The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

That's great on the refurb of your controllers there nothing worst than a floppy stick, no pun intended? ;P English was my worst subject I don't know if I could handle 4 years of it, but sure could use the schooling!

I too still have 2 original XBox's, one of the two is almost brand new. They had a lot of great games on that console. I also still have a very good shape Genesis console that I should get out and is another one I'd like to still play. My Intellivision died years ago so I should see if you can still buy those, there was an online shop still selling them a year ago, before I can't! I loved that console and even though the games are blocky I sure would like to play some of the great games that came on that console. Colecovision & Atari 800's would be other loved consoles.

I like playing the old system as well and emulation for some of them but that normally isn't as good as the real thing.

 

Just dealt with a windows 8 laptop. I must say, I'm thoroughly disappointed. Huge step in the wrong direction, compared to 7. Some people like it, but it will take a great deal of time for me to get over the initial shock LOL!

Apparently, someone disabled the wifi at the driver level. Took me 5 min to fix it. Would have gone quicker, but finding device manager took most the time :S

 

I hear you, I've played with it quite a bit and for me to use it I have to do a series of tweaks and mods before it is usable and if I'm going to do that why not just stay with Seven, the little bit of performance boost isn't worth the efforts in my thinking...

 

Yep Windows 8 can be gotten to a usable state. But given the effort required, not to mention the relative difficulty in removing a Windows 8 format from a hard drive, I really don't find any benefit in using it. The performance differences are minute for anyone with a halfway modern PC anyway, so the only real-world factor is usability. Windows 8 doesn't offer a single damn thing for the home user that Windows 7 doesn't already have. The majority of the time, 7 does those things with dramatically less hassle and with orders of magnitude more efficiency. The amount of effort required to do daily tasks and other simple things has been tripled. That's only the tip of the iceberg. The few powerful features Windows 8 DOES offer for say a professional environment are quickly overshadowe4d by the fact that even advanced users can't properly navigate the piss poor cartoon GUI.

Downgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 7 on customer machines at work is a nightmare. 9 times out of 10 the only remotely efficient solution is to remove the hard drive from the machine and Killdisk it in an external dock. Otherwise the drives have a factory format that ties your MFT with the UEFI BIOS. A form of poorly thought out DRM more than anything. Microsoft is basically trying to engineer Windows so it's the only thing you can install on a given set of hardware. I am only too happy to put up with the bother to get people away from Windows 8.

Start8 and ClassicShell are a start in the right direction, but they are FAR from the kind of fix that makes me want to use the OS. Disabling Metro entirely like was possible in RC versions is the only thing that will shift my opinion. The RC Version of Windows 8 is fantastic, and is essentially Windows 7 1/2. Just faster, cleaner, and better. The retail version was essentially a bait and switch..

 

Epic fail! LOL! And a freeware circumvents. Boy I'm surprised LOL!

 

Yet you need to go back to the tiles when doing anything. It just has the option to start in the existing desktop mode by default. It doesn't disable Metro, which is where the problem lies. Control panel for example no longer exists in the traditional sense. It's now all split into Metro.

 

The release of Windows 8.1 only brought back the "Start Button" but it is rumored that 8.2 plans to bring the true Start Menu back to Windows. My guess is that like mentioned it will still run under the Metro system so what have you gained?

Good point Jeff...

a snippet from Kevin Parrish (a positive spin)
on Windows 8.2

 

No experience with Oppo, never even heard of the brand.
My £250 Pioneer VSX-922 has an ethernet port on it, so I'm not sure what that's about. I was ideally hoping for a player that supported 3 analog outputs on the same channel for 5.1 passthrough to another analog device, but you have to pay almost triple what I did to get that, it simply isn't worth it.
Because for my small room the Logitech Z-5500s are all I could ever need, I've wired the satellites to the amp on the Pioneer, which can unsurprisingly drive them fine - since the subwoofer on the Logitechs isn't really geared up to be used separately, I'm using the SUB OUT of the Pioneer with a RCA to 3.5mm going to the centre/sub channel of the original Logitech control unit. Works fine for my purposes, even if it is a bit of a hack.
I looked at HDMI upscale, but didn't consider it worth it at the time as budget was fairly limited, and I couldn't really envisage much that would use it. I do use a 4K display but the difference between upscaled and internally pixel doubled sources isn't really great enough on a 32" display to warrant replacing the receiver at this stage. I'd consider it if I move somewhere that facilitates a 55" or so TV like you've purchased.

Jeff: Sounds good on the N64 controller refurb, I'm trying to remember if there was any appreciable difference between my N64 pads new vs. their latter years. I do remember they became a little bit less tactile, and picked up some sort of rattle, but still worked perfectly well enough.
I wasn't aware of an official gamecube component cable, but I bought a multi-purpose component cable for around £15 a few years back which covers the gamecube and the PS2.

The original Xbox is one of the few modern consoles I've spent very little time with. There were a lot of games I missed out on that gen as I was limited to only having one console of the major three (Previously I'd achieved more via my brother owning some of them).

On the Windows 7 vs. Windows 8 debate, 8 is unquestionably inferior to 7 from both a user experience and reliability standpoint. Businesses are usually pretty strict about allowing only Windows 7 laptops to be ordered with good reason - supporting them in a business environment is not remotely cost-effective.
I use it on my PCs, but three out of four of them have some pretty alarming bugs, that really beg being reformatted to get rid of. It's not something I've got rouind to doing hyet...
Oh, and I of course use classicshell on all of my PCs, and I install it on almost every Win8 machine I come across at work to make the user experience more tolerable.
As annoying as this is, I was absolutely dumbfounded to discover that Server 2012 uses that interface as well. An example of why this is a problem is one of our client's servers had a desktop icon shortcut to cmd, as that was the only way of getting access to a command prompt without a fight.

The 'fixes' in 8.1 are a means of promising people a useable O/S and implementing nothing of the sort. Careful wording allowed people to give them the benefit of the doubt and fix the mess they created with 8, only to discover they'd done nothing that really helped.
My last understanding was that Windows 8.2 was not going to exist, and instead become Windows 9 which would be at least a further 18 months away.

A few of my gripes with 8:
- A fairly good proportion of the time (and almost always with certain applications) - a crashed process will enter a protected state, where the only option to terminate it is to reboot the machine. This does not stop the PC rebooting, so clearly windows has the rights to terminate it, but the user (via TaskManager, or even third party apps like Process Explorer) does not. If you can only run one instance of a process (e.g. most games), enjoy needing to reboot if they ever crash.
- 'Update and shutdown' only occurs a certain proportion of the time - I think there's a registry hack you have to run to enable it. Forcing people to 'update and restart' in said is mildly annoying, but it gets better. When an update is due, the default option when you shut down is 'Switch user'. Since there is no notification on the desktop that an update is pending, when you go to shut down, you just hit enter quickly as you're used to doing, and end up back at the switch user screen, not even having logged off - so you need to log back in again, then go to shut down and pick the correct option.
- A further point on that note, windows update enforces a mandatory 48-hour reboot after updates are applied. I think this can be changed in group policy editor, or perhaps the registry, but there's no UI to disable this behaviour - so you'll be working away and suddenly poof, the PC reboots without warning. After all, since you're in the desktop you had no idea an update was coming. These notices are only displayed in the metro area.
- The touchscreen keyboard is a bit bugged. On my LAN PC, every time I play Battlefield 4 (now if you want bugs ), once the game has loaded I need to alt-tab, open the services.msc page and do a properties on the touch keyboard service. I don't even need to change any values, just the very fact the properties page is open allows Windows to realise I'm not trying to play Battlefield with a touchscreen. If I don't do this, the keyboard and mouse do nothing.

There's plenty others, but I think you can see the kind of stuff people have to put up with.

 

Nice to see you back on the thread Sam. Your tiny speakers should sound fine with a decent receiver. It's too bad you can't setup a good audio system in your room as it is a whole different world, I dread the day that I would have to rely on computer speakers for my pleasurable listing environment. Luckily you're not getting DC feedback converting RCA-to-TRS connection, I do that in certain situations and can get a noise floor problem of approximately 20dB of 60 cycle feedback. I overcome it with an isolation transformer that doesn't hinder my frequency response to terribly, it's a high quality transformer but it does affect the gain slightly.

I use my Yamaha RX-V2400 for most of my connections as it is the heart of my system. I'm going to upgrade the old girl though and most likely go to the Yamaha CX-A5000 Preamp in chorus with my Crown XLS amps. Or I'll get the Yamaha Adventage RX-A3030 receiver but the preamp is truly my best path.

Well the Pioneer does have a LAN connection, I missed that, it doesn't have a WLAN but you can buy it additionally. The Pioneer Elite BDP-62FD is a very good player from a Audio & Video stance I found out after digging around some more. I also can mod it to make it even better so it is back in the fold of considerations. Also 4K upscale isn't important really for this player as it will be more so my Audion player, primarily! With that said I've eliminated the Sony due to all sorts of potential problems playing different formats and this is what I'm now focusing on:

#1 - Yamaha Blu-ray 3D™ Player BD-S677 (Excellent player and fully integrates with my audio gear and smart phones)
#2 - Pioneer® Elite Blu-ray 3D™ Player BDP-62FD (great audio/video and is moddable)
#3 - OPPO BDP-103D Darbee 3d/4K Player (all around good, from what I've read) This might still be the best?

Here is my existing Yamaha RX-V2400





Here is the Yamaha CX-A5000 Preamp:





And here is the Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A3030:





You my toys!!
Steve ;P

 

That RX-a3030 is a beast! I want it! But $2000 from newegg? 8 paychecks, if I weren't paying bills :S You do get what you pay for though

 

Heh tiny speakers - the satellites are still 60W RMS each you know? They go pretty unpleasantly loud in a small room, I would have no use for anything more powerful at all. People have been known to crack ceilings with Z-5500 sets.

Yeah I've been around, reading posts, but I don't often have much to post about myself, been busy with work for so long I regularly forget what I was going to do with my spare time

 

60W RMS? My tweeters on their own can handle more then that. Besides speaker wattage isn't always a good measuring factor, actually normally not at all unless it is a venue issue. With my clean amps, the Crown's, and not clipping the signal I could easily drive your 60W speakers ate twice their continuous rating and not blow them. But I know for small speakers that those are extremely nice, I wasn't meaning to rib you on that but knew my comment would get a spark from you. Seriously though if you listened to my system you would definitely see where I'm coming from and appreciate that stance.

You always have great input so it's nice to see you chime in, whether it's indifference or not! I sure get being busy and not having time, for sure.

Yes Kevin I know you would love to play with the latest Yamaha and would love it too. If you dig around you can find the RX-A3030 for around $1500 USD, still a serious chunk of change though....

Steve

 

Yes indeed. Nor when comparing amplifiers. For instance, a 200W Precision power amplifier, would likely smoke a 600W sony amplifier.

 

Absolutely!!

 

After enough hard use the sticks lose their spring entirely and flop around freely. Several people I know personally have had the same issue. (Any puns not intended lol)

The component cable for the Gamecube to do progressive scan was only officially available in Japan and has active hardware in it. A pretty price was paid for the official one.

You maybe thinking of composite, as the ONLY component cable ever made for the Gamecube was the official one, and as mentioned above, requires active hardware in-line.

 

No, I'm thinking of component. Doing some reading a lot of cables like this were 'fake' i.e. sending a composite signal down the component cables, so not ideal, but that's possibly what I bought. If anything, it's more useful for a number of I/O connectors reason than a picture quality reason.

Point well understood about speaker wattage, but they're not the usual standard 2-5W satellites you get with PC speakers, and they can run up to the 110dB @1m mark without much distortion - as I say, plenty good enough.

 

I've got some Altec Lansing 3.5" drivers with a sub that have a sensitivity of 116db @ 1w/1m, not 2.65mV, and they sound good for what they are, but again they are nothing compared to a real stereo and real drivers, not even close! Small drivers and especially ones that can't reproduce tight, strong, lows, can easily be highly efficient for their optimum range, and again that doesn't make them great either. However efficiency is a important factor in some models but there are other models were less efficiency actually works better as dumb as that sounds. Polk Audio speakers are a prime example, with the right size amp a Polk system can sound fantastic, depending.

I also have some older Logitec's and Cambridge surrounds for my PC's that are decent but not serious speakers.

I'm familiar with your speakers and I haven't misrepresented them even if you think they are better than what I think, as I think they are just OK, definitely not seriously high fidelity speakers, truly....

You put your speakers up against my Klipsch and there will be NO CONTEST, night and day in sound environment, not even close.

But that's OK, if you are happy with them good for you, I've had/have much better and have worked around even better stuff than what I have, if only I could afford really high end gear. To a heavy, my gear would be middle/high-end of the road, but to achieve real high-end that would require 10 times to even 100 times what I've spent for my gear, so it's above my pay grade.

In the audio world, especially high-end, spec's are a minimal point as there are too many thing's spec's just do not cover, and I know you want to wrap your hands around that like it will tell the whole truth, when it is only a starting point even if the numbers aren't fudged, as they so often are.

 

Likewise I've been pretty busy figuring my life out so haven't been posting much lately. I haven't posted in the majority of the forums for about a year, but I do keep up with 5 or 6 major threads and post in those when I have valid input.

As far as audio quality, the cheapo Logitech X-530 setup I've had forever is surprisingly good. There is definitely enough quality in the speakers to easily tell the difference between onboard sound and my $150 X-Fi sound card. 70W RMS 7.4 watts x 4, plus 15.5 watt center speaker and 25-watt subwoofer.

The subwoofer is more than enough to rattle windows and have my parents at the other end of the house yelling I almost always leave the sub's power knob turned to the minimum setting and the sound card's Bass Redirection at 150-200Hz. Otherwise it's sometimes overwhelming. Not the most responsive bass, but certainly not muddy. The satellites/center are likewise more capable than their wattage would suggest. Quite powerful sound for what they are. Any proper set of stereo equipment is going to whomp them, but they are a standout product in their class. I can't speak for their ability to fill a larger room. Never tried it.

 

I can get the neighbors yelling down the block but that's no indicator. There is a kid at work with his smart phone that we yell at when he is playing his RAP (CRAP), I know you like crap. ;P

Jeff if you listen to a decent stereo verses your 530's or Sam's 550's you wouldn't even consider an argument, truly!

This is the point as you stated...

FYI, if you guys are thinking of a UHD TV Vizio is coming out with a 50", 55", and 65" for a $1000 to $1500 this fall, it is well worth the money at that price.