Category: proper hardware

Bosch Professional GAA 18V-24 USB charging adapter 1600A00J61 1600A00J5W (WHL #49)

Something out of the ordinary for today, a brand new item, bought for disassembly and kind-of off-label use. A Bosch Professional USB charger which happens to have a 12V port also…

Contrary to my very first thought when I found this charger, it does NOT allow 18V batteries to be charged from USB or a 12V source. Maybe I should test that, but I doubt it. However, it does convert the other way – stick in a 18V power tool battery (ranging from 1.5Ah to 12Ah as of today) and get a USB charger with a lot of oomph, or a “heated jacked” power source with a lot of potential for baggy pockets. […]

12th May 2019 12th May 2019 By Bzzz In No Comment

Samsung USB 3.1 Flash Drive BAR Plus MUF-256BE3/EU (WHL #45)

Wan Hung Lo #45 – Christmas Turd Edition!

Yeah…wasn’t planned to do that, but just like with the much more expensive “proper hardware” item from last year, the BenQ EX3501R that caused m u l t i p le revisits, I guess I found something worthy of in-depth reviewing. A simple USB flash drive.

Let me explain. I’m in the market for some 200GB+ device, as I’ve come to the point in the upgrade cycle where my 128GB Sandisk Extreme Pro (wank, wank) is no longer capable of holding all data that I want to carry around. […]

24th December 2018 24th December 2018 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

BenQ EX3501R frame skipping with AMD and Nvidia GPUs (WHL #33F6)

Another quick follow-up on the BenQ EX3501R (yawn).
“sss” noted that there’s an issue with their Nvidia GPU and regular 100 Hz operation, FreeSync most likely isn’t the issue here (greedy bastards). (S)He’s having missing frames leading to e.g. jerky mouse movements, which can also be detected by running the UFO test and taking a picture.

Well, so I did.
Radeon 380, 100 Hz, FreeSync enabled but not active in plain Windows mode. Test needed Chrome browser for a) performance (FF you laggy bitch) and b) V-Sync reasons, as FF cannot get its shit together, especially in full screen mode. […]

4th November 2018 4th November 2018 By Bzzz In 14 Comments

Static over DisplayPort (WHL #33F5)

Okay, I admit – this is a lazy one. But I’m busy playing Path of Exile :mrgreen:

Before removing the faulty Ednet DisplayPort cable from my desk, I gave it another shot and tried capturing the artefacts on camera. A tad difficult as I noticed that the most prominent stuff is only visible on a pure black (#000) background and is very much gone on colorful backgrounds or even patterned images. Which makes it quite hard to capture without the noise from the now pretty underexposed camera sensor. And the autofocus has nothing to focus on, because if there is, the fault goes away. […]

30th September 2018 30th September 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R, AOC U3477PQU and a faulty DisplayPort cable (WHL #33F4)

Well, who would have thought that the BenQ needed another blog post…

Last week, the line flicker described in got significantly worse. I switched graphics cards the week before (Radeon 260X out, 380 in), which resulted in a driver reset and one Windows boot for the short sighted, but it also caused a bit of movement on the cables, as my computer is rack-mounted. Flicker stuff was the same for a few days.

Then it got so bad that it not only had those intermittent lines, but there were entire blocks of lines just black, audio stuttered, and the entire screen went dark for a second every so often. […]

23rd September 2018 23rd September 2018 By Bzzz In 11 Comments

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – AMA modes revisited for response time measurements (WHL #33F3)

Finally got a photo diode for re-measuring the panel response time of the BenQ EX3501R. It’s a Vishay BPW34 type with 7.5mm² of active area, 70pF of capacitance at 0V, 600 to 1050 nm of spectral bandwidth (Reichelt claims quite a bit more?), peak sensitivity at 900nm and a relatively big half sensitivity angle of 65 degrees. Yeah, capacitance goes down when reverse biasing it, whatever, just slap it onto a probe and let’s go:

It’s not perfectly aligned at the screen, but that shouldn’t do much. I’m running GIFs with #000000, #7F7F7F and #FFFFFF frames, flickering at 20Hz. […]

28th January 2018 29th January 2018 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – line flicker (WHL #33F2)

Ahh, good old Christmas.

Been busy with other display-related things, but haven’t been using the BenQ at all. Now that everything is quiet and there are a couple days of vacation, I did fire up the system and played PoE for half an hour. And another half an hour to take some videos and photos. For whatever reason, there are now entire lines flickering during gameplay, and I claim these weren’t present the last time I used the thing. GPU driver update (still on 17.8.2 for my Radeon 260X)? Someone changed something in the PoE code (which caused an update of 600+ MB)? […]

25th December 2017 25th December 2017 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor – AMA modes (WHL #33F1)

This post is partially outdated – please have a look at the updated version #33F3 with proper photo diode measurements as well!

 

So…I tried measuring response time of the monitor, and I didn’t really succeed. I’m missing MY PRECIOUS photo diode, so doing the same thing with an LED…is pretty meh. Don’t take these for real, time must be off due to high capacitance (“high” being some 10pF including leads?) and the LED not being as sensitive as a proper photo sensor diode.

Well anyway, the shape of the traces tells us a little about the AMA setting of the display, which is BenQ speech for the Advanced Motion Acceleration or pixel response / panel overdrive setting. […]

3rd December 2017 29th January 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment

BenQ EX3501R 3440×1440 21:9 35″ Curved VA monitor (WHL #33)

Getting sidetracked lately, I know…

Why not post about something that doesn’t come from some Wan Hung Lo factory? I could write a review and put it in some hardware forum, but as there are very few reviews out there as of now, let’s try tweaking visitor count a little ;)

The BenQ EX3501R arrived earlier today (HUGE 100x65x35cm³ box!), and I was waiting for something like that for the past two years already. Manufacturers obviously like to spoil products these days, every new monitor of that kind has something that puts me off big time – no (or very crude) height/tilt adjustment, glare (glossy) coatings, insane stands with integrated electronics meaning no VESA mounts, basically nonexistant FreeSync ranges on “gaming” displays, flickering in FreeSync mode, or something else that somebody probably got a raise for inventing the bullshit. […]

28th November 2017 4th December 2017 By Bzzz In 10 Comments