Hey gamers: what hardware to get?

Post #444,093 by crazy 5/18/24 5:59:39 PM 5/18/24 5:59:39 PM Reply	Hey gamers: what hardware to get? I've been watching videos such as the following and I'm wondering what it would take to get a system together capable of running a GTA v. https://youtu.be/G-bcR3j72mk?si=AWqfGvzv6hkOttmr So do I get a dedicated console such as PS5 or Xbox or do I put a PC together? Keep in mind that have managed to avoid putting a PC together for the last 10 years and would prefer to keep it that way.
Post #444,094 by malraux 5/19/24 2:10:07 PM 5/19/24 2:10:07 PM Reply	PS5 then. If you for some reason don't want to just buy a console, then https://www.reddit.com/r/buildmeapc/ is a good resource. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #444,095 by static 5/19/24 11:03:29 PM 5/19/24 11:03:29 PM Reply	What Adminiscott said. Normally I'd say "what games were you wanting to play?" and use that to guide what console or hardware to recommend. But you already said. :) PS5 will be the best bet. It also runs most PS4 games. And you can buy and download games. And it has streaming apps. Be aware that most PSN stuff requires a subscription. Sony couldn't make PS3 owners do that, but they couldn for PS4 and now PS5. (And GTA VI is due out in about 18 months time. Probably. It'll be for current gen consoles for a while before it comes out on PC.)
Post #444,097 by crazy 5/20/24 11:17:00 AM 5/20/24 11:17:00 AM Reply	Okay, sounds good If I decide to actually do it, I'll get a PS v.
Post #444,098 by crazy 5/21/24 12:59:01 PM 5/21/24 12:59:01 PM Reply	On the other hand These tiny form factor computers are looking amazing to me. I can place one on top of my projector with a USB dongle radio keyboard/trackball in my lap. I'd like to play with 16 cores and a GPU and an npu. I just want to do it without building a complex expensive PC. https://www.servethehome.com/asrock-industrial-nuc-box-155h-mini-pc-review-intel-ai/ So is this thing capable of GTA v as well as keeping my futz factor down?
Post #444,099 by crazy 5/21/24 1:42:44 PM 5/21/24 1:42:44 PM Reply	Can that thing run an open source trainable model? And I really have no idea from which I speak. So I'm going to babble a bit and hopefully someone here can correct and point me in a direction. I would like a totally local AI model run. I don't want it to reach out and touch anything on the web unless I specifically tell it to. I want to feed it information though, maybe text or email or Real-Time camera and audio input or point to specific websites and it should digest those. How about a home-based security system that has cameras all over the place outside and can tell the difference between deer and raccoon movement and a human attempting to be sneaky? What would it take to have a real-time home security system to be able to do that? I'm not that paranoid. I'm just reasonably paranoid. Let's face it, I occasionally piss people off. Does such a thing exist? And is it runnable on the above mentioned box in a reasonable fashion, ie: a training period should never be more than a day or so. And yes, training is different from the inference phase. But I expect to swap back and forth until it's trained and then let it run. And if not that box, what box? And does anyone recommend a specific model?
Post #444,114 by Another Scott 5/27/24 11:44:10 AM 5/27/24 11:44:10 AM Reply	Not local, but ChatGPT on Raspberry Pi smart speaker https://www.notebookcheck.net/Neither-Amazon-Alexa-nor-Google-Nest-smart-speaker-uses-ChatGPT.841640.0.html Interesting, but no thanks. [ insert story about car dealer's "AI" assistant being used to write user's python program. ] Cheers, Scott.
Post #444,100 by Another Scott 5/21/24 8:50:06 PM 5/21/24 8:50:06 PM Reply	See the 3rd page of your link. That system thermally throttles quickly (it only runs at full power very briefly). AFAIK, all the micro PCs do that. That's usually incompatible with gaming. I agree with adminiscott - if you want to game, get a gaming box like a PS5. If you want to do computer stuff, then think carefully about what you want it for. If you want to do heavy-duty computing, you still need a big box and decent cooling and it probably won't be small (or cheap). Last November got J an M2Max MacStudio from B&H (she's been a Mac person for ages). It's quiet and has decent horsepower and decent ports. Spendy, of course, but not as ridiculous as some of their boxes. I don't know how they are for running Linux these days (if that's your thing), or if they somehow make running Linux/Unix-like things inside macos painful. Happy hunting! Cheers, Scott.
Post #444,101 by crazy 5/22/24 12:31:18 PM 5/22/24 12:42:34 PM Reply	Understood. If I want to run gaming at any given level, I have to have a certain number of cuda units. If I want one of those baby PCS, I have to plug in an external GPU coprocessor. I've been reading and watching videos and now have at least a baseline understanding of the amount of power required to run modern games on a PC. It's a lot. Same thing for localized ai. Downloadable models are rated on the number of billions of parameters they work on. There's the entry level ones that can run in 20 GB of memory and there's the top end ones that can run in 90 GB of memory. So if I want to run a top end one I've got to have a huge amount of memory. And then I want those same GPU cuda units for it to use. I think I'll give it another 6 months and see where the downloadable AI development goes and combine that with the possibility of me getting a stack of used graphic cards. I've got too much yard work and pond work and all kinds of around the house work to do before getting distracted with computer fun stuff. But I'll use it as a target reward. I'll accomplish x number of tasks over the summer such as finishing the pond and I'll reward myself with an AI development station for the winter. Edited by crazy May 22, 2024, 12:42:34 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #444,102 by drook 5/22/24 2:08:06 PM 5/22/24 2:08:06 PM Reply	It's always just about ready No matter what you want to do - gaming, video editing, AI dev - there's always new hardware on the horizon that is so much better that you might as well wait. -- Drew
Post #444,106 by Another Scott 5/26/24 11:49:16 AM 5/26/24 11:49:16 AM Reply	New AOOSTAR external card coming. https://www.notebookcheck.net/AOOSTAR-teases-external-graphics-card-solution-with-unreleased-AMD-Radeon-GPU.841420.0.html $750. I can see the utility, in limited circumstances. Otherwise, a mini-tower PC would seem to be better in 99% of circumstances. And a PS5 would still seem to be better for gaming (unless Sony continues their trickery with demanding subscriptions and so forth - I haven't kept up with that). Cheers, Scott.
Post #444,107 by crazy 5/26/24 3:32:29 PM 5/26/24 3:32:29 PM Reply	Looks like I want a steam account So then it becomes a matter of creating a PC that fulfills the requirements of steam and then upping it if I find it affordable. I initially thought I wanted a tiny PC simply because I'd like to be able to put it on top of my projector. But I can have it off to the side and have an HDMI cable going from it. That's fine. Also, larger PC has a greater chance of having an initial steady-state airflow that keeps the CPU cool. Many of these mini PCS are great to start off with but start screaming when you attempt to pull any real tasks out of them. Also, I've been wanting to do cuda programming for 10 years. Seriously. I was being introduced to it at boa and then I got arrested. So that's always been hanging on the back of my head. I want to code in Python and toss off many many cuda tasks.
Post #444,109 by Another Scott 5/26/24 6:54:45 PM 5/26/24 6:54:45 PM Reply	Lots of folks are doing amazing things with GPUs. ScienceDirect.com [...] The Neptune implementation of the EM-EMC algorithm can perform parallel calculations using either CPU (multi-core) or GPU (many-core) processors, making maximum use of parallelism in each case to reduce execution times. All simulations were performed with a Supermicro workstation, with dual Intel Xeon Gold 6136 CPUs (2 x 12 = 24 physical cores; 3.0–3.7 GHz clock rate) and an Nvidia Titan RTX GPU (4608 CUDA cores; 1.35–1.77 GHz clock rate). Single precision floating point calculations were used to maximize performance. [...] Execution time using the GPU implementation was 2.7 min (4608 cores), compared to 26.2 min using the parallel CPU implementation (24 cores). [...] Have fun! Cheers, Scott.
Post #444,110 by drook 5/26/24 7:46:00 PM 5/26/24 7:46:00 PM Reply	Is cuda still a thing? Real question. I look at what I was using 10 years ago and I'm pretty sure that's not what I'd use if I were starting over today. -- Drew
Post #444,115 by crazy 5/27/24 4:50:00 PM 5/27/24 4:50:00 PM Reply	What other are you thinking of? I'd say Nvidia owns the world as far as parallel processing via gpus right now and the world seems to have standardized on it. https://developer.nvidia.com/about-cuda#:~:text=CUDA%20extends%20beyond%20the%20popular,you%20can%20accelerate%20your%20applications. Of course, that's from nvidia's perspective. I heard of some projects that put front end libraries and tried to allow for seamless farming out between different co-processors which in turn would create cuda and other code. Do you have any direction you suggest I look into?
Post #444,116 by drook 5/27/24 7:53:16 PM 5/27/24 7:53:16 PM Reply	I don't actually know what's current, which sparked the question, do you? Without looking it up, I'm guessing if I went back 10 years I'd have been looking at rust, or go, or ruby on rails. And I haven't heard anyone talking about those lately. -- Drew
Post #444,117 by crazy 5/27/24 10:35:56 PM 5/27/24 10:35:56 PM Reply	Bad comparison To start off with cuda processors are the cornerstone of Nvidia graphic cards. They were originally created to create polygons or do whatever other massive co-processing it takes to keep game screens filled with pretty pictures. They are simpler than regular processors but they can pack a shitload of them in a single card. Thousands of them. So then cuda programming became whatever style that is requiring to toss off tasks to the cuda processors on an Nvidia card. Ruby is an object oriented scripting language. Ruby on rails is a framework which essentially is a whole bunch of libraries and programming styles to use the rails framework to create database driven websites. Or at least that's what I seem to recall from many years ago. Rust is a very recent systems programming language that supposedly compiles to quick machine code while simultaneously allows for memory safety.
Post #444,118 by drook 5/27/24 11:10:33 PM 5/27/24 11:10:33 PM Reply	Ah, I was thinking cuda was a language, not a hardware platform -- Drew
Post #444,130 by CRConrad 5/31/24 1:53:18 AM 5/31/24 1:53:18 AM Reply	Wha, you haven't? How? ...if I went back 10 years I'd have been looking at rust, or go, or ruby on rails. And I haven't heard anyone talking about those lately. Places like Hacker News and programming YouTube, Rust is pretty much all they talk about. (OK, not all: Also Zig, and Python of course, and still a perhaps surprising amount of Go. But yeah, lots of Rust.) -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #444,138 by malraux 5/31/24 1:14:24 PM 5/31/24 1:14:24 PM Reply	Yep, Python/Rust/Go/Typescript are the 4 horsemen now Unless you're doing Windows programmering, in which case it's C#. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #444,140 by crazy 5/31/24 9:22:43 PM 5/31/24 9:22:43 PM Reply	I changed my mind Why should I bend over backwards to learn s* that I won't apply in my life? F* that. I'll get a PS5 and game and enjoy myself. I assume you have this overarching target goal of your life. The target goal is kick the kids out of the nest and make sure that they are taken care of and then enjoy yourself on the way out. I've been forced into enjoy myself on the way out so I might as well enjoy myself on the way out.
Post #444,141 by drook 5/31/24 10:42:33 PM 5/31/24 10:42:33 PM Reply	Mostly by not reading about programming languages any more Which was my point. I have no idea what, if anything, that I used to know about is still around. -- Drew
Post #444,142 by crazy 6/1/24 10:03:58 AM 6/1/24 10:03:58 AM Reply	You remember the old days when c was used to programming operating systems, with a bit of assembler Not anymore. Rust is where it's at. Think of c but a little safer. I learned c from kerningham and Richie. I remember in '77 when my brother Leon was talking to me on the phone. I was in 9th grade. He was a grown up. He started to describe a computer that he was working on in his job. He described Unix to me. He said it would be a good idea if I ever came across Unix to go learn it. It was interesting and worth a career. 3 years later, I fell into a technical support job that involved entry-level Motorola Tandy xenix systems. And the first Intel Unix systems. And I was handed kerningham and Richie and told to go learn C while doing tech support. And a rocketing career was born. I am one of the original old geeks. I'm a gray beard. I'm not part of the original Unix group. I'm not one of those brilliant originalists. I'm a hanger on. But it was fun hanging on.
Post #444,145 by drook 6/1/24 12:53:41 PM 6/1/24 12:53:41 PM Reply	I was never that deep in the stack End user apps only for me. Closest I got to "real programming" was Pascal in school, and still like the "main loop and functions" construction. Then my first real world use of computers was Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe PageMaker doing static websites and newspapers. Then prototyping office automation in MS Access before turning it into a multi-user web app on a SQL back end; Active Server Pages, then PHP. Couple web developer gigs on PHP and Postgres/MySQL. I've done my own Linux server admin when this was all new, but now I just want to click a button to install an app then start creating "content." I'm glad there are people who like doing the back-end stuff, but I'm not one of them any more. -- Drew
Post #444,134 by pwhysall 5/31/24 3:50:44 AM 5/31/24 3:50:44 AM Reply	macOS on a Mac Studio is literal actual UNIX so running unix-y stuff is fine. I wouldn’t put Linux on a Mac. It’s a ridiculously expensive way to run Linux, and the x86 platform is better supported anyway.
Post #444,135 by pwhysall 5/31/24 3:59:38 AM 5/31/24 4:01:59 AM Reply	Depends what games you want to play with what input method If you’re going to play big AAA games (e.g. FIFA, COD, Diablo, etc.) and you favour a controller, then get a console (PS5 or XBox, choice of which is driven by (a) platform exclusives (b) which controller you prefer). They’re both much of a muchness performance-wise. For RTS and/or (most) simulation, PC is by far the best. The Mac is sloooooooowly becoming a viable gaming platform but the best Apple GPU - strong as it is - still gets squished under the heel of AMD and NVidia’s last-generation offerings, and storage is an issue. Base SKUs have far, far too little storage. When your £1500 computer comes out of the box with half the storage of a £500 Xbox, you’re doing it rong. My personal dream is that the M5 or M6 comes with a competitive CPU and Apple pull their fucking finger out and engage the game developers properly, and then I can justify an M5/M6 Ultra Apple Studio, and retire my PC altogether. My PC is as follows: Ryzen 7 3700X, NVidia RTX 4070, 32GB RAM, 1TB OS drive and 2TB game storage drive (both SSD). This is not top-tier, but plays things like COD:Modern Warfare 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 at high frame rates with high detail levels. I use the stock Wraith Prism air cooler that came with the CPU, and whatever brand of case fan came with the Fractal Design North everything is packed into. I’ve set the fan curve to be pretty much silent under low load. The AS GPU does much better in synthetic benchmarks than it does in actual games Edited by pwhysall May 31, 2024, 04:01:59 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #444,136 by CRConrad 5/31/24 5:15:54 AM 5/31/24 5:15:54 AM Reply	Oh how I wish... I’ve set the fan curve to be pretty much silent under low load. ...that my son could do the same. Don't get me wrong, I like that he sometimes keeps the door to his room open -- you might sometimes (when he doesn't have something loud on in his headphones) elicit an answer to a query, and every now and then even get some actual off-line social behavious out of him. But if I'm having a conversation with my wife, or even just watching TV with her, the fan(s?) of his PC (like that/those of his brother before him) often drown out whatever anyone is saying. And yeah, he does actually vacuum it out every now and then, so it's not just humonguous dust rats. I suspect the bearings are quite simply shot, and it's time to get new (and better) fans. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #444,137 by pwhysall 5/31/24 11:41:05 AM 5/31/24 11:41:05 AM Reply	Even large case fans... …can be quite loud at full load. Especially when they’re just regular (aka cheap) fans, and there’s four or so of them (three at the front, one at the back). Mine (2x120mm, front intake; no exhaust because the North case has sufficient top/rear airflow to not need it) sit at ~10% speed most of the time, ramping up to no more than 75%. At full tilt, they’re obnoxiously loud, even if I’ve got headphones on. You need to berate him into sorting out his fan curve.
Post #444,177 by CRConrad 6/10/24 5:24:24 AM 6/10/24 5:24:24 AM Reply	He doesn't even have a fan club, let alone a curve to grade them on. But yeah, I know what you mean, and will bring it up with him. Downside is, maybe he already has. (Dunno how much he's learnt from Big Bro, and how much he in turn was into all that.) Worst case, I'll (half? He has a freaking job now, for summer!) sponsor him to some actually good ones, because I suspect / assume that what he has now are just some cheap-ass generics. Is it still "Noctua" one is supposed to look for, or...? -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #444,178 by crazy 6/10/24 8:11:24 AM 6/10/24 8:11:24 AM Reply	Noctua looks like the quietest I can have them delivered to my door for 35 bucks tomorrow. You need four of them? 140 bucks, double that for shipping to people who live with the reindeer. Versus peace and quiet so you can have a gentle conversation? What the hell is wrong with you? Order them, get them to your door, tell him to install them, tell him he owes you some money and hang it over his head for a while. And then forgive the debt. This is for you, not him. Yes he is impacting your life. He's a kid that you made. That's how it works. You placed him in the environment where he now makes noise. It's your fault. Now fix it.
Post #444,181 by CRConrad 6/10/24 9:29:43 AM 6/10/24 9:29:43 AM Reply	Bah. I grew up with four siblings -- a little noise isn't that much of a hardship, I could just live with it. Raising my voice is no problem; I'm a loud guy. (The arguments between our parents when we were kids were... not pretty.) And my dear Anki is half-deaf, so we gotta have the telly on pretty loud anyways; could be she doesn't even hear those fans. And as a responsible father, I hafta teach him to balance greed vs quality vs social mores... "Yes, you should switch to quieter fans for the rest of the household's sake" vs "Get quality stuff; yes it costs more, but it's worth it in the long run" vs "But don't be an idiot and overpay for bling and brand names". And, yes, to do stuff for himself -- but with some friendly help and support. I'll at least hover in the background -- especially since I haven't really built any PCs from the ground up, so it'll be a useful learning experience for me too. And he is on track to earn several grand from a two-month 33-hr/wk job this summer, so I'll probably at least initially go with "I'll pay half, by paying for them and you can pay me back your half later"... And then probably forgive some, most, or maybe even the entirety of that. Dunno yet. And thanks! But probably no need: I'm pretty sure I can get stuff delivered direct to here[1], no need to have two legs of delivery. ___ [1]: From Verkkokauppa or Jimm's or Multitronic or Power... Or we'll check on one or another or a third of the domestic price-comparison sites. Or if it's all to expensive here, we could always check a Swedish one and order for delivery to one of my sisters, and pick it up there when we go visit later in the summer. But yeah, if none of that works / comes out cheaper, I might have to bother you! ;-) -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #444,185 by crazy 6/10/24 10:35:32 AM 6/10/24 10:35:32 AM Reply	Don't give him time for research, procrastination or paralysis through analysis You have the knowledge of what you want or the ability to do the research. You're doing it right now. Get to the point of checklist of items to buy and a couple of choices if you're that type of guy. Show three. The expensive one that someone would be stupid to buy, the cheap one made out of s* no one should want to buy as well, and the one you actually want him to buy in the middle. I remember when mode: I gave the a boy (12 or 13 at the time, seemed to have some technology knowledge) a stack of scsi discs and a stack of scsi boards and a stack of sata discs and a stack of sata boards and a few usable intel computer frames and I said have fun. This was stuff I had accumulated through the years as either upgrades from work that would have been discarded or by buying stuff at the computer fairs. I should have paid closer attention. Scsi termination was not something he was familiar with, nor did he feel the need to research at the time. He just plugged s* together until something worked. In the process he burned out 3/4 of the equipment. A learning experience.
Post #444,193 by CRConrad 6/11/24 2:42:49 AM 6/11/24 2:42:49 AM Reply	He's 21, he can handle T LEAST PART OF THE RESEARCH HIMSELF oH FUCK i HATE cAPSlOCK, WHY THE FUCK IS IT NEXT TO A??? And he'd certainy see through that three alternatives approach and find it insulting to his intelligence, too obviously guiding him. But yeah, we'll do something like that in co-operation. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi
Post #444,188 by pwhysall 6/10/24 3:17:32 PM 6/10/24 3:17:32 PM Reply	The quietest fans are from BeQuiet https://www.bequiet.com/en/casefans Funnily enough. An AIO might also be a solution.
Post #444,192 by CRConrad 6/11/24 2:39:28 AM 6/11/24 2:39:28 AM Reply	Thanks!
Post #444,144 by crazy 6/1/24 10:36:57 AM 6/1/24 10:36:57 AM Reply	It will be a console for a year or two So to start off with PS5. Can you recommend a particular third party gaming controller? I want as easy on my hands as possible. Think of minor arthritis and I gave up on gaming when Ben kicked my ass when he was nine. My ego couldn't handle it. But now I'm happy to flip through some driving games. So what controller would you recommend for me?
Post #444,146 by drook 6/1/24 12:57:21 PM 6/1/24 12:57:21 PM Reply	Different controllers for different games Like for instance ... -- Drew
Post #444,147 by Another Scott 6/1/24 1:03:46 PM 6/1/24 1:03:46 PM Reply	[ rofl ]
Post #444,150 by pwhysall 6/2/24 4:20:07 PM 6/2/24 4:20:07 PM Reply	Third party controllers are aimed at competitive gamers... ...not old geezers. You will probably not find ergonomic relief in a third-party offering. You should check out the Sony controller first. Also get your hands on an Xbox controller. A key difference is that the Sony controller has the thumbsticks arranged symmetrically, where the Xbox controller is asymmetric. Different people find them differently comfortable. I’m asymmetric and prefer the Xbox controller, but I know people who find the Sony controller better for them. Bonus: the Sony controller has a built-in microphone that you can accidentally activate in-game, so everyone playing with you can hear you debating what you’re having for dinner with your spouse, the argument you're having with your children, and the terrible music you listen to whilst playing.

Welcome to IWETHEY!