about it, or forgot about it

Very nice, I've got my eye on the asus enclosure but no matter how fast the enclosure if your port is 10gbps actual transfer maximum is 1250megabytes per second so I don't think we'll be making full use of even gen3 drives yet.

How hot does your enclosure get? Mine gets mighty hot on long transfers even with a mod to make the chips contact the casing, hoping the larger asus and faster speed will eliminate the heat issue.

I dont even hit 1GB/s on mine despite being 10Gb, and the SSD normally going higher

They get hot fast, i sit mine on top of the PC case where i have nice 140mm exhaust fans to cool it down with some pre heated air

 

[oobymach]

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send your nano-SSDs to me. i'll make them unique, for sure. for 2€.

You've inspired me to take arms against a sea of troubles.

Usb drive 2.0

 

[tabascosauz]

So PPCS messed up and sent me a 180mm XT45 rad instead the 280mm XT45 rad I wanna see how they gonna make this one up to me

In the meantime, here's some beefy Optimus Foundation goodness

 

[AlwaysHope]

My main area is open world RPG as well. Now I'm even more tempted. Just like I said, I'm a bit scared to block airflow towards my GPU with something that may or may not improve my gaming experience.

IF your referring to the system in your system specs, then I'm not sure about the slot placement space those boards have. But on my system, there is good spacing between all 16x slots. That's 1 thing Gigabyte did well with this board.

 

[plastiscɧ]

You've inspired me to take arms against a sea of troubles.

Usb drive 2.0

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lol. i thought this is a hair comb..

u made me proud if this is your solution to a temperature problem! looks awsome.

do not forget the thermal glue or a thermal pad to ensure the bridge is optimal between the components!

 

[ThaiTaffy]

You've inspired me to take arms against a sea of troubles.

Usb drive 2.0

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Get some thermal epoxy and get rid of the zipties can be moved to impressive mods then rather than ghetto.

 

[Mussels]

You've inspired me to take arms against a sea of troubles.

Usb drive 2.0

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That is the fastest hairbrush i have ever seen


SSD update: the third attempt has shipped from Japan and not the UK, and amazon have promised the five thousand two hundred and seven cent refund (her words... sigh, call centers) by thursday.
I mean it's Amazon Au, with a screwup from Amazon UK, and a call from Amazon US, to a call center in... india? maybe? so uhhh... BYO thursday.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

That is the fastest hairbrush i have ever seen


SSD update: the third attempt has shipped from Japan and not the UK, and amazon have promised the five thousand two hundred and seven cent refund (her words... sigh, call centers) by thursday.
I mean it's Amazon Au, with a screwup from Amazon UK, and a call from Amazon US, to a call center in... india? maybe? so uhhh... BYO thursday.

And here's me worried about 16gb of ECC ddr3 I ordered last week and still hasn't been shipped. .