PC Hardware Talk Megathread

[combustiblefuel]

Not super happy with the distro plate and pump combo so I went ahead and ordered the a ekwb flt 360. Will need to ee work some of the loop but the thermal take one is bad at not allowing air to exit the water . It just sort of recirculates any bubbles at the outlet due to positioning.

[combustiblefuel]

I regret all choices made on the build.

Hardest loop I've ever had to drain .

I'm going to remove the rear radiator. The ports only fit upwards so It's hard to blow the lines empty even upside down.

The distro/ pump combo also is hard to drain in the mid position on the motherboard drain . Replacing it with the ek flt 360 will help with that.

[Raekwon]

Everytime i Consider water cooling I look at all the people with leaks and hassles around it and stick with my AIO which is pretty damn good at cooling.

[PsYcNeT]

I have the cash and know-how to do hardpipe WC but I just don't have the time or wherewithal to give a #### to bother with it. I ain't young no more.

[btimbit]

Full water cooled is one of those things I wanna do at least once since it looks like a lot of fun, but fully knowing I have absolutely no actual need to do it. I'm just a tinkerer

Even air cooling is so good these days, some of the dual rad towers are better than a low-mid range AIO. Bought a peerless assassin and it does a much better job than my last AIO did

Side note, but finally upgrading the 3080. Just ordered a 7900xtx

[combustiblefuel]

I've never had problems with hard line water cooling before.

This was my mistake in loop planning. It was the rear 240mm rad having the ports facing up. I could off had them facing down if I just shaved a small amount off the slots and extended them . It functioned well but it was harder to drain it the way it was.

I could have ran this thing forever and never had a leak but I just wanted the ekwb res/pump combo for looks.

It's not hard to water cool. Took me 2 hours from empty case to being completed.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Has anyone here bought one of the Beelink Mini PC's? Something like one of these:



From time to time Amazon runs sales on these which are a lot less that what I can build one from a barebones kit + parts. Reviews are mostly good, outside of a few failures.

Still, I can't help but think these have a short life span. Or will send my info to the CCP...

[Aegypticus]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Has anyone here bought one of the Beelink Mini PC's? Something like one of these:

From time to time Amazon runs sales on these which are a lot less that what I can build one from a barebones kit + parts. Reviews are mostly good, outside of a few failures.

Still, I can't help but think these have a short life span. Or will send my info to the CCP...

I bought this one for my parents for Christmas: BeeLink SER5 Max. I paired it with a grey-market Office key to replace their 11-year-old Excel, Outlook, FreeCell, and browsing machine that I assembled for them.

Obviously not had it long enough for any durability issues to crop up, but I have been quite impressed by it. Right from the start the packaging was very premium-feeling, which always makes me feel optimistic that they put some care into the product itself.

The build quality surprised me in a good way. Nice materials, fairly thoughtful layout and good included extras. It came with a mounting plate to attach it to the VESA mount on a monitor, as well as a short HDMI cable just about right to reach your monitor ports if you mount on the back. Even the power brick looked and felt premium, being all matte-black with that kind of soft-touch plastic you get on some higher end stuff.

The bottom even pops off with 4 screws and has a spot down for a 2.5" drive with the data and power connections hard-mounted so you don't have to worry about cables. If I had one small complaint it's that the fan can get a touch loud when it ramps up under heavy load, but it rarely seemed to do that once Windows finished all its mysterious new installation background tasks.

My overall impression is that it looks good, feels good, is very snappy for things like browsing and office tasks, and I still can't figure out how they can put the whole thing together for that cheap. There's no way in hell I could even come close to the specs if I built it myself, and it's ridiculously tiny to boot.

As for spying on you, I really can't say. I will say that Wendell at Level1Techs on YouTube seems to like BeeLink quite a bit, and if he doesn't know what he's talking about, I don't know who does.

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...1techs+beelink

[indes]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

Has anyone here bought one of the Beelink Mini PC's? Something like one of these:







From time to time Amazon runs sales on these which are a lot less that what I can build one from a barebones kit + parts. Reviews are mostly good, outside of a few failures.



Still, I can't help but think these have a short life span. Or will send my info to the CCP...

I bought my wife one of these for her remote link WFH job. It's worked great so far, runs 3 monitors and like already noted, has a VESA mount.

I think it's great value for what it is.

[photon]

CableMod recalling all their 12VHPWR angled adapters if you have one:

https://cablemod.com/adapterrecall/

[chemgear]

32" OLED Monitors seem to be a brand new thing now. I wonder if it would be better just to get an LG C3?

[Meelapo]

Originally Posted by chemgear

32" OLED Monitors seem to be a brand new thing now. I wonder if it would be better just to get an LG C3?

I think with an OLED monitor you get the monitor-y functions that you're used to - display port, desktop style stand, etc.

That being said, I run an LG C1 48" as my desktop display and I couldn't be happier with it. The OLED quality is amazing and I wouldn't go with anything else.

If you're needing something smaller than a 42" then I think your only options are proper OLED monitors rather than actual televisions.

[chemgear]

Yeah, refresh rates pushing 240hz rather than the 120/144 with the LG's too.

[combustiblefuel]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Yeah, refresh rates pushing 240hz rather than the 120/144 with the LG's too.

Honestly, at 4k anything over 120hz is irrelevant. Current cards can't push much past 130 in 90% of games. It's not just lg that can do 240hz . All panel makers have that ability now but even a 4090 struggles to consistently deliver 120hz .

Your buying the 240hz now so a rtx 6090 can push those frames in 4 to 5 years.

[chemgear]

Fair. OLED monitor gaming is the main point I think.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I have a C2 42 and it's pretty close to perfect when it's working as intended, which is 90% of the time. There are some weird quirks with it sometimes though, like randomly dimming or HDR not working properly with some titles.

[DoubleK]

The office I'm working out of has these Dell C3422WE ultra wide monitors.

I don't think I could go back to dual 27" monitors. The extra vertical real estate is very helpful for spreadsheets.

Definitely will be looking into an ultra wide for my home setup.

[Since1984]

So I just dropped way too much money on probably the best build I will have in my life, I still have a day or two to tweak the specs... But I can't take my money with me when I die so might as well throw some into something I love!

Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
Core i9 14900k 3.2ghz (same price as the 13900k)
Arctic Cooler liquid freezer II
MSI GeForce RTX 4090 suprim liquid
G.Skill 64 GB DDR5 6000 MHz cl32
2TB WD Black SN850x nvme M.2 SSD
MSI Meg platinum psu
In a NZXT H9 Flow black case

I'm upgrading my monitor to the Alienware 32" 4K 240hz QD-OLED

It's a nice treat to myself at the end of a long road of being the executor to my Mother's estate.

[DoubleK]

Does anyone know how to hook two PCs up to two monitors using a KVM switch?

I bought this KVM switch, and I can control both computers with the keyboard and mouse, but I can only get one monitor to work at a time with each computer. Ie the left monitor only works with the left computer and the right monitor only works with the right computer.

I am using a laptop dock for the USB-C passthrough charging.

I tried connecting the monitors together with a VGA cable to see if that would do it, but still can't get it to use both monitors.

Edit: I figured it out. I needed to run two cables between each PC and the KVM switch, so 6 HDMI cables total.

[DownInFlames]

That sounds overly complicated. I'd use Remote Desktop and control the second computer from the first.