Snakecharmed

I see your edit now and I appreciate where you're coming from. I'm not saying nor suggesting that it's garbage, nor am I trying to discourage you from trying to refine your work. I'm sorry if it came across as overly critical. As an enthusiast, I would want to learn why a professional would or wouldn't do things a certain way. Design is neither wholly driven by feeling nor technical accuracy, but like any skill, hobby, or profession, one has to master the fundamentals before they can justifiably bend the rules. Otherwise, it just looks like an unforced error that weakens the overall product. It doesn't help that designing with text is a lot harder than many people think it is. Branding especially is a minefield. Regarding the circle, the stroke is jagged. It flattens out at 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° and there are noticeable steps everywhere along the curve. If you're working in a raster graphics program, anti-aliasing needs to be turned on so that doesn't happen. Otherwise, it's not going to look good in print either. As for the text, look at how the letters in iamjanco's text on the arc aren't stretched. Each character maintains its rectangular form. They aren't wider on the outer edge than the inner edge and appearing to have a trapezoidal stretch. This is where vector tools give you more control over text on an arc. If you were working with a vector of the EHW.net logo in a vector design tool, you could have avoided stretching that as well. I wasn't being snarky about GIMP either. It's simply not the right tool for designing with text, and the same applies to Photoshop as well. Your ability to control text will be extremely limited in a raster graphics program compared to a vector one. Whether ENTERPRISE cares about the integrity of the logo is up to him, but I'm saying that simply isn't done in the branding and marketing world. It opens up the door for others to modify your logo in other unapproved ways, which dilutes the strength of your logo and brand. There are a whole host of other legal issues that come with that as well, especially if trademarked, which is why I caution against doing that in-house because you don't want the first-party to encourage third-party misuse. If you look at any company's branding guidelines, you'll find a primary logo, a handful of secondary versions for specific usage scenarios, and about 35 examples of impermissible modifications that the marketing department will come down hard on you for.

You're free to disagree. I'm not knocking your effort either. If anything, I'm pointing them out for you to understand where you can improve, but there isn't much to dispute in the scope of a professional design critique. There's a reason why top shelf graphics designers are in the positions they're in even when the profession as a whole is a lot less lucrative than it used to be. Every designer worth their salt would have noticed the same things I did.

As a designer who is not taking part in this effort, I'm going to offer the following feedback: Corporate branding guidelines universally disallow the manipulation of their logos because that dilutes the integrity of the logo and the brand. In other words, bending the EHW.net wordmark would never be permissible if it were under the care of either an in-house marketing department or a professional third-party agency. The circle is badly aliased. There's a noticeable and unsightly stretch around the outer circumference of all the circular text. In addition, the tracking of the motto looks forcibly compressed as do the characters themselves. The stars in iamjanco's example exist for readability purposes because it's jarring to flip the orientation of your text 180° while reading along the arc without a visual break. Also, as for general advice, don't use a raster program to make and manipulate logos. If you don't want to pay for Adobe Illustrator CC (and I can't blame anyone for not wanting to), then try Affinity Designer. GIMP is not a serious design tool, and it's even less appropriate for what should be vector designs.

This is when I realize I'm grateful for paying no mind to interior aesthetics. It certainly would have added extra expense to my build. If I had an aquarium-style case, you bet I'd feel obligated to make it look good inside too. Instead, my case is to the left of where I'm sitting, placed inside of what would have been an enclosed space in my desk if I didn't open up the back and leave off the front door. My only considerations for running wires/cables are to avoid creating unnecessary airflow obstructions beyond what I can reasonably manage. I have no idea how tedious it is to match PCB colors, ARGB LED lights, and fans while still ensuring that the components are all good quality and perform well. Circling back to the original question, it's likely a combination of factors and it's not universal for everyone who overspends on a motherboard. It's partly: Ignorance possibly fueled by bad word-of-mouth or influencer advice (Maybe those bar charts that exaggerate 1% differences aren't that helpful when people ignore the context.) The aesthetic tax The tendency to overrate your needs in a hobby where there are more product choices than rules I've seen the specs of a few baffling builds where the user created an easily avoidable bottleneck with their choice of components like an absolutely dreadful SSD on a workstation board. I hesitate to draw a broader conclusion beyond ignorance (some of it willful) when we share a world with Wccftech commenters, the likes of whom have brain-dead pissing matches about why AMD/Intel having the best gaming CPU matters when 1) none of them can afford it, and 2) if you have anything resembling a serious gaming rig, you're going to be GPU-bound anyway.

One other thing that I just thought of was that a few years ago, motherboards with insufficient VRMs being paired with the more power hungry CPUs were a big deal, so the general advice to spend more on a board might have been a hedge toward safety. Either way, I don't think suggesting a higher-tier board is necessarily made with performance in mind as much as it may be some other factors to ensure that there won't be any other types of issues with the build. The same thing tends to happen with PSUs and it's why you see some people thinking you always need 1300W now. Sure, if it's a POS that's rated 69 Plus Wood...or a Gigabyte.

Sir Beregond nailed the main points. Here's a few more unorganized odds-and-ends that come to my mind on this topic: Regarding features, one thing that Steve of GamersNexus has ranted about in recent times was the disappearance of the 7-segment display from all but the highest-end desktop CPU boards. With how AM5 was with DDR5 memory training and the excruciatingly slow boot times early on in the platform's lifecycle, I sure would have liked to know what the hell was going on because there were times it sure seemed like my settings caused a system hang on boot. On a couple of occasions, they did, and it took me way too long to recognize it. Back when I was more budget conscious than I am now, I went for the obvious candidate CPUs for big-time overclocking that didn't need to be on premium motherboards (Athlon XP-M 2400+, i5-2500K, i7-2600K). I had to think back to some of my old overclocked builds on a budget to remember what a higher-end board would have gotten me, and it was usually I/O. Not even the generation of technology like PCI-E 4.0 vs. 5.0, but the number of back panel USB ports, USB headers, PCI/PCI-E slots, SATA ports, and even fan headers. And yes, especially in the case of the $80 Albatron Nvidia nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset Socket A board that I used with the Athlon XP-M, I ran out of I/O a number of times. Fast forward to last year, and 10+ back panel USB ports was one of the earliest requirements I had while board shopping. Every (more) affordable AM5 option fell short in that area. Speaking of PCI-E 5.0, that immediately ruled out the B650 for AM5. Last year, any respectable B650E motherboard started at $300 and X670E at $400. None of the boards I really wanted were part of any Micro Center bundles either, so I ended up going with this sussy baka Asus board, which I wouldn't have bought if I didn't effectively get it for $80. Also, what later turned out to be my ideal $300 B650E board—the ASRock Taichi Lite, the most affordable B650E with a 7-segment display and is otherwise better than this ROG board in every way—didn't come out for another half a year. I generally wouldn't buy a high-end board on a budget, but the issue of cheaper motherboards screwing you on I/O options is very real. That's why I felt comfortable buying a damn Z170 board for the i3-6100 build I did for my parents back in 2016 when by any logical means, I should have gotten an H110 board instead. I just didn't want to deal with the adapters, hubs, and other crap like what I added to their previous nForce 570 Socket AM2 board or my old 8th gen i5 Intel NUC that I gave them to replace the i3-6100. As it's already been said, none of this is necessarily gamer territory either. Gamers migrating from consoles need this stuff the least, and that's the audience you were building PCs for not long ago. I don't consider myself a gamer, my lack of free time to play games since last year notwithstanding. This is more power user, overclocking enthusiast, or some other EHW motto territory.

Ever since Nadella took over Microsoft, they've been in an echo chamber about how great their ideas that have no respect for customer privacy are. The insane part is that their user base has such a high concentration of enterprise customers.

That'll be a printed ticket fee, you environmentally unconscious heathen.

Service fee: You pay to help keep them in service.

I set up my first camera last night after getting the motivation to do so after reading this thread. It's a white label Dahua 4K (8MP) varifocal Starlight sensor PoE turret camera with ePTZ from EmpireTech. I haven't started recording with it or doing anything else other than network and video setup. All I've learned so far is that my front porch area is so bright at night that the camera never switches to IR mode. Either that or I don't know what I'm doing yet. Also, I'm glad I got an auto-tracking PTZ camera as well because I'va already been wanting to zoom this varifocal turret but not at the cost of having a wide angle view.

I'm just glad to no longer see BS sponsors like BetterHelp and Masterworks. Some scammers had to occupy Established Titles and Kamikoto Knives' vacated places in the porta-potty though. I regret not using SponsorBlock sooner. I also have more appreciation for channels that either self-sponsor or are entirely funded through Patreon supporters.

Not only budget, but usage scenarios would help too. This was a whole new domain for me to research and I'm still not sure I have it all figured out yet. I have one auto-tracking 4MP PTZ, one 8MP varifocal turret with ePTZ, and I plan to buy four more of those turrets. The auto-tracking PTZ camera was completely unnecessary, but one neighbor was hoping someone in the neighborhood would be able to capture license plates... After all my stalling, the most important suggestion I can offer is to get Blue Iris first if that's going to be your control center, then set up one camera through the camera's native IP web interface and get Blue Iris to recognize it. All the other reading on setting up VLANs on my switch or VPN on my router, both of which I've never done before, has been exhausting. My budget started at <$100 per camera when I first started planning it until it grew to "I can't blame my equipment if the system doesn't work well."

Adding another vote to the return bucket. It's worse than either a 7800X3D or a 7900X. It's basically a 7600X3D with extra baggage. If nothing else, I would expect Zen 5 to cause some downward pricing pressure on Zen 4 next month.

Meanwhile, this is not the case with the Ryzen 9000 series desktop parts as the spec sheet of that says: OS Support Windows 11 - 64-Bit Edition , Windows 10 - 64-Bit Edition , RHEL x86 64-Bit , Ubuntu x86 64-Bit Don't care about Ryzen AI. It doesn't apply to Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs, which is presumably what would be the most relevant to people here.

I set up EAC to export both at the same time too. I used to manually switch between each one and would often forget the command line variable I was supposed to use for exporting to FLAC when I had been using LAME MP3.

I don't see myself going for this generation since my rig is the least of my concerns for the first time in years, but 9950X/3D would be the move for me among the Zen 5 chips. Maybe AMD will do something better with the dual-CCD X3D chips this generation, but I doubt it. They're going to wait until Intel stops Sideshow Bobbing over rakes before they engineer something stronger for gaming than a Ryzen 7 ?800X3D.

To be honest, I'm surprised you went with the 7900X3D in the first place, since that was the 7000 series CPU that reviewers recommended not to buy. It either functions as a 6-core X3D CPU or a slower all-core 7900X, so it was a compromise on both ends of the gaming-productivity spectrum. I don't foresee stability being an issue for a non-X3D CPU. If anything, it's been fun trying to find the undervolt limits of the 7900X at the 105W Eco threshold to maximize benchmark performance at that power limit. At some point in the future when I have the time or desire, I may delve into the memory overclocking which seems to produce more meaningful performance results anyway.

In general, taking more pictures is important to get a shot when you otherwise wouldn't have, but a phone isn't going to give you the shot when you're trying to capture something under highly specific conditions that exceed its physical limitations. No amount of post-processing is going to fix the resolution or flash overexposure from a Motorola Razr V3 VPotato. However, a modern flagship phone is also no potato. I don't consider myself a great or even good photographer, but I own the least amount of mid-high quality gear that is good enough to cover most shooting scenarios to the point where I can only criticize myself (and the full overcast cloud cover during last month's solar eclipse, until the miraculous final minute of totality when I fired off 7 auto-bracketed shots during the longest cloud break window of about 15 seconds) if the results aren't as good as I would like. I'm of the mindset that I strive to minimize/remove technical impediments so the onus is on me if I don't produce a good result. But that doesn't mean I go out and buy a Canon EOS R3 or an RF 100-300mm F2.8 L IS because there is no way I can maximize that body or lens on my best day. I actually hate it when people think that I must be good because of my gear. My gear sets the ceiling, not the floor. The floor is still going to be leaving your lens cap on. My actual abilities are somewhere in the middle. In my case, the only reason the body looks more substantial is because of the battery grip so I have portrait shooting controls and more battery power. I have to give credit to people who excelled (or still excel) as film photographers, because they can't fire off hundreds of shots blind to their memory card, pick out the best one, and post-process it to look as ideal as people's imaginations.

Old parts from my LG G4, including all available backplates (white, blue, gold, and the original factory leather). I have everything except the phone itself because both my original and warranty replacement G4 bootlooped. The ThinkPad T43 that I benched to the lowest score in the CPU-Z competition here a couple of years ago, loose Cat 5E cables that have no use anymore because I now use unbooted Cat 6 cables going into my new network switch, and a USB floppy drive that I actually plan to keep around as long as I still have several boxes of 3.5" floppy disks that are probably unreadable anyway since they're magnetic media that have been in storage for 25 years. There's far more junk lying around that I haven't taken pictures of yet, but I intend to take most of it to e-waste recycling. I don't like keeping things around for the maybe scenarios that never actually come to fruition. I've already taken HDMI 1.1/1.2 and random odds-and-ends coaxial cables cut by the cable company to recycling. I don't want that crap.

I'm still using a rooted V60. It's still perfectly capable as a daily driver, unlike my V20 which was extremely sluggish before I switched over to the V60 in 2022. I only use the V20 as a remote control for my lights now. At some point in the future when apps widely deprecate the version of Android I have on the V60, I'll get a used Sony Xperia 1 that's a generation behind the latest and deal with whatever modding necessary to get it fully functional on my carrier network.

Nice, I didn't know Enhancer for YouTube was available for Chrome now. I have it on Waterfox, but I've been using Improve YouTube! on Vivaldi/Brave. Enhancer is much better. My favorite feature is the finer playback speed, since 1.25x is usually not fast enough and 1.5x is too fast. This is a native Firefox feature, but I was glad an extension exists for Chrome as well: Type-ahead-find CHROMEWEBSTORE.GOOGLE.COM Find text or links as you type

No skimping out on memory (although the -90 cards wouldn't do that anyway) this time. 32 GB 5090 incoming for...$1999? Because I simply expect generational price hikes from Nvidia at this point.

If I had the guts (or the recklessness, take your pick) to invest 10x what I already have invested in them, I'd be retired by now. As a Millennial. There was never a realistic scenario in which I would have done that though. At most I might have put in double.

A camera that supports ONVIF, controlled by the desktop software of your choice, effectively turning one of your PCs into an NVR. For Windows, that's more than likely going to be Blue Iris. Despite how their mobile app looks like it was designed 15 years ago, everything else about Blue Iris seems to work well enough for it to be the software of choice in many IP camera communities. Personally, I'm only going to use wired cameras, but I know there are wireless ones as well that can do the job. Just don't allow them to communicate outside of your LAN. Even better would be to put them on their own VLAN with your NVR PC. I don't trust the security of, nor do I want to pay the monthly fee for cloud-based cameras. Ring is notorious for security breaches, whereas the other brands just have crap hardware with limited functionality masked by modern app design.

Trash solution from a trash game company. The entire thing can be circumvented by running Windows 10. That's the worst part about this half-baked idea. Force honest players to jump through hoops while the cheaters, who we can presume are more tech-savvy, have a mere speed bump of an easy circumvention. About a decade ago, I quit LoL after being on the winning side of an ARAM game and getting 1 game above .500 in that mode to never play again. The game had its moments and one of my best gaming memories even came from that game, but on the whole, it was tedious and unfun largely due to the constant meddling by the devs nerfing everything to death, and I was a support main of all roles.