Jade Falcon wrote:

kithylin wrote:

Would it be too much to ask for ya to run the hdtune benchmark on that kingston ssd and share with us? I've been curious about it's real world performance in a real system.. not the paid view of a reviewer channel. Been tempted to try some but not sure how they -really- perform.

I have one, I even let a friend borrow it for a benching setup. I'll give him a ring and see if he's can bench it. In fact I have 2 I let him use for a short wile. I'll be sure to get you a HDtune read and write run provided it can run on win2k. Its in my old 604 setup I gave him to bench so it will be limited to sata2.

I think I payed 30 some dollars a piece for them

Yeah I've seen em around for the price and they seem sort of price-attractive. But I just wonder how they last over time mainly.. did you have em over a year and they still worked? Did you use em exclusively in windows 2000 for a long time? (not vista or win7)

Only used in 2k for a few months. Still work fine. Realy fast in 2k. But sata2 holds it back.

I had such good luck with my adorable thin client I decided to buy another one. This came up & it was cheap so how could I say no?

Ahaha... I've been after one of these for a while actually. It's a *1st gen* Apple TV. That's important, because unlike later Apple TVs, which are ARM, this one is essentially a 1GHz P3 with 256MB RAM, a GeForce chip and a SATA HDD. Also, unlike the ARM variants, these have an unlocked bootloader and can run whatever you want from the HDD or a USB stick. It's still EFI (and is stripped of Apple's BIOS emulation, so sadly getting DOS or Win98 set up seemingly is difficult or impossible), but it's a great little box for Linux or even OSX with the right tweaks.

Current plan is to try to install a reeeeally stripped down instance of Tiger (or maybe even Leopard/Snow Leopard!) and use it as a ghetto Mac Mini with analog video. Just look at all those ports...

It came with XBMC installed. Bodging the green channel for composite video works but is very sinusoid-y. Somehow I don't think this was Apple's intended use-case.

Tiny tower of power!

kithylin wrote:

Would it be too much to ask for ya to run the hdtune benchmark on that kingston ssd and share with us? I've been curious about it's real world performance in a real system.. not the paid view of a reviewer channel. Been tempted to try some but not sure how they -really- perform.

It gets about 400- 420MB/sec read speed in HDDTune after a fresh windows install and indexing disabled on drive C. It's a decent drive for the money. Better yet, A-Data SSDs are just as fast and are very reliable. So far I've used 10-12 to build or upgrade machines for friends and family, and no one has had any issues.

...and then this morning I picked up this (on the right) for a song:

I am absolutely having more fun playing with tiny PCs than I am with full-size ones right now.

It's actually really well equipped for a 10" netbook. Yeah, it's an Atom, but it's a dual-core 64bit with hyperthreading, so it'll run basically anything modern. It has a 320GB HDD, a PowerVR GPU 😜 and the 1GB RAM is expandable to 4GB. That's almost the same specs as the Macbook beside it.

It also has VGA, HDMI, and a dedicated audio line-in jack, none of which the Macbook "Pro" has, and 3 USB ports which is one more than the Macbook. WTF Apple.

The previous owner had done a factory reset, so I was able to experience what one of these would be like if you bought it new. It came with Win7 "Home Starter" and all the goodies installed - Norton, McAffee (both unregistered of course, they were practically fist-fighting to see which was gonna nag me more), Internet Explorer, a shit ton of toolbars and adware, buggy touchpad drivers, and a bunch of preloaded crap apps that nobody ever would use. I don't understand at all how they can flog these in stores set up this poorly - don't they lose money on the mountain of tech support they'd have to dole out?? You'll notice in the above pics, which were taken after less than an hour of ownership, it's not running Win7 anymore.

I feel sorry for the engineers who did such an excellent job speccing out the hardware on this thing, only to have it smeared over with mouldy cream cheese & rancid salmon by whatever marketing/sales driven ingrates who thought it needed to suck more. Fortunately it makes an excellent little Linux book.

^^ I think I have a new favorite laptop. I upgraded the little Acer today with a leftover 2GB DIMM from my Macbook and gave it a thorough cleaning while I had it open. Looks brand new now. Wiped "Windows 7 Home Starter" and put a fresh install of AVLinux on - the new 2016 edition, fully 64 bit. It runs great. Honestly I like this thing better than the Macbook *or* the 15" IdeaPad on the previous page. Yeah the 10", 1024x600 screen is pretty cramped, but it's so adorable I don't even care. Fantastic keyboard for its size too.

xjas wrote:

It also has VGA, HDMI, and a dedicated audio line-in jack, none of which the Macbook "Pro" has, and 3 USB ports which is one more than the Macbook. WTF Apple.

Apple's latest MacBook "Pro" is even worse, and has been much derided for it. Compare that to Apple hardware from the PowerPC era - my 2005 PowerBook has the following: 2x USB, DVI-out (VGA with an adapter), S-video out, Firewire 400 + 800, audio line-in + out, modem + LAN + wireless, and a PCMCIA slot.

Waiting for a GTX 750 Ti to arrive, think I bagged a bargain at £52 plus £2.50 P&P - it's only a 1GB version though.
Could have had a non-Ti 2GB for £60, or a Ti 2GB for £75
Also on my radar was a HD 7790 at £45, but the GTX750Ti seems to have it pipped on performance, and on lower power consumption - and at the moment, I seem to have settled in the green camp.

Will have the possibility of a return, so if anyone says "no you fool, the 1GB is rubbish", then I might swap

Which means my next best machine gets the GT730, unless it's worth running as PHYSX to the GTX 750 Ti

Only fly in the ointment with that, my motherboard's two PCI-E x16's drop to x8 if both are used, so I'm not sure if that configuration would be worthwhile

Matth79 wrote:

Waiting for a GTX 750 Ti to arrive, think I bagged a bargain at £52 plus £2.50 P&P - it's only a 1GB version though. Could have […]
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Waiting for a GTX 750 Ti to arrive, think I bagged a bargain at £52 plus £2.50 P&P - it's only a 1GB version though.
Could have had a non-Ti 2GB for £60, or a Ti 2GB for £75
Also on my radar was a HD 7790 at £45, but the GTX750Ti seems to have it pipped on performance, and on lower power consumption - and at the moment, I seem to have settled in the green camp.

Will have the possibility of a return, so if anyone says "no you fool, the 1GB is rubbish", then I might swap

Which means my next best machine gets the GT730, unless it's worth running as PHYSX to the GTX 750 Ti

Only fly in the ointment with that, my motherboard's two PCI-E x16's drop to x8 if both are used, so I'm not sure if that configuration would be worthwhile

I don't know your budget but I did a quick search and there's a HD 6970 2GB card for £70.00 + £5.00 shipping.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262727448300

It's +16% faster than the 750 Ti and double the ram @ 2GB.

Or a used HD 6950 2GB card for £61.99 with free P&P. Still +4% faster, but 2GB card.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222123490779

Both are UK sellers within UK.

Got this for tinkering around a little bit:

Also waiting for an Orange Pi PC, similar device, but from China, cheaper, not as much software available.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Got this for tinkering around a little bit: […]
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Got this for tinkering around a little bit:

Also waiting for an Orange Pi PC, similar device, but from China, cheaper, not as much software available.

I have the first two versions. Considering how cheap wireless usb are I'd have liked more ram on board for the last version and use one usb port for that.

Bought a Sempron 2650 AM1 Dual core 1,45Ghz 1MB L2. Lowest cpu to compare to older fast 32bit ones.

kithylin wrote:

I don't know your budget but I did a quick search and there's a HD 6970 2GB card for £70.00 + £5.00 shipping. […]
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Matth79 wrote:

Waiting for a GTX 750 Ti to arrive, think I bagged a bargain at £52 plus £2.50 P&P - it's only a 1GB version though. Could have […]
Show full quote

Waiting for a GTX 750 Ti to arrive, think I bagged a bargain at £52 plus £2.50 P&P - it's only a 1GB version though.
Could have had a non-Ti 2GB for £60, or a Ti 2GB for £75
Also on my radar was a HD 7790 at £45, but the GTX750Ti seems to have it pipped on performance, and on lower power consumption - and at the moment, I seem to have settled in the green camp.

Will have the possibility of a return, so if anyone says "no you fool, the 1GB is rubbish", then I might swap

Which means my next best machine gets the GT730, unless it's worth running as PHYSX to the GTX 750 Ti

Only fly in the ointment with that, my motherboard's two PCI-E x16's drop to x8 if both are used, so I'm not sure if that configuration would be worthwhile

I don't know your budget but I did a quick search and there's a HD 6970 2GB card for £70.00 + £5.00 shipping.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262727448300

It's +16% faster than the 750 Ti and double the ram @ 2GB.

Or a used HD 6950 2GB card for £61.99 with free P&P. Still +4% faster, but 2GB card.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/222123490779

Both are UK sellers within UK.

Nice suggestions, but had already ruled out anything below ATI/AMD GCN, as when I had my HD5670 before that, I was on the latest legacy driver and getting nagged to update - to a driver that wouldn't support it.

Budget, flexible, performance target, the freebies coming up on Uplay.

With a 125W AMD 965BE and a good name (Silverstone) 500W PSU good for 36A at 12V, the 250W TDP 6950 would be out as there are only 2x 6pin (max 225W load). And the question, how far is it worth taking the GPU with that somewhat retro CPU.

I was tempted by the HD7790 as that little gem is GCN1.1 - tends to be cheap as it's in the old numbering scheme, but really sits somewhere with the R7 series

I bought a second MSI KN9D SpeedSter2 from a different seller. I believe the first one was lost in the mail. Best case scenario I'll have two.
I had this one sent USPS air mail from Germany. I'll get this one for sure.

Scooore! My GTX 750 Ti arrived, the one that was meant to be a 1GB
Actually was the MSI 2GB OC model - I guess they misread the 1 in the last part of the model as being 1GB .... not that I'm complaining 😎

Probably my most expensive purchase in this year

An ultrawide LG 29UM68-P

Ips,29" and have freesync as soon as i got DP cable gonna test how's it works,so far everything is pretty exciting,and better than pair of tn+film monitors 😊

Ordered a cheap 10/100/1000 PCI NIC (probably a OEM version of a TP-Link card; the shop I ordered it from had both and they looked the same, had the same specs and supported the same OSes, except one was 1.5 Euro cheaper than the other) to bring my Pentium II online. Also ordered two 75 cm long power cables because improvements in my desk cable management mean I can use shorter cables...

I have a thing for ITX cases, motherboards, and Mac Minis (the ones with optical disc drives) so I couldn't resist this case:

I plan to make it a HTPC to replace an old Tivo series 1 that can no longer record. I'm not sure a Celeron 847 will do 1080p, but I'll try. 1080p isn't important as I'm going to hook it up to an SDTV for now. Last time I used XMBC aka Kodi, its DVR feature was garbage. I hope it is better now or there are Linux alternatives. If not I'll have to buy another Windows license.

Not computer hardware, but audio hardware is the next best thing.
I just upgraded to Denon's flagship receiver, the AVR-X7200WA. This thing is incredible. Unlike many of the AV receivers I've owned in the past, this one sounds so...hi-fi! It weighs a ton too. The first thing I noticed when I picked it up was how evenly distributed all of that weight was. Unlike many other AVRs, the transformer in this unit is located smack dab in the middle, not off to the side.

Some things are still made in Japan. 😮

New HDD : LINK 😀 (Marvell controller on Sabertooth X79)