Mr. Fox

That sure didn't last long. I looked at the link a couple of hours ago and it was about $1,700, but now it's back up to an idiotic $2,200 and the only option available. Thankfully, the rational part of my brain is still functioning well enough that it convinced the irrational part of my brain that $1,700 was still an absurdly frivolous price. I was tempted to add it to my cart for a minute or two, though. It sucks being tempted by impulse, but the victory of overcoming it is sweet.

Thanks brother. It's very kind of you and I appreciate the compliment. I'm flattered that I remind you of your dad. I'm sure he's an awesome man so I take that as a compliment as well. I'm not fond of the design (BGA) but when the cost is kept very low, and if the product will do what you need it to do, it's not the end of the world if you have to throw it away if it stops working. It offers good utility at a low price. It's only when something is both disposable and expensive that it becomes an unwise purchase. I have to admit that, for what it is, it does a really nice job and it's great that it has some degree of expandability. I mean, there are laptops that have soldered ram and storage and this allows replacement and upgrade of both, plus expansion to add a 2.5 inch SATA drive. It's a lot more than you would get in a laptop at this price, that's for sure. I don't really have any use for this NUC. After doing the initial review and the video I haven't used it, so I'm probably going to sell it. I have two fantastic desktops and a nice enough laptop for business travel, so I can't imagine that it won't just sit and collect dust if I keep it. If anyone is interested in it let me know and I'll put it up in the community marketplace. I also have a nicely binned 12900KS and 32GB of Hynix DDR5 M-die that I am not using that I can also sell. If anyone is interested in that, I will put that up in the marketplace as well.

If the GPU killing driver thing were to involve an NVIDIA GPU I would be inclined to consider it a deliberate digital genocide maneuver on the part of the Green Goblin as a wicked plot to sell more GPUs to people that wouldn't otherwise spend any money. We have already seen them in action enough times to know they are not an honorable company. With AMD I would not think that and lean more toward a view of it being accidental or due to incompetence versus a deliberate act with nefarious purposes. However, what we are seeing with unethical pricing and market manipulation they are both shaping up to look like unscrupulous companies that don't care about their products or the people that buy them, as long as they keep making money.

More humor... when my kids were little, if they cut wind (passed gas) my father-in-law would say, "hey kiddo, your breath smells the same, but your voice sounds different" or "if you're doing that in parts, please leave mine out" LOL.

Wow, that is really horrible. I feel bad for the people this has happened to. This should be covered by AMD, even if the GPU is out of warranty.

Well, let me think about it for a minute. *one minute later* nope

Probably among the small number of GTX 980 owners that still exist, only one possessed enough intelligence to identify there is a problem. The rest of them are merely examples of why we can't have nice things any more.

The prophesies are coming to pass. We can all have whatever the lowest common denominators are willing to put up with. Now it is only a question of who is the king of the bottom-feeders.

https://youtube.com/shorts/j2t6M1pz3OU

Intel and NVIDIA generally only engage in battles they have confidence they can win and typically only do things they are good at. AMD tries to do things that they are honestly not very good at doing. They may want to be and they may try hard. Acknowledging effort is appropriate, but only achievements and results truly deserve to be rewarded.

Yup. It's different now. Instead of leveling up for top end, they're just screwing everyone indescriminately at every level. That is not the same as charging a premium for premium. It's more like bad people being bad people and charging stupid people a premium for stupidity. Gone in 60 seconds. I clicked the link and found the same issue. They must have only had a tiny inventory, or people have bots in place to scarf them up for resale/scalping purposes.

Thank you. The LTT video shows examples of three companies in Toronto that are repurposing old tech by jazzing it up with some bling that the kiddos tend to love, and reselling the used stuff still super-cheap compared to the new stuff. Really good solution for financially challenged people (and parents of younger kids) that need a cheap computer that will still do most things well enough if your bar isn't set too high. I would do it for that purpose, nothing to do with e-waste mitigation.

Yes. There is definitely a market for that kind of thing. That guy (in the first link) has a very funny dry sense of humor. I really like his dry corny humor. That is why I think it would be challenging to become established in that niche, but I think once you do it could be very lucrative. The second link (LTT video) shows examples of those who have. I put links to both videos because the first one does not allow embedding their YT videos, so I made both just links so nobody would skip the first link thinking it was the same video as the second link.

Doing something with tech for money like what is shown in both of these videos would probably be a smart thing to do in this difficult economic environment. The vast majority of consumers prefer having something adequate that doesn't cost any more than necessary. It might be difficult to get it in motion as a business, but once you did and got established in it, I think it would have potential to be lucrative. https://youtu.be/0Q6QQm_kPfw https://youtu.be/W8snwlE93aE

I have nothing against Crocs or the people that love them. But, I don't want a PC case that looks like a shoe. Or, for that matter, that looks like anything else other than a PC case. I'm not a fan of gimmicks like that. They usually embrace compromise and omit functionality as a trade-off for weird aesthetics. Even when the aesthetic is pleasing, you're giving up something else related to functionality, performance, or both.

It is getting harder to rationalize spending between $1300 and $2000 more than the price of an A770. If the percentage of performance uplift loosely matched the percentage of price increase it would be fairly easy to justify. I agree with the last comment... definitely "ewww" for me, too. No thanks.

Looks like they are shooting the new Mission Impossible movie in Brother @Papusanstomping grounds (Norway).

It certainly smacks of Micro$lop incompetence and ineptitude. When you spend a lot of your time butt-kissing losers and idiots, their poop gets splattered on you and you eventually begin to smell and behave as badly as they do.

A few products I recently picked up... @Papusan wants the first item because it is BGA.

What Martha Stewart did was equally illegal and she put in her time for it, but I don't refuse to value her talent, watch her on TV or prepare recipes she shares on the basis of her infraction. Neither of their crimes or convictions have any bearing on the validity of their opinions or the information they possess. Their crimes were a direct result of their brilliance, using knowledge and ability to beat the system. It was obviously illegal in the view of their prosecutors and they got caught. If they repaid their debt to society it is now water under the bridge. The way I see it, if what they say has merit then their criminal record is totally irrelevant. Personally, I would not refuse to listen to them or dismiss what they say merely on the basis of their past convictions. But, I totally respect your freedom to do so. I am confident that we have more people than we would ever want to believe we have in positions of power and authority in this country (including a former two-term philandering POTUS circa 1993 and his witchy evidence-destroying wife, our outgoing Speaker of the House, her husband and their son, and our current POTUS and his son) and your country, that are guilty of equal or worse crimes against society that have been overlooked. They are above the law because of their political value to the people that have the ability to turn a blind eye to their crimes in the name of advancing an agenda. They are not held accountable to the same laws because of who their friends are.

Yes, totally. It seems obvious the communication gap was between the father and his son, not between the customer and shop. If I were that Canadian PC shop and I had already been paid I would have refused to give him a refund, especially if the son purchased the system or parts from another PC shop. My response would be, sorry pal, you bought it, it was built for you, it's yours. If you changed your mind and don't want it now, then you sell it and you absord the loss. Not my problem. Once it was built, the parts are all used and instantly worth less than new sealed box. And, there likely would have been restocking fees, etc. It would take a really good repeat customer that I did a lot of business with and wanted to retain as a customer before I would take the loss on that kind of deal.

Interesting that they sell castrated CPUs and spin them as special. This is really difficult for me to relate to as someone that cares about overclocking.

She is a better lady than I deserve, that's for sure. Thank you. It is both awesome and weird that this many years have passed. She is definitely a part of me now and I can't imagine life without her.