The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Sorry for muddying up the thread with politics. Jeff is right. Politics can turn friends into enemies. Let's not go there

Steve, she seems to like the Roku. She's not very tech savvy at all. It's a VERY simplistic user interface. Even a child or monkey could figure it out. I was under the impression that it was a general media player. Not one usb port! It merely excepts a wifi signal. And on top of that, you have to register on Roku.com, and submit your credit card information, in case you decide to use/purchase channels in the store. Thankfully, it requires a numerical code (4 characters) to purchase things. She has children over often.

 

Is there a big difference between EIPS and IPS monitors?

 

You won't tend to find original IPS monitors any more, that will usually be used as shorthand for either S-IPS or E-IPS / H-IPS. The former is the 'original' tech that popularised IPS for consumer displays, the S providing slightly better response times (in the 8ms-12ms segment rather than 20+), E-IPS and H-IPS are more modern versions which allow less powerful backlights to be used for the same brightness, and offer better contrast ratios (as early S-IPS panels had poor black levels and contrast)

 

@ sammorris

ok but the reason i ask this is because the LG 24EC53V-P states IPS where has the Dell UltraSharp U2412M is said to be E-IPS. Are you saying that there is no noticeable difference between them?

 

My TV adapter is a HDMI port in structure that the dongle connects to not USB and uses WiFi to connect to the internet or I believe you can use a LAN port on the TV as well but the nice thing is that my TV remote also controls Roku, a nice feature.

I may have to get Roku at least to play with it to see if it is worth while. I don't really need it as my other TV's and Blu-ray players have what they now call Smart technology in them. Plus I'm planning on buying a Samsung UHD player as well which has even better internet features.

Thanks Kev...

ddp, I know the order of the presidents, you obviously didn't follow the last 3 and then the useless peanut farmer statement, he wasn't the 4th in order nor did I state it that way.

 

It certainly has more channels than I'm used to seeing. I believe she selected 21 channels to be installed, on Roku.com, before the initial setup. Our bluray player only has Netflix, Youtube, and two others I forget which, since I don't use them

 

And here I sit with basic cable... Never invested in a Blu-Ray player or a Smart TV. Happy with my HDMI cable routed through the ceiling from the file box... PS3 sitting around for the odd disc-based media.

 

Finally my 4 plus year old Plextox PX-810 drives gave out the good news is the Asus sata drives DRW-24B1ST are cheap 33.98 for both shipped from newegg

 

Yeah well I'd advocate the means I use to watch TV/film etc but it isn't exactly user-friendly

 

I'm no stranger to un-friendly interfaces. I just don't think the large majority of it justifies that much effort. Would possibly get a setup capable of wireless streaming to eliminate the HDMI out, but otherwise not very interested. I have no problem getting any show or movie I need, and it's cake to simply enable my TV as a third monitor/audio output and drag my media player there.

 

Happen to know where theres a couple still in use TEE HEE![oops meant 716 Plexys ]

 

OOhh! I believe the 716's were highly revered drives. -_- <-------- Jealous.

My optiarc 7200S is quite the champ though

 

Hey Sam, thanks for that hardware list (back before I spent a solid week moving somebody out of a 20-year rental.) I have added those items to my newegg Haswell wishlist.

You mentioned i7, whereas I had been looking pretty seriously at i5 - as you say $110 less. The i7 offers hyper-threading, but I am not really aware that HT helps you at all on games, although you mention that "for heavy games" the i7 might be worth the extra investment. Could you expand on that comment? What kind of heavy game? The kind that I play - 2560x1600 with lots of AA? Tomb Raider? Far Cry 3? Crysis 3? 'Splain please!

To solve the Haswell heat issue, I believe I would delid it - that's another reason maybe for the 4670 - if I screw it up - it's $200 not $300. I think I have the patience to do it - Blaze pretty much convinced me it's not that hard, and some YouTube videos have given me confidence. One YouTube showed before and after temps. With the terrible insulating paste removed, the chip runs cool. Just as nice as sandy bridge.

On your memory, I see you picked Corsair low profile 1600, which is what I had looked at but in 4 gig size, for $89 for 8 gigs, or $180 for 16 gigs, about the same price. But I think you have said before that it is easier to overclock with just two memory sticks, rather than dealing with 4, is that correct?

Regarding the gigabyte board, I had pulled up the UD4H model, running about $35 more - it has a few more reviews - without diving into it, I don't really see any difference between the two so I don't know what the extra $35 is for, but you probably do. Care to comment?

Regarding that last item:

......which was the beautiful Noctua cooler, and yes I agree, however about 6 months ago I impulsively sprung for the new "TRUE"



the Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme, with two 140mm fans (and which can take a third fan) sitting in the box in the cabinet just behind me.

And yes, you are right, I would want to totally push the chip, which is why, in addition to putting the big cooler on it, I would also consider de-lidding it (after thoroughly testing the cpu to make sure it's good before I pulled out my razor blade - yikes!!)


Regarding the Roku - I ended up installing a roku also. It performed beautifully, and I didn't like the registering part - but oh well. I used paypal as my source of buying - and if you don't buy, you don't pay. But ... after a lot of research I think I screwed up in buying the Roku, because that family member likes YouTube - and while somebody - maybe it was FredBun with the excellent politics - hahahaha - anyway somebody said their blueray pulls up just a few channels including YouTube - the Roku WILL NOT pull up YouTube.

I WAS NOT AWARE OF THAT LIMITATION AND NOW I HAVE BUYER'S REMORSE.

However, it's only $100 so what the heck. With the money that Stevo throws into his awesome hardware and $20k + audio system, I am ashamed at how little I spend for the enjoyment I get from video games, lol. So I can't complain too long and hard about $100.

It's a nice device, and other than no YouTube, it works very well. I watched 9 episodes of Breaking Bad on Netflix - which I was curious about after they won the Emmy a couple Sundays back. The cast was so excited to win the Emmy, their acceptance speech made a big impression on me, and after somebody said it was about making meth, I thought - well that's a show that Kevin would like. So I watched it at full 1080p, and the Roku streamed it beautifully with no problems. (By the way, I got their best model, and I did spring $5 extra for the tiny 2 gig memory chip you shove in the side.)

The set, a 24" Samsung, looked gorgeous. In fact, it looked just like 4k. Literally. I am not exaggerating at all, because on that Samsung 24" monitor, 1080p has the same pixel density as 4k on a 48" screen, like the big-screen Toshiba my brother picked up. Am I right?

So I have always been shocked looking at that Samsung - 1080p on it is like a photo. I am here to tell you that when 4k hits full mainstream, and we have that kind of pixel density on 48" screens, picture quality like that will indeed be wonderful!

Almost as wonderful as when the Finians defeated Canada! (As I recall, soon thereafter they decided it was just too damn cold, so they came back home.)

Anyway, back to YouTube ... other than a blu-ray, what similar product to Roku DOES pull up YouTube? Anybody know? I heard that the Apple TV product pulls up YouTube. Anybody have any experience with that?

Rich

 

Yeah, outside of our blu-ray player, and the Roku, my experience is pretty limited in that regard. I imagine the WDTV Live boxes might be capable. Wouldn't surprise me anyhow.

 

Hmmmm. WDTV LIVE. Never heard of it. Okay, I'll look it up. I know somebody who has Apple TV and bragged about it to me but I didn't ask for a demo - next time I'll ask to see some YouTube.

 

Yup. Confirmed. And from what I'm seeing on their site, it has at least as many channels as the Roku.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=570

I had one for a short time. But this was a few years ago. It was quite dandy. It only had trouble with a couple files in 100. Not too bad.

 

Just a little update from me. Got my hands on a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro. Basically very close my XtremeMusic, but it has the X-Ram which acts as a hardware audio buffer. Now both PCs can drop the ancient Audigy 5.1 chips and have the slightly less ancient X-Fi chips

Pretty happy about that as it was a ~$140 card for free and works quite nicely. See my profile for the full specs of both systems.

 

Question for you guys with the roku's or whatever other ways to go about it I think it's called streaming, I'm new to most of it, a neighbor of mine just got into it, he bought a sony bluray wifi player with the netflix capability, after he set it up which by the way the wireless network part was a nightmare, but a nice collection of tv viewing, but the quality was a little like watching a vhs tape, do you guys have the same experience.

 

Hyper threading or otherwise, the i7s show some benefit in certain games, and latterly a small number of titles are supporting about 6 cores (e.g. BF4).

You should double check that cooler you have supports LGA1150 as Haswell uses a different socket to Sandy and Ivy Bridge.

Correct, 24" 1080p (which, by the way, PC monitors have been doing for over 8 years) is the same density as 4k but the larger resolution allows that quality of detail to fill more of your field of view - I.e. sit closer or have a bigger screen and still have the same crisp image.

If you ever used a 14" CRT to play modern content you'd have marvelled at how high definition it was. Same reason.