What's your latest tech purchase?

[Ruru]

But let's go not totally offtopic here, though I didn't pay for these, but my friend visited yesterday and he gave me some stuff:

-2x SilentiumPC Sigma Pro PWM 140mm (I'll put these to my main system later today)
-SilentiumPC Mistral 140mm (goes for 775 retro gaming PC)
-Huawei 4G router (currently in use and works great!)
-Zyxel router
-USB 2.0 microSD reader
-Hitachi 160GB 2.5" HDD
-8-socket powerstrip
-a small 4-port USB hub (this will become handy with laptop)
-some HDMI cables
-USB to mini and microUSB cable
-a long CrossFire bridge
-a PATA cable
-a Targus laptop bag where he had all this stuff in

 

[Valantar]

But let's go not totally offtopic here, though I didn't pay for these, but my friend visited yesterday and he gave me some stuff:

-2x SilentiumPC Sigma Pro PWM 140mm (I'll put these to my main system later today)
-SilentiumPC Mistral 140mm (goes for 775 retro gaming PC)
-Huawei 4G router (currently in use and works great!)
-Zyxel router
-USB 2.0 microSD reader
-Hitachi 160GB 2.5" HDD
-8-socket powerstrip
-a small 4-port USB hub (this will become handy with laptop)
-some HDMI cables
-USB to mini and microUSB cable
-a long CrossFire bridge
-a PATA cable
-a Targus laptop bag where he had all this stuff in

So ... you're sure you're not a hoarder, right?

 

[plastiscɧ]

i love my GMMK TKL ANSI (ENG-US) layout and the Gateron red switches ... unfortunately i almost went thru all my spares switches and a box of 120 switches (or several 36 switches boxes ) would cost me too much right now ...

thus! giving a Swedish brand a go.... (still made China, well the GMMK was too but US brand ) Deltaco
i got a DK440R (aka: GAM-100-CH) for the price of a GAM-075, basically 64chf instead of the usually seen 99/119chf, a 65% layout still having PgdUP/DOWN/Delete and °/§ in it? hell yeah! using Fn key for F1 to F12 home/end/Printscr is not an issue getting used to a ISO (FR/DE-CH) layout neither, can be wired (USB-C) wireless (BT3.0/5.0 & 2.4ghz) double hell yeah!

and the front laser engraved keycap are surprisingly neat (i love front engraving now ) although i kept my ASCEND red Esc key from the GMMK plus, icing on the cake, it use Kailh box red switche
basically lower priced than 2 boxes of Glorious Panda/Lynx Switch or about the same of a box of Gateron Red (they were way cheaper when i initially bought them ) although i could have taken the option of 2 box of 42 Akko CS Jelly switches for 54chf tho, but i don't know these enough.
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obviously RGB and 20 modes out of the box but YAAAAY software (not running in background is a plus) and hopla fixed white FTW!

wire cap puller? ohhh good! (prefer these over the plastic ring key puller )
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my oldie came back to me too ( ASRock AM1B-ITX Athlon 5350 8gb Kingston HyperX a, ooooohhhh, GT-730 3gb (DDR3 variante unfortunatelly) a 500gb spinner and a Bluray drive in a InWin Diva case) not a latest purchase but a latest "come back" ahah!
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i suppose it could do well for a fun HTPC (although i use a Xiaomi Mi TV Stick right now, i gave the Mi Box S to my parents recently )


edit: that Swedish brand naming sense tho .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Taco

nice headphones BTW

 

[Mussels]

I do because they are faster then in an external enclosure usually and I need the space.

Plus I am also rocking 6xSilverstone CP11 Ultra Slim SATA cables I broght directly from Silverstone in Germany really friendly people.

Link: https://silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=445&area=en

Theres a lot of reasons to use internal drives vs external, just that speed isn't one of them - USB caught up and surpassed SATA long ago

 

[agent_x007]

Mic upgrade (old one on the right) :

(before anyone asks : Yes, I did get an arm and pop-filter along with it)

 

[Ruru]

So ... you're sure you're not a hoarder, right?

I'm always down for free stuff

Theres a lot of reasons to use internal drives vs external, just that speed isn't one of them - USB caught up and surpassed SATA long ago

Weird how SATA has stuck in 3.0 for over a decade, I guess that it can't be sped up or otherwise it had probably already got new revisions.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Weird how SATA has stuck in 3.0 for over a decade, I guess that it can't be sped up or otherwise it had probably already got new revisions.

It really is and more than just a little irritating given how easy it would be to update the spec to 24gbps or even 36gbps.

 

[agent_x007]

Mic upgrade (old one on the right) :
(before anyone asks : Yes, I did get an arm and pop-filter along with it)

It's an upgrade along side my main PC (new case + new platform) :

 

[Space Lynx]

It's an upgrade along side my main PC (new case + new platform) :

That is a nice rig, well done mate

 

[Ruru]

It's an upgrade along side my main PC (new case + new platform) :

Those Deltas look creepy.. I can only imagine those at full speed.

 

[Russ64]

Needed a new laptop as my very old HP Pavilion was pretty much EOL even though I tried upgrading to HDD to SSD (during that process which is difficult, I somehow broke the keyboard so needed to use an external USB keyboard) and it runs Windows10 but the i3 struggles.

I purchased one of these ASUS Vivobook-15-OLED
15.6" Full HD OLED
Intel i5-1135G7
Nvidia MX350 Graphics
16GB RAM
512GB SSD
Windows 11 Home

Amazon has these at really good prices.

 

[agent_x007]

Those Deltas look creepy.. I can only imagine those at full speed.

No worries, both have full PWM control (but I must keep CPU Vcore under 1,3V, for long term AVX workloads).

@CallandorWoT Thank you

PS. Out of camera view, are two 120mm fans (with blue only LEDs on top left), and a single 140mm fan on top right (no LED).
All three are Maglev style with easy detachable fan blade assembly (same goes for red one in bottom, and 140mm on the back too) :

 

[Valantar]

I'm always down for free stuff


Weird how SATA has stuck in 3.0 for over a decade, I guess that it can't be sped up or otherwise it had probably already got new revisions.

It really is and more than just a little irritating given how easy it would be to update the spec to 24gbps or even 36gbps.

There was SATA Express, which ... well, we all know how that panned out. My understanding is that there just isn't a perceived need for this at any point in the industry, which has left SATA at 3.0 as its final state more or less by default. IIRC Anandtech wrote something to that effect once, that the SATA Working Group had essentially abandoned all attempts at future standards and instead recommended adopting other PCIe-based standards for anything that needs the performance. After all, it's still 2-2.5x faster than a HDD, leaving plenty of room to grow there for faster drive tech like dual/triple actuators, and anything faster would still most likely be slower than PCIe. Why have two standards when you can have one?

u.2 and PCIe over various types of cabling (OCULink plus various other standards, proprietary solutions, and plain riser cables) has essentially removed any need for a faster SATA standard. Having everything over PCIe is both faster and simpler, as you remove the need for some (integrated or discrete) PCIe-to-SATA/whatever bridge somewhere, and in most applications signal integrity either isn't an issue or would be just as much of an issue for a similarly fast revision of SATA (e.g. you'd need the same redrivers or retimers as you need with PCIe). PCIe also has the massive advantage of flexibility and scalability in lane counts and speeds across the same controllers, connectors and cabling, making it extremely flexible. If HDDs at some point outstrip SATA 3.0 speeds broadly, they'll likely just move to some sort of single-lane PCIe interface (or two slower lanes for longer wiring runs).

 

[Ruru]

There was SATA Express, which ... well, we all know how that panned out. My understanding is that there just isn't a perceived need for this at any point in the industry, which has left SATA at 3.0 as its final state more or less by default. IIRC Anandtech wrote something to that effect once, that the SATA Working Group had essentially abandoned all attempts at future standards and instead recommended adopting other PCIe-based standards for anything that needs the performance. After all, it's still 2-2.5x faster than a HDD, leaving plenty of room to grow there for faster drive tech like dual/triple actuators, and anything faster would still most likely be slower than PCIe. Why have two standards when you can have one?

u.2 and PCIe over various types of cabling (OCULink plus various other standards, proprietary solutions, and plain riser cables) has essentially removed any need for a faster SATA standard. Having everything over PCIe is both faster and simpler, as you remove the need for some (integrated or discrete) PCIe-to-SATA/whatever bridge somewhere, and in most applications signal integrity either isn't an issue or would be just as much of an issue for a similarly fast revision of SATA (e.g. you'd need the same redrivers or retimers as you need with PCIe). PCIe also has the massive advantage of flexibility and scalability in lane counts and speeds across the same controllers, connectors and cabling, making it extremely flexible. If HDDs at some point outstrip SATA 3.0 speeds broadly, they'll likely just move to some sort of single-lane PCIe interface (or two slower lanes for longer wiring runs).

Yeah, you have good points there. As all modern motherboards have NVMe M.2 slots and at least four SATA connectors for general use SSD/HDDs.

 

[Valantar]

Yeah, you have good points there. As all modern motherboards have NVMe M.2 slots and at least four SATA connectors for general use SSD/HDDs.

Yep, plus consumer local storage needs have dropped precipitously since the advent of cloud storage (whether that's sustainable in the long run is another question entirely). A handful of SATA ports for mass storage + 2-3-4 m.2 ports for whatever you want that's faster is plenty for consumers - especially seeing how m.2 drives go to 8TB and are far more limited by cost than anything else.

 

[Ruru]

Yep, plus consumer local storage needs have dropped precipitously since the advent of cloud storage (whether that's sustainable in the long run is another question entirely). A handful of SATA ports for mass storage + 2-3-4 m.2 ports for whatever you want that's faster is plenty for consumers - especially seeing how m.2 drives go to 8TB and are far more limited by cost than anything else.

Yeah, it's mostly the modern games which consume the most storage on an average consumer..

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

I got curious and bought WD Ultrastar HC560 20TB HDD. Currently the biggest CMR HDD around. It is not my smartest purchase ever..despite the discounted price. A shucked hdd would lower capacity like 14TB would be better price to space ratio.

So far I am amazed! This hdd despite being 20TB is much much quieter than my HC550 18TB ultrastar. It is as quiet as if not quieter than my 14TB wd external. I wonder if I just simply for a bad batch for previous 18TB and trying ask for an RMA. But it was an OEM hdd so I am not sure if warranty is claimable.

I think I might turn this HDD into a temporary boot drive while waiting for SSD price to fall or saving up for the moment. Yeah its random io may be far from ssd but for HDD is the best in its class anyway I need capacity as a stopgap before 4TB ssd goes down in price.

 

[Shrek]

I seem to recall that Western Digital may be returning to a Hybrid option

Western Digital announces a hybrid hard drive | Network World

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

I seem to recall that Western Digital may be returning to a Hybrid option

Western Digital announces a hybrid hard drive | Network World

According to the HC560 data sheet although this is first HDD from them incorporate Optinand, they said it is not a Hybrid HDD though.

 

[ThrashZone]

According to the HC560 data sheet although this is first HDD from them incorporate Optinand, they said it is not a Hybrid HDD though.

Hi,
Using a 20tb as a boot drive is just crazy talk

 

[Shrek]

According to the HC560 data sheet although this is first HDD from them incorporate Optinand, they said it is not a Hybrid HDD though.

Good to know, even if the article thinks its hybrid
Western Digital announces a hybrid hard drive | Network World

 

[lexluthermiester]

It's an upgrade along side my main PC (new case + new platform) :

"Galactic Empire" GPU?!?

I seem to recall that Western Digital may be returning to a Hybrid option

Western Digital announces a hybrid hard drive | Network World

That would be nice!

There was SATA Express, which ... well, we all know how that panned out.

And that is because it wasn't directly backward compatible. Compatibility is important. It was a moronic decision.

 

[Mussels]

"Galactic Empire" GPU?!?

And that is because it wasn't directly backward compatible. Compatibility is important. It was a moronic decision.

There was a few cool star wars edition GPU's, like theres been a few gundam ones. Harkens back to the days of anime girls and frogs and whatever on GPU boxes, to me.

I think SATA is dead in the water, no mechanical drives are coming close to its 600MB/s limits. SATA will linger for optical and mechanical drives for another 10 years before those technologies come close to maxing it out, it's kinda like USB 2.0 lingering around for the slow speed devices.

High speed devices like SSD's have moved away to PCI-E based connections. Reminds me of the transfer from IDE to SATA, where lower speed devices stayed on IDE for quite a long time before it vanished.

 

[tabascosauz]

"Galactic Empire" GPU?!?

There was a few cool star wars edition GPU's, like theres been a few gundam ones. Harkens back to the days of anime girls and frogs and whatever on GPU boxes, to me.

It would have been better if it was a 20 or 30 series FE cooler instead of the generic Nvidia blower. But at least it looks cool.

 

[OneMoar]

3070TI GO brrrrr