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Literally land line. I'm home 98% of the time because reasons, so I've not had a lot of use for one. But it's becomming incresingly difficult to use the internet without smartphone access and two factor authentification becoming a standard, so I'm out of time to resist change.

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  • 3 months later...

Is there a website that lets me compare my current GPU with another to see if it’s worth upgrading? I have an MSI 1660 Super that I bought before all GPU prices went insane. I think I bought it for $250 and now I think it still sells for $500 or $600.

I want to upgrade to a better GPU, but sometimes browsing r/buildapc or r/buildapcsales I’ll see that it’s not worth upgrading from what I currently have from a price and power standpoint. To me though, it seems like upgrading to a 3060 or a RX 6800 would be a substantial increase in power. I just have no idea what price I should be shooting for or I’m playing some stuff on high already then what would a newer card do for me.

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1 hour ago, Tabe said:

That’s perfect.

So basically, aiming for ray tracing is pointless unless I want to spend thousands on a new pc. And I don’t yet have a dual 1440p monitor setup. So at this point, upgrading to something more powerful would be a waste since I can already play games at 1080p on ultra or near ultra and hit between 30 and 60 fps or more depending on the game. Or, at least, it would be a waste until these prices come down another couple hundred bucks.

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I wound up buying a 3080 12 gb card for $800. From Best Buy at that. It has already gone back up to $950 or $1000 or more. I also had to buy a new power supply. Now that I have an 850 W power supply and a 3080, I feel like I might as well just upgrade my CPU. I have a Ryzen 5 5600 now, but I think I might upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5800x. The only thing holding me back is that I did so much wire organization before so that barely any wires showed in my case that I would essentially have to redo everything, including all of the wiring for my RGB fans. Or maybe not. Maybe I just get away with taking a picture, unscrewing the motherboard, install the new CPU and fan, screw the motherboard back down, and just reconnect what was already there. 

The other sticking point is that almost all of my friends who wound up upgrading their CPU wound up having a ton of issues to the point where they had to reformat and reinstall everything. The reformatting part isn't so bad, but I'm on a data cap with Comcast and I recently discovered that I constantly come close to going over my cap each month. I would basically be limited to reinstalling a couple games a month.

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So another computer build question...I now have a 3080 with 12 gb of vram, but I'm still on my old Ryzen 5 3600. I want this thing to basically last through this entire generation of consoles and wanted to upgrade to the Ryzen 7 5800x3d, but I don't think it's compatible with my motherboard and it's $450.

The next best thing is apparently a Ryzen 5 5600x. There's a bunch of comments out there how other than the 5800x3d, it's the best chip out there for gaming. I also thought about the 5800x since it has 2 more cores, but again people online are saying that only matters if you're using your computer as a workstation. I would be using my computer for gaming, video editing, casting/streaming, and Photoshop/Illustrator work.

So the main issue is that it's hard to find any sort of decent write up on an older chip like the 3600 comparing that to something newer like the 5600x. Anyone think it's worth the upgrade and would that and the new GPU be enough to carry me through this current console generation? I'm also planning on upgrading my current 1080p dual monitor setup to 1440p dual monitors.

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  • 1 month later...

After being almost exclusively an LG smartphone user for nearly a decade (a one year dalliance with a Nexus 6 way back in 2015ish aside) I've been forced out of that ecosystem by the combination of LG no longer making phones and my V60 temporarily getting stuck in a boot loop about a week and a half ago. I broke down and committed way too much money for a S22 Ultra.

The screen is so pretty, but fuck Samsung is really weird about things. Like if I put all my apps on my home screen like I prefer, there's no option to sort them automatically. I can't set a default "hide the camera cutout" across the board but have to do it individually app by app.

It's obviously snappy and fast and having the brand new battery makes an obvious difference over the 2 year old one in my V60.

I miss the dual screen, but the Z Fold was A.) not in stock at my local T-Mobile and B.) a few hundred bucks more than the already absurd price on this.

And, of course, once the battery in my V60 fully drained and shut down, I was able to charge it and it's worked fine ever since, so maybe I didn't need to upgrade immediately like I thought I did (though it's been having enough minor issues that I was planning to in the next two or three months anyway.)

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4 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

After being almost exclusively an LG smartphone user for nearly a decade (a one year dalliance with a Nexus 6 way back in 2015ish aside) I've been forced out of that ecosystem by the combination of LG no longer making phones and my V60 temporarily getting stuck in a boot loop about a week and a half ago. I broke down and committed way too much money for a S22 Ultra.

The screen is so pretty, but fuck Samsung is really weird about things. Like if I put all my apps on my home screen like I prefer, there's no option to sort them automatically. I can't set a default "hide the camera cutout" across the board but have to do it individually app by app.

It's obviously snappy and fast and having the brand new battery makes an obvious difference over the 2 year old one in my V60.

I miss the dual screen, but the Z Fold was A.) not in stock at my local T-Mobile and B.) a few hundred bucks more than the already absurd price on this.

And, of course, once the battery in my V60 fully drained and shut down, I was able to charge it and it's worked fine ever since, so maybe I didn't need to upgrade immediately like I thought I did (though it's been having enough minor issues that I was planning to in the next two or three months anyway.)

Would a different launcher UI take care of that? I've used Nova Launcher for years and love it, especially since you can save the settings on one device and port it over when you get a new one.

The Z Fold looks super tempting and I've enjoyed the Note 10 I got after my Pixel was borked, but I'd love to switch back to the Pixel series now that I'm upgrade-eligible.

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5 hours ago, Pete said:

Would a different launcher UI take care of that? I've used Nova Launcher for years and love it, especially since you can save the settings on one device and port it over when you get a new one.

The Z Fold looks super tempting and I've enjoyed the Note 10 I got after my Pixel was borked, but I'd love to switch back to the Pixel series now that I'm upgrade-eligible.

It might, and I might play around with it when I get some free time.

There's also some just "get used to it" that'll probably help with some of my issues.

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I just got the Z fold for basically 75% off. Samsung had a sale a few weeks ago on their website for it around $899 and I got a $450 trade in for my S20+. 
 

i like it so far, but almost never use it folded up. 
 

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Anyone use a wi-fi extender or something similar and want to educate me?  Basically, we want to extend our Wi-Fi network to our back porch.  Signal is fine in house, but gets unreliable on the back porch unless we leave the door open (not feasible in Summer heat).  With door close, signal alternates between moderate, weak, and nonexistent.

Thinking I need a Wi-Fi extender, but don’t know much  about them and pros and cons.  A little speed loss isn’t a big issue as long as it keeps streaming sites like YouTube playing without interruption.

Edited by Tarheel Moneghetti
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32 minutes ago, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Anyone use a wi-fi extender or something similar and want to educate me?  Basically, we want to extend our Wi-Fi network to our back porch.  Signal is fine in house, but gets unreliable on the back porch unless we leave the door open (not feasible in Summer heat).  With door close, signal alternates between moderate, weak, and nonexistent.

Thinking I need a Wi-Fi extender, but don’t know much  about them and pros and cons.  A little speed loss isn’t a big issue as long as it keeps streaming sites like YouTube playing without interruption.

I don't know a ton about it (I have a <2000 sq ft house and one powerful router on the main level is enough) and I'm not exactly answering the question, as I'll talk about mesh instead of extenders, but every router company sells mesh systems now.  If you want to keep your existing one, log into it and see if the dashboard has a section that mentions "mesh," and then just Google what's compatible.  What I can tell you:

  • Avoid the ASUS mesh system.  I did try that because I got a great deal, but I never could get the node to work consistently.
  • How big is your house?  You may not need one.  I'm using a powerful Linksys Velop base unit with no nodes and I can get a signal on the deck (of course, the deck is probably only 30-40 feet from the unit).
  • As mentioned earlier, always get a wifi-6 router moving forward. 

Note: quick searching and reading r/homenetworking tells me range extenders are old tech, not well made, and not recommended, so YMMV.

Edited by Technico Support
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  • 1 month later...

My Steam Deck purchase just went through. When I pre-ordered it back in March, I had a job where I could play my handheld at work. That is no longer the case at my new job... I am not sure if I still need one but I went ahead and completed the purchase. I figure that gives me a week or two to think about it. If I decide I don't need it, I'll offer it to my brother first as he plays a lot of Steam and Switch, if he doesn't want it I can probably sell it for a very slight profit on eBay.

I think the concept is great, I just don't play a ton of handheld unless I am on a business trip, and I do still have my Switch. I just am not sure how much use it would get.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 months later...

Am looking for recommendations for a cloud storage/backup service.  I need something on the order of 20TB, maybe more.  Essentially, I want to be able to have cloud backups of my handful of external media drives.  They are not all connected at once - I rotate through them depending on what I'm looking for.  Being able to share files with other people is a must as well.  

Whatcha got?

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Its' going to be really hard to tick off all your boxes, as most non-enterprise storage solutions cap around 6-7TB.  Backups go higher, but no file sharing.  You're pretty much looking at Google Drive being your best bet, as it caps at 30TB and file sharing is pretty easy.  OneDrive is an option because you can give access to your files via SharePoint, but I think it's more pricy than Google.

I used Drive myself to backup my mobile devices, and school I consult for uses it exclusively for all storage.  There hasn't been many issues (the recovery window for an accidentally deleted file is tight), and I've been happy with it to swing files between my devices (I have 2 phones and 2 PC's that need to swap files around at times, so Drive makes that easier).  

For my PC backups, I use OneDrive personally to keep my personal PC backuped, and my actual 9 -5 job PC uses OneDrive for storage (it's enterprise, so the storage cap is huge), and haven't had any issue with file recovery.  Hell, changing PC's is pretty easy now as soon as I log it in and connect it, it pulls down my files (or the links) locally.  

 

Now, for media, I know some older former tape traders have moved to a Patreon model and have been using Google Drive (you join a tier, they send you a link), and you can set up users to have specific access/limits), so that may be a point in Google's favor.

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  • 1 month later...

Well, tonight was...hairy.

As a preamble to the worst of the t-storm bullshit we caught here in the DMV, there was a power surge at my building that zonked out my computer.  It's had some POST (that's Power-On Self-Test, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like) issues for a while, where it would hang and annoy me for as much as 30 minutes before finally coming back to life.  Usually two or three power recycles of turning off the PSU, unplugging the cord, letting it sit for 30 seconds or so, and then trying again would wake it up.

Not tonight.

Must have unplugged it about 10 times and it didn't do a thing.  Popped out the CMOS battery (which will reset the motherboard) and that did nothing, at least with a short, 30-second wait.  Replaced the CMOS battery with a new one, nothing.  And the worst part was that it has 4 little "dummy" lights on it, the two big ones being memory and CPU.  And, yeah, CPU was solid red.

So finally I got desperate and found only one seemingly workable suggestion: take out the CMOS battery for a period longer than 20 minutes so that the system BIOS properly resets.  So, I did that, went to work to check on an experiment at 10 PM (it's fine, btw), and came back to replace the battery.  Everything plugged back in...still nothing.

Then I got REALLY desperate, opened my work laptop, and resigned myself to spending about $400 replacing the motherboard and the CPU.  The CPU is just old enough that you can't get new Ryzen 7 2700s anymore, and if I had to punch up to a different release of the Ryzen, I was probably going to need a new motherboard anyway, not that I knew what was wrong with either (or both).

5 minutes after placing the order, the computer POSTed and booted up.  Little fucker.

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