Linusinium

I ended up saving some money compared to an S10 and other flagships since the Mate can be had for under $700. Didn't think anything could pry me away from Snapdragon based phones but very impressed with Kirin. If you plan to unlock the bootloader, other brands are better than Huawei in that regard. Also if you are in the US, you lose warranty options compared to other brands. Despite all of these flaws, it was the best option for me. The new one plus 7 pro just launched yesterday, you should consider that phone too.

I bought the Mate 20 Pro. Slightly cheaper than other flagships since it's a 2018 phone but the cameras and the battery life are really good. 2k amoled screen is great, I'm happy with the audio but it's not the best compared to other top phones.

Poco F1 is great phone, can't think of a phone in the price range that beats the bang for buck

When I first moved the PC into the living room, I used Kodi. While the lapdog is functional, I used Kodi because it let me navigate using a gamepad while leaned back in the couch rather than leaning forward to use the lapdog on the table or being held captive by it when I place it in my lap. I now use gopher though it's not perfect for 4k, it's easy to miss placing the cursor in the desired spot, it can take a few tries. No other player I tried came close to MPC's improvement in image quality. I realize I may be an outlier here, it may not have the same impact for everyone but it blows my mind every time. I can only describe it as sorcery, I still can't believe that a GPU can make such a difference. It takes all 1080p I content I throw at it and spits it back out as if it's native 4K. If you have better hardware combo than mine, you can also utilize the SVP filter. My PC can't, the framerate conversion takes too much toll but the 60fps conversion also has a wow effect. Another wrinkle is that it requires ffdshow to be installed, that filter introduces major dithering for me.

I've been using VLC for a long time, last year I moved my PC into the living room and went with a 65" 4K TV.I didn't know that a media player utilized GPU to enhance video playback existed and when I first heard about it,I dismissed the benefits as placebo effect and gimmicks but installed it to try it out anyway. Didn't do a direct comparison between different media players, just setup basic upscaling settings and didn't do any further testing. Fast forward to last week, I didn't know how good I had it until I decided to do a fresh OS install and tried media playback before reinstalling MPC&madvr combo.This time around I played with the settings even more. I pushed the IQ settings a lot higher, to the point where the GPU couldn't handle it and playback was stuttering (no SLI support sadly) and then backed off a little til playback was smooth again.To compare it, this must be what before and after cataract surgery feels like.Few caveats: Playback disc/file has to be decent, not uncompressed BR but not terrible either. 720p doesn't work quite as well as 1080p upscaling. RGB range needs to be set to full and to get the most out of it display should be calibrated through http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/A setup guide can be found here: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1357375-advanced-mpc-hc-setup-guide.htmlKeep in mind this setup guide was done with older GPU's in mind. The better the GPU, the better image quality you can push. My 980TI is nowhere near able to max out the settings but the image quality keeps improving though the GPU can't keep up for a smooth playback so I have to take it down a notch. For reference this is a screenshot of the settings I'm using, you'll have to experiment with other settings to get the most out of it: If you watch the Game of Thrones season 6 finale through this setup, in the opening scenes, Tommen is getting dressed, you can see dust specs floating around. Grab any content you have seen before with non GPU utilizing player and you will instantly notice the difference in image quality. A lot more detail and sharper image. My HTPC and TV: I7-4790K@4.4GHz-H100i-MSI Z97 G5-Ripjaws X 16GB DDR3 1866-MSI 6G 980TI SLI- Corsair AX760 PSU-Samsung 840 EVO 250GB-1TB Mushkin Reactor-Corsair Lapdog+K70 Red & Logitech G700-Corsair 760T-WIN10-65" Samsung KS8000

GOW4

*I am in no way affiliated with MSI, Corsair or any other brands I may mention here. I wish I were though. It was difficult to classify as into which sub forum I should post this thread in since it's kind of a build log but I've started building this PC about 2 years ago. there are some truly bizarre coincidences, the last one drove me to post the whole history. I didn't think it would be appropriate for the build log section of the forum so I'm posting this in OT, mods feel free to move it if there is a sub forum where it belongs more than here. I'll update the thread with pics when schedule permits as I'm moving the setup around but for now: Started planning this, what was at that point a 1440p build in 2014 with a future 4K compatibility in mind. Narrowed it down to 3 cases and was favoring the Corsair for the GPU space, I figured even down the road, 4K wouldn't be doable with a single card and I was worried if 12" cards would become the norm. I wanted to wait a little longer before I start buying and building but a good friend I've known forever was about to get married, they had a wedding gift registry so as I was buying gifts randomly from their list, I saw a promo that gave me the incentive to treat myself too. I got their gifts from registry which included a Game of Thrones book set but I wasn't really paying attention, I just selected 3 gifts from the list and went back to shopping to buy the 760T. That took a while to make it ship to me and not to the couple as gift lol but eventually, it worked. However, this "select a free gift" popup kept annoying me and preventing from finishing the order. Eventually I gave up and angrily clicked options on the popup to make it go away and finish the order. I had no idea what free gift I selected, didn't even care, just wanted to get past it. The same day I decide to get a CPU and a mobo too so I brush up on my research, see that things barely changed, I got a 4790K and I wanted a decent but affordable Z97 board, most reviews pointed to this: As I was building the system, I noted the dragon theme for the mobo but at that point, I didn't even care. I was never the guy to pay attention to other factors beside performance. I should note that at this point, I had 0 exposure to game of thrones/a song of ice and fire. The second time I took the PC out on the balcony to clean it (I have a mini compressor), I scratched the right panel pretty bad. I couldn't stop looking at it. The free gift from the popup that kept annoying me as I was buying gift for the friends that were getting married had arrived in the mail. It was a red sticker/decal. I ended up putting it on the panel only because it covered up the scratch perfectly, I justified the sticker (usually find that stuff tacky) by having it match the mobo theme. This is the sticker: Anyway, that's how I started representing house Targaryen before I even knew about it! was weird because as I eventually started watching the show, it became my favorite TV show ever: Fast forward to 2015, I got two failed tries to buy a 55" monitor, both arrived with cracked screens, I eventually settle on buying locally, a 65" TV, once everything else is up to par. 1440p was already too much for the 970 and I saw used 980TI's drop to $400. I figured I'll stay at 1440p for a while, a 980ti fits the purpose well and offers a reasonable option of going SLI down the road. The only used 980TI for exactly $400 that I could find was this one: Now it's getting creepy, I never made a themed build, let alone start it before I was even aware of the theme. But what's a Targaryen without a 3rd dragon right? After 2 cracked monitor screens, I finally accepted the reality that I missed the window of when perfect pixel units were shipped with crates to ensure safe arrival. BTW, If anyone reading this is considering importing a 50"+ plus monitor, have it shipped via crate or forget about it. Anyway, after realizing the monitor isn't happening, I started looking into TV's as monitors, after a lengthy research and a few visits to local stores, settled on a 65" Samsung KS8000 so now I needed to look at GPU again. I opened [H] and newest for sale thread had a 980TI, I researched the seller's heat and ebay, offered him $300, he agreed and I paid him before even realizing it's the exact same model as the one I bought before, enter the third dragon. After getting the second card, I remembered I'll need a SLI bridge. I fired up newegg and ordered the first bridge I saw. Of course, as you may guess by now, it was a dragon themed SLI bridge, this one: Once I started watching Game of Thrones, It felt really strange when I realized I had the sticker on the case all along, as the house represented in the sticker became my favorite one. After waiting for so long to finish and finally move the PC into the living room I got anxious and serious about finishing the 4K upgrade ASAP and since the PC is moving into the living room, I bought a Corsair Lapdog as well and a K70 for it. With everything else in place, it was time to check out the TV's in person to help make the decision. I went to Best Buy, got to the TV section and I was drawn to a TV that had the Game of Thrones blu-ray playing, it was the Samsung that I had favored all along. The BB sales guy threw it in to make the sale too lol: Anyway, I thought I should share this here.

You could shave a few bucks off with buying windows on reddit or [H] forum, I believe WIN10 goes for $20. If you want to save money and don't mind used components, have you considered a 980TI instead? It's not too far behind the 1070 performance wise and goes for $300. I just got a second one myself, out of principle I didn't want to pay above MSRP for the 1070. EDIT: What the other poster said is probably correct, I haven't looked into WIN10 prices in a while.

I want the Razer Blade 14 but only if Linus licked it.

The prices listed for displays and processors are misleading. I've worked at places* where I had access to discreete info, there are discounts exclusive to mass orders, kept from "smaller" (think less than 50k quantites) customers. I enjoy teardowns as much as the next guy but there is a price we pay when we order a part from a "LG direct" catalogue, there is another price a small company like Wasabi Mango pays and then there is the price that mass order customers leverage, think, Microsoft or Sony orders. R&D is expensive, people tend to underestimate the entire cost of development. It's easy to look at a product and conclude a fraction of the actual cost was required. On the other hand, sequel products tend to have significant portion of the development cost absorbed by R&D of the previous product and some of the cost listed are reduced over time, literature and packaging for example. Inital, original products are always the most expensive to manufacture, with the lowest yield rates. Later in the production, these always improve and other benefits are also passed onto the next product. As for the lenses, FB/Oculus were in position to waltz into a negotation knowing the order saturates manufacturing lines over extended periods of time, immense leverage over OEM's.

Every once in a while, a thread like this pops up and inevitably, some idiots try to make arguments to justify piracy. Fact is, you are obtaining a product or service for free that legitimate users pay for. Only an underdeveloped brain can conclude that this is somehow ok. Making the argument that the original content has not been removed just because you copied it to justify downloading games or movies is retarded. Please, take that argument to court, I hope you get a long sentence. I don't personally care what the piracy defenders do. However, it would be beneficial to you if you admit the truth, not necessarily publicly but at least to yourself: You don't want to pay. Maybe you are broke, maybe piracy has conditioned you not to deem software as something that's worth paying for even if you can technically afford it.

It's not well visible because of the color scheme but the max is 1852. I wouldn't put too much value in the RPM stats, a lot of individual factors come into play.

FML

OP posted the article, which is fine but then he repeatedly tried to sell "the innovation" to tech enthusiasts. Apple isn't even catering to this crowd because the typical user here will see right through it when a business tries to pull a fast one on them. Apple is catering to the mass consumers who don't know better, they may protest the inconvenience a little but will sooner or later give in and Apple knows, it's why they did "innovated" to begin with.

Oooh, so glad to read this, puts a smile on my face. No actually, this makes me straight up hard. It's pocket change for them but AT&T will act like they are now considering filing for bankruptcy because of the lost profits.

I wonder how much the 4K fee will be, the xbox live subscription must be going up too. Internal numbers are unlikely to ever leak out but I wonder how much a unit will actually cost them to build. For the past few years, the notion that Sony and MS are selling consoles at a loss (lol) or minimal profit has been firmly entrenched in the media but it couldn't be further from the truth. It's like the ifixit tear-downs. They disassemble a device, for an example an iphone, price out the parts and the total is counted as the cost. However, the prices used are the ones us individual consumers would pay. So if I as consumer order the iphone's speaker from a catalog, that's the price used. That does not account for discounts that Microsoft can leverage when ordering a 100 million console parts. I used to work in a parts warehouse a long time ago. We pay $57 for a part, turn around and sell it for $92 to a small store chain. You as a consumer? Guessing $150? Wrong. $197. Misanthrope's estimate above sounds right but if they were to sell at cost or minimal margins, one can only guess...

It makes sense to me, hardware is not there yet. A true 4K/60 PC can't be done yet unless you opt for a multi GPU setup. Consoles will likely target 4K/30 but it's still a tall order, especially when consoles have to fit certain form factor and pricing expectations. The form factor dictates power and cooling limitations, to fit a 4K/30 capable machine within the expected form factor, they have to wait. I'm assuming they are picking AMD to build it for them, they have to wait for next AMD's architecture to pull it off.

It can always be worse. You could have bought new hardware, even taken a week off work to enjoy it and to be home when it's delivered only to find it's been damaged:

Panels are in pre-production stage, hope there is decent size variety. A 4K 144Hz gsync or freesync monitor is set to become a long term solution and pricing will reflect that. What incentive is there to upgrade a 144Hz 4K monitor when it will take years for the GPU power to get the most out of these 4K 144Hz monitor. Yes, one can play older games and lower the settings but that doesn't take away from the fact that a 4K 144 gsync variant could be now paired with a 1070/980TI, then a 1080TI and a 1180TI and even then it's questionable to get to max out settings and get most out of monitor. Video cards mastered 1080p/60 a while ago, 1440p/60 is now pushed to the lower price range but 4K/60 is a tall order already, one that no single card can master, 4K/100+ will prove a challenge for quite some time, ensuring the monitor's relevance for years to come.

We knew it was coming, with the absence of AC sequel. Once they are done with WD2, the work force will probably move onto next AC or Division 2. Ubi game designers, rather their entire work force are bounced around between different projects all the time to increase work efficiency but ultimately it's because of shareholders. There is trouble brewing with Vivendi staging the final moves for a hostile takeover of Ubisoft. Vivendi=Abstergo anyone? They were arrogant with Watch Dogs launch and while successful, Ubi could have learned a few lessons. They even had ads taking shots at GTA V: While there is plenty wrong with Ubisoft the publisher and Watch Dogs the game, Ubi has the sheer manpower to "brute force" a game and because of the experience they have in making them, they aren't absolute garbage. If Ubi lands a hit, they won't know what made the game good but will desperately try to make the rest of the games in the lineup like the game that sells well. That being said, Watch Dogs is a decent premise. They butchered it with the first protagonist, his story didn't work out. The first game did some neat things to make the city appear live and added AI routines and animations for the NPC's but behind the facade, the game was a shallow, uninspired game. The only inspiration I found to do the side quests was to make the map look neat.

The first 4K/144 prototype has been shown off at Computex, if that's of relevance to you. DP 1.4 4K panels capable of 4K/144 are in pre-production. In theory, you could wait for one of these or maybe it will have a G-Sync variant. 144Hz/G-Sync combination is appealing because it appears to be a long term solution. If you play modern games at max settings, It will be years before you can even get the most out of monitor since 144fps in 4K is a tall order anyway. I did extensive 4K research myself before committing last week. 4K is not practical below 30". I was very focused on price/performance. There is a LG 31MU97 that still hasn't dropped down into your price range but a Korean manufacturer Microboard used the same panels in their R4K310C monitors. The LG one sold for $1300 at launch, Microboard goes for $560. BTW, Linus reviewed the LG version. Having seen the LG version myself, it's definitely the monitor I would have bought myself had I opted for a traditionally sized display.

A dedicated monitor is better than a TV in a secondary function. Granted, some of the TV's do 4:4:4 @60Hz and have lag reduction mode too but at that price point of the TV's that do a good job as monitors, might as well get a monitor. I suppose at 1080p there are cheap and viable alternatives to monitors. 1080p monitors have gotten good over the years, there is little incentive to pick a TV over it. 4K however caused many to go for cheap TV's to use as monitors. I went about it differently. Instead of making the TV back up as monitor, I bought a 55" 4K monitor that has the secondary function as TV. I've wanted to move the PC into the living room and dethrone the TV for years and now I'm finally doing it. Probably getting the Lapdog as well to complete the experience.