Katja

Got a slightly defective Sony NEX-F3 camera body (have to restart camera after every shot), an old Pentax lens, and a K mount to E mount adapter.

Takes some nice shots.

Dealing with PSO2 burnout, so I'm starting on my backlog finally (which is EXPANSIVE).

The two games I'm finally getting out of the way are NieR:Automata and CODE VEIN. I also started Metro Exodus, which has more progress than the other two, but I made the mistake of playing Enhanced Edition, so the framerate is a bit garbage.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is also ready to play. I have a lot of spare time, so I should be able to at least make a dent in my backlog while spring comes along and hopefully before the next sale.

I've been listening to this on loop for a while, given the current state of my mental health and physical. It's calming, in a weird way.

Activision's gotta prove themselves after launch before they get my money.

On 8/13/2022 at 2:08 PM, Azther said:

sorry to bring up an old post but figured you and @Reciever would like to know this if you dont already know, pso2 works on steam deck with proton-ge 29, which is the newest update as of 7th august. So with this pso2 should now in theory work under whatever flavour of linux you like as long as the necessary dependencies are installed. Just found out this info today lol

It was working on a previous version of Proton after GameGuard for the global server got updated; you just had to enable casefolding on whatever file system the game was installed to, if it's EXT4 or F2FS. The patch is built into that version of Proton, making it WAY EASIER.

On 2/1/2022 at 3:49 AM, Katja said:

My main machine is this, redistributed by Maingear as the Vector Pro 17", but is also sold as the Eluktronics MAX-17 and probably a bunch of other names by various manufacturers.

I bought it with an Intel i7 11800H, 32GB of DDR4-3200, an RTX 3080 16GB, and a 1TB NVME drive. It's definitely a good system out of the box, but I did make some small changes.

Namely, I upgraded the ram to 64GB, and added an additional 2TB NVME drive, and seems to be running well.

Windows 10 Pro is what this system came with, but I opted for running LTSC (and have used 11 to an extent), and it seems to run fairly well; the temps are definitely something I could really want cooler, but I do keep this in dGPU mode. Temps tend to stay within 80-90C on the CPU, not the most ideal, but that's usually under load. GPU temps are something I haven't gotten around to monitoring, but I'll probably modify this when I do get around to it at some point.

Since this is a rebadged Tongfang chassis, usually someone like Eluktronics or Maingear tend to have their own control centers to modify things; this is something they usually do within their own design. Maingear's control center doesn't seem to work on Windows 11 currently, but I haven't tested it since I initially bought this laptop back in November, so I can't say.

What I can say, though, is that Eluktronics' control center seems to work well on this system (which shipped as Maingear to me) and has a bit more configurability; Maingear seems to cap the GPU's wattage at 150W, when Eluktronics does allow the GPU to hit it's actual cap at 165W, which is where I prefer to keep it at.

I haven't done much with undervolting, but it seems that -70mv seems to do the trick using Throttlestop, and it does help the temps a bit, but I do need to experiment more with it to find a good UV for it. For now, this seems to do the trick.

Linux compatibility seems to be okay on this; I did run an Arch install using i3 for some time, and it seemed that it auto-detected everything out of the box, asides from the GPU (nvidia-proprietary is kind of a must). I haven't done much in Linux with this, but that's something I'll mess with in the coming weeks.

I imagine that doing some proper undervolt experimentation (including maybe on the GPU) might be in order to help the temps, as this runs warmer than I'd probably prefer, but it's to be expected since this system is primarily for gaming.

I'm not usually one to opt for Intel, but the gen 4 speeds on the first NVME slot as well as having Thunderbolt 4 in this were honestly something I were happy to have. I paid about $2500 USD for the system's base model, but the upgrades costed a lot more.

I'm hoping to do some more Linux tinkering with this, and maybe try to fine tune the temps (and maybe repaste the CPU/GPU sometime soon) so I can maybe get this into a place where I'm happy.

For my first full-time laptop system due to moving to Europe recently, I'm pretty happy with it overall. My only gripe is fan noise, but it's not usually too much of an issue.

If anyone else happens to own this same model with similar CPU/GPU, I'd appreciate some suggestions on undervolts at some point.

This thing is thin, strong, and makes for a good 1440p/165hz gaming machine and productivity system. I figure I'd post given nobody had posted anything about a Tongfang system yet.

Oh yeah, this had a power delivery failure and the system is done for now, until I can figure out a proper way to troubleshoot. Meh.

Figure I'd toss a thread to start this since my girlfriend has given me full reign over her last two PCs and didn't have really anywhere else to post it.

Top PC is her old main system, which after some digging had a Phenom II X4 955 with 8GB of DDR3-1333 and a Radeon HD 5850; something I thought was kinda neat. We booted it up and found two ancient installs of Kubuntu and Debian, probably that hadn't been touched since around 2012 (if file dates are anything to go by) and the clock was rather close to the current date and time.

I haven't delved into the bottom PC, which was apparently originally a file server she had, but the most I know is that it's an AM3 platform system, which will be fun to figure out what specs it has; at some point I'll probably repaste the Phenom II and maybe the 5850 and repurpose it.

We booted up the top system and found two ancient installs of Kubuntu and Debian, probably that hadn't been touched since around 2012 (if file dates are anything to go by) and the clock was rather close to the current date and time. Lots of old music and memes from 2010, some old game installs, and some other stuff. Really cool find. (screenshot taken with capture card via OBS)

What other cool stuff have you dug up and looked at? Could be anything from a PC you found at a local thrift store, thrown out, in your closet, or otherwise!

Pulled girlfriend's old PC out of the closet since I permission to use it as a project system and it's got like 4 sata drives, which I thought was kinda cool. Probably somewhere in the realm of like 6tb of storage if I had to guess.

Oh, it also had some old versions of Debian and Kubuntu on it, oldest kernels being somewhere in the 2.6.x release area.

Gonna note this at the start: price isn't too much of an issue for me, although if possible I'd like to keep under 200€ as much as possible.

I got an AKG C3000 a couple of months ago before my move used and unfortunately it didn't come with the bundled shock mount, which is starting to bother me in a lot of ways. I'd like to buy one, but unfortunately I'm not having any luck finding one that ships to Spain, so I figured I'd turn here and see if anyone here would have either the H85 mount for it or something comparable to the C3000 as a microphone.

For reference, I'd prefer it to be ideal to female vocals (for a given reason), and I'd be more than happy to cover shipping to here. Let me know if you have anything and maybe we can work out a price?

On another note, I've officially had it with DIscord's radio silence (which to be fair, they aren't exactly great in general, but that's besides the point), and just posted a long "I'm not a dev but have somewhat of an understanding on some technology" rant telling them to at least address it. Screenshotting it here because I'm absolutely irritated with the lack of radio silence and that Wayland screenshare in general is just borked.

I'm waiting on PSO2 maintenance to end.

Meanwhile eating a borgar 

This is a bit more serious than I care to admit, but I'll just spoiler the text in case people flip shit; I'm handling it okay, but it's something I'll handle ok, since I have a history with it.

On 7/10/2022 at 1:01 AM, ryan said:

hmmm..are you asian lol....like 2300 kung fu movies 500 anime

No, you gotta store ALL THE ANIME

12 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

just beware that if u offer it to the community here, expect lower offers since members here tend to be more in the know regarding hardware pricing 😄 so id maybe expect more like 350€ instead due to used and no warranty.

Oh yeah, I'm aware. I'm not pressed for money, it'd be more of a "oh hey, people might want this in a pretty cool community, i'll offer it up here first" deal.

Just now, jaybee83 said:

a quick look on sold 2070 Super FE models on ebay suggests an average price of 450€. compared to that, u can get an RTX 3060 or an RX 6650XT gpu new for a bit less (starting at 400€ for a 3060 and 410€ for a 6650XT). the 3060 is a tad slower than the 2070 Super, with the 6650 XT a tad faster, so the 2070 Super slots right in between.

considering the performance, i would say 400€ would be a fair price, but if u can get more on fleabay id say go for it 🙂  with a bit of luck u can maybe squeeze out 450-500€ for it.

 

 

This was what I was looking for, appreciate it a lot. I'm not really broke or anything, just kind of wanted an estimate so I could determine what to do with the card (currently a 3 way tie between VFIO, Plex encoding, and selling). Although honestly if I do sell it, I'll toss it up here for first dibs.

Girlfriend and I have an external enclosure with like.. something around 16tb or so, so a decent amount. We're discussing building a NAS, which won't happen at least until after we get our new fibre line installed; aiming to have that run into my office so I can manage it easily. I'd say with all of the storage we have laying around, we could potentially have somewhere in the ballpark of 30tb, but that depends on what hardware we have/end up getting.

Honestly I need to look through her old systems and see if any have enough sata support for a project like this; worst case I can make a double-duty plex and storage server with some extra hardware if need be. That enclosure has something in the ballpark of 5 drives, and if I set it up, I want redundancy, not just pure storage.

Now, if it were an ideal build, I'd probably aim for all-sata SSD storage, but I'm honestly unsure if I wanna foot the bill for that (gotta pay to get some stuff shipped over here from the US I have with some family there, which is gonna cost a bit) on a project that could potentially not work out. Still gotta think on that, since I'm heavily considering buying some cheap x79 or x99 boards/CPUs for something like this. She's got about 2TB of NVME storage in her PC, and I have about 3TB worth, so who knows. All planning for that, but who knows.

On 7/3/2022 at 5:12 PM, Katja said:

The Icicle Cubes is something I can get done if I get a group, the Orbs I'll have done tomorrow, and the Blizzardium will be done after maintenance this week! The weapon.. I'm gonna go broke for. Oh well.

So I got it done, and managed enhancing my weapon to top-tier DPS shenanigans, gotta do some work on the armor though. Meh, but it was worth it for some current end-game content. Guess the 10th anni event did me some favors, heh.

Also passing Mastery IV in one go with two capsules was insanity. Weapon is pretty much complete for the most part, just need to fix up some of my armor. I cannot confirm or deny that I spend too much of my free time on this game.

More curious to see what they're roughly selling for in the off chance a friend of mine doesn't want the one I have shipped to her. Debating selling it or repurposing it somehow, since I'm not exactly sure what the GPU market is like since I bought my 6800XT a couple months ago with my current system.

Any thoughts?

Doubt there's any specific reason to jump to 11 Enterprise on this PC as a second boot (since I'm dailying Fedora, keep LTSC around for a couple of games that have weird issues), but gotta ask where you all are at with that since I don't have a damn clue on it.

Currently dailying Firefox under Linux since I can't seem to find a Waterfox repo on Fedora (very lazy) and Librewolf to access Book of Faces to contact some family/friends from secondary school. It works enough.

18 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

lol loving that mental image haha

They're older systems fwiw; one of them was her current system until she went to a MSI Delta 15; she still uses it, just hasn't hooked it up since the move lmao.

I'm the tech-literate girl of the relationship so I take it in stride, and she loves me "nerding out". I love her to death

1 hour ago, Reciever said:

I don't mind shipping to Europe but I can't guarantee anything after it leaves the country since tracking tends to not follow after that. 

Alright, I'll run it by my girlfriend to see if she's good with it, but I can't promise anything; not sure how she is with excess hardware (given she currently has 3 desktops sitting in our living room), but I'll see.

Max file size doesn't like 1440p scaling; but I'm still doing some work on configuring it to be more.. personalized? Not used to using GNOME since I tend to use other DEs, but hey, I'm liking Fedora.

I think the last hardware failure I had was my Thinkpad E14; somehow the display started going out (ended up being the main board) and eventually it gave up. Took out the ram and drives, and bought a Huawei Matebook 14; I'll miss that thing.

Also I guess my iPhone 12 since that's carrier locked in the US and I gotta mail that back to my egg donor.

On 6/19/2022 at 1:17 PM, Katja said:

PSO2 is gonna be torture to grind the new weapon out, but I really hope my drop luck is okay enough so I can work towards it.

I jinxed myself with this; my drop luck is absolutely atrocious. But hey, there's a workaround to the stutter now (and we know what caused it)!

I can't get the material weapon after two weeks of grinding and over 100KC on the enemy I gotta kill for it. It's a painful time but eh, something to do?

The Icicle Cubes is something I can get done if I get a group, the Orbs I'll have done tomorrow, and the Blizzardium will be done after maintenance this week! The weapon.. I'm gonna go broke for. Oh well.