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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: el_murdoque on Tue, 18 February 2020, 07:28:07
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My current rig, as it has grown over the years, has taken on some weird proportions.
The PC is a frankensteined monstrosity that was put together from a server and an old gaming PC, both bought second hand and rather cheap on ebay.
I built another PC from the leftovers and flipped it to further reduce cost.
My keyboard and mouse combo cost me about two thirds of what I paid for the PC.
The monitor is not a monitor but a 42" TV which cost about as much as the keyboard, mouse and PC put together.
Audio is put out through a pair of studio monitors - and the whole TV/PC/keyboard-mouse combo cost me about two thirds of what those cabinets sell for.
Somehow I gathered quite good equipment for the whole human/machine interface with a decent sized display, stellar audio and my select choice of input devices,
but under my desk, there's a potato driving it all.
Do you run top shelf gear in all regards?
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I have an oddball Frankenstein, I suppose. I have a huge tower case that is at least 15 years old, maybe 20, solid steel, and probably weighs 30 pounds empty. I have always liked it because it has room for a full-sized mobo, numerous drives (4+3 external and 4 or 6 internal) and receptacles for 6 fans. Every year (or 2) I replace some few components and so everything in it has been changed several times along the way. In the beginning, I had discreet hard drives for OS, photos, music, Linux, etc, but much of that need has been displaced with larger drives and better external drives.
Soon I may finally get a smaller and lighter case, and look for a single very large slow fan (or 2) to cut the noise, but I still want a full-sized mobo because I have a nice full-size sound card as well as video card.
I use 2 "smaller" monitors (~20"-24") that I got very cheap which look out of place because they are black. Everything else is beige!
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My current rig, as it has grown over the years, has taken on some weird proportions.
The PC is a frankensteined monstrosity that was put together from a server and an old gaming PC, both bought second hand and rather cheap on ebay.
I built another PC from the leftovers and flipped it to further reduce cost.
My keyboard and mouse combo cost me about two thirds of what I paid for the PC.
The monitor is not a monitor but a 42" TV which cost about as much as the keyboard, mouse and PC put together.
Audio is put out through a pair of studio monitors - and the whole TV/PC/keyboard-mouse combo cost me about two thirds of what those cabinets sell for.
Somehow I gathered quite good equipment for the whole human/machine interface with a decent sized display, stellar audio and my select choice of input devices,
but under my desk, there's a potato driving it all.
Do you run top shelf gear in all regards?
My rig will soon compare to my peripherals
Logitech G203 and Corsair K63 but planning to get another board for portability and typing
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Pretty much.
I'm bored with some of it, but it's all good stuff.
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I had a fullsize case with holes cut in it for custom watercooling but a year or so ago swapped into a carefully chosen small case with an inverted motherboard mount which was bought abused on ebay - it's hard to get an IO shield to fit in at all. Inside is a dodgy Chinese built laptop BGA CPU on an adaptor (an i7 4980HQ to be exact) in an Asus ITX mobo cooled by an ancient Thermaltake IFX-14 with no fan, the backside cooler is Arctic Alumina'd to the backplate though it doesn't do much if anything. There's a 180mm fan at the front connected to a PWM adaptor and a 140mm mounted on the back of the case (yes, that means outside). Graphics are the fastest available fanless available at the time, a Palit 1050ti KalmX (actually currently not installed...) My storage drive (old school spinner) is mounted to the floor through some holes I drilled using isolation mounts from my old case. My only monitor is a 20" 4:3 which I'm dreading the death of as it's basically irreplacable.
Are my input devices in any way as eclectic or overthought as my computer? I don't think so, though there can't be too many 1800ish boards built with a mix of 100 and 120g linear switches. Or red/clear hijacked matrix Duckys...
I still want a full-sized mobo because I have a nice full-size sound card as well as video card.
MATX boards have 4 slots space (sometimes not all the spaces have sockets to allow for GPU coolers, m.2 drives or extra IO connectors) so a couple of cards will fit fine :)
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My only monitor is a 20" 4:3 which I'm dreading the death of as it's basically irreplacable.
Why are long skinny rectangular monitors so much in vogue? I can understand movie screens but for doing real work like writing or spreadsheets it seems to me that a square-ish type of screen is far better?
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My only monitor is a 20" 4:3 which I'm dreading the death of as it's basically irreplacable.
Why are long skinny rectangular monitors so much in vogue? I can understand movie screens but for doing real work like writing or spreadsheets it seems to me that a square-ish type of screen is far better?
I read an article which suggested there's more money in making TVs so all the factories making panels make 16:9 for that and monitors are an afterthought. I guess people have been tricked into the 'benefits' of having two things side by side - which works just fine on 1600x1200 with less scrolling than 1080p.
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It's true about the screen resolution conforming to movies, but there's often been questions raised about it being more about selling fewer pixels for more money as well. I tend to think screen makers saw an opportunity to merge both and save money at the same time.
As for vertical screens,
We view things horizontal, our eyes are oriented this way, the only thing we really do vertical is read and even that is because we haven't adjusted our formatting to modern tech. Though I'm not sure these is a way to fix that or if we should.
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Widescreen is better .
you can run 4:3 on a wide screen monitor.
a 50" wide screen, would give you a 40 inch 4:3 screen.
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I've come to realize that computer are relatively disposable in the eyes of an enthusiast. Most people will end up replacing or upgrading long before the parts approach their lifespan, and I'm no different so I try not to go all out on my build knowing that I'll want to refresh in a few years. I just buy cheap now and get something that's fast and good enough for me. It's all built in a standard mid sized case that's put off to the corner of my room, I don't really see it. I don't frankenstein anything, except maybe my power supply. I upgrade displays whenever I see something I like, so before it was my 27" Qnix monitor and now I use 4k TV's. Audio is something that probably won't change, I have vintage tower speakers connected to a receiver that I got from ewaste. Sounds janky but its a decent setup, I don't think it'll go anywhere unless I have to move.
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Widescreen is better .
you can run 4:3 on a wide screen monitor.
a 50" wide screen, would give you a 40 inch 4:3 screen.
But I don't want a huge physical screen to avoid knocking over even if it didn't use more power than necessary to produce an image so big I have to waste floor space to sit further away or get neck ache turning my head constantly. 20" 1600x1200 @ 1 meter is great, another inch and 2048x1536 would be endgame. Too bad I don't want to look at xrays all day or I'd have one (that can only do greyscale)
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Widescreen is better .
you can run 4:3 on a wide screen monitor.
a 50" wide screen, would give you a 40 inch 4:3 screen.
But I don't want a huge physical screen to avoid knocking over even if it didn't use more power than necessary to produce an image so big I have to waste floor space to sit further away or get neck ache turning my head constantly. 20" 1600x1200 @ 1 meter is great, another inch and 2048x1536 would be endgame. Too bad I don't want to look at xrays all day or I'd have one (that can only do greyscale)
Nah 40 inch with one vertical on the side
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Built my original rig in around christmas 2013 and it was pretty good and good run most AAA titles on high but quite top of the line at the time.
Since then I've upgraded the GPU, replaced the HDD with a 1TB SSD (Best decision Ive ever made) and upgraded the RAM after I had a stick die.
But now my input devices are worth way more than my rig even when I first built it. I have a handful of high end keebs, 144hz monitors, decent headphones and standalone microphone and about $1000 in sim racing gear.
Ive noticed my CPU starts to bottle neck on some games I want to play so I have thought about upgrading that but I keep putting it off and buying other stuff :p
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But I don't want a huge physical screen to avoid knocking over even if it didn't use more power than necessary to produce an image so big I have to waste floor space to sit further away or get neck ache turning my head constantly. 20" 1600x1200 @ 1 meter is great, another inch and 2048x1536 would be endgame. Too bad I don't want to look at xrays all day or I'd have one (that can only do greyscale)
If you have to save space,
On the 50" 4K wide screen,
1600x1200 @ 22.7 inches
or
2048x1536 @ 29.1 inches
On a 43" 4K wide,
run 2048x1536 @ 25 Inches.
or
1600x1200 @ 19.5 inches. (exactly what you have now, except with way better contrast ratio, and higher gamut)
and you're not going to knock it over, because it's wall mounted
Not trying to be difficult, but a 50" or 43" widescreen can accommodate any usage scenario that you're looking for.
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I also built my current rig around 2013 or so. Originally configured, I believe I had an i5-3570k in it, 8gb of DDR3 clocked at 2133, a GTX 760, and a 750-ish watt Raidmax psu. The case is still just some cheapo Apevia X-Hermes. I think it cost $50 at the time. For storage, I started with a 1tb WD black mechanical hard drive. That's bloated various times over the years, now up to a 1tb Samsung Evo 840, a 6tb WD black, and a 2tb WD black. I still use the Corsair K70 I bought not long after (my first modern mechanical, not sure otherwise). I believe my EVGA Torq x10 is only slightly newer than that, and I didn't pay a huge amount for it.
Not long after the release of the 10 series, I upgraded to a GTX 1070. In the last year I picked up a treasure trove of i series and Xeon processors at a recycler for $7 each, having dug them out of a scrap bucket ... including the i7-3770 I upgraded to. I bought two separate 8 gig sticks of ram used on Ebay to bring my system to 16 in the last few months. I have faster processors around, just haven't bothered to switch to another socket just for gaming. It is handling Red Dead Redemption 2 on max just fine, but I do want to build a new Ryzen rig once I bother to ATX mod a XPS 720 chassis for that purpose.
My primary gaming monitor predates even my rig. I have an old Samsung 21" (or so) 1920x1080 display I got back in 2009 or so, on Black Friday, for about $120. I was still using my very first desktop computer when I got that display. Still looks beautiful, so I have had no reason to replace it unless I want to make the jump to 4k. On either side of it, I have a 23" (or so) 1920x1080 Westinghouse led tv I got at Goodwill years ago now for something like $100 (when displays like this were first coming out), and some cheapo 21" (or so) 1920x1080 Acer touch display I got for about $100 new at some point for when I had a monitor wall mounted above my bed with a knockoff compute stick. All 3 are mounted to the desk, the side monitors mounted with gas spring arms that cost me a little bit more than the displays themselves.
My speakers are a set of Bose Companion 2 Series II speakers I picked up at Goodwill years ago for $7.
So, my setup is a random amalgamation of once-premium things and/or random scrap and/or thrift finds. I guess I'm not too picky if it gets the job done just as well as anything else. I don't do much typing on that computer, so the mediocre Cherry MX reds suit me just fine.
I agree on 4:3 being nice. I have very little desk space at work. At the high school, I have two 2003-ish vintage Dell business class monitors in 4:3, mostly for their fancy proprietary stands. Those, right next to each other, already take up a lot of space, and I have just enough clearance left to see when students come to the help desk counter. Honestly, the biggest use I have ever seen for 16:9, even at home, is to tilt the display 90 degrees and use it that way for reading articles and/or going through long vertical lists, but even spreadsheets too. I may eventually go that route at work, I do a lot of copying and pasting, and recording/logging things in Google Sheets.
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I like the 4:3 aspect as well. There never seems to be enough vertical space for my architectural drawings.
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I'm currently updating and upgrading my input devices to match my rig's appearance. So far my monitor is up to the task for now (ACER XF270HU - 144hz 1440p IPS), but again I have an addiction to hardware and devices which I rotate between my rig and my son's rig (his was made from spare parts that I have gathered over the years).
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I'm currently working on ATX modding an XPS 700 series chassis from 2006, so my brand new build, when that occurs, will literally be built within a 14-year-old case. lol
Some things just don't replacing.
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I almost did a build in a 700 case, but the owner of the e-waste recycler wanted it. Should be a fun case to mod and bring up to date, also should be a hefty one at that in the event you ever have to move it lol
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I almost did a build in a 700 case, but the owner of the e-waste recycler wanted it. Should be a fun case to mod and bring up to date, also should be a hefty one at that in the event you ever have to move it lol
Heck yeah. I imagine nobody would be walking out with the thing if they happened to break in to rob the place. You should keep looking. I know a local place still gets them from time to time. I have possibly started hoarding 600 and 700 series computers. I have an original 730x. I don't have any of the ones with cool colors though.