What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

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Swapped out the 16GB RAM kit for 32GB. I feel like the rest of my system is bottlenecking my CPU, so I want to take advantage of it's power while it's still reasonably good :lol:

Now all I need is a new GPU - thinking the replacement for the RX 7900 XT will be a suitable candidate.
 
Nexus
Swapped out the 16GB RAM kit for 32GB. I feel like the rest of my system is bottlenecking my CPU, so I want to take advantage of it's power while it's still reasonably good :lol:

Now all I need is a new GPU - thinking the replacement for the RX 7900 XT will be a suitable candidate.
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You have quite a few options, honestly.

  • 7900XT
  • Used 6900/6950 XT
  • 4070 Ti
  • 4070 Super
  • Used 3080/3080 Ti
  • 7800XT (basically a 6900XT)
 
Terronium-12
You have quite a few options, honestly.

  • 7900XT
  • Used 6900/6950 XT
  • 4070 Ti
  • 4070 Super
  • Used 3080/3080 Ti
  • 7800XT (basically a 6900XT)
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The RX 7900 GRE and XT were at the top of my list, but we only have lower-end AIB's still in stock - and I want something at least as edgy looking as my Red Devil Vega 64 :lol:
 
Nexus
The RX 7900 GRE
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How'd I forget about the GRE!? :lol:
Nexus
and XT were at the top of my list, but we only have lower-end AIB's still in stock - and I want something at least as edgy looking as my Red Devil Vega 64 :lol:
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Hm. Are you opposed to using eBay? You can probably find a Red Devil there if none are available elsewhere.

Powercolor made an RD for the 7800 as well, if push comes to shove.
 
Terronium-12
How'd I forget about the GRE!? :lol:

Hm. Are you opposed to using eBay? You can probably find a Red Devil there if none are available elsewhere.

Powercolor made an RD for the 7800 as well, if push comes to shove.
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I've been keeping an eye on eBay, though it seems to be slim pickings in my region, unfortunately.

I know future-proofing is a (mostly) pointless endeavour when it comes to PC parts, but I'm thinking an X900 series card might be my best bet: my main monitor is still 1080P/144Hz (will upgrade to 1440P eventually), though my sim-racing monitor is 1440/165Hz - and I'm expecting the worst for Assetto Corsa: Evo's optimisation at launch :lol:
 
Nexus
I've been keeping an eye on eBay, though it seems to be slim pickings in my region, unfortunately.

I know future-proofing is a (mostly) pointless endeavour when it comes to PC parts, but I'm thinking an X900 series card might be my best bet: my main monitor is still 1080P/144Hz (will upgrade to 1440P eventually), though my sim-racing monitor is 1440/165Hz - and I'm expecting the worst for Assetto Corsa: Evo's optimisation at launch :lol:
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Fair enough. :lol:

If it launches next month, RDNA 4/8800 XT is rumored to have RT performance on par with the 4080S and raw performance that's better than the 7900 XT. It may be worth waiting to see what happens after that's announced at CES next month (hopefully).

Though with PCs, the waiting game is incredibly fickle and almost pointless, so...
 
www.notebookcheck.net

PowerColor is rumored to introduce Radeon RX 8000 Reaper graphics cards early next month

PowerColor is set to introduce the new Reaper series of GPUs for AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 8000 series, targeting budget and mainstream market segments with models like the Radeon RX 8800 and Radeon RX 8600. The lineup, expected to be unveiled at CES 2025, represents AMD's strategic focus on...
www.notebookcheck.net www.notebookcheck.net

I'm hoping speculation is incorrect and we'll still get a Red Devil variant - I'm assuming the 8800 XT will cost ~$1k when it lands here, and I'd want a beefy cooler for something that expensive.

...Though I'm half sold on this already because of the name :lol:
 
Reaper is a pretty cool name though. :lol:

Last time I can remember it being used in the PC space was for this:

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And, yes, I absolutely had a kit of these.
 
I got and set up my Google TV Streamer to my TV. The Google TV Streamer is the rather expensive replacement for the Chromecast With Google TV. It seems to run smoother than the Chromecast With Google TV. Though I don't have a 4K TV, this device even can allow you to stream media in 4K resolution should you be bestowed with a 4K TV. I have no or few complaints about this device, if any.
 
Tried to get bearable HDR colours on Windows 11 desktop, on a HDR display of course. And didn't succeed. Googling for solutions only produces either instructions that don't work, or completely insufferable Reddit elitists that keep claiming that's how it should look because it's the correct colours and not the incorrect ones we peasants are used to with our puny SDR displays. Also everyone should use sRGB and it looks similar to HDR.

Well, not sure if everyone should or not, but I've been using that indeed and it's nothing like the HDR colours. It actually has colours to begin with, with HDR on everything gets washed out so heavily that it looks like a frosted glass layer on the screen. I've been doing commercial graphics design for more than a decade so I think I have a bit of an idea of how a screen should look like, and above all I'm pretty sure that RGB #000000 should be a very dark black instead of a mid grey.

The Windows HDR calibration tool does absolutely nothing to correct it as I tried extreme settings in both minimum and maximum and nothing changed, the only way to get black that is even remotely black is to crank gamma so low that white becomes grey and then compensate by extra brightness. Considering that everything looks just fine with the (Nvidia settings) default 50% brightness, 50% contrast and 1.00 gamma on SDR, I have a feeling that things aren't right if HDR needs 90% brightness and 0.65 gamma to produce anything that doesn't look like stone washed jeans.
 
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Not quite today, but finally got high speed fibre optic broadband installed in my house this weekend.

The cables were only laid in the street recently. Prior to that, the max we could get in this village was 67mbps, which was a big downgrade from our previous address.

We've gone up to 500mbps now, which is nice, but we will be getting double that for no extra fee once my O2 and Virgin accounts are linked.

To go with that, bought a new Mesh Network system, which is all up and running and pretty soon I might upgrade my NAS to an M2 system.
 
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Set up dual boot for the first time on an old tower I had as a kid. Had reset the BIOS password a few weeks ago.

It now runs Windows 10 (originally 7) and Debian 11 i386, using 99% CPU resources while idling. Only a single core processor + hyperthreading, with 2 gigs of ram. Acheulean, actually.

It was Cinnamon. Of course it was Cinnamon...
 
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While not modern by any stretch, I picked up a set of Logitech X-540 speakers a few months ago. Everything seemed fine with them.

Until I was watching a movie on Saturday.

Despite the audio being DTS-HD MA 5.1, it sounded horrible. I looked into if Windows 11 has a built in equalizer, which it does not.

That then led me to Equalizer APO and Peace. After spending FAR too long trying to follow the instructions on how to get Room EQ Wizard to work with it to set the EQ automatically with a mic, I gave up and just did it by ear. The difference between the before and after isn't a lot, but that was never the intent. The speaking into a tin can sound that the movie had was vastly improved.

Obviously these speakers fire hot in the 400-1800Hz range and are lacking around 80Hz. I blame needing a boost on the 15k-20k Hz to being old and having some tinnitus.

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I've done so many things this past week or so.

I bought parts and built my first NAS. The motherboard/CPU shipped from China and it took an entire month for it to get here. I think it got stuck in customs for an extra week due to all the tariff changes that kept happening at the time.

I initially had to leave the boot SSD hanging outside for a day or so because the SATA cable I bought was too short. I was following an online guide and they have a different version of the motherboard so the SATA port is in a different location.

I only got two 12TB hard drives mirrored. I didn't want to spend too much and I don't need that much space just yet.

It's running TrueNAS Scale and I've gotten Jellyfin, Immich, and Tailscale to work so I'm really happy with how things turned out. The only issue is that the chassis fan is pretty loud, because it runs at full speed and the BIOS for the board isn't that configurable. I might try to do some more tinkering or I'll change the fan to a Noctua one.


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After that, I bought a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a new motherboard and RAM to go along with the platform upgrade. I previously had a Ryzen 5 3600. The upgrade process was pretty smooth, but I had a hiccup where I couldn't fit in my graphics card into the motherboard. The PCIe slot was like 1/8 of an inch to the left of where the GPU is. I physically couldn't move it left enough to slot it in. I had to completely unscrew and then rescrew the motherboard to get everything to fit correctly.

I've played a handful of games to test and it definitely relieved the massive bottleneck I had.


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I got lucky and snagged the last RX 9070 XT available yesterday, and it was the variant I was looking for (PowerColor Red Devil). I bought a new PSU for it (Antec NE850G M), and installed them both today.

I needed another PSU for an upcoming DIY NAS build (waiting on HDD prices to drop), so I figured I might as well get a beefy one for my main rig.

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Clearance was a bit tight - I didn't think it'd be bigger than my old Vega 64 :crazy:
I'm assuming the specified GPU clearance for my case is without the fans mounted, which is sneaky.
 
My family moved house last week and when setting up and dealing with the Internet installation we got a good deal from my ISP to get half gig speed for the same price we were paying before (had to renew contract)
I was only getting 90mbps in my room WIFI so I routed an Ethernet cable to the living room router. Viola, 500mbps.

I invested in a CAT 8 cable for the unrealistic chance that the UK might try and catch up with Fibre/internet infrastructure in the future.

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Nexus
I'm assuming the specified GPU clearance for my case is without the fans mounted, which is sneaky.
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It's normal, the measurement is supposed to be the absolute maximum possible space and they assume you'd remove the bottom fan if you really needed that space. Personally I would remove that fan since it's not really doing anything, half of it is obstructed by the card now and the other half is blowing air down the front of the card which has its own fans - you might even be causing the card's fans to run faster and thus louder (doubt it's perceptible though) to keep cool because of the turbulence the case fan is adding to that airflow. Then there's dust ingress and noise, and a tiny amount of power wasted...
 
sesselpupser
Personally I would remove that fan since it's not really doing anything, half of it is obstructed by the card now and the other half is blowing air down the front of the card which has its own fans - you might even be causing the card's fans to run faster and thus louder (doubt it's perceptible though) to keep cool because of the turbulence the case fan is adding to that airflow. Then there's dust ingress and noise, and a tiny amount of power wasted...
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I remember watching a Gamers Nexus review on my case, and they said dual 140mm intake fans were optimal for temperatures - having said that, this was when even dual-GPU's were smaller than current mid-rangers. :lol:
 
I wanted a second of my LG Ultragear monitor but the one stand took up enough desk space let alone two. I went searching for dual monitor arms. I needed this type (not the spring armed one) so I can have it flush against the wall and can have my monitors how I want. This was surprisingly cheap and I'm very pleased with the sturdiness and quality.

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Then I needed to get a second 27' Ultragear 1440p monitor (That was the expensive part)

Pretty happy with the result.

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Not today, but I installed my new NVMe. This thing is a bit crazy, it has immense read speeds (but gets incredibly hot). I was going to settle with a Gen 4, but I thought “Why not try something new?”

That said, I’m looking at replacing the fans in my PC to a matching set.
 
Honeywell PTM 7950 arrived today.

www.ebay.co.uk

Genuine Honeywell PTM7950 Thermal Phase Change Pad 8.5W/m.K PC CPU GPU Paste | eBay

Why Choose Our PTM7950?. Why Authentic PTM7950 Matters. â100% Genuine Honeywell - Sourced directly from certified Honeywell suppliers. Genuine Honeywell PTM 7950 Phase Change Thermal Pad - Industrial Grade Performance.
www.ebay.co.uk

Got thermal putty on the way tomorrow along with a microphone so I can play MW2 lobbies in multiplayer games.


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TL;DR - After a hard drive failure, my 2011 iMac is back in service as a Time Machine server for the MacBooks in the family.

The hard drive isn't needed as it has a 256GB SSD in there too. This old, old machine has an insane amount of compute power, 32 gigs of RAM and a monster 27 inch screen. The HDD is totally dead, the WiFi is too unreliable to use for Time Machine (so it's wired) and the OS is back at High Sierra, but hey, it still works with a 5TB external hard drive for the backups.

PS Our MacBooks which have died over the years died after around ten years, this iMac is still going strong after 14.
 
Turns on NAS, can't connect to the IP address.
Turns on connected monitor, sees that it's not assigning a network connection.
Plugs in keyboard, INSTANTLY gets an IP address assigned.

I am so confused :lol:
 
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My computer had a mild freakout today that I think nearly corrupted my external hard drive again. I was watching a video I had stored on my drive, and then suddenly, Windows Media Player froze up, and for some reason, I could not minimize the program or even go into Task Manager to terminate it, which is strange because this never happens to me. So I tried logging out as a means of terminating the program and logging back in again. This, of course, succeeded in terminating the program, so I tried to access my drive again, and it acted like it was going to be loading forever, and based on my past experiences with this drive, this is usually a sign of corruption. So I restarted my computer and disconnected the drive from my PC as well, and once it restarted, I plugged it back in again, and everything seemed fine. :odd:

I was pretty surprised to see it still worked as intended, given the issues I've had in the past with it. As a precaution, I did error checking on it and checked its health on CrystalDiskInfo as well, and everything seemed fine. I guess the ordeal was just a weird fluke and not much else. For future reference, I suppose I should just shut down my PC and disconnect the drive if it happens again. Fortunately, I don't use my external hard drive as much anymore, and even if it does give me problems, I have recovery software and my 4TB SSD in my PC to extract everything to. Thankfully, I didn't need either today. 👍
 
Sonygamer455
My computer had a mild freakout today that I think nearly corrupted my external hard drive again. I was watching a video I had stored on my drive, and then suddenly, Windows Media Player froze up, and for some reason, I could not minimize the program or even go into Task Manager to terminate it, which is strange because this never happens to me. So I tried logging out as a means of terminating the program and logging back in again. This, of course, succeeded in terminating the program, so I tried to access my drive again, and it acted like it was going to be loading forever, and based on my past experiences with this drive, this is usually a sign of corruption. So I restarted my computer and disconnected the drive from my PC as well, and once it restarted, I plugged it back in again, and everything seemed fine. :odd:

I was pretty surprised to see it still worked as intended, given the issues I've had in the past with it. As a precaution, I did error checking on it and checked its health on CrystalDiskInfo as well, and everything seemed fine. I guess the ordeal was just a weird fluke and not much else. For future reference, I suppose I should just shut down my PC and disconnect the drive if it happens again. Fortunately, I don't use my external hard drive as much anymore, and even if it does give me problems, I have recovery software and my 4TB SSD in my PC to extract everything to. Thankfully, I didn't need either today. 👍
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There are two types of storage device. Those which have crashed and died, and those which haven't yet crashed and died.

Time to implement a redundant backup system.
 
Sonygamer455
I can't say I've heard of this before, at least that I know of, but I'll certainly keep this in mind.
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What I mean is to have multiple independent backup methods, preferably with one being an off-site copy.

For example, I back up my Mac to a hard drive I plug in periodically, to a network-attached Mac on an hourly basis (using Time Machine) and to the cloud.
 

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