Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

"Free ninety nine" is the bestest of prices!

 

Couple of bits

Gigglebutt B850i AI tops

WAM 64Gb DDR5 6000MTs and a Light enhancement kit to fill the spare DIMMS

Some backwards fans


SSUPD Xhuttle

 

Couple of extra charger leads for my Pixel Watch 3
Both seasons of "Star Trek: Prodigy" on bluray, having learned that Netflix have dropped it.

 

This delightful century old Starrett socket set.



21/32", and other such exciting sizes.

 

Reminds me of when I was an apprentice mechanic, we had a whole tool chest full of Whitworth spanners and sockets, just for a few very old trucks we had to maintain - Bedfords if I recall.

 

I have a 1976 land rover that has imperial, metric and Whitworth in it!

 

A pair or Steel series Arctis Gamebuds, bit of a game changer for me, using gaming handhelds etc, I tend to use my Bluetooth headset (in ear, because easy travel, nicer to the surrounding environment) which is a set of Anker Soundcore Liberty 4 NC as they are nice and compact with good sound but of course the variability of BT latency in the 100-300ms range is a bit hit and miss when it comes to gaming and media, sometimes its fine you don’t notice and sometimes it’s out there and looks like you are watching a foreign dubbed movie the lip sync is so uuurgh

These come with a RF transmitter, which fits in the case and still pocketable, so I can use BT when I don’t care and pop in the RF transmitter when I do, dropping that latency into the 30ms window, OK not the 0.3 of wired but wired is so inconvenient.

They are not without downsides, it would seem that steelseries don’t know how to do things mobile, so you need a PC to setup custom EQ profles and transfer it via buds to mobile app, rather than tweak on the mobile app, I mean really, come on and some functionality is broken, like volume control on the buds but I’d imagine that’s just a firmware fix away.

But to have negligible wireless latency, yay, sound quality is decent out of the box, just needs a few tweaks, lots of preset profiles tweaked for games by competitive gamers that do make a nice difference. Perhaps not quite up there with the liberty in terms of bass, but tuning is so backward I haven't spent enough time yet whereas the Soundcore could do it all on phone easily.

 

New combat claws acquired

 

Beer and vape juice. See the Meh thread for beer purchase

 

Another book pre-order, due mid-January:-

 

My super duper expensive Mech keyboard for work...



Cost a whole £15.98 and has hot swappable* linear red switches, wireless with 2.4Ghz & BT and has USB-C charging. Even has pseudo RGB although I have this turned off.

50p of painters tape later (tape mod) and it feels and sounds decent for a mid price Mech let alone one that cost less than cheap membrane e-waste from Argos / Currys.

*From what I can tell but didn't come with a switch puller so *shrugs*.

Not as nice as my wife's RK S98 but that was also way too "thocky" for work use anyway.
(and cost £90!)



Minisforum MS-01 in this picture (didn't really purchase the hours it took to re-arrange the entire room...)

Only the baby version with the i5 12600H and combined with 32GB DDR5 and NVME's I already had lying around. Will be replacing the Epyc system I used to run as a tinkering box (learning how to do stuff), home lab and server.

 

That seems like a mega bargain! Would you mind sharing a link, please? Very tempted to have a punt myself at that price. Cheers

 

Should be this one: Rii Mechanical Keyboard,Wireless Gaming Keyboard Rechargeable with 101 Keys Red Switch 20 Modes RGB Backlit 3 Modes(BT5.0/2.4G+USB C) for Win/Mac PS Xbox : Amazon.co.uk: PC & Video Games

It has gone up a whole £1 since I bought on Sat!

Just note, it does sound quite hollow out of the box but is easy to open - just remove the keys to expose the screws and it will come apart (there are no screws on the bottom).

 

Because reasons I don't know

 

A shortwave radio, with SSB and air bands. I've already picked up some English language Chinese propaganda, ATC from Bournemouth airport and Radio 4 on longwave!

I'd been after one for a while but didn't really think it was worthwhile, until Spain and Portugal lost their grids and suddenly I thought I'd like to be able to pick up comms in a crisis. Before it arrived my only ability to listen to radio was to sit in the car.

 

Prefer my SDR, as can be used with a PC, Laptop or Raspberry Pi for remote listening, but these are still cool

 

The problem with relying on computer technology however is:

Although TBF the only kind of radio that's immune to a complete loss of power is those wind-up ones.

 

With this in mind, I chucked £80 at a portable solar panel for my power station