What's your latest tech purchase?

[Space Lynx]

Well I've had a birthday been very bad and spent some money I suppose I shouldn't have but still.... It's a tech purchase thread, so here we go


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Been looking at the blu rays for a long time now, so when I got the chance and they had been dropped in price, I thought, you know what.... Birthday treat


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It came from the desert, sorry no, Ebay! Saw it up for sale and was a not hardly used model, so thought what the heck and grabbed it. All decent in box and opened but not used and £59 posted so thought that was pretty much a decent deal

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Ah yes, a server left in a box I was waiting for things on site to change for me but sadly not, so I decided to get it installed in the cabinet and worry about it later... Shame only a single CPU and 8GB of DDR3 RAM in there, so we'll do something about that soon enough I believe I've got a spare CPU or two and I am pretty sure I have a heatsink for it, so I'll get those installed soon and then hopefully get some work done on it I believe Mr Clamps @Solaris17 video tutorials will be helping me through so looking forward to it if I can get 5 minutes to do it.. Sophia there checking my work and making sure I'd got everything in place... I think she was a little worried about the amount of cables and such needed from behind the cabinet but I think I've enough to cover it.....

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Ah a few more pics of some recent hardware purchases... What was I thinking... Well I'm going team beige to start with! I had had another fan die in the little homeserver I have and I was getting fed up with swapping them out all the time so, I had a recommendation, I went with some of these and damn are they not cheap.... But, hopefully, I won't need to swap them out in a months time with another... The case I have my homeserver in is a Fractal Design 804, 4 120mm at the front, then a 120mm on the left and a 140mm on the right. So 6 fans where bought and thank god some where on sale!! £135 is kinda hard to swallow that's for sure....

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The two B450 boards I was a little off my game here as I just saw a free mouse mat or something with them and thought, bargain... Well yes and no I think... But, I do have two 1700X CPUs and a PC I built for my Mum for my sisters girls I think needs an upgrade since they are running a dual core and 8GB of RAM, so the plan is 1700X, B450, 16GB and that'll do. I've recently re-flashed each of the 5 RX480 Strix I had mining a few months ago, but since I've turned them off I wanted them to get back to stock and doing something else and being useful again, so one will be headed back up to them with the 1700X which I think will make a massive difference over what they had. What I'll be doing with the other four cards, I'm not sure. I have sold one which I had recently got the money for, which was nice, so... Might do a giveaway I think with them... Not sure yet....

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And finally, Isabelle couldn't believe her eyes when the two RTX 3070s I had had been sent from my mate in the US, finally turned up in the UK and more so to my home address some 2.5 months nearly later on... Jesus.... Not sure that 3 to 5 day postage time is holding it's own at the moment lol Still, grateful to have them, just waiting on a few more bits of kit to turn up now..... When he sends them!

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Oh and some DDR3 for a mates rig, what a nightmare this stuff has been... Ordered 6 sticks 8GB DDR3 through Ebay... Guy packs it in a single bag, when I receive them I think oh dear, hope these work and well, eventually when I got around to testing and finding out 4 of the 6 sticks didn't work correctly, I was somewhat annoyed....
I got hold of the seller and said to him the problems with the pictures, and he'd sent me out two more sticks. I'm still waiting on 2 more replacement sticks as they have not yet turned up.. Here's hoping I don't have to go down the claim route cos I could really do without the hassles...... We'll soon see....


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And here we are with the latest daft purcahse....
NVME PCIe Gen 3 storage... Now I'm very impressed with these and more so with the price. I saw them on Amazon for £75, now for 1TB NVME storage, even for Gen 3 speeds, that was a darn good bargain. Hell my 1TB SATA SSDs I bought a few months ago I think, I think where a little more expensive than that..... So when I saw them I thought I'd consider buying a few, then they went out of stock, then I stupidly went searching and saw them in Overclockers for the same money, I was weak and ordered 4 and ordered a 16GB RAM kit for my sisters PC I mentioned above, 3600MHz CL16, so nothing blowing out the water but something decent and more than enough for what they use.
But still, got two of the P5 drives installed into my X570 board, got them configured and was very impressed with their performance so was worth the cash I guess



If you managed to get through all of that text and rubbish, I applaud you!!

Here we are with a quick CrystalMarkInfo speed test for the two installed P5 drives....

View attachment 213197

It's a shame one of them isn't quite hitting the 3000MB/sec speeds but I believe this is down to the way it's connected on the motherboard... One to the CPU and one through the southbridge chip....

Hi Phil, I also have a 1 TB Crucial P5 drive. I got it on a crazy good sale, $85. I really recommend you get some heatsinks on those bad boys if airflow isn't hitting them.

Also, after about 2 months use now, my drives don't have as good of scores as they first did. It's still pretty good, I'm happy I got it, but I wish I just spend the extra $90 on the Western Digital SN 850 1TB drive personally. but again can't complain for the price I paid, so it's all good.

 

[phill]

That looks sick! nice collection @phill

Thank you kind @Solaris17 I'm hoping to put the servers to good use and make ya proud We'll have NASA up in here before you know it

Hi Phil, I also have a 1 TB Crucial P5 drive. I got it on a crazy good sale, $85. I really recommend you get some heatsinks on those bad boys if airflow isn't hitting them.

Also, after about 2 months use now, my drives don't have as good of scores as they first did. It's still pretty good, I'm happy I got it, but I wish I just spend the extra $90 on the Western Digital SN 850 1TB drive personally. but again can't complain for the price I paid, so it's all good.

Mine wasn't far off that pricing either mate, I paid £75.. I thought, screw it. There's no way I needed them really but I thought meh, I'm weak, I'll grab some lol

I'm not so worried about the scores as such, I don't need to wear them out with benchmarks but I'm guessing with use they will always get slower but hopefully not as slow as a SATA SSD else they will go back!
What's the difference with the SN850 drives? Are they the gen 4 models or just a higher performing drive?

 

[Space Lynx]

Thank you kind @Solaris17 I'm hoping to put the servers to good use and make ya proud We'll have NASA up in here before you know it


Mine wasn't far off that pricing either mate, I paid £75.. I thought, screw it. There's no way I needed them really but I thought meh, I'm weak, I'll grab some lol

I'm not so worried about the scores as such, I don't need to wear them out with benchmarks but I'm guessing with use they will always get slower but hopefully not as slow as a SATA SSD else they will go back!
What's the difference with the SN850 drives? Are they the gen 4 models or just a higher performing drive?

SN850 gets 1 million IOPS read and yes is gen4, and crucial P5 1tb (once you install the OS and use it for a month or two) gets around 390k IOPS read, which is the same as my 5 year old 2TB SSD gets on read IOPS.

and from what I understand read IOPS are mostly what matters.

 

[Tomgang]

Well I've had a birthday been very bad and spent some money I suppose I shouldn't have but still.... It's a tech purchase thread, so here we go


View attachment 213164

Been looking at the blu rays for a long time now, so when I got the chance and they had been dropped in price, I thought, you know what.... Birthday treat


View attachment 213165View attachment 213166View attachment 213167

It came from the desert, sorry no, Ebay! Saw it up for sale and was a not hardly used model, so thought what the heck and grabbed it. All decent in box and opened but not used and £59 posted so thought that was pretty much a decent deal

View attachment 213168View attachment 213178View attachment 213179View attachment 213196

Ah yes, a server left in a box I was waiting for things on site to change for me but sadly not, so I decided to get it installed in the cabinet and worry about it later... Shame only a single CPU and 8GB of DDR3 RAM in there, so we'll do something about that soon enough I believe I've got a spare CPU or two and I am pretty sure I have a heatsink for it, so I'll get those installed soon and then hopefully get some work done on it I believe Mr Clamps @Solaris17 video tutorials will be helping me through so looking forward to it if I can get 5 minutes to do it.. Sophia there checking my work and making sure I'd got everything in place... I think she was a little worried about the amount of cables and such needed from behind the cabinet but I think I've enough to cover it.....

View attachment 213169View attachment 213174

Ah a few more pics of some recent hardware purchases... What was I thinking... Well I'm going team beige to start with! I had had another fan die in the little homeserver I have and I was getting fed up with swapping them out all the time so, I had a recommendation, I went with some of these and damn are they not cheap.... But, hopefully, I won't need to swap them out in a months time with another... The case I have my homeserver in is a Fractal Design 804, 4 120mm at the front, then a 120mm on the left and a 140mm on the right. So 6 fans where bought and thank god some where on sale!! £135 is kinda hard to swallow that's for sure....

View attachment 213170View attachment 213171View attachment 213172View attachment 213173View attachment 213175

The two B450 boards I was a little off my game here as I just saw a free mouse mat or something with them and thought, bargain... Well yes and no I think... But, I do have two 1700X CPUs and a PC I built for my Mum for my sisters girls I think needs an upgrade since they are running a dual core and 8GB of RAM, so the plan is 1700X, B450, 16GB and that'll do. I've recently re-flashed each of the 5 RX480 Strix I had mining a few months ago, but since I've turned them off I wanted them to get back to stock and doing something else and being useful again, so one will be headed back up to them with the 1700X which I think will make a massive difference over what they had. What I'll be doing with the other four cards, I'm not sure. I have sold one which I had recently got the money for, which was nice, so... Might do a giveaway I think with them... Not sure yet....

View attachment 213180View attachment 213181View attachment 213182


And finally, Isabelle couldn't believe her eyes when the two RTX 3070s I had had been sent from my mate in the US, finally turned up in the UK and more so to my home address some 2.5 months nearly later on... Jesus.... Not sure that 3 to 5 day postage time is holding it's own at the moment lol Still, grateful to have them, just waiting on a few more bits of kit to turn up now..... When he sends them!

View attachment 213176View attachment 213177View attachment 213183View attachment 213184View attachment 213185View attachment 213186View attachment 213187

Oh and some DDR3 for a mates rig, what a nightmare this stuff has been... Ordered 6 sticks 8GB DDR3 through Ebay... Guy packs it in a single bag, when I receive them I think oh dear, hope these work and well, eventually when I got around to testing and finding out 4 of the 6 sticks didn't work correctly, I was somewhat annoyed....
I got hold of the seller and said to him the problems with the pictures, and he'd sent me out two more sticks. I'm still waiting on 2 more replacement sticks as they have not yet turned up.. Here's hoping I don't have to go down the claim route cos I could really do without the hassles...... We'll soon see....


View attachment 213188View attachment 213189View attachment 213190View attachment 213191View attachment 213192


And here we are with the latest daft purcahse....
NVME PCIe Gen 3 storage... Now I'm very impressed with these and more so with the price. I saw them on Amazon for £75, now for 1TB NVME storage, even for Gen 3 speeds, that was a darn good bargain. Hell my 1TB SATA SSDs I bought a few months ago I think, I think where a little more expensive than that..... So when I saw them I thought I'd consider buying a few, then they went out of stock, then I stupidly went searching and saw them in Overclockers for the same money, I was weak and ordered 4 and ordered a 16GB RAM kit for my sisters PC I mentioned above, 3600MHz CL16, so nothing blowing out the water but something decent and more than enough for what they use.
But still, got two of the P5 drives installed into my X570 board, got them configured and was very impressed with their performance so was worth the cash I guess



If you managed to get through all of that text and rubbish, I applaud you!!

Here we are with a quick CrystalMarkInfo speed test for the two installed P5 drives....

View attachment 213197

It's a shame one of them isn't quite hitting the 3000MB/sec speeds but I believe this is down to the way it's connected on the motherboard... One to the CPU and one through the southbridge chip....

That's a nice little spending spree you had there and a early Christmas in August.

Well as you know, I had my spree and Christmas in June.

But it's time for a counter attack, so two words: build log, build log, build log

 

[phill]

SN850 gets 1 million IOPS read and yes is gen4, and crucial P5 1tb (once you install the OS and use it for a month or two) gets around 390k IOPS read, which is the same as my 5 year old 2TB SSD gets on read IOPS.

and from what I understand read IOPS are mostly what matters.

Ah, well if it's hitting 7GB/sec instead of 3GB+/sec then I can see why The Gen 4 stuff I find is way crazy over priced for the size of them and the performance, well, numbers... Bigger better and all that jazz but does Windows work any better at all?? I mean I'm still using SATA SSDs for my OS... The rest is such a mixture and mess, I've not even started thinking about I'll have another check over it in a month or so's time but there's not been much happening with them at the moment.. Just extra ultra quick storage at the moment

That's a nice little spending spree you had there and a early Christmas in August.

Well as you know, I had my spree and Christmas in June.

But it's time for a counter attack, so two words: build log, build log, build log

Thanks Tomgang, I just saw this and thought, yeah why not Very much didn't need any of it but when I saw the storage so cheap and the Amiga documentary cheaper again, I thought, what the heck

Ah, everything will be going in the build log matey, just a click away from there in the sig It's a dangerous place to click mind... Some say it might blind your eyes and not because it's awesome either!! I've got a few things I can update in there as well, so I'll see if I can get and do that in a bit.... Still a few bits waiting on hopefully we'll get them at some point

 

[freeagent]

Happy Birthday!

 

[phill]

Happy Birthday!

Thank you Was a little while ago but appreciated!!

 

[Space Lynx]

Ah, well if it's hitting 7GB/sec instead of 3GB+/sec then I can see why The Gen 4 stuff I find is way crazy over priced for the size of them and the performance, well, numbers... Bigger better and all that jazz but does Windows work any better at all?? I mean I'm still using SATA SSDs for my OS... The rest is such a mixture and mess, I've not even started thinking about I'll have another check over it in a month or so's time but there's not been much happening with them at the moment.. Just extra ultra quick storage at the moment

Thanks Tomgang, I just saw this and thought, yeah why not Very much didn't need any of it but when I saw the storage so cheap and the Amiga documentary cheaper again, I thought, what the heck

Ah, everything will be going in the build log matey, just a click away from there in the sig It's a dangerous place to click mind... Some say it might blind your eyes and not because it's awesome either!! I've got a few things I can update in there as well, so I'll see if I can get and do that in a bit.... Still a few bits waiting on hopefully we'll get them at some point

yeah, I agree, that is why I kept mine, it's not a big deal. for $85 I couldn't beat it.

 

[Tomgang]

Ah, well if it's hitting 7GB/sec instead of 3GB+/sec then I can see why The Gen 4 stuff I find is way crazy over priced for the size of them and the performance, well, numbers... Bigger better and all that jazz but does Windows work any better at all?? I mean I'm still using SATA SSDs for my OS... The rest is such a mixture and mess, I've not even started thinking about I'll have another check over it in a month or so's time but there's not been much happening with them at the moment.. Just extra ultra quick storage at the moment

Thanks Tomgang, I just saw this and thought, yeah why not Very much didn't need any of it but when I saw the storage so cheap and the Amiga documentary cheaper again, I thought, what the heck

Ah, everything will be going in the build log matey, just a click away from there in the sig It's a dangerous place to click mind... Some say it might blind your eyes and not because it's awesome either!! I've got a few things I can update in there as well, so I'll see if I can get and do that in a bit.... Still a few bits waiting on hopefully we'll get them at some point

Good, will se that build log. Link in, when ready.

 

[tabascosauz]

SN750 started dying about 2 weeks ago. Started doing the disappearing act, and constantly errored out when I put it in the external enclosure. Since I know for sure the 5900X isn't like my cancer-ridden 3700X, immediately alarm bells were ringing so I copied everything off and ran diskpart clean all. WD RMA process is easy.

RMA replacement arrived today, the way they packaged it snugly was pretty cool, not seen this before. Still not sure whether I want to put it in the 4.0 CPU slot and clean install Windows onto it (and bet on not buying a 4.0 drive anytime soon), or keep going with it in one of the 3.0 x2 chipset slots as a data drive with Windows still on my old SX8200. I guess I wouldn't have this problem if the Unify-X was a X570 board.

 

[arni-gx]

this month.....my new LCd monitor, my new mouse and keyboard..... also, my new usb 3.0 hub.....

 

[micropage7]

stock Nikon lens VRII to replace the broken one

Engenius AP
sometimes i just wanna try it

Many talking about gaming mouse with RGB effect, what about cheap mouse with RGB effect?
actually not too bad, for $2 you have light mouse with RGB effect but the switches, you can't expect more for that price

And another tenda router

 

[ixi]

stock Nikon lens VRII to replace the broken one
View attachment 213525

Engenius AP
sometimes i just wanna try it
View attachment 213526

Many talking about gaming mouse with RGB effect, what about cheap mouse with RGB effect?
actually not too bad, for $2 you have light mouse with RGB effect but the switches, you can't expect more for that price
View attachment 213528

And another tenda router
View attachment 213527

Why genius and tenda? Just for testing or something else?

 

[Shou Miko]

SN750 started dying about 2 weeks ago. Started doing the disappearing act, and constantly errored out when I put it in the external enclosure. Since I know for sure the 5900X isn't like my cancer-ridden 3700X, immediately alarm bells were ringing so I copied everything off and ran diskpart clean all. WD RMA process is easy.

RMA replacement arrived today, the way they packaged it snugly was pretty cool, not seen this before. Still not sure whether I want to put it in the 4.0 CPU slot and clean install Windows onto it (and bet on not buying a 4.0 drive anytime soon), or keep going with it in one of the 3.0 x2 chipset slots as a data drive with Windows still on my old SX8200. I guess I wouldn't have this problem if the Unify-X was a X570 board.

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Hmm, I relay on WD for HDD's and been thinking about their SSD's never purchased one because the prices was the same ally as Samsung so I always went Samsung but lately they are so hot they are annoying.

 

[Mussels]

I bought a wifi repeater for a friend that cost $13 Au and i expect to be total shit, as well as a sound isolation shield for my blue yeti... should make interesting pics when they arrive

 

[tabascosauz]

Hmm, I relay on WD for HDD's and been thinking about their SSD's never purchased one because the prices was the same ally as Samsung so I always went Samsung but lately they are so hot they are annoying.

I think I've bought 2 x SN550, 2 x Blue 3D M.2, 2 x Blue 3D 2.5", and 1 x SN750 so far. Everything is impeccable except for the SN750, which does get a little warm. SN550 is one of my all-time fave recommendations, I don't have anything against Samsung (still using an 850 EVO), they're just expensive for what they offer. Not a big fan of WD HDDs, but I have an old 1TB Black and 1TB Blue that I dock occasionally for archiving stuff

I'm starting to suspect the two middle M.2 slots on the Unify-X don't work very well as the new drive started disappearing as well. Both have this switch that toggles between 3.0 x2 from chipset (no CPU lane-sharing) or 4.0 x4 from CPU (lane-sharing). I moved the SN750 so now I have it in the top 3.0/4.0 x4 slot (CPU), with the SX8200 in the bottom 3.0 x4 slot (chipset).

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Very impressed....

 

[micropage7]

Why genius and tenda? Just for testing or something else?

engenius is for testing
tenda has better coverage in my office, tplink is good too but some model is hard to find here

 

[Toothless]

Y'know, sometimes EVGA B-stock has some goodies at good prices.

Test bench was a 450w, now it's 850w. Gotta say I feel a bit better knowing I can overclock say, a GTX580 and more and not fear explosions.


Bonus pic of test bench. Needs some shelves.

That stain on the left side won't come out. I think it was a mocha frappe.

 

[witkazy]

Belated Birthday gift for my kid , she pretty much abandoned her msi apache after she got this.

Yeah it is Aple but she uses Procreate a lot so i do not mind 12.9 inch variant.

 

[Chomiq]

Just a power strip that I plugged in to use with phone chargers, ds4 and old stereo receiver.

 

[Sithaer]

Welp, so this just happened cause reasons.
I was browsing the second hand market and honestly at this point I got tired of the prices and everything new is way way out of my budget range.

Yeh I took a risk with this as its not exactly new but its in a good condition + previous owner changed thermal pads and paste recently so I went for it and its also a fairly premium model so I trusted it more.
+ I met the seller in person and checked the card.

Performance is enough for my needs, ~1 year ago I tested a 1660 Super for a day and I was fine with that but I missed out on buying one at the time.
This is close as it gets, a bit better actually + 2 gigs of Vram so now I can finally max out Doom Eternal. '7.5 gigs Vram with my native res,yikes'

Cooler on this thing is impressive tbh, in my case its staying around 65-68 celsius in demanding games and only 33-40% fan speed and thats dead silent.
Boosts up to ~1940 Mhz core with factory settings.

Now only to sell my RX 570, they fetch decent monies on the second hand market here so better do that while I can. 'thought about keeping it but with such prices and I'm not exactly swimming in money'

Kinda funny how I always own Nvidia card then AMD then Nvidia and this repeats.

 

[phill]

View attachment 213633
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Welp, so this just happened cause reasons.
I was browsing the second hand market and honestly at this point I got tired of the prices and everything new is way way out of my budget range.

Yeh I took a risk with this as its not exactly new but its in a good condition + previous owner changed thermal pads and paste recently so I went for it and its also a fairly premium model so I trusted it more.
+ I met the seller in person and checked the card.

Performance is enough for my needs, ~1 year ago I tested a 1660 Super for a day and I was fine with that but I missed out on buying one at the time.
This is close as it gets, a bit better actually + 2 gigs of Vram so now I can finally max out Doom Eternal. '7.5 gigs Vram with my native res,yikes'

Cooler on this thing is impressive tbh, in my case its staying around 65-68 celsius in demanding games and only 33-40% fan speed and thats dead silent.
Boosts up to ~1940 Mhz core with factory settings.

Now only to sell my RX 570, they fetch decent monies on the second hand market here so better do that while I can. 'thought about keeping it but with such prices and I'm not exactly swimming in money'

Kinda funny how I always own Nvidia card then AMD then Nvidia and this repeats.

I have the SC version of the card and I'm still happy with it I'd say anything up to about 50% fan is silent/quiet

 

[tabascosauz]

I have the SC version of the card and I'm still happy with it I'd say anything up to about 50% fan is silent/quiet

Was happy with my SC ACX 3.0 for 5 years, now my friend is happy with it I still think it's the sexiest card ever made, especially with a window

If I had a 1080 Ti ACX 3.0 or Classified I probably would have not bought the 2060 Super and still have it, to show off in my Cerberus X with the windowed panel - sadly while the FE is sleek it just doesn't have the sexy illuminated ACX 3.0 nameplate

 

[Mussels]

View attachment 213633


Welp, so this just happened cause reasons.
I was browsing the second hand market and honestly at this point I got tired of the prices and everything new is way way out of my budget range.

Yeh I took a risk with this as its not exactly new but its in a good condition + previous owner changed thermal pads and paste recently so I went for it and its also a fairly premium model so I trusted it more.
+ I met the seller in person and checked the card.

Performance is enough for my needs, ~1 year ago I tested a 1660 Super for a day and I was fine with that but I missed out on buying one at the time.
This is close as it gets, a bit better actually + 2 gigs of Vram so now I can finally max out Doom Eternal. '7.5 gigs Vram with my native res,yikes'

Cooler on this thing is impressive tbh, in my case its staying around 65-68 celsius in demanding games and only 33-40% fan speed and thats dead silent.
Boosts up to ~1940 Mhz core with factory settings.

Now only to sell my RX 570, they fetch decent monies on the second hand market here so better do that while I can. 'thought about keeping it but with such prices and I'm not exactly swimming in money'

Kinda funny how I always own Nvidia card then AMD then Nvidia and this repeats.

Awww the 1070 has little boomerangs!

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION, REEEEE