sonofsanta

I am getting a proper case without a window, because I want it to be quiet, and flashing LEDs right by my head (my PC is on the desk) will only infuriate & distract me Reckon I'll get the Coolermaster cooler because it's great value for money and should be noticeably quieter than stock, but I still have no idea on motherboard. Does there honestly need to be this many models from each manufacturer. Why are they doing this to me.

Dunno, not got it yet but stock coolers have never been up to much in the past, and it seems like a proper cooler does a much better job.

If I do go for a new monitor as well (not sure yet, I don't need one...) then I'll probably get the 25" Dell, actually; would fit on my desk a bit better, the lag was a bit better than the BenQ, and the colour accuracy & quality of the Dells is legendary. I'll probably spend more time sorting photos than I will playing games these days, so these things matter :/ No point in buying a new GPU when the next-gen--with its new 16nm process and shiny HBM2--is so close. Maybe in a year or two

Where's the fun in that? I need the mad cackling moment of booting it for the first time and getting to shout "IT LIVES!" Watercooling is a whole world of faff I don't need, and doesn't necessarily run any quieter either.

That's the 212 cooler I was thinking of glad it's working out for someone, + points to its column! That mobo is Z97 though, for the older gen of Intel CPUs--I'll need a Z170 (or H, conceivably, but it seems like it's worth paying for the Z chipset).

So, after recent good news, I finally have pennies to spend on a new PC I'm more or less up to speed on everything I need to know, and have the build all but picked out, but there's two particular areas I wanted to ask the hivemind about. CPU Cooler I'm not intending on overclocking (not even buying the K chip) because it's not worth my time or money, tbh. I'm past that stage, and all the worrying about stability and squeezing out the last drop of performance. I'm more concerned with noise than performance, although the two are related. I gather that the Noctua coolers are more or less the gold standard, but if I'm not overclocking, is the NH-U12S overkill? The Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO gets a lot of good reviews for half the price, and an i5-6600 at stock shouldn't be difficult to cool. Basically I want permission to save the £25 and get the 212, so just let me know I'm not an idiot for this. Motherboard There are forever and always too many bloomin' motherboards to keep up with, so recommendations for a good value ATX LGA1151 motherboard are welcome. Single GPU only (I did Crossfire once, never again) and no particular fancy features--just something reliable and with decent connectivity. I've always gone with Asus in the past, but reviews online seem less than complimentary about their current crop of boards, so I'm open to Gigabyte and MSI as well. It looks like there's lots of good boards at £120, but if I can get something good enough for £90-£100 it's all money saved (that I might spend on bumping up to a 500GB SSD). Any other thoughts on the build, let me know; I'm going to move my 680 over from my current PC (good enough, esp. at 1680 x 1050) and PCI-E SSDs don't seem worth the premium, sadly, so I'm pretty settled on everything else, but there's a fair chance I've missed something. Cheers, y'all.

We just have a Nikon Coolpix L330 to loan out, on the grounds of "Keep It Simple, Stupid". Anything DSLR shaped is both too complicated for most people and too expensive to replace when it's inevitable dropped/left behind. Any Canon/Nikon/Sony point & shoot compact between £50-£100 would do the job. We have a Nikon D90 for ourselves to use in taking proper quality photos, but that's because we know what we're doing (at least, that's the impression we try to give).

It's in line with the "Snape kills Dumbledore" moment from HP for me--part of the cover. Or, if it's (b), trying to sever his last connection to the light side. I reckon we'll see a redemption arc from Kylo, and his guilt at what he did then.

So on my recent transatlantic flights... Star Wars: The Force Awakens is better the second time once there's not the weight of expectation on it and you can just relax and enjoy it. Not sure who has more sexual tension; Finn & Poe or Hux & Kylo. I am also now convinced that Kylo Ren is the Snape and is not actually evil but either (a) a plant (b) trying to force himself to be when he really isn't. Crimson Peak by Guillermo del Toro, with Tom Hiddleston and other fancy names. Very moody & gothic, fantastic creature design (ofc), but there wasn't enough plot in the second half--enough revelations--to keep momentum and suspense high. Creed aka Rocky 7. I'm a sucker for a Rocky movie anyway, but this was solidly done, very engaging & enjoyable, great acting and characters throughout, and that fight cinematography! Gorgeous. Absolutely one of the best Rocky films, up there with 1 & 2. Victor Frankenstein with James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe. Again, gorgeous production, but... idk. Didn't feel meaty or engaging enough. Enjoyable, but not quite satisfying, y'know? And then also watched Horns on Netflix over the weekend which was both darker than I was expecting and better. Daniel Radcliffe's accent is atrocious (par for the course with his acting, tbh) but the story was great. Actually very enjoyable and, importantly, satisfying.

Bernie Ecclestone: F1 drivers right that sport is in jeopardy - BBC Sport Ha! Apparently he is agreeing with them without any sense of irony.

B****cks. I best make the most of watching the next four seasons of F1, then, because they're the last seasons I'll be watching. I wonder why audience numbers keep falling, Bernie. I wonder.

After a three year absence, the Ars Technica series on the history of the Amiga is starting up again: A history of the Amiga, part 9: The Video Toaster | Ars Technica

aaaaaand I'm not going now because they just cancelled the Cambridge event, and I'm not driving 3 hours to Oxford.

In general: i3, 4GB, 128GB SSD. Oldest generation we have is i3-550, they have about 18 months left in them. Some PCs are 8GB because RAM was cheap as chips at the time we were buying. RAM is not so desperate a limitation when you have SSDs; the access penalty for virtual memory is much lower. Our Core2Duos were retired last summer, after 7 years good service. Wasn't anything wrong with them (once they had SSDs in), but I'm working on servers/switches this summer, so if I didn't replace them last summer I'd have been committing to them until they were 9 years old in 2017 and that would have been pushing our luck too far.

Saw him live at the Embassy Theatre in Skegness when I was a kid. He chopped my Dad's head off.

I like that. Like you say, a bit of colour Now we just need to get McLaren back in red & white...

That's what the New-FSRMFileGroup PowerShell in the first post does. No import/export, but just run the same script on each server.

Channel 4 reveals Formula 1 coverage team On the one hand... Steve Jones as presenter. Urgh. And still an Eddie Jordan. On the other hand... Coulthard, Webber, Wolff, Prost, Ben Edwards commentating still, and Murray flippin' Walker! Most importantly of all: there'll be no advert breaks during the race, and they're keeping as the theme tune.

Yeah, discussing some new features, but some of those features are free to existing customers, so I would like to know, and the new paid features seem to be more or less what Securus does. And, frankly, if it's a good alternative, I'll be tempted, price depending. Couple of other speakers as well, though. And lots of miles at that lovely HMRC rate, which is about 4 x what it actually costs me in fuel. If nothing else, at least I'll get my week's diesel paid for!

Anyone else off to the Smoothwall e-Safety things going on this year? I've just signed up for the Cambridge one on 16 May. I don't often get to many EduGeeky things from way over here in the sticks, so I might actually get to meet some of you for once!

So genuinely no reason not to run it, except Lewis worrying that he won't look cool enough. This is some interesting maths, subject to the usual winter testing caveats: F1 in 2016: Analysing Mercedes & Ferrari's race simulations in testing | F1 News

From BBC person on Twitter, the driver's view: Looks alright for racing. Only concern might be seeing the lights at the start.

In which event, I believe you're the second school to have been caught up in that attack. So one man's poor online hygiene brought down (at least) two schools and a county council. Can you get court injunctions against people owning computers?

CCNA covers a lot of networking theory, and while you do the lab work on Cisco kit, most of it is fairly transferable. It's like learning programming with Java; you have a bit of relearning to do with syntax, but the theory will stand you in good stead. Having done a CCNA and an MCSA, I'd say a CCNA is much harder and more rigorous. I'd also say you'd be more in demand as a network engineer at big companies with it than you would in IT Support with an MS qualification; my gut feeling is you could ultimately end up on a higher salary with a CCNA. Ultimately, though, whicever one interests you more. Both have their moments of being dull as dishwater, so motivation and interest will carry you through.

And the ultra-soft was something like 0.8s faster than the soft last week, wasn't it? Around that mark. The more I see the Manor livery the more I think it might be my favourite on the grid...