26 years old, USA
Thin clients! $30, sometimes $15, for just as much CPU power as the Pi. More power usage, though. And ensure you buy the cables and SSD, check carefully what the seller is including or excluding from the shipment.
No hey this is valuable added input. Sorry you’ve had a rough experience, and I’ll take this as a warning that I will most likely have to learn some new skills in dealing with the issues you’re describing.
Quake that people actually play. Like look at the virality of Battle bits Remastered, the Battlefield with block characters so you can have like 200 people in the match. Games need to feel snappy and run on a lot of low tech machines, and developers are mostly never catering to that budget demographic. FPS games have a huge demand for this. The hundreds of thousands of nerds who can infodump about how incredible the Source engine feels is my proof. So yeah I think there is still a market for competitive movement game 2.0 - a team fortress 3, a titanfall 3, a quake / unreal tournament that runs well and allows community mapping. Like unironically last gens engines followed the wrong upgrade paths and there is still more performance to squeeze out (titanfall 2 using highly customized source and it looking like a AAA game rather than a source game as my proof)
Hey OP,
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/possible-raptor-lake-refresh-launch-date-leaked
It sounds like Intel is releasing mid-October. I don’t know if Intel is of interest to you, and these are described as flagship cards. I also have no idea if this will effect prices on other cards or not.
Because I’m on Linux I have no interest in Intel / Nvidia, though Intel can have amazing performance on Linux when they give it the proper firmware updates.
Intel’s previous release was not great, by the way. This does throw doubt in my mind this next one will do anything for you other than potentially reflect in the prices of other products. 🤷♀️
6700 XT ($320) is indeed faster than the RX 7600 ($250) - it’s just that I already know OP is on a 1080p (22") monitor. I’ve seen the BG3 and CS:2 benchmarks, but not the cities skylines 2 benchmarks.
I also have a stupid question, but does support / firmware updates matter a lot for GPUs? It’s been a while for me. The 7600 is brand new from last month, and the 6700 XT is from… 2 years ago? Is that support gonna expire soon or am I making up a problem that doesn’t exist?
I was pretty frustrated reading about the Microcenter 5800x3D situation. I am so jealous of city dwellers lately, I’m looking for reasons to seethe about living in the middle of nowhere.
To play devils advocate, I think on a budget Am5 mobo (b650) Pcie 4 x 4 is the main or only storage choice? I think my mobo came with one pcie 5 x 4 m.2 slot, or maybe it didn’t even. And then graphics cards might be on pcie4 for much longer yet as they use 4 x 8 lanes while using a 4x16 slot. There’s been a leak that a Pcie5 card from AMD MAY release soon. Neither OP or I will need it for a 1080p monitor though 😆
I honestly let fears about upgradeability get to me a lot more than I hope OP does. I think there is a sub-$1000 Am5 build that can make a terrific value/longevity out of this situation. But when I did, I talked myself into spending a lot more. 😅
Bringing up AM6 is a terrific point! AM5 high end has some really bad issues right now, and AMD very well might to redesign the chip and/or socket to get better performance.
Gamers Nexus said they will do a Cities Skylines 2 benchmark next week I think. Not that it will necessarily change your build at all, I’m guessing this will handle it fine and the Gamers Nexus benchmarks of BG3 would have you walking away with the same set of conclusions that you’ve already arrived at.
Ultrawide monitors often come with extra software to help you enjoy it more like built in KVM functionalities. There’s also window snapping managers on Windows like WiLMa. I’m similar to you though, 2x24" mounted to the wall.
I also went down the “is AM4 still good?” Rabitthole and decided because I don’t have a Microcenter near me, I could not get a 5800X3D, so I didn’t want to build it. After watching many videos though, AM4 is a mature platform and so thoroughly developed. Sales are on fantastic products, and the GPU and RAM will remain upgradeable for years, just that upgrading the CPU would require a new MOBO as well. Building AM5, seems OP already knows a great deal, but the news is that it can be finicky and returning products because they don’t work so well is more common than usual.
I just built an AM5!
My biggest concern is your storage. Thats a PCIE 3 x 4 rather than a PCIe 4 x 4. I went with the 1 TB Solidigm P44 for $50. There’s also the Samsung 990 Pro which has gone on sale a few times recently. The Samsung NVMEs all slap, it the two drives I mentioned are meant to be the fastest available.
You have a micro-ATX board with a Mid tower ATX case, by the way. You could get a smaller case, if you wanted to. $120 is an amazing price for a B650 board, I paid $180 and thought that was the best I could do because I only looked at Newegg.
On your RAM I made sure the RAM I bought was certified for AMD EXPO. The newest overclocking solution. Without overclock, RAM will often run at 5200 or 5600 depending on the motherboard. But 6000 is meant to be the sweet spot for this series of CPUs. I disagree that 32GB is necessary. You can always double it up from 16GB later on. Edit: CSky2? You mag actually want the 32GB, that would be a quick check with a benchmark or a user post about RAM consumption by the game to confirm if 32GB would have payoff or not.
Why the 6700 XT instead of the RX 7600? I decided the 7600 was a better value because I want to game at 1080p for the next few years. I went with the 7800X3D and after taxes my build was $1400. Ouch that was a hard pill to swallow. I started below $1000 and got greedy. But we’re splitting hairs, if you prefer one of these cards then power to you.
I imagine your CPU and your GPU both recommend a 650W power supply, and I imagine you know something I dont and 600W will handle it fine. But if they recommend 750W, I would just double check.
Edit: by the way Newegg has the Fantastech sale starting now-ish but really opening up on October 9th. And I think Intel is announcing new products next month? I’m unsure. Obviously I decided to do it now, and if I have buyer’s remorse so be it.
I think I’m hoping to play it next month 😊
I love AI dungeon!
Playing Path of Exile for the first time! I’m trying a Witch Elemental… Mischief build? I don’t really understand it at ALL and that feeling of being a newb is the most fun thing about it.
I really like this kind of discussion, I wanna see more discussion where community members are the voice as opposed to news where a journalist is the voice.
Wait is XMPP self-hosted?
I really wanna switch to Eternity / Infinity because I’m able to customize super pretty colors. But I got sync first and it’s super pleasant and easy. Love the post filters.
LearnLinux.TV is a pretty nice resource. Redhat offers some guides, too. I think I started on youtube and that led me to written resources, eventually.
A lot of software actually offers its own guide with it. You could also go the IT Cert route and learn CompTIA stuff. It’s more rote and less hands-on, though, but it might point you towards concepts you want to learn.
This is the same issue I have with Joplin! I need to get like multiple installations or databases to keep things separated. It’s all a mess.
“There’s an app for that.”