UltraMega

I don't expect this to turn into a full time business or anything. Any profits I make will just be on top of what I'd make otherwise. If I can get in a routine of selling just one per week and making $150 per sale, that's an extra $600 a month. If I could do 4 each week, then it would be like a real business but I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, if ever.

Got a pretty good deal on the 5700X, newegg was selling them for $178 at the time, which is pretty good for new. Usually they go for more than that used. I particularly like the 5700X because it's almost the exact same performance as a 5800X but only 65 watts and therefore much easier to cool. Going with a 5800X or X3D would mean the whole build gets a lot more expensive because of the added cost of the CPU and cooling requirements. This PC will probably be going for around $1000 unless I get something better than a 3070 for it. I agree that going any higher on the price would mean moving to Zen 4. I don't think the 5800X3d is a particularly good value, even used, because a Ryzen 7600 performs about the same for gaming and it's cheaper.

To answer why someone would use Etsy to buy a PC: I think it's probably cheaper than buying a PC from one of those gaming PC sites. You generally only get a 30-90 day warranty on PCs like this no matter where you buy them, unless you pay for an extended warranty, and I offer a 90 day warranty on all the PCs I build. I think some people also like the idea of buying from "the little guy" rather than a big business as well. Another reason is that when you buy something on Etsy, I think it's usually safe to assume the person selling the item has a passion for it, and in the case of gaming computers, more expert level knowledge of how to properly build and setup a computer. I know from first hand experience that the people building computers at a place like Digital Storm have basically no understanding of the hardware they're putting together and only know how to do it because someone trained them to. They're not PC gamers at all, just assembly line workers. I think a lot of people prefer to get a PC from a PC gamer who fully understands everything about the PC. If there is ever an issue, the customer only has to deal with one person instead of a big business with an annoying phone tree or anything like that. Etsy is a bit of an odd platform, I agree, but someone already bought the PC I listed and other sellers on there are clearly making it work so . There are a lot of frilly pink PCs on there though, might have to build a pink PC.

Moving away from Ryzen 3000. Next PC will be: AMD 5700X 16 thread CPU 3600Mhz 32GB CL16 Ram 2TB PCIe4 4500MB/s M.2 drive GIGABYTE B550M DS3H AC (wifi) Thermaltake Toughpower TPD-0750M About $600 in parts. Same case as the last PC. Have not settled on a GPU yet. All new parts. This started as a re-sell experiment, and I may source a lightly used GPU if I find a good deal on one, but I am moving away from used part and simply selling retail hardware now. I love the idea of recycling hardware, and I would really like that to be a part of my future PC sales, but now that I feel I've found an avenue to sell PCs, and I'm going to try to tap it with quality PCs, and maybe move back into refurbs once I get established. Two months from now I hope to have 3-5 PCs listed on my Etsy account ranging from $700-$1500. What would you guy like to see specs wise in that price range? Or any range?

I've completed the Etsy order, shipping it out today. Ordered another identical case so I can reuse the box for shipping. Feel dumb for not keeping the original box. I cut some foam to support the GPU and make sure it can't move around during shipping. Paid for shipping insurance and signature verification, and the shipping only cost $45.

I love Cities Skylines, I have 170 hours in it not counting the game pass version that I started playing on before I bought it on steam. How many DLCs has it sucked you in for?

It's definitely possible. just uninstall your Realtek audio driver and then reinstall your GPU driver. Might not fix your issue, but easy thing to try.

It wouldn't have anything to do with your audio driver, it would be the GPU driver that powers the audio over HDMI. A quick search suggests the Realtek driver is interfering with the AMD driver. https://www.eightforums.com/threads/fix-amd-hdmi-no-sound-output-to-monitor-speakers.21357/#:~:text=If you have downloaded and installed updated Realtek,select Action%2C then select Scan for Hardware Changes.

Yesterday I had a customer call me about transferring some old DVDs of home movies to a flash drive. Some of these DVDs are over 20 years old and not all of them are fully readable. Obviously way less complicated than dealing with VHS tapes, but still kinda interesting to be dealing with burned DVDs that are so old they are breaking down. Pretty simple though, VLC can convert the video data to mp4. I had to pull my old Sandy Bridge PC out of my closet to do the transferring because it's the only PC I have with a DVD drive.

PC sold on Etsy for real this time. Payment cleared, everything good to go. I just have to ship out the PC now.

Definitely interesting hearing about some of your IT backgrounds from this thread. Sounds like the overall take away is that experience definitely trumps certs, but get them if you can if you're still trying to boost your resume.

Been playing this game Ixion. The soundtrack is pretty top notch.

I am in a similar boat of looking for ways to expand on my resume. I have no certs, no IT degree. I did get basically a general associates degree which just means I did all the college level general ed. I would have wanted to become a scientist if I were better at math, but that didn't happen lol. Computers were always a hobby for me, got my first computer repair job when I was 19 or so and have worked a lot of computer related and computer repair jobs since. Before COVID, I had a REALLY great job. I could set my own hours, I was making great money for the number of hours I was working, and I didn't have to work full time or even close. I was easily paying my bills and stacking my saving without breaking a sweat. And it was the only job I ever had that I got because of a special piece of paper, but it wasn't from a cert or degree, it was my business license. The job was; Amazon in home Assembly/installation technician, and I needed the business license to get this job. I had the license from doing computer repair on my own via my Google listing. Basically, Amazon used to have this thing where you could order something like treadmill or a trampoline that needed assembly and pay extra to have Amazon schedule an in-home assembly appointment for you, and I would be the assembly guy. It paid 80% of what the customer was charged, and that was a lot of pay for the time it took to do the work. Typical jobs would be something like a treadmill that takes an hour to assemble from start to finish and I would make about $100 for the job. Do 2-3 of those in a day, work a few hours, go home with plenty of time to relax. It was really the best of times. I had signed up for the Amazon thing because they offered computer stuff like hard drive replacement as some of their in-home services, and that was what I signed up to do, but they had no restrictions on what else I could sign up for, so I signed up for everything I could. At one point I was doing faucet and garbage disposal replacements which were great because they paid a lot more, but didn't take any longer, when things went well... Some faucets were a lot of work, but it was a good to gain that experience. At some point they did put limits on the plumbing related jobs, which was probably a good thing since people like me who had literally no experience, training or oversight could do those jobs, haha. I did a lot of research and started slow with the plumbing stuff, and I never had and major issues. The job did allow for you to just walk away if you got there and figured the job was too hard, so I did walk from some faucet jobs because I know I would only make a mess if it wasn't a very straight forward thing. I did get as far as buying a Dremel and learning how to deal with stuck bolts and faucets covered in rust and grime. Beyond that, you would need a real plumber. I did that for about 4+ years. When COVID hit, Amazon put in-home services on hold. When they finally resumed, instead of letting individual contractors like me do the job, they only allowed big business to take over and act as a middle-man. Despite that Amazon had created a great system with a simple app for contractors like me to use, they just decided to have another company step in and take over, and take all the profits with it while paying the assembly workers a typical hourly wage instead. I have to admit, this job was so perfect for me that it's made it hard for me to accept certain types of more traditional work. They say, it's easy to get used to something better; hard to get used to something worse. But I'm getting less and less choosy as my saving gets a little smaller and smaller. I always had my own PC repair listing on google and that has always been a side gig for me. I have never paid for reviews or advertising. After COVID, I noticed I started getting more calls from PC gamers and I've tried to cater to that more, but this has only ever been a side gig for me and does not pay my bills. Just started a google ads campaign and hoping this will boost my business to the point where I can at least use it to keep up with my bills, but I will probably just have to find a regular job. I've been applying and I haven't had much luck. I think I have a fairly good resume, but no certs or relevant IT degrees. I do get some interviews but I'm sure I'm never the best candidate for the job on paper since I don't have any certs and I have never worked an IT job that was focused at all on networking, so I don't have that on my list of experience. I've been thinking it's time for me to get the CompTIA A+ cert at least, which I think I could probably just pass right now, but I'm sure after doing practice tests it will be a slam dunk. I think that will make a difference for me, because I do have enough experience to get my foot in the door, but a cert or two would really help seal the deal. Little side rant, I did not come from a loving or supportive home. I've noticed throughout life that people with rich parents have it easy, which is obvious, but people with poor but loving and supportive parents are often just as well off, if not more so. I had neither of these things, I mean actually my family is fairly wealthy but they are also extremely selfish and jaded people with lots of alcohol and anger issues among the lot of them. They were extremely unsupportive to say the least. I am definitely the most well rounded down to earth person in my immediate family by far, which speaks very poorly on them because I'm not that well rounded. I basically grew up poor and unloved. I fell into a group of similar friends in high school that I would just call "uncared for kids". I had two best friends back then that both died, one committed suicide after he got really addicted to drugs. The other got hit by a bus in San Francisco, and knowing him he was probably pretty high at the time. I've had several other not so close friends who have died from drugs or suicide. Those events were a big set back for me, as I was not prepared to deal with double whammy emotional blows like that in my early adult life when I was just trying to figure out how to leave the nest without failing at life. I didn't feel like things were ever going very well for me until I got that Amazon job that died with COVID. Now, I'm just trying to figure out how to feel like things are going well for me again. When you spend a lot of time working for yourself, you end up with some weird resume attributes: Random Stats: I have 20 5-star Google reviews currently for a perfect 100% 5-star rating, all from real customers. I have 200+ reviews on my Amazon account and a 4.9/98% rating. I have a 100% ebay seller rating with plenty of traction.

Well, this is embarrassing but the sale did not go through. Looks like it was a fake buyer, and Etsy denied their payment. Hopefully it will sell soon.

Is this thread showing up twice for anyone else? Once in the news section, once in the threads section on the main page? @ENTERPRISE

Microsoft Wins FTC Brawl Over $69B Activision Blizzard Deal as Merger Nears Close WWW.YAHOO.COM Microsoft’s $69 billion bid to become a video game behemoth by buying Activision Blizzard is one step closer to... Still think they should have bought Ubisoft instead, but it will be cool to play through a decades worth of COD games once they drop on game pass.

Yea that is a good point about overclocking, there is still more to gain with Intel there, but overlocking in general is a lot less exciting than it used to be for Intel and AMD since they have both learned to just take advantage of the headroom on their own more and more effectively over the years. Never gonna be like it used to be with CPUs like a Q6600 or a 2600K where you could get stupidly massive gains just from having a pretty decent motherboard and tweaking a few settings. Those were fun times. What kind of OC do you get on your Intel CPU these days? 4-500mhz? Does that offer much over Turbo? Last Intel CPU I had was a 7700K and it was a fairly average chip. At stock it would turbo up to like 4.9ghz, I only ever got it up to ~5.1ghz with the OC and the gains were totally insignificant. I feel like that CPU was already maxing out pretty hard out of the box, and my impression is that's how all Intel CPUs are now.

Hmm, interesting. IDK if I would personally care about some old Disney movies from VHS quality, but cool for the more irreplaceable stuff. If you ever need another way to convert, try some thrift stores. GoodWill will let you return stuff if it doesn't work.

You're just doing this casually? For what reason? What's the backstory to this? Do you already have the stuff you need to do it? What are you using to do it? I have no experience with this, but I know that those old dual DVD and VHS players that would let you copy VHS to DVD are rare and expensive now, yet I see them often at thrift stores and it makes me want to buy them just to see if they work and try to sell them on ebay or something.

When Intel had that generation or two where they still weren't being pressured a lot by AMD and they started looking for ways to nickel and dime their customers and locked down the ram speeds so you had to pay for a more expensive chipset just to use standard 3200mhz ram when that was never the case on any generation before it, I stopped wanting to buy any Intel products. AMD started being more competitive not too long after that. I have not bought an Intel CPU since Ryzen 3000 came out for myself or any PC's that I have built. Intel definitely pushed me into the "vote with your wallet" mentality with their ram speed BS. /Rant That said, I love seeing the CPU market be competitive again. For a long time AMD left the door so wide open, now it feels more like Intel has to try to keep up with AMD, and they're not doing a bad job.

Looks like I just got my first sale on Etsy, someone just ordered the PC I had listed. I had initially listed it for $1200 and lowered the price over time down to $999. I should still make a small profit, and hopefully get a little traction to my Etsy account to make the next sale easier/pay more. I don't still have the box for the case I used for this PC, so shipping it will be fun.

Google planning to over do it with data... Doesn't sound like a rumor to me

I'd play some BF with you. I haven't been into it for months, the rail gun update killed it for me because it became super unbalanced at the time. Hopefully it's better now.

I'm still new to this. Is it like, the more submissions the better? Or is it the best score in each category is what gets counted? Basically, I'm asking if I do some submissions and someone else has a higher score in those categories, does mine still count?