Journal #8710

I think that is dock connector.

You should try to save up some money for a new laptop though, or maybe if you can't afford a new one you could try investing in a second-hand laptop. For some decent gaming I'd only go as low as 2012, when the Ivy Bridge was released. Some of the CPUs have the Intel HD4000 which is powerful enough to play League of Legends for example on 15 inch screens.

If you're not moving anywhere soon the better option is to invest in a desktop system, you can find way more easily used parts on the internet.

Here's a tip for finding cheaper parts: online marketplaces are not necessarily where you'll find the cheaper options, but you can use them to gt an idea for the price of what you're looking for. Instead, see if you have computer/gaming communities or forums in your country where they have trading threads. There's a slight chance people will be selling at lower prices there.

First of all, thank you for clarifying the component's name.

But, I'll disagree with you on one bit:

-investing in a second-hand laptop

Why would I go for a laptop which is even more weaker than a weak laptop? It confuses me...

---

But, in any case, I should build a good desktop PC. The problem is, my 6 year-old brother (addicted to FNaF and ROBLOX) will "steal" it from me.

The laptop my brother uses now, was bought for me. Simply, he loved it more than his laptop, and he took it away from me, that little bastard! And now I live with the trash I'm used to.

Ah well, I could buy a good laptop for around $500 and say to my brother that it lags a lot. After all, I think it's more cost-effective than buying eGPU equipment.

Teach that kid about boundaries. They need it around that age.

I agree with Striker on one part : external GPUs aren't worth their value and you should save for another laptop (if you are moving a lot) or a desktop PC. Assuming you will buy an external GPU close to a GTX 980 (or another decent GPU), your RAM and CPU won't be able to follow causing a "bottleneck" and you won't get any benefit. Some today games are more CPU intensive rather than GPU intensive (I think it's the case of Assassin Creed Unity). Trust me, before posting my "PC building journey", I already looked at those.

For the trading thingy to get cheaper parts : I'm not a huge fan of that idea, the guy could have done something bad to the part (like bad over-clocking or broke something that will cause it's death in some months) before selling it to you. Cheaper but more risky.

About your brother, like Jessie said, teach him some manners ^^

Quick notice to Striker : an Intel HD 4000 could run League of Legends somewhere close to "High"/"Very High", with the laptop (see details below), I run the game in "Medium" in 60 FPS (drop at 30 FPS if everyone is casting a spell).

Intel Pentium 2020M - 2,4 Ghz dual core
4 Gb RAM
Intel HD Graphics 2000
Windows 10 Pro x64 (was forced to leave forever Seven due to huge speed loss)
1366x768 LED screen

With this laptop, here are some games and how they run :

Battleborn : Required several Unreal Engine 3 INI tweaks to run at 15 FPS in closed areas, start to drop to 1 FPS in huge areas. The game is unplayable because I must run in 640x480 fullscreen and set the "render scale" to 50%, this cause the game to be in 320x480 with a horrible black contour. I don't know what the ** Gearbox has done with the UE3 engine.
Borderlands 1/2/The-Presequel : Respectively 60/50/40 FPS constant at lowest quality (can be improved with UE3 INI tweaks). Those are UE3 engine games.
Counter-Strike Global Offensive : runs at 60 FPS in 1024x768 lowest quality, Source (own branch) game.
Deus Ex Human Revolution : between 45 and 60 FPS in 1200x600 with everything set to "Off/Low" both in Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11, some FPS drops due to "streaming", this is a "Tomb Raider Underworld" engine game, developers always complained that this engine wasn't good for DX:HR.
Dishonored : between 50 and 60 FPS in 1200x600, it's an Unreal Engine 3 game.
DOOM (2016) : Engine crash (unsupported OpenGL 4.0 ARB extension). id Tech 6 engine.
Fallout 4 : Works in the menu, crash when you start a new game. Own engine.
Killing Floor 2 : Several UE3 INI engine tweaks were required to run at 60 FPS (no zeds) and 30 FPS (in-game action). If optimized like hell (no textures, no streaming, no shadows, no gore...), it runs at 90 FPS.
League of Legends : as said above : "Medium" 60 FPS 1366x768 (drops to 30 FPS if huge number of particle effects).
PAYDAY 2 : 30 FPS at 800x600, 2 mods must be installed, the first one is a Direct3D hack to fake an NVIDIA GPU (otherwise the game won't run) and the second one lower the shadow maps resolution. This game isn't optimized anyway (programmed by incompetent monkeys). This is a Diesel engine game.
Overwatch : Take a lot of time to load the assets (the weapons and the heroes are invisible for 2/3 minutes) but runs good at 30-60 FPS in the lowest possible quality. I'm happy Blizzard think about players with low end PCs.

Wait a minute. It's not like I'm going to play the latest DOOM, or GTA V, Fallout 4, PAYDAY 2, and other large AAA titles.

But, it's your assumption that I was going for a GTX 980 equivalent. Actually, I was going for an R7 240, a lower-end GPU meant to max out games like Garry's Mod, and to run BF3 on low settings.

But here's why I'd rather not install an eGPU: power usage. See, the 240 has low TDP (power consumption), and it powers itself from the motherboard (?), so it doesn't need a dedicated power supply.
The method of setting up a DIY eGPU requires to connect a PSU to the graphics card. Hence I gave up on this idea.

So, I'm, indeed, going to buy a new laptop if I get a chance, since I really had good marks this year (12 A's, and 2 B's).

Your brother is a dick.

Where you live, and probably everywhere else unless found, its cheaper to buy an used desktop computer than a quality laptop.

I'm not sure, Stojke, but I am sure in this:

My previous (dead) computer had a price of 700 BAM. And that was the price of my first laptop!

Telling by the parts, the laptop is worth pretty much the same as my PC. However, the laptop has a worse GPU, but twice more RAM, and twice the HDD space.

The charger, and the battery are probably part of the price, regarding the laptop.

But, yeah, even if I do buy a laptop, I will make a choice between:

• Dell Inspiron 15-5545 (AMD A10-7300 APU with an R7 M265 on it)
• HP ProBook 650 G1 (Intel Core i5-4310M with Intel HD 4600)
• Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Non Touch (Intel Core i3-5015U with Intel HD 5500)

I'd rather get the first one, because of that sweet APU. And, it's perfectly enough for me, because I play older games, and not that Witcher 3 crap, which would make my X3100 beg me to shut it down. Witcher 3 isn't crap, it's a seemingly good game, no offense.

EDIT: In fact, I'm more likely to buy a desktop PC
I mean, who would say "no" to a dedicated, discrete GPU in that good-looking case which has fans blowing air? Oh dear, I've realized how much I miss desktop PCs. *grasp

I found the following for €150:

GA-41T LGA 775 motherboard with DDR3
4GB of RAM
Quad Core 8200 (Easily sold for €20, E5450 costs around €30)
GT630 1GB
640GB HDD
400W quality PSU
And a cool case + DVD burner + Installed Windows operating system

Much cheaper than anything a laptop can offer in that class.

It could go well. But the problem is the GPU. An R7 240 is slightly better. But, because of Nvidia Shadowplay I'd upgrade the GPU to a GT740.

So, that PC + a GT740 (if compatible with the motherboard) would result in a good retro gamer's PC. And for less than 500 KM (a.k.a BAM).

Retro gamer? Such a pc with an slight cpu upgrade and for example an R9 270x could play any game that is currently on the market in mid/high settings.

Every PCI Express card is compatible with every PCI Express slot, only the speeds differ.

But the R9 270X costs more than my budget PC build...

Ah well, it's at least a good GPU. But, I will not need such a powerful GPU. I only do easy things, like:
-Playing Far Cry, Half-Life 2 etc.
-Making maps for Far Cry, CS 1.6, and more...
-Video editing in Sony Vegas Pro 11 (and I have Corel VS Pro X7)
-Music production with FL Studio 11
-And, of course, things related to mapping: coding, texturing, sound, etc.

I'm very, very sure that an R7 240 or a GT740 is perfectly enough for all of that. And an R7 270X is something that should be used in, for example, Unreal Engine 4, or the latest CryEngine, it's just too powerful for those older games.

R9 270X costs ~€120 used with existing warrenty.

But, think about it that 1€ = 1.95 KM, so it would cost around 230 KM to get one. Too freaking expensive...

Dude, I live in a village, not everyone's income is more than $80 000 per year. My parents' combined income is only around $20 000 per year. I mean, the most expensive thing we ever bought was a €600 car...

Therefore, if I'm asked, I choose the MSI's version of R7 240. Period.

R7 240 barely surpasses GT630 if we were to base our analasys on Passmark benchmark Average G3D Mark, and those values are:

R7 240 : 962
GT630 : 794

While an R9 270 has an Average G3D Mark score of 4252.

If it werent for testing and experience in computer service over the years I would not have been so sure as to say that in todays games a graphics card is all that matters.
Nina has an E6850 Core 2 Duo (Average CPU mark 1969) and an R9 270X she can run any game on mid/high settings today.

You are confusing smart invesment with spending your budget at once. Smart invesment is getting parts overtime so best deals would appear with high chance of getting quality items.
I would rather wait a few months to build an pc than buy some 3rd grade crap right off the bat (right away).
Just as I bought an e5-2670 CPU and am waiting for a nice cheaper X79 motherboard to appear (As they are currently only found new for insane ammounts of money but can be found used or even new from 3rd party sellers for 100 to 200 euro).

Dont jump into her bed just because she took off her gloves, have some self respect.

OK, let's say that I bought a PC with that GPU, but why would I need it? Fine, maybe I'd play GTA IV (and V) and Crysis 2 & 3, but certainly not other titles: Witcher 3, Fallout 4, especially not Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 etc. Simply because I would play them for a few days and just uninstall them.

My need of low-end GPUs is perhaps the effect of my modesty, because I don't buy 3 oranges if I eat 2, why would I need the extra orange?

Since the R7 240 really is a bit underpowered, I'm going for an R7 250. It used to be my choice, but the price grew, and then I stopped making part lists for some reason.

Because you will want to eat oranges again tomorrow.
R7 250 passmark is still only 1404(average).

For the amount of money that you want to buy a computer a barely decent one can be bought. A real, true quality, computer would cost anywhere from €1500 to €5000.

I am only telling you this because I would like you to realize how important it is to properly analyze something before buying, or doing, anything.

Especially in Balkan countries where you can get cheap german/euro shit every day only if you look a little.

I'm not going to eat the orange tomorrow. Because I am a retro gamer. Perhaps the only reason for eating the orange tomorrow will be when Half-Life 3 comes out, or Crashday 2.

But I'm not looking for a decent computer, I'm not a true gamer. Gamers, real PC gamers spend more than $900 on their computers.

There, according to my current hardware, I'm not a gamer at all. Even with a $300 PC, I still wouldn't be a PC gamer.

But there's one thing we didn't think about at all:

• My parents

I mentioned their yearly income, if you remember.
They would never spend more than €500 on a PC like that. NEVER. It has always depended on my parents: can I have this? Can I have that?
It always depended on them, if they are OK to open their wallets, so I could have proper gaming hardware.

My parents also have a strict policy on buying things:

• If I pass with an A, I can get things which I want, but it's limited
• If I pass with a B, well, I can't get anything

• If I behave well, I can also be bought something, but again, it's limited
• If I don't behave well, they'll take everything I have

So, even if I do things very well (always get As, and behave well), my parents still won't buy the things which I want (e.g. a proper gaming PC).

"I found the following for €150"

If that's used, then my dad wouldn't agree to buy it. Sure, the price is attractive, but it's used. He always thinks that used things are broken, not working, need to be fixed etc.

Yeah, not everything is my parents' problem. When I was 9, I didn't know anything about CPUs and GPUs, so I didn't want a new PC, even if it lagged.

So instead of doing some research and presenting your parrents an well thought of option that will both cost less and provide more you decide to get less?
Dumb logic, very.

Your parrents are not irrational (at least I asume as thats usually the case), if they see that you have decided to conserve both their founds, time and show that you are capable of doing a complex task such as that they will definitely agree and even praise you for your work.

Finally, thank God. I realized what you're talking about.

So, if some (more expensive) parts/computers over here can be bought for less (used, of course), and I show to my parents how much of an advantage that is, they will agree, and I'll also get a good gaming rig. (if all goes according to plan)

I think that I have hit a rock with my head a couple of times, mentally.

So, a €300 used PC with parts similar to what you mentioned up there, would be much more cost-effective (bang for the buck) than my planned PC build with an R7 240. I see what you mean.

And, off-topic, 20 comments, yay! 20 is wealthy (it rhymes)!

EDIT: My brother, though, cannot be teached boundaries...

Now, the only problem left is my brother...

Well, unbelievably I have convinced him that he will go to jail if he ever "steals" my new computer.
I also told him that, as soon as I get the new PC, we will play PAYDAY together, and I'll let him play GTA V.

I think that the only thing left is to find, either the parts, or a used PC.

P.S. We fell into trouble in the ShoutBOX.

Pengy is just jelly hes not a link [link]master[/link] like us.

Let me try to do something: your text here

EDIT: So the [s] is strike-through, interesting...