Official Building/Upgrading thread

[heisenberg]

picked up kanto yu2s the other day, and they sound amazing! ncix had them on their weekly sale. kinda expensive tho

[twitchyzero]

having some weird problems with a gt 220 video card, windows and even the booting screens are partially cut off. i didn't install anything recently and going back to a previous OS backup didn't do anything. only cleaned it few months ago so overheating shouldnt be an issue.

right now there's an older display via VGA to mobo
HDMI to the video card

latest nvidia driver couldn't even install, i had to get the one off asus website from 2012 haha. The driver recognize both GPU and iGPU. Same problem, I did desktop resizing to create an odd resolution but still slightly cut off.

Would a hardware failure cause weird ratio issues? I was only aware of flickering/losing signal etc if it's not a complete death.

[Razor Ramon HG]

Been following the release of the upcoming AMD 300x series for a while now.

Made a couple announcements today at E3, most of which surprises me is a R9 Nano..

AMD Announces Radeon R9 Nano 6-in Graphics Card | PC Perspective

On stage at the AMD E3 2015 press conference, AMD's CEO Lisa Su announced the Radeon R9 Nano, a 6-in PCB small form factor graphics card that will feature "2x the performance per watt of the R9 290X" as well as "significantly" more performance than the R9 290X.

Jesus fuck. Even without benchmarks, that's extremely impressive.

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-C...Graphics-Cards

AMD's Joe Macri said on stage that the cooler they designed is built for up to 500 watts but that the board was only going to draw 275 watts, while keeping the board temperature down to 50C!

[iam_dan]

Anyone have the Asus MG279Q monitor? I'm thinking about picking it up, but not sure if I should wait for a 144hz Freesync (MG279Q caps at 90hz when Freesync is on) later this year or just commit to this one.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/asus-mg27...10309-1049.htm

27"
144hz Refresh rate
90hz Refresh rate with Freesync on
IPS 100% sRGB
2560x1440 Resolution
4ms Response time


Another downside is that it doesn't have anti-blur

[FerrariEnzo]

debating if I should get another SSD for apps/games...

I read that installing and uninstalling lots can wear down the life span of SSDs... I currently have a 128gb SSD for my OS.. with the recent price drop on SSD, a 250 can be had for around $150ish range.. or should get a mechanical drive? 750GB Black Notebook Hard Drive is $75 at NCIX.. not bad

BTW, the reason im looking for a small drive is my case has a spot for 2 small drives...

[noTirl]

Originally Posted by FerrariEnzo

debating if I should get another SSD for apps/games...

I read that installing and uninstalling lots can wear down the life span of SSDs... I currently have a 128gb SSD for my OS.. with the recent price drop on SSD, a 250 can be had for around $150ish range.. or should get a mechanical drive? 750GB Black Notebook Hard Drive is $75 at NCIX.. not bad

BTW, the reason im looking for a small drive is my case has a spot for 2 small drives...

If youre not too picky amazon has this 500gb for $170.

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00RQA6M5Y

[Razor Ramon HG]

You'll never wear down a SSD. It'll be obsolete by the time it fails.

[twitchyzero]

ouch
Fury X reviewed
nice cooler, cool HBM tech
but it's ultimately on par with a 980 which is $150 cheaper
HARDOCP - Introduction to Fiji - AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Video Card Review

[tarobbt]

Looks sweet, no memory chips...

[Razor Ramon HG]

The next generation of cards will be the one to really watch.

Fury X has been a bit of a disappointment, but the Nano is very interesting.

[StylinRed]

so, on my htpc my AMD HDMI Audio driver keeps failing

The supported formats will support 5.1 192khz and Dolby True HD, DTS-HDMA and I use it to watch my blu-rays from it

But for some reason out of the blue? i guess whenever i go to use my HTPC (always on) the HDMI out will only support 2.0 stereo and Dolby Digital -_

I have to uninstall the driver and re-install+reboot before I get all the supported formats again



any clues?

[knight604]

great mouse on sale

Logitech G502s Proteus Core Tunable Gaming Mouse at Memory Express

[underscore]

Anybody have experience with third-party laptop docks? We're looking to replace all the desktops with laptops but it looks like only some Dell and Lenovo laptops have dedicated docking stations you can get.

[!MiKrofT]

USB 3.0 docks using the DisplayLink chipset are usually the best ones if your laptop doesn't have a physical docking port.

[StylinRed]

Omg, my laptop just died, I put it in sleep and went to do some other stuff came back to it and its off and won't turn on, it lights up then shuts off immediately -_- bah! @%#$!!

[lilaznviper]

Originally Posted by !MiKrofT

USB 3.0 docks using the DisplayLink chipset are usually the best ones if your laptop doesn't have a physical docking port.

I have these at some offices at work. They work half the time. sometimes the display port doesn't work and most of the time the usb ports don't work.

I find the dedicated docking station is better

[underscore]

Dedicated it is, that seems to leave me with Dell, HP or Toshiba. Unfortunately only Dell is clear on which laptops can and can't have a dock.

[lilaznviper]

Originally Posted by underscore

Dedicated it is, that seems to leave me with Dell, HP or Toshiba. Unfortunately only Dell is clear on which laptops can and can't have a dock.

you might want to take a look at the surface and the docking station from microsoft. It works really nicely together. This might work for you depending on what applications you will need to run.

[!MiKrofT]

True. Dedicated docking works the best of course. However I and a few others at work had no issues using my older Dell E6430U with a USB dock with the DisplayLink and I reconnected that thing every single day.

Originally Posted by lilaznviper

I have these at some offices at work. They work half the time. sometimes the display port doesn't work and most of the time the usb ports don't work.

I find the dedicated docking station is better

For Dell it's mainly the Latitude series that have docking ports since it's more business focussed.

Originally Posted by underscore

Dedicated it is, that seems to leave me with Dell, HP or Toshiba. Unfortunately only Dell is clear on which laptops can and can't have a dock.

This is what I currently use at work with dual 24"

Originally Posted by lilaznviper

you might want to take a look at the surface and the docking station from microsoft. It works really nicely together. This might work for you depending on what applications you will need to run.

[heisenberg]

anyone willing to share a picture of your set ups...?

[underscore]

Originally Posted by lilaznviper

you might want to take a look at the surface and the docking station from microsoft. It works really nicely together. This might work for you depending on what applications you will need to run.

I looked at a couple of those but they were all too small and only came with Win8. I need Win7, 15" screen, 8GB RAM, ~256GB SSD, something like an i5 or i7 as some of the software we run can be pretty demanding and I need to run multiple instances of it.

[Razor Ramon HG]

Latitude E7450 or E6540?

Lenovo must have a few ThinkPads with dock support too.

[underscore]

E7450 is too small, E6540 looks to be the same specs as the others I've looked at aside from the CPU, but it's more expensive atm. Right now leaning towards the Lattitude E5550, i7-5600u (2.6GHz x2), 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 1920x1080 screen with a dual display dock for ~1800, most likely going to add the touchscreen for $200 (much to my annoyance) and backlit keyboard to all of them as well.

Best option from Lenovo is the W550s, but spec'd the same as the Dell it lands at $2300 and the touchscreen upgrade costs twice as much since you need the 3k screen to get it. The $700 difference might be doable if I wasn't buying 7 of them, but $5k is a pretty big price gap overall.

Toshiba and HP seem to have docks but aren't very clear on what laptops can use them, so I'm waiting to hear back from their reps on what options they have.

As a side note the surcharge for upgrading to an SSD anywhere is such bullshit, they charge twice what the drives are worth on their own and they don't remove the value of the basic HDD.

[Razor Ramon HG]

What type of work are you going to be doing?

Reason I ask is, Intel U-series CPUs are fairly weak. They're great for casual uses, but for more intensive purposes such as a workstation, I'd personally get a laptop with a standard M-series such as the i7-4710MQ.

The problem is that I don't know of any business laptops that aren't using ultrabook CPUs at the moment, so you'll have probably have to use a third-party dock.

If you don't mind using a third-party dock, I would recommend a Clevo.

This Clevo P650SE can be configured to your liking - http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure(1,257,0)ec

I'd recommend the following build:
15.6" FHD IPS 1080p
I7-4710HQ
NVIDIA GTX 965M
8GB DDR3
256GB Samsung 850 Pro
Realtek RTL8723BE
(Windows extra)

It comes out to about $1565 after taxes. Of course, this is without any further discounts. I'm sure they would be more than willing to offer you a 10% discount on it + free shipping as they've done for me in the past, bringing it down to around $1410. I'm sure if you're buying multiple notebooks, you'll have even more negotiating power for further discounts or free upgrades.

I think this is way better bang for your buck than the Dell in terms of performance. It's mainly a gaming notebook, but during the time that I had it, there's no reason it couldn't be used as a mobile workstation since it looks exactly like a business notebook (make sure you request the laptop without the Eurocom logos).

EDIT: Oh, I forgot that at least with the 970M configuration, you could plug in three displays natively into the laptop, so you might not need a dock if you don't mind plugging/unplugging cables.

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

Omg, my laptop just died, I put it in sleep and went to do some other stuff came back to it and its off and won't turn on, it lights up then shuts off immediately -_- bah! @%#$!!

So I took my laptop apart and found that the posts on the motherboard which allowed the heat sinks screws to be planted to the video chip were broken so I guess that caused the video chip to fry guess that also explains how easily the laptop was getting hot these days :/

I tried to see if I could reapply the heatsink to see if it would turn on again but nope :/ just blinks on and off still bah