General PC Help Thread - OP updated with useful links - READ

Rudolphin wrote:
Advent7 wrote:Looking at buying this (or the 24 inch version, I'm unsure).

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 9-pdt.html

Annoyingly it seems hard to find a monitor of this spec with inbuilt speakers, which my current one I'm sending back has (really handy for passing my ps4 on it.

Anyone recommend some external speakers that can take both optical and 3.5mm input? Failing that, a G-sync monitor with built in speakers would be better.

Edit: this looks alright https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-agon ... 46-ao.html

For about that price I got a Asus PG279Q which has inbuilt speakers. Incredibly hard to find, but if you see one nab it. The Acer equivalent is the XB271HU.

Even though half my pc is asus, the scrappy quality of the monitor I sent back put me of buying any more from them.

I went with this in the end... no speakers so I'll have to sort something out later and user headphones in the mean time.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 9-pdt.html

I looked at both the ones you suggested earlier actually and nearly bought the Acer one, but read horror stories of backlight leaks on it and there was enough to convince me to avoid. Shame because it looks like a great monitor.

Orbital wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:Actually, if you really specifically want that mobo and that SSD, then that's a good price, I was thinking it would be a cheaper Z170/H170.

That gigabyte is a decent GPU too, Tom's hardware have been comparing different types of cards, like loads of 1070s and a bunch of 1080s, can't remember if they've done the same with 1060s though.

A big cooler is normally fine, otherwise they wouldn't make them, that's again more of a personal preference since there isn't too much of a difference in performance, especially at stock. Personally I'd only go for the larger one if I was going for the best OC I could.

Cool, I ended up spending £40 more for a brand new 1060 G1 which supposedly has a backplate (don't even know what this for, weight distribution i guess), better cooler and better clocks. and RGB lighting but only on their logo. got a Gigabyte FOC XM300 GAMING MOUSE thrown in for free, nice.

I might re-order that mobo then, it;'s only £60 ish more than the good z170's and supposedly comes with the m2 drive.

I've got a Z170a and it's very good.

Advent7 wrote:
Rudolphin wrote:
Advent7 wrote:Looking at buying this (or the 24 inch version, I'm unsure).

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 9-pdt.html

Annoyingly it seems hard to find a monitor of this spec with inbuilt speakers, which my current one I'm sending back has (really handy for passing my ps4 on it.

Anyone recommend some external speakers that can take both optical and 3.5mm input? Failing that, a G-sync monitor with built in speakers would be better.

Edit: this looks alright https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aoc-agon ... 46-ao.html

For about that price I got a Asus PG279Q which has inbuilt speakers. Incredibly hard to find, but if you see one nab it. The Acer equivalent is the XB271HU.

Even though half my pc is asus, the scrappy quality of the monitor I sent back put me of buying any more from them.

I went with this in the end... no speakers so I'll have to sort something out later and user headphones in the mean time.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/ ... 9-pdt.html

I looked at both the ones you suggested earlier actually and nearly bought the Acer one, but read horror stories of backlight leaks on it and there was enough to convince me to avoid. Shame because it looks like a great monitor.

Each to their own. I bought the Asus after researching for a solid month and after seeing multiple reviews calling it the best gaming monitor available. My experience with it has been flawless, it really is a thing of beauty and is, as far as I know, the only monitor currently capable of 165hz.

Oh I'm Sure it's great, it's just that I was sat with another asus monitor in a box on the floor being reigned that had a shed load of amazing reviews and I wasn't willing to give the brand another chance on the same kind of product.

Their media products seem a bit hit and miss but can't fault the hardware.

Rudolphin wrote:Each to their own. I bought the Asus after researching for a solid month and after seeing multiple reviews calling it the best gaming monitor available. My experience with it has been flawless, it really is a thing of beauty and is, as far as I know, the only monitor currently capable of 165hz.

Not now...

http://www.144hzmonitors.com/gaming-mon ... 0hz-240hz/

Quite why anyone would need a 240hz monitor I don't know, but they do apparently exist.

There was one that could go to about 190 with a user overclock as well, wasn't there?

It's arrived, hopefully I'll see some benefit to G-sync.

Edit: holy gooseberry fool this is a leap ahead of the other monitor, absolutely stunning quality.

Anyone recommend a reasonable computer for my dad?
His needs are not great, he mainly just surfs the net, youtube, ebay. He has mentioned he'd like to play games, but he doesn't desire anything special, so I'd probably just give him access to my steam library which has stuff like Fallout and Skyrim on for him to dick about with.
His current PC is a mess, I've tried fixing it, but it's a decade old, and will not accept the this is ancient and dead as strawberry float when it takes nearly 10 minutes to see the right click menu!

I'll probably replace the whole lot, so monitor, keyboard and mouse, he's one of those that won't/don't really look after anything, spec wise, nothing too fancy, has to be windows based, reliable, able to be on for like a week without the fans moaning!

Cheers for the help

JiggerJay wrote:Anyone recommend a reasonable computer for my dad?
His needs are not great, he mainly just surfs the net, youtube, ebay. He has mentioned he'd like to play games, but he doesn't desire anything special, so I'd probably just give him access to my steam library which has stuff like Fallout and Skyrim on for him to dick about with.
His current PC is a mess, I've tried fixing it, but it's a decade old, and will not accept the this is ancient and dead as strawberry float when it takes nearly 10 minutes to see the right click menu!

I'll probably replace the whole lot, so monitor, keyboard and mouse, he's one of those that won't/don't really look after anything, spec wise, nothing too fancy, has to be windows based, reliable, able to be on for like a week without the fans moaning!

Cheers for the help

Saw this on HotUKdeals - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262801650317? ... rmvSB=true, price looks pretty good for the specs. It's nothing amazing but should be more than sufficient for most of the things you mentioned. If you got a relatively cheap graphics card to add to it (say a GTX1050) then I reckon it'd make for a decent pc, probably run most modern games at 1080p with low-medium settings.

My mother gave an old laptop of hers to me a few month ago and until recently I hadn't bothered firing it up. I decided to try and use it the other day as I fancy playing a couple of the old games I have from GOG. It's pretty old (Windows 7) and I've been trying to install a bunch of updates notably Windows 7 Service Pack 1 but it just won't install for love nor money, bearing in mind I'm not very tech savvy does anybody here have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

And a new record with win 10 wake up time ... Almost 1h ..

IAmTheSaladMan wrote:My mother gave an old laptop of hers to me a few month ago and until recently I hadn't bothered firing it up. I decided to try and use it the other day as I fancy playing a couple of the old games I have from GOG. It's pretty old (Windows 7) and I've been trying to install a bunch of updates notably Windows 7 Service Pack 1 but it just won't install for love nor money, bearing in mind I'm not very tech savvy does anybody here have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Same problem with my laptop after reinstalling W7 to try and get it working again, had to download a certain update file which solved it. Will let you know when I get home what the file was that fixed it.

Are BenQ monitors any good? Just wanted a 1080p monitor with speakers for my return to the master race in less than a weeks time. Reviews were great for the one I got off Amazon and was less than £100.

This one was basically all I wanted, no desire for 4K yet and I'm happy with 1080p

KjGarly wrote:
IAmTheSaladMan wrote:My mother gave an old laptop of hers to me a few month ago and until recently I hadn't bothered firing it up. I decided to try and use it the other day as I fancy playing a couple of the old games I have from GOG. It's pretty old (Windows 7) and I've been trying to install a bunch of updates notably Windows 7 Service Pack 1 but it just won't install for love nor money, bearing in mind I'm not very tech savvy does anybody here have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Same problem with my laptop after reinstalling W7 to try and get it working again, had to download a certain update file which solved it. Will let you know when I get home what the file was that fixed it.

Well I took the high tech approach of restoring factory settings which seemed to work but then there were hundreds of updates and it just seemed like they would never end so I restored factory settings again, left auto updates deactivated and I'm just gonna use it for retro emulation instead.

IAmTheSaladMan wrote:
KjGarly wrote:
IAmTheSaladMan wrote:My mother gave an old laptop of hers to me a few month ago and until recently I hadn't bothered firing it up. I decided to try and use it the other day as I fancy playing a couple of the old games I have from GOG. It's pretty old (Windows 7) and I've been trying to install a bunch of updates notably Windows 7 Service Pack 1 but it just won't install for love nor money, bearing in mind I'm not very tech savvy does anybody here have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Same problem with my laptop after reinstalling W7 to try and get it working again, had to download a certain update file which solved it. Will let you know when I get home what the file was that fixed it.

Well I took the high tech approach of restoring factory settings which seemed to work but then there were hundreds of updates and it just seemed like they would never end so I restored factory settings again, left auto updates deactivated and I'm just gonna use it for retro emulation instead.

Updates should take 4 days or so if done constantly it is worth persisting for security etc.

IAmTheSaladMan wrote:
KjGarly wrote:
IAmTheSaladMan wrote:My mother gave an old laptop of hers to me a few month ago and until recently I hadn't bothered firing it up. I decided to try and use it the other day as I fancy playing a couple of the old games I have from GOG. It's pretty old (Windows 7) and I've been trying to install a bunch of updates notably Windows 7 Service Pack 1 but it just won't install for love nor money, bearing in mind I'm not very tech savvy does anybody here have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Same problem with my laptop after reinstalling W7 to try and get it working again, had to download a certain update file which solved it. Will let you know when I get home what the file was that fixed it.

Well I took the high tech approach of restoring factory settings which seemed to work but then there were hundreds of updates and it just seemed like they would never end so I restored factory settings again, left auto updates deactivated and I'm just gonna use it for retro emulation instead.

The update file I had to download from MS to get my updates working was a Windows6.1-KB3102810-x86 file which solved it. Took a couple of hours to download over 300 updates and install but no more than that.

My computer has been off for almost 24 hours and just turned its self on. How do I figure out why it did this? I have my internet via Ethernet, is it possible it's got some sort of wake on LAN function? If so, what would have activated it? How should I diagnose this?

Is Norton Ghost installed?

That's not a growth wrote:My computer has been off for almost 24 hours and just turned its self on. How do I figure out why it did this? I have my internet via Ethernet, is it possible it's got some sort of wake on LAN function? If so, what would have activated it? How should I diagnose this?

I get this. It's annoying.

Go to device manager, right click > properties on all network devices, Bluetooth, mouse and keyboard etc, under power management tab uncheck "allow this device to wake the computer". Then just use your machines power button.

If you want wake on LAN, enable magic packet only. Otherwise any network activity will wake it.

What's a magic packet i.e. what would wake up the PC?

General PC Help Thread - OP updated with useful links - READ

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