Re: VW That's your opinion but it simply doesn't follow. I picked VW simply because it was a recent and well known example. Would you prefer the XBox failure rate? Or? Plenty more where those came from. Of all the PSUs that get reported as failing on SPCR I honestly can't recall the last time a Seas...

If the manufacturer wanted to lose money by producing an unreliable product that would break down, lose them reputation, cost them money to replace and be a sales disaster then of course they would produce a PSU that couldn't handle it. This isn't the case though. No one is stupid enough to do that...

I'm about to embark on a build of a mATX Skylake i5 computer that will have no GPU in the near term so my immediate power needs are very modest, probably <250 watts. However, partially based on the paucity of really well made sub 400 W PSUs and partially because I'm not entirely convinced that I won...

While I like the potentially tiny form factor mITX feels to me like it cuts off too many avenues that I'm not sure I might want to go down. mATX doesn't deliver quite as significant a size reduction but I'm more comfortable with the trade-offs, at least right now. When Lawrence Lee reviewed the Frac...

Thanks Mike! I hope I can keep the aged PC alive for awhile as it appears that I have do a great deal more reading and thinking. Apparently VortexBox will allow ripping and at least audio playback so maybe the optical drive could be moved to the NAS if I went down the VortexBox path? I'm the antithe...

A lossless compressed 1080p Blu-Ray movie can run 30-40GB, depending on the encoding method and audio tracks. So, if you have a large library, you'll need to decide whether to transcode for storage savings or have a fleet of HDD's Now, think about the storage requirements for "4K". Thanks for the c...

This will be a Windows build, the least problematic option as far as I can tell. As far as transcoding video goes I have to plead ignorance. I'm very interested in film/video media but I know zed about the technology side. I'm an old school physical formats guy being dragged into the digital realm. ...

Here is the situation: I have an old (Core 2) PC with what seems to be something failing on the motherboard (intermittently gives me “keyboard failure” or simply freezes the keyboard and mouse but it isn't the keyboard, unplugging everything and letting it sit will usually temporarily fix it). I'm t...