The Computer Thread

How much should an 8gb laptop with a separate graphics card and an Intel i5 processor be able to handle, you think? Both gaming and streaming wise?

edited 1st Dec '15 3:01:46 PM by trashconverters

Well, if you can't get it replaced a usb wifi stick shouldn't be problematic. They aren't really that hard to break either, your biggest problem would be losing the damn thing. If you can get another WI FI adapter instead, you should be golden.

That really depends on the processor's capacity and the GUI it has.

edited 1st Dec '15 3:02:47 PM by ElRigo

Not sure how to replace the integrated Wi Fi thing in a laptop, and I don't really want to send it off for repair when I am six days away from a deadline.

Well, unless you have a computer buddy who can get the part for you you are most definitely gonna have to send it to get repaired. Usb stick it is.

BBC: Universities suffer cyber-attack

...Three days before a deadline. Gah.

Yup. Gah's about right. Shows how good their teaching of cybersecurity must be if they're getting done up like a kipper.

On another note, I'm at the final stages of planning the next phase of my Black Box's upgrades. All I'm missing now is a modern graphics card that AMD can be bothered to provide upgrades for. Since they stopped making drivers for my HD 6970, I'm taking that as a cue to get a new card.

edited 8th Dec '15 4:58:05 PM by TamH70

My new laptop's arrived today. All hail Queen Elizabeth, a budget-ish option ($700 Toshiba machine, 3.6GHz i7) that still promises plenty!

(Why the name? Well...my old and quite ageing laptop, now slowly being phased out, is Hermes; my phone is Invincible; and my name is Sabre and I have a naval geekery problem.)

Now for the long and tedious job of migrating my files over...

edited 8th Dec '15 8:53:47 PM by SabresEdge

I am now looking at the setup screen for the software for my new motherboard - my new PC is nearly alive. I feel like Victor von Frankenstein and shouting, "It's ALIVE!!!"

More to do to get to that point, though - I need to get my new graphics card installed, and so on, but at least my Black Box is twitching.

I'm interested in getting this wireless adapter for my Asus G551 laptop to replace the stock unit. Except that I can't find any local vendors carrying it. Well, it's not like I'd save on shipping if I bought it locally...

Nice bit of kit that card. I've been reading about Bigfoot's stuff for a while now, but I've never bought any.

Come Christmastime, I'll get to see what the $1,600 computer I asked for can do. It'll have a 2560x1440 resolution monitor and a $600 graphics card to go with it. However, I don't intend to buy a large size SSD until their price goes down.

The prices on the big ones are falling all the time. There was a 960 Gb one available on sale recently for just north of £150.

Meanwhile, all the bits and pieces are now back on my Black Box. Both side panels are on, all the fans, and there's a lot of them, are hooked up and everything seems fine.

I don't want to even guess how much my current rig would cost if I bought it all retail, especially as a pre-built setup.

I swear I could strangle Windows Update Guy. Every time I want to shut down the computer, it wants to update, and every time it updates it's for one thing only - to wreck my sound drivers and install broken ones from AMD that I know DON'T FUCKING WORK because they've failed on numerous occasions.

I run my system using HDMI for both audio and video from my new graphics card to my 42" television, instead of separate speakers, as I find this more convenient and cuts down on cables. It's worked brilliantly in the past, but for the last year or so AMD keeps dropping the ball with their HDMI audio drivers - they never work. If Realtek didn't have a sort of OEM audio driver on their website I'd never be able to listen to anything coming from my computer apart from fan noise.

And I can't think of anything to stop Windows Update Guy fucking with me apart from disabling Windows Update completely. Anyone have better ideas?

Finally solved that issue. Turns out I had to tell windows not to update the audio driver, and make sure it knew I meant it.

Meanwhile, I'm toying with the idea of putting another 16gb of RAM in my system. Which would be a total of 32gb. Which sounds insane but I can afford it and I have the slots spare on my motherboard.

Damn, what an annoying problem to have. Computers don't have enough standardization to prevent this type of shit.

Anyway, I also have enough space for 32 GB of RAM, but I was told that it would be a waste of time to put the extra 16 GB in, as it would accomplish nothing extra for me. And I do think that's the case. I can run multiple games at once (not filling the screen at once, but one on the screen and others in the background), have an enormous number of tabs open in both Chrome and Firefox, and not have slowdown. I'm fine with what I got.

With the extra RAM, I'd have no bother running RAM disks. And these fit my interests because they could make my machine go faster. Or so I've read.

Besides, the older I get the more I want to use my Black Box for things other than gaming, posting here or watching videos about Fleetwood Mac - and more RAM is always better for stuff like photo and video editing.

My X360 controller isn't working right. In some programs, it thinks I'm rapidly hitting the button, while in some games, it keeps being unable to make up its mind if I'm using a controller or not, and keeps displaying keyboard/mouse controls on the screen.

This is pissing me off. I have Windows 10 64-bit, and the computer claims the controller driver is up to date. Any help?

edited 24th Feb '16 5:22:17 AM by BonsaiForest

Wired or wireless? If it's wireless it could be a hardware problem with the adapter or something interfering with the signal. In either case it could be a hardware issue with the handset.

Tricky one that. You could try uninstalling the drivers after removing the controller, reinstall them, and put the controller back into a different USB port. I've seen that kind of thing work for other USB devices that have decided not to play correctly.

Wireless.

So, you suggest those solutions? I just arrived at work, so I could try those when I get home. I hope at least one of those solutions works!

I am noticing that my controllers' behavior appears to be that of an item that is being unplugged and replugged rapidly in the course of dozens of times a second. Which may explain why my games keep saying "press [keyboard control] to do this", then suddenly swap it to the controller control the instant I move anything on my controller - or keep freaking out back and forth between the two if I'm holding a button.

It may also explain why one game acts like I'm using turbo, thinking I'm pushing a button super rapidly.

I hope it's not a broken USB port that'll screw with everything. I may try switching my controllers' wireless receiver to a different port, and plug my mouse into that one.

edited 24th Feb '16 6:40:38 AM by BonsaiForest

I think there's something wrong with either my mouse or Yahoo! Mail.

Whenever I select a group of emails to move them to a folder, for some reason it un-selects the group and opens one of the emails I clicked on so I could move the group. It does this multiple times until I can do it. It's quite frustrating.

Got another computer today - as part of my apartment block's (as Americans and elsewhere would call it) informal recycling scheme, I got a Dell Precision 530 tower workstation. For free.

I have no idea at all if it works, and I've a sneaking suspicion it doesn't, given that there's no wiring loom between the harddrive and dvd-rw, and the power supply. Things to investigate, I think, are whether it will switch on, and if it doesn't, how much can I get for the bits on Ebay.

edit.

Found out just how old the thing is. Fifteen years. Means the IDE-based and Molex powered drives that I found in the system are as much use as teats on a bull, as there's no way of hooking them up to the PC's power supply. When the thing came out it used SCSI hard drives and those are funny things that require sacrificial goats to work properly.

I have another power supply I'm not using, and this does have Molex leads, but I'm pretty sure it's stuffed. I also have another motherboard, this one a more conventional and modern Intel socket 775 one, but I'm not sure if it works, and if it does, if it will fit into the case.

edited 29th Feb '16 2:12:53 PM by TamH70

Well, since my laptop's 7 years old and has recently begun sometimes shutting down to what I can only determine to be overheating, I've decided to finally make a new computer, and I'm returning to desktops.

Parts list is here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Balmung60/saved/G4x8TW (edit for correct link), Operating System will be Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" (or just reusing my 17.2 "Rebecca" boot drive), and monitor will be sourced locally.

edited 1st Mar '16 5:43:32 PM by Balmung

That is actually looking like a nice, tidy system. It's more powerful in many respects than what used to be in my Black Box Mk.1.

Kudos.

Only drawback is no frontside USB 3.0, but I don't have any 3.0 devices and I really like the Cooler Master 912 design.

EDIT: Whoops, previous post had the wrong part list. Correct list is here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Balmung60/saved/G4x8TW

EDIT EDIT: Double whoops - reviewed my orders placed and I forgot to actually order the CPU when I ordered all the other parts. Fixed now.

edited 1st Mar '16 10:09:01 PM by Balmung