What's your latest tech purchase?

[TheLostSwede]

Schuko is not the acknowledged euro technically ... but the Swiss 2 pronged T11 (no ground prong) is considered as EU plug by almost every international sellers XD hilarious eh?
mainly because it fit in Schuko socket (some Schuko also have a compatible ground hole for the T12, i noticed it in Spain) and also Italian socket are almost the same, although the T13 (ground) will not fit in grounded Italian socket

Type C is Europlug and not really different than Type J which is the Swiss T11/12/23 (the Swiss T11 is actually a Type C) or Type L from Italy
View attachment 225917
the Schuko Type F and E are often intercompatible even with different grounding, the male plug quite often feature the 2 type of grounding

also yeah UK plug is the most secure of all (well, were i live at least, we technically don't really need fuses in our plug ... nothing ever really happen at the plug... the circuit breaker/fusebox will always shut the current before that ) and all the other are bulky without reasons ... (aside US/ITA/CH/EUP)

edit, in Switzerland if an appliance has a shucko, most retailer/etailer will ship an adapter with them (luckily since they cost around 10chf on average price )

Actually, it has nothing to do with the Swiss plug, as the Swiss plug is larger than the Europlug and a different shape, as you should know.
The Europlug is called so because it works in all the European countries, except UK and Ireland, since it can be fitted within the shape of the Schuko, the French, the Italian (which is somewhat wrong in your picture), the Swiss and the Danish (yes, Denmark decided to make their own socket) sockets, plus the older ungrounded pre Schuko sockets used in many European countries and even Russia has a version of those.
The Europlug is limited to 2.5A, due to not being grounded, nor double isolated. These are also always moulded onto the wire and you're not allowed to change the plugs.
If you want more than 2.5A, you need to use a CEE 7/17 plug, which won't work in Switzerland.

Technically speaking, the European standard was supposed to be IEC 60906-1, but so far the only country that is using it is South Africa, although Brazil made a variant of it as well.
It is similar, but not the same as the Swiss 10 A socket/plug.

IEC 60906-1 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[GreiverBlade]

well then all the ungrounded plug in Switzerland are Europlug

oh well ... the more you know ...

edit: noticed the plug on my 4Smart Voltplug is 220V/2.5A hehe

 

[The red spirit]

To be honest, I have no idea. I'm guessing it's just conversion.

Anyway, it's not good for listening to music, so I'll make do with simple stereo for now.

Spatial audio was never intended to be for music, it's for gaming only. That is what put Creative, Gravis, Aureal on the map. It lead to creation of Creative EAX, Aureal A3D and bunch of others and literally the main reason why people used to get sound cards in the late 90s. XP was the last OS to have HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and DirectSound, which meant that most sound card makers went out of business. After release of Vista, Creative made Alchemy software, which allowed some spatial audio (it's not full EAX) to be restored in older games, but at cost of no proper hardware acceleration, meaning sounds effects came with a cost of less fps (sound cards in the past processed audio themselves and thus meant that CPU had less work to do and therefore more fps). Many people think that Aureal had better effects, but Creative outcompeted them. The sole reasons why those 5.1 or 7.1 setups became so hyped up in the past, was mainly due to usage of computer for home theaters or for the best possible spatial audio. We now have RGB gaming hype, back then it was 5.1 and EAX hype, except it wasn't just for bling, but for nice effects and more fps. Anyway, EAX doesn't really need those speaker setups and works just fine with stereo speakers or headphones. Here's a demo of EAX:

Now there's just nothing quite like that anymore in games, which is a shame, because spatial audio was awesome.

BTW LGR made a review of X-Fi card:

Skip to Doom 3 and you will hear what kind of jump in quality EAX was. That's like going from integrated graphics and low settings to RTX 3090 with ultra everything.

 

[Valantar]

Picked up one of these to try out a fan swap on the RX 570 ITX in my travel PC. Would have gone brown, but they only sell the high speed version in black unless you buy an NH-L9x cooler alongside it.

Also, attempt 2, failure 2. Officially giving up on these Keychron wrist rests now. I don't think a single piece of wood that thin can be stabilized sufficiently to not warp. Needs some form of reinforcement or layering, which this doesn't have.

http://imgur.com/PUcS3X8

 

[ThaiTaffy]

attempt 2, failure 2. Officially giving up on these Keychron wrist rests now. I don't think a single piece of wood that thin can be stabilized sufficiently to not warp. Needs some form of reinforcement or layering, which this doesn't have.

http://imgur.com/PUcS3X8

You could steam it then add weight on a known flat surface that might fix it.

New switch came I got it wrong it's a Jetstream and in ruff shape, seems it's had some water damage so the one sfp socket it probably dead as well as alot of rust on screws and things. The top of the housing looks like it was dragged behind a car but other than that the peal on the front was still on so it looks ok and the management and other ports are all fine. Not bad for £25

Just the bare essentials so my wife doesn't kill me today (she needs her WiFi) will start adding dubious Chinese good tomorrow and set them up in vlans.

 

[TheLostSwede]

well then all the ungrounded plug in Switzerland are Europlug

oh well ... the more you know ...

edit: noticed the plug on my 4Smart Voltplug is 220V/2.5A hehe

It's so annoying that there are so many different plugs and even variations of what is technically the same physical plugs sometimes, but just slightly different, because...
Spent a lot of time and research on power plugs a few years ago, as the company I was working for was developing a smartplug, which in the end only ended up as a 110V version with US prongs, as it's just a mess to try and get into other markets when the product has an integrated plug and has to be grounded.

 

[Valantar]

You could steam it then add weight on a known flat surface that might fix it.

In theory, yes, but given that I have no means of applying steam in an even way to something that large, nor any clamps to hold it down properly (given that it's not flat stacking things on it won't work), that's a no go. I would expect that to mess up the finish too. Besides, this really shouldn't be necessary for a brand new product. It would be nice if this was an easy fix, but sadly it isn't.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

In theory, yes, but given that I have no means of applying steam in an even way to something that large, nor any clamps to hold it down properly (given that it's not flat stacking things on it won't work), that's a no go. I would expect that to mess up the finish too. Besides, this really shouldn't be necessary for a brand new product. It would be nice if this was an easy fix, but sadly it isn't.

My guess is it was manufactured fine but stored poorly and yes it shouldn't be necessary I'd get in touch with keychron rather than your retail outlet, one is bad luck but two points out a problem.

 

[seth1911]

In the near future it will be a FX 9370 or 9590 if my favor. shop get one

I had a FX 9590 a few years ago here for some testing and it was a hot and powerfull b..ch in compute

 

[Valantar]

My guess is it was manufactured fine but stored poorly and yes it shouldn't be necessary I'd get in touch with keychron rather than your retail outlet, one is bad luck but two points out a problem.

Yep, that's what I'm thinking as well. I've already written to them, so we'll see what they say. Given that these come in a slim cardboard package, wrapped in a thin plastic bag, and don't even come with a silica gel packet in the packaging, I'm guessing they go through some serious humidity and temperature changes during that 3-4-week boat journey from East Asia to Europe, which would warp any thin piece of non-laminated wood.

 

[dorsetknob]

Really only 5A? Weird. I would have guessed more.

3A 5A and 13A are the widely accepted and available fuze capacity generally in the UK

 

[AusWolf]

Spatial audio was never intended to be for music, it's for gaming only. That is what put Creative, Gravis, Aureal on the map. It lead to creation of Creative EAX, Aureal A3D and bunch of others and literally the main reason why people used to get sound cards in the late 90s. XP was the last OS to have HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and DirectSound, which meant that most sound card makers went out of business. After release of Vista, Creative made Alchemy software, which allowed some spatial audio (it's not full EAX) to be restored in older games, but at cost of no proper hardware acceleration, meaning sounds effects came with a cost of less fps (sound cards in the past processed audio themselves and thus meant that CPU had less work to do and therefore more fps). Many people think that Aureal had better effects, but Creative outcompeted them. The sole reasons why those 5.1 or 7.1 setups became so hyped up in the past, was mainly due to usage of computer for home theaters or for the best possible spatial audio. We now have RGB gaming hype, back then it was 5.1 and EAX hype, except it wasn't just for bling, but for nice effects and more fps. Anyway, EAX doesn't really need those speaker setups and works just fine with stereo speakers or headphones. Here's a demo of EAX:

Now there's just nothing quite like that anymore in games, which is a shame, because spatial audio was awesome.

BTW LGR made a review of X-Fi card:

Skip to Doom 3 and you will hear what kind of jump in quality EAX was. That's like going from integrated graphics and low settings to RTX 3090 with ultra everything.

I know EAX (and Creative in general) very well. The difference is, if you had a capable sound card back then, you could just enable EAX in the game you were playing, and enjoy great sound without messing up anything else. If you enable spatial audio in the software of my TUF B560M-Plus, you can choose from different spatial "scenarios" which get applied to everything from the Windows desktop to movies and games. It's more like a layer of echo that you can switch on or off. It's nothing like in the good old days. But then, there's no more in-game switch for spatial sound, which makes me wonder if buying an expensive sound card actually still makes a difference.

 

[The red spirit]

I know EAX (and Creative in general) very well. The difference is, if you had a capable sound card back then, you could just enable EAX in the game you were playing, and enjoy great sound without messing up anything else. If you enable spatial audio in the software of my TUF B560M-Plus, you can choose from different spatial "scenarios" which get applied to everything from the Windows desktop to movies and games. It's more like a layer of echo that you can switch on or off. It's nothing like in the good old days. But then, there's no more in-game switch for spatial sound, which makes me wonder if buying an expensive sound card actually still makes a difference.

Well, if you understand that sound card doesn't do EAX anymore (well it can emulate up to EAX 2.0 with Creative Alchemy) and is mainly bought for more audio outputs, cheap headphone AMP, cheap way to get ASIO, as cheap DAC or for some other advertised feature, they are fine. Usually they are easiest and cheapest way to add 7.1 audio outputs to PC. They are also pedestrian way to record something semi-professionally on budget. If you spend more than 30 EUR on one, you can expect some upgrade to your audio. Otherwise, external DACs beat sound cards. There are some inexpensive external DACs that are really good and do very well in objective tests. Topping D10 was one crazy good DAC for 100 EUR, FiiO E10K was crazy good unit for 30 EUR. Unless you need some specific advertised feature or 7.1 speaker outs, expensive soundcards don't make much sense anymore. But for that matter, I think that many expensive DACs make no sense either, since over time there pops up some really well engineered DAC that embarrasses 10x more expensive units.

Apparently, you can buy something like Creative AE-5 if you want Scout Mode, virtual 5.1/7.1, or Dolby Digital Live. There's Asus Xonar Essence STX II. It does bunch of Dolby stuff and is mostly abandoned at this point. So overall, not much value in premium sound cards. It definitely looks like those industries just lost all their selling points and try to profit from those who don't know that. However, lower end cards at 50-80 EUR budget offer a lot value as adequate DACs, 7.1 audio outputs, headphone AMPs and maybe even Dolby stuff and they might be acceptable for amateur recording of music or digitizing analog formats.

Beyond that I can't say anything more. I'm deaf myself, but I heard the difference between cheap motherboard Realtek and Topping D10. I have bought Xonar DG and even it is a reasonable upgrade. I have Creative X-Fi HD, but that thing is just brutal with higher frequency sounds and despite being technically sound, it's quite awful for actual usage, due to how very obviously "coloured" in terms of sound it is. Anything beyond Topping D10 is likely to not make a difference to me. Even more premium motherboard might be good enough to be above Xonar DG and bellow Topping D10. The funny thing is that DACs support some crazy audio formats like 32 bit 384 kHz audio or DSD, some even support 768 kHz audio. Not sure what the point of that, but well, apparently if you are bat, you have a DAC for yourself.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Creative X-Fi HD, but that thing is just brutal with higher frequency sounds and despite being technically sound, it's quite awful for actual usage, due to how very obviously "coloured" in terms of sound it is.

It is just faulty, it tends to oscillate at higher frequencies if you measure it up it would show the so called beard at the higher spectrum, the distortion causes your described harsh feeling. Age, hot environment etc... no wonders. I had a Ti HD myself. It died, I hated it because of the dreaded RCA connectors. Like any X-Fi I have had, and I have had them a lot including the STXII, DG, DGX, D2X, some Auzens etc I recently dug up some s***t Ensoniq ES1371 in my stash, why I haven' t disposed it was the first question, I am more sad, I can't remember where my AWE64 went.

It sounds about the same as any PCM1794A based device if properly done, which I prefer still to any ESS Sabre based DAC. If you want super colored sound the go for AKM Velvet's you can't top them, it means like stuffing velvet in your ears and then listen. They all do distort and color the sound, there is no escaping it with about any of them, you just have to pick your preferred poison.

Emulation goes up to EAX4 btw, but who cares anymore, few geeks that also whine that emulation lacks few effects? Last time I used 7.1 was around 2003 using Audigy 2ZS, and then it had perfect sense to do so as games were hardcoded for one decent API that Microsoft killed because of jealousy, yes exactly, as they could not allow some other company to overtake their audio stack and rule it.

You cannot compare DSD with PCM, thus the higher modes. It is a completely different principle. I have only few DSD records, so basically I don't give a s*** about about these supersampled numbers too I only care for 1:1 mode native here, so 24/96 is enough for me. I have a strong feeling the DSD one I have are brute transcodes and simply a snake oil. I had one Rainbow Rising SACD after measuring dynamic range it turned out to be worse versus same album PCM FLAC from a CD, while it may not be a signal that it is really worse, it wasn't better for sure. You cannot transcode DSD to PCM, you will loose bitperfection and introduce rounding errors. Does it matter? I don't know, I tend to avoid it.

At current point there is no hard need for dedicated internal sound cards, just because they are flaky, all of them really for various reasons.

 

[The red spirit]

You cannot compare DSD with PCM, thus the higher modes. It is a completely different principle. I have only few DSD records, so basically I don't give a s*** about about these supersampled numbers too I only care for 1:1 mode native here, so 24/96 is enough for me. I have a strong feeling the DSD one I have are brute transcodes and simply a snake oil. I had one Rainbow Rising SACD after measuring dynamic range it turned out to be worse versus same album PCM FLAC from a CD, while it may not be a signal that it is really worse, it wasn't better for sure. You cannot transcode DSD to PCM, you will loose bitperfection and introduce rounding errors. Does it matter? I don't know, I tend to avoid it.

Decent post, but it was measured that humans don't really hear more than what CD produces, which is lossless 16 bit 44.1 kHz sound. There was some research done and some rare people may hear up to 28 kHz, but most likely you are not one of them and in terms of musicality, that doesn't do much to sound. Most people don't even hear glorified 20 kHz either. They top out at 16-17 kHz with big losses of dB at highest frequencies. Even then, that's the upper limit, if you are listening casually and even carefully, you will be hard pressed to tell a difference between 14 kHz sound (sampled at 28 kHz) and 17 kHz recording. Diminishing returns start at 8-9 kHz and become very diminishing returns at 12 kHz. mp3 was developed with psychoacoustic in mind, so it tried to cut down bitrate with as little perceptible difference as possible. mp3 sounds really okay at 192-256 kbps and really great at 320 kbps. AAC is made differently, but with same ideology. It managed to retain same quality at 20% less bitrate and it is capped to 17 kHz (34 kHz sampling). Youtube uses AAC in all videos. Most of the time, Youtube sounds fine (can't recall bitrate, but maybe it's at 192 kbps). You can hear better with flac obviously, but difference is small and Youtube's sound quality is not shabby. I honestly believe that you don't really need 24 bit 96 kHz audio. more bits are useful if you are recording music and will work with it later. However, 96 kHz audio (48 kHz audible) is a massive overkill. I don't think that you could tell between 24/96 and 16/44.1 in double blind test, even with best gear. You may not be lacking storage, but if one day you end up like that, you could convert those files to 24/48 files and save some space at no loss of quality.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Decent post, but it was measured that humans don't really hear more than what CD produces, which is lossless 16 bit 44.1 kHz sound.

We can hear distortion and react to it, especially if it is odd random natured harmonics, odd numbered due to our eardrum construction and perception, we react to in usual repeatable manner, there are many books about sound nature, composers actually are thought to take advantage of this effect on phycological level, I've fetched some literature from my ex about it, she is a composer. Each hardware produces distortion, no matter how good it is, it is about what kind of distortion it is and in what spectrum and situation.

You have to indulge into hardware nature with each DAC architecture, there are optimal and suboptimal modes for most of them, most of them cheat in one way or another, you can't know that unless you start to design something with them and do extensive torture testing and reveal weak sides of each architecture. So the mode, ie data material you feed into it may matter more, than the fact we aren't simply hearing more. It is just about compromises, there is no universal answer. But in the end of the day just pick the one that irrates you less. After a while you will get used to anything either way, also human nature, but there are long term effects also, you will have less listening fatigue if the source has less odd harmonic distortion. 24/96 is my sweet spot in due to my DACs architecture... there are no other reasons. You will cap your DAC performance while feeding lower bitrate and trigger some unpleasant surprises ie more distortion and ringing artifacts. I can usually distinct a good 24bit record vs a 16bit, if the source really was 24+bit plus and the record isn't butchered and it often is. There is no thing as best gear mate. It is all subjective some are happy with FM radio still. I don't need to convert anything, I have enough space also. You kinda overract about the end bandwidth, but it is needed by design how modern one bit dacs work. The amount of hardware quantization engines inside ESS's is astonishing these days, the real internal frequency they treat audio is in MHz's!!, few KHz you are speaking here sigh. It is not about our hearing range, but the DAC architectural quirks. During early years it made sense to upgrade as the DAC evolved fast and became better, leaving less their own signature horrible distortion, now we are at the point of things where only taste matters, they still differ thou. And the DAC IC self is least part of the story for a good device. The part that craps out is the voltage multiplier or current to voltage analog section, it has even more compromises.

Actually I was more thinking about the mix and engineering, that differs a lot. Normally each record is redone from mastertapes, unless it is a snake oil release just for the sake of release. That Rainbow record was engineered by Martin Birch(I was always wondering if he is one of us, just with an English name). You either hate or love it. Attenuated mid section, subdued tops and flat bottom, signature 70ties sound, considering on how many records he has put his hands on, he deserves some credit into it. During early days vinyl were sought not because of the quality aspects or other audiophile bullshit, but different mixing, it had a different sound engineer, that knew the quirks of their own vinyl press. Mastertapes were shipped across Europe, Japan and US and you didn't ship containers full of records, you shipped mastertapes, did your mixing and stamped the records, thus some were better or worse masters. I was hoping the DSD CD would be taken from a fresh master... not the same rehash.

Nowadays new vinyl is a matter of hoax made from digital records and with a preset... it has lost anything meaningful... hipster stuff for those who don't understand how tech works and how it used to work. Nobody bats an eye about the sound engineers either way too, most them are deaf or beyond stupid anyways, so why bother? Steven Vilson comes into my head as last I liked from "younger" ones. The meme will explain my disrespect for Rick Rubin - the butcher. Records are often recorded at home now(read in a shed), musicians often don't even meet and understand a crap about tech aspect of sound recording. The recorded material is awful content wise, they have no engineering(the guy that used to spank musicians do their job properly) anymore as you can't push something out of crap and you can encode it anything you like, it will sound like shite, just turn it louder. The finished records are evaluated by artists themselves, guess where? In a car... So your argument about mp3... it is good. The records are so bad and raped it really doesn't matter how they are encoded, they lack so much there in the first place and have nothing to loose. The best loved records are in FLAC for me, I don't care for space. Lately on Bandcamp there is some sort of revolution, 24bits are becoming a more often sight too, at least some hope. But still for the sake of production, they are all PCM's. DSD's has a long way to go.

 

[lexluthermiester]

24/96 is my sweet spot in due to my DACs architecture...

Honestly, I run 16/44.1. My Xfi defaults to 24/96 but there are some programs which don't like 24bit or 96khz. Everything is compatible with 16bit/44.1khz. And I honestly like the 16/44.1. It just sounds better to me.

 

[AusWolf]

mp3 was developed with psychoacoustic in mind, so it tried to cut down bitrate with as little perceptible difference as possible. mp3 sounds really okay at 192-256 kbps and really great at 320 kbps.

I remember listening to music on my first ever mp3 player at 128 kbps. I had to save space to fit as many albums as I could into its 2 GB storage. Only later did I realize how crappy it sounded. With better mp3 players and bigger storage, I started using 256 kbps. Nowadays I'd say 192 kbps is the bare minimum, 256 is OK, 320 is the best practice. If some music really grabs me, I try to get it in flac, though I have to use my headphones at high volume to notice any difference - and even then, it's not much.

 

[Mussels]

I don't understand why wireless / Bluetooth mice get so much crap from gamers. I hate the feeling of a dangling cable.

Premium wireless is great.

Bluetooth is not. It's laggy and suffers a lot of jitter.

Best case bluetooth is usable, but the moment you're in a busy 2.4GHz environment, or have range issues... oof.
compared to what dedicated receivers can do, where i can take my xbox controller , G pro wireless and corsair headset three rooms away through walls

My new usb drive.

View attachment 225932

The enclosure not the best, cost less than $30 though, and it is significantly faster than my lexar 256gb usb stick both read and write. 8gb file transfer speeds and graph below.

View attachment 225933View attachment 225934

My 256gb usb drive with the same file copying from the drive is around 170mb/s, writing to the drive is like 66mb/s.

Oh hell yes, i love my USB NVME (despite its poo sustained writes)

950 reads, and 550 writes... until the cache is out or it overheats, then it slows to 50MB/s -.-
(Intel 6000P 1TB)

I use it to clone my games over to my HTPC when i wanna game over there, so i dont need to redownload them

 

[AusWolf]

Premium wireless is great.

Bluetooth is not. It's laggy and suffers a lot of jitter.

It doesn't feel laggy to me at all. Maybe it's just me.

 

[Mussels]

It doesn't feel laggy to me at all. Maybe it's just me.

You simply have have the luck to get all the boxes ticked - close range, no interference.
No kids? The moment a game console with four controllers is fired up, bluetooth devices tend to shrivel up and die.


Oh, i posted in the GN thread and forgot here: I got a new modem/router for $20 second hand.

It's a fairly tall, but nice looking ADSL2+, VDSL, or gigabit cat5e router. (not my pics)

My ISP has a little oddity, in that when you change modems over, it takes 15 minutes for the swap to happen. Some technical reason, you get downtime if you swap.
Thing is... i was getting a 25/5 connection solid, instead of my expected 60/20... while "disconnected"

Removed the phone cord from the wall. Connected.

Factory reset so i could log in, check the stats. "Backup 4G modem activated, check connection"

Turns out these are only sold and used for Telstras top tier plans, with 4G instant backup so they can cover up all their outages. The owners are meant to return these, or they face a $200 fine if they dont stay on their 24 month contract.

So either the previous owner pays a $200 fine, or they give me free 25/5 internet for upto 24 months. I guess i wont be stuck offline any time soon.

My only irritation is that I'm capable of syncing at 84, sync at 82, yet get 55-70 depending on the modem. Why the gap, guys?

 

[plastiscɧ]

15,46€
I am very curious if this is a good one... normally they cost 200-400 bucks..

black week offer from china.

 

[AusWolf]

You simply have have the luck to get all the boxes ticked - close range, no interference.
No kids? The moment a game console with four controllers is fired up, bluetooth devices tend to shrivel up and die.

True.

View attachment 226165 15,46€
I am very curious if this is a good one... normally they cost 200-400 bucks..

black week offer from china.

It might be a 1024 GB card with a whopping 16 GB of storage space (Chinese advertising).

 

[plastiscɧ]

True.


It might be a 1024 GB card with a whopping 16 GB of storage space (Chinese advertising).

ha
i thought the exactly same. but it was too attractive to click it away...

 

[Valantar]

View attachment 226165 15,46€
I am very curious if this is a good one... normally they cost 200-400 bucks..

black week offer from china.

Fake capacity SD cards are extremely common, and this is undoubtedly one of them. It will start disappearing data after its actual capacity fills up, which is going to be somewhere in the 4GB-32GB range. You might think that that makes it still a decent deal - the problem is that you have zero control over when it starts making stuff disappear, and there is zero chance of recovery.

My new usb drive.

View attachment 225932

The enclosure not the best, cost less than $30 though, and it is significantly faster than my lexar 256gb usb stick both read and write. 8gb file transfer speeds and graph below.

View attachment 225933View attachment 225934

My 256gb usb drive with the same file copying from the drive is around 170mb/s, writing to the drive is like 66mb/s.

Oh hell yes, i love my USB NVME (despite its poo sustained writes)

950 reads, and 550 writes... until the cache is out or it overheats, then it slows to 50MB/s -.-
(Intel 6000P 1TB)

I use it to clone my games over to my HTPC when i wanna game over there, so i dont need to redownload them

I got one of these myself last week - finally making some use of my spare 500GB 960 EVO. Orico M2PV-C3, very happy with it so far. Got pretty stable 700MB/s copying a large game folder (30GB or so, large files only), with a more complex transfer seeing some drops into the 300-or-so range due to lots of small files. Didn't try copying from it. Either way, great performance for 270SEK (~€27). I was thinking of getting the USB 3.2g2x2 20Gbps version, but ... it's more than 2x the price (nearly 3x) for performance that I'll likely never be able to make use of. Not worth it.

Most of the casing is plastic, which is perfectly fine even if it doesn't feel very premium. What I like is that the heatsink screws down on top of the drive rather than sliding in, meaning that it's actually possible for it to meaningfully contact the thermal pad and controller and not get damaged or crumpled during installation or removal. Got it off Amazon, the only weird thing was that it wasn't retail packaged but came in a collection of transparent plastic bags. Seems like someone is bulk ordering Orico products and reselling them for cheap. I've gotten several Orico products off AliExpress with reasonably nice packaging earlier, but in the end it doesn't matter I guess - just a bit weird.