Ostardva

In a college setting, some kind of laptop makes sense to take notes.
 
You can get a cheap laptop and build a good PC.

1. Wait for Zen Architecture. 
2. Go for an Intel i5 of some sort.
3. Get the FX CPU.
 
- AMD's APUs are horribly dated now. I still run an A8-7600, and it's a pretty bad bottleneck. Sure it's cheap, but that's all it it, and when gaming with a competent GPU it *feels* cheap.
- Take these things from someone who chose AMD at the outset because they were affordable, and 3 years later regrets it.

I don't see any mITX motherboards tho...  
 
I don't know whether it's proven or not but back when skylake came out, reviews of DDR3 LGA1511 motherboards always had the caution of how DDR3 sticks operate at 1.5V+ while DDR4 sticks usually run at 1.2Volts  
 
http://www.kitguru.net/components/motherboard/anton-shilov/intel-prolonged-usage-of-ddr3-memory-at-default-voltages-can-damage-skylake/

Yep, any haswell/Broadwell/Skylake CPU will destroy your budget A8  
 
So if you'd like saving your current RAM (and don't mind being maxed at 8GB without having to completely switch) then:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£299.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Impact Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£157.22 @ Misco UK) 
Total: £456.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-29 22:56 BST+0100
 
Or any i5 (Haswell and later) but x8x/x9x (aka Z97/87, H97/87 ect.) motherboards in Mini ITX flavours seems to be getting a little difficult to find  

Not for Z170, it's like what's the point in getting an unlocked CPU if you can't overclock due to limiting chipset?  
 
For H110, it does (and in Mini ITX!) but you won't be able to OC so...if OP doesn't going down to a 6700 then I guess it could work (I don't know how much damage it can do but normal DDR3 sticks do require 0.3volts more compared to DDR4 sticks so...it could potentially damage the memory controller as well )
 
^^

Cheapest motherboard+only 8GB of RAM:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£310.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£105.50 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£34.99 @ Novatech) 
Total: £450.49
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-29 22:37 BST+0100
 
Probably the config I would go with:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£310.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: Asus Z170I PRO GAMING Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£129.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Kingston FURY 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  (£70.02 @ Novatech) 
Total: £510.01
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-29 22:36 BST+0100
 
Not if you want to overclock your i7 6700k and I don't believe DDR3 LGA1151 ITX motherboards exist either  

I thought so... hence the confusion in the above post, and I've now changed the topic. >_> No worries. A learning curve.

So.
1. LGA 1151 socket.
2. DDR3 motherboards.

I took apart my 4-port 80GB a few years ago to clean it out.  It was pretty easy.  Get a piece of cardboard and draw a rudimentary outline of the system's borders.  Shove the screws into the cardboard in their respective places so you don't lose them or forget where they go. 
 
I'm not a certified repair man for PS3's  but to me it still seems logical with the symptoms you mentioned to assume the Bluetooth module is no good. 
 
Check eBay for parts first.  Just make sure you double check the model of your PS3.  CECH*** and whatnot.  I wouldn't be concerned about any of them being used.  They're generally sold by people that are parting them out because other parts stopped working.  

TL:DR - Kaze if you have the cash to spare. 
 
I think you have enough options with fans these days (with rubber grommets) that you should go for the Kaze. ITX is problematic with airflow as I'm sure you're aware. I have a Thermaltake Core V1 and I'm already looking at this case and seeing far better ventilation.

You'll need to balance your air pressure though as all that mesh will become negative or positive pressure depending on your fan setup.

Most colleagues where I work are non-techies, but had a pleasant experience with one recently.
 
She has to put up with an ancient Sony VAIO (that originally ran Vista) that wouldn't output to a projector even when connected properly. She asked me for help and then cut in quickly and said the classic "No, you watch but I want to see if I can solve this myself and tell me if I'm doing it right." Funnily enough she solved it in a way I hadn't thought of and initially didn't think would work.

The VGA cable was missing a pin at both ends, but the missing pins were different. Obviously the missing pin at the laptop end made it unhappy, whereas when she flipped it over it worked.
 
It's the little things...
There is hope, friends.

I have a Zotac GTX 970 4GB with an AMD A8-7600 and I've been looking into the same issue. It's frustrating right? Short-answer, pretty much any on the FM2+ platform will bottleneck a GTX 970 to some degree on more modern games. The A10s with significant overclock, or the 880k are the best shots for FM2+ (in my uninformed opinion) but you're still gonna bottleneck. Like I've been told by the forum, wait for AM4 or go Intel. Especially when I realised my A8 was on-par with an entry-level i3 >_>.

That's because the automated function doesn't work at the moment. If you want to post images using the upload function, please add your images manually instead of the automated method. This will get you past the bug that's currently happening.

Today... a black filing cabinet from IKEA which was half-price in the bargain area (£60 down to £30), but the star of the day is the Qisan Magicforce 68-key keyboard, see below. Still adjusting to it but overall impressed with how quiet the switches are in comparison to my Razer Tournament Edition ones, despite needed a touch more force. It's also so compact as well but there's a lot of FN Key functionality!

It might help to know that this thing has been bottle-necked whilst gaming for about 6 months.
Just read this lovely bottle-necked guide on here and saw that under a "normal" gaming load my CPU is hitting over 90% usage. Under normal media and browsing loads it's between 40% and 65%.

Okay so maybe it's not a H55i... couldn't remember if it had an i on the end. I say this as it has no USB connection. 3-pin header on the pump is what it has. Motherboard also runs above 60c gaming.
 
Yeah, I think I'm going to as a precaution when I next get the chance, especially now I know I've been throttling it regularly, accidentally, against my will (I'm sad about this).

I play Keyboard & Mouse pretty much the entire time. I also have the PS4 version so when I play on that I do use a controller and it took a while to get used to. Once you memorize your hotbars on both it becomes muscle memory as someone else above stated. I still prefer a M&KB though because it's faster and more responsive because I click on targets faster than I cycle through them with a d-pad.

Well say hi if you need a fellow Brit's help! You never know.
I think I've seen something similar to Plastidip. Some console communities use it for modding in bath tubs I think? Odd but it's popped up on my Facebook lately for Gen 1 PS3s. I'll give it a miss as I won't be the person using it and wouldn't want to complicate it for her. ^___^''

I get some help from friends but mostly everything is done by me, I just need more gear haha but money is tight
 
Snip is because I deleted the text in you post so I could quote you without making the forum messy

Plastidip is super easy though, and the finish it really nice!!  just spray it and boom and it peels off easily later if wrong, or they want to remove it!

I made another topic to further explain this phenomena, you should go read it after reading this one.
 
It's graphics card upgrading season and the one thing on a lot of people's minds is "will my system bottleneck this graphics card?" And the answer to that is... it depends. Not just on your hardware, but the game itself.
 
What is a bottleneck?
I'll leave it up to this video to explain it.
 
But if you are the type who wants me to get to the point: a bottleneck, or specifically, a CPU bottleneck, is when the CPU is too busy that it bogs down other parts of the system. With games, the CPU is too busy to tell the GPU to render stuff and you get lower performance than what the GPU should be capable of.
 
How can I tell if my system will bottleneck a video card upgrade?
The basic way to tell is if your CPU load is constantly high, you'll have a bottleneck. How high? I peg it at about at least 80%-85% almost all of the time you're playing the game. If you want to know if your system will bottleneck a potential upgrade, run the games that you usually play or want to play, fire up task manager (CTRL + Shift + Esc if you haven't learned the other three finger salute), and leave it on monitoring the CPU utilization window.
 

This is what my CPU looks like during a GTA V run
 
I say that it has to be at the 80%-85% almost all of the time because a game can be highly dynamic. If there's enough explosions going on to make Michael Bay shed a tear, then the CPU is certainly going to be hammered a lot. But often times even a regular ol' shootout won't hammer the CPU all that much.
 
Keep in mind that every game is different. A wide variety of games will need to be profiled. Don't run the most intense game available, profile it, and think that applies to the whole system. Though if it's a game that's played daily, then it can have more weight to your decision making.
 
Well crap, I don't think I should upgrade because the video card will be bottlenecked.
 
The question to consider is how much of a boost will the system get anyway? What about your upgrade plans? If you plan on building a system later but you can get something now, why not get the upgrade and reap the benefits? Ultimately it's up to you, but don't think just because your system has a high chance of bottlenecking a future upgrade doesn't mean you shouldn't upgrade at all. Set some (realistic) requirements like the system must perform at least 45FPS at 1080p in most games on their highest quality preset (not including AA).  Don't sweat it if the system still meets or exceeds them. If your system is getting 40FPS on a game and an upgrade can do 80FPS, but on your system it can only do 70FPS, but the next card down can pull about 60FPS and isn't all that much cheaper, why not still consider it? (I don't know of any real life situation like this, but just some food for thought)
 
I don't want to bother with profiling my games, just give me some pointers
I can't seem to find a lot of websites that aggregate their CPU benchmarks on games with actual figures, are fairly recent, and have a wide sample size. What I did find was Anandtech's CPU benchmarks (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1357) and a slew of articles from TechSpot (http://www.techspot.com/features/gaming/gaming-benchmarks/) along with some various other articles or sources that had at least a large gap in performance. (such as this video putting a GTX 1080 in an i5-750 machine) So based all this, here's my conclusion:
In most cases, you can go down to an Intel i3-4000 or AMD FX-8000 series and still be at least 80% performance the card can achieve (at least with a GTX 980/980Ti) Even in this situation, you'll still likely achieve 60FPS or above at 1080p on maximum or at least high (it's also getting harder as of late to distinguish between the two, so I wouldn't sweat it if you have to tone down the quality a bit). You're basically in the danger zone if your processor at the time of release was about $100-$120 or less or is less than about 1900 or so on this chart . Though this only applies to DX11 titles. There's not enough data to make a conclusion on DX12/Vulkan, but so far the trend is more cores is better if the game uses async compute (not all games will!) The tip I want to leave with you is this: bottlenecks aren't the end of the world. Determine how much you're willing to put up with.