The laptop has arrived and seems pretty good so far, it's pretty much a silent, fan less version of the XPS 13 that's less flashy and with touchpad buttons but that's pretty much what I wanted and it keeps the excellent minimal bezel design which makes the screen seem oddly large at first.
I bought a couple of Hue bulbs for the lounge as my Dad struggles to reach the side lights, it's just the most basic lights (dimmable but not colour changing) and I'm quite impressed with them as a functional improvement rather than a bit of a toy like I use mine. The lights come on and off automatically during the day on their schedule and my Mum is quite amused at being able to control the lights from her phone.
I also bit the bullet and upgraded the ram in my PC which has been a decision I've been toying with for a long time as I'm kicking myself for not upgrading a couple of years ago when the PC had its upgrade for VR and the ram was a lot cheaper. My PC is very picky over the ram it works with and also the PC can be a bit flaky when it has the power removed. I spotted a reasonable deal for 4x8GB sticks at the right speed, popped it into the PC and it started up but no display and didn't appear to be booting. That's not unusual on the first boot after the power is out and on the second boot the louvres moved as normal, the fans spun down, phew I thought but no still no boot or video output. I tried a few more boots but despite the boot sequence sounding normal and no beeps.
I removed two of the sticks of ram and this time I did get a beep code indicating no ram which was well progress, I took that ram out and swapped the other sticks in which brought the machine back to its normal boot sequence but still not starting. I moved those sticks over to the other two slots but noticed they didn't seem to be sitting in properly, I clicked them in again, booted again and was delighted to finally get a blue light on the monitor followed by the AW logo followed by a warning about the memory being changed. It didn't make it into Windows but on a reboot it did and showed all 16GB of memory, I shut it down and popped the other two sticks in making sure they were pressed in firmly and again blue light on the display, AW logo and made it into Windows. It's managed a few reboots now and although it still needs a memtest, it's looking good:
https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Genera ... 2GBRAM.pngWhat I'm hoping the non-booting problem is caused by is the one-sided ram sockets in that unlike most other ram sockets I've seen, there is only one latch at one side rather than one at both sides which seems a bad design. I'd noticed when moving the ram at one point that although I'd levered it in on the non-latched side, when the ram clicked in the other side appeared to be rising so I think it was sitting half in the slot which was enough for the PC to detect there was something there and try a boot rather than stop and give a no ram error.
Of course now it seems a bit ridiculous to put the whole 32GB in there but at the same time after all the hassle, it's good to know that it's done and won't need to be touched again plus DDR3 prices are only going to go up in price.
Phalanx - liquid cooled i7 3930K @ 4.2Ghz, 32GB ram, Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB, 2TB SSD/28TB HDD, dual blu-ray, Dell U2711/HTC Vive