mao91

I bought my current laptop a whole decade ago. HP Pavilion dv6t with a 2nd gen i7-2720qm and 8GB of ram for a whopping $1180. A few years back I slapped an ssd in it and I still use it today, but it's in that stage of life where the mobo doesn't recognize batteries so it's tethered to an AC adapter and blah blah blah. Anyway, I'm starting grad school this fall and need a new laptop. I enjoy the longevity I got out of my current model and am looking for the same this time around. My budget is around the 1200 range again. I'm not looking for a powerhouse (no gaming or video work) but want something that will be able to keep up for the next decade. For the most part, I'll be using it for academic work. I'm grossly out of the loop on laptops, though. Does anybody have a solid recommendation? I'd prefer a 15 inch model for familiarity but am open to a surface style for stylus use.

Due to too much pain, I am in the market for an ergonomic keyboard for work. The catch: it cannot require dedicated software to run. It must be 100% plug and play. Recommendations? I’ve heard good things about the Microsoft Sculpt.

Wow yes this is a great LMGTFY... I've already looked there. I posted this thread in case there might be any outliers someone may know of that aren't listed on PC Fart Licker.

As the title says, I'm looking for a 1080p, 23" display. I do not care about color accuracy, refresh rate (60Hz is plenty for me) or response time. My only requirements are as follows: 1. 23" 2. 1080p 3. HDMI or DP in. 4. IPS 5. VESA mounting. The cheapest option will likely win the honor of being displays number 4 and 5 for my setup. PS: If necessary, I am willing to delve into the used market, but I'd prefer the two at least be matching.

Sneaky almost got me. <link removed by moderation>

Hey Sanvator! I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. Can we get a full spec list for this PC? Also, do your motherboard show you any post codes?

This is precisely why I'm thinking of adding a second one that will simply play the "coin" sound from Super Mario World.

Since my PC lays sideways in my rack I thought I’d add a new power button. I used stepping bits to get the hole to the perfect size to screw in the button’s shaft and wired it up to a spare set of power sw and power led wires I had laying around. Looks great and had a very satisfying click.

If you modify it to have HS5s instead it HS7s, and swap the interface for something with optical in, you’ll save money and get a good result still. Or dump the sub and get HS8s and you’ll lower your cost significantly.

FTFY. And no. Just the plastic shrouds. The hardware itself is fine.

Uhhhhh…. you might want to go back and read my post and then edit your response. No, I absolutely did not put whole components in the oven. I swear, some of you aren't that bright (says the one who put plastic in the oven).

Long story short I need the shroud for an Asus X99-Pro. Does anybody happen to have one of these old boards they'd be willing to part with? Or even part out? I literally just need that plastic shroud. Bounty: $30 USD plus shipping.

To at least closely match the chipset heatsink above it. Any recommendations? Also looking around myself.

Update: I’m doing the thing

Oh this looks good!!! Following!

Great! I've regularly used it to paint PCIe covers (the ones on the back of the case) so I figured it should be okay but, well, those are just inconsequential metal pieces. I wasn't sure about something like GPU shrouds, chipset covers, vrm heatsinks, etc.

no.

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this. My components are getting a bit older so I know I'm not going to sell them, which means I'd like to try painting a few things. Is there any particular kind of paint I should be looking at, or would a basic krylon multi-surface bonding paint work fine?

Focusrite Scarlett Solo ($100) Yamaha HS7s ($319ea) (get a pair) Yamaha HS8S ($469) 2x 1/4" TRS to XLR cables (scarlett solo > sub) Set x-over and sub-speaker vol balance. 2x XLR cables from sub to HS7s. This will fit your budget. For extra sauce, use Sonarworks w/ their RTA mic to calibrate your listening spot for pretty damn flat reference. Should give you about as close to full reference as you can get without going five digits. Note: Sonarworks will try to auto calculate speaker distance and listening distance. You may need to use a tape measure to get more accurate and make some adjustments to their values during the measurement process. Source: am audio engineer.

This looks great! Well done.

Case: be quiet! Pure Base 500 Fan config: 2x 140mm Noctua NF-A14 front intake, 1x 140mm Noctua NF-A14 rear exhaust. CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 Front fan mount: both high (above shroud) Question: I have two HDDs in the HDD cage below the shroud. Should I ditch the 2x140mm fans on the front and opt for 3x120mm to push air over the HDDs as well? I don't use them very often, mostly just an internal archive before things get pushed to my NAS. I'd obviously rather not hassle with returning and ordering new fans if I don't absolutely need it.

It’s your ram in a box.

A thread. I’ll start: Forgoing SATA connectors and just directly soldering a mini USB 2.0 header to a hard drive.

That is incredibly unusual. What are your boot settings looking like?!

What you're saying makes zero logical sense. Digital offers a much wider dynamic range but ultimate punch in a recording boils down to a few things. Let's take a drum kit for example. Here's what goes into making a drum kit's sound: 1. The drums themselves, and everything that goes into the kit and setup. 2. The drum sticks, to a degree 3. The drummer / performance. A killer drum part can sound lacking and lifeless if you don't have the right drummer giving it just the right performance. 4. The room. This is a huge part of making drums sound "alive." Room blend is really important with drums. If the room sounds like shit, the drum kit will sound like shit, no matter how amazing the drums, drummer, performance, and part are. This is why a lot of modern engineers just program drums for the final product. 5. The mics. This is the last piece of the primary puzzle. Warren Huart breaks this down super well: mics and preamps matter, but not nearly as much as people tend to think. 6. Other factors: mic placement, cables, preamps, and signal processing, plus of course the engineer putting it all together at the end. Now. Let's mix that drum kit. Whether you've recorded to tape and are mixing it fully analog, or have recorded into a DAW and are mixing fully digital (or even utilizing a hybrid approach), it doesn't matter who you are as an engineer, you only have that source audio to work with, to take and transform into what the end listener will hear. Okay, now that the drum kit is mixed (and let's assume the rest of the song), let's master it. So the engineer sends off the exported mixes (let's say 32bit float 96kHz WAV) for mastering. And let's suppose this is being mastered for both digital and for vinyl. This means that source audio is going to be mastered twice, possibly even by two different engineers, maybe even at two different studios. Both masters are the same mix of the same song. The difference is that the one for vinyl is getting heavy master EQ modification (the mastering engineer may even ask for leveled, processed stems to make tweaks to individual elements, thus "remixing" the song, to a degree) before being applied to vinyl. It will likely receive less compression and maximization overall, since vinyl is a fairly delicate physical medium to print an audio source to. The digital mastering engineer may take a similar approach (see Cage the Elephant, et. al.) and try to avoid the loudness war and instead opt for ample "breathing room" in the mix, so the drum can feel like they're pushing a touch louder. Or, more likely, that engineer will push the maximization, which can make the master be more consistent in volume on paper, but could take a bit of life out of the finished mix and, if the engineer isn't careful, introduce some slight "pumping" effect to the mix. Now you take both of those masters, and turn them up. The digital may slam you in the face with consistent volume, and the vinyl may sit back a bit more and allow the dynamics of the song to push through a bit more naturally. This can help the vinyl to feel more alive, but that isn't because of the medium. It's because of the mastering method. If you took the digital master and "remastered" that already mastered file for vinyl, it wouldn't sound the same, because it would be a bit more brash and "in your face." Are you hearing what I'm saying? Stop saying vinyl is better. It's not. It less perfect, and very different. At this point, I'm going to step out of this conversation, because I'm not going to try to explain audio engineering to a brick wall. For the record, most studios record at 48kHz anyway since it's easier to record multiple channels simultaneously. The only practical reason to record at a higher bitrate (96 or even 192) is for editing of the source audio (pitch correction or time stretching).