Computer advice thread ("What's the best way to do this?")

Well part of the reason I want the 1050 is because its low power so I don’t need to buy a new PSU as well. Also so far the cheapest I’ve seen for a 1060 is $195 and I can get a 1050 for $110.

Do you have like a 100w psu? Hyperbole I know but still.

I’m seeing the 1050 ti is 75w and the 1060 might cap out at 140. That’s at full load. If youre on the most minimal PSU I guess that makes sense.

Nah but I’m kind of going the scrapyard wars route so I got an i5 Dell Optiplex for a little over $100 and I think it only has a 300-some watt psu.

I just got a 1050 and if you’re more worried about being able a bunch of games you already own vs new games, it’s perfect. I can run Overwatch 1080p full settings at 60fps.

That sounds good to me. Honestly this is more of a stopgap pc to last me a couple years or however long until I can afford to drop $1000+ on a god-tier pc and then I’ll just use this one as a HTPC. Most of the newer games that usually interest me are indie games anyway so it should handle most of those just fine.

Well I’ve had it for a few days now and so far so good even with a few hiccups. Turned out that it had a PCI-E x16 and an x16 routed as an x4. The full x16 was placed at the very top so the card wouldn’t fit because the big ass cpu cooler was kinda in the way, and it’s a dual slot card and the PCI-E x16 slot is on the top slot so there isn’t anywhere for the top half of the I/O shield to go. And even if I could insert the card without having it mounted in the cases slots properly, there’s an internal port in the way of the I/O shield. Thought about just taking it off or cutting it down but I didn’t wanna mess anything up so I just put it in the x4 slot and it’s ran fine. I’m sure it’s bottlenecked but I’ve still got 60+ fps on most games. Hell, Project Cars was giving me ~60-100+ fps on mostly default settings. Granted I only have a “900p” monitor so I’m sure that helps. The only game that didn’t really run great was Rust, but I haven’t messed with the settings yet. Think it’s worth it to eventually just buy a PCI-E bridge cable and just leave the card in the case on some kind of anti-static pad and shove the HDMI cable through an open slot?

Based on my experience the extra lanes give you somewhat diminishing returns. If it were an 8x slot I would say you probably wouldn’t get a noticeable difference in most games. My guess is going from 4x to 16x would give you something like 10-30% improvement in framerates for things that are GPU limited. It varies from game to game.
Personally I would do some kind of hack to make it fit in the socket, but I’m also comfortable doing rather invasive mods to electronics and have built custom computer cases before. Since it’s a stop gap if that kind of stuff isn’t your thing maybe don’t worry about it.

Sorry for temporary double post, old post was not supposed to be a reply to someone else. Anyway!

I want to build a military themed custom case. I want to make a control panel that is reminiscent of missile launch controls with toggle switches for the case fans and a big red button for the power button. Is there a way to rig it such that the switches for the case fans have to be in the “On” position for the power button to work and possibly a “Main Power” switch that allows the fan switches to activate. My ideal situation is to have a “Main Power” toggle, 2-3 toggles for “Main and Auxiliary Coolant Systems” (Case exhaust fans) and when those are all activated to have an LED indicator turn from red to green and allow the big red “Launch” (power) button to work. I have never messed with fan controllers or LED case lighting, and most of what I have found googling is forum posts saying “get a fan controller.”

If you use DPDT switches you can switch the power for the fan on one pole and put the other pole in series with the power button. It’s easy enough to add some indicator lights and stuff too if you want. PM me or something and I can give you more suggestions.
I feel like the need for fan controllers and stuff is pretty much gone now that everything has built in speed control and better power management. Making custom cases is fun and a good way to learn some things but I don’t think there are any arguments left for practicality.

So my “new” computer has been running great…except I’ve been getting the occasional random shutdown. It doesn’t freeze up first like I’d expect with a bum hard drive, and generally no blue screen or anything like that. Think I’m just overwhelming the little 255w psu and need to upgrade it?

What have you got plugged into it?

I already unplugged the DVD drive just to be safe since I don’t really use it. Basically just an old i5 650, an ssd, the old hard drive it came with, a couple sticks of ram and a GTX 1050. Oh and a keyboard and mouse, duh.

Okay, at bare minimum, that stuff draws at about 170W, so you’re probably just overdrawing your PSU. It’s actually recommended that you have a (minimum) 300W power supply with a gtx1050.

Yeah I knew that but I thought his PC had a 305w psu when I bought it, but later I found out there were also 255w “green” models out there, which I ended up with.

Well, the good thing is that powersupplies are basically the only component in a computer these days that are truly future-proof for the foreseeable future. You might just wanna get a big ass 600W PSU. It’s not like it’ll draw anymore than you’re using.

Any way to subscribe to a subset of someone’s tweets? I like https://twitter.com/unchartedatlas but don’t need 24 imaginary maps a day.

I got an older Home Theater receiver off my roommate for $10 to use as more of a traditional Hi-Fi system. For the speaker outs it only has the older speaker wire connections, no rca or 3.5mm. I have a couple speakers hooked up right now that I got for dirt cheap years ago but they are sub-par. I’d like to just hook up some decent computer speakers. I was able to find cables that looked like they would work but how would I go about that without frying them since normally the speakers are powered by the receiver and computer speakers have their own power supply?

If the stereo has only amplified output then most computer speakers won’t work, you need a pre-amp output for them. Honestly though if you aren’t using the amp in the stereo then it isn’t really doing much beyond being an over sized switch.

So, here is my understanding of what you’re asking:
You have a home theater receiver but, rather than using super shitty speakers, you want to connect powered computer speakers to it.

Here is the issue: Since the computer speakers are powered and are, well, computer speakers, they already have an amplifier built in. Sending a signal from the receiver’s amplifier to the input of the computer speaker’s amplifier would, at best, give you really overmodulated and shitty sound and, at worst (depending on the power of the amp in the receiver), damage the amplifier in the speakers. Moreover, the amplifier in the receiver is expecting a load from ACTUAL speakers, and so you could actually end up damaging the receiver depending on how it’s designed.

So, question: Does the receiver have something like a “Tape Out” feature? It’s common on older receivers to provide the ability for people to have their tape player record the output of the receiver. If so, connect the speakers to that. If you don’t have that, connect them to the headphone jack on it.

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[quote=“VictorFrost, post:60, topic:288”]Here is the issue: Since the computer speakers are powered and are, well, computer speakers, they already have an amplifier built in. Sending a signal from the receiver’s amplifier to the input of the computer speaker’s amplifier would, at best, give you really overmodulated and shitty sound and, at worst (depending on the power of the amp in the receiver), damage the amplifier in the speakers.
[/quote]This.

[quote=“VictorFrost, post:60, topic:288”]
Moreover, the amplifier in the receiver is expecting a load from ACTUAL speakers, and so you could actually end up damaging the receiver depending on how it’s designed.
[/quote]Extremely doubtful. The “line in” input of a powered speaker is a high impedance load, the limiting case of which is having nothing connected at all. Granted, old-school vacuum tube amplifiers could indeed be broken by operating when unloaded, so that disconnecting your speakers could indeed cause the amp to break, but that’s hardly relevant nowadays.

Going on to ninjarabbi’s question, one possible solution would be to use a device like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/PAC-SNI-35-Variable-Line-Converter/dp/B001EAWS3W

Something like this would probably do the job, although you’d lose a little sound quality. Also, you should obviously be careful to make sure the specifications match your devices.

(EDIT2: don’t; it would melt; 50W is probably too low for your receiver, and apparently being able to consistently handle 50W is an exaggeration anyway. The advice about specifications still covered that, though ^_~)

EDIT:
On further inspection, compared to a car’s head unit, your home stereo receiver would likely be designed to output more power into a higher-impedance load; thus the line out converter might not be able to handle it. The one I linked appears to be rated for 50W, but your receiver’s peak output would likely be higher. What exactly this entails depends on what kind of circuit is being used. Chances are it would work fine but you’d need to treat a 1/4-ish volume setting on the receiver as though it were the maximum; at max volume it would be way too loud and/or cause clipping and/or the converter would get really hot.

EDIT2:
Based on some of the reviews, the PAC SNI-35 uses several 8 ohm load resistors to effectively “simulate” a low-impedance speaker load, which is apparently necessary for some car stereos. Those resistors would indeed be likely to melt if you connected it to your home theater receiver.

On the other hand, if you’re OK with making it circuit yourself, you can make a simpler circuit that would do a better job. For each channel you probably only need two resistors for a voltage divider and likely a capacitor, i.e. this: