Regarding the blades: this is pretty low-end, but if you're broke, it'll get the job done. However, for this one, it’s actually worth the money if you're doing a lot of cutting—unless you want to blow out your shoulder using that jagged crap...
Here are the machines for thermal laminating: If you're moving high volumes, there are electric ones too, just so you don't wreck your wrist...
There are plenty of laminators out there, but keep in mind that if you're laminating all day long, you'll kill a cheap one in no time. If you have heavy volume, or if you're planning to offer this as a service, look into roll laminators. The film from a roll is much cheaper...
You can find similar equipment from brands like Rentz over at: . Compare those prices against other stuff like cutters and trimmers, and you'll realize why I brought up sewing machines and manual folding... 😬
Oh, one more thing. I don't know if you're doing that thing where you make promotional New Year's calendars—calendar on one side, ad on the back? That was one of my most profitable items back when I was running things. I'd send them to a print shop to print the calendar on one side in A4 sheets (8 per sheet), then depending on the ad requirements and quantity, I'd run them through a small inkjet or silk screen. Back in my day, we actually had to order custom tools just to round the corners on the calendars, and we'd beat them into shape with a hammer because corner rounders weren't available anywhere outside of professional print shops. Nowadays, those rounders are dirt cheap and an incredible tool...
1. For cutting, a small manual A3/A4 paper cutter is plenty. Just make sure you find one with a solid lever to hold the paper down so it doesn't slip. 2. For small batches—even just 100 or 200 business cards—a sharp X-Acto knife and a metal ruler work wonders. If you print the cards with crop marks (just tiny little dots), you can cut them all in about 15 minutes with a blade, and they’ll look like they came off a professional industrial cutter.😁 3. Scoring is also done manually: use a metal ruler and ideally a blunt piece of plastic or plexiglass in the width you need. For anything larger than 1,000 units, just take it to a local print shop. 4. Perforating is also a manual job with two ways to go about it: for bigger runs, use a sewing machine and a heavy needle 😁; for smaller amounts, just use a tailor's awl to poke the holes along a metal ruler, obviously. 5. Gold foil—which is always a headache with wedding invites and stuff—can be handled for small quantities using gold foil applied over printed text through a laser printer. For large runs (200–300+), hand it off to a screen printer because that gold foil gets expensive fast. 6. Don't send clients to someone else for printing. Instead, strike a deal with a shop owner where you bring them the business in exchange for a decent wholesale rate. The client doesn't need to know you're outsourcing the actual print. Same goes for screen printing... you prep the files on tracing paper and have them run the job. 7. You absolutely need a reliable inkjet, like rustysurfer79 mentioned, plus a black and white A4 laser printer. That covers small print jobs. Anything larger? Take it to a print shop. If you establish a relationship with them, you can get a great price without destroying your own gear. For something like 500+ B&W prints, a home printer can't compete with a cheap commercial copier. Or just buy a photocopier 😁—same logic applies to color and A3 copies. If your monthly volume is low, don't waste money on equipment; it's better to feed a local shop enough work to earn a discount. 8. Never buy paper, cardstock, tracing paper, or any other supplies at a retail store. Find a print shop and buy from them. They can cut everything to the exact size you want, they have a much wider selection of paper and cardstock, and some even carry specialty tinted stocks. Usually, whatever you need, a pro can hook you up with for the price of a couple of beers... and the pricing is usually killer if you know the right people. 😁 9. Never, ever, EVER send a client to someone else to get their work done. You can handle everything. You can take a job just like a client would, outsource it, and pocket a 10%-20% commission—that's a win. If you bring them a lot of work, you can negotiate a special rate. But if you send a client to a printer with *your* design already finished, you've made zero dollars. 6. You can do binding yourself, but stapling and gluing... it's much easier to outsource that to a print shop or an old-school bookbinder looking to supplement their retirement. It requires a steady, experienced hand, which is the most important part. Plus, you need a big guillotine cutter to make it actually look professional. That's why I avoid doing it myself... you could eventually pick up a comb binder and some different sized plastic spines; it's not expensive and looks good. It's worth it for brochures, newsletters, manuals, books, etc. Everything else? Just pass it on. 11. If you're prepping for print or screen printing on foil or tracing paper using a laser printer—don't use that same laser for thicker materials. You'll strip the plastic gears, and the tracing paper will slide all over the roller, meaning you'll never get the registration right. 12. If you really insist on stapling things yourself, don't buy a heavy-duty machine; just grab an electric staple gun. You can find them at places like Walmart or Target for about 50-$20 and they get the job done.😁 For the base, you’ll just need to have a metal cone custom-made. That way, when you fire the staple, the ends of the metal immediately fold inward.
Maybe this sounds a bit ridiculous to you, but call it what it is: rationalization... 😁 You can tell yourself that a standard stapler is cheap, or that you can pick up some used bookbinding gear for just $333, but honestly? The difference in time spent working with a basic bookbinder versus using something from, say, a heavy-duty brand like Swingline is negligible. Let's say you're stapling a hundred A5 booklets; one way takes you thirty minutes, the other takes an hour. Add in the several hours you'll waste just stacking the signatures for those hundred booklets, and there's no getting around it... unless you drop a fortune on an automatic collator, which is pricey and only worth it if you're drowning in work... 😬 Then you realize you could have actually managed without that $333 stapler all along...
None of these speakers have a built-in volume knob for your headphones... you have to adjust the volume using the physical dial right on the headset itself, which is exactly what the Razer Piranha has. If your audio sounds way too quiet, it’s probably because:
1. Your headphones are shot. 2. You're losing power from your sound card because you've daisy-chained cheap splitters or low-quality extension cables together. 3. Your sound card is just putting out a weak signal.
That's basically it...
What kind of sound card are we talking about from that old PC? If it's a decent one, it might actually outperform this integrated crap, so if you can find drivers online, that might fix things.
Look, the Piranha uses a standard 3.5mm stereo jack, so you can test those headphones on any computer, laptop, stereo system, or even a phone with a jack to see if they're actually fine. These headphones usually sound great and get pretty loud—if you crank them all the way up, they actually get annoyingly loud. If yours don't do that when you plug them into, say, a phone, then just go buy new headphones...
Intel motherboards are pretty sensitive to this kind of stuff 😁
Dual channel basically means if you've got matched sticks in the right slots (the ones with matching colors), the processor can tap into both memory banks at once. It makes things run just a tiny bit faster. Honestly, the difference between dual and single channel isn't massive—you wouldn't even notice it without running benchmarks—but there it is...
You didn't lose anything on your hard drive; that's not how it works. Just empty your Recycle Bin😁
Heh... just because you see a higher number or a newer series doesn't mean it's actually faster. It might just be built to be more "eco-friendly": http://www.hwcompare.com/10435/radeo...-6570-oem-1gb/
You can usually find an HD 5770 sitting on shelves for around that price point, especially if you catch one with a solid two-year warranty. If you're buying straight from a big-box retailer like Best Buy, though, you might have to settle for something a bit more entry-level, like an HD 5670. Bottom line: when you're scanning the price tags, aim for 512MB to 1GB of memory—don't bother going higher than that—and make sure it’s GDDR5.
In tests and everything else, the PSU performs great. Solid specs, tons of connectors, quiet... but look, even if you say money isn't an issue, I don't see the point in dropping that much cash on a single power supply. You aren't going to get anything better, higher quality, quieter, or... I don't know, anything really... than what you'd get with something like this:
You've got one +12V rail at either 82A or 72A split across four rails. Over ten years ago, every PSU had just one rail. Then they decided splitting them into two, three, or four rails was the "premium" way to go, and now they're pivoting back to single rails as the superior solution... hahaha... hilarious. CoolerMaster might have more connectors, but in my book, that's only useful for crazy rigs with three or four GPUs sucking up massive power. For any standard build with two GPUs and whatever overclocked CPU you throw at it, a Chieftek like this is more than enough. It’s still a top-tier unit, and it has plenty of connectors for a dual-processor, dual-GPU setup... plus, eight SATA and four Molex won't fail you regardless of what you cram into your case... 😁
And let's be real, the Chieftek is "only" $333 cheaper 😍
So, unless you're building a monster rig with three or four graphics cards, blowing over $150 (in my humble opinion) on these kinds of units is overkill. You simply won't have anywhere to actually use all that extra headroom...
We also know that these things are manufactured in only a few places globally, and a lot of PSUs are actually built on the exact same platforms. A huge chunk of the price comes down to the "finish"—the paint job, the branding, the included accessories, and the cable count—even though the core specs of these high-end units are incredibly similar. After all, nothing can really be "better" than the ATX specification itself... 😁
As for the little German guys at Chieftek, they've been in the game forever. They've always been solid and reliable without being flashy or pretentious in their marketing. Meanwhile, you've seen decent companies like CoolerMaster slap expensive labels on budget units just to move them... 😬
I'm not a Chieftek fanboy; there are plenty of other great brands out there. I just figure you aren't building a system that needs more than 700W-800W, because that kind of power requires three or four high-end GPUs and an insanely expensive motherboard, which aren't exactly common finds around here...
To wrap this up, here's a quote from a Xtreme Hardware roundup regarding Chieftek power supplies:
"The Turbo Power series products are based on a widespread platform from Channel Well. It is good indeed, and the PSUs have excellent electrical parameters and reasonable noisiness, but this platform actually sells under about half the brands present on today’s PSU market.
Thus, it is only the Super Power series that I can find impeccable, except for UPS incompatibility (but not all users have UPSes). These PSUs are very good, delivering high output power and excellent electrical parameters. They are quiet and have a normal selection of connectors which will suit not only a home/gaming PC but also a workstation or even a small file server."
Nah, that 500W CX unit is actually weaker than the Xfinity 450W one. 😬 If you aren't exactly swimming in cash, you're better off sticking with the Xfinity 450W...
I've never actually done this 😁 and honestly, I don't see the point, but whatever... let's look at it this way: since these are active speakers, they have their own built-in amps, so you aren't going to blow anything out. You can just grab a cheap 3.5mm stereo splitter, plug it into your PC, and hook up both sets of speakers to it. It works fine with headphones and speakers combined, so it should work for two sets of speakers too. That said, there are about a million variables that could screw up the sound quality. Sometimes when you use a splitter, the total volume drops, and I'm guessing you weren't looking for a quieter experience, right? You should probably head over to the audio/video subforum to ask—those guys will give you the full rundown on what might go wrong...
But hey, if a buddy of yours has these or something similar, a splitter is basically pennies, so you might as well give it a shot...
Look, it’ll probably hold up... actually, it definitely will. Your rig likely isn't pulling more than 300-350W, but if I were you, I'd play it safe and go with the 550W unit instead. If nothing else, you'll get less heat and better longevity out of it.
Even though we're talking about computer speakers, you should probably head over to the audio/video subforum to ask that... 20 meters is a pretty significant distance when you start worrying about signal strength and interference (a cable that long can basically act like an antenna picking up noise 😬), so you might actually need some shielded cabling...
Look, there’s nothing left to debate if you’re getting the exact same results on both your old rig and the new one: your Optimin router is just garbage. Give them a call and lay it out for them—a router shouldn't be acting like this. Demand they come out and swap it for a decent one.
The light keeps flickering—not constantly, just enough to be annoying. I'm pretty sure that shouldn't be happening.
Either my PC is drawing too much power, or it isn't getting enough. I can't tell which one it is.
Just try testing each cable one at a time in the same spot. If it's overheating, the whole thing is going to cook. Also, try swapping out those power strips for actual surge protectors.
A probe might flicker because of induction—what people call phantom current. If everything else has been running fine until now, I wouldn't sweat it.
It’s impossible to have too much or too little. 😁 It could just be voltage fluctuations that have nothing to do with you or how you set everything up. It’s all about the quality of the power coming out of your wall. That’s exactly why we talk about this stuff here—you need to invest in high-quality power supplies. You want something that has more than just a basic fuse; it needs those extra layers of protection that will actually shut down or even fry itself before it takes your entire PC down with it.
What placidcanyon2 suggested actually makes sense: just lug your rig over to someone who has a solid setup and stable power. You don't even have to bring the whole tower if you don't want to—just grab the case, then use their keyboard and monitor once you get there. See how it behaves under those conditions.
edit:
Installing a power supply... if you're counting labor at even just one hour of service time, you're looking at a minimum of $100.$50Look, here’s the play: you walk into the shop and say, "Hey, I really want to buy this power supply from you guys, but I have absolutely no clue how to install it myself. Could you maybe help me out?" Then you hit them with that innocent, wide-eyed look—you know, the one where you act completely helpless. To seal the deal, just offer them a coffee or a beer on you. Just keep it low-key, though. One-on-one, obviously.
The outlet is grounded through the neutral if those "prongs" aren't connected. You've got plenty of massive buildings out there built 25 or 30 years ago before they even implemented these modern extra protection and grounding regulations, and everything works just fine. It's the same way in my apartment building... don't sweat it. Power strips aren't an issue either, like those guys mentioned, but do check to see if they're getting hot anywhere. If they are, it means either the circuit is overloaded or you've got some crappy wiring connections somewhere...