PC advice

Two things folks aren’t explaining clearly.

Since the last time you bought a machine, graphics cards are more important than CPU once you get to roughly the 8th Gen i5/i7 on Intel and the AMD Ryzen second Gen. The CPUs are so fast that I/O (specifically disk IO, meaning get an SSD and preferably an M2/PCI motherboard installed style one, not a SATA one — but ALL of them completely smoke a spinning hard disk nowadays, hard disks are for BULK storage now) and graphics drive the machine price points.

Flight sims max out GPU these days not CPU. They also need that stupid bulk storage because their data sets are enormous for all the graphics they do.

So... if going flight simming ...

Fast CPU doesn’t matter who’s but needs to be a tower to avoid Intel and AMD built in graphics (disclaimer: Both are getting better but if you want max graphics performance don’t use it) and at least an Nvidia RTX 1080 as a bare minimum or preferably newer. (Good luck. Stock is low and supply chains are broken due to Covid.)

Now if you truly don’t care to join the expensive “gaming” world — which flight sims push the absolute limits of the hardware in — for a “productivity” machine, heck most Intel i5s since 8th Gen and newer and i7s will completely smoke your old machine. Get newer versions of office and such it’ll slow them SLIGHTLY but CPU isn’t the limiting factor — again — it’s I/O speeds to the drive.

Examples:
If you need portability I like what Lenovo is doing in their laptops. Runners up are the HP Envy line, Dell XPS, and even Acer’s higher end. (Love the dual display Acers. But due to right hand issues I’m Lenovo all day every day or at least their keyboards because... nipple mouse. Required. Work machine is Dell, has Lenovo keyboard attached to a laptop.)

Laptops are easy to connect to multiple monitors these days for the most part. Intel machines will have DisplayPort and/or HDMI or both. AMD machines will have a special version of DisplayPort over USB or similar. Just watch out that the laptop has what your monitor has. But after ten years you probably want a new monitor anyway.

SOME laptops and monitors can do the fancy USB 3.x thing where the monitor can CHARGE the laptop in the same cable as the video goes to the monitor in. This is NICE for a clean cable setup. The other way to go is a correct “docking station” which really aren’t docking stations of old. The laptops no longer go IN them they just connect via USB 3 and above, and then they’re just a “brick” with a pile of connectors for various video and monitor(s) and a USB hub or two. Sometimes two different USB speeds per different USB ports and different connector types (USB A vs USB C).

Okay that’s the brain dump. One more thing. Most manufacturers are now taking the guts from fast laptops (not really fast enough yet to be “gaming” laptops so again, flight simulator changes your needs DRAMATICALLY) and sticking the motherboards in mini or micro PC devices. These are awesome for “productivity” if you don’t want a laptop. Fairly cheap too.

Someone mentioned NUC. They’re already outdated. One of the micro machines from Lenovo or Dell will smoke a true branded Intel NUC. Great idea, forced miniaturization, short lived. Cramming a complete laptop minus the display into a box makes for a smoking fast windows 10 machine. Especially with M2 SSD slots for the drives and fast DDR4 RAM. But they won’t have the monster graphics card or chipset for the majority of them.

There’s a HANDFUL of “gaming” laptops. They’re big, bulky, thermally limited by their fans, and a compromise. Gaming is still a tower for the real deal.

Also... replacing “gaming” above with “video editing” if you do that and all of the above applies equally.

Summary: need flight sim or video editing, build a monster tower — spend big bucks on the graphics card. Don’t need flight sim/video editing, get a solid (up to two years older) i7 laptop or mini/micro desktop, or one year old AMD processor, fast SSD storage and plenty of RAM. And be relatively happy with either on board graphics chipsets.

Toss any models you find our way we can tell you the pros and cons.
 
What Nate said about the graphics card. I have an older p7 system that I use for photo, scanning, video and audio work. It's got a high end GeForce video card that I put in about 4 years ago. While my i7 system is faster, the p7 system smokes a much newer laptop and an Apple system (that's not hard). The CPU isn't running very hard, the graphics card does most of the work. SSDs make all the difference in the world compared to rotating drives.
 
By the way do I *have* a proper docking station or good cable management for my pile of machines? Hell no. Don’t even have time to order the stupid thing in the WFH IT world right now.

Here’s a couple year old Dell XPS hooked to two 4K monitors, HD video camera and quality mic, and the aforementioned Lenovo keyboard.

If a laptop doesn’t have tons of ports I don’t want it. But if I have one of the fancy USB-C laptops next for business productivity it will be ordered day one with a massive dock to get all the ports back. LOL.

Yay IT guy. What a freaking mess. Looking behind my monitors gives me Forrest Whittaker Eye.

That’s the laptop, two old Mac mini’s for testing corporate software on, and somewhere far down to the left is three power strips, a gigabit Ethernet switch, and a Dell T620 tower server running Proxmox for many virtual machines. Not pictured is the Synology NAS ahead of the monitor on the far left. LOL

Giant freaking cable disaster. But it’ll change config again in a month so... who cares? Hahaha.

Oh and the laptop is open because the dumb design vents rearward when closed and I make the fans spin hard. It stays a lot of degrees C cooler inside open like that. Most do. The internal monitor is off.

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asicer said:
It's called "Thunderbolt".
Click to expand...

Not on AMD processors.

Be forwarned. Thunderbolt is technically an Intel only technology that they’ve now “released” to the open market but it has NOT been fully implemented in AMD chipsets.

AND if you REALLY dig into source and behavior tests, it’s not implemented to spec properly by Apple either. They bastardized the hell out of it even WITH their Intel chipsets.

I didn’t feel like going into it. Better to say “do your homework and buy the CORRECT docking station for your SPECIFIC laptop and monitor combination”.

Too much crap to go into for someone upgrading from a ten year old machine.

AMD may or may not support it. They WILL however support SOME form of super high bitrate video over USB-C.

(Start daisy chaining monitors and let us know how it goes on three or four different laptop models made this year from the big four and an Apple... heh... you’ll rapidly find “Thunderbolt” is NOT a true standard. Heh. Here lie dragons. Without even mentioning the differences in the number versions of “Thunderbolt”... heck there’s even significant problems between different implementations of “HDMI”... including but not limited to non-standard copy protection silliness for media and non-standard voltages changing how far you can drive the cable / resistance issues... that mostly don’t affect the typical laptop user at 6’ or so... hahaha...)

Enjoy the insanity if you dig into it. :)
 
denverpilot said:
Not on AMD processors.
Click to expand...

As someone who flips between Mac and PC on the regular, Intel's petulance with Thunderbolt has been maddening.

My next workstation will almost certainly be some sort of AMD variant, and my ecosystem of peripherals are all hanging on Thunderbolt 3.


As such, I've had my eye on the few mainboards which have Ryzen and Thunderbolt 3 paired and certified. Here are a couple:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asrock-x570-phantom-gaming-itx-tb3-motherboard,6293.html

https://www.gigabyte.com/Press/News/1824

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11847/gigabyte-announces-x399-designare-ex

I run an intel flavor of the Designaire board now and it's solid, so that would be my first pick I think. Waiting to hear how it is in the wild of course.
 
Ok. My new computer is blazingly fast. Except when it isn't. But I had this problem before with the old computer too.

Most of the time, when I click on a link or a tab, nothing happens. I usually have to click it a couple of times before it catches, and then the window pops up quickly. I have better luck if I hover the cursor over the link for a second or so before clicking.

There are several things in common with the old computer. I have the same wireless keyboard and mouse. The same cable modem and the same monitor. Unless there are settings for this, what parts should I start swapping first?
 
JOhnH said:
Ok. My new computer is blazingly fast. Except when it isn't. But I had this problem before with the old computer too.

Most of the time, when I click on a link or a tab, nothing happens. I usually have to click it a couple of times before it catches, and then the window pops up quickly. I have better luck if I hover the cursor over the link for a second or so before clicking.

There are several things in common with the old computer. I have the same wireless keyboard and mouse. The same cable modem and the same monitor. Unless there are settings for this, what parts should I start swapping first?
Click to expand...
Never mind. I think I fixed it easy as pie. It was right there in front of me all the time.

Settings
Devices
Mouse
Additioinal mouse options
Pointer options
enable "snap to".

So far, so good. But I have had temporary successes before.
 
Until my latest go-around with them, I would have recommended HP for a laptop. However, I've got an HP Pavilion laptop that I got a year ago for Christmas that has been to HP 3 times, all in December. I sent it back the third time the end of the month and they still have it, a month later. They claim they are waiting for a part, but won't tell me what one. The last email I got from Customer No-Service was the beginning of the month which claimed I would have it on the 6th. Today is the 28th and when I spoke with someone yesterday he said it could be until about the 13th of March.

HP used to be outstanding on service. Not so much now. Oh, and my other consulting machine (Lenovo) appears to be TU, as well. It's pushing 6 years old, so I'll cut Lenovo some slack, but HP has really got me upset right now. Best of luck to you.
 
JOhnH said:
Never mind. I think I fixed it easy as pie. It was right there in front of me all the time.

Settings
Devices
Mouse
Additioinal mouse options
Pointer options
enable "snap to".

So far, so good. But I have had temporary successes before.
Click to expand...
Yep. Another temporary success. I guess my next option is to replace my wireless mouse. I used to have a half dozen mice, keyboards and about a hundred various cables. In a quarantine induced frenzy, I tossed all of that shilt. Wish I saved a corded mouse or two.
 
JOhnH said:
Ok. My new computer is blazingly fast. Except when it isn't. But I had this problem before with the old computer too.

Most of the time, when I click on a link or a tab, nothing happens. I usually have to click it a couple of times before it catches, and then the window pops up quickly. I have better luck if I hover the cursor over the link for a second or so before clicking.

There are several things in common with the old computer. I have the same wireless keyboard and mouse. The same cable modem and the same monitor. Unless there are settings for this, what parts should I start swapping first?
Click to expand...
Doesn't sound like hardware to me if it only happens on web links and all clicks on applications to launch them, etc, work the first time.

The two of many possibilities that first come to mind are a slow DNS server or URL/web filtering security software trying to intercept all web links to check them before handing off to the application or browser.

Sent from my LM-G850 using Tapatalk
 
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