bmichaels556

And here I am, too lazy to even fold my own laundry.

Best piece of advice.
Don't use your nostalgia or "good times" to influence your bidding.
You can easily overbid thinking I love this hardware...
 

Feel free, but for the most part I'll write the process in short form below..
 

I googled my LOCAL auctions places, go to their website first, find the PC sections, (register to the site) and put bids down on single PC's and doing so multiple times...
They start cheap, many people increase bids, sometimes I get lucky, sometimes the price gets too high for me to bother with..
Once I win by the ending timeframe,..., I go collect at a certain time and date.

https://www.evansclarke.com.au/catalog.aspx?catid=102

public auctions are an option.

This.
I bought 30x Dell Optiplex's (4790 nonK, 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD)
But they have Proprietary PSU cables... so I bought the adapters required for 24pin PSU compatibility, and now can throw these internals in normal ATX cases with New or Refurbed PSU's, and much better GPU's.

Depending on prices, can be a STEAL.

nothing says fun like buying computers by the dozens.
I saw a pallet full of dell SFF i3 with 4 or 8gb of ram being sold.

This is how it works with houses and automobiles.  Referbing computers seems like it’s becoming very similar to these more traditional persuits.  There are auctions.  Sometimes online, sometimes in person.  You buy an amount of product (be it houses or cars or computers) refurb them and resell them.  People do it with pretty much everything.  Furniture, guns, tools, etc..  

older thinkpad T4--
HP has a new ryzen powered system with some decent card offerings for 700-1000$

It's going to be impossible to find a good deal on a unused monitor that is 1440p and with a noticeable fps boost.
I have a few options for you. Here they are with the specs: 
 
1. good color accuracy, 1080p, 144hz, 24 inch (not the best size but bigger than 21.5 inch), benq (good company) $200
https://www.amazon.com/BenQ-XL2411-Equalizer-Vibrance-Competitive/dp/B01H5KKQTM
 
2. probably bad color accuracy, 1080p, 165hz? (it has 165 and 144 listed in title), freesync, $160
https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-E255B-1658A-Gaming-Monitor-DisplayPort/dp/B07KGMQGDT
 
3. probably bad color accuracy, 1080p, 144hz, 27 inch, $140
https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Widescreen-XF270H-Bbmiiprzx-Refurbished/dp/B07BHQD1S7
 
And if you're willing to go a small amount over:
3. unsure of color accuracy, 1080p, 144hz, 27 inch, curved, freesync, $203
https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-C275B-144R-1920x1080p-Freesync-DisplayPort/dp/B07BVW5TV5
 
4. unsure of color accuracy, speakers, 1080p, 144hz, 27 inch, freesync, $210
https://www.amazon.com/Acer-VG271-Pbmiipx-Technology-DisplayHDR400/dp/B07MDXF81K/
 
 

Welcome to the Displays section, where everything's made up and the specs don't matter! 
 
(EDIT: Please note this thread is quite outdated at this point; eventually I should get around to making an updated version, but that day is not today :P)
 
Response time and latency

Do you need a 5 ms response time or less for gaming?

Dynamic Contrast Ratio (DCR) – 1,000,000:1+ "Contrast Ratios" are Just Made-up Numbers

"You can't get audio through a DVI port!"

Isn't HDMI limited to 60 Hz?

"Humans can't see more than 60 Hz anyway!"

"Why are there TVs at 600+ Hz when monitors don't go beyond ≈144 Hz?"

"Does 1920×1080 scale perfectly on 3840×2160 (4K UHD) monitors? What exactly happens when you run a non-native resolution on a display?"

Does DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync/AMD FreeSync require a new monitor or will existing monitors be upgradeable with just a firmware update?
Also, if a monitor has DisplayPort 1.2a input or higher, does that automatically mean it supports DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync?

PLS and AHVA vs. IPS

IGZO vs. IPS

LCD vs. LED

AMOLED vs. OLED

Quantum Dot vs. OLED / IPS / etc.
 

Considering software i really like the Affinity Products (Photo, Designer, Publisher) which you can get for 50€ each.
I dont really miss any,Photoshop Features. But that might be because of my workflow...
 
The way Designer and Photo are working with Publisher is quite comfortable from my perspective.
 
@PixelPol I dont have anything to add XD Well written.
 

It really depends what kind of videos you're trying to make. 
 
But like others said, a decent phone camera on a chair and sitting outside or having a few lamps around is MORE than enough for a decent-looking video.
 
The microphone obviously depends. If it's you talking at a computer desk behind a camera, in that situation, a mic will really improve audio quality. It just depends what's viable. Otherwise your phone camera may be sufficient enough.
 
As for editing, I've used Sony Vegas since the beginning. Well, almost. I think it's great, but not free. DaVinci Resolve maybe? I know many use it and again, that should work out just fine. And again, it depends how simple (or not) the editing is. Hell, many of the videos I've made could have been done with Windows Movie Maker if I tried hard enough. Not that I'd recommend doing that. Ever. But I COULD have.
 
Point is, don't think you need all this awesome epic equipment and software to start things. You don't!

It really depends what kind of videos you're trying to make. 
 
But like others said, a decent phone camera on a chair and sitting outside or having a few lamps around is MORE than enough for a decent-looking video.
 
The microphone obviously depends. If it's you talking at a computer desk behind a camera, in that situation, a mic will really improve audio quality. It just depends what's viable. Otherwise your phone camera may be sufficient enough.
 
As for editing, I've used Sony Vegas since the beginning. Well, almost. I think it's great, but not free. DaVinci Resolve maybe? I know many use it and again, that should work out just fine. And again, it depends how simple (or not) the editing is. Hell, many of the videos I've made could have been done with Windows Movie Maker if I tried hard enough. Not that I'd recommend doing that. Ever. But I COULD have.
 
Point is, don't think you need all this awesome epic equipment and software to start things. You don't!

Holy crap, AV1 takes THAT LONG!? To be honest, I wouldn't care how much "better" it is, that demand for time is just way out of proportion for any benefit it might bring. Just my opinion though. Might I feel different if I had a quad Xeon rig and were doing these things professionally? Maybe. But even still, that's a lot to ask.. Not bad on those 3900X encode times though.
 
I ran some further testing for my own curiosity. I used some video from my Galaxy Note 4, which at 1080p seems to only record at about 15mbps, which is fairly reasonable for the quality you get from it in my opinion. Using all the settings I'd busted my ass to lock down, at RF 19 it ended up at like 13.5mbps!! So all that tells me is that it radically differs depending on quality of source file. Handbrake ultimately seems to ask, "What bitrate do I need for this level of quality? I don't care what the source bitrate is, I'm worried about source output for a certain level of quality." Hence the results I guess. Very interesting.
 
Further, cranking all the way down to RF 24 still shows relatively little difference from source but with much more reasonable bitrate. Compared to even Google Photos compression, equivalent constant bitrate ALSO is MUUUUCH better. Tons of nuance to this. It's been a fun adventure, but also frustrating. 

I just use ffmpeg to split video. 
 
I took a 10s part from a 120FPS 1080p game capture and it took over 4h to encode it to AV1 with the ffmpeg with the best quality preset. 

I usually just use default for 1080p YouTube preset. Though filming stuff at 1080p60 means I probably should make my own preset to shrink files before uploading.

The only other thing I can think of if you’re looking online for references that might help, is that a classic car that is verified as being not a hodgepodge of parts assembled from other vehicles is the term “numbers matching”. There are numbers matching cars and non numbers matching cars.   Iirc there is a particularly desirable version of a fairly common corvette of which more are running today than were ever built.  Very very few of them are numbers matching cars though.

I doubt it’s a new thought.  Classic car people have been doing that for decades.  That it isn’t a regular thing already implies there may be a dead end somewhere.  This could be a problem already solved with the answer being “no”.

Quit hatin', playa.

I was thinking a serial number might read out in software somehow if you could install it.  The way classic car people do it is by checking serial numbers on various parts of the car.  The VIN is a serial number, but there’s a separate one for the gram, the engine block, etc.. Video cards are single parts but they’re made up of a bunch of other smaller bits each of which may or may not have its own serial number which may or may not be associatable with your original card.  Could be a pile of research even if it’s possible which it might not be.

That's a good question.. On the box yes, but I probably mixed up boxes since I had like 4 of these back in the day.. So yeah, the box's serial mismatches, but that's not really evidence in this case.
 
Yeah, would anyone else know of other places where a serial number might be that I could actually check on in front of me?

He claims he took it to a couple of shops.  They might have cleaned the card.  Are there interior codes you might have records of you can check?  Are there other places than the sticker which also have a serial number or is it just that one sticker?  Automobiles usually have serial numbers in multiple places.

No, he buys cheap shit. And he acts like he's the best worker in my crew, when he's really the guy that fucks up the most.

As an example, if you were looking for a sedan and you saw a 2017 Kia K900 and a Mercedes C-class going for about the same price, which would you think is the better car? 
 
Most of the people who read that are going to prefer the Mercedes. A very small fraction of the people who know what a K900 is are going to be wondering if that car was in a wreck or if someone just doesn't know what it is they've got. 
 
That's mindshare. 

Why do you want an old Xeon or TR if all you do is game...? Why not choose... literally any other, more sensible option?