Tom's Hardware of Finland

Monitor is the more vanilla solution, but if you want a hub I recommend sticking it to the underside of your desk like this to avoid a visible tangle of extra junk:

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Heck yeah, that was my initial thought.

Ok, so I’ve looked into 2200g builds. A nice looking tiny one with a Chopin or Antec ISK will cost me $400. A decent looking smaller one will cost me $310. But the third option is kind of the one I want someone to verify for me is this:

Upgrading old business boxes with GTX1030s? I can do 2-3 of these for $500. They’ll be bigger, but I really like the way Lenovo ThinkCentre PCs look. I actually really like the tiny laptop-y ones, too, but I’d need to add a GPU to those things, so… Has anyone done this before? I am watching videos on Youtube and it’s seeming like it’s really easy, but it seems so easy that it can’t possibly be true? Please help.

I have not done that before but it should be that easy, you just need to watch out for a few things:

  1. Some OEM machines might not like it if you try booting with a replacement gpu, so I’d double check online if a particular model gave anyone trouble

  2. Don’t buy the DDR4 version of the 1030

  3. If the machine you get needs low profile, make sure the card includes its bracket or can have its bracket ordered

I bought a non low profile generic chinese offbrand as my first ebay purchase and wtf this is dumb (I’m a moron).

Other things I’m learning: 750TIs are the best budget friendly GPU/$$ if you’re getting the full fat version. I need a skinny version and low profile 750TIs on eBay go for as much as a new 1050. Tldr if you buy a budget SFF PC like my Lenovo ThinkCentre you should just go super easy and buy a 1030 low profile off Amazon for 2 day shipping and ugh wtf am I going to do w/ this other stupid thing I thought I was getting a stupid deal on

geez I bought a friend a low profile 750Ti for like $100 four years ago

This is why normies buy Playstations instead of build computers

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Intel needs to actually start competing at the low end again, this is getting ridiculous

  1. Ebay refunded my money for that bogus GPU
  2. I set up a GT1030 in the business box and it’s running overclocked,but still nabbing me 60fps in most of the game.
  3. Not finding super cheap SFF i5 ThinkCentres + Win 10 around. UWMadison has 2nd and 3rd gen i3s, but I am fairly certain I need quad cores. Optimally I’ll have 4 of these Moon Fields consoles, so I can just keep looking…
  4. Realized that the GT1030 doesn’t do any kind of capture, so I need to upgrade to at least a GTX1050 for a streaming/Parsec box
  5. Also realized the i5-3470 in this old PC is way better than the i5-750 in my older PC which should have been obvious but it wasn’t so

Cool

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at this point I’m hoping the rumoured new Macbook to be announced in a couple weeks is just all ARM already

I know it’s a couple years ahead of what everyone is expecting but Intel is doing nada

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come on

that’s 2x the GPU performance on a chip with 1/5 the peak TDP and near-equal CPU performance (both single and multithreaded)

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I go to my parents home often enough that I’ve been thinking of getting a laptop I can play games on. I’ve got a Microcenter near me and have been eyeing this on sale(?) for $750: http://www.microcenter.com/product/507458/g3-15-3579-156-gaming-laptop-computer---black

  • Intel Core i5-8300H Processor 2.3GHz
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5
  • 8GB DDR4-2666 RAM
  • 1TB Hybrid Hard Drive+8GB Cache
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Home
  • SD Card Reader
  • 10/100/1000 Network
  • 1x1 802.11ac Wireless+Bluetooth 5.0
  • 15.6" Full HD IPS Anti-Glare LED-backlit Display

Does this seem like a solid get for the price? I can’t figure out if it’s actually a sale or not because I can’t find a price history tracker for Microcenter, but if it is a sale it should end at the end of the month per Microcenter’s typical sale schedule. But my main concern is whether I’d be better off waiting until Thanksgiving/Black Friday for a deal on a better laptop. The $750 seems like a good price for a GTX 1060 laptop and I don’t want to pay a few hundred more unless there’s a very good reason for it, even if it’s on a Black Friday sale, but could I expect something better to come down to the $750-800 range? Or should I just grab this while I can?

to be honest I’m actually more forgiving of a 15" form factor with an Nvidia GPU now than I was for most of the past five years just given how much the ultraportable space has stagnated, that seems like a decent buy to me

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Just bought this monitor:

Seems to check all the boxes. The stand is less hideous than the similar Acer one so I went with this one

I have an older version of this and you can turn off the stand lights and it recedes into ‘almost acceptable for an adult to own’. Other than that, it’s a very good stand, much smoother and more stable than any I’ve felt.

I’m still in disbelief at what you get for the money in the TV world next to monitors. I’ve been using my TV exclusively for PC stuff since I got it because the color is so much better, despite losing Gsync and >60HZ, which I loved.

Sorry, do you mean value is better for TVs or monitors? I’m not feeling TVs generally right now - 4K/HDR are much less appealing than the mix I get from a circa 2015 1080p projector (100” screen) and Gsync monitor.

I hope Nvidia supports the adaptive refresh in HDMI 2.2.

Monoprice makes affordable (~$60) good-quality monitor arms. The appearance is fairly neutral and the adjustability is great.

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I mean from TVs; HDR in OLED finally offered me an upgrade path past 12-year-old plasma, and at $1200, much less than what HDR costs in monitors. This is far enough that color, contrast, and screen size win out over motion for me (and color is so much farther than I had expected, even when I still prized the aging plasma next to that very good IPS monitor for certain things).

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I’m deep into ergonomic stuff because of spine fusing, but even generally I can’t recommend monitor arms enough. It’s also just nice to be able to e.g. put a book underneath the monitor after you raise it, or push it out of the way to clear your desk.

I’ll have you know that Nvidia is making a very nice 55"+ 4k HDR Gsync display and it will only cost as much as two or three RTX 2080ti’s

I want HDR badly but I’m not buying a damn thing until everyone decides on either HDR10+ or Dolby Vision

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