A thread that had a bit of life on the old forum that would probably be useful here.
I’ll get us started by asking for VPN recommendations.
I’m using Private Internet Access and have been for the last 3 years, good speeds, also they have web browser extensions for chrome and firefox if you just want to route your browser through the VPN (useful if you game online). Alternatively they have the regular desktop and phone app to send all traffic from your device through the VPN
Costs about $40/yr.
Thumbs up for PIA, has an Android app too, in conjunction with My Football channel on Youtube = free A-League streaming in HD
I did not know about that My Football channel on YouTube. Is it a legit stream? I’ve just been scabbing my brother in law’s Foxtel Go
Two SFCUers can’t be wrong! Thanks guys.
Its an FFA stream targeted to Japan and Canada and a few other places with no A-League broadcaster
You need to be using the vpn to see the live or recorded games
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IPvanish is also decent, the cyber Monday sales have good yearly deals on VPNs
Hardware-wise, I got my biannual laptop update, a Lenovo Yoga 370, lovely machine reduced from $2500 to $1300
I use PIA as well, pretty happy with it, no complaints. Handy to be able to use it on my Android phone as well.
I use PureVPN… Approx $160 for 3 years… Have had zero issues with it. Works on my iPhone too.
I went and set up a PiHole on my home network a few months back. Best thing ever.
It’s basically a network wide advertising and telemetry filter. It’s unbelievable how much internet traffic is nothing but ads, tracking other data mining shite. 47.1% of all my internet queries apparently.
Thoughts on whether it would be a good business laptop mate? Just about time to upgrade mine.
Doesn’t need to run a heap of software - mostly cloud stuff really.
It would be an excellent choice, probably a bit overpowered, but I couldn’t resist the bargain.
Looking to get some upgrade help for my comp, my current build has the following:
Kingston ValueRAM KVR24N17S8/8 8GB (1x8GB) DDR4
Be Quiet! Pure Power 10 CM 600W Power Supply
Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB 7200RPM
Corsair Neutron Series GTX 120GB SSD
Intel Core i5 7600
ASRock B250 Gaming K4 Motherboard
GEforce GTX 1060 Graphics card
But it just manages BF4 with any newer games, especially with high graphics, completely struggling. Would anyone be able to suggest what I could upgrade to allow me to play something more modern? Even COD 5 etc?
You’ll see the biggest performance gains from upgrading your graphics card from that GTX 1060. Unfortunately GPUs are expensive. How much are you looking to spend?
Some newer games are starting to utilise more CPU power but i dont think your i5 is really going to be holding you back just yet. Unless you can find a cheap 2nd hand i7 of the same generation that you can do a straight swap with the CPU i probably wouldn’t worry about upgrading it yet.
Everything else looks fine for gaming. Maybe get an 500GB-1TB SSD storage drive to load some games onto.
I was looking at a Galax GeForce RTX 2060 Super or would that be overkill? I had a mate who suggested I needed a new motherboard and RAM rather than a GPU?
Nah that card isn’t overkill. I’ve got a GTX 1080 that i’ve had for a few years. It still holds up but even some of the newer games i need to turn a few of settings down or my framerate starts to dip under 60@1440p. The RTX 2060 has slightly better performance than the 1080, you’ll still probably not be playing every new game on ultra at 60+1080p.
Motherboard upgrade wont increase performance at all, unless you’re going full CPU+motherboard upgrade and even then you probably wont notice much of an increase in framerate in 95% of games.
DDR4 RAM is super cheap at the moment, so you could grab another 8GB to fill the spare slots on your motherboard. As a general rule try find similar RAM to whats in your system at the moment. Again, you’re probably not going to notice much of a performance boost in most games, but its good for future proofing.
perfect! Thanks for the help. Definitely saves me a bit of money as my mate was suggesting I upgrade everything except the graphics card. Last time i trust him, considering he’s an avid gamer. Was going to buy extra RAM in any case so may as well go for that as well!
No worries. Out of curiosity, what games is your 1060 struggling with? Is it the 3GB VRAM version?
It’s a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 G1 Gaming (Base: 1620MHz,Boost: 1847MHz), 3GB GDDR5 (8008MHz)
It works fine on Battlefield 4 with very slightly lower graphics but I had issues with Bioshock Infinite and Assassins Creed Syndicate has some issues, had to drop the graphics for that.