This was tempting to post in ~games but think it suits ~tech better.

What are your thoughts on these monitor frame sync technologies?
Have they made a big difference to your gaming experiences?
Could you do with out it?
What about G-Sync vs Freesync?

Yes, yes, I know, the classic blunder 😅

I just have to say though, the difference is insane, I mean what the actual fuaæosiuhrfjk!?

I have been on 60 hz screens my entire life, only upgrading to 1080p in 2015 or so, and I bought my current screen from a friend a year or two ago -- I guess that's why I never realized it was 144 hz, not 60 hz!? But playing WoW with another friend yesterday, we started talking about specs and refresh rates came up, so she even offered that I could borrow her second screen because she felt so sorry about my only having 60 hz. So for fun and just to be sure, I went to check my settings and yup, it said 144 hz in there! "Surely not", I thought... so I clicked it and absolutely surely fucking yes, it instantly looked a million times better??? I laughed so hard because it is both amazing and I am an idiot because I have seen this exact meme dozens of times and I cannot believe that I am a victim too 😂

The colors are so much richer, the movement of everything was so much smoother. I mean seriously, my mind is still completely blown now a day later. This is a great christmas present for myself, and it was free!

I don't think any other computer upgrade has ever had this big an impact. Blew my mind!

So I'm in the market at the moment for a GPU upgrade. I haven't spent a dumb amount of money on something stupid in a while now and I'm thinking this Christmas season is the time. My only problem is, I've been really out of the loop since the Great Shortage. I've heard AMDs cards these days are actually more than complete jokes, and NVIDIA has been getting too big-headed and making some poor consumer choices. So a switch to AMD sounds like it might be viable for me.

At the moment, I've got an RTX 2070 8GB. I've read that lately, games have been utilizing VRAM like crazy so I want to bolster my numbers on that front. Was looking at 12GB cards since the 24GB ones are all ludicrously priced. At the moment, I'd say my budget is around 500/600 USD. Is AMD worth switching to at the moment? Or should I go for something like a 4060?

I am a pretty big fan of the PCMR Battle station posts where everyone shares their computers and desk setups. I have never seen one here so I figured I would start one!

Here is my desk, three 32" monitors (two facing the desk, one facing my living room on the back ). I primarily use my lower monitor and have background stuff on the upper (spotify, torrent client, youtube, podcasts, winamp, twitch, discord, etc etc). I have a bunch of old Xbox360 controllers and enjoy playing PC games on the couch on my rear monitor (as well as streaming obviously). The rear monitor also has a firestick and my only source of sound (other than my headset) is an Amazon Echo (which also controls my living room lights). The PC is a prebuilt from iBUYPOWER, it was my first time buying a prebuilt (I was hesitant to do so) and the only reason I did was because I was wanting to build a new rig right as crypto mining was driving up the cost of everything and I was able to get a great deal on this one. So far it has performed great. I still have two RAM slots open so I think that is the next thing I am gonna do.

I built my last computer in 2008 so I was way overdue for a new one and my S.O. has informed me I went a little overboard =)

9200 i7-8700K 6-Core 3.7 GHz | Liquid Cooled | Z370 Motherboard| GeForce GTX 1070 | 16GB DDR4| 1TB HDD | 240GB SSD |

Lets see what you guys have!

EDIT: sorry for the low picture quality, my cell phone is garbage.

EDIT2: forgot to include a screenshot

It's the same background on all three, but the taskbar is basic on the two secondary (and icons are only on the main). And if anyone was confused about the random monitor hanging off of the back of my desk this kinda shows it better.

Hello everyone, my CPU died and I'm at a crossroads and hoping for some advice. I bought my rig 4 years ago second-hand. It was originally built in 2017 using high-end parts. It was not something I was looking for TBH, but at the time GPUs were hard to get and it was a crazy deal. Here is what's left of the rig:

• Motherboard - ASUS x99 Deluxe II, fits Intel i7 LGA2011-v3 CPU socket
• PSU - EVGA Supernova 850 T2
• RAM - 32GB, 4 sticks of G.Skill Trident Z 3200 DDR4
• GPU - EVGA 1080 Ti Founder's Edition 11 GB
• Case - In Win 904 plus - large and spacious case
• Storage - Couple of Samsung SSDs
• CPU Cooler - Have ditched the Corsair AIO, picked up a lowest tier fan for $10 to keep it booting while I figure out what to do

Options I'm floating.

1. Get a compatible CPU, but that socket is harder to come by for my MOBO and likely to be second hand + get a new CPU cooler, and upgrade GPU.
2. Replace MOBO, GPU, and get a new CPU and CPU cooler. The PSU is 6 years old but it's decent quality and 850 watts should be enough?

Price range/goals:

• Happy to spend a bit on something that is mid to slightly upper range, but not high end. Thinking $$ will go into the GPU and CPU (maybe $600-800 USD ea?), something reasonably good that's just before the latest gen to get a discounted price. If replacing MOBO, something simple and medium range would be ideal.
• Play some current AAA games like Baulder's Gate 3 and Elden Ring decently, at medium-high settings (not ultra), and don't need super high FPS.
• Ideally supports 4k resolution for desktop use but for gaming I'd be mostly sticking to 1440p/1080p.
• I don't want to overclock (those days are over)
• Likely to sell in 2ish years, don't need heaps of futureproofing
• If replacing MOBO, open to going to the AMD ecosystem for price/performance ratio. I've only ever used Intel so know less about AMD systems.
• Don't need raytracing, DDR5
• For CPU cooler I don't mind AIO but if anyone has any non-water cooled recommendations I'm all ears

I'm at a bit of a loss at what to do, and there are not many PC-building threads here on Tildes, so I thought I'd ask for some advice. Anyone have opinions on option 1 or 2 above, or is there a third option I'm not thinking of? And does anyone have part recommendations? Thanks in advance.

Title says it all. Panels went dark and motor shutoff while bus was still in motion. Driver did a great job and brakes did not fail. No injuries.

I tried to capture reboot sequence but fumbled my phone :(. Mildly distressing that this is a thing that happens…

Edit

Note this happened twice in a row. The first time eveything powered down completely. The driver stopped the bus, waited a minute, rebooted and off we went. The second time, lights stayed on, but everything else blipped. Deiver restarted engine (presumably for ac) and radioed for help.

I'm looking at starting to do a PC build and I'm a bit lost on which way to go CPU wise.

Proposed use case: linux, some gaming (usually older games), possibly trying to learn home lab/self hosting types of things probably in a VM but nothing really heavy. I do want to run Starfield when it comes out and maybe be able to try VR some time in the future.

I'd like to have a bit of a future proof system while getting value for my money, as in I'd like to spend less but I will spend more if it matters. This is where I'm sort of getting lost.

I tend to lean towards Intel because VM's and multitasking should work better (I think) but people seem to believe that AMD is better bang for the buck?

I feel like I'm likely not going to swap CPU's, but RAM, GPU, and storage are easy to swap so I'm not to worried.

Since the minimum and recommended specs for Starfield have come out, I've been budgeting to do a big upgrade on my PC with an AMD 6800 xt and a fancy new 1 TB SSD (which is the first game I've ever seen that requires an SSD) just so I can run the game in all it's space epicness.

What was the game that you were so excited for that you made the jump to upgrade your PC to the next gen of hardware? New or old!

Yeah that's the question. I was thinking of the possibility of posting deals here. But it might just eat up the other tech content here. That's not my goal, but I'd like to start a PC building\support\tech deals tilde.

Just got a new laptop. Downloaded firefox plus a few extensions, found a thing that fixes Windows 11's weird task bar, deleted the bundled McAfee, installed steam, GOG, and Epic and switched everything to dark mode. I feel like I'm forgetting a ton of things, but I'm not sure what.

What do you include as part of the standard setup anyone should do with a new computer?

I really like tinkering with older PC's, trying to make them work for modern usecases which is mostly using web browser.

Anyone else do this here? Or interested in it?

I have old 10" netbook from 2007 or so, it has 1gb RAM and Intel Atom 32bit that barely can handle things. However, I switched it's old SATA hard drive to an SSD, and it is a bit faster at booting now! I also ordered 2gb RAM stick, so maybe that will help it a bit too. It's also running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 32 bit, but i dont recommend this for linux newcomers since it's a bit different distro.

If you have an old laptop or PC lying around, try breathing life into it by installing a Linux distro like Debian 12. Change a spinning hard drive to an SSD. For even older retro hardware there are even SD card adapters and such, that can work in place of old hard drives.

My goal is to make this tiny netbook good for light web browsing and maybe even scripting on things and having a Matrix chat window open. It's perfect tablet size, but very underpowered, even during it's release, so it's a challenge. But that's what makes this kinda fun! Also it helps tone down e-waste if one can use an old device for modern things.

Since it seems we have a few other cyclists on here, I thought I would ask for a recommendation. I'm looking at bike computers, and I've been going back and forth between Wahoo and Garmin. I don't need anything super fancy, so I've been looking at the Bolt or the 530. I really want it for making a route on the computer, and then getting directions at turns (along with the basics like speed, distance, time, etc.).

My biggest priority is stability and battery life. I've read some reviews of the Wahoo saying it crashed or froze on them, which would be a huge turn off to me. My current "computer" is just a simple magnet on the wheel that runs a sensor - it never crashes or freezes or anything like that, and I change the battery about once or twice a year.

So, I'm curious if anyone has suggestions or experience with these.

And also I just wanted to get more cycling content on here... :-)

My main needs are:

• Not too pricey
• Very low idle power
• At least 6 x SATA

I don't need a beefy GPU (the iGPU will be more than I need) or lots of CPU performance (I'll probably pick one of the cheapest compatible CPU).

AM5 is still pretty expensive and the cheap(-ish) motherboards mostly only have 4 x SATA so I would need an extension card. But I'm considering it because 5nm vs 7nm should improve the power efficiency, right? What kind of improvements should I expect there?

Are there any other reasons to go for AM5? I might prefer it for emotional reasons (the lastest and greatest always feels better) so I could use some input from kind strangers.

I could also just wait a bit longer. When should I expect the low-end AM5 comonents to become cheaper?

Here are my views on this:

• Windows: The Windows attitude towards privacy isn't good with their telemetry and other data collection increasing gradually from 8 to 10 to 11. In fact, most geeks across the support forums think that 7 is probably the safest and most privacy friendly Windows version but MS is doing everything it can to ensure that newer software doesn't support 7 and it just goes into obsolescence.

  The "default" state in which a W10/11 laptop comes today is so privacy unfriendly that it sends all kinds of data like contacts, location, etc. to Microsoft and their "trusted partners". You can't turn off this data unless you've visited power user forums and know exactly where to find those settings, and basic telemetry still won't be disabled of course.

  As ironic and unintuitive as it sounds, Microsoft Windows was probably much better in privacy department during the bad old days of Gates and Ballmer compared to the good "open source and geek friendly" days of Satya Nadella!

• Mac: Apple systems should ideally be privacy friendly considering the amount of premium they charge to their products and services. But how well does that work in practice? I've never used an Apple product but those who use them seem to have the impression that they're no good in this department compared to others.
  Logic tells me that a more capitalist devil should be no different than the less capitalist one, they're probably all the same when it comes to throwing user's privacy in the bin!

• Linux: Linux used to be the holy grail of users who cared about privacy many years ago but does that still hold good today? Ubuntu was also in some data collection controversy or other many times in past, but how are the state of things today? And what about the derivative distros, are they good too?

First and foremost: I'm not certain whether this belongs in ~hobbies or ~comp. As I consider this a hobby, this seemed like the more appropriate spot, but I'm more than happy to move/repost in ~comp.

So for the past few years, I've really been hit by the computer nostalgia bug. It originally started as me just wanting to dive back into MUDs, and the whole retrocomputing fascination probably came from me wanting to recreate the "good ole' days" where I would pull up the Windows 98 terminal app and connect to my favorite MUD.

Now I've got a room in my house dedicated to this old, esoteric hobby that happens to take up a lot of space. Admittedly, I don't know a TON about hardware but I've been having a blast tinkering around on old machines. It's even more fun to see how I can push the limits of the computers given a few modern tweaks here and there.

Here's what I've currently got sitting up in the Upstairs Museum of Retrocomputing:

• A Compaq Prolinea 5/75 Pentium - this was given to me by a friend who had it sitting in the basement. To my surprise, everything was still in working order and it fired right up (Windows NT 4.0!) on the first try. Of course, I ripped out the old barrel clock battery and put in something safer. I'd say I tinker with this one the most on the software side, while still trying to keep the hardware as close to original as possible.
• A Compaq Prolinea 3/25s 386 - I just picked this bad boy up and am working on getting an OS installed. It had some damage from a leaky clock battery but I don't believe anything was irreversible. I'm not too confident in the whopping 4 MB of memory, but I'm planning on installing Windows 3.11 on this one.
• A Tandy TRS-80 CoCo 2 - It works, but I haven't spent a ton of time with it because I don't have an old TV or monitor with a coax connection. I'd love to figure out how to create my own cartridge with a homebrew version of Zork or Adventure.
• A Power Mac G5 - It's not ancient, but I think it's still worthy of being in the museum. I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet because I don't have the right video cable. I'll get around to it eventually.
• A Generic Pentium 4 - I actually found this one at a Goodwill store. This one fired right up and had a copy of Windows 2000 installed, including all of the old work files that the person left intact. This one has been the easiest to mod because it's somewhat closer to modern and uses a common form factor. So I've plugged in a new OS, new ethernet, etc. At some point the technology starts to blur and you start questioning why you aren't just using a modern computer.

What's next on my list? I'd like to start playing around with computers/OSes that I'm unfamiliar with. I grew up in a DOS/Mac OS 7-10/Windows world, so I'd love to get my hands on a NeXt, BeOS, etc. or even an Apple II.

But first I need to get the damn 386 running again.

Please help lol

I tried looking around a bit but couldn't find anyone that was interested in this. For me it had been on my radar for years through various forums, but I only built my first watercooled PC in 2020. For that I designed and manufactured my own case and now I am working on a second one! It's become a fun hobby that's taught me CAD and more about manufacturing in general.

So I was curious if anyone else is into the same thing here? It's probably a bit more niche than the mechanical keyboard thread I saw!

So, what's the hottest new thing in IT today, what's that coolest new tech which might prove to be a goldmine some years down the line? The way PCs, websites, databases, programming languages, etc. used to be in the 90s or mobile computing used to be in 00s? Early 00s gave us many a goodies in terms of open source innovations, be it Web Technologies, Linux advancement and propagation through the masses or FOSS software like Wordpress and Drupal, or even the general attitude and awareness about FOSS. Bitcoin also deserves a notable mention here, whether you love it or hate it.

But today, I think IT no longer has that spark it once had. People keep mulling around AI, ML and Data Science but these are still decades old concepts, and whatever number crunching or coding the engineers are doing somehow doesn't seem to reach the masses? People get so enthusiastic about ChatGPT, but at the end of the day it's just another software like a zillion others. I deem it at par with something like Wordpress, probably even lesser. I'm yet to see any major adoption or industry usage for it.

Is it the case that IT has reached some kind of saturation point? Everything that could have been innovated, at least the low hanging fruits, has already been innovated? What do you think about this?