Post here when you buy computer/tech stuff

[ian]

It's a whole new world of viewing for me, it's the first time I've experienced 4K inside the home.

Welcome. YOU. WILL. NEVER. GO. BACK!

From when I got my first LG 4K monitor, I knew it was what I needed in my entertainment and computing life!
Then I got my 55" hisense for the loungeroom. My couch is right about 2 metres (just under) from the TV so I didn't go as big as you.

Did you buy it after a demo instore?
I had a look around for a while, and while samsungs 60"+ TV's looked fucking amazing compared to anything else (regardless of price) the smaller ones (42"-55") what I was looking at weren't as impressive against other brands.
I was looking at an LG 50" for $1298 a Samsung 49" for the same and the 55" hisense I ended up with for $997.

Unlike the large samsungs (that you got) that were smooth and vivid compared to the rest, there was hardly any difference at the smaller size so I saved $300 and got 5 inches extra.

I've gone a bit 4K nutty, I have the TV, my 27" LG monitor, 2 Acer 28" monitors, and a 28" samsung. then bought a PS4 pro to get the most from the TV.
Even the cheapest of the cheap ACER ones are great.
But if you wanna get PC gaming on 4K I can say from first hand experience, you DO need more than a single 1070 to get the most out of it. (I think you had a 1070... 2 of them work though)

I am considering getting rid of the ACERS and Samsung and 1070 to fund a 1080TI. The LG is really amazing despite it being smaller than the others... I can't work out why LG TV's (in any size or price range) are meh, but their monitors are fucking brilliant.

[Skynet]

I'd checked out a few 4K TVs at JB to see what they looked like. But honestly I got such a fucking cheap price on it that I pulled the trigger and bought through someone I know. The JB link I posted 1 page back is about $500+ more than I paid

I'll get a 4K monitor eventually, but I'm in no rush for that at this time. I'll probably upgrade GPU and monitor at the same time later down the track.

[ian]

I've bought some laptops (3).

2 Beautiful HP 15.6" ones. AMD A10s, full HD IPS screens, 256GB m.2 SSDS, 16GB's of 2133 DDR4 ram, backlit keyboards and Bang & Olufsen audio. These things are competent gaming machines on low settings.
Amazing machines, I paid $319 and $279.
and one Acer aspire 15.6". AMD A9, 1366X768 screen, 8GB of 2400 DDR4 ram, 512GB m.2 SSD.
This one is not too special, but for $269 its worth it.. Hell the RAM (single stick of KINGSTON 2400 DDR4 and SAMSUNG SSD are worth that price alone.)

I've also bought a tonne more computer parts which I won't even get started with.

[Matisfaction]

Finally got around to picking up one of these, for the price and the size, the sound on this thing is pretty impressive, it's suppose to have a decent battery life as well.

[OrangeRibbon]

I finally bought an external Bluray drive for my laptop. I didn't think I would miss having the drive but I kept on forgetting and buying CDs for cheap or at concerts and having no way of ripping them.

[melancholy]

Raspberry Pi 3 B+

This is my third Pi, and will replace my current Retropie. I think I am going to turn the old one into a security camera.

[Hawq]

edit forgot the other thread

[Matisfaction]

My 10yr old MacBook is dying a slow death and I can't really afford to splurge on a new Mac Device, so I decided to go for a Chromebook

[pixel]

I got a hot deal on a Note 9, I'm bursting with so much excitement that I can barely keep it in my pants. I'm definitely on fire this holiday season after making this purchase.

[melancholy]

Upgraded my Roku to be 4K HDR compatible. Now I just need to decide if paying the extra $4 a month for 4K Netflix will be worth it.

[Calavera]

Finally bought another hard drive. This one here a 3GB Seagate Barracuda

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6822178994

My other 3TB drive kept getting maxed out and I would go through and try to delete anything unnecessary to free up a few GB. Now I don't have to worry about that!

Also finally added a wireless card. Years and years ago, probably close to 10 years my USB wireless receiver I had quit working. My router isn't that far from my computer and I had a long Ethernet cable laying around so I just used that and never bother to get a new wireless adapter. At goodwill I found an old D-link wireless card that was still in the box and looked like it had never been used for $3. It was from 2006 but I figured for $3 I'd give it a shot. If it didn't work I could always use it in an old PC when I'm messing around with one. I couldn't find a driver for the exact card I have but I did find a 64-bit driver for the chipset it uses. It was an unsigned driver so it took a little bit of messing around to get it to install but it finally did and it actually works fine! I was pretty surprised a 12 year old wireless card was still able to be used on Win 7 64-bit. Will it work on Windows 10 though? Eh idk, the driver should still work but I imagine Windows 10 isn't as easy to install an unsigned driver as 7 is.

[melancholy]

Finally bought another hard drive. This one here a 3GB Seagate Barracuda

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6822178994

My other 3TB drive kept getting maxed out and I would go through and try to delete anything unnecessary to free up a few GB. Now I don't have to worry about that!

Also finally added a wireless card. Years and years ago, probably close to 10 years my USB wireless receiver I had quit working. My router isn't that far from my computer and I had a long Ethernet cable laying around so I just used that and never bother to get a new wireless adapter. At goodwill I found an old D-link wireless card that was still in the box and looked like it had never been used for $3. It was from 2006 but I figured for $3 I'd give it a shot. If it didn't work I could always use it in an old PC when I'm messing around with one. I couldn't find a driver for the exact card I have but I did find a 64-bit driver for the chipset it uses. It was an unsigned driver so it took a little bit of messing around to get it to install but it finally did and it actually works fine! I was pretty surprised a 12 year old wireless card was still able to be used on Win 7 64-bit. Will it work on Windows 10 though? Eh idk, the driver should still work but I imagine Windows 10 isn't as easy to install an unsigned driver as 7 is.

Honestly, it might have an easier time finding the driver on Windows 10. Win 10 has a much larger driver database than 7 did. But to answer your question about unsigned drivers, it MUCH harder to use them on Win 10. It requires booting into a special mode on every startup (kinda like booting into Safe Mode, only one that turns off signed driver enforcement).

[Calavera]

Honestly, it might have an easier time finding the driver on Windows 10. Win 10 has a much larger driver database than 7 did. But to answer your question about unsigned drivers, it MUCH harder to use them on Win 10. It requires booting into a special mode on every startup (kinda like booting into Safe Mode, only one that turns off signed driver enforcement).

It was a similar process with Windows 7. You had to boot into a special mode on startup like you mentioned to install the drivers. Most guides I looked at said you just do that and it works. This is not true, the driver would install but upon rebooting in the device manager the card would show an error of something like "driver not signed so can't load" What I had to end up doing was installing the drivers in that special mode then use a program called Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider to sign the files. After that it works on startup no problem. It was a fairly simple process, the only reason it took me so long is because almost every guide on how to do it was incorrect.

[melancholy]

Huh, I thought that mode was added starting with Windows 8. Didn’t know it existed in 7 too.

[Calavera]

Bought another 8gb of ram which brings me to 16gb total. Another 8GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600. I paid $33.75 for it and that was by far the cheapest I could find. That is funny because when I ordered the original 8GB back in October 2012 it was $37.99. 6 years later and it is still the same price, more expensive in most cases!

[ian]

Thought my Gigabyte Z97 or RAM or 4790k was on the way out so I picked up an Asus Maximus 8 ranger, 6700k and 16GB of 2400MHz Corsair vengeance DDR4.

Then I stuffed around with the timings on the Z97 and fixed all issues by going down to 2133.

So now I’ve got the 6th gen i7 just sitting there.

[Skynet]

I got a Netgear Orbi RBK50 AC3000 Mesh Wifi setup.

https://www.amazon.com.au/NETGEAR-High- ... orbi+rbk50

I price matched at Office Works and they beat it by 5% bringing it down to AU$425 (roughly US$308)

It's a pretty good price when you consider Amazon US has it for US$329 https://www.amazon.com.au/NETGEAR-High- ... orbi+rbk50

[pixel]

I got a Netgear Orbi RBK50 AC3000 Mesh Wifi setup.

https://www.amazon.com.au/NETGEAR-High- ... orbi+rbk50

I price matched at Office Works and they beat it by 5% bringing it down to AU$425 (roughly US$308)

It's a pretty good price when you consider Amazon US has it for US$329 https://www.amazon.com.au/NETGEAR-High- ... orbi+rbk50

I think my dad bought a set of Orbi routers to upgrade his old Apple Airport. He seems very happy with them so far

[Skynet]

I got a Netgear Orbi RBK50 AC3000 Mesh Wifi setup.

https://www.amazon.com.au/NETGEAR-High- ... orbi+rbk50

I price matched at Office Works and they beat it by 5% bringing it down to AU$425 (roughly US$308)

It's a pretty good price when you consider Amazon US has it for US$329 https://www.amazon.com.au/NETGEAR-High- ... orbi+rbk50

I think my dad bought a set of Orbi routers to upgrade his old Apple Airport. He seems very happy with them so far

It's definitely an improvement over my single modem/router device I had previously. My wireless cameras outside respond much quicker than before. Ideally I'd like to get 1 more satellite router to extend the coverage a bit further, but so far it's working better than my previous setup

[pixel]

I bought my first AMD processor after only buying Intel for a decade, a Ryzen 2200G for an emulation machine. I saw ETAPrime's video on the integrated video and thought building an ultra-small computer would be a fun project:



I bought a slightly larger pico PSU, so I'm hoping to push the CPU/APU a little harder for better performance. But I think the case will be the biggest limitation with overclocking.

The plan is to run this on my living room TV for the time being. But I want to build an arcade cabinet once spring comes and mount this machine without a case inside. At that point, I'll either overclock the hell out of it or switch to a beefier Ryzen like the 2600G.