Off-Topic Thread

Calibos

ED E wrote: »

Calibos, man am I jealous. Thats a household using a lot of media! 5TVs + Other clients.

NUCs were on my radar. Might invest in one as they really are tidy units. Before that though the proper FreeNAS unit though, need to get proper content serving before we start pulling from loads of clients.

Thanks for all the info guys!

Don't be jealous. House of parents, adult children and significant others that cant afford to move out! We're the Cyber-Walton Family The only thing I'll say is that despite the 'excess' of 6 TV's we'd have a very low carbon footprint what with only one house to heat etc and one of each of all the other household appliances rather 5 of everything. The cost of all the Computer gear/ servers etc is shared.

ShadowHearth

My solution for media playback. Asus O!Plus, I put movies and TV series on portable hdd and that's it, it can use,usb keys too. So far it plays all formats. Handy little thing and has remote. Then ps3 or ps4 for Netflix.

ED E

Calibos wrote: »

Don't be jealous. House of parents, adult children and significant others that cant afford to move out! We're the Cyber-Walton Family The only thing I'll say is that despite the 'excess' of 6 TV's we'd have a very low carbon footprint what with only one house to heat etc and one of each of all the other household appliances rather 5 of everything. The cost of all the Computer gear/ servers etc is shared.

Thats exactly where a nice NAS becomes very cost efficient, especially one with low idle draw. Right now we have 3 always on units, 1 single drive "NAS" from WD for backups, 1TB DLNA share from the router and a "home server" PC(Win7Pro64) box that hosts a few different services along with a couple TB of content. Its a mess.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

My solution for media playback. Asus O!Plus, I put movies and TV series on portable hdd and that's it, it can use,usb keys too. So far it plays all formats. Handy little thing and has remote. Then ps3 or ps4 for Netflix.

Looks nice enough, similar price to the Roku, will check it out further. Is the UI "old people friendly"?

kearneybobs

I use my PS3 in the sitting room for media and in the bedroom I use a WD TV Play. Bought it for about €30 or so from Amazon. Doesn't support DTS I believe but that's hardly a game breaker for me. I use PS3 Media player on both devices and works pretty much flawlessly.

Genghiz Cohen

Serephucus wrote: »

At the moment, mine is an mATX rig in an Arc Mini. 2x3TB for documents and irreplaceables, and 3x4TB for movies and the like. It also handles backups of the family's stuff, uTorrent, and Minecraft.

I'm thinking over the summer I might switch to this:



It's Silverstone's DS380. An ITX box, with 8x3.5 hotswap bays, and 4x2.5 internal bays. I'm also thinking I'll throw this in it:

A case with a door in front of the power buttons gets a huge no from me. It is such a pain in the ass that you'll start leaving it open and then it'll get broken off. Worse still, that one hides USB ports too.

Serephucus

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

A case with a door in front of the power buttons gets a huge no from me. It is such a pain in the ass that you'll start leaving it open and then it'll get broken off. Worse still, that one hides USB ports too.

Given that it'll be for a server, it's basically a non-issue. My current one gets turned off once every few months for maintenance, and that's about the only time I'm physically near the thing.

Random other point: I dunno when it happened, but Corsair have a new budget line of Gold PSUs out - The CS series. 80+ Gold, modular, and only around €5 or there-abouts more expensive than Super Flower's units on HWVS. 450-750W.

ShadowHearth

ED E wrote: »

Thats exactly where a nice NAS becomes very cost efficient, especially one with low idle draw. Right now we have 3 always on units, 1 single drive "NAS" from WD for backups, 1TB DLNA share from the router and a "home server" PC(Win7Pro64) box that hosts a few different services along with a couple TB of content. Its a mess.



Looks nice enough, similar price to the Roku, will check it out further. Is the UI "old people friendly"?

UI is pretty much dumbass prove. Its not fastest or snapiest one, but it works and extremely minimalistic.

ED E

kearneybobs wrote: »

I use my PS3 in the sitting room for media and in the bedroom I use a WD TV Play. Bought it for about €30 or so from Amazon. Doesn't support DTS I believe but that's hardly a game breaker for me. I use PS3 Media player on both devices and works pretty much flawlessly.

€30? Looks like you got a very good price. Guts of 70GBP right now.

kearneybobs

ED E wrote: »

€30? Looks like you got a very good price. Guts of 70GBP right now.

Yeah. It was an already reduced price and Amazon had £5 voucher off too. Was a brilliant bargain
It came to £32 and had the £5 off. Just over €30. Seems to be out of stock from Amazon for some time though now.

Vandango

Seaaan wrote: »

I believe I posted it on a Thursday, and Tuesday 2 weeks I got it. So 11 days.

Thanks for that.

TheDoc

New BENQ monitor arrived today, woohoo!

Had bought one to replace my main monitor that died earlier this year, and was so impressed flogged of my other monitor to buy another BENQ

Really high quality for €140

WhiskeyGoblin

Lads, tryna help my friend build a PC. Not sure what GFX to go for though, he mostly plays LoL and nothing much demanding. What would you suggest? I was thinking 770/270x/280x!

Seaaan

marko93 wrote: »

Lads, tryna help my friend build a PC. Not sure what GFX to go for though, he mostly plays LoL and nothing much demanding. What would you suggest? I was thinking 770/270x/280x!

Well I play LoL quite a bit, and honestly a stronger graphics card doesn't seem to make a huge difference. I'm running a 290 @1440p and barely maintain 80 fps. Is the game cpu bound?


Oh yeah, my old 270x ran it at 50-60 fps at 1080p

Gumbi

Seaaan wrote: »

Well I play LoL quite a bit, and honestly a stronger graphics card doesn't seem to make a huge difference. I'm running a 290 @1440p and barely maintain 80 fps. Is the game cpu bound?


Oh yeah, my old 270x ran it at 50-60 fps at 1080p

That's because it is largely CPU limited, I believe.

Seaaan

Frankly, above 40 and I'm happy.

Lu Tze

Anybody tried the Stream in-home streaming thingy? Just gave it a lash quickly there (the beta is open to anybody now), looked really impressive, tried Euro Truck 2 and Tom Raider on a crappy laptop and it played fine for the few seconds i played them! Slight jutter on euro truck, but im on the wireless instead of plugged in.

I must say i think this will be class, a little intel NUC tucked under the telly and off you go when you fancy a bit of button bashing on the couch! Not sure how it will keep up for fast paced games and things, will have to give it and extended go at the weekend.

ED E

Gumbi wrote: »

That's because it is largely CPU limited, I believe.

Yep, completely. There is very little rendering involved in LOL as its essentially 2D.

WhiskeyGoblin

Thanks, I'll let him know!

Sarz91

Anyone know where I can pick up a gtx 770 with the titan blower cooler? Thinking of putting one into a Hadron and from what I've seen a reference cooler would probably work best.

Yeti Beast

Sarz91 wrote: »

Anyone know where I can pick up a gtx 770 with the titan blower cooler? Thinking of putting one into a Hadron and from what I've seen a reference cooler would probably work best.

EVGA seem to be the only manufacturer that still uses the reference cooler on some of it's SC cards, and are widely available, but they're pricey compared to others. Amazon, Novatech and Scan have them in the UK, but I can't link.

Headshot

Where the **** is GTA 5 on the PC.

rolexeagle1

Lu Tze wrote: »

Anybody tried the Stream in-home streaming thingy? Just gave it a lash quickly there (the beta is open to anybody now), looked really impressive, tried Euro Truck 2 and Tom Raider on a crappy laptop and it played fine for the few seconds i played them! Slight jutter on euro truck, but im on the wireless instead of plugged in.

I must say i think this will be class, a little intel NUC tucked under the telly and off you go when you fancy a bit of button bashing on the couch! Not sure how it will keep up for fast paced games and things, will have to give it and extended go at the weekend.

Is that Big Picture? Or can you now stream from your pc to your TV??

Lu Tze

srumball wrote: »

Is that Big Picture? Or can you now stream from your pc to your TV??

No its not big picture. You can stream from your desktop to another computer in the house , in my case a low powered laptop which couldn't run the game at 640 X 480 res but was displaying it full screen on high settings through streaming! Will try again at the weekend, with an ethernet connection this time for an extended play

Calibos

It basically encodes the game as a H264 1080p60 video stream to the client with only control inputs going back from the client to the main gaming rig. 1080p is apparently flawless on a wired network but a bit hit and miss on wireless. 720p is however pretty flawless on wireless. Looks like Wifi AC will be required for flawless 1080p wireless.

As long as the client PC/device can smoothly decode a 1080p60 video stream you're pretty much good to go. i.e. Your laptop or media player becomes a full powered gaming PC.

It's taken till now to be feasible and playable because you need hardware in the main rig capable of both running a game native at 1080p60 and also to H264 encode the game frames at 60 frames a second real time at the same time!

Headshot

Who wants borderlands 2 steam key?

bassey

Bagsy if not gone

Headshot

Enjoy Bassey

WhiskeyGoblin

Does anyone know what sort of connection I'd need to get my PS3 to work on my dell Monitor through Display Port? I've had a look, but I've no idea what is good or not.

Lu Tze

Lu Tze wrote: »

No its not big picture. You can stream from your desktop to another computer in the house , in my case a low powered laptop which couldn't run the game at 640 X 480 res but was displaying it full screen on high settings through streaming! Will try again at the weekend, with an ethernet connection this time for an extended play

Just for those interested, had a slightly longer go of this last night - using Arkham city. I think it was slightly limited by the connection as the main desktop is connected by home plugs.

Serving Machine
I5 - 16GB RAM - Hd7970 -Connected to router via homeplug

Client Machine
Pentium G630 - 8GB - HD7770 - 720p screen - connected to router via ethernet


Unfortunately didnt test at 1080p as the tv is 720p. Maintained close to 60FPS for the most part. A bit of slow down (30-40FPS) when 7-8 characters on screen in a fight. Im pretty sure its running the game at 1080p on the serving machine, and then downscaling it for the stream to the client resolution.

Bandwidth taken up by the stream (presumably) was about 50 Mbps. Not sure if that is bottlenecked by the homeplug.

Overall ran pretty smooth

ED E

Lu Tze wrote: »

Just for those interested, had a slightly longer go of this last night - using Arkham city. I think it was slightly limited by the connection as the main desktop is connected by home plugs.

Just tried it there on L4D2 to test it quickly, desktop is a Q6600 and 7870, dual GigE NICs, client was a tablet running on wifi, reported link speed is 270Mbps, real world doing 80Mbps(5Ghz).

Panel defaults to 40hz so it was vsyncing at 40fps solid. Slight bit of input lag but I could still pop a few zeds. Will be interesting to try it across pure ethernet.

EDIT: Forgot, both 1080p.