The "I Just Bought" thread

I've just purchased my first gaming laptop. It's meant to also be a workstation while I'm on the road, and I'll be on the road for a bit for the next year. For a while now I was researching what would be a good one. I was initially looking for something high-end, but then I thought if that's actually worth it. Considering only 5-10% of games will tap that hardware at that level. So I went for something not exactly bleeding edge, but good enough. And it did cost quite a pretty penny. At least more than I ever thought I'd pay for a laptop.

And it's the ASUS ROG G751JY:
- 17.3" IPS anti-glare matte display
- i7 4720HQ @ 2.5 Ghz
- nVidia GTX 980M @ 4GB
- 16 GB RAM DDR3 (upgradeable up to 32 GB)
- 128GB SSD + 1TB HD
- Blu-ray reader/writer
- HDMI/VGA video-out, Thunderbolt port.

The only thing that is not ideal is the keyboard layout (but that's kind of a given since it's a laptop). I'm not a fan of where they placed the Home/End keys. I'm gonna be writing quite a bit of code, and I'll have to get used to it. Or I'll just get another keyboard for work.

laptop? wow! sounds more like a portable desktop!

Just ordered this one:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-750-series.html

The 400GB version.

I'm very curious to see how much of a difference it'll make for gaming.

DArtagnan said:

Just ordered this one:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-750-series.html

The 400GB version.

I'm very curious to see how much of a difference it'll make for gaming.

Click to expand...

Nice buy, Dart. You'll have to let's us know if it makes a significant difference vs standard ssd's. I've been looking hard at them but don't know if I want to pull the trigger.

sakichop said:

Nice buy, Dart. You'll have to let's us know if it makes a significant difference vs standard ssd's. I've been looking hard at them but don't know if I want to pull the trigger.

Click to expand...

Well, I'm sorry to report that there's absolutely zero difference in terms of load times, at least so far.

I've benchmarked the drive and it's much, much faster than my Samsung EVO SSD, but it's not reflected in any of the games I've tested.

I've timed it using a stop watch, and it's exactly the same for the following games:

Star Citizen
Secret World
Company of Heroes 2
Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic

I chose those games because they have long load times, and it seems the reason for that is something other than loading data.

I do see a major difference when copying files, though.

But, so far, it's not at all what I was hoping for. Maybe some games will be better for it, as it's supposed to be extremely fast even when accessing small files.

danutz_plusplus said:

I've just purchased my first gaming laptop. It's meant to also be a workstation while I'm on the road, and I'll be on the road for a bit for the next year. For a while now I was researching what would be a good one. I was initially looking for something high-end, but then I thought if that's actually worth it. Considering only 5-10% of games will tap that hardware at that level. So I went for something not exactly bleeding edge, but good enough. And it did cost quite a pretty penny. At least more than I ever thought I'd pay for a laptop.

And it's the ASUS ROG G751JY:
- 17.3" IPS anti-glare matte display
- i7 4720HQ @ 2.5 Ghz
- nVidia GTX 980M @ 4GB
- 16 GB RAM DDR3 (upgradeable up to 32 GB)
- 128GB SSD + 1TB HD
- Blu-ray reader/writer
- HDMI/VGA video-out, Thunderbolt port.

The only thing that is not ideal is the keyboard layout (but that's kind of a given since it's a laptop). I'm not a fan of where they placed the Home/End keys. I'm gonna be writing quite a bit of code, and I'll have to get used to it. Or I'll just get another keyboard for work.

Click to expand...

Just started a test playthrough of Witcher 3, on the new laptop. And it's running butter-smooth, with everything set to max, except Hairworks. The cool thing about the new laptop, and I didn't know this before buying it, is that it comes with the G-Sync display module installed. So I can hardware accelerate vsync and man does it feel smooth.

The only downside is that the whole screen feels so small at 17.3". But I'll get used to it, I guess.

A new NAS. Needed one with a larger capacity since I'm going to use it as a media server. So goodbye to my old QNap (I have a friend that could use it), Welcome Asustor 5004T, a 4 bay thingy. Initializing it now. So far I've installed 3 WD 3TB Red NAS disks in a RAID 5 configurations. The 4th bay is currently unoccupied, will use that one for archive disks eventually.

pibbur who is currently not mirrored. And not striped.

pibbur who said:

A new NAS. Needed one with a larger capacity since I'm going to use it as a media server. So goodbye to my old QNap (I have a friend that could use it), Welcome Asustor 5004T, a 4 bay thingy. Initializing it now. So far I've installed 3 WD 3TB Red NAS disks in a RAID 5 configurations. The 4th bay is currently unoccupied, will use that one for archive disks eventually.

pibbur who is currently not mirrored. And not striped.

Click to expand...

How's media system coming along, Pibbur?

I have observed an increase of the mysterious phenomenon of ephemeral Pibbur Posts in recent days...

Ehh... yes.

Media system - I've started transferring media to the new NAS. Have to read a bit about how to do it the Asustor way - they've got lots of programs for doing things.

pibbur who is here, there and neverewhere

I just bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner that focuses on getting animal hair out of your carpets and furniture. Dyson DC50 Animal Upright Vacuum ‑ Bagless

So, put it together yesterday and then vacuumed my carpets three times with my old Hoover. Plugged in the dyson and ran it one time over a 3 foot square. It totally filled the canister with pet hair. Did the rest of a 17X10 living room and had to empty the thing 9 more times to get all the hair out of the carpet. Ewww! The carpet "looked" clean but was just full of pet hair. My wife is going to do the rest of the house and all the beds and furniture today. Yuk!

I've found that Dysons are brilliant while they work, but they have a nasty habit of burning out or breaking. Keep your warranty.

Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980 Ti

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5472#ov

Ripper said:

I've found that Dysons are brilliant while they work, but they have a nasty habit of burning out or breaking. Keep your warranty.

Click to expand...

I bought a pet hair one 4 years ago and only had one problem with it. The one side of the power head stopped. They had it replaced and to us in under a week.

We have four cats and had two St. Bernards(had to put one down this spring). My wife owns a small cleaning company and thinks it is the best she has ever owned.

@JDR13 - drool

Come to think of it. I've installed 3 TB disks in the NAS If I had bought those back in '84 when I got my first computer, it would have cost me around 9 billion NOK, 1.5 billion USD.

I'd need 900 000 of the first 3.5" disks (10 Mb) made by Rodime. Or 9 000 refrigerator sized 1GB IBM disks.

In 1956 IBM released the first hard drive ever: 5 MB in a 2 refrigerator sized box. I would require 1 800 000 of those, costing me 18 000 000 000 USD. I doubt that many were produced.
.
A 50 year timelinbe of hard drives can be found here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/article.html.


pibbur who suddenly feels rich. And hopes there aren't too many miscalculations.

PS. Another perspective: Back in 2000, when we installed PACS (digital radiology) for 5 hospitals, the estimated storage need for images pr year was 3.5 - 4 TB. A typical chest X-ray with two images at 4K resolution, 2 bytes per pixel takes 8 MB with 50% compression. So I have room for around 750 000 chest x-rays. In stead I'll store DVD's and Blu-rays. DS.

CelticFrost said:

I bought a pet hair one 4 years ago and only had one problem with it. The one side of the power head stopped. They had it replaced and to us in under a week.

We have four cats and had two St. Bernards(had to put one down this spring). My wife owns a small cleaning company and thinks it is the best she has ever owned.

Click to expand...

The second one that went on me went out in style - the power head burned out, complete with smoke effects and blackened, melted plastic.

I got a German Meile, which is built for battle, though it's not quite as effective. I do have a taste for unnecessarily heavy, solid feeling tools, though.

We have a central vacuum cleaner. Very happy with that. Efficient, relatively silent, no airborne dust, and best of all, I only needed one outlet (?) when installing it. Only downside: it needs a human operator.

Pibbur who, looking at his floors, realizes he ought to vacuum them. Eventually.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new KVM switch, didn't get around to install it until today.

It's an Aten CS1784A. Unlike it's predecessor this one supports:

• 120Mhz monitors
• Gaming keyboards (Have a Roccat Isku I couldn't get to work)
• Mouse switching between computers.
• Other things

So now I'm typing on my mechanical Isku in stead of my ultra flat Deathstalker. It feels a bit strange, but I like it and I'll get used to it.

pibbur who observes he now have a good reason for his typos.

Books. Lots and lots of books. I got a gift card from my sister as a birthday present, and I had to spend it all at one go, so I bought a lot of books. The books were:
The Lost World: Sequel to Jurassic Park. I really liked the Jurassic Park book (and the movie, but it's very different from the book), and was recently reminded that I had not read the sequel.
Ofärd: A "historical fiction" book, written by a historian who writes very good history books (I've read a few, they're not aimed at people who just want a simple overview, or read about heroic battles, but rather he makes in depth history books about specific topics, and he makes them fun to read), about a trading journey from Sweden ca 600 ad (that is before the viking age) down to southern Europe.
Brasiliens Historia Quick overview of the history of Brazil. I have huge gaping holes in my knowledge about the history of Brazil, so this would be a good starting point for me to fix this.
Slaveri-serien 3 books about the history of slavery, from the ancient time to modern day. Written by the same author as the first book.
Ryssland : en europeisk civilisationshistoria An overview of the history of Russia. While I know more about Russian than Brazil, there are still holes in my knowledge.
Jugoslaviens uppgång och fall A history about what lead up to the conflict in Yugoslavia in the early 90's.
Vietnams historia Same series of books as Brasiliens History above. I also know very little about the history of Vietnam (I'm not completely ignorant, just nearly)
Stora döden - den värsta katastrofen som drabbat Europa A book about the black death, and its impacts on society in Europe. Same author as the first book (so it's not a light read).