Black Friday/Cyber Monday purchases! (2023)

[Frindis]

I bought a wool blanket on sale and the game SpeedRunners.

 

[Milkovich]

I bought a wool blanket on sale and the game SpeedRunners.

I also bought this game literally at the last minute of the Steam sale. Now the money has run out. But we have something to play)

 

[Frag Maniac]

A sheltered upbringing, perhaps?

My understanding of the saying is to not commit resources and keep options open—eg don't spend now, wait to see what the situation is in a few months. So it looks to have somewhat different meanings depending on location.

Well, the definition I found fits the phrase really. I mean there's no sense over thinking a rifleman's main concern in those battles. They were no doubt trained extensively on how to load them, so the main thing that applies while waiting for the enemy to come is keeping the accoutrements ready, especially the gunpowder, as it's no good if wet.

As for my upbringing, I was not overly sheltered or coddled, quite the opposite. It's just that I've always chosen to keep only a few select friends for company, and I'd usually only hang out with one at a time. Now a days though, with the tech overload, global pandemic, rioting, etc, I do tend to stay at home a lot. I know a lot of people do anymore, but here it's common.

I mean these chaotic public outbursts have been going on for some time. We got hit pretty hard here with riot violence after the Rodney King incident, WTO conventions, and other issues. It's a toxic mix here of hardcore political types, anarchists, and homeless that flock here for sanctuary. Not a good scene anymore, and it's a shame, because it used to be one of the top cities in the country to live.

 

[Colif]

@Frindis regarding Christmas, probably just get money towards the things I have already bought. Mum said that she would pay for half of the AIO which is nice. My brother normally just gives me cash and I still have some of that from last year. Cash is useful when almost everything is cashless these days.

 

[Inspireless Llama]

So I had a Samsung soundbar (HW A650) already. Last week I purchased the surround speakers (SW 9200S) for them for about 35% off. Turns out PC's don't really support 5.1 natively, so I ended up purchasing a soundcard (Sound Blaster SE) as well.

Also got a new mosue and a long DP cable since the ones I already hard were too short to connect both my monitors (they're both 32") to my PC

Picked up the mouse, cable and soundcard from a pickup point today.

That was my black friday pertty much.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Mum said that she would pay for half of the AIO...

Argggh, the AIO I backordered that was supposed to be in stock by yesterday is the ONE thing that's going to hold my build up now it seems. They sent me an email saying it's arrival has been delayed, and there's still no update on when the new arrival date will be.

 

[Colif]

Bad weather has been the reason I haven't installed it yet.
Using my phone for a week is starting to drive me mad. I have found reasons why I need a new one of those next year.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Bad weather has been the reason I haven't installed it yet.
Using my phone for a week is starting to drive me mad. I have found reasons why I need a new one of those next year.

Yeah sometimes I'm deceived by the relatively mild weather we get where I live, but places like Newegg source their stock from all over. So it may likely be bad weather I'm waiting on too. I just hope it's not a long wait. I was tempted to cancel the order if Amazon would agree to match the price, but after waiting on hold twice, the 2nd time because the 1st call suddenly went to a busy signal mid convo, they only insulted me saying they don't do price matches.

 

[Colif]

A friend is helping me install the aio but stormy nights are stopping us. Can do the hardware side any time but I am not going to plug pc in during a storm to make sure it works. Prefer to do it all at once.
It has been a week almost since I last used my pc. I took a photo of it since it won't look the same later.

I know what it is like waiting on parts, I ordered 3 fans last December and it took 20 days for them to arrive. They got misplaced on route.

 

[Milkovich]

A friend is helping me install the aio but stormy nights are stopping us. Can do the hardware side any time but I am not going to plug pc in during a storm to make sure it works. Prefer to do it all at once.
It has been a week almost since I last used my pc. I took a photo of it since it won't look the same later.

I know what it is like waiting on parts, I ordered 3 fans last December and it took 20 days for them to arrive. They got misplaced on route.

This pain is probably present in all countries. Whatever spare parts I ordered, there are always some jokes, either it gets lost, or the wrong one arrives, or is generally poorly packaged and damaged. That's why I buy everything in person whenever possible.

 

[Colif]

My PC turned evil after installing the new part

I would buy in person but there aren't any PC stores in my city... none that don't sell OEM stuff anyway. If I wanted Dell spare parts, probably get them... want anything else, use internet and wait a few days.

there is one store that has gear on its website but if I order from them, it comes from across country anyway as they part of a franchise and I really wonder what they do have in their store. Every time I order its a long distance delivery.

 

[Brian Boru]

I buy everything in person whenever possible.

Here in USA there's also been a recent craze for porch robbery—baddies following delivery trucks and grabbing whatever they drop. Mark Rober has devoted a number of videos to combatting them—example 17m

My PC turned evil

Eh, no mate, that's not evil—that's embarrassed!

there aren't any PC stores in my city

How have ye been getting deliveries since the Space Shuttle has been discontinued?

 

[Frag Maniac]

My PC turned evil after installing the new part

I would buy in person but there aren't any PC stores in my city... none that don't sell OEM stuff anyway. If I wanted Dell spare parts, probably get them... want anything else, use internet and wait a few days.

there is one store that has gear on its website but if I order from them, it comes from across country anyway as they part of a franchise and I really wonder what they do have in their store. Every time I order its a long distance delivery.

Jeez, sorry to hear about your access/delivery woes, mine pale in comparison.

Sorry if I mislead anyone with the text about AIO mounting, which I've deleted. I'd forgotten the main part of the loop you don't want at the top or even same height as the rest of the loop is the pump itself. You're probably OK with that front mount because the pump is definitely below the rad's tube ports. You get best assurance against air migration, gurgling, and premature failure with the pump below the rest of the entire loop, but Arctic are pretty good now (as the video suggests) at detailing proper and improper installation. Perhaps even more so than Steve in the above video, whom didn't really make much mention if any about how to do a proper front mount.

************************************************************************************************************************************************

I have an update on my AIO situation. I ended up canceling the delayed backorder on the Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420, as Newegg STILL hasn't given a new arrival date. Fortunately I found, if you search for it correctly on Newegg, they have the same cooler sold by their "PlatinumMicro" store, for just $5 more.

Not only that, Platinum Micro are FAR more accessible via phone! So after talking to a nice gent at the Arctic South Carolina support center on the phone, I asked if Platinum Micro was an authorized reseller, AND if their latest stock would have the LGA 1700 mount. He said yes to both. I then called Platinum Micro and the guy there verified the ones they have now have a bracket that fits both AM4 AND LGA 1700.

I didn't stop there though, since both Newegg and Platinum Micro (and Amazon) still have old product pictures showing the old LGA 1200 mount kit AND even an old box that says 2 yr vs 6 yr warranty, I asked him if he could grab one and look at the box. I did this mainly because he thought they still only had a 2 yr warranty. He verified they are the new QC Certified ones with 6 yr AND the new mount kits.

I made sure to thank him for his help and tell him I value vendors whom are reachable in times of delays and product description confusion, and I tend to think he learned something by it too. All in all this will only slow me down at most about a week hopefully (it will ship on the 4th vs arrive on the 1st).

One last tid bit for anyone using or buying an Arctic cooler. Their guy at the SC support center said their latest thermal paste is MX 6. None of the latest coolers come with it, at best you get MX 4 or MX 5. I mention this because MX 6 is made thicker and is said to never harden. They guarantee it for 8 yrs! The guy on the phone said both MX 4 and MX 6 have good thermal conductivity, but I found pics showing they advertise MX 6 as yielding 20% better performance.

So I bought a 2gm syringe of MX 6 on Amazon for $6. You only need 1gm at most per application, the tiny syringes included with the coolers are .8 gm. So a 2gm syringe will last you easily until your next complete build, even if you hold on to the one you've just built until it's pretty outdated like I do.

 

[Colif]

The traditional answer to Steve's Video

The front is fine, what Steve is saying is that if you have to use front, try to have the tubes connect at base of the Radiator if you can. But if say your PC case is too long or your GPU gets in the way of having a bottom connection, it is perfectly fine to have it link to the top.

The main thing to understand from his video is as long as the PUMP isn't the top part of the loop, air will never get sucked down the tubes. Given in most cases its hard to mount a 360 or 420 to the front of the case, and have the PUMP be above the top of the radiator, that shouldn't be a problem. It would be easier to do with a 240

Top is fine
back is fine... if you can do it
Front is fine
Don't mount radiators on bottom of the case unless you using solid tubes and then its not an AIO. Radiator at bottom of case really easy way to shorten AIO life span. Since in that case, the pump is always top part of loop and gets all the air bubbles.

Some Arctic AIO have a notice in the front of manual saying not all boxes come with the right screws. We ran into a problem mid install in that the instructions didn't seem to match. Their website is broken... if you go to here -
https://support.arctic.de/en/lf2-360-argb
on Firefox, you see 3 revisions.
On Chrome or safari you see 7

So no wonder there are missing steps.

most of them are revision 3, it shows you on the bottom of the box.

I had kryonaut left over from when I installed the 5800x3d so we used it over MX-5 that came with AIO. Reviews show it is equal or in some cases better.
temps hard to judge since its cool here anyway.
Cores - 27c
Package - 37c
Nvme - 45c
GPU - 36c

 

[Frag Maniac]

The traditional answer to Steve's Video

The front is fine, what Steve is saying is that if you have to use front, try to have the tubes connect at base of the Radiator if you can. But if say your PC case is too long or your GPU gets in the way of having a bottom connection, it is perfectly fine to have it link to the top.

Front is only fine if the pump is not at or above the tube ports on the rad (which yours obviously isn't). I edited out everything I initially said and rewrote it due to having forgotten the pump position is the key thing. As far as I recall Steve did not mention this regarding front mounts. If he had, he clearly would have exampled acceptable front mounts with tubes at top. Others and Arctic definitely have mentioned it though. I just spoke to Arctic again btw, as they were returning my phone message. Andrew, whom I spoke to clarified all of what I am now saying, but also said they value GamersNexus' input and at times make corrections because of it, as well as further testing for those whom need to use front mounts.

As far as MX paste goes, if you're going to compare it to high end brands like TG Kryonaut, you need to use MX 6 as a reference. I've seen two tests already that show it outperforming Kryonaut Extreme, and tying with Noctua NT-H2. The best may be TG Conductonaut though, which I've seen testing a few degrees below MX 6 and Noctua. Note that it costs well over twice as much though, as it's literally liquid metal, like Terminator T-1000 model without the shape shifting bling.

Liquid Metal TIM however has 3 main dangers, problems with Aluminum, Copper, and electrical conductivity. Therefore it should be used with extreme caution, and can still cause system issues within a year, as the best ones (like TG Conductonaut) are less viscous and tend to seep into places you don't want it to. It's clearly for extreme OCing, but comes with risks.

BTW, if you notice, only revision 6 and 7 show the actual current mounting bracket. They also have an actual non animated real life install video on YouTube that is far easier to follow for fastener installation.

 

[DXCHASE]

So below is the pc i wound up getting. 13400F/4070. I know you cant OC the cpu, but its not being used by someone that really would be doing this. Its been delayed on shipping which im ok with since its not being used. I will most def. change the ram and add an ssd down the line. But im liking the custom cpu heatsink. Ill post my thoughts on it when i get in hand.

https://www.newegg.com/yeyian-ypi-ta34f0b-4701u-tanto/p/N82E16883630033

 

[Frag Maniac]

So below is the pc i wound up getting. 13400F/4070. I know you cant OC the cpu, but its not being used by someone that really would be doing this. Its been delayed on shipping which im ok with since its not being used. I will most def. change the ram and add an ssd down the line. But im liking the custom cpu heatsink. Ill post my thoughts on it when i get in hand.

https://www.newegg.com/yeyian-ypi-ta34f0b-4701u-tanto/p/N82E16883630033

Yeah I was about to pull the trigger on a 4070 myself until I went hog wild. The 4070 is fine for 1440p and definitely 1080p, and even some 4K on older and/or less resource hungry titles. I still don't know if I'm going to like everything about having a 4K display. I'm thinking of keeping my 1080p TV and mounting it on another wall of my living room and just using it for TV with headphones. It's going to depend on how well the 4K one upscales 1080i and 720p content.

 

[Snouff]

I did not purchase anything for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

 

[Brian Boru]

I did not purchase anything for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Welcome to the forum

Did nothing take your fancy, or are you waiting for later?

Or broke like me?

 

[Frag Maniac]

Has anyone ever been woken up at 6:45 AM by an Amazon delivery? I ordered something yesterday that showed a 7 AM - 11 AM estimated delivery window for today, so I was expecting it at the very end of that window if not later. They've been averaging late afternoon to as much as 8:30 at night usually.

So the gal buzzed my intercom, myself then dragging me out of bed, picking up the receiver and yelling WHO IS IT, and she says "Amazon!" I said to her, yeah right, and hung up. We often get people trying to sneak in via scam stories over the intercom.

So then I remembered the early estimated delivery window, and worried she may have stormed off after I hung up, and started spamming the code to buzz her in. When she got to my door I asked, why are you guys delivering packages so early? She says, "It's Amazon!", like it's a badge of honor or something, and I said, yeah,... CRAZY Amazon!

She didn't seem bothered a bit when I told her I'd gotten less than 4 hrs sleep so far when I picked it up.

On a humorous note, one of our local news stations yesterday was doing a piece on the rising prevalence of porch pirates that steal holiday deliveries from the front doors of people's houses. I was mad at first, and really felt for the victims. Then at the end of it they showed one of the pirates scampering to their car in a big green Grinch costume, and the cop chasing after them in his patrol SUV was wearing a Santa outfit! That still has me cracking up today every time I get the image in my head.

 

[Colif]

Not from Amazon but I have received freight at 7.30am. I was lucky I was awake. I don't recall what that was. Just hearing a truck outside and thinking.... its a bit early.
I think I had only ordered it day before... that is fast turn around here as 99% of the things I order come from outside of my city. I have never had same day delivery, average is about a week unless I pay for express freight. Generally the cost is worth it to pay for express. For some reason, basic freight at one place is 15 and express is 17... why would you choose slow?

I am not in the USA so there is that.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Not from Amazon but I have received freight at 7.30am. I was lucky I was awake. I don't recall what that was. Just hearing a truck outside and thinking.... its a bit early.
I think I had only ordered it day before... that is fast turn around here as 99% of the things I order come from outside of my city. I have never had same day delivery, average is about a week unless I pay for express freight. Generally the cost is worth it to pay for express. For some reason, basic freight at one place is 15 and express is 17... why would you choose slow?

I am not in the USA so there is that.

Yeah I just thought it was weird that the delivery gal looked at me perplexed when I said 6:45 was awfully early to see deliveries. I mean I'm usually up by that time and fixing and about to eat breakfast, but I was up till about 2:30 AM still messing with the TV.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Just an update on my holiday build. I was supposed to get the last part tomorrow, being the PSU, but looks like it's coming today! It's already almost 4:30 PM here though and they didn't verify it was out for delivery until 2 PM. I've had Amazon deliveries as late as 8:30 PM, but since I was up ridiculously late last night, I'm not going to push it.

On a side note, I also ordered a Power Practical "Luminoodle" Bias Lighting kit for the back of my TV. GOVEE is the most popular brand of this type of product, but they didn't have one the size of my TV that plugs into the USB port on the back. Plus the GOVEE ones are all dependent on a cell phone app, even if using the supplied remote.

What I also like about the Power Practical brand is they offer kits that have colored lights, and ones that are just white LEDs, which is what I bought. The LEDs are also 6500K rated, and high quality, so it's possible to stay in the daylight white spectrum (4000K to 6500K) while dimming them. This is important to me because true white daylight lighting yields the most accurate colors in the content you're viewing.

It was a bit of a fiasco trying to get the 15% discount Power Practical offered via their chat service, mainly because in my part of the country, Amazon has the shipper and seller listed as Blue Apex. Power Practical showed me a pic of the shipper and seller being Amazon and them from their end though. Once I proved with a full screen shot of their own Amazon store showing it as shipped and sold by Blue Apex, they came through with a partial refund, though was more complex than it needed to be.

Another nice thing about the Power Practical kits, and the reason I suspect they call them Luminoodles, is the tape strip the lights are on is flexible enough to just bend 90 degrees at the corners. This also means you know by the length of the light tape if it will exactly fit the outer edge of the back of your TV. Other brands have you loop the tape at the corners. Some supply short cables for corner bends, so you get no lighting in the corners, and the length of light strips can be a problem fit wise for some TVs.

------UPDATE WITHIN AN UPDATE!-----

Low and behold as I was writing this post, Amazon came with my PSU! The thing is heavier than I suspected for a compact unit, but from reviews I've read, the supplied cable bundle itself is pretty heavy. The guy had a large rolling cart full of packages. I spotted which package it was right away, but he said he had to delivery a different package with a lower apt number on my floor first. I kind of cringed when he casually dropped the PSU in the bottom of the cart, but the cart is soft and springy at the bottom like a trampoline. He bemoaned how heavy it was when handing it to me, and to that I said, yeah, probably shouldn't be dropping it then, to which he didn't reply. He was also claiming Amazon makes them deliver them in Apt order when I asked if he was actually forced to deliver the other one first, but I get the feeling he's new and a bit weird at keeping track of which packages are delivered. He actually whined about having to take a pic of it laying by someone's door if they're not there to receive it. I said, UPS does that all the time, and they do it quick (hint hint).

Whatever Amazon, I know, the old adage of good help is hard to find is still relative today, perhaps more so with behemoth companies like yours.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Another update on my PC build. Was nearing completion but had a bit of a disaster last night, I took out 4 expansion slot covers, but the GPU only took up 3. I tried to pull out the GPU to put one cover back in, but it wasn't budging after pressing the GPU locking tab down. So I pressed a bit harder and it broke! One side of the tab was hanging loosely!

Fortunately AsRock is familiar with this, but after trying to jiggle the remaining bits of the broken tab free as they suggested, they recommended a replacement since I couldn't get it out. They said they could have just sent a new tab otherwise, which clicks into place. So I have to wait for another one to come after barely getting it packaged back up and to the nearest UPS store.

My bias light kit is also not as described on Amazon. It has no way to turn on and off or dim as shown on the product page. So it's going back too. I just hope it doesn't take too long to get the replacement MB! I find it strange their RAM locking tabs are sturdier, while the GPU ones are very thin. Seems like they could easily make a running change, since this is just a separate assembly that easily clicks into place.

 

[ipman]

So below is the pc i wound up getting. 13400F/4070. I know you cant OC the cpu, but its not being used by someone that really would be doing this. Its been delayed on shipping which im ok with since its not being used. I will most def. change the ram and add an ssd down the line. But im liking the custom cpu heatsink. Ill post my thoughts on it when i get in hand.

https://www.newegg.com/yeyian-ypi-ta34f0b-4701u-tanto/p/N82E16883630033

I'd be interested to know.

This PC has been breaking down; and I've been doing cold turkey from gaming. It's been tough!

BSOD's led me to fix many things but now think graphic card is culprit. I'm going to repaste and clean, but am looking at new PC.
Same specs, 4070 looks good value and looking at a similar CPU. I'm going to get it custom built.

It's little things like I don't want usb's and jacks on top and I want it to stay as dust free as possible. So I'm still trying to decide about a case mainly.

I patented the 'massive' letterbox, but it never took off, Amazon can even get a tv through it