Hardware Discussion Thread

Thought i'd throw this in here rather than start a new thread.

I'm kinda half thinking about getting a wireless keyboard and mouse...
Ideally the keyboard would be backlit and it wouldn't be too expensive.

This would prob be used as a second keyboard and quality is not such a big thing, I'm really just looking for the cheapest. Although some kind of light on the keyboard would be very handy.

Anyone any ideas?

Cheers

TheDoc wrote: »

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/4209906/art/sapphire-technology/radeon-hd-5770-vapor-x-1.html

ATI Spahire 5770 1gb vapor x.

Looking to move from my Nvidia GTS 8800.

Looking to get myself a dual monitor setup for lols, so this card looks the biz, and the price looks good.

( was considering a 4890 vapor x1gb)

Any advice from the peeps?

4890 has more brute power,but it runs hotter and uses alot more power.

If your gaming,go with the 4890,if not the 5770 is a better choice

Solitaire wrote: »

FYP! :P

And its a hard choice... 5770 is quiet and subtle, 4890 brute-force powerful. If you just want to game well get the 5770, but if you want to "push the envelope" regarding quality and AA/AF think about the 4890... and a bigger PSU :P

Yeah I remember we had this convo bout the psu before and I dont want to look at a new one.

I play wow which isnt that demanding, and left4dead the odd time which my 8800gts runs both ok, just in hectic situations things stutter slighty.

I'm assuming the 5770 will give me a nice boost especially in wow ( not an intensive game on graphics) but will make it urn smoother, while running on my psu.

And 120€ for a vaporx 1Gb is pretty nice price

Think i might go with that one

Solitaire wrote: »

Thought it was the HD5750 VaporX for €120-ish? The HD5770 VaporX is €134, still dirt-cheap compared to most HD5770s though! :P

Is there actually a vapor X cooler on the card?
It looks just like a regular heatsink + fan to me! :eek:

Effluo wrote: »

Oh I can see Vapor X on the card, but i don't recognise it's technology!

It just looks like a normal heatsink + fan, then they just use the brand name "Vapor X"

Vapor-X is essentially a fancy heatsink. It uses phase change as a heat dissipitation mechanism. More info [urk=http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/VaporX/VaporX_index.aspx?cid=2]here.[/url]

I'm an Engineer so when I read all of that, I went "Yeah, that makes sense, but it's probably mostly marketing". Bought one anyway (a 4890 which uses an incredible 90W at idle) and it is the quietest performance GPU I have ever owned. Aside from startup (and it is not even that loud then) I cannot hear a thing, even when gaming. I'll be buying Vapor X cards for the forseeable future.

The only downside I found with it is something I cannot believe they overlooked. The fan design means that less air than you'd think gets pushed out of the case through the PCI-E expansion slot holes. So even though the cooler is great at removing heat from the GPU, it dumps a lot of it into case raising ambient temperatures and hence raising the GPU temperature. I'm making it sound like a bigger issue than it is, but I'm amazed that they would go to so much trouble to design this Vapor X cooler and overlook something as simple as this. Simply changing the design of the plastic housing and fan would dramatically affect this and would not add a lot to production costs.

Latest and greatest from Intel with the Core i7 980x

Review: here

Not much out of the ordinary to report, no surprise that it is very powerful and very expensive

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Wow +1 :eek:
High end processor and graphics on the same core will change so much in the world of computing. No need for huge cases to accomodate 1 foot long graphics cards, less compatibility issues without the massive range of CPU/GPU's, same RAM used for graphics and general use...thats just off the top of my head but so much more possibilities. I'd say this has been AMD's long term plan ever since they bought ATI. They've been happy to let Intel rule the CPU market while they have been quietly working on integrated processing. I do vaguely remember reading somewhere though that Intel are working on something similar albeit not with someone like ATI to back them up.

Don't forget the implications for mobile gaming!
Seriously though, that's pretty incredible. I was thinking of putting together a cheap build soon but I might just wait till next year now

KonFusion wrote: »

Quick question on duel-channel memory architecture.

If I have 4 DIMM/RAM slots on my mobo, and it's duel chan memory architecture, and I fill the first 3 slots, because it's duel channel will I get slower performance from the third chip?

Thanks

Um this thread is more discussion of new hardware etc. You might be better off starting a new thread in future to ask questions. Anyway if you have say 2x512mb sticks of ram in the dual channel slots and 1x512mb of ram in one of the other slots then the system will just revert back to single channel mode. Basically your ram needs to be an even number(e.g. 2x512,4x512) and they must be in the right slots! It is also recommended that they are matching otherwise they will just run at the speed of the slowest stick or maybe even not at all?

Thought this article might be of interest to anyone putting together a gaming PC:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/athlon-ii-x3-440-gaming-performance,review-31906.html

the spider case is gonna look a lot less badass with cables connected to it, and i wouldnt put it anywhere but on a dust free lab's tabletop.

Tea_Bag wrote: »

the spider case is gonna look a lot less badass with cables connected to it, and i wouldnt put it anywhere but on a dust free lab's tabletop.

in fairness it wouldnt really collect that much dust. a little bit, like everything else, but not a lot. And very easy to dust off either way. I'd just be worried about people touching it - they'd either hurt themselves or It.