Honestly I find Surface laptops to be pretty crappy. They're not built very well, those keyboard covers are really flimsy and poor quality... the touchpads on them are a joke too. Next to no ports, no upgradability. They're much more functional than iPads and Android tablets for sure since they run a proper desktop OS but they sacrifice a lot for portability.

I got this cute little USB cooling fan from the company Hayata a couple days ago,

Well, it's not "little". It's like the size of a softball, but still.

The little board on the bottom actually comes off, and you put back on when needed.

The back of this thing, where hot air from the CPU vent of a laptop blows out.

And here's the matching USB cord.

I got this thing as an accessory for my laptop, which sometimes has a bit of cooling problems where it tends to get a little hot. This cooling fan might not be considered "hardware", but at least it's something used for computers.

Hi all,

Got some pretty cool news. Found a ThinkPad T420 on eBay for $63 shipped. It is a complete rig, came with i5 2520M, 8GB RAM, 1600x900, 128GB Toshiba SSD, and 90W charger. Has HD3000 graphics. The issue was a corrupted Windows 7 install so looks like the guy didn't know how to fix or had time to deal with it.

seller's picture, needs some cleaning up

also had this tape and stickers on the lid

And all cleaned up! It seems to be missing the little sticker for the LEDs on top of the case. Anyone know where I can nab that? Thanks.

front

rear

side

other side. Ditched the DVD/RW drive with a spare 2nd bay SATA caddy and tossed in another SSD in there.

Bottom

dat Sierra Gobi card

Even has the NMB keyboard! Does have some shine on it though. Replaced the touchpad sticker as well

superior OS

modded BIOS with WiFi whitelist removed. Added a Dell DW1510 WiFi card

desktop

specs

programs galore

installing high sierra on the other SSD

a helper! Used this guide https://josephsiu.com/convert-windows-10-thin … os-high-sierra/

macOS 10.13.6 desktop

specs + details

oeuvre wrote:

Hi all,

Got some pretty cool news. Found a ThinkPad T420 on eBay for $63 shipped. It is a complete rig, came with i5 2520M, 8GB RAM, 1600x900, 128GB Toshiba SSD, and 90W charger. Has HD3000 graphics. The issue was a corrupted Windows 7 install so looks like the guy didn't know how to fix or had time to deal with it.

Very neat! Although it's a little strange that the desktop of a ThinkPad would have the IBM logo, even though it's a Lenovo ThinkPad and not an IBM one 😜

I just always loved that wallpaper so naturally it goes on all ThinkPads

This puppy arrived yesterday and I have installed it today:

Goes Like Hell version with a boost clock of 1875 MHz making it the fastest card of its kind (with stock settings). It has a massive heatsink with copper pipes, polymer capacitors (not the can versions like you see on Asus cards), it is really high end, nothing is plastic except for the fans. It also has a RGB LED strip which I didn't know. I had to special order this card because no one in my country has it on stock. The packaging looks and feels kind of cheap, but every penny of the development budget at Gainward obviously went to the design of the card, so that makes sense. The included ExpertTool tweak program also works great.

I've also upgraded the memory of my daily pc (DDR4 is starting to become cheap, so why not?), installed another Corsair LED fan and added a firewire PCIe x1 card (I still use an old Lian-Li case which has a front firewire connector, which I wanted to make working, because everything has to work!!! 🤣).

If I had a card like that, I'd upgrade my hardware to Ryzen 7 or get a bigger, beefier PSU to feed the drives, board, CPU, and peripherals.

bjwil1991 wrote:

If I had a card like that, I'd upgrade my hardware to Ryzen 7 or get a bigger, beefier PSU to feed the drives, board, CPU, and peripherals.

I have built a new pc almost 2 years ago and I upgrade every now and then. For this card you need a good power supply, because the card alone can consume >250W and it takes two 8-pin PCIe connectors.

Upgrade cycles have slowed down so much that I'm losing interest in PC upgrading. Well I can definitely afford $500 for a RTX2070 to get a mere ~30% more FPS than my current GTX 1070, but that's pure lunacy compared to getting TRIPLE the fps from a HD5850 to a HD7950 for $220 in 2013.

That's why graphics hardware with Raytracing enabled to some degree is exciting, it's not just more of the same.

Palladium wrote:

Upgrade cycles have slowed down so much that I'm losing interest in PC upgrading. Well I can definitely afford $500 for a RTX2070 to get a mere ~30% more FPS than my current GTX 1070, but that's pure lunacy compared to getting TRIPLE the fps from a HD5850 to a HD7950 for $220 in 2013.

but RTX2070 doesn't even perform 1/4th as well as an S3 ViRGE

Palladium wrote:

Upgrade cycles have slowed down so much that I'm losing interest in PC upgrading. Well I can definitely afford $500 for a RTX2070 to get a mere ~30% more FPS than my current GTX 1070, but that's pure lunacy compared to getting TRIPLE the fps from a HD5850 to a HD7950 for $220 in 2013.

I come from a GTX 1070. While the fps increase at 1080p and 1440p is quite small (RTX 2070), the fps increase at 4k is significant and the GTX series can’t do hardware raytracing (of which I think it is an evolution in graphics realism). The RTX 2080 performs about the same as the GTX 1080ti in normal games.

I ordered a Jdiag FasLink M2 scanner on Amazon, said it was "delivered," and the item was missing and the package wasn't sealed. I spoke to Amazon on their live chat and I'm getting my money back. I also gave my review on the product and the seller after the incident occurred. Third party sellers should pay the price for that. Well, time to go on eBay and buy one off of there from a seller that has better reviews/feedback or the Blue Driver OBD2 scanner tool that every mechanic has that also has a YouTube channel. Going to Autozone is the last thing on my mind as they don't have OBD2 scanners that check enhanced features, like the ABS, Traction, Transmission, Stability control, and SRS. They do sell those tools, but, they cost more than what I make in a week. End of ramble/rant.

Welp, I purchased another piece of modern hardware a few days ago. It's a mini headphone amplifier that provides kickass audio quality. Here are some pics.

[click to enlarge]

The front side of the amp. On the left are the audio jacks, input is the audio cable connecting from the amp to a computer, and output is the headphones. On the right side is the volume control knob.

[click to enlarge]

The back side. I think the "DC SV" port on the right is where the USB charger for the amp connects.

[click to enlarge]

And here are the cords associated with my headphone amplifier. The cord on the left is the audio cable that connects from my PC to the amp, and the cord on the right is the USB charger for the amp.

[click to enlarge]

On April Fool's Day, I bought a BlueDriver Professional OBD2 scanning tool that I'll be using on my 2001 Oldsmobile Intrigue GX, my dad's 2005 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx LS, and my mom's 2007 Chevrolet Uplander LT to check and see which parts/sensors are broken or might fail in the near future, and get live data to check a few sensors here and there to make sure everything is working correctly and replace said part later on. Might either receive it today or tomorrow (my timezone).

bjwil1991 wrote:

On April Fool's Day, I bought a BlueDriver Professional OBD2 scanning tool that I'll be using on my 2001 Oldsmobile Intrigue GX, my dad's 2005 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx LS, and my mom's 2007 Chevrolet Uplander LT to check and see which parts/sensors are broken or might fail in the near future, and get live data to check a few sensors here and there to make sure everything is working correctly and replace said part later on. Might either receive it today or tomorrow (my timezone).

Those are neat. I use one hooked up in my Hummer H1 with a tablet on the dash for extra info/logging. 😎

Decked out dashboard. My Nexus 7 2012 tablet has Lineage OS 14.1 (Nougat 7.1.2) with GApps installed, SuperSU (rooting software), and trimming software to make the tablet run faster. Unfortunately, it's a 8GB model and I might get the 16GB board, swap them around, and install the custom ROM on there. Might flash the custom ROM on my dad's tablet as well (same thing as mine) or get his working. Also, which dashboard mount did you use for your tablet?

I don't know what the mount is. I bought it years ago.. Just some Chinese one off Amazon. It isn't a dash mount though, it is a suction cup windshield mount. It happens to work well for me since the H1 has a completely vertical windshield that butts right up to the dashboard.

Over the weekend, I bought a Samsung Gear VR controller (new) for my Samsung Gear VR headset (bought new a year or so ago).

Got a new toy today.