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New computer/laptop advice thread

Started by Barry Admin, January 18, 2020, 10:39:27 PM

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seepage

Quote from: Blumf on May 25, 2020, 11:09:35 AM


But yeah, why is so much stuff in the custom PC world full of stupid LEDs and ugly shapes?

ACHTUNG! DAS BLINKENLIGHTS!

Now I've got adverts for all manner of these stupid cases. Presumably the lights are programmable and you can turn them off?

Puce Moment

SO I have been grappling with these issues for what seems like weeks now. Whilst I was trying to get my PC to run eMule properly I think I have ended up buggering with my proxy/DNS/ports settings. I ended up switching over to Soulseek anyway, so I really want everything back the way it was.

Some websites are not accessible for me anymore (including BBC iplayer) as I get the standard:

QuoteYour Internet access is blockedFirewall or antivirus software may have blocked the connection.
Try:
Checking the connection
Checking firewall and antivirus configurations
Running Windows Network Diagnostics
ERR_NETWORK_ACCESS_DENIED
Check your Internet connection
Check any cables and reboot any routers, modems or other network devices you may be using.
Allow Chrome to access the network in your firewall or antivirus settings.
If it is already listed as a program allowed to access the network, try removing it from the list and adding it again.

I have run through quite a number of youtube tutorials to sort this out, including runnning cmd as admin to try and reset my settings. Nothing works so far.

In an annoying twist my Logi bluetooth speakers are now incapable of being paired with my PC after a year of flawless service. I assume the two problems are related somehow.

Have I broken my PC?

Kryton

So I use a crappy TV screen as my monitor - it's fine (my last proper monitor got fucked when moving house). However at times my computer seems to have major audio issues at random times (not always, but mostly when I'm gaming).

I'll explain: It seems like my computer seems to flicker between headphones then tv audio (even if there's no headphones plugged in), as though it cannot decided which device to use and causes games to stutter.


It's an absolute ball ache. It even does this if I disable the headphones. And as state even if there's no headphones plugged in.

Could this be a fault in my audio drivers? Or a hardware error?

The weird thing is, it doesn't do this all the time, just seemingly at random. Which makes it even harder to figure out what's going on.

peanutbutter

So I had a dual boot hackintosh that I want to delete the mac partition on to increase space for the windows partition. The Mac partition is before the windows one, what are my options to increase the Windows partition size? Will it involve copying the partition to an external drive and then back to the (now wiped) internal drive?

NoSleep

Quote from: peanutbutter on June 20, 2020, 11:46:27 AM
Will it involve copying the partition to an external drive and then back to the (now wiped) internal drive?

That would be the best thing.

I have limited experience of changing partition sizes (and on Macs) but I concluded that it was best to plan ahead and not have to do this. I think I might have had to reformat a (thankfully backed up) hard drive because I tweaked the size of a partition and it screwed everything. Also, expanding the size of a partition sacrifices the contents of the next partition, so you need to back that up anyway and start afresh.

Famous Mortimer

I've been looking for a mini-PC (or just one that fits unobtrusively under a telly) to put under my telly. I've been using a laptop for the job for a few years but it's given up the ghost.

I just want a cheap one. One of the new Raspberry Pi 4 kits might be favourite at the moment, mostly because there's too much choice when looking for a mini PC. If anyone has an "I bought this, and it's great" story, then please share it? I really don't want to spend a lot, it's just for browsing, Youtube, very light word processing and streaming video from elsewhere in the house.

Blumf

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on July 01, 2020, 05:49:03 PM
I've been looking for a mini-PC to put under my telly.

I just got this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GVG3Q4Z/

Seems to handle media playing duties fine, but I haven't had time to give it a full shakedown yet.

Pros:
Cheap (90 quid)
Fanless
Usable, if unspectacular, spec (2GB RAM, 32GB SSD, 4 Core CPU, microSD slot)
Very small

Cons:
Win10 only, will not boot other OS's (without a lot of faff)
Only 2 USB ports
BIOS is very limited (e.g. no boot on keyboard)

Blue Jam

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 05, 2020, 05:03:25 PM
They're about a ton less than that now. I've had one for years and it's been great.

I had a look and you can go a few generations newer than the x230 now. I'd go for the current gen -1 or 2 if I was buying now.

Any particular models you'd recommend? I got a refurbished ThinkPad T420 for just under £200 in 2015 and didn't expect it to last five years so I've been pretty impressed with it, but now it's getting a bit creaky and I also need Windows 10 for werk so I may as well upgrade while I'm at it.

Current ThinkPad has 8Gb RAM and an Intel i5 quad core. I do a lot of graphics stuff with big files so it will need to be reasonably fast and powerful, no gaming though so a proper gaming laptop would be overkill. It would be nice to have something a bit lighter and thinner this time as well, could do with ditching the optical drive
Any recent-ish models I should check out?

Sebastian Cobb

I'm thinking of getting an x260 at the minute as this thing is getting a bit battered. They make an i5 version and i7 but it doesn't look like there's actually that much difference based on reviews. They're quite small machines (same as the 230). One of the things attracting me to it is it seems to have decent battery life, and you can put an extra battery inside it somewhere, which lenovo claims will give over 20 hours! They also do models in ~720p and full HD which might suit graphics work better.

There's later models (the 260 and the 270) but last I looked the 260 was where they went cheap.

Does your current Thinkpad have an SSD in it? If it doesn't you could probably get a noticable speed boost just with that for about £25 (for 250gb) and being a Thinkpad it's usually just a case of sliding a tray out the side to swap it. You can get win 10 licences off ebay for £1 as well, depends how much you want to upgrade really.

BeardFaceMan

I'm looking to get a cheap 10" Android tablet, will mainly be used for internet browsing and ebook reading so it doesn't need to be all-powerful with a huge memory, just solid. Any good options?

Famous Mortimer

I ended up buying a BMax Mini-PC off of Amazon, and it's fine (I did end up paying $200 for it, I kept looking at listings and thinking "I could do with a bit more of that" until I ended up at one that was within my price range).

I was thinking of putting Linux on it at some point, but Blumf's comment has me thinking. I know some machines really don't want you to do that, so I need to do more digging.

peanutbutter

Okay, so I'm gonna build a PC I guess. Other than the following things what parts am I expected to need
- case
- motherboard
- processor
- cooler
- memory
- hard drive
- gpu
- windows (assuming I don't just pirate it)

and of things I already have:
- keyboard
- mouse
- hdmi cable(s)
- monitor

I'm assuming:
- 1 power thing
- thermal paste
- some kind of standardised screws
- a good screwdriver for those screws


Honestly just building it for the sake of having that experience down, I've a sneaking suspicion it'll cost me a bit more than just buying a 1 or 2 year old gaming PC with similar specs and I wanna make it Hackintoshable so I'll be paying extra for Intel bullshit







RE ThinkPads, I notice my x220 and x230 now cost a fair bit more than I got them for like a year ago. I assume people are just stockpiling them for parts or something? The x220 keyboard alone sells for almost as much as my x220 cost.
All of those mobile dual-core i7s seem like a bit of a scam, marginal performance boost for significantly extra energy usage.
You could potentially do an eGPU deal with the thinkpad? T420 might be too old.
Can also bump the RAM up to 16gb in a T420, think it handles up to 2133mhz ddr3

Wonderful Butternut

You'll need a power supply. You can get an idea of how much wattage you need using this: https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator
Do not skimp on the quality of your power supply. My current PC has a Corsair TX series and my last one had a beQuiet! Pure Power series. Never had trouble with either.

A lot of CPUs come with a stock cooler that'll be good enough unless you want to overclock, and it'll probably have thermal paste pre-applied to it in a nice neat uniform layer. So check the description when you're buying. The AMD Wraith cooler that comes with most Ryzen CPUs is quite decent.

The necessary screws should come with the components (screws and standoffs for the motherboard for example will be packaged with it). You will need a phillips head screwdriver.

A few cable ties or sleeves might be a good idea. You'll get some probably with the power supply, but a few extra won't hurt.

Have a check on how many fans are in the case. I got a case that only had 2 fans in the front of it sucking air in the front, so I bought another fan to suck air out the back for better airflow.

You'll need a USB drive to make a windows boot drive from using a windows 10 iso.

monkfromhavana

Suddenly developed a problem that has caused me to tear my hair out.

Because of a knackered headphone port, I use an external soundcard. Last night I had the headphones on (less than 6 months old, not been bashed around) and no problems.

This evening plugged them in as normal, and the sound is massively distorted to unlistenable levels, is way too quiet and when nothing is playing seems to have a constant white noise sound.

I've tried restarting laptop, updating drivers etc etc but to no avail. The headphones work on other devices and the sound when just playing through the laptop speakers is fine.

It's probably caused by an update, but it's annoying - any ideas?

Wilbur

Quote from: monkfromhavana on July 31, 2020, 10:41:36 PM
Suddenly developed a problem that has caused me to tear my hair out.

Because of a knackered headphone port, I use an external soundcard. Last night I had the headphones on (less than 6 months old, not been bashed around) and no problems.

This evening plugged them in as normal, and the sound is massively distorted to unlistenable levels, is way too quiet and when nothing is playing seems to have a constant white noise sound.

I've tried restarting laptop, updating drivers etc etc but to no avail. The headphones work on other devices and the sound when just playing through the laptop speakers is fine.

It's probably caused by an update, but it's annoying - any ideas?

System restore to before the update and hope they fix it before it applies again........

monkfromhavana

I've tried the headphones again this morning with the stereo (I was a bit drunk last night and it didn't occur to me to do so) and sound is still fucked, so have ordered a replacement wire for the headphones.

It is a bit weird that headphones that were working perfectly suddenly become the worst headphones on the planet though.

olliebean

Quote from: monkfromhavana on August 01, 2020, 11:11:50 AMIt is a bit weird that headphones that were working perfectly suddenly become the worst headphones on the planet though.

It's what they do.

TrenterPercenter

In the market for new laptop as this one is literally falling apart (Lenovo ideapad).  Could be willing to spend upto and a bit over of a grand as long as it is future proof (They all appear a bit more pricey now to get something top notch - this laptop has lasted 7 years and if it wasn't for it physically falling apart it would can still handle most things).

Wondering if any one has any good reccomendations?

Edit:
Oh and my primary concerns are general day to day use Netflix etc.. i'm not looking to "game" on it as I have the ps4 but it would be nice if I could play somethings on it (champ manager and maybe some of those realtime strategy games).

bgmnts

Is it possible to get a cheap desktop/laptop that has a decent processing speed, over 8gbs of RAM and a good graphics card?

I want to be able to able to play a wider range of games on Steam or even disc maybe but know fuck all about 'puters. No fucking about with drivers or or physically changing the rig n shit.

Just want to be able to plug it in, set it up, download steam and be able to play higher performance games. Doesnt have to be top of the line 4k 10000FPS or anything.


Wilbur

Quote from: bgmnts on September 08, 2020, 12:48:55 AM
Is it possible to get a cheap desktop/laptop that has a decent processing speed, over 8gbs of RAM and a good graphics card?

I want to be able to able to play a wider range of games on Steam or even disc maybe but know fuck all about 'puters. No fucking about with drivers or or physically changing the rig n shit.

Just want to be able to plug it in, set it up, download steam and be able to play higher performance games. Doesnt have to be top of the line 4k 10000FPS or anything.

There are plenty of companies selling PC combinations of pretty much whatever you want. You probably pay a bit over the top for them putting it all together but they need to make money somewhere. There should be plenty of recommendations on here from the past for particular companies to use/avoid if you do a google search.

Captain Z

What I'm really struggling with is that prices don't seem to have dropped at all in the last eight years or so. The laptop I bought back then for £430 was an ASUS, Intel i3, 6GB RAM, 500GB HD. I'd at least expect to upgrade to i5 and 8GB RAM for the same price these days, but even something like that seems to be going for around £550 (Avoiding HP - I won't touch them with a bargepole).

What are these AMD Ryzen processors like? I've only ever had experience of intel chips and not a huge computer buff so if someone could put it in terms of 'actually they are totally equivalent these days'/'nah you still want to go with intel', that would be nice.

Wilbur

Quote from: Captain Z on September 11, 2020, 04:51:15 PM
What I'm really struggling with is that prices don't seem to have dropped at all in the last eight years or so. The laptop I bought back then for £430 was an ASUS, Intel i3, 6GB RAM, 500GB HD. I'd at least expect to upgrade to i5 and 8GB RAM for the same price these days, but even something like that seems to be going for around £550 (Avoiding HP - I won't touch them with a bargepole).

There has been some sort of global event which has led to 1) A slow down in production and supply of computer equipment and 2) An unprecedented demand for laptops from people wanting/needing to work from home.

Thus the machines you expect to see have all been snaffled up and the prices have gone up. Just very bad timing I'm afraid.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: bgmnts on September 08, 2020, 12:48:55 AM
Is it possible to get a cheap desktop/laptop that has a decent processing speed, over 8gbs of RAM and a good graphics card?

I want to be able to able to play a wider range of games on Steam or even disc maybe but know fuck all about 'puters. No fucking about with drivers or or physically changing the rig n shit.

Just want to be able to plug it in, set it up, download steam and be able to play higher performance games. Doesnt have to be top of the line 4k 10000FPS or anything.

The GPU tends to be the thing which pushes a laptop's price up greatly. I managed to get an Acer Predator 17.3" with good specs, and a 1060 6GB GPU for 700 from Argos, although it was a limited time deal and they're almost twice that usually. If you're willing to go second hand/refurbished you might could pick one up for 600-700 on ebay, or the 15.6" version for 500. I tend to play games through the HDMI to my TV anyway but need the larger screen for work stuff.

Captain Z

Quote from: Wilbur on September 11, 2020, 05:06:42 PM
There has been some sort of global event which has led to 1) A slow down in production and supply of computer equipment and 2) An unprecedented demand for laptops from people wanting/needing to work from home.

Thus the machines you expect to see have all been snaffled up and the prices have gone up. Just very bad timing I'm afraid.

I should have added that, on and off, I've been looking for around 3 years now. I started just using my work laptop some time ago so it's less of a priority, but still got my eye on a personal one.

Sherman Krank

#85
Quote from: Captain Z on September 11, 2020, 04:51:15 PM
What are these AMD Ryzen processors like?
You should only go with a Ryzen if you're someone who enjoys saving a load of money while getting superior performance.
If that's not you then stick with Intel.


Here's the current 'Bang for Buck' chart.





Puce Moment

If anyone knows about webcams or using a laptop as a webcam to enable a user to use Zoom/Teams better for teaching I would appreciate it greatly.

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=82686.msg4321112#msg4321112

BeardFaceMan

I have a 4tb Seagate external hard drive that I keep all my videos on, lately I've been getting a I/O device error when trying to use it. If I unplug it and plug it back in it works again. It's happened about half a dozen times over the last few months. Do I need to be worried?

Wilbur

Quote from: BeardFaceMan on September 20, 2020, 08:49:02 PM
I have a 4tb Seagate external hard drive that I keep all my videos on, lately I've been getting a I/O device error when trying to use it. If I unplug it and plug it back in it works again. It's happened about half a dozen times over the last few months. Do I need to be worried?

Yes. If the files are important to you I'd copy them somewhere else.