Ixionn

Yeah I did a lot of more digging through bluetooth amp boards and couldn't find anything. Decided since I'm probably already pushing it as far as ordering this late, so I went ahead and just ordered the parts for my original plan. I just have to pick up the materials for building them now, I'll be sure to post a bit of a build log for at least one of them, then some finished pictures once they're all done!

Hey all, so I've been kind of slacking on my Christmas gifts for my family, but I came up with a pretty cool gift idea that can be built mostly with parts and materials I already have. Basically the idea is a simple semi-portable (has to be plugged in) bluetooth speaker. It's going to be a simple wood box, themed paint or finish for each family member. The speaker used will be one 6x9 coaxial (woofer+tweeter combo) car speaker. It'll have a removable speaker clothe cover (perf board probably) with magnets. Anyways as far as building them goes I've got all that down, I have two pairs of these 6x9 car speakers, one pair Pioneer, other pair Sony, so decent quality stuff. I have 4 family members in my household so it all works out. What I need help with is finding a good means of driving them along with simple bluetooth functionality. My current plan is a mono amplifier board, cable with resistors wired in to convert stereo signal to mono for said amp, then a basic DROK bluetooth module feeding the amp through said cable. What I was wondering is if anyone knows of a bluetooth amplifier board that outputs a mono signal, so it would do all of this for me. I really rather not feed the speaker off just the left or right channel of a stereo amplifier, that's an absolutely horrible way of doing things. I know my current plan should work fine, I just figure if I had a more "all in one" solution, it would end up cheaper and simplify my project speakers a bit. If anyone has seen any boards available like this I'd appreciate your input. Also, what do you think of my idea? I'm kind of going for an old school table radio form factor, but with the design of a speaker cabinet from the 70s or 80s. I might add a rough sketch here so you all can get a better idea of what I'm going for. Thanks everyone!

I would for sure say the CPU is the biggest bottleneck here, those Phenom II chips are very dated and underpowered nowadays. Even an upgrade to 3rd or 4th gen Intel would likely give you a huge performance jump, if not Ryzen like you mentioned. I would keep the 970, at least until you see how it performs with the CPU upgrade, then make your decision. The 970 is still a respectable GPU nowadays, it's about on par if not better than a GTX 1050. If you were to upgrade the GPU I would look into a GTX 1070 or better. Also I don't know a huge amount about Ryzens, but I believe you will want faster than 2666Mhz Ram for it.

If you're doing 2x 8GB of ram you should be fine, that way you can easily upgrade to 32GB in the future by buying a matching set. Build looks good, 240GB should be plenty for minecraft and basic everyday programs and you can always add a bigger HDD or SSD alongside in the future. Everything looks great but it does look like your current total is around 470, you may want to stick with just one 8GB stick of ram and a slightly cheaper Ryzen CPU if you want to save money, considering unless you already have a Windows key or plan on using Linux, you will need to buy that as well.

The 970 is still a very respectable card, so you should be well off with that. It may be advisable to look into the older Intel stuff, such as 3rd and 4th gen (3000 and 4000 series CPUs) if you want a good amount of power for not too much cash. Personally if you do have around 800 USD to spend, I would look into Ryzen.

You need to delete any of the Program files, AppData and any registry keys in order to fully remove it from your computer. There are a few guides online for deleting programs from the registry, you do need to be careful and be sure to follow the instructions when using regedit. For the files you first may want to go to "View" in the file explorer and check the box that says "Hidden Items". You will want to look in "Program Files," "Program Files (x86)" and ProgramData, all located in your C drive. You will then want to locate the AppData folder which should be under your User in the "Users" folder, it may be under "Default" and/or "Public" as well. I had issues with updating Firefox is doing these things fixed it for me, I was able to reinstall it and no longer have issues. If you don't trust yourself there are a few programs that do basically the same steps as I mentioned, but with a simple click of the mouse.

That looks like a great option, thank you!

I am in the US. I am on AT&T (GSM, unlocked GSM devices are supported)

I'm sure this is probably the most common topic on this section but, I'm looking for some recommendations for a phone upgrade. I've been back and forth between iOS and Android for years, but with how iPhones currently are, I think I'm making the final decision to stick with Android. I currently have an iPhone 8, failing home button, lackluster battery life, typical iPhone stuff it seems. I'd like to find a sub 500 dollar Android device that would suit my needs, I've been looking myself but I can't seem to find a solid device that suits me well. Here I'll give a list from most important to least of what I've been looking for: -Headphone Jack (with a decent internal DAC would be a nice plus, I'm a big audio enthusiast, a decent quality 3.5mm output is a must) -Decent camera (I'm no photographer, I often take pictures when working on things, or just pictures and videos with my friends, nothing major. I just want decent pictures and good overall 1080p video performance) -Good everyday overall performance -OLED Display (pretty standard nowadays fortunately, I'd prefer it over an IPS display) -MicroSD expansion (If the phone has a larger internal storage, say 128GB or larger, this could probably be ignored) -Clean stock Android feel, and the ability to easily run a custom install would be nice Also, I'm looking for a device 2019 or newer, preferably. I know this is a bit nit-picky but I hope I can find a device that will at least come close to these guidelines. Thanks all!

From a technical standpoint I doubt it really makes a difference. If you want to have a nice aesthetic build having just one brand may help your parts match up better in that way, other than that I can't really see a reason to stick strictly with one brand, other than maybe having most of the parts in your system have their warranty through ASUS.

I've always been an EVGA guy myself, but generally I would go for whatever brand has the best price available at the time. The cards themselves are all generally the same Nvidia design so it shouldn't make a huge difference, if you have a 2080 Ti you have a 2080 Ti. Never really heard of any major issues with EVGA, Asus, MSI so I would just price around, the EVGA cards are some of the best looking in my opinion.

As far as gaming goes yep. Only advantage I can really think of is running some sort of workload (Folding At Home for example) and having a second card to be able to get more performance that way. If your goal here is just a gaming and music mixing machine then I would put all the money towards one GPU. I did skim over the fact you said you had a 2000 dollar budget, in that case max it out. Get a 2080 Super and be happy.

Do you have another PC to test it on? Maybe a laptop? That would let us narrow the issue down between being on the computer side or monitor side. Your symptoms could also be a failing HDMI cable, so definitely try another one and see if the issue continues, bad contact in a failing HDMI cable can cause some strange issues in my experience.

Well I will say SLI is considered pretty useless nowadays, nobody really does it anymore, there's not many games that support it well. I would go with a single card and shoot for something like a 2070, really though is you're happy with the 1660 I would keep it for awhile.

Am I all set? Not sure if I'm earning the points I should or not. I noticed I'm not on the leaderboard for the LTT team, maybe that's only people with a huge amount of points, crazy horsepower machines? I'm running two machines, my desktop with an i5-4690k, 16GB DDR3, GTX 1070 SC, then I have my laptop with an i7-10510U, 16GB DDR4, MX250. My desktop has been running for two weeks or so, my laptop has been running for a few days now. My room these machines are both running in is heating up like crazy, never knew how effective a PC can be as a spaceheater! Anyway I'm hoping I'm all good here, got my team set for LTT, passkey is set, and registered into the giveaway you guys are running too. I know I don't have a massive amount of computing power here but I hope I'm helping out, thanks all! (view here is from my desktop just now, points earned should be for my user so both machines, my laptop displays the same points earned.)