Do you think the mod mat would make a good mouse pad? 

My corsair mouse won't work on my aluminum mouse pad and also doesn't work well just on the wood grain table. I don't like the mouse pad offerings these days but quite like the way the mod mat looks and if it works good enough as a pad I will get one.

No, all drives are independent.

Those constellation drives. Love 'em .

Do you think the mod mat would make a good mouse pad?  

Depends. Is this mat for a gaming rig (hence the corsair) or just office work?

It's a gaming mouse. Sabre one. It's really bad and quality is junk and the sensor is 10 steps back from my 15 year old x750 that died the year before but it is the only mouse I could find since the a4tech X750 that has an extra button next to the normal left click button.   On the x750 this button was a hardware based fixed function rapid fire button.  The corsair has it in a similar position and is programmable so I programmed it to do the same.    I can't find any mice with a button in this position.

I am considering buying new old stock x750, it was so good it even worked on a dish of water 1cm above the water surface.

Ha! I'm in the same boat as you. My old mouse konked out a few months back and now I'm stuck with this microsoft-brand plastic humpback whose full name I don't even know. Meh, it moves my pointer, so I'm happy enough. But for you, those x750s are a solid choice. I would also urge you to check out some of those older Steelseries gaming mouses as well, though the newer models are of poorer quality.

As for a pad, theSteelSeries 4HD professional pad was the best I ever owned and is not metal-coated. I had great comparison for it: an old magazine that I balanced on my lap. Ahhh, the good old days, when life was frugal...

The bloody brand is a sub brand of A4tech and make some nice looking gaming mice, even ones without rgb! but they don't have the buttons I want.

There is some logitech I just found with the buttons but it says they are the DPI up down buttons and I can't find anything to say you can reprogram them?  It was the case with the corsair one but they stated all buttons were programable so I did just that, changed the left DPI buttons to rapid click and the middle one to DPI.  Dumb thing is none of the corsair mice store the macros despite having EEPROMS for storing settings.

They are really poor mice, expensive too.  My scroll wheel didn't work for almost a year and had to "wear in" before it stopped randomly jumping direction.   They also don't work in USB 2 or 1 half the time. The OS fails to detect the mouse about 50% of the time.  The work around is to use USB 3 only and it stops having drop outs.

Hard to imagine basic things like mice and keyboards have regressed in the last decade.

I am going to get a re-make of the original 1980s model M. This company makes new ones and customs versions.

http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/SFNT

I love this option!

http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/CKSET

Do you think the mod mat would make a good mouse pad?  

No, the surface is way too grippy.

You could always get this one though https://www.cafepress.com/+spaceengine_ ... d,45204462

https://www.cafepress.com/+spaceengine_ ... d,45204462

No-way! SE shirts?!? SE mousepads?!?!? :shock: . I had no idea you were merchandising HarbringerDawn! The solemn code of Fandom demands that I support this.

Hard to imagine basic things like mice and keyboards have regressed in the last decade.

Personally, I blame generation Z . The tech companies cater to their attention-deficient interests, getting away with selling them inferior goods, that us older connoisseurs of the cybernetic arts would recognize as cheap knock-offs of the old days, when quality proceeded quantity . 

In all seriousness though, I have noticed the once golden quality of a few computer manufacturers do downhill.  Dell had gone into a slump the last ten years or so, but have picked themselves up again. I guess the opinion of which company produces the highest quality goods for decent prices is obviously subject to personal preferences and economic barriers, but what is the most reliable computer-tech manufacturer in your experience? In terms of price versus quality, tech support and availability?

I can personally recommend the mousepad, and this magnet (wears out in a year or so if put on a car, sadly) if you plan on buying things. I don't have personal experience with any of the other stuff.

At least in the past I would say evga had great support and quality products. I am not sure what they are like now as I havn't purchased anything from them in 10 years.

Asus has been mostly good, their mid and cheaper stuff is poor though.

Gigabyte is awful in every account I had dealings with them. Parts are unreliable and fail easy, performance is hit and miss and warranty support was terrible.

Have had great reliability from AOC and Dell monitors but they aren't the best for gaming performance, more office quality.

Corsair... meh!  Ok cases but lackluster for everything else. Even their roots in Dominator brand RAM that made them who they are now I had mixed results.

Best keyboards I found are cheapo $15 logitech ones and old IBM ps2 keyboards

Mice logitech and (when the were a known brand) A4tech

Old thermaltake PSU from 10-15 years ago are amazing!  All mine from the 750w+ thoughpower range are still going like new from over a decade ago.

CPUs I like AMD even when they were well behind in performance. I just like the compatibility and PGA socket AMD have.  I have been running the same passive water cooling since Athlon XP days and only one waterblock change in that period. On FX now but the system will fit AM4 as well.

Had a few intel core based systems and I hated the LGA socket.  I had all of them burn out pins on the socket after about a year of use. PGA has a far more reliability and higher current capacity over LGA I found.  The issue I found is the pins are spring loaded and over time they loose tension and the contact to the pad degrades and once that happens the heat builds up (due to increase in resistance) and it quickly goes down hill, a negative feedback in play.

Also I hate the idea of having to upgrade the board for every cpu refresh/gen, something intel forces on you while AMD generally don't do.

Now that they are pretty much at performance parity for me at least AM4 platform is a no brainer.

I still have my logitech x230 2.1 speakers and they sound great, a lot better than the common offerings now. I had them since 2005 or so.

One tip I make for anyone water cooling.  Pure silicone hoses. Mine are still going and I never had a leak since I set it up in 2003-4
Silicone rubber had excellent rebound and elastically which makes them leak proof at connection points as they conform perfectly to fittings and what not.  Something the PC industry standard of PVC hose is opposite at.  PVC = leaks.

Funny thing is I have never seen any PC place sell silicone hoses nor any kit come with them nor any pro water cooling guys even know about it. It seems like I am the only one.   Silicone water hoses are common in industry though. Standard on commercial printers for the ink lines and water blocks used on the print heads for heating. 

I also use car coolant. Haven't changed mine since 2010 and still perfect. the stuff sold on PC markets every other person seems to have corrosion or sludge problems or reactions with the rubbers and plastics.

Anyway that is some off the top of my head random experiences and suggestions.

At least in the past I would say evga had great support and quality products. I am not sure what they are like now as I havn't purchased anything from them in 10 years.

I like EVGA products. I can't comment on their customer service since I've never had a problem with anything I've bought from them.

Gigabyte is awful in every account I had dealings with them. Parts are unreliable and fail easy, performance is hit and miss and warranty support was terrible.

The Gigabyte products I've owned have performed well. My mid-tier AM3 motherboard from them lasted for 8 years of heavy use and never failed.

Had a few intel core based systems and I hated the LGA socket. I had all of them burn out pins on the socket after about a year of use. PGA has a far more reliability and higher current capacity over LGA I found. The issue I found is the pins are spring loaded and over time they loose tension and the contact to the pad degrades and once that happens the heat builds up (due to increase in resistance) and it quickly goes down hill, a negative feedback in play.

That's very strange, I've never heard of anything like that. The people I know who have Intel processors have used them for years, including with overclocking, and never had any issues.

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I like Western Digital for hard drives. I've had many and have rarely had a problem, and their RMA process is quick and painless if you need to return one for replacement.

vlad01, I still use EVGA products and I can say they have remained up there in customer service.  They don't delay and if you end up on the phone with them they don't keep you on hold either.  I always try and buy EVGA cards now

[hr]

[youtube]0dEyLoH3eTA[/youtube]

Ha! I just watched that before looking at this thread.

Yeah EVGA was great. When I had 9800 gtx in SLI both mine died in about a year from bump gate and even though their warranty only covered USA and some of Europe and I am in Australia they went out of their way and replaced my cards anyway.


I have a classified GTX 980 now but I purchased that 2nd hand from my best mate when he got the 1080 as soon as they came out.

It has a full cover EK block which worked out great since my PC was already water cooled. It is a stop gap while I waited for Zen and new "volta" but we know how this all worked out, zen came and went and almost on the 3rd one already and GPU situation is as bad as it was when pascal came out.

Interestingly 20 series at least in Aus is falling in price. Ti is almost under 2k where it was 2.3-2.4K few weeks ago.

I even found 2080 Tis for 1600 AUD on ebay new from the US, considering the 1080 Ti is still up around 1250 AUD here, it doesn't look as ridiculous as it was. I hope the tread continues because no one deserves to pay prices like this.

and their RMA process is quick and painless if you need to return one for replacement.

That is good, because you will need that service a lot if you ever buy a WD hard drive. A friend of mine bought one of their newest external hard drives (the My Passport), and it failed in a month. So he got a replacement. That also failed, but this time in two weeks. He was not man-handling them or putting them in hot/cold environments - they were just sitting safely on his desk. The first failure was a drive-wide file corruption. The second time computers simply would not recognize it at all. He went through all the trouble-shooting, and in the end had to give up.

Yes, it may be that external drives are just a bit more delicate then other similar hardware, regardless of manufacturer, but I avoided WD when I recently purchased an external drive for myself from Toshiba (as discussed on this thread in fact ). Time will tell if they are more durable.

That is good, because you will need that service a lot if you ever buy a WD hard drive.

I've purchased at least 7 WD drives for myself over the years. None have failed, even after many years of hard use. Maybe their external drives are unreliable, I wouldn't know, but their internal drives are excellent.

I have had a couple WB drives die in the past and no other brand, WD have made up a tiny fraction of the brands of drives I have owned and they died. So my WD failure rate has astronomical (no pun) They were all internal drives too.  All got the click of death.

I have one 200GB WD drive and that is ok, but it is literally the only one out of about 7 drives I have laying around.

seagate have a similar rep of failure in recent years but my newest one is over 10 years old so I own none of the failure prone models.

My fav drive from back in the day were Quantum fireball drives.
And now is original Hitachi or the modern HGST rebrand.