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ZekeSulastin

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It was still overpriced when it was rumored to be ~$700 with the rest of the market priced commensurately, and I go online right now and buy significantly more powerful prebuilts for less, albeit without the integrated puck (which does nothing without buying the non-included controller anyways), HDMI CEC (probably want to hold off on that for a patch cycle or three if the complaints on r/SteamMachine are any indication), and the size (ok ya got me there).

You did look at the Steam Machine's specs/benchmarks, right? I'm fairly certain that the build you just made well exceeds what Valve put out.

basically same specs

The RTX 5050 8 GB is 10-20% faster and the Intel 225F is significantly more powerful (a bit harder to get percentage ranges there since there aren't many 225 benchmarks).

The Steam Machine has been known to be roughly a Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 7600 M performance wise for a while and the release benchmarks have confirmed it; given Valve's statements that it would likely cost more than consoles before prices went haywire, I don't think the Steam Machine would ever have been priced competitively.

I just wish someone would come out with a PCIE 4x1 capable card with SFP - my main desktop’s non-GPU expansion slots are all 4x1 electrically and even the one you linked is a 3x2. As far as I can tell the only 4x1 cards available are RTL8127 or AQC113 RJ45 ones :(

I suppose an NVME riser is also an option, albeit janky.

iBook Clamshell 4 months ago

I don’t think I’ve seen a cookie banner pop up with a “please reconsider” on refusal … ever, actually. Neat?

I had Debian running on an old clamshell iBook for a bit; the main things I remember were that it was kind of neat, and that it took less cpu to play music from my server via mpd and pulseaudio-over-network than it did to play the files directly on the iBook.

This is a more Reddit comment section than I’ve seen on r/headphones in ages. It’s almost nostalgic!

I use my wired Sundara (which have dropped in price greatly since I got them years ago!) at my desk with DAC/AMP all the time, of course, and have a very nice set of Etymotic IEMs with a USB-C dongle permanently attached (once I stopped using it for my PC*). For use with my phone I haven’t actually reached for those Etys over my AirPods Pro 2 in years as the latter are significantly more convenient. They also work fine with Windows 11 (which supports AAC over Bluetooth, as can Linux IIRC) if I want to use them there for whatever reason. Maybe I’m blessed in that I don’t require my phone to be a critical listening device?

* If you have hissing/interference/etc when plugging headphones into your PC, the Apple USB-C dongle is very good and only 9 USD.

The separate light-only sticks are useful if you want the appearance of all four slots filled: having four RAM sticks usually forces a slower memory speed (as the target market typically overclocks their RAM*), so unless you actually need a lot of RAM and can’t get a 2x32 or 2x48 etc kit you’re better off with the fakes.

Edit: this is also why some “extreme overclocking”-type motherboards** only have two DIMM slots: having four actively opposes their purpose.

* And yes, loading an XMP/EXPO profile to get the advertised 3000CL60 or w/e counts!

** i.e. https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-cross...

Which doesn’t matter at all in the case of Helldivers 2 as it’s only available for PC, PS5, and XBS/X. That’s a good part of why PC players were so irritated, actually: when all this blew up a few months ago, the PC install sizes was ~133 GB vs the consoles’ 36 GB.

Steam Machine 8 months ago

I thought DLSS4 did work on Linux, and a quick glance at r/linux_gaming seems to say the same.

I agree about RDNA3 holding it back; given its specs I’m hoping its significantly cheaper than $750.

It's mentioned as upcoming in the FAQ under "How much will it cost?": "$30 on subwaybuilder.com and $40 on Steam (page is coming soon). The Steam launch won't happen for a few months after the launch on subwaybuilder.com."

Here’s a fun thought exercise - replace Ozempic/weight loss with any number of drug/mental health condition pairs.

I also hope there’s no long term worse side effects, but I agree with pjc50 in that most of the negative reaction is actually about feeling morally superior.