Hardware Discussion Thread

[AnyOldName3]

Ahh... I've just seen how the missing keys are done. Interesting. I still think that'd be likely to infuriate me, though.

I didn't manage to click the links earlier (I was just reading the product names as I was left unoccupied in the back of a car with practically no internet, so images would take forever to load - even the forum was almost unusable) so missed the details.

Anyway, it's not so much that I'm constrained for cash, it's just that I don't like spending money if I'm not convinced I'm getting something significantly better. This is actually a lot of the reason I'm not wholly constrained for money in the first place. (Also this rule seems to have an exception with the extra VRAM version of GPUs - I'm all about that VRAM, 'bout that VRAM, no swapping.) I'm not convinced buying a keyboard which would be over twice the price when new switches were included of another is a great idea just on the off-chance I decide to change switches, but I'll definitely pay an extra few pounds to guarantee I don't get pissed off that I have to keep turning num lock on and off. I'm also increasingly sure that it is the brown switches that I want - now I've been using an old clacky keyboard for a few days the novelty of its noises is wearing off and is definitely getting a little annoying, but I still need the actual feeling of the click (yet it wouldn't be a huge issue if it was a little subtler).

I've noticed the Cooler Master TK Ultimate is just a little more than the Aivia Osmium, but it definitely looks obnoxious with red backlighting and I can only imagine it'd look worse near the reast of my stuff, as in general everything's white, black and blue. It also doesn't have any of the advanced features like macro buttons. There's also the Trigger Z for an extra £23 ($35) which does have most of the advanced features of the osmium (and all the ones I'd actually use; I wouldn't need USB/audio passthrough as my case has plenty at the front and volume buttons vs a volume wheel is no biggy) and I have no issues with the aesthetics, however more money is more money, so I might need some convincing it's worth it if the keycap issue is minor (although even I've read stories of cracked spacebars on Aivias).

I do appreciate all the help, and wouldn't ask for it if I was immediately going to say every suggestion was bad without considering it.

[kinkinkijkin]

Hmm... you should be able to turn off the backlighting if you don't like it (though I am not at all sure about this, some boards you can't) but the issue with cracking spacebars shouldn't be huge (cherry-compatible spacebars are not particularly expensive, you just need to know exactly how many keyboard units long it is). It *MIGHT* be better to buy the aviva and just replace the spacebar if it ever does crack, but I don't know.

I'd recommend hopping over to geekhack or deskthority and asking experts. Most of them are rich people who have large keyboard collections so someone probably has tried the exact keyboard you want before and can tell you its name. Geekhack can be found on freenode if you don't want to wait forever on the forums for an answer. Dunno about deskthority.

[AnyOldName3]

I found the Trigger Z on sale on another site, so ordered it. It doesn't give me free next-day delivery, though, so I'm waiting a few days now.

[NKF98]

For a gaming rig, is getting an i7 in any way noticeably superior than an i5, making it worth the extra ~$100? It is going to be running a dual monitor, running Netflix/Hulu/Movies from my hard drive on one end and running Dolphin/PC game on the other.

[AnyOldName3]

Practically no games currently released will make use of the extra threads, so it's probably better to put the money into something else.

[NKF98]

What kind of processes do make use of extra threads?

[teh_speleegn_polease]

Anything which can be easily multithreaded. Most really CPU-intensive tasks do make use of extra threads (unless there's some specific limitation preventing that, e.g. Dolphin lel). The only thing that comes to mind right now is video editing on the CPU - an i7 can actually be faster than some GPUs, unless of course you can afford a Titan or similar which will most likely blow any CPU out of the water. I used to do some intensive rendering in Blender, and my i5 4670k was slightly faster than my GTX 680 - so an i7 would do even better (although my GPU is not exactly top-end nowadays).

Another thing which I can think of right now are servers - if you want to run a server for something (e.g. a game) on your PC, you can have it use some of your spare threads and not risk running out of processing power if you randomly decide to overload the CPU with other stuff. On my i5, if I want to allocate two threads to a server I'm basically left with only half my CPU for everything else.


Also if you want to run P95 till your PC explodes you'll be able to work on twice more numbers at once.

[NKF98]

OK, I won't be doing anything like that so I'll stick with an i5-4960k

[AnyOldName3]

(04-11-2015, 07:25 AM)teh_speleegn_polease Wrote: Anything which can be easily multithreaded. Most really CPU-intensive tasks do make use of extra threads (unless there's some specific limitation preventing that, e.g. Dolphin lel). The only thing that comes to mind right now is video editing on the CPU - an i7 can actually be faster than some GPUs, unless of course you can afford a Titan or similar which will most likely blow any CPU out of the water. I used to do some intensive rendering in Blender, and my i5 4670k was slightly faster than my GTX 680 - so an i7 would do even better (although my GPU is not exactly top-end nowadays).

Another thing which I can think of right now are servers - if you want to run a server for something (e.g. a game) on your PC, you can have it use some of your spare threads and not risk running out of processing power if you randomly decide to overload the CPU with other stuff. On my i5, if I want to allocate two threads to a server I'm basically left with only half my CPU for everything else.


Also if you want to run P95 till your PC explodes you'll be able to work on twice more numbers at once.

Really? Everything I've done has gone a gazillion times faster on my 770, which is pretty much a 680 with a slight overclock. What kind of stuff were you rendering?

[KHg8m3r]

Get an i5-4690K instead, it can overclock better