Post Your Last Purchase

[Jarhead]

Found an album I've been looking for for *forever*. Mayu no Oto by SEDO Sounder. Shipping from Japan, should be here in a few weeks.

[Jarhead]

A refurbished M2 MBA 13 with the upgraded SoC, 16GB RAM, and 1TB SSD in space gray. Waited for the release of the M3s to see what the discounts would be like and other places like Costco didn't have any enticing configs/prices so went refurb instead.

[ryan]

month old now but im really liking my zenbook 14 oled with the geforce now sub. covers all bases, great battery life and 4080 power for my fav games

[saturnotaku]

I'm swapping out my M3 Pro MBP 14 with a refurbished M1 Max 14 that MicroCenter has up for $2100. While I'll be taking a hit CPU wise, the extra GPU cores provide a noticeable bump in performance. Plus everything I've read indicates it won't be super loud like the M3 Max in the same form factor. The biggest upgrades, though, will be to unified memory and internal storage as the config I'm picking up is 64 GB and 2 TB, respectively. Apple Silicon Macs are emulation beasts, especially with the latest updates to Sonoma and RPCS3. So I'm going to be digging out my PS3 games and purchasing a DualSense to go with it.

[ryan]

Oh nice yeah I might be getting an injury settlement from my accident. Either buying a car or leaving the country

[Jarhead]

Some garage/shop stuff, but the main thing was getting a proper shop vac instead of using a repurposed home vacuum cleaner.

[raptorddd]

On 3/19/2024 at 4:47 PM, ryan said:

Oh nice yeah I might be getting an injury settlement from my accident. Either buying a car or leaving the country

what.? leaving as traveling or leaving as living in other place.? where you going to.?

[ryan]

hey @raptorddd I haven't forgot about you, I will be moving for 6 months to (no idea hawaii??) I want a break. I will still help you out just be patient :p. going to likely have to wait a year for settlement

 

[kojack]

On 3/19/2024 at 9:17 PM, ryan said:

Oh nice yeah I might be getting an injury settlement from my accident. Either buying a car or leaving the country

 

get a van and travel!  If we were not tied to our 350,000 dollar mortgage, we would be doing that right now.  

[raptorddd]

9 hours ago, ryan said:

hey @raptorddd I haven't forgot about you, I will be moving for 6 months to (no idea hawaii??) I want a break. I will still help you out just be patient :p. going to likely have to wait a year for settlement

 

its ok thanks...1 year settlement for the insureance.? hawaii mmm.  if i had the money and be able to travel no anxiety, i would travel to south part of mexico. visit the pyramids. never been to central or southern mexico.

 

7 hours ago, kojack said:

 

get a van and travel!  If we were not tied to our 350,000 dollar mortgage, we would be doing that right now.  

that sounds fun. .. alot of years to pay that debt.  

[kojack]

14 hours ago, raptorddd said:

its ok thanks...1 year settlement for the insureance.? hawaii mmm.  if i had the money and be able to travel no anxiety, i would travel to south part of mexico. visit the pyramids. never been to central or southern mexico.

 

that sounds fun. .. alot of years to pay that debt.  

20 left. We refinance after the first 5 years to get some extra things done. It added 5 years to our mortgage. But NEVER AGAIN! We are in a much different place now.  Get our mortgage paid off ASAP then just relax. I will be 67 when it's paid off. 

[ryan]

Raptor wednesday maybe. let me know what laptop you were looking at around 300-350...I can let you know if its worth it or not, but your pretty good with selections as you have a precision. but if you had say a elitebook or something with a 8250u ect or even a 10th gen i5 let me know... prvt message me and be patient..or create a thread ..ill post in your thread. alot of advice from the old timers here.

 

Kojack, thats a long time when you hit 55. 5 extra years? alot of moola. but you know whats best your a smart guy. anyone seen Eternal around?

[raptorddd]

20 hours ago, ryan said:

Raptor wednesday maybe. let me know what laptop you were looking at around 300-350...I can let you know if its worth it or not, but your pretty good with selections as you have a precision. but if you had say a elitebook or something with a 8250u ect or even a 10th gen i5 let me know... prvt message me and be patient..or create a thread ..ill post in your thread. alot of advice from the old timers here.

 

Kojack, thats a long time when you hit 55. 5 extra years? alot of moola. but you know whats best your a smart guy. anyone seen Eternal around?

did not see this post before i had already PM you.. thats what i said in PMi need advice on selecting.

good at selections.? LOL the precision i got that used on craiglist. all pc's before precision were celeron entry level.

never had a pentium i remember seeing  pentium4 ect.  at that time i didnt care all i wanted was a pc.. 

then all i care was one affordable i7. so i searach on craiglist for i7 laptop and the m4600 precision was the cheapest. all i know at that time that it was i7 dell.. it was i7 thats all i cared. once we figure it out ill create a thread.

[kojack]

Just ordered two of these for MrsKojack and myself.  Our current ones are Wore TF out!  Lots of use from the past two years.  The new models have replaceable everything.  Anything wears out, order the new part and away we go.  Along with my Medical Cannabis card, these are going to be great!  I tried my first haul of medical grade and it's AWESOME!  No more pain in my neck, knee, the brain goes in the correct gear and is happy all the time too. 

 

POTV XMAX Starry V4 Vaporizer | Free Shipping - Planet of the Vapes (Canada)

[KING19]

Besides groceries i ended up buying a new phone about a month ago. The Galaxy A54, I was leaning towards the Galaxy S23+, the Galaxy S24, but they was too expensive of what i needed. I hate the fact that flagship phones removes features like the headphone jack and the sd slot like why....... meanwhile midrange and budget phones still have those features.....

[saturnotaku]

Just did an overhaul of my desktop. Swapped the horrible Lian-Li case and MicroCenter-branded PSU for a Corsair 4000D Airflow and EVGA Supernova 850G XC power supply that comes with NVIDIA's stupid 12V connector so no adapters needed. The case change alone dropped my under-load GPU and CPU temps by 4-5 and 7-10 degrees, respectively, and that's with one fewer intake fan. Speaking of GPUs, MC had some refurbished RTX 3080 10 GB Founder's Edition cards for $400 so I grabbed one of those. It's a surprisingly capable GPU even today with just enough VRAM headroom for it not to be an issue for most games at 1440p while generally outperforming the costlier RTX 4070. I'm also a sucker for the Founder's Edition aesthetic. The one game I play that basically requires DLSS 3 (Portal RTX) I can just fire up on my laptop. I'm also planning to downgrade my primary gaming monitor from 4K back to 1440p. My office monitor will still be 4K because I like the resolution and sharpness for productivity.

[Sandy Bridge]

On 5/20/2024 at 9:00 PM, saturnotaku said:

MicroCenter-branded PSU

Does the "horrible" apply to the MicroCenter-branded PSU as well as the Lian-Li case?  I didn't know Micro Center even had their own PSU line.  Though given that their other store brands, such as Inland SSDs and PowerSpec desktops, tend to be pretty decent, my baseline expectation would have been that it would be competent.  I'd be curious who the ODM for their PSUs are.

 

Not that it really matters to me, I'm still only halfway through my SeaSonic's 12-year warranty.  But as a fan of Micro Center, it's interesting to hear of a new product.

----

 

Last purchase was about 9.5 gallons of 88 octane gasoline from the local petrol station.  I think the last "durable goods" (not grocery/gasoline/hotel/food) purchase was a couple of Blu-Rays from the local DVD/game exchange place, including Rocky III - always a classic, and now I won't have to play the "who's streaming it this month?" game if I want to re-watch it.

[saturnotaku]

On 5/24/2024 at 10:55 PM, Sandy Bridge said:

Does the "horrible" apply to the MicroCenter-branded PSU as well as the Lian-Li case?  I didn't know Micro Center even had their own PSU line.  Though given that their other store brands, such as Inland SSDs and PowerSpec desktops, tend to be pretty decent, my baseline expectation would have been that it would be competent.  I'd be curious who the ODM for their PSUs are.

 

Not that it really matters to me, I'm still only halfway through my SeaSonic's 12-year warranty.  But as a fan of Micro Center, it's interesting to hear of a new product.

 

PowerSpec is MicroCenter's in-house brand, and it consists of fully built desktop PCs (like Cyberpower, iBuyPower, etc) and individual components including power supplies. My desktop was originally a PowerSpec machine that was built in a crappy LianLi case that had virtually no front air flow save for some small perforations between the solid front face and the main case structure. The power supply was also from that brand, but according to most tier lists, it was in the "C" category, so average at best. 

 

My desktop is basically the Ship of Theseus at this point because all the components except the  RAM have been changed since the original date of purchase.

[Sandy Bridge]

Interesting, it's been a while since I was PSU shopping, and I didn't notice the PowerSpec ones when I was shopping last time.  Did some searches on them, found several other people saying "Tier C" (without saying on what basis), but the only in-depth review I found of one was from Tom's Hardware.  On that one they said it was made by High Power, with generally high quality, but with one of the criticisms being a sleeve-bearing fan that might not last the whole 10-year warranty.  Which is a reasonable concern.  Of course, it wouldn't be surprising if PowerSpec uses multiple ODMs and if quality varies among the models.

 

What is your recommended PSU review site?  JohnnyGuru was my reference back in the day, and I see he has recommended Cybenetics as a good reviewer these days.

 

Last tech-related purchase: The expansion for the game Suzerain.  My favorite political-themed game at the moment, most games in the genre are mostly about numbers, it's much more about the people (although having the budget to do things still matters).

[Jarhead]

Microcenter opened up a store in Charlotte recently, so we drove down last weekend to check it out. Picked up a few things but most interesting was a replacement battery for the Dell 7577. Didn't even realize that Inland sold laptop batteries. Also picked up some small things from Ikea because hey, why not.

 

More recently, I picked up some stuff from Costco's website, specifically new sneakers. Apparently, Kirkland has their own shoes now, so I picked up two pairs to see if they're any good, especially for $25/ea. Also ordered a new set of checks as I was running low and still pay bills like an old fudd.

[ryan]

leia lume pad 2..

 

glasses free 3d tablet

[Sandy Bridge]

A 14 TB hard drive.  7200 RPM.  Toshiba, CMR.  Unlike the stealth-SMR WD Red that I purchased a few years ago.

 

My old 2 TB hard drive failed after 10 years, so it was time for an upgrade.  I cycle them through where the newest one becomes the largest external backup drive, and the smallest external backup drive becomes an internal drive.  So a 2 TB failed, a 6 TB becomes an internal one (still a backup though, as it will remain due to being the WD SMR drive), and the 14 TB becomes the new external.

 

Also have another 2 TB (WD), 3 TB (Toshiba), 4 TB (Seagate), and 8 TB (Seagate) still in service, not counting any SSDs.

 

Not quite keeping up with the highest-volume Backblaze drives, but I have one that's near the middle of their pack again!

[Eban]

7 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

A 14 TB hard drive.  7200 RPM.  Toshiba, CMR.  Unlike the stealth-SMR WD Red that I purchased a few years ago.

 

My old 2 TB hard drive failed after 10 years, so it was time for an upgrade.  I cycle them through where the newest one becomes the largest external backup drive, and the smallest external backup drive becomes an internal drive.  So a 2 TB failed, a 6 TB becomes an internal one (still a backup though, as it will remain due to being the WD SMR drive), and the 14 TB becomes the new external.

 

Also have another 2 TB (WD), 3 TB (Toshiba), 4 TB (Seagate), and 8 TB (Seagate) still in service, not counting any SSDs.

 

Not quite keeping up with the highest-volume Backblaze drives, but I have one that's near the middle of their pack again!

 

I..."borrow" a lot of movies and tv shows from my friend with an eye patch...I really do need to have a backup drive

[ryan]

I had to...

 

bought a 50 dollar projector off amazon thinking how bad could it be. its 1080p has bluetooth accepts hdds and a roku stick has 2 hdmi ports two usb ports and decent speakers. the image quality blew my socks off for 50 bucks. its actually not bad its sharp clear and bright with passable colors. overall im impressed and will be buying two more..ha it is just as good as my old 1080p gaming projector from 5 years ago. so things have changed in 5 years but this thing is really impressive for 50 bucks. heck its worth 500 to me, if i had seen it in store and had to pay 500 i would. 

[cylix]

Got on Prime days from Amazon a Lenovo Yoga Pro Gen 8. I wanted a thin small laptop with 32 GB unter 1000 Euros and  this was the only choice.  In the end  I payed 700😃.Pretty slick with nice aluminum body, a very good keyboard  for it's size, maybe best  in class and that 780m Igpu is pretty good, can run every office task and also do some casual gaming. I can run Diablo 4 on it. Spec wise amd ryzen 7840hs, 32 gb ddr5, IPS 400 nits and 1tb SSD.