Sept 1, 2020 17:04:55 GMT c said:

Incy, if you want to go high end for the graphics card, the 3080 was announced today.

www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2020/09/01/nvidia-rtx-3090-3080-and-3070-everything-we-know-ahead-of-todays-ampere-launch/#23c3fb5b4077

And liquid cooling will get you a performance boost on par with moving from from the 1080 to the 2080. It is a huge boost. No need for a complex system, just something to cool the CPU. Stuff is FAR easier to use these days than it used to be. Closed-Loop liquid coolers are common now and pretty much plug and play without a hassle. They are also smaller than air cooling options. Will need two of them to also cool the GPU. Also increases overall airflow through the PC due to the smaller footprint as CPU aircoolers tend to be massive. I use air cooling for my current build but next build will def be liquid cooled now that closed systems are a lot less hassle to use. It may be overkill for your system but if you are going to run high end, you will need it to really get the most out of the hardware.

If you do run air cooler make sure you use a GOOD cooler. This is what I run now and it works great.

www.amazon.com/dp/B005O65JXI

Not sure your PC building knowledge, but I seen people with insane systems and a stock CPU fan wondering why shit runs slow.  Cost limited me but a dual fan setup would be best.  It is size heavy so a small case may find itself running out of room, which is why I suggest mid to full towers.  Small towers are cute, but I focus on performance.

Also know cases are def not all considered equal so look into a strong case option too.  Another area I seen people skimp on.  I like cooler master cases for more budget options but there are some really great cases on the higher end.

In the near future I plan to move my PC into this case or something very similar.  

www.lian-li.com/lancool-ii-mesh-performance/

I love that you can open the PC to work on it without unscrewing anything.  I also just think this is a sweet budget case.  Of course there are better options at the higher end, but me broke.  

For the Cooler, I will get one of these: noctua.at/en/nh-d15
I personally think liquid cooling isn't a great idea, I know the fittings etc. have got better, but a case with good ventilation will be fine.
This is the case I am looking at:

www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/meshify/

I always like the Fractal Designs case aesthetics and they have good airflow, you can put fans on the front and back.
I don't really get the trend for tempered glass on front panels that force you to liquid cool because there is no airflow.

Sept 1, 2020 17:16:51 GMT Gyro LC said:

That CNC router is sweet, especially for free. I have the Pocket NC v1 5-axis. It can only do up to 4” cubes. We were using it to make wooden dice. pocketnc.com/

That's really cool, I haven't seen those before.
I love the idea, but they are crazy expensive for the work envelope size.

Sept 1, 2020 19:25:43 GMT 🤯 said:

As much as I'm loving this thread, why isn't it in VG&Tech?

-_-

You shut your damned whore mouth 🤯,  :@
We don't want to be down in that forum gettings dorito crumbs and mountain dew all over us.
Plus, you post anything non-gaming and it gets ignored.

I love Fractal Design's cases. Make sure you get one with a type C interface since that will be used more and more in the future and some of the older models I think lack it. Rock solid cases though. The old Meshify C was one of the most recommended cases when I built my computer but was a bit more than I wanted to pay. But next build is a toss up for me between the Meshify and the Lancool from Lian-Li.

That heat sink should serve your needs very well. Moreso if you are running air through the case. Water cooling would be better in terms of temp control, but realistically, I doubt you will hit a point where you will run hot enough for long enough to need water cooling if you are not gaming or doing shit like VR / CGI. I use a cheaper version of it now and works perfect for me.

IDEAL fan placement is actually not front and back from on the sides.  But it is a pain in the ass to set up and not really worth the hassle. Plus it makes opening the case a pain the ass.  My cube build had side fans and it sucked to open the box due to them.  I prefer front and back too, but the reason I am looking at water cooling is simply to reduce the amount of fans I need and the mess of wires. Also is more cooling power for less cost these days as a low end cooling system will match that higher end heat sink you are getting due to the cost of the metal increasing.  

Sept 2, 2020 3:46:37 GMT c said:

I love Fractal Design's cases. Make sure you get one with a type C interface since that will be used more and more in the future and some of the older models I think lack it. Rock solid cases though. The old Meshify C was one of the most recommended cases when I built my computer but was a bit more than I wanted to pay. But next build is a toss up for me between the Meshify and the Lancool from Lian-Li.

That heat sink should serve your needs very well. Moreso if you are running air through the case. Water cooling would be better in terms of temp control, but realistically, I doubt you will hit a point where you will run hot enough for long enough to need water cooling if you are not gaming or doing shit like VR / CGI. I use a cheaper version of it now and works perfect for me.

IDEAL fan placement is actually not front and back from on the sides.  But it is a pain in the ass to set up and not really worth the hassle. Plus it makes opening the case a pain the ass.  My cube build had side fans and it sucked to open the box due to them.  I prefer front and back too, but the reason I am looking at water cooling is simply to reduce the amount of fans I need and the mess of wires. Also is more cooling power for less cost these days as a low end cooling system will match that higher end heat sink you are getting due to the cost of the metal increasing.  

It's annoying that AMD doesn't support Thunderbolt directly and you have to tie up one of your PCI-E slots for it, but I think it is worth it.

I prefer front and back fans as you get the best airflow, if you have push-pull fans on either side the motherboard retards the airflow, and in most cases they have a panel to hide your wiring behind.
Cable management is probably the only thing I am OCD about, I did a heap of it when I was an apprentice.

I never go bleeding edge with the hardware, I was really tempted to do a Threadripper build, just because I find them fascinating.
I think the gains over a Ryzen 9 aren't really worth it unless you have a heap of applications  or hardware than needs the cores.

The problem with bleeding edge is the gain usually are small, the costs are high and sometimes the gear has serious issues that you pay to discover. I would rather not be essentially beta testing hardware that I pay for. I prefer to go reliable tech from the last stable generation if I can afford it, or top tech from two generations back. There is nothing I hate more than hardware instability.

We’re reaching a plateau of performance increases. In the 90s and 2000s, there were big gains between generations. Now they’re incremental. I built my previous PC in 2008 with mid-grade components. I replaced it earlier this year but it still performed just fine with games. I just felt like getting a fancy new processor. I didn’t need to upgrade.

Sept 2, 2020 19:12:30 GMT Gyro LC said:

We’re reaching a plateau of performance increases. In the 90s and 2000s, there were big gains between generations. Now they’re incremental. I built my previous PC in 2008 with mid-grade components. I replaced it earlier this year but it still performed just fine with games. I just felt like getting a fancy new processor. I didn’t need to upgrade.

That's an interesting view, I think it is true to a point that clock speeds are only increasing incrementally.
The real gain has come from AMD's ability to squeeze on way more cores with their 7nm processors.
The Epyc and the Threadripper are amazing achievements.

Even the Ryzen should be making games way faster than they are.
The issue is not so much the hardware but the software.
Most games aren't written to tax multiple cores so it's why the Intel house fire chips still slightly win out on games based on their higher single core clock speeds.

What is more cool about the new Ryzen chips and especially the PCIe Gen4 is the read write speeds to the drives.
You can assign cores to do nothing but fetch information from the drive and with fast Ram in enough channels and fast M.2 or Optane drives there is really no limit on how fast you can read data.

Where this is super-exciting is the application that is being touted on the PS5.
NO LOADING SCREENS!
The read speed of the drives and the processing speed means they look to be pulling the graphics in real time.
That would be incredible....

c, I checked the new Nvidia cards today, glad I held off on my build the RTX3070 is about as fast as 2080Ti at 1/3rd of the price! That's insane.
That I think will be my  sweet spot if I can get one, which is what I expect the major problem to be.
I would be so pissed if I just bought a 2080ti.
Again, I think this is all about the nanometers.
The 3080ti looks cool, but I think overkill for me.


In other technology news, I am pretty psyched for the Microsoft Duo, which to me looks a hell of a lot better than the Galaxy fold.
Even if it is a last generation processor and a low refresh rate screen.
I think there are a couple of specs that just become things for reviewers to bitch about.
I have a Galaxy Note10 Plus 5G I normally upgrade my phone every two years.
It has never bothered me in the slightest how smooth the refresh rate is on a phone when you're scrolling, I mean if it was 10hz it would be ugly, but 60Hz is plenty.

So team green just released the 3070 which in gaming performance almost matches the 2080ti for half the price, which is a great deal... if you can find one!
I am holding off for the AMD launch, though they constantly disappoint with graphic cards.
Leaning towards the 3080 at the moment, can't understand the justification for the 3090

On the Microsoft Duo front, I looked at it and was going to buy it, but the crap camera put me off.

Figure I am two years away from updating if I do, and since I go past tech for budget updates looking to build around something like the RTX3070 and a midrange Intel chip. Thus far though I really have no good to update but Cyberpunk may change that.

Streamers I follow got the 3080 though and I see no difference from the 2080.  I suspect that few things are using the processing increase we are getting as we are nearing a graphics wall where programming is not keeping up with speed.

Oct 28, 2020 5:57:37 GMT c said:

Figure I am two years away from updating if I do, and since I go past tech for budget updates looking to build around something like the RTX3070 and a midrange Intel chip. Thus far though I really have no good to update but Cyberpunk may change that.

Streamers I follow got the 3080 though and I see no difference from the 2080.  I suspect that few things are using the processing increase we are getting as we are nearing a graphics wall where programming is not keeping up with speed.

Unless people are gaming at 4k and their graphics card was bottle-necking them, they wouldn't see much difference in FPS with the naked eye.
Yeah, I think you strategy is solid, maybe an i7-8700k or a Ryzen 3600 secondhand (Which will be three generations old soon)
There's probably going to be a heap of 2080ti's going cheap from people upgrading.

My daily driver is a laptop with a i7-8850h and 32gb of Ram and an onboard 1050Ti which seems pretty useless, but better for CAD and Adobe than the onboard graphics.

When I do upgrade it will be to use ray tracing so MTX3080 is perfect for that. Figure swap in a i7 and build around that shell. But as it is I barely use my PC to play games with "modern" graphics. By the time I upgrade the 4080 will likely be out so the 3080 will drop in value and since the 2080 has more raw power for mining, the 3080's will be cheap.

There will be a heap of 1080ti's from people upgrading. Those 2080's will be bought off the market for bitcoin mining rigs.

Oct 28, 2020 6:59:55 GMT c said:

When I do upgrade it will be to use ray tracing so MTX3080 is perfect for that. Figure swap in a i7 and build around that shell. But as it is I barely use my PC to play games with "modern" graphics. By the time I upgrade the 4080 will likely be out so the 3080 will drop in value and since the 2080 has more raw power for mining, the 3080's will be cheap.

There will be a heap of 1080ti's from people upgrading. Those 2080's will be bought off the market for bitcoin mining rigs.

I think bitcoin mining is dead and buried now, it's too expensive, most of those cards are coming back onto the market.
You can buy dedicated mining rigs for little money and it still doesn't make sense. 


www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-z15
420 kh/s 


Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti 96 Mh/s ; 155w

Oct 28, 2020 7:10:22 GMT iNCY said:

Oct 28, 2020 6:59:55 GMT c said:

When I do upgrade it will be to use ray tracing so MTX3080 is perfect for that. Figure swap in a i7 and build around that shell. But as it is I barely use my PC to play games with "modern" graphics. By the time I upgrade the 4080 will likely be out so the 3080 will drop in value and since the 2080 has more raw power for mining, the 3080's will be cheap.

There will be a heap of 1080ti's from people upgrading. Those 2080's will be bought off the market for bitcoin mining rigs.

I think bitcoin mining is dead and buried now, it's too expensive, most of those cards are coming back onto the market.
You can buy dedicated mining rigs for little money and it still doesn't make sense. 


www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-z15
420 kh/s 


Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti 96 Mh/s ; 155w

This post caught me.

What's up with bitcoin mining, dedicated rigs for it, and the whole deal being dead and buried?

Father-in-law has apparently been getting into this over the past two years, building up a farm of bitcoin miners. He doesn't really know what he's doing, he admits. Is partnering with people who apparently do. I don't know enough to know whether he's been smart to pursue this, especially this way... Or if he's too late to the party and being taken for a ride.

Oct 28, 2020 7:31:43 GMT 🤯 said:

Oct 28, 2020 7:10:22 GMT iNCY said:

I think bitcoin mining is dead and buried now, it's too expensive, most of those cards are coming back onto the market.
You can buy dedicated mining rigs for little money and it still doesn't make sense. 


www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-z15
420 kh/s 


Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti 96 Mh/s ; 155w

This post caught me.

What's up with bitcoin mining, dedicated rigs for it, and the whole deal being dead and buried?

Father-in-law has apparently been getting into this over the past two years, building up a farm of bitcoin miners. He doesn't really know what he's doing, he admits. Is partnering with people who apparently do. I don't know enough to know whether he's been smart to pursue this, especially this way... Or if he's too late to the party and being taken for a ride.

It's got to the point where the home mining setups can't really generate enough money to be worth your while at the current BTC price.
With a top of the line rig you won't make much, you can improve it by joining a pool of other miners, but it doesn't really help.
The dedicated mining hardware like the z15 I posted, do make money... But only about $25 per day.
I was interested because I am looking at putting solar power on the roof at work and thought that using the excess energy to mine bitcoin might make sense... It doesn't.
It's an enthusiast sort of thing, but I wouldn't expect many home users to be making anything over the cost of paying for their hardware, unless they're mining pump and dump shitcoins.

I looked into mining in 2012 and it just did not seem worth it after the increase in electrical costs to keep things cool and the draw to run the gear itself.

But it is not really the home users that suck the crap off the market but people who are setting up rigging walls. So not so much one user buying one to mine, but one guy buying 100 at a time to upgrade a wall.

I mined one bitcoin back in 2013-2014 with middling hardware. I wouldn’t bother now. I did just sell it recently to pay for some remodeling.

Wish I was smart enough to buy bitcoin when the stock market collapsed. Would have been a really easy 300% return on investment now.

What even is mining bitcoin?

Embarrassing confession... In early days, I thought that bitcoin was something related to minecraft because of the mining tie in.

Oct 28, 2020 7:47:39 GMT iNCY said:

Oct 28, 2020 7:31:43 GMT 🤯 said:

This post caught me.

What's up with bitcoin mining, dedicated rigs for it, and the whole deal being dead and buried?

Father-in-law has apparently been getting into this over the past two years, building up a farm of bitcoin miners. He doesn't really know what he's doing, he admits. Is partnering with people who apparently do. I don't know enough to know whether he's been smart to pursue this, especially this way... Or if he's too late to the party and being taken for a ride.

It's got to the point where the home mining setups can't really generate enough money to be worth your while at the current BTC price.
With a top of the line rig you won't make much, you can improve it by joining a pool of other miners, but it doesn't really help.
The dedicated mining hardware like the z15 I posted, do make money... But only about $25 per day.
I was interested because I am looking at putting solar power on the roof at work and thought that using the excess energy to mine bitcoin might make sense... It doesn't.
It's an enthusiast sort of thing, but I wouldn't expect many home users to be making anything over the cost of paying for their hardware, unless they're mining pump and dump shitcoins.

As I understand it, it sounds like he's got 100 servers or something around that neighborhood all set up to mine in a trailer adjacent to the waste coal power plant he bought and now runs. I assume power for running them and cooling them comes pro bono from his plant.

I still don't understand what the actual mining is though. But it clearly seems to at least just involve automated code doing something?

c I remember hearing about Bitcoin when you could buy them for $0.25. I just thought buying one would be a great way to lose a quarter.

🤯 Basically, mining is a race to complete extremely complex math problems. The type of math Is one-way, so you cannot just reverse the equation to solve for x. You have to guess what x is then run the equation and see if it matches the solution. It’s brute force so higher computational power is better. If you solve the problem, you’re awarded a certain number of bitcoins. The problems are used to build the blockchain, which is the record of all bitcoin transactions ever.

Yeah I remember when it started I was like who the hell would pay for fake money.

Oct 28, 2020 19:33:20 GMT Gyro LC said:

c I remember hearing about Bitcoin when you could buy them for $0.25. I just thought buying one would be a great way to lose a quarter.

🤯 Basically, mining is a race to complete extremely complex math problems. The type of math Is one-way, so you cannot just reverse the equation to solve for x. You have to guess what x is then run the equation and see if it matches the solution. It’s brute force so higher computational power is better. If you solve the problem, you’re awarded a certain number of bitcoins. The problems are used to build the blockchain, which is the record of all bitcoin transactions ever.

I'm realizing now I know even less than I thought I knew.

Just pretend people use computer graphics cards to create picks that then mine the matrix gold mines with. The bigger the card, the faster the pick works.  But over time the matrix gold mines become harder to mine, so you need to get better and better picks.

But who's this math expert who buried gold behind Good Will Hunting equations embedded within the Matrix?

So to bump my geek thread with more broad and geeky matters.
I just rolled out Home automation across our business, which I think is super cool.
It all started because the national telephone network here is shutting down in favour of a FibreOptic IP network, which is great but meant my alarm didn't work any more for letting me know if it was going off.

Then I stumbled across this online, which appealed to me: konnected.io/
So I installed that, then added a couple of IP cameras which were crazy cheap at under $100 each: reolink.com/au/product/rlc-410/

Then I wanted something to pull all the data together and found: "Home Assistant" : www.home-assistant.io/ (Completely free, I installed it on an old PC that was lying around)
Finally, I started changing my light switches to these: www.aliexpress.com/item/4001320452950.html (Except I bought them re-branded in Australia with local regulatory approval)

Now everything here is automated, I can check my cameras from anywhere and if I have to I can switch my alarm on and off and it sends me messages over Telegram if it is triggered with a photo.
It's all getting amazingly cheap to do these days.

It is insane how cheap IP cameras are. I had rigged my apartment in NC with one for 40 bucks I could check when I was on vacation. Did actually bust the management company coming into the apartment unannounced too, which was scary since we left the cats there alone.  Anyone who owns a home though should really consider at least one camera, if not a full setup.  $200 is what it takes really to set up a really strong security system without having to DIY any of it really.  Can go cheaper if you are willing to rig up your own storage system.

Not sure if you looked into shit like thermostats or automation of lights yet Incy but can set this all up too to make sure everything is off at certain times, temp is turned down during the night and up in the morning and all sorts of other shit.  IFTTT makes since really easy to chain together.

May 3, 2021 1:48:57 GMT c said:

It is insane how cheap IP cameras are. I had rigged my apartment in NC with one for 40 bucks I could check when I was on vacation. Did actually bust the management company coming into the apartment unannounced too, which was scary since we left the cats there alone.  Anyone who owns a home though should really consider at least one camera, if not a full setup.  $200 is what it takes really to set up a really strong security system without having to DIY any of it really.  Can go cheaper if you are willing to rig up your own storage system.

Not sure if you looked into shit like thermostats or automation of lights yet Incy but can set this all up too to make sure everything is off at certain times, temp is turned down during the night and up in the morning and all sorts of other shit.  IFTTT makes since really easy to chain together.

I am always leaving the lights and AC turned on by mistake, now when I arm the alarm system everything turns off automatically.
You can even run the whole thing off a laptop or a raspberry pi

Yeah, this is the perfect system to use a Pi for as well, since you really do not need much power to run it all. Can use a cellphone not in service to act as a proximity remote, to trigger things automatically when you are in range or leave the area. Also can use the phone as a remote interface to the home network to program things. So when you show up and the phone connects to the wifi network turn on lights, shut off security, start AC - when the phones breaks the wifi connection do the opposite. Everyone has an old phone around so it is a cheap way to do more location based automation as well.

Or as you do, just link everything together, so it is one button starts the chain of everything you want to do.

More interesting crap to do is use IFTTT to get things like sunset time, and turn lights on based on that time, blink your lights when a certain condition is met (like important email comes in you should check), log info from a fitness tracker into a spreadsheet and other things. I am working on the research now to see if it is possible to use data from a fitbit to map manic states, to then trigger the user that they undergoing a possible mood state change.

May 3, 2021 3:34:11 GMT c said:

Yeah, this is the perfect system to use a Pi for as well, since you really do not need much power to run it all. Can use a cellphone not in service to act as a proximity remote, to trigger things automatically when you are in range or leave the area. Also can use the phone as a remote interface to the home network to program things. So when you show up and the phone connects to the wifi network turn on lights, shut off security, start AC - when the phones breaks the wifi connection do the opposite. Everyone has an old phone around so it is a cheap way to do more location based automation as well.

Or as you do, just link everything together, so it is one button starts the chain of everything you want to do.

More interesting crap to do is use IFTTT to get things like sunset time, and turn lights on based on that time, blink your lights when a certain condition is met (like important email comes in you should check), log info from a fitness tracker into a spreadsheet and other things. I am working on the research now to see if it is possible to use data from a fitbit to map manic states, to then trigger the user that they undergoing a possible mood state change.

If you want to play with cobbling sensors together, have a look at Node-Red, I use it a lot and it is perfect for this sort of task.
There are already nodes in there for Fitbit: flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-fitbit

I was planning more of just using pulse data. Was a KISS system. Basically measure average pulse rate, note it to a spreadsheet, then if the daily rate increases 20% over the 30 day average text the person a mania warning. Stupidly simple.

Node-Red appears to be a way to simplify logic gate automation which is useful if you do not really know logistical logic. I play a lot of modded Minecraft, and logistical logic is the bread of butter of modded minecraft where really you just play with automation.

But can do insane things when you really get the hang of logic gate automation. Basically, logic gate automation, coupled with parameterized decision making is basically what people consider AI.

May 4, 2021 3:43:07 GMT c said:

I was planning more of just using pulse data. Was a KISS system. Basically measure average pulse rate, note it to a spreadsheet, then if the daily rate increases 20% over the 30 day average text the person a mania warning. Stupidly simple.

Node-Red appears to be a way to simplify logic gate automation which is useful if you do not really know logistical logic. I play a lot of modded Minecraft, and logistical logic is the bread of butter of modded minecraft where really you just play with automation.

But can do insane things when you really get the hang of logic gate automation. Basically, logic gate automation, coupled with parameterized decision making is basically what people consider AI.

I'm aware of logic gates. 😶

I have spent my whole working life in industrial automation.
I can write it, I can fault find it, I can modify it.

Node-red is useful because it allows you to patch together different networks and platforms. Everything FROM SQL to Modbus to TCP to RS232
Before Node-red there was no easy way to stich frameworks together at the moment in a visual way. Sure you can use python or nodejs but it is slow at the wire frame stage.
With Node-red you can build a rest api in 10 minutes.

This is what I have built so far:




I blurred the cameras for the screenshot

So, it does some cool things, turns all the lights off when the alarm is turned on.
If the alarm goes off, it sends me a message over Telegram with a photo of the camera in that zone.

Still to do:
I bought an IR blaster and I am going to program in the downstairs air conditioner, to ensure it is turned off
In my box of tricks upstairs I have an ESP8266 NODEMCU and a relay board, I am going to flash it with ESP home and use it so I can switch off the alarm and open the roller door from my phone. (It's a big door, not your typical garage door)
The upstairs air conditioner / heat pump has failed, I am going to replace it with a new one that has wifi built in so I can turn the heater on automatically when heading to the office.
I also have a large touch screen display I am going to set up in the office as a monitor for the front door alarm and as a control centre.
Use another ESP8266 to trigger a webhook on the doorbell.
I also have a cheap power montitor / current clamp I bought online so I might tie in some power monitoring.

I don't have time for any of this... But it interests me... I don't get out much.