especially if you wanted to play Halo on PC
I still giggle that after years and years of Halo 3+ being a console exclusive, and Halo 2 sucking on Windows for years*, the entire Halo collection now has a Gold rating on Linux. I have very specific memories of being annoyed for years that the most prestigious Microsoft game doesn’t work on a Microsoft gaming platform (Windows).
*God damn does Games for Windows Live suck
A note on the fans specifically, you can buy quiet fans. In general, the larger the fan, the lower the speed you can run it and the quieter it is. You can also setup fan curves so they are only doing anything of note when the computer is pumping out heat (given your statements, that would be basically never).
The electricity usage is a pretty notable thing. Though, if you take the graphics card out of a desktop (use integrated graphics, a dedicated graphics card in a server is just wasted electricity) and set the OS to power saver (this mostly means it won’t boost the CPU to higher clocks), it really won’t use much power. Compared to buying dedicated NAS hardware, you may never recoup the energy costs between the hardware you have and the lower-power hardware you need to buy.
If you don’t already own one, a Kill-A-Watt is a great tool to have. Tells you how much energy a device is using. Biggest thing I found was my TV had a vampire draw of 15W. Literally draws 15W while off. This got the TV put on a power strip I turn off when I’m not using it.
Now, with all that said, sometimes you just want what you want. And there is nothing wrong with that. My goal here is to make sure you don’t feel you have to pick one option over the other.
If you have a desktop, throw a hard drive or two in it and you have a NAS. Software (like you mentioned Plex or Jellyfin) does the rest. Even if you only have a laptop, a hard drive in a standard USB enclosure will perform this role just fine.
Works perfectly fine on my machine I bought over two decades after the game came out, looks significantly better than when the game came out too. Not sure how much more upgradability you could possibly want.
Yeah, and as long as these things never touch the internet, there really isn’t an issue.
What are you intending to run on this server?
If it is just PiHole, you can basically get the weakest computer you can find.
If you want lots of storage space, you will need to make sure you have a case and motherboard that will accommodate the drives.
If you are running encryption on those drives as well, you will need a CPU more powerful than what comes in a Pi, but nothing crazy.
If you are running lots and lots of VMs, you will want lots of RAM. A linux VM will use maybe a few GB each depending on what software each is running internally, a windows vm will use a bit more.
If you are doing AI workloads, you will need a graphics card.
Exactly, that information isn’t coming from inside the black hole. In fact it is the lack of information that tells us such things. We know the ratio between the lack of information (the event horizon) and the mass of everything inside.
Mother of the year.
Yeah, Texas defending privacy rights in undeniably a good thing.
Those are both solid pieces of hardware. However, I would suggest getting a Ryzen 5600 for a notable per-core CPU buff over the 3600x, which should help quite a bit with games like Civ’s AI turn time. And since that CPU, Motherboard socket isn’t latest-gen either, you can buy used for cheap still.
On a slightly different note: The 7k series Ryzen CPUs get you on the latest slot, AM5. This will get you future upgradability if you want it, but it will also come with higher costs as AM5 is the newest socket, so people aren’t unloading them onto the used market in quantity. Such cost considerations are best determined by you. Both are a solid choice though.
For the GPU, I think the Radeon 6600 is a good choice. Radeon stuff works better in linux and that particular one is plenty strong for what you listed.
I highly, highly recommend PassMark’s benchmarks for comparing hardware. They are the first place I look to get relative numbers. And from there I determine what I need/want.
What will you argue if I bring up the fact that they ripped off countless Pokemon?
The case case isn’t about character designs, the case is about patents Nintendo filed after PocketPair released a game with said mechanics. The idea that one should be able to patent a game mechanic someone else has already released in their games is BS. Japan’s patent system sucks and Nintendo sucks for abusing it.
Summoning creatures from an object is hardly “blatant plagiarism”. Many, many, many games have the ability to summon creatures from an object. Pokemon was certainly not the first one to do it…
We are talking about gliding on a mount…a very common game feature…
Japanese ones are particularly worse. In the US a successful defense is prior art, there is no such defense in Japan.
If you’re coding or whatever this is fine.
I want coders to learn from trusted sources too. How do you authorize a user and store the password (plain text, hash, encrypt)? Do you use MD5 or SHA-256? (Always hash passwords, don’t use MD5)
If you have to encrypt some information, do you use AES or Triple DES ? (never Triple DES)
When authorizing with OAuth, should one send the auth url, client id, client secret, scopes, and redirect url to the client machine? (yes, yes, no, yes, yes)
These are basic questions with answers that are easy to find…and many programmers get them very, very wrong. Mostly out of carelessness, often the question itself doesn’t even pop into their head.
As long as they let you turn off the upscaling I won’t complain about it. Unfortunately there has been a trend as of late to force it on; the artifacting drives me nuts. It’s always harder to to see in youtube videos though, since they are compressed quite a bit compared to live play.
Biggest thing that concerns me was their focus on pushing one into multiplayer in V. I’m worried that is going to intensify since it made them so damn much money doing that last time.
Either way, game isn’t out for a year, and it isn’t out for PC for probably two years. So, just going to go back to enjoying my Breath of Fire IV playthrough I’m currently doing. :)
Sounds like bringing your passport solves the problem completely. Something that has always been a good idea.
Reseat the button cell for the bios?
This is a good one too! And if you have a volt-meter, see if it’s low (or just replace it if you have a spare).
Since it is something with the computer itself and not the OS, some things to try:
The goal is to narrow down which piece of hardware is failing.
The UPS should have a USB plug in the back. Plug that into your computer and it will read the battery status as if it was a laptop. Then in your OS, set the standard shutdown options when low on battery.