What Have You Done Today - (Computer Version)

[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

Now all I need is a new GPU - thinking the replacement for the RX 7900 XT will be a suitable candidate.

 

[Terronium-12]

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

Now all I need is a new GPU - thinking the replacement for the RX 7900 XT will be a suitable candidate.

You have quite a few options, honestly.

• 7900XT
• Used 6900/6950 XT
• 4070 Ti
• 4070 Super
• Used 3080/3080 Ti
• 7800XT (basically a 6900XT)

 

[Nexus]

You have quite a few options, honestly.

• 7900XT
• Used 6900/6950 XT
• 4070 Ti
• 4070 Super
• Used 3080/3080 Ti
• 7800XT (basically a 6900XT)

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

 

[Terronium-12]

The RX 7900 GRE

How'd I forget about the 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

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.

 

[Nexus]

How'd I forget about the GRE!?

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.

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

 

[Terronium-12]

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

Fair enough.

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...

 

[Nexus]

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

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

 

[Terronium-12]

Reaper is a pretty cool name though.

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

And, yes, I absolutely had a kit of these.

 

[JohnBM01]

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.

 

[Greycap]

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.

 

[Dave A]

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.

 

[Def-Infinity]

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...

 

[TB]

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.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

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.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9b7jJn

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.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zB6Vfd