Someone has been doing some upgrading round here...

The Analogue N64 clone console ships from Hong Kong, so there's likely going to be a foreign transaction fee on most credit cards. Add in the shipping charges and taxes, it's close to $299. Ships first quarter 2025.

I usually choose black for consoles & electronics, but I chose white this time. After owning a (white) PC-Engine mini (which is the Japanese version of TG-16.. since TG-16 mini was sold out and only available through scalpers), I realized white doesn't show dust and fingerprints.

I believe it. Some of those cpu comparison sites, in their review/analysis, even attack consumers for choosing AMD over Intel (blaming them for falling for AMD's superior marketing, Intel's stock performing poorly and whatever else). The same sites skip over AMD having better efficiency and they lie about its performance in games (vs Intel). Red flags that they've been paid off by Intel.

Back when I used to custom build my own desktop PC's, I always went with AMD cpu's. However, my laptops have always had Intel cpu's, for whatever reason/s (availability/more common probably).

You could wait for hacked firmware if you plan on downloading ROM's or get an Everdrive ROM cart. It seems like the Everdrive could be a tad more secure tho, since you could pass on the console firmware hacks with an Everdrive, especially since this console has Wifi network connectivity.

krikzz.com/our-products/cartridges/ed64x7.html

I cancelled my PS5 Preorder. Too many friken bills lately (helping my mother out with her bills - repairs to her auto and home heating).

Edit: PS5 Pro preorder

One of my long time gaming friends worked as a cook in restaurants but was in college studying computer networking. He was also an alcoholic and heavily into harder drugs. When COVID hit like millions of others he lost his job but got that fat unemployment. He asked me to pay his rent one month, I actually did and he paid me back like 2 months later. Eventually he borrowed like $200 more from me and 6 months went by I heard nothing. I knew his reddit name and he was in some subreddit talking about shooting up cocaine(!). Like dude seriously. He asked me for MORE money on top of the $200 and I turned him down. Eventually he got evicted from his apartment and he is currently homeless. He posts on Facebook every once and a while letting people know he is still alive and surviving by panhandling and dumpster diving.

Not a good idea to get into hard drugs unless you are crazy rich, and even then its still a bad idea.

Yeah I work in tech and have been worried that they might not resume our projects at any given time.

But they keep telling me they want me back every time there's a new project, so I hope that stays true.

I was extremely lucky that I didn't lose my job during COVID. I was working for a wealth management firm that was family owned since the 1940s. Their Glassdoor reviews were off the chart. I actually got a huge Christmas bonus in 2020 and a raise. The next year 2021 was the best ever for the firm.............so they sold it to "go out on top" and I lost my job but got a huge severance package in 2022. My new job pays more and is walking distance from my apartment so thats nice.

I was pretty pissed off that CyberPower required a subscription just to check the status of the battery. Turns out I was wrong, you are required to activate the trial which enables all features, after 30 days the trial expires, and the only "Advanced feature" that still works is battery health. If you want to set "plug #1 to turn on at 5pm and off at midnight" that costs a monthly fee. I don't need that.

Downloaded the latest version of NUT that supports my UPS but think I am going to leave well enough alone. I admit I am curious how crazy I could make my setup if I went that route:
networkupstools.org/

Been noticing the rare BSOD issue that happens with my PC hasn't been happening lately, seems to coincide with temperatures outside being much cooler now. Had been suspecting it's a heat issue, gonna get a newer more modern case with better airflow and see if it solves the issue for good. Before, it was happening once or twice every 1-2 days.

Also gonna put the stock cooler for my Ryzen 7 3800X back on, actually bought a brand-new AMD Wraith Prism for it. Those tower coolers with the big dual rads and dual fans are nice and cool the CPU better, but got to looking at it and stock coolers with the fan blowing air down (instead of through) actually allows air to blow around the MOSFET's, voltage regulators, caps and stuff around the CPU socket, which is probably a good thing. Those tower coolers don't seem to get much air around there, compared to the stock one.

Not 100% sure but I also think my 3080 is so big, it's somewhat blocking airflow from the front fans going in.

If you've ever looked at one of those WWIII nuke maps, the Northeast is portrayed as being by far the hardest hit area of the US (if a nuclear war broke out with Russia). It's probably due to the heavy concentration of population centers/cities in the NE, and/or perhaps that it's where military command and intelligence bases are most concentrated (Annapolis, MD; Langley, VA; Washington DC, etc).

Alternatively, if they didn't want to guarantee themselves being wiped out in the process, they could just detonate nukes in low Earth orbit (above North America) to take out our entire power grid, since we haven't hardened our grid against EMP attacks (low orbit nuke blasts) or Carrington events, to throw our civilization into complete disarray & chaos.

8tb nvme SSD only $599

a.co/d/071EQtD

I realize this is a major First World Problem, but Intel 13/14th gen CPUs have been all over the news about their issues overvolting themselves to death. I was pretty sure the 14700kf was immune to this an it only was an issue with the i9 but supposedly it could potentially effect any 14th gen CPU.

Only updated the BIOS on this MSI board once since I bought it, Intel released an update that makes CPUs immune to getting the voltage problem but will not fix damaged CPUs. That damage is permanent. So in the interest of safety I decided to update my BIOS, MSI released an update for my motherboard last month.

Flashed the BIOS, everything is normal. Booted to Windows and noticed my RAM was at 4800 mhz, not 6000 mhz like with XMP. Oh well, so I reboot back to the BIOS and enable XMP Profile 1. Reboot.....................sits there for a minute then it says "the overclock settings didn't work". Shit.

I spent forever in the BIOS tweaking stuff. No dice. So I just rebooted and went with 4800. Its not like 4800 mhz DDR5 is slow RAM in games.

AMD has EXPO which is the same thing as XMP, my motherboard supports it. So I rebooted, picked EXPO profile 1, and restarted. Here I am typing at 6000 mhz EXPO on an Intel CPU.

Also I realized you can tweak the fans for your AIO and the pump in the BIOS. I never bothered. Just going with the defaults. Wonder if I should even bother?

There are multiple settings in the BIOS to change the AIO pump speed and such. I've never had a watercooled PC before so its all new to me. The consensus online seems to be leave the pump at 100% all the time because similar to a car running at 65 mph all the time will last longer then constantly shifting engine speed. I didn't change anything

Also when it comes to RAM speed your max/average FPS barely changes at all, or might even go down with crazy fast 7800 mhz RAM. However the 1% lows, where you might really feel the difference can be a lot higher on higher mhz RAM.

I'm not finding it here at work but there was some benchmarks I saw where a game was getting higher max FPS at DDR5 4800mhz then at 7800 mhz, however the 1% lows were 60fps at 4800 mhz and 90 fps at 7800 mhz.

Since I'm already running 6000 mhz I don't know if its worth it to sit and test the max speed I can get going over 6000 mhz. Laws of diminishing returns vs time spent.