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  1. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    I haven't even remotely thought about since about January, but Windows Server 2025 is probably going to be released in ~October. Supposedly, it'll have better security for SMB and drop a lot of legacy netlogin code, plus overall device management features that probably relate to client health...
  2. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Arrow Lake will be coming out of TSMC fabs and it'll be on a smaller process node than Zen 5 but absolutely no one is talking about its expected TDP. Die shrinks usually improve power efficiency, but Intel's last few (desktop) updates have eschewed that in the name of better (desktop)...
  3. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Intel's version of forward progress for about the last six years has been to boost the TDP enough to get 100MHz higher boost clocks, such that i7 and i9 desktop CPUs are more in line with Threadripper than desktop Ryzen right now. These aren't workstation products. Even seen with the "bragging...
  4. Mercutio

    KVM Switch

    I hear about people screwing up USB-C connectors on their phones. I'm not sure how people do that, but I'd expect a phone's power cord to be damaged a lot more often than anything plugged in to a desktop computer. What are you doing to USB-C cables, man?
  5. Mercutio

    KVM Switch

    I haven't run across damaged connectors on USB-C cabled used for displays, but I do notice that monitors connected by USB-C seem to lose their connection and blink off more often than those connected via HDMI/DP. That might just be a Windows thing, but I see it a lot on NUC-size devices where...
  6. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    Intel also has a frame-generation trick, called XeSS. It's only supported in about 200 games total, and I've never heard of 80% of them, but it does work on AMD and nVidia GPUs, just like AMD's FSR. The Spider-Man games from Sony ARE supported, though, and from what I can tell, frame rates are...
  7. Mercutio

    Seagate Wretched

    I'm still not a lawyer but it looks like, if the drive Seagate sends you for an RMA unit dies after 90 days, you're just SOL. The weird thing about that is that some of the Ironwolf Drives apparently include data recovery with the warranty, so maybe they DO actually work on the individual...
  8. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I'm planning on buying sometime in August. I hope to see some testing from the nice people at Puget Systems before I get anything.
  9. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Interesting but not meaningful news: 9900X sample came out ahead of the i9 14900KS on Geekbench 6 by about 6% in single threaded tests. It's about 10% slower in multicore, but that's an 8p/16e core CPU vs 12 cores of AMD. Geekbench is a synthetic benchmark, so I don't know how much I really...
  10. Mercutio

    KVM Switch

    Typically, Displayport supports newer and fancier stuff without needing anything goofy and extra, but I don't think we're going to get affordable 8k displays with extreme color accuracy any time in the really near future. Maybe try to make sure you're getting something that supports HDMI 2.1b...
  11. Mercutio

    Seagate Wretched

    Based on my reading of the warranty (and I am not a lawyer), Seagate's warranty only covers the drive at time of initial purchase, and for the sorts of drives we buy, that's probably five years. It looks like replacements are only covered for 90 days unless a local statute is in place, with the...
  12. Mercutio

    Seagate Wretched

    I haven't had to do an Ironwolf but I did advance replacement on a 16TB Exos last fall. The drive I had wasn't provably bad according to Seatools, but it also disconnected from its HBA every few days. The drive I got from Seagate was recertified and had a zero power on hours count, which I...
  13. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Even pros can't normally afford to invest in full lens collections on multiple mounts.
  14. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    We have different photography priorities, I think.
  15. Mercutio

    Something Random

    This is big city thinking. The miles and miles of corn are very real, but it's too early in the year for it to be scary corn. Any adult can see clear to the horizon. Corn isn't scary until it's seven feet tall and the only thing you can navigate by is the direction of the sun. My dad used to...
  16. Mercutio

    Something Random

    My partner's birthday is July 4th and this is the first year I get to spend her actual day-of birthday with her. It borders on incomprehensible how much this particular birthday sucks. Indiana doesn't allow alcohol sales on holidays. Most bars and venues for adults will likewise be closed just...
  17. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    I told my partner that Canon is likely to release an R6iii sometime in the next six-ish months and I'd probably trade in what I have to upgrade. I am not trade in, sell or diminish her access to the R6. Many threats and promises were made regarding this matter and so I guess that I am paying...
  18. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    The R6ii is discounted pretty massively this week for some reason. I love my R6 and I'd be all over an R6ii if I didn't already have one. $2000 to get one is almost a no-brainer.
  19. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I'm more interested in knowing expected MSRP. The launch prices on Zen 5 are generally lower than Zen 5. I'm pretty happy about that.
  20. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I got distracted replying to LM but a Slovenian retailer seems to slipped launched prices for Zen 5: €650 for the 9950X, €500 for the 9900X and down to €310 for the 9600X. I'm guessing the prices in USD will probably be pretty similar.
  21. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    I truly do not know. It's my first experience with Windows 11 on a desktop at home, and I don't think I ever saw an RDP session last longer than five minutes. At first, I thought it might be a CPU or GPU load issue, or maybe a problem with the wired NIC, but none of the mitigations I've used in...
  22. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    "Only." I don't make so much money that I can comfortably spend $5k on a PC for what amounts to hobby use and feel like I'm being anything like responsible. I definitely had more contracting income when I was younger, but the trade off is that I'm not as busy with work stuff and I take weekend...
  23. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    That's true if you're gaming, but I'm using a 3rd generation Threadripper as my daily driver system. I spend kind of a lot of time working in a video editor and with VMs, so having scads of PCIe lanes and four dozen threads has been a better overall deal for me than whatever desktop platforms...
  24. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Sorry to hear about your health of late, Greg. The 7600X and the 5900X are very close in performance terms, and actually so are the 1080Ti and the A770. I haven't had a chance to finalize the setup on the new PC well enough to run any normalized tests, but it looks like games are mostly around...
  25. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    I tried Windows 11 on my AM5 PC over the weekend and I had non-stop issues with RDP (Remote Desktop). Remote Desktop had some changes around the time Windows Server 2016 was released, and I know a half dozen registry settings to run on the client and server side to improve connection stability...
  26. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    There's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that when the power budget is equal, the 12c AMDs can ramp up a bit higher on all cores than the 16c versions, which was my reason for buying a 5900X instead of a 5950X for my second desktop. Purportedly, they're launching Zen 5 X3D much earlier this...
  27. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    IIRC the all core speeds on the 12-core SKUs are supposed to be generally higher for faster single threaded capability, but I did just look and the TDP on the 9900X only has a 120W TDP instead of 170W like the 7900X, so no, there's no reason to look at the less expensive one in this generation.
  28. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Higher all core clock.
  29. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    Leaked prices suggest the new guys will be a little cheaper, like $50 less than last gen for the new Ryzen 9s. I don't see anything else but a 9950x in my future but maybe the single core advantage will make me look at the 9900x instead.
  30. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I've compared Noctua / Scythe tower coolers with what I'm guessing are midrange and up AIOs. It's kind of apples and oranges since the AIOs usually support a different cooling load, and not in an absolute noise controlled setting, but I have yet to experience an AIO rig that is as quiet as high...
  31. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    Is there anything loose in the chassis? Even unsecured cables?
  32. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I wanted to put something together today because I haven't built a full desktop in ages. 😁 Also I want PCIe lanes more than I want a Thunderbolt port that'll never get used. The leftovers after I'm done will probably get assembled into a midrange PC that I can sell. A GTX1080 is STILL a...
  33. Mercutio

    Ryzen

    I'm building a Ryzen 7600X / X670E system today. The CPU is a placeholder for whatever Zen 5 thing I get since it'll be easy enough to resell. I'm using GSkill DDR5 6000 EXPO RAM, a GTX 1080Ti and a Peerless Assassin HSF just to get the thing going. I assume this thing as it is will be a little...
  34. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    All you need is a machinist and 10kg of copper!
  35. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    Asrock? Microsoft stopped allowing Windows 7 and 8.x licenses from being used for Windows activations at the end of 2023. If you have updated to 10 or 11 prior to that, the license should still be available and should still re-activate. Microsoft doesn't lose the licenses once they've been...
  36. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    LM, why not just customize your windows 11 install to remove the parts you don't like? What brand of device did you get?
  37. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Everyone should be blocking advertising at all times and on all devices. I don't think this is a controversial thought. Amazon does seem to have an issue with prioritizing certain products, but I can't tell if that's because of ads or favoring its own products over those of others.
  38. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    DDG is in every way that matters just a front-end to Bing. So are Ecosia, AOL and Yahoo. Bing is not good at search. As far as what happened to search at Google: Google had an engineer at the head of the Search Product team until the mid 2010s. He was replaced by a guy with a background in...
  39. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    You can uninstall it. It'll come back with the next major Windows update. You can also disable it through either a group policy object or registry hack. I suspect the GPO will be respected. I'm not fully certain that removing the registry setting is.
  40. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    Sick of bullshit Google AI in your search results? In your browser of choice, find your Search engines section under Settings or whatever. Make a new entry, call it Verbatim, shortcut @v and use this search string: https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s Google Verbatim Search is just...
  41. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    If I had to guess, 95% of people who use Windows don't pay enough attention to directory names to know where things are saved beyond "Documents go in Documents and Pictures go in Pictures" and if they ARE made aware of the difference between c:\users\username\Pictures and...
  42. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Windows Recall is out of the picture for now. OneDrive DOES have a useful function. It can handle file versioning and off-site storage, so it's a form of ransomware mitigation. It's just that it is very invasive in how it operates. Google lets users add arbitrary directories to its sync...
  43. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    The latest thing now is that Microsoft is turning on OneDrive backups without asking permission. Does anyone want a Windows 11 installer image that just doesn't have OneDrive in it?
  44. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    FSR is real and it helps upscale graphics, which decreases pressure on your GPU cores to render each frame but increases pressure on your texture memory since the upscaled frames still have to be spit out in their upscaled resolution. This actually kind of benefits AMD and Intel hardware more...
  45. Mercutio

    Here is a thread to talk about gaming

    A Chinese company makes this thing called the Odin. It's $200 - $550 (if you buy from their store instead of Amazon) and has either a Snapdragon 845 or SD 1 gen 2(!) in it with either 6600 or 8000mW battery, with a 6" FHD screen and the horsepower to run Windows on ARM, Linux or Android. The fit...
  46. Mercutio

    Mirrorless Cameras (MILC) and Lenses

    Looks like the review embargo on Sigma's APS-C lenses for Canon RF mount has lifted. They're just reselling lenses that existed for Sony and Fuji and apparently they work really well, even if they're optically less than perfect.
  47. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    250GB SM951. It's still in use, still tests healthy and works just fine.
  48. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    I have! In fact, my oldest X99 desktop has been running with a taped-down m.2 drive for probably over a decade, since I dropped and lost that tiny screw at some point and I never bothered to put in a replacement. It's currently someone's gaming PC and I know it's still operating.
  49. Mercutio

    Mini PC

    You could just tape the smaller drive in place, LM. Electrical tape is your friend. But most systems with m.2 ports have a provision for moving the retention screw to a proper placement for your drive as well.
  50. Mercutio

    Windows 11

    Surfaces were damned near impossible to repair in any meaningful way. I don't remember them burning any loins but they never have more than 2 USB ports and that sucks all on its own and they definitely get warm. I have somebody's retired Surface Book 2 sitting around and my OG Surface Pro 2...
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