I’ve spent basically the last two years—nearly two, actually—just messing around with Western Digital drives. If you're looking at them for simple backups or some light, occasional use, sure, go ahead. But if you need a drive that’s going to be running non-stop—say, for streaming movies or anything else where the thing is spinning for hours on end—I wouldn't touch Western Digital with a ten-foot pole.
Adata gives you a three-year warranty—you could also go with SanDisk or General Electric if you want—just make sure it’s USB 3.0 and stay far away from Western Digital; that stuff is incredibly unreliable.
Brian Campbell36 said:Well, looks like I'm back in the game too. 🙂
So, a buddy of mine just picked up a Sapphire HD 7770—pretty much the same one I'm running—that's only about three months old, and he's looking to offload it for $267 ☕ . My big question is... is it actually worth dropping that kind of cash on a card like this? (He’s planning to hook it up via ATI Crossfire so they both run on a single motherboard)
Is it really smart to sink a decent chunk of change into these kinds of experiments? I mean, we all know the reputation for overheating issues, right? 😕
Timothy Kim60 said:If you're looking for a rough comparison between GPUs http://www.hwcompare.com/12210/gefor...adeon-hd-7870/
As for how much that Hwcompare site is actually worth—honestly, I don't know. I’ve always been a bit skeptical of it. I mean, sure, it gives you the technical specs... but in actual gaming, things work differently—that's a whole different ballgame—so maybe it's better to just stick to specific game benchmarks for individual cards (if that's even your thing)
Hwcompare is basically a useless site; it doesn't provide any concrete data that could serve as anything resembling a reliable benchmark.
Think of it as the "pipe" connecting the GPU to the card's onboard RAM—basically, the wider that pipe is, the more data the GPU can shove through to the memory at once. Yeah, you’ve got everything from 384-bit to 448-bit or even 512-bit setups, and so on.
Oh sure, why stop there? Maybe he’ll bring you a Starbucks latte and a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts while he's at it, just to make your life easier while you're busy overthinking everything. 😁
Steven Wilson32 said:Let me clarify things a bit more
My boss wants two different computers to have identical mail setups—same inbox, same sent folder, same contacts, the whole nine yards. Since he's using an AT&T email account via POP3, it’s making my life a total nightmare. Can this be fixed by using a Windows Live ID? Basically, if I switch to a Windows Live ID, will all those emails actually sync up between two separate PCs?
Look, Windows Live Mail is a pretty primitive email client—honestly, it’s incredibly dim-witted when it comes to networking stuff. Why on earth aren't you just using Outlook since you already have it? It would be so much easier to just grab a tool like this one to sync everything across both machines perfectly. http://www.itsth.de/en/produkte/e2s4o.php
fadedbadger11 said:but isn't that what they're showing us here? Like, the manufacturers—or whoever actually runs the tests—ran the numbers and found out that out of a rated 400W, this unit is actually pulling about 336W. So, if you do the math, that puts the efficiency at roughly 84% in this specific scenario.
Look, I’m not trying to act like a know-it-all or anything—I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea here—my only real goal is just to wrap my head around how this stuff actually works, and in this case, it's specifically about the power supply! If there's already some deep-dive thread out there explaining all this, I'd be more than happy to give it a read, because honestly, I haven't stumbled upon anything helpful regarding this yet.
When you’re actually measuring power supply efficiency, the results usually end up looking like this kind of bell curve:
With high-end units—like this Corsair CX430 shown here—that "belly" of the curve stays pretty flat between the starting and ending points. On the flip side, if you're dealing with cheaper, lower-tier power supplies, that belly tends to be much more rounded out. Generally speaking, most PSUs hit their sweet spot with the lowest losses somewhere between 50% and 80% load.
Joshua Rivera29 said:Hey guys—wondering what I could get for my old laptop. I don't really need it anymore since I'm looking to build a desktop instead. ASUS Laptop Intel Core i3 @ 2.26GHz 4GB RAM 17" Full HD 1080p LCD Nvidia GeForce 9650M GT 1GB 640GB Hard Drive
How old is it? Is there any warranty left? Also, how’s the battery holding up—and the overall condition of the machine? Ideally, looking for something around $833.
shadowstag21 said:Hey there. I'm trying to figure out the value of these parts:
