/baw/ - General Discussion

>>421721
Nearly any of those will do the job since they can't really do too much to begin with, unless the laptop specifically has venting holes at the bottom, or you use them with those aluminum unibody laptops where the frame can actually conduct the heat somewhat.

>>421722
There are laptops that DON'T come with vents on the bottom?

>>421723
I wouldn't know, laptops suck. Use a desktop. Even a mini pc will do better than a laptop, unless you absolutely need portability.

>>421724
There's nothing wrong with laptops, you don't always need the biggest e-dick to satisfy your needs.

>>421725
Laptops are more expensive and have less performance, less connectivity, and less expandability than desktops, for the same price. It's not about having a bigger e-dick, it's about getting more for your money.

>Can I truly call myself part of the Master Race if the new one doesn't have 18 revolving blades and cause me to die of hypothermia when activated?
Misconception: a true PC should invoke hyperthermia from the GPU, not hypothermia from air displacement.

>>421726
It depends on the use case, of course.
Gamer? Renderer? Datahoarder? PC.
Browser only? Programmer? Laptop is a legitimate consideration.
If you need performance, connectivity, and expandability then absolutely. Most people don't.

We've hit the point in technology where most people have more than they will ever need. I think that's a good thing.

>>421732
>browser only
this depends entirely on what browsing experience you like. A laptop wouldn't give you decent screen size and a good keyboard/mouse, unless you hook it up to external screen/keyboard/mouse in which case you may as well get a PC. If you are fine with small screens and hooking up external keys/mouse (or use the built-in shitty keys+touchpad), then I guess laptops are fine.
But keep in mind, most people just use their phones to browse nowadays, so if you just want to browse, you don't even need a laptop.

>Programmer
Again this depends on what you are programming. If you run android studio plus photoshop plus virtual machines (that's what I did when developing mobile apps), then you'll need actual performance and a laptop will be significantly more expensive.

If you go around from client to client making presentations or showing the designs you made in Photoshop/Sketch then sure, a laptop is what you need. But for serious work a PC is simply more efficient.

State the best Operating System

-Go-

>>421738
They all suck.

>>421748
The Critic - It stinks
Why are you such a debbiedowner anon.

>>421846
Is it wrong that I want to eat those white pebbles? My mind instantly thought sweets when I looked at them

IMAGINE BEING AT COMPUTERS

>>421877
That's a question of fashion, isn't it? The styles the companies put out change over time, "tempered glass RGB bullshit" is whats in with them at this moment.

Why is an SSD superior to a regular drive?

>>421991
No speed penalty on parallel transfers, significantly lower random access time. The higher sequential read/write is a bonus too, but not what makes a real difference (I had those old old Intel X25 SSDs, with 40mbyte/s writes, and even those made normal HDDs feel like a C64 tape drive).

>>421993
Are there any downsides for all this speed?

>>421994
SSDs have finite write cycles. In reality, these are set so high in consumer devices that you'd likely buy an entirely new PC by the time they die. It's not a dumb idea to check the SMART data for total data written every once in a while, but usually this only allows you to extrapolate how long the device will last, or what kind of specs you should look for in your next upgrade.
For example, my current SSD has ~10000 hours uptime and ~25TB written, meaning that it writes an average 22TB per year, so a Samsung 980 256GBB with 150 TBW life expectancy would last me six-seven years of daily usage. And that's on the real low end of things, 500gb or 1tb drives have double and quadriple the lifetime due to having more NAND cells to use. So a 1tb drive would last me 24 years at this rate. In other words, the finite write cycles is not much of a big deal.

Also SSDs cost more.

That's about it.

>>421998
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201210/09131845861/not-this-again-senator-tillis-tries-to-slide-dangerous-felony-streaming-bill-into-must-pass-government-funding-bill.shtml

He's literally being paid off to push this insane bill (which should be no surprise to anyone).

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-covid-19-stimulus-bill-is-full-of-copyright-enforcement-laws/

It passed.
Americans your political system is total bullshit, where anyone can just slip a totally unrelated rider into any bill getting passed.
Its basically admittance that the entire thing is corrupt.

>>422087
Is that the one that makes streaming a felony, or the one that requires all pornography to have written consent from all participants?

>>422089
The streaming one.

>>422087
>>422090
Pushing in something unrelated into a bill is a simple act of misdirection. And yeah, the entire American political system is corrupt. Bills are passed either based on how much "support" the senators get, or if there's a big enough crisis that they need to look like they are doing something.

Well, unless my sources are full of shit, the "Moar Online Censorship But You Get 600 Bucks" bill did not technically pass in the US of A.

Something seems fishy in my server. On the two slots that use the Marvell controller, one of the drives has been reporting recurring errors. After switching the drive out, the new drive put in its place SOMETIMES reports errors. And also the other drive on the same controller started doing this too.

The drives don't have bad sectors - I've ran multiple full zero writes. However when I do this on the server side, it SOMETIMES returns errors. That is, I do a full zero run + verification and on one check I get a bunch of bad blocks, on the other one I don't. Sometimes it just hangs up.
On Windows, the drive has zero errors.

So now I either have to deal with bad SATA cables, a failure on the PSU (unlikely, 5 other drives have no problems), on the Molex to Sata power converters (possible but not likely), or FreeBSD having problems with the Marvell ATA controller. Or perhaps the PSU just not having enough amps on this specific rail to keep both drives running, as it is quite an old PSU.

>>421998
Someone should hack Washington.

>>422339
wat?

I've been thinking of putting a full watercool loop in my PC. I have some experience with them, but I never built a full custom loop before.

>>422405
Just how much better is watercooling a machine justifying the extra work?

>>422406
Very. With air cooling, the hardware shoots up to maximum temperature in a few seconds. With water cooling, it takes a long time to heat up all the water in the tubes as they flow around, so it can take minutes for the hardware to get significantly higher temperatures or any higher at all. And depending on your setup you can get your hardware to below 50C on load and within a few degrees to room temperature in idle. Simply put, it is very hard to move back to air cooling after you have used decent water loops.
Not the AIO CPU coolers though, those are terrible.

Right now I have a semi-AIO on my gpu (it's an AIO but built out of shelf parts and quick release fittings so it is expandable), which is not the most efficient thing, and takes a lot of space, and I want to replace this with a single-slot proper GPU water block. However for that I need an external pump/reservoir, at which point I may as well get a CPU block too. The question is to whether to go for the semi-AIO for the CPU that has a pump/reservoir/CPU block combo, or go for the full custom set with the external pump/reservoir.
The latter would require me to cut my own tubes, the former means that I may not have enough space for the long tubes they include by default.

I oughta make some pictures of the current setup and case so I can measure and plan things better.

>>422407
The kit I was about to buy ended up having its price raised literally the next day I was about to buy it. And now it's not that good priced anymore to be worth buying. fucking hell.

I might just blow the money on extra HDDs.

What antivirus setups would anons suggest for a PC?

>>422511
Common Sense.

>>422511
GNU/Linux or similar.

>>422533
Part of common sense would be using protection even if you aren't sticking your dongle in the worst ports.

>>422655
There are some real cuties out there.

Could do with a new computer, can't be bothered with the setup and transferring all my games across though.
Last time my friend offered to do it and messed things up so bad had to take it to a shop.

>>422697
>Could do with a new computer, can't be bothered with the setup and transferring all my games across though.

Why not just put the old computers boot drive into the new computer? At worst you have to reactivate windows, but if you have a legit key then that takes like two clicks, if you don't then there are some tools on github to do it. And you have to install new drivers but that's not a big deal either. I've been using the same windows install since, I dunno, whenever win7 64bit came out (it has been upgraded to win10 since).

>>422698
Think I've still got the key lying around.
What though if my current computer is a laptop?

>>422701
On a laptop it is possible that the key is tied to the hardware and you'll need to use one of the activators. I had a MSDNAA key, despite being 10+ years old it still worked - my old machine was active since its win7 days, my new computer defaulted to being inactive, but I could just tell Windows to check the activation status and it activated it by itself.

This is the activator I think I used the last time (MAS 1.4):
https://gitlab.com/massgrave/microsoft-activation-scripts

I would just like to express annoyance at the fact that social media sites in particular make a point of overriding middle click's usual function of "open in a new tab" with "just a second left click", because it means "open this in another tab so I have that set aside to work on later while I read the rest of this page" becomes "open this in the current tab, possibly putting whatever I was reading behind several minutes of scrolling through a now-refreshed list of messages".

>>422719
I am a filthy trackpad user and have not pressed the scroll wheel for years.

>>422719
Try using ctrl + left click instead. I found that as long as the link is an actual link (and not just a pure javascript trigger), it works more often than middle click.

Printer ink cartridges are a fucking scam, like the way companies jack up the price of insulin despite it being far cheaper in cost to produce (the only upside is you don't need to inject printer ink to survive).

>>422723
True.

>>422723
This is well known. I've heard some people being able to buy new printers cheaper than ink cartridges.

Thanks, big centralized government!

>>422859
Uh... what for?

Does anyone have problem with half the internet just not working today?

>>423175
This is so sad.

>>423176
It's awesome. Cake for everyone.

My laptop made a weird noise that sounded like the dripping of rain, the fuck was up with that?

>>423181
And that day could be today!
I recall the term 'delicious cake' becoming a euphemism for loli r34, hence 8chan's /delicious/ rivaling our /pco/ after /aco/ existed.

>>423186
Windows 10 is an odd thing, with every update they fix half the bugs, add a bunch of new ones, and remove some already working functions either so they can move it under the new control panel or replacing it with something that looks new but does the same.

It's not any more terrible than Windows usually is but you can certainly feel that it's hacked together by low budget Indian subcontractors.

>>423187
You can FEEL when pajeets are involved. Circular logic, buckpassing and bug-hiding is how they roll.

>>423188
>>423187
Well whats the alternative in terms of the customer's choice? As time goes on you need to buy the latest system as vidya gaems eventually drop the oldest one in terms of running.

>>423189
If you want production, Mac, if you want games, the latest Nintendo or Playstation.

Or you can run Windows 10 which is mostly fine, once you configure windows update to not automatically fuck up your system (use gpedit.msc for this, and you need at least the Pro version for this).

>>423190
>Playstation
Are you retarded?

>>423191
I'm not endorsing Sony's consumer-hating politics if that's what you mean, but if he wants a gaming platform then his only alternative to Windows 10 is getting a console.

Why would a machine heat up more when left to idle than when you are actually doing stuff on it.

>>423218
Because when left idle, it may turn down the fan speed which will raise temperatures. Of course when the temperatures rise up, the cooling fan should automatically kick in...

>>423218
Fan speed etc. is SUPPOSED to relate to temperature.

>>423218
If your browser is open, a certain site might decide to hog more CPU.

And don't forget that there are some things that can cause the system to use higher clocks even if you are idling. For example playing a video file could trigger higher clockspeeds in the GPU.

How much would you generally spend on a custom ordered PC?
And any personal recommendations on websites that provide the service?

>>423279
I order stuff from the local stores, they tend to give me better prices because I've been doing so for almost 20 years now.
As for how much to spend on it, that depends on what you want to use it for. Don't fall into the trap of getting stronger hardware than what you'd need, nowadays you can get crazy strong cpu/gpu but they also cost extreme amounts. A Ryzen 3600 is already overkill for nearly anything you'd do (including games), unless you are running lots of encoding or VMs. Low-range hardware is surprisingly powerful now, and that includes both CPUs and videocards.

>>423279
About $7k. I always get the latest pre-built. I make certain it's got Alienware logos on everything.

>>423283
2/10

>>423335
It looks okay, given that the 3060 videocard alone is out of stock everywhere and can go for something like $800 when it *is* in stock. And it comes with a monitor and 3 drives.

I'd probably go for a less bullshit case (Be Quiet 500/601/802 depending on features/size and budget), an air cooler on the cpu (Noctua U12S with F12 fan is terrific), and a better power supply, with at least 80plus Gold rating (you don't want to cheap out on the power supply, and it's not the watts that matter).
Also the B550 motherboards are better than X570 since they have no fan and most of them come with 2.5G network; the X570 has PCIE 4.0 on all ports but that does not matter much (B550 has them on the main port and 1 nvme slot, the rest use PCIE 3.0 which is already very good).

But if you can't be arsed to build your own setup, it's a good buy. Especially since decent videocards are impossible to find new, and even used cards have astronomical prices.

>>423333
Quads confirmed with motherboard spiders

Who here is posting on an absolute tired old chugger of a machine?
Video somewhat unrelated.

Beef PC

>>423357
I usually upgrade every 7-8 years on average, because CPU speeds have stalled so much that it takes this long for major changes in speed to happen. In the 90s you could've upgrade every year and get double performance. I only just updated last year, so my PC is fairly up to date until the middle of the decade.

However I do plan on restoring my old 1998 PC.

>>423357
2012 MacBook """Pro""" here! Changing the hard drive soon, by miracle getting a PC laptop at the end of the year.

>>423362
You're making me feel wasteful about buying a new computer despite only having my laptop for 6 years...

>>423414
Yeah that goes well with your room if you also have a disco ball in it, but I prefer the kind of box that you don't even see or hear running, it just does its job silently.

>>423335
should have went for the rtx 3060 ti...

I think my HDD is clicking.

>>423468
HDD read heads make clicking noises, that's normal. Unless it's something like an extremely loud singular click that also happens to coincide with significant system hangs, then you have a problem.

Either way, check the SMART diagnostic data to know if you have issues, and make sure your backups are up to date.

Got my new computer.
Should I install my games to the HDD or the SSD?

>>423516
SSD, provided it is large enough.
HDD is only for cold storage or shit that requires minimal random reads (for ex. movies).

>>423517
1TB, and its separate from the main drive, so it should be fine.

>>423518
Oh, sounds like my setup then (500gb nvme for OS, 1tb sata ssd for games).

It looks like Google plans on forcing everyone to use 2 factor authentication, and get rid of normal passwords.
Any other good email provider beside gmail, that doesn't deal with this bullshit?

>>423591
I can recomment Mailo for general use, though you can use it as a recovery email too I guess.

>Technology
Fucking Goddamn Shitty Phones.

I only have a mobile phone because all sorts of online stuff now needs to use text message for verification.
Sim card has randomly decided to get fucked for seemingly no reason, me and my roommate spent hours narrowing this down.

Now am gonna have to venture out to an actual physical store for the company if there's any chance of getting it replaced.
Text message verification is bullshit and just a hassle.

>>423758
Mobile phones are bullshit. We should all go back to landlines. Or telegrams.

>>423796
Talking IRL is kind of cool too.

Switched my computer (windows 10) on today and am having visual problems.
Screen flickers black for an instant occasionally, also sometimes have a pair of tiny tiny negative squares on the left and right sides of the screen when I move the mouse around (tried to screencap that but it never appeared on the screencap)

No idea where this comes from, could only hope an update will arrive that makes it go away.

>>423940
The squares on the sides could be an overlay from some app. Try closing stuff and see if it goes away after closing any program. I had this stupid issue where enabling steam overlay once prevented animated cursor from working in games, talk about unrelated problem.

I don't know about the flicker thing, that could be so many different things from software issue to hardware ones.

My monitor is... ticking?
What the hell is that about.

>>424365
IT'S A BOMB

>>424376
>Doesn't even have a slot to insert your floppy into
Modern computers were a mistake

I'm posting this here, but FUCK Google Lens, its just so much worse than Image Search. I'd disabled it previously but somehow that shit has come back on me.

>>425364
I have a (rarely used) laptop, and it reaches about 40° Celsius in like 30 minutes. Very relatable meme.

I'm getting an AD email in Outlook asking me about upgrading my account.
What's the deal with that? Never seen anything like that before, its presumably official since it doesn't function like a regular email but have no interest in actually following its link.

>>425639
Nah it doesn't look anything like that.
And when I say it doesn't function like a normal email it doesn't appear in your deleted folder when you delete it. And is specifically tagged "AD" in a way no normal email is.

If its a scam they've somehow managed to infiltrate and modify the actual design of the email browser.

>>425641
Still most likely just a scam email.
Doesn't outlook have a way to check the email source data? It should be clearly visible from that if it comes from some bullshit site instead of Microsoft or outlook.com. Even the link itself, if you copy out and run a WHOIS on the domain, you could probably tell if it's by Microsoft or some registered-two-days-ago phishing domain.

I currently have 730GB of free space in my game SSD, up from 700 after deleting a couple of things.
Keep getting this nagging anxiety in my chest that it is not enough, despite the fact I don't regularly purchase triple-A games with bloated file sizes.

>>425668
If "deleting a couple of things" nets you only 30gb saved, then you should have enough space. If you run out of it, you can just delete one of those triple-a games you are not currently playing (you can re-download them from steam anyway, can't you?).

>>425670
It was more than literally two games but yeah.
More just a side-effect of my actual anxiety where when my resources reduce it sets me off.

Honestly though there is an actual problem you see with games from big companies that are like 50GB or more simply because they don't want to put forth the effort in making it more compact.

The battery on my smartphone is dying. These things are such a fucking con.

Wouldn't even own a mobile phone if it wasn't mandated nowadays by needing to receive texts to verify things online.

>>425888
The amount of technology I have just for the sake of other people or jobs is infuriating, and I LIKE technology!

My monitor started getting errors, a slight blue hue and some vibration on the left side only. I took it apart hoping to find the problem, and ended up tearing the glued down ribbon cable for the lcd display. A replacement panel costs as much as a new monitor.
Fuck.

>>426931
That sucks man. At least it was on its way out anyway?

>>426932
I only just noticed but it was almost 9 years old, so yeah, I guess you could say it was. If it had only started getting issues a month earlier, I would've had the money to get a new one, now I'm not sure I do, I'll have to dig into my savings... again...

I'm also having monitor issues.
When out today and left my computer on, when I got back the monitor was black, had to reset the machine twice to get it running again.

Works now but the problem is I've got flickering green dots dancing across my screen and not sure how to get rid of them.

>>426989
Update: Ended up plugging the cable into a different port on the back of the monitor and it seems to have fixed the issue.
There's three and only one seems to be in full working order now.

>>426990
Is it a HDMI port? Those can go VERY quickly, ask any electronic repairman who works on TVs.

>>426993
Is there a specific reason for that?

>>426994
When you are trying to plug it in by reaching in the back and don't angle the slot up right (because you are not seeing it), you might accidentally have the metal coat of the male connector touching the pins inside the female one. If you do this on a TV or an AVR or a PC, which have metal back plates, you end up connecting the grounded chassis to the data pins. This usually shorts out the connector (or rather the pins on the driver chip for that one connector) and that's that.
There are also some shoddy connectors where the pins are not properly seated on the female end, and simply pushing in the cable will push the pins back and break them off.
Plus the cable has a lot of pins and a small connector that isn't secured in place by anything (vga/dvi have screws, displayport has spring loaded pegs), so they can be unplugged easily.

In short, it's a consumer trash connector.

Ugh, might need to buy another controller for my PC, starting to have downward drift issues.

What is the best choice of game controller to buy for a PC? Like what will last best versus the cost?
Modern ones seem so much more expensive but buying an unofficial 360 controller seems like a bad idea.

>>427054
all pads will develop drifting since they all use the same technology.
You might be better off trying to repair it. There are guides on youtube. Worst case is you can get a spare part and solder it over.

>>427056
Some might develop drifting sooner than others or prove to be more sturdy, that's why I was asking for a recommendation.
I've actually got the alcohol and try to clean them out but don't have a soldering gun.

>>427057
Unfortunately I can't help you there, I've only used the xbox controllers for my PC for a long time now.

As far as I know all controllers (except for some old Sega ones) use standard potentiometers, so they'll all go to shit eventually. If one develops drifting later, it's most likely down to the controller seeing less use - I never got any drifting despite sticking to the same pad for 6-7 years, but I did not use the analog pad much either.
That's why I recommend you get some OEM parts from china and solder them over. I had a similar problem with a mouse wheel (they also use potentiometers), and getting replacement parts extended its life nearly tenfold.

We should stop making graphics in video games better, its nothing but a con.

What the flying fuck is a .jfif file?

>>427789
It's a jpeg but with some extra information that .jpg files couldn't store, such as colorspace. But, later versions of .jpg format allowed for EXIF info, which is basically an evolution of the JFIF data, making .jfif obsolete. I think some digital cameras used this format prior to EXIF.

SSD gradually die off over time, bit by bit in a more specific way than traditional hard drives.

Its not like this is a harsh time limit but checking my computer and noticing one is at 'of 930 GB' and the other is at 'of 931 GB' does terrible things to my autistic anxiety.

>>427920
That's not how ssds die, and you'd have to do something silly like farming Chia on them to kill them. Even the shitty consumer SSDs have so much write cycles that they'd die for other reasons before you hit that cap. And if you hit it, then they'll just stop working permanently (or you'll be unable to write to them), they won't just eat up random bits from the total capacity.
The 930/931 gb is just because one is set up to have a full capacity of 999 630 000 000 bytes and the other is 1 000 000 000 bytes.

Also, make regular backups, and your anxiety will go away.

My internet was down since late in the day yesterday.
Oh lord in heaven it is just the worst thing that can ever happen, such unimaginable torture and deprivation.

Losing access to the internet is like being sealed in solitary confinement, the ISP should be locked up for human right abuses for allowing it to happen.

>>428591
Pirates are gay and have syphilis.

>>428593
Then don't have sex with them.

The difference between a book and the internet is you read a book once and you've consumed all the content from it, while the internet is instead an infinite ever-expanding amount of books.

>>428608
You don't have infinite free time either. Plus, you can always re-read a book. Or even a chapter.

>>428616
>You don't have infinite free time
You underestimate my power!

Having to update to newer operating systems annoys the piss out of me. 2025 seems like it'll be on us before you know it.

>>429685
Windows 10 seems to be working fine for now.
11 rewrote a ton of things for the worse, I see no point in using it for a while. It's Windows 8 all over again.

>>429685
Just take the jump into Linuxland already. Even the occasional major version upgrades are simple.

>>429691
I don't want to fuck penguins though

My boot drive (500gb) was getting dangerously full, so I was contemplating upgrading it to a 1tb one, since SSDs have came down in price so much lately. Plus this would've allowed for an upgrade to PCIE 4.0 for extra speeds.
However upon doing a checkup on what exactly used so much space, I discovered that Firefox has a bug introduced some time in January in its automatic cache deletion. There's an option to delete selectable parts of your browsing history whenever you close the browser. I had it set to delete only the cache. The bug in particular caused the cache to not be deleted and instead turned into files named "cache2.<datetime>.purge.bg_rm". The datetime part is whenever you close the browser.

There has been 2670 of these, totaling to 134GB, which explains why I was running out of space on my boot drive.
Fucks sake, Mozilla.

>>429998
Also, each folder had a ton of files inside, from hundreds to thousands, I guess depending on how long each session was. Which means that there were over 2 400 000 files in the profiles folder, which made it take a long while to delete.

Interestingly my older profile creates these cache2 folders but they are all empty. Digging into settings, it seems that I had browser.cache.memory.enable and browser.cache.disk.enable set to FALSE under about:config. So with those settings, the extra folders are created, but don't take any space, which at least prevents millions of files in hundreds of gigabytes being created.

tl:dr; if you have Firefox set to clear your browser cache on close, it instead just renames the cache folder but does not delete it. This can result in a ton of junk data written out over the months.

If you use Firefox, you should definitely check your profile folder if it has all this junk cache2 inside it or not.

one of the SSDs in my machine just died.

I'm screaming at the moment.

>>430237
I've got two SSDs, the main one and the one all my steam games are saved to.

If either dies I would be proper fucked.

Sympathies anon.

>>430359
I managed to fix it, the fuse was dead, I just removed it with a hot air gun and patched the traces with a small single strand wire. None of the data was damaged. I've set up a dummy service on the drive so when Windows creates HDD image backups, it will include this drive too. That way I'll always have a week-old backup at worst. My last backup was 1+ years old (which is why I was only screaming as opposed to tearing my hair out).

>>430395
Lewd!

I hate mobile phones. Now that I actually use one my credit keeps getting drained and I don't know why.
Why do all of you exist, why does the internet need to text you things to verify things now, life was better before this nonsense.

>>430674
We do not choose what technology should be, that is decided for us. In that sense, when it comes to technology, there is no democracy.

Been getting so much more spam email recently. Its all blatantly obvious and goes directly to junk so its not like the stuff is a problem, but still is annoying.

Just found out that Windows File History will save the Firefox cache directories since they are placed in the user profiles appdata folder. This resulted in over 1 million files created in a one year period in the file history backup, which takes hours to delete.

For anyone using Firefox or derivatives, change the cache directory to something like c:\TEMP\firefox_cache, you can do so in about:config by creating an entry named browser.cache.disk.parent_directory, setting it to string, and giving it the directory you want to use. You could also just disable disk cache altogether (or keep disk cache on but point it to a RAM drive).