Birmingham Cross City - And A Price Rise

[philskene]

Slightly off topic --

Mike:

"All i can say is roll on next year when TT:120 really kicks off."

I just went to the Hornby web site. The price of those locomotives. 145 Pounds!~! Wow. And that's before track, rolling stock, ... . Way out of my league.

I think I'd prefer to stick with my NG24 layouts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5kANQqVW6k&t

Phil

[haverfordwest]

Phil,

is that not the 00 gauge prices. From what i have looked at the TT stuff is slightly cheaper. The starter set i would like is £195 i believe, with loco, coaches and track. Plus it is something tangible to own buddy and my youngest grandson can have it all when i kick the bucket.

I would be looking at similar amounts of money over the next few years. Just to update this pc and keep it going. As it stands now future gaming is probably going to be very poor, with a 14 yr old base pc, which i have continually updated. Without paying shed loads of money on it.

Mike.

[NorthernWarrior]

I was just looking at what it would cost to buy a reasonable new PC (I9 with a RTX2060, 32Gb of RAM, one SSD drive and 2 x 2Tb mechanical drives), expecting PC Specialist would come in with something decent around the £900 mark - nearly fell off my chair when the modest(ish) spec I input returned at nearly £1400. Not getting that past the wife. Guess although the hardware shortages are easing, the associated price scalping isn't.

[haverfordwest]

What i looked at a few weeks back Vern, for a good gaming PC. Was more like £2500, which was not top of the range gaming specs. Just something to get by with, for the next couple of years. I already have 3x separate SSD drives and an old spinner drive in this pc, buddy.

I could probably get by, with just buying a mobo, cpu combination, plus 64GB ram i have 32gb already. But the big expense would be the graphics card, for something that would be good for anything up to 10 yrs or until i fall off my perch. PSU is no problem as it is a decent 850W unit.

Mike.

[NorthernWarrior]

Yes that @£1400 was after I downgraded my spec a bit.

My Achilles heel on the current PC is the PSU, only 450w so putting in a RTX card might struggle.

One thing I am considering is a separate sound card or one of those DAC devices you plug in a USB socket. Even after updating the drivers, the Realtek on board sound is a bit crap really.

[haverfordwest]

Understood Vern in regards the spec and yes 450W with an RTX. Might be asking a bit much though.

I had a good Sound Blaster card in this when first bought. Which included a SB Inspire EAX 7.1 speaker system.

When i updated my mobo and cpu in 2013, i gave the SB card to my son in law. As the mobo has built in Realtek 7.1 chip onboard.

Don't really find much difference buddy. Came with a suite of software for adjusting all the sound options and can play anything up to 24bit, 192000 Hz quality.

Mike.