Snakecharmed

The biggest problem in the GPU and CPU spaces is a lack of competition. GPUs are effectively a duopoly with Intel basically being noncompetitive at the mid-high end for the foreseeable future, and x86 CPUs are a duopoly due to licensing. AMD is looking good right now in both areas aside from supply issues, but it wasn't that long ago that they were committing a bunch of unforced errors as well. If the GPU landscape looked like it did in the old days, Nvidia wouldn't dare pull this kind of crap. Actually, thanks to a source I found off of Wikipedia, I see that Nvidia has been pulling this crap forever. They've been watching politicians for decades learning best practices on mudslinging. Anyway, it's not sustainable in today's market, but it was nice having the choice between 3dfx, ATI, Matrox, Nvidia, and PowerVR in the old days.

It's important to realize that any company is capable of doing these types of things if they have the market share and hubris to pull it off. Usually, their PR isn't this incompetent though. As consumers, this only goes to show that a company is not your friend. There is no reason for the consumer to be a rabid fan of a company. They are in the business of making money. They don't know your name. They don't know that you contributed a tiny fraction to their revenue. So why do free advertising for them when their product should be able to speak for itself? Furthermore, in this case, it's clear that if Nvidia does know your name, they feel that you are obligated to shill for them.

https://twitter.com/HardwareUnboxed/status/1337885741389471745 Nvidia walked it back, but the damage is done. GamersNexus also pointed out the obvious. https://twitter.com/GamersNexus/status/1337905467079741451 They only went back because they got caught, although it's monumentally stupid for Nvidia to think that they weren't going to get raked over the coals for this. JayzTwoCents made a good point at 4:40 in his video about how that damn email read like a press release that was meant to be shared. I don't have words to describe that level of PR idiocy. Was Nvidia getting bored with merely being shady under the table that they had to crank the difficulty up to 11 and get the entire PC and tech community to become aware of their disrespect for hardware reviewers and independent journalism? Incompetence and hubris is a deadly combination.

I have two laptops in addition to my workstation, so I'm thinking that probably contributes to why I've never felt the need to keep around parts for another system. I used to keep around an extra GPU (first a GTX 560, then a GTX 760) for an eGPU setup to use with one of my laptops several years ago for a gaming HTPC. After I got a newer laptop, I got rid of the extra GPU as well. Now the newest of my laptops has an RTX 2060, so I'm clearly done with eGPUs too. I can't even claim to use the desktop computer I built for my parents as a parts dumping ground anymore because their build is newer than mine. I put together a Skylake build for them five years ago with a Core i3-6100 on an ASRock Z170A-X1/3.1 motherboard. The only hand-me-downs in that machine now are my old SeaSonic S12-380 380W PSU from something like 12-15 years ago and one of my old 500 GB SATA hard drives as an external backup drive. I do have a box of old-ass cables that need to be sorted through though. A few months ago, my neighbor asked me if I had a spare VGA cable he could borrow for a few days. I did, and for all I care, he can keep it. I think there's a 15' USB 2.0 A-B cable, a few CAT5 or 5a cables, and a couple of older HDMI 1.x cables in there as well, but probably nothing that uses obsolete connectors that can't work with newer hardware at the older revision's throughput. However, I know I won't be using any of it again, so I'll have to go through those soon and take another haul to the electronics recycler.

Is that really hoarding or just having enough space and not enough motivation to toss it? I usually sell off an old part as soon as I'm done with it if it's worth anything, or else I'll take it to my local electronics recycler. If it's something that can be put away in a closet and not take up valuable space, I might forget about it for years. Generally though, I don't keep many PC parts around. A couple of years ago, I took an old Socket A Albatron motherboard and Athlon XP-M 2400+ to the recyclers. They also rebuild and resell computers, so I figured it wouldn't go to waste. I think I may still have the Thermalright heatsink for it though. I have 3.5" floppy disks and Zip disks in a couple of boxes that I haven't opened in years. I also have an 80 GB and a 160 GB Western Digital IDE drive that I can't be bothered to hook up with my SATA-IDE adapter because I just don't care, but I need to wipe them before getting rid of them. I also have a spare Chaintech AV-710 sound card. I'm not sure why I bought two of them years ago, but I did. They only cost me about $15 each at the time.

I'm sure some contrarian is going to find the new BMW design language inoffensive. I think it's a matter of splitting hairs to define what your threshold is for something to be "universally" hated though, but it's still not on the same level as the Fiat Multipla. I haven't been interested in any new car for nearly a decade now and I'm not in the market for one either, so I could probably criticize contemporary automotive design until the cows come home. What BMW is doing now hardly even registers any emotion in my book because I've become jaded over the past decade by stupid designs from Toyota/Lexus, Nissan, GM, and even Tesla. Seriously, take a cue from Porsche and stop making front fascias that look like someone used the Photoshop eraser tool where the grille would go.

Some things I would consider first are your budget, the size of your room, the amount of physical space you can make for the sub, what the other components of your sound system are, what you listen to with that system, and what your expectations for the sub are. That Klipsch is frequently on sale at Newegg for that price and it’s not a sub that’s worth the $250 “regular” price. I have a 10" ported downfiring sub/footrest for my desktop workstation, but it originally spent a few years as a home theater placeholder sub before I bought what I really wanted. It's ideal in its current arrangement for listening in front of my computer especially because I’m literally on top of it, but it was nowhere near suitable for a 19'x16'x9' family room that's part of a 40' wide open floor plan.

Congrats to all the winners!

I don't know that these designs ever become liked so much as normalized. A lot of people hated the Lexus grille at first and I still think it's hideous today. If anything, it got worse as newer model refreshes led to bigger grilles. The difference is that there are more of those cars on the road now. I think Toyota/Lexus designs have been awful ever since the 4th gen GS. The 2013 GS was just bland and generic apart from the grille, which was still small at the time. Everything after that was drawn under the influence of hard drugs. Incoherent kinks, creases, and sharp angles are what you draw when you're trying to be edgy (pun intended). The current generation Camry offends me more than any soulless commuter car I've seen before it, especially in the SE and XSE trims with the fake exhaust tips, fake rear bumper vents, nonsensical blackout roofline (XSE), and Predator 2.0 (or Stormtrooper if in white) grille. Also, I would differentiate between innovative design and incoherent design. Tacking a ridiculous front and rear fascia onto what is an otherwise normal car shape isn't innovative, it's incoherent.

Technically, this wasn't working on the computer so much as it involved an external component connected to my computer, but it was a bad mistake. I used to have a Virtue Audio TWO.2 amplifier for my desktop. I bought it used and with extra accessories, but it was something like $449 new if I recall. It was a very nicely crafted piece of audio hardware. What happened was that in the midst of moving my desk and reconnecting all kinds of wiring after I had a carpet installer restretch the room's carpet, I had bare speaker wires that were still connected to the back of the TWO.2 amplifier sitting on the desk. The speaker wires fell from the desk to the floor, shorting out and landing right on the coaxial terminals on my uninterruptible power supply. I definitely should have taken more precautions, but that was some BS luck of the highest order. The speaker wires sparked on the coaxial terminals, fried the amp, and tripped the circuit breaker for the room I was in. Virtue Audio had already stopped selling new products when this happened. Their website didn't have any functioning email addresses or a phone number despite them saying they were still providing customer service for their existing customers. I eventually just sold the dead amp for parts on eBay. I ended up getting an SMSL Q5 Pro to replace that TWO.2. It's not as elegant of a piece of hardware as the TWO.2, but I do like that it has an LED display and a remote control.

I've been on board with the idea of a GTA set in London for years. For me, it would be the novelty of driving on the other side of the road as an extra layer of difficulty, although it would probably become second nature rather quickly. I'd also like in-game pedestrians bringing slang like git, plonker, bellend, and wanker to a global audience.

I may be waiting it out until Zen 4 at the earliest, but it's pretty amazing to see AMD at the top again after so many years. If I was in the market for a new CPU right now, I'd go with at least a 5900X, but I could pretty easily justify a 5950X as well for the little bit of content production that I do.

I agree with this. The welcome bar takes up a lot of valuable screen space and it's not a great look. I hope at most it's meant to be temporary because the site's content should be able to speak for itself. I've redesigned customer portals before to get rid of that text on the home page. It muddies the portal's information hierarchy and unlike those portals I've redesigned, there's no need here to fill space for the sake of filling space due to a lack of content. Getting rid of that bar alone would make the titles of the Latest Activity columns plus 1-2 threads in each column visible above the fold. I'm also on 1440p. Half an ultrawide minus taskbar, or 1720x1400 to be exact. The content below the fold is in three columns as expected for that screen width. The Latest Activity columns don't collapse to one column until you're at or below 750 pixels wide.

Impressive. If reviews for this were widely available when I was buying the SX8200 Pro, I may have gone with the Gold P31 instead. In theory, its superior power efficiency mentioned in this AnandTech review would be good for a laptop too. It seems that SK Hynix didn't have the Gold P31 start making the rounds in the press until mid-late August though.

I also have the XPG SX8200 Pro as I got the 1 TB version for my laptop a couple of months ago. It's a new Ryzen 7 4800H laptop, but unfortunately, it's still limited to PCIe 3.0, so my choice boiled down to either the SX8200 Pro or the Sabrent Rocket. I was seeing a better price on the SX8200 Pro and stacked a Newegg coupon on top of it. At the time that I bought the SX8200 Pro, the 970 EVO cost about $45 more. It did get a price cut recently, but if I was going to spend what it cost before, I would rather have a PCIe 4.0 SSD (for a motherboard that would support it) instead of a Samsung. Meanwhile, the SX8200 Pro has been great so far.

Family Room Home Theater Mordaunt Short Alumni 8 tower speakers Mordaunt Short Alumni 5 center channel speaker Mordaunt Short Alumni 2 satellite speakers Mordaunt Short Alumni speaker stands Rythmik Audio D15SE Signature Edition 15" sealed downfiring servo subwoofer Onkyo TX-SR706 7.1 channel A/V receiver M2Tech hiFace Two Hi-End USB to S/PDIF output interface with BNC connector All of the speakers are finished in piano black. I love this setup for music. I'm always impressed by the soundstage and the depth whenever I listen. I don't have many audio enthusiast friends, so It's by default the best system I've assembled and heard, but it also has a very high WAF. Even the Rythmik D15SE beautifully disguises itself as an end table. Unfortunately, I hardly listen to it now because I haven't turned on the TV much in the past couple of years. My TV and A/V receiver are both seriously in need of an upgrade, and I really want to upgrade the TV to a 65" LG OLED, but if I'm not turning it on, what's the point? Desktop Workstation Wharfedale Diamond 10.0 bookshelf speakers TSC T100-110 10" ported downfiring subwoofer SMSL Q5 Pro 2.1 channel amplifier I used to have a Virtue Audio TWO.2 before the Q5 Pro. I accidentally blew out the TWO.2 when I was moving my desk and the speaker wires still connected to the back of the amp fell off the desk, landed right on the coax terminals of my UPS, and tripped the circuit breaker for the room. The Q5 Pro has better bass and the digital display and remote control are nice, but the TWO.2 was better balanced and more detailed overall, and also just a finely crafted piece of hardware.

Edifier W860NB ANC Sennheiser PX 100-II with Yaxi Earpads Koss Porta Pro with Yaxi Earpads Other accessories: LG V20 FiiO A3 I'm a basement dweller when it comes to headphones since I rarely wear them and I've always been way more invested in speakers, but I got a great deal on the Edifier W860NB earlier this year that I'm looking forward to using when I fly again. Shopping for active noise cancellation as a feature made comparisons difficult. It's a value-added feature that doesn't directly translate to SQ from the cans themselves, and people don't often compare SQ between ANC and non-ANC headphones. Despite how much I dislike them as a speaker company, I admit that I gave Bose a much longer look than expected with a used pair of QuietComfort 35 II's.

Hi all. Thanks to @UltraMegafor the link to here. It's funny, I've been part of the old site for nearly a decade, but I didn't participate regularly because I either wasn't following industry news or upgrading my machine. Now that I'm beginning to focus on these things again, I was spending more time on the old site posting in that damn "We Are Live" thread than actually following the hardware. You know it's bad when you can't even go on a forum to find the content you want, and instead spend more time exasperated at how the new direction of the forum violates every principle you've learned and absorbed professionally. I'm glad to see a lot of familiar usernames here, even if we haven't had direct exchanges before. I was never super active on the old site, but the familiarity helps set my expectations of this community and the level of discussion I hope to see continue here.