The Chat/Spam Thread

[DarkSaibot v.1.3.10]

just that i'm old fashioned - i like to keep them separately PC for PC use and TV for Tv-Shows,Movies And Cable Network Channels + My plasma tv eat less power than the 1000w source that i have in pc - or so i like to believe

CPU i Have an old AMD Phenom 1100T
VIdeo Hardware Radeon 580 GTX


I remember trying once to link the pc to plasma tv but the resolution was destroyed - something like 640x480 didn't even see the whole desktop screen - probably lazy settings from me

Then you'd only need to buy some sort of wireless mini-keyboard or mouse so that the experience doesn't suck

i think you need those (wireless mini-keyboard|mouse) only if you want to use the internet on google - youtube - for just watching movies/tv-shows from a stick/external hdd i think the remote is enough

depending on the cpu in that pc you really don't even need HW acc if you're not watching h265

never watch h265 - i suffice mostly with NTG - NTB and TBS releases - NTG dosen't always play

still my wish list remain :
Media Player DUNE - entertainment
Synology DiskStation DS918 + 10TB HDD (NAS) - bussiness
Oculus Rift Virtual Reality + Oculus Touch - porn curiosity moslty
Xbox or PS4 - Depends wich is more easy to mod - entertainment - red dead redemption 2 | NBA } last of us}Uncharted } days gone
and a LGA 2011 MOBO with 8 memory DIMMs + CPU to upgrade my pc and use all my leftovers DDR3 RAM

[anon]

depending on the cpu in that pc you really don't even need HW acc if you're not watching h265

Possible, but since he said he was on a budget I was thinking of a laptop like mine, where HEVC and non-accelerated 1080p are unplayable.

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality + Oculus Touch - porn curiosity moslty

Apparently the stuff available so far isn't very good, but feel free to share your experiences in the future ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[yoco]

Not sure how to describe this... in my family house we have 2 floors. My room is in second floor where I have my router. Now, 1st floor, I can get some WiFi signal but not everywhere. Is it possible to make it so that I would have better WiFi signal? What do I need to buy?

[Sazzy]

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality + Oculus Touch - porn curiosity moslty

why not just get a google cardboard for 5 dollars and try it out with your phone? Seems a steep investment for something you can try almost for free.

Not sure how to describe this... in my family house we have 2 floors. My room is in second floor where I have my router. Now, 1st floor, I can get some WiFi signal but not everywhere. Is it possible to make it so that I would have better WiFi signal? What do I need to buy?

You can add an additional access point halfway and let it repeat the wifi;
Or you can put cheapo wireless router (as a slave) downstairs using a powerline adapter to connect it

First option will definitely be the cheaper one and might even work better

just that i'm old fashioned - i like to keep them separately PC for PC use and TV for Tv-Shows,Movies And Cable Network Channels + My plasma tv eat less power than the 1000w source that i have in pc - or so i like to believe

See the thing is, those numbers are very misleading. A 1000W supply does not mean you're constantly using 1000W. It scales with what your pc is actually using. I put a 350W supply in my media center and it's running just as fine, for example.
I actually calculated how much my media center uses a year, and it's only 20 dollars if I leave it on day and night, 365 days. And this is calculated on top usage. I turn it off when I sleep and go out the house so it's probably not even a third.

Hard disks use like 10W and they spin down when you're not using them, so hardly use anything at all. Your cpu usually underclocks when idle, also using less CPU. Yours has a 125 W TDP, but the average will be much much lower. You can get a newer one pretty cheaply that only uses half that on max load and will easily do 1080P and even H265 with a better GPU baked into it. Your motherboard probably uses less than 100W. RAM like 15W. So honestly the only power hungry thing in there is the GPU and a newer CPU would completely replace it. And that will just as well underclock when idle and use far far less. Yours has 150W TDP. So all in all your power supply is most likely enormous overkill for that PC and I doubt you'll go over 40 dollars a year when leaving it on. It's honestly a non-issue unless you live in a country where electricity is SUPER EXPENSIVE. Keep in mind actually that buying a new power-friendly PC will cost you a pretty penny as well. Let's say it's 400 dollars, which is on the low end but should suffice for a media center plenty (mine was around 450 and plays _everything_ ). That would mean that the investment alone would let you run the old pc for 10 years non-stop! And don't forget it will use electricity too, adding another 20 dollars a year. The return on investment is in other words absolutely horrible and not worth it if you're doing it to save money.

[yoco]

I have cable from my router to my TV, so I can watch hbogo, etc. If I buy a second router and use this cable to connect new router with my router upstairs, can I still connect TV with cable to new router?

[Sazzy]

yeah, just disable DHCP on second router so the router upstairs does the actual routing. That's good news actually, it's your best case scenario to expand your wifi range :) ! Get like a Asus RT-AC51U or a TP-Link Archer C6 . They're 40 dollars and pretty decent for their cost. (Pretty big fan of asus' firmware!)

[yoco]

I already have asus rt-n66u. It's doing great so far.

[yoco]

I can't find in stock Asus RT-AC51U anywhere here at my place, but there is TP-Link Archer C6. I'm just a bit concerned about the firmware. Are they reliable?

[Sazzy]

I got one for my dad cause he didn't want to spend 250 on a high end one. Obviously I prefer my asus (ac66u) but it's not failed 'm so far and he has it for a few years now. The asus definitely has a ton more features, but just to expand your wifi the TP-Link is great. I was going to say you might want to google how easily you can set it as an access point together with the asus (asus has a great built in wizard for it) but then I remembered you were hooking it up by cable. Doesn't have to be the asus ac51u of course, I only picked that one out since it's one of the cheaper asus I found while still offering quite a bit. (And I also really like Merlin WRT for the asus)

[yoco]

Pretty much all Asus routers below 50€ are out of stock here. Don't feel like ordering from german amazon, so I'll just buy TP Link C6.

[Sazzy]

What's wrong with german Amazon?

[yoco]

Nothing. I just need it quick, and ordering from germany will take 3-5 days delivery time.
But since Archer C6 is also praised I'll probably get it tomorrow here.

[anon]

See the thing is, those numbers are very misleading. A 1000W supply does not mean you're constantly using 1000W. It scales with what your pc is actually using. I put a 350W supply in my media center and it's running just as fine, for example.
I actually calculated how much my media center uses a year, and it's only 20 dollars if I leave it on day and night, 365 days. And this is calculated on top usage. I turn it off when I sleep and go out the house so it's probably not even a third.

One little known fact: most power supplies are less efficient (as much as -20 percentage points) when load is way below average, and slightly more so when at higher load but still below maximum. In any case, these differences will be vastly offset by the fact you're idling/on standby mode or playing Crysis and compiling Gentoo at the same time respectively, but it's worth knowing nonetheless.

I'm all for saving energy (not coincidentally, the power bill came today and I'm still at 25 kWh per month), but many of the "common knowledge" tricks have minimal effect and no relevance for stuff that doesn't run off a battery, or even harm performance and/or hardware like wireless APSD or hard disk APM. The biggest savings come from really simple things that you should be doing anyway: turning off the monitor if you're going to be away, and putting the computer on sleep mode if it's not going to be used at all. There is also frequency and voltage scaling on all modern processors, which has a significant effect with no drawbacks on most scenarios, but that's enabled by default.

PS: the smallest power supply I've ever had was the size of a coffee cup and rated for 80W, it only had the motherboard ATX connector and a Molex for one hard drive And the BIOS didn't support booting from USB, so I had to get really creative to run some recovery tools...

[anon]

Not sure how to describe this... in my family house we have 2 floors. My room is in second floor where I have my router. Now, 1st floor, I can get some WiFi signal but not everywhere. Is it possible to make it so that I would have better WiFi signal? What do I need to buy?

Sazzy already gave good advice, and you're very fortunate to have wiring in place already, making the required effort minimal. Just get another router and follow those instructions, it shouldn't take long.

Additional tips: since you're going to have one access point on each floor, you must make sure they have the same name and password but different channels - one of 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4 GHz, and just about any non-overlapping one on the 5.8 GHz band. Don't use automatic channel selection. Antennas with a gain of at least 5 dBi would also be desirable, they will improve horizontal coverage (which is good) at the expense of vertical (less relevant in this situation). An intentional side effect of this configuration is that whatever you use will roam to the strongest signal whenever you go up or downstairs.

I've never used powerline adapters, but apparently they work well enough, with the physical limitation of having to be in the same circuit to "see" each other. But once again, since your cabling is already done just use that, it's the best choice.

On a sidenote, TP-Link used to be good when they used Atheros chips; the TL-WR841ND in particular was an excellent example of a very cheap router that could do almost about anything not involving USB or OpenVPN. Now they've switched to Mediatek for many (most?) models and those aren't as good. In any case, you should always check WikiDevi and the OpenWrt wiki before making a purchase, even if you have zero interest on custom firmware.

[DarkSaibot v.1.3.10]

why not just get a google cardboard for 5 dollars and try it out with your phone? Seems a steep investment for something you can try almost for free.

crossed my mind - just that my current phone it can't be considered a smartphone anymore i have i think around 10 years old Gigabyte GSmart Rio R1 wich i barelly use on calling and texting - is blocking even in surfing internet - don't want to imagine what will happen in videos - so a good new phone will cost me the equivalent of the vr rig

Apparently the stuff available so far isn't very good, but feel free to share your experiences in the future ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

i think it will be a long distance future - unless i will win on betting sports or lotterry ))

See the thing is, those numbers are very misleading. A 1000W supply does not mean you're constantly using 1000W. It scales with what your pc is actually using. I put a 350W supply in my media center and it's running just as fine, for example.
I actually calculated how much my media center uses a year, and it's only 20 dollars if I leave it on day and night, 365 days. And this is calculated on top usage. I turn it off when I sleep and go out the house so it's probably not even a third.

Hard disks use like 10W and they spin down when you're not using them, so hardly use anything at all. Your cpu usually underclocks when idle, also using less CPU. Yours has a 125 W TDP, but the average will be much much lower. You can get a newer one pretty cheaply that only uses half that on max load and will easily do 1080P and even H265 with a better GPU baked into it. Your motherboard probably uses less than 100W. RAM like 15W. So honestly the only power hungry thing in there is the GPU and a newer CPU would completely replace it. And that will just as well underclock when idle and use far far less. Yours has 150W TDP. So all in all your power supply is most likely enormous overkill for that PC and I doubt you'll go over 40 dollars a year when leaving it on. It's honestly a non-issue unless you live in a country where electricity is SUPER EXPENSIVE. Keep in mind actually that buying a new power-friendly PC will cost you a pretty penny as well. Let's say it's 400 dollars, which is on the low end but should suffice for a media center plenty (mine was around 450 and plays _everything_ ). That would mean that the investment alone would let you run the old pc for 10 years non-stop! And don't forget it will use electricity too, adding another 20 dollars a year. The return on investment is in other words absolutely horrible and not worth it if you're doing it to save money.

i know that an 1000w will not consume 1000w but right now i'm very confused with my electrical bill - i'm using only my pc - 12h per day - 2 plasma tv - an old fridge - and the central heating for hot water - and i pay around 50 bucks per month - for some countries it could cheap but in my country i'm on 10% clients that consumes above avarage - it's like i'm spilling kw and idk where

forgot to put in my wish list the fact that i desiree to change over green energy using solar panels - but that will cost another 3-4k without considering the winters when sun is scarce