The 'Look What the Postman Brought Me' Thread - Technology Edition

[pappaduck]

The NR200 looks like a great case, kind of annoyed it came out after I built my last PC as the h210 I have despite being massive for an ITX case still has quite a lot of limitations. Only being able to fit a 2 slot GPU these days is a problem and there is a lot of wasted space. It was very easy to build in though.

[Pew-Pew]

Even my Dan A4 H2O (which is 11 L...) can fit a 3 slot card, it's crazy that there are larger cases that can't. Your case is 27 L!

That said, with the new cards being so massive it is still quite limiting only being able to fit a 3 slot GPU. It means that if I want to change my 3070 to a 4080 I can only either get the FE card (impossible in Singapore) or the MSI Ventus 3x. It's probably fine, but people always seem to shit on ventus cards for some reason.

[Alan]

Logitech G502X Lightspeed
My G502 Lightspeed started not holding a right click, eg. if youre in an FPS aiming sometimes it would lower and then raise the gun randomly. Went with the newer one and if someone snuck in and swapped it back with a working G502 I probably wouldnt notice because its nearly idential. Slightly different shape at the top, slightly longer thumb button and no rgb "G" and thats about it and thats fine with me! Hopefully the optical switches will be more reliable but then I had the last one for about 4 or 5 years so not too bad. The buttons do feel like they need slightly less force to press and bounce back slightly quicker making rapid clicking faster but its probably just because its newer. Great mouse is still great. Theres an RGB one for an extra 15quid to punish people that like that rubbish :p




Sennheiser EPOS x Drop PC38x
I dont understand the drop stuff at all. When they first colab'd they already made the G4me One and the PC373 which were both identical to the Drop PC37x so I dont get why its a colab or why its continuing but anyway! The G4me One, PC373, PC37x are/is the best gaming headset on the planet imo. The 38x is very very similar but with 2mm larger drivers and theyre bloody excellent. I cant A/B with the 37's because my set broke but they are at least as good as they were. Super comfy, only mildly warming on your ears and fantastic sound and stereo positioning with a nice wide soundstage. Cant really fault them! Well, except I got the yellow accent ones and its not the nicest colour but it was a £30 cheaper than the all black ones and I'm not planning on wearing them out



I have been using a wireless set since my 37's broke and the convenience of wireless does rear its head. I have only barely stopped myself 3 times now just before yanking the cable as I go to make a coffee with them still on my head.

I also tried the H6Pros which seem good but slightly less comfy

[Snowy]

Decided that my old 32" superwide needed upgrading to an ultrahypermegawide to take advantages of things like >60Hz refresh and HDR. With my birthday coming up and a donation from Mrs Snowy, plus selling my old monitor to my little bro, I am now sporting one of these monsters:



Utterly absurd monitor and also utterly incredible to game on. The curve is really pronounced, it really fills your view, and just looks absolutely incredible. With my new rig, I am able to get pretty much anything running at full graphical loveliness. A really amazing experience - Cyberpunk, Red Dead, F1 2023, FIFA 23, all just look insanely good.

[Animalmother]

Flash bastard, how much did that set you back?
Looks amazing, I'm betting the driving games are particularly epic looking on it.

[Snowy]

Full price it is £1200, but was £900 in the Prime sale. Knock a couple of hundred quid off from my wife's birthday contribution and another £100 from my brother for my old monitor and it is in the category of 'Expensive but not insanely so'.

It isn't just driving games that look epic either, everything does. F1 2023 does indeed look magnificent, so does Forza 5, but also RDR2, Cyberpunk, Division 2 - the screen is absolutely massive but still sits within your peripheral vision very naturally.

That said, it is one to avoid after a drink or two. There is something very nauseating in sitting in front of a massive patch of movement with a surround that remains stationary, much more so than on my old screen. Learnt that lesson in a single sitting.

[Lenny Solidus]

Even just looking at a still picture of the bloody thing I can't entirely comprehend how the hell you will not end up completely distracted by all the peripheral noise, in action it would no doubt drive me completely fucking nuts being so used to a mostly central vision cone at all times. I always thought having a monitor like that would be an undeniable benefit but just looking at it makes me want to tape newspaper to the screen on either side to make it seem normal - which would be rather counterproductive. I know none of that makes sense...it does to me.

Flash bastard

This got me so good.

[eny]

I imagine it is like sitting close to the cinema screen, you move your focus rather than take it all in. Peripheral info informing where to look kind of thing. It makes me think back to when I first got a PC, playing MOHAA:AA and SoF2 on a tiny 17" CRT, oh how far we've come!

[Snowy]

I imagine it is like sitting close to the cinema screen, you move your focus rather than take it all in. Peripheral info informing where to look kind of thing.

That sums it up really nicely Mark.

If you think about how you see things normally, you have the area that you are focusing on as well as what you are seeing peripherally. Playing on a smaller screen eliminates the peripheral vision, as you are essentially viewing through a box. When you move to a screen as wide as this is, it re-introduces the peripheral view - you don't, and can't, focus on the whole thing at once in the same way you can't focus your vision on everything in your FOV, but you can change your focus plus things in the peripheral view become noticeable in a way you simply wouldn't have sight of on a standard screen.

It's definitely much more than a gimmick.

[Raid]

I recently started playing Star Wars: Legion (basically Star Warshammer), and while I made a few little hills that looked reasonably good out of foam and sculptamould and plaster, I wanted some buildings too and just don't want to commit the amount of time it takes to make each one by hand. I do have a 3D printer already, but it's a resin one that's very good at doing fine details, but can't really do big stuff. Resin printers are also an absolute chore to use; the resin will give you chemical burns if it's on your skin for more than a few seconds so it requires tons of extra good practices to stop injury, and any print errors mean you end up welding cured resin to the fragile resin bath and it takes half an hour of careful cleaning so you can try again. I would never recommend one to anyone, you just can't get the same quality from better technologies.

So now I also have an Ankermake M5C. It's the first 3D printer I've owned (my 4th; two resin, now two FDM) that I'd describe as user-friendly. It's been running almost every waking hour since saturday and not a single thing has gone wrong with it, and the prints are perfectly useable without any tinkering whatsoever. It levels itself, it comes with a magnetic, heated, flexible print bed as standard, and putting it together was a matter of tightening 10 screws and inserting two idiot-proof ribbon cables. And the stuff it prints is just plastic; I can handle it without having to hope the alcohol bath and UV oven I have to put resin prints in hasn't left liquid in any hollow parts that'll seep out and give me a surprise hospital trip later. Oh, and the plastic filament is nearly half the price of the same weight of resin.


I think we've now gotten to the point where 3D printers are actually easier to use than paper ones (granted that's saying more about what hateful things 2D printers are). This thing isn't colossally expensive (£320, Amazon did have them on a flash deal for £270), but the experience of using even this mid-price machine is vastly better than anything that was available even two years ago. It even looks quite nice.

[Rusty]

Oh god. Something else for me to hanker over. Good sales pitch x

Love to see some more output of it.

[Raid]

I took a quick shot of my current Legion layout with the new pieces prior to painting. The dome-shaped hut at the far end was the largest thin I ever produced from my resin printer. The tower in the middle is the one from the first post after painting.



The results aren't flawless, but a lot of the little artifacts you can see are from where there was a support structure to support an overhang, where I've not cleaned it up at all. You can see the odd more pronounced layer line. I'm sure there's a technical name for that, but I bought this specific printer because I want to do absolutely no tinkering - I don't have the patience to do a 6 hour print only to find I changed one setting that I shouldn't and wasted the time and the filament. This is also using one of the cheapest filaments I could find on Amazon, at £12.99 per kilo. There's about one spool of filament on display here if you include the tower.

[Rusty]

Well that looks fabby!

Did you 3d model the stuff yourself or download online items?

[Raid]

I bought the unpainted models from Imperial Terrain. They're not hugely expensive, and I think it was worth it to get a bunch of good buildings from a matching set, rather than just a load of half-decent ones that don't really look like they go together. I've spent about $50, and I've only printed a small fraction of that so far. I have an entire modular spaceport to do at some point.

The tower and resin-printed hut were I think free from Thingiverse.

[Raid]

Not so much a "Look what the Postman Brought me", rather a "Look what the postman brought me two months ago that I wanted to use for a while before commenting", but I grabbed myself an XBox Elite Wireless Controller 2 for about £110. I've wanted one for ages but couldn't ever justify the expense as I haven't really had much use for a gamepad in recent years. But then I started playing Jedi Survivor and Elden Ring. Having now finished both, I can honestly say that those programmable finger-tip triggers on the underside are a massive upgrade over the standard controller layout, to the point where I'm not sure I'll ever buy another controller without them. This may sound silly given how little time it takes to move a finger from one face button to another, but having a separate finger for controls such as Stim/Crimson Flask and Dodge means I fumble less when stressed. I bound the other two to the shoulder buttons that I tend to find uncomfortably placed on modern controllers. The analogue triggers can also have their movement restricted so that they're an effectively digital control, making them more responsive and more useful in games that don't need the analogue input. I genuinely think they contributed to my enjoying Elden Ring on the second attempt.

I'd be hesitant to recommend paying this much for a gamepad, particularly one that seemingly has poor reliability, but I really think the finger-tip buttons should become a standard feature on the next iteration of console controllers. They don't need to be removeable paddles as they are here; the Steam Deck just has standard buttons in the same position, and they arguably work better than these paddles which do occasionally fail to register.