paddy-stone

Agree with above, if you're not opposed to getting one from China, you can go on aliexpress and find loads of systems based on n100 cpu, and is mini PC sized, which means no worrying about power supply etc, just pick one that you need, for example some come with 2 sata SSD/HDD slots... but bear in mind that those one can be much more expensive.

My preference would be to go with a normal mini pc box, and use the USB for storage, along with an external USB drive, or possibly a HDD dock for example. If it's just for home usage, that should be plenty fast enough, I've used USB storage drives in the past with no problems at all.

[edit] Just found this one for $106 freehttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005234874016.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.4.3358ojdZojdZ1u&gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.40050.354490.0&scm_id=1007.40050.354490.0&scm-url=1007.40050.354490.0&pvid=4b9e26d8-a7dc-4557-acc0-e2685a9746e4&_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40050.354490.0,pvid:4b9e26d8-a7dc-4557-acc0-e2685a9746e4,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238116%232002&pdp_npi=4%40dis!USD!270.26!102.70!!!270.26!102.70!%40211b613117086938887121125e8ef8!12000032308953602!rec!UK!882557326!&utparam-url=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller|query_from%3A

8 hours ago, Salted Spinach said:

Interested in the regular LF3 280 due to sale price (EUR 68.39). However they charge EUR 41 for international shipping

 

I can get a LF2 280 locally for the equivalent of EUR 80.5

 

Arctic's AIO are much cheaper than the more heavily marketed gaming branded competitors in my country. I don't know how much LF3 is going to be priced when it gets sold here, or if that will even happen any time soon because the LF2 is selling for less here than on Arctic's site.

 

What should I do? Is it normal for exported AIOs to drop in price like what I am seeing here? Do they decay/depreciate when shelved for too long or something I am not aware about

Go on Amazon to see if it's as cheap there. I went on Amazon.uk and can get the 240 Arbg for £62

I wouldn't bother.. but if you already have a mobo that's suitable then maybe $10.

Well you could always try one of these ways with linux  https://office-watch.com/2023/microsoft-office-linux-four-ways/

But really if you need windows for certain apps, then stick with windows, although you might find that it's pretty slow, especially adding office on top of windows already bloated use of ram. So you might want to add more ram as 4gb is very low.

Depends on what you want to do with it really in some respects?

If just general web browsing. media playing, media server etc, then can easily go with linux mint/pop-os/ubuntu  for most things.

I found this info:

New Scalable Clocking Architecture for Easier Timing Closure

The C/A CK has typically run at the same frequency as the data-strobes (DQS) in all prior LPDDR standards, up to LPDDR4/4X. Such a clocking scheme puts enormous pressure on both the DRAM C/A lanes and the SoC timing convergence, since the CK is the reference for C/A lanes on the memory channel and the memory controller in the SoC typically runs at half the CK frequency at the DDR PHY Interface in the DFI 1:2 ratio mode. For example, for an LPDDR4/4X speed of 4267 Mbps, the CK and DQS run at 2133 MHz, and the C/A has a data-rate of 2133 Mbps and controller clock runs at 1066 MHz.

Such a clocking scheme is not scalable at LPDDR5 speeds. Thus, LPDDR5 adopts a new clocking scheme, where CK runs at one fourth the data-strobe frequency at speeds higher than 3200 Mbps, and at half the data-strobe frequency at speeds under 3200 Mbps. Hence, even at 6400 Mbps, this clocking scheme requires CK to operate only at 800 MHz. This allows C/A to run slower (at 1600 Mbps, since C/A can transition at both rising and falling edges of CK rate (for example: DDR type) in LPDDR5) and hence greatly improves the margins on the C/A lanes. Similarly, a slower CK enables the SoC to not only close timing more efficiently, but also provides a higher performance, since the controller can now work at 800 MHz in DFI 1:1 ratio. Additionally, LPDDR5 does not support the traditional bi-directional data-strobe architecture, and instead introduces two uni-directional data-strobes: Write clock (WCK) for Writes and an optional Read clock (RDQS) for Reads. The system can choose to operate either strobe-less or with a single-ended strobe for Reads at lower speeds and save power, although a differential strobe (RDQS/RDQS#) becomes necessary for higher speeds.        

source: https://www.synopsys.com/designware-ip/technical-bulletin/key-features-about-lpddr5.html

So in essence even though it's reporting 800Mhz, this is normal

Ahh OK, that's why I wanted to check... my ram is running way slow then. I've also checked in bios and it's reporting that it's running at 6400, so not sure what's going on.

Hey, just a quick question/observation.

I noticed that my RAM in HWINFO64 shows 786.5Mhz under the max column. When I looked in CPU-z for confirmation, I saw that it said FSB/uncore? was 1:8, so took that to mean that the memory clock frequency FSB should be x8 to get the approx 6400Mhz that I was looking for?

I just got a 6800U mini-pc to replace those times when I'm mostly doing not much but browsing and listening to music etc... but still a decent enough performance for most stuff. I might even try dual-booting with OMV to see what the performance is like as a NAS.

My response is "who said that!!!" then run away laughing maniacally.

My dog would lick me all over if she could. She started at 8 wks old when we got her too. She almost daily decides she wants to lick my head (I'm balding, and shave my head), so she jumps up on the couch that I sit in front of on the floor, and proceeds to put her paws on my shoulders and lick all over the top and back of my head... I don't mind it though personally, but my family look disgusted often 

She will be five in another month, time has absolutely blown past.

3 hours ago, jaslion said:

seize all activities

Sorry to be a grammar nazi, but the word is cease, not seize 

I have the new-ish Xiaomi F5, I was going to get the pro for the wireless charging, and a few other upgrades to the F5... but in the end decided the much lower cost of the F5 was worth a shot.

I am really pleased with the F5, and I decided to get a magnetic charger for the phone to hopefully put off any issues with the charging port. I'm still getting the 67W charging from it too, which is a bonus for my usage, only requiring between 20-40 mins charging every few days and I usually recharge when it gets down to between 20-30% left. The magnetic charger I got was only a few $ from aliexpress, and I usually get my packages between 5-7 days on average. I also got my phone from there too, but at the time it took about 4-5 weeks... but at only £240 approx was around £160+ cheaper than buying from a UK source.

The magnetic adaptor is this one  https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004263177310.html

it just plugs into the same charger cable you would normally use. I have a few dotted around the house for convenience.

Yes it's working fine, as above. For example my HWINFO reports mine at 1800Mhz, but because it's DDR is actually 3600Mhz. We see this common misconception all the time on here, and everywhere TBH... you're no different to others that don't know these things, so no worries

For me personally I can't stand having to deal with the discs etc. Once I rip them to my server, they stay in their cases in storage. I have 3 copies of my most used/favourite movies, not including the physical. So that I don't have to spend my valuable time re-ripping / downloading again. I probably wouldn't be so anal about it if my internet was faster, but at only 60Mb/s it takes a while for a 50GB+ to DL... and even longer if I rip it myself.

Lately I have been more exacting with my choice of movies to own... And I've also been getting more digital movies, rather than physical, so it hasn't been as bad lately. I think it stems from the time when we were still using floppy discs and it took a very long time to do pretty much anything, and having to wait, and wait, and wait... approx 3-4 hours just to install windows 3.11 IIRC, and don't get me started on ms office. So I have computer ADHD, or PTSD if you like from those times in my late teens to mid 20's approx when time seemed to stand still while trying to do anything... I swear that out of an 8 hour day, we spent around 6 hours waiting for stuff to happen... and that's not including 24k internet waiting, just time for programs to load, installations etc etc. Now I just can't wait for my fix 

49 minutes ago, MarkPol88 said:

Technically motherboard might turn on PSU without CPU but I think it may depend on the chipset/motherboard manufacturer. Better someone more knowledgeable than me clarify this.

 

You would still need to hook up front panel connector power switch to turn on motherboard.

As I said - if it is new, I would wait for rest of the parts and do test boot of everything plugged in.

Yeah depends on chipset, some mobos are able to update bios etc without cpu/ram, but TBH for testing purposes I don't think it's worth bothering... just wait for entire system and do a system test out of the chassis if possible. Worst thing is taking all the time and cable routing etc and then finding out your mobo or cpu or something is DOA. Even almost 30 years in I still do a bench test of components when doing a full system build/rebuild.

A few years back I skipped doing a testbench, heartbreaking when you have to remove almost the entire system in the end to send a part or 2 back as DOA... makes you remember for the next few times though, lol

I'll be buying one soon, I am torn between the EM680 with a 6800U 8c/16t @4.7Ghz max, USB4 etc, or the UM780 with a 7840HS 8C/16T @5.1Ghz max, USB4 etc... both would be with 32GB DDR5 ram.

|EM680 is approx £435, also the DDR5 is LPDDR5 @6400Mhz which I can't see the price of even anywhere, but even 5600Mhz 32GB 2x16 is approx £160, whereas a single 32GB is £95... so the price of the Em680 is really very good considering how much the parts would have cost. Plus you get USB4 x 2, one of which is used for power.

UM780 again parts out pretty well considering the spec, and works out approx £660 after vouchers, also with USB4 x 2, except this time it also has a dedicated 19v power input... although you can use USB4 for powering if you want. DDR5 on this is lower at 5600Mhz.

Personally speaking I am leaning towards the Em680 as I would be using it more for things like media player/server/NAS usage than anything else... and works out at a fairly low energy machine for every day use, and would consider it for use for casual gaming and retro gaming machine too. My main desktop would get a lot less usage with the mini-PC in use... but would still be there for if I wanted to go high FPS gaming, video recoding and other high intensity usage.

Not familiar with Asus BIOS settings as it's been years since I last dealt with them... so all I can suggest is reset cmos as I said above, and hopefully make it less painful in future with saving profiles.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=0&f=3&sort=price&page=1

take your pick, they're all much of the same these days for 2.5" drives on the lower end of the price list. I'd just pick one that's within your budget, and at least 250gb if you can afford it.

5 minutes ago, HendryyyyyVarrrr said:

She mainly uses it for Sims 4 and work stuffs.

But yeah, i guess i need to buy a new SSD. Any recommendations for cheaper SSD that last a lil bit longer than the other?
Thanks!

reset cmos again, and when you can boot into bios, change it to recommended settings. reboot saving settings.

once it's back to stock settings, check if you can now enter bios without having to reset cmos. if this is the case, save this as a profile in bios. now look for a setting such as "hold down power button on boot for 3+ seconds to enter bios" it can be slightly different according to manufacturer. this is so that if you set your pc to fast boot (or similar), which doesn't have the boot into bios screen.

then you can go ahead and make your changes to ram settings etc, and again save that as a profile. this way you won't have to keep playing with it after resetting cmos each time.

+1 for just swapping a cheap ssd into it and reinstalling windows, or even put a linux distro on there, depending on what your sister does with it of course.

I've found through the last 10 years or so, most people that are not well versed in computers in general, only use them for internet... in which case a linux distro would be perfect, light for ram usage and disk space in general. I'm still running an old Asus x53e with an intel i7 4c/8t from circa 2010 in dual booting with a cheap, small ssd and it runs perfectly... I use linux when not needed for anything major, and windows if I have to. This is just my backup machine, my main desktops are used most of the time, but still handy for those times when my other machines are busy, or I just need to do some quick online stuff etc. The SSD even is an old samsung 60GB 830 from the same era, any newer ssd will be much faster even a cheap-ish 240gb for approx £15

It depends on the stores. If they're big stores like the aforementioned, then as above. Some smaller stores though operate on a sale or return model with some manufacturers/wholesale stores, which as it sounds means of they don't sell they return them for a rebate on the money they paid. This gives some smaller stores a much better chance at surviving in the retail world.

Have you considered using OMV?

This is what I use currently on a microserver with only a dual core celeron and 8GB ram, but is still plenty for many dockers. and is very easy to manage using portainer and/or ssh. Currently I instantiate dockers using ssh with docker CLI. I keep a text file with my settings for it updated onto it, makes it easier IMO to make changes when needed, or to edit a docker cli before installing. Once installed I usually manage the basics with portainer, like turning on/off, duplicating (which re-pulls the latest image without changing anything) and a few others. I'm using ZFS on OMV too. And I have my jdownloader and sabnzbd dockers running through a gluetun docker container, which is set to my vpn and if the container borks, or whatever then it doesn't allow traffic through anymore until it's fixed.

There are guides out there for setting up OMV, but it's pretty easy after the first time, and sounds way more complicated than it actually is... I had to re-do everything one time after I decided to move it to it's current hardware, took maybe an hour or 2 at most... but could do it now from memory except the docker cli (which is why i have the text file), and would maybe take 30-40 mins except for the omv install itself.  I'm running OMV 5.6 as I had problems with the install on the newer version. But it's super stable, currently been running 61 days, but that's only because I had a power cut. 

10 hours ago, E-waste said:

Guarenteed to HALVE battery capacity in about two or three years, so please use this ONLY when it is absolute emergency, and do not go above about 75% charge when using this.  It will quickly heat the battery (useful in winter actually) and do not use this when the battery is below 15%.

 

Battery university website has a few chart examples of charging cycles + battery capacity at six different depth-of-discharge levels.

In my experience it hasn't made any difference, I've had my poco x3 pro for almost exactly 2 years, battery life is still able to support all day usage. In that time it was charged on average once a day with it's 33W charger. I think it''s way more of a problem personally if a person is using it for high CPU use at the same time as charging, or leaving it on charge all night. This is one reason I bought my new phone, as it only needs approx 30 mins to charge from 20-100%, 20% is the lowest I try to get before charging it again. Longevity isn't really a problem for me, as I would normally swap phones every 1-2 years max. I'd much rather enjoy the benefits of high speed charging, in fact I considered getting a worse cpu and getting 120W or higher charging speed.

At the moment, I am still using both phones daily, and because of this I am now only having to charge once every 2 days on each phone. And actually on Android 13, the battery use seems substantially better... eg last night I charged my new phone to 100% before going to bed, took it off the charger and only used it once for a 5 min gaming session, went to sleep with it still being 100%... this morning battery still at 100%. On every phone I had previous to this I lost at least 2-3% overnight, sometimes as high as 8-12% with phone in sleep mode, not off completely.

Anyway, I thank you for your input, I know it was well meant. I just don't think some of those studies are very accurate, at least not in my experience of having a number of smartphones through the years. In fact my brother is still using the pocophone F1 I had since it came out, after I'd had it for around 18 months and daily charging. And he'd been using it a lot whilst charging for at least 2 years and sometimes several charges per day... and it's still working fine even now as his backup phone that he still uses daily. Admittedly the battery longevity went down a bit as he didn't know he shouldn't really use it for gaming etc whilst charging, but since I told him, he was much better at trying to charge when not in use... and since then the battery is holding steady still. If needs be I'll swap the battery out for him, it's like £10-15 IIRC. But seeing as he has another phone now as his primary, he'll probably just use it 'til it doesn't work anymore.

Is any of this a consideration

Quote

AMD^® CPU

• 2 x SATA 6Gb/s ports¹
• 1 x M.2 slot (Key M)¹
  • Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 (1st, 2nd and 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen™/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Graphics) or PCIe 3.0 x2 (Athlon™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics) and SATA 6Gb/s
  • Supports 2242/ 2260 /2280/ 22110 storage devices

AMD^® B450

• 4 x SATA 6Gb/s ports

1. SATA5 and SATA6 ports will be unavailable when installing a M.2 device in M.2 slot.

Hey peeps, just got a new phone, the Poco F5 5G. I can't believe how this thing flies. It automatically added 3GB virtual RAM, but set it to 5GB instead so now is 8+5GB. Did an Antutu run, and it scored 1.23 million, my previous poco x3 scored approx 420K. Has Android 13 (MIUI 14) already. I copied my data from my x3 pro, and other than having to sign into and verify some security apps, like banking, Authy etc was a very smooth process and took approx 30 mins. Charged up from 58% to 100% in around 30 mins too, but that was because I forgot I was bench-marking at the same time, so took a little longer than it should. I paid around £230 from Aliexpress from poco official store, and took around 3.5 weeks, 2 weeks of which it was just sitting in a warehouse. Anyway, still worth it IMO, to save from the official UK store price of £399 and wait a few weeks. Came with a Euro plug, and adaptor, and still hit the 67W charging fine... so I don't care about non UK plug. Dolby Atmos speakers etc too, very nice playback of movies that are atmos capable, had to try them out of course

https://www.mi.com/uk/product/poco-f5/