Katja

10 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

If they did a video on what doesn't suck about Windows 11 it would be shorter than a YouTube commercial, LOL. For Windows 10 it would be maybe 10 seconds longer. They both suck, but Window 11 sucks more. 

Aesthetic atrocities aside, the people that like it are only looking on the surface. The payload of utter trash and worthless bloat these digital abortions carry is nothing short of phenomenal. Roughly half of the 120+ services running in the background by default are unnecessary. May of them are present to support the Redmond Retards' stupid sheeple gimmicks, data collection, spying and control freak fetishes.

Debloating newer versions of Winduhz 10/11 helps to minimize the feces, but still isn't enough because the trash is too deeply embedded.

Both of these are debloated and optimized, but look at the payload of filth that remains on the newer trash OS.

  Hide contents

LTSC 2019 - well over 100 running services if not debloated.

  Hide contents

LTSC 21H2 - over 200 services without debloating and still more than 100 after taking out the trash.

 

Seeing the LTSC 2019 vs 2021 things makes me wish the games I play didn't require newer Win10 builds. I have an Arch Linux install on a separate partition on my system, but there's just some things that won't run due to anticheat compatibility (*cough cough nProtect GameGuard) so I gotta deal with it for the time being.

Oh, how far Windows has fallen. I mean, hell, I actually liked 8.1 with Classic/Open Shell on it, and it was definitely faster overall. Just so much crapware and disappointment to me ruins it.

I've been using this dingaling for a few days and it seems to keep temps moderated under load and reduce fan noise on top of it; no complaints.

Also, like two minutes ago, I just found out this thing has a freaking phone stand. Well, that'll be useful for Twitch. I'm actually amused.

On 2/4/2022 at 10:52 AM, Eban said:

(What can I say..I hate apple products and I prefer a smaller phone in my pocket....these rugged phones suit my lifestyle)

Rugged phones are nice; usually when it comes to phones I tend to alternate between iOS devices and Android devices, but I'm probably sticking with exclusively android devices in the near future; always wanted to try out a Unihertz device, but didn't have a proper incentive. Those tiny phones would probably work well for my small hands.

On 2/5/2022 at 7:18 AM, Sandy Bridge said:

An IDE drive?  Now I'm curious.  I probably could add one of those to my desktop with a PCI Non-Express IDE adapter card, but is this a semi-recent computer with both SATA (and a lot of them!), and an IDE drive?

It isn't; they're just sitting around gathering dust; although I do need to eventually get a spare drive I have into a system to get some data off of, might be a worthwhile project to do at some point

5 hours ago, cucubits said:

This makes me think of Curse of the Necrodancer. The music was awesome but I just couldn't keep up and found it a bit too difficult. Loved watching videos of others playing it though.

Own it on the switch; it's a really fun game, but I'm more thinking things like DJMax and EZ2ON, since rhythm games themselves are very niche.

One of my partners got really agitated for buying her Bravely Default 2 and I'm all for it. Kinda sad there aren't any games I'm explicitly interested in outside of some niche rhythm games, but my backlog is already beyond redemption, heh.

I'll start to kick this off, since I'm surprised this thread doesn't exist yet.

Currently I'm daily driving two phones: an iPhone 12 running on iOS 14.2, as well as an Xperia 1 that's bootloader unlocked and on Android 12; one has a sim card on AT&T, and the other one is awaiting a Vodafone sim for use over here.

If we wanna count my girlfriend's desktop, I really can't answer.

But she has like 8 SATA drives in our TV room, as well as an IDE drive that I'm kind of curious about. We have a goal of making a file server, so that'll change.

I had a bit of fun doing upgrades when I did, but a lot of this happened because of a defective G15 Advantage Edition system (M6 batch, which I ended up returning)

I ended up doing a lot of ram swapping; changed the 1x8gb stick in my Thinkpad E14 to a 1x16 that came out of my Maingear Vector Pro (that tongfang laptop I can't remember the model of), as well as a 1TB Samsung 980 NVME drive (one of two) that came out of my G15 before I returned it. I also swapped the wireless card in the Thinkpad courtesy of CoolStar to get macOS running on it, but I'm not currently using macOS; probably will reinstall it at some point, given some issues I had are ironed out in the config.

On my Vector Pro, I upgraded my ram to a 2x32gb kit, as well as tossing in a 2TB Inland NVME drive, purely because I wanted to have the extra capacity for games, and the extra ram for my copious amounts of productivity I tend to leave open (live streaming is a hobby, and some other niche things). I'm also aiming to repaste it in the next week or two with some MX-5, but I'm waiting on that to arrive, since Correos messed up the shipping a bit; not too concerned, but this system is running toasty and ideally I'd like to get temps further down.

My partner's laptop, a Delta 15, got the original 2x16gb kit I had for the G15, and she got my second Samsung 980, as I wasn't going to use it due to my Vector Pro having a (practically 980 Pro) OEM Samsung gen 4 drive in it; it ended up being a fun system to open due to it never being opened; but it honestly is one of my favorite looking machines to this day; I kind of now regret getting my Vector Pro due to 17 inches being a bit much, but it works until I have a monitor once I move to Barcelona soon.

I have some spare laptop dimms laying around now and I'm not even sure what to do with them; might save them for the off chance I make a project system.

I've been jumping back and forth between 10 and 11, but I've settled on 10 LTSC for the time being. I like 11 for the looks, but it tried way too hard to be like KDE, and I guess I'm not a fan of where Microsoft is headed with Windows at this point.

LTSC being stable is what I aim for, and since 21H2 is now available, I can daily drive it due to being a newer version with game support (since gaming is a priority on my system asides from some productivity and low downtime, due to being sick). Windows 11 has a lot of potential, but my one wish is that Microsoft would just stop bundling so much added crapware that people don't tend to use, but that'd be asking too much. My main system's control panel didn't work under 11 unless using the Eluktronics one, but it's something.

I like 11's aesthetic, but it's trying way too hard to be something it isn't; I'll keep using Win10 LTSC 2021 for the time being, until the last of the games I play finally have proper anticheat support in Linux (nProtect GameGuard namely).

I was honestly just more irked with Win11's issues with AMD CPUs around launch, but I haven't touched it in a month or two, so I can't say where it's at right now. I'm more than happy with 10 LTSC since it doesn't change much and it's more lightweight than both 11 and 10 Pro.

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.

On 1/29/2022 at 5:57 AM, FrozenLord said:

You might want to look into the Eurocom Tornado F5 (rebranded MSI 16L1) for that matter as well.

The F5 offers a 6th gen 1151 LGA socket and can run a 9th gen Core i7 just fine, with some BIOS mods.

It has also got a single MXM slot, on top of 1x SATA (2.5") and 2x NVME (m.2 2280) 🙂

I am now HEAVILY tempted on that; I'll have to look after I move in a few weeks, based on if I have any spare money, given right now there's some other things I have to worry about.

On the off chance, if you know anything bout it, how is this in terms of fan noise/temps, given it has a desktop CPU? My current main machine is using an 11800h and a 3080 165w, but the idea would be to make that more of a second-use/project machine for Linux and other things.

1 minute ago, cucubits said:

I'm guilty of this as well. I've got a little raspberry pi4 box automating various things around the apt (lights/fans) and I have Linux running on my NAS box too.

I haven't used a Raspberry Pi in a long time; the last one I used was an original Model B rev B, but I've thought about getting one for some time; currently though I'm looking at getting another laptop to do some hardware tinkering and also to use as a small workhorse.

I'm now kind of curious how modular and costly the M18x is, given I'd like to have an inexpensive tinkering machine that can do some more intensive work (since my main machine is almost exclusively gaming-oriented).

Hello, and welcome to the UAC testing facility. For more options, please press 4.

I have a nasty MMORPG hobby of sinking time into those; otherwise, I'm in the mech keyboard rabbit hole. I also tend to enjoy doing softmodding on game consoles (current focus is the Wii U, given I can't program), because who doesn't like running unsigned code on a console you love?

I also like putting Linux on more devices than I care to admit to. Overall, my hobbies stay kind of in the line of tech, but outside of that? Anime. I'm weeb trash.

Been sinking too much time into Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis; would be putting more time in but I'm prepping for a move on Friday, and it's gonna be a long day.

Glad this came out of the ashes of NBR; granted I joined a month or two ago, and towards the end of the life of the forum, I wish I could've gotten to bond with everyone more, as the community was honestly pretty awesome.
Here's to the future, yeah?