[castleofargh]

the reflection in her eyes:

 

[miceblue]

Who would be interested in participating in the AAMML holiday gift exchange this year? : D

 

[U-3C]

Who would be interested in participating in the AAMML holiday gift exchange this year? : D

I sadly don't know enough about active to know what to give. :'(

Body pillows for everyone?

 

[miceblue]

I sadly don't know enough about active to know what to give. :'(

Body pillows for everyone?

Everyone will have a list of favorite anime they like and/or gift ideas. : )

 

[vantt1]

RIP Eagle Fantasy Golf

https://twitter.com/eagle_fg/status/1050580189531402240?s=21

 

[U-3C]

Everyone will have a list of favorite anime they like and/or gift ideas. : )

I guess I'll give it a try.

Worst case, body pillows for everyone.

 

[Ra97oR]

I am in as always!

 

[deadlylover]

Picked up a couple of old workstations over the weekend, 245 dollarydoos each or approx 180 freedom units.

Dell T3600 (Sandy Bridge E)
E5-1620 (4C/8T @ 3.7GHz)
32GB DDR3 ECC 1600MHz, this platform was quad channel, pretty decent even by today's standards
240GB SSD (some liteon, not too terrible...for 2013)
Quadro 2000 (pretty bad but ehh good to have around for troubleshooting)
Win 7 Pro wooooo.

Certainly gives my old 3770k rig a run for its money, I still only have 8 gigs of RAM....

Hmmm wonder if I should buy the e5-2687W for $150, 8C/16T, 3.1GHz base, 3.8GHz turbo. Ehhh pushing $400 per computer is getting a bit pricey, I think it's unnecessary if the main purpose is 1080p 60fps gaming with something like a cheap 570 class card.

For 11.11 day, which is basically China's 'Black Friday' sales, I ordered a few new additions to the crew. Priestess from Goblin Slayer and Rikka from SSSS Gridman (I haven't seen enough of the show yet to like her, it's just that as a staunch follower of thighdeology, I have to pay respects to our queen)..

 

[miceblue]

Another Kyoto Animation in US theatres? Sign me up.
Also, more Hibike Euphonium.

Didn't watch Hibike Euphonium. It was okay. A bit too slow and uneventful for me compared to K-ON!

Purple eyes girl is in it.

 

[U-3C]

Picked up a couple of old workstations over the weekend, 245 dollarydoos each or approx 180 freedom units.

Dell T3600 (Sandy Bridge E)
E5-1620 (4C/8T @ 3.7GHz)
32GB DDR3 ECC 1600MHz, this platform was quad channel, pretty decent even by today's standards
240GB SSD (some liteon, not too terrible...for 2013)
Quadro 2000 (pretty bad but ehh good to have around for troubleshooting)
Win 7 Pro wooooo.

Certainly gives my old 3770k rig a run for its money, I still only have 8 gigs of RAM....

Hmmm wonder if I should buy the e5-2687W for $150, 8C/16T, 3.1GHz base, 3.8GHz turbo. Ehhh pushing $400 per computer is getting a bit pricey, I think it's unnecessary if the main purpose is 1080p 60fps gaming with something like a cheap 570 class card.

For 11.11 day, which is basically China's 'Black Friday' sales, I ordered a few new additions to the crew. Priestess from Goblin Slayer and Rikka from SSSS Gridman (I haven't seen enough of the show yet to like her, it's just that as a staunch follower of thighdeology, I have to pay respects to our queen)..

What are all those workstations for, out of curiosity?

---------------------

Would love to get a pillow but it will be rather awkward should my parents come by one day without telling me, while I'm away, and the find it in my room...

My physiotherapist recommended me to get a second pillow or a body pillow though for posture reasons...so, for health?

 

[deadlylover]

What are all those workstations for, out of curiosity?

I have a weekly LAN party so we always need at least 4 systems. One of our original sandy bridge builds is starting to go, and getting a replacement motherboard is surprisingly expensive! I might replace my main system with one of them, or maybe upgrade the Z820 workstation after I repair it. (ambient temp sensor is dodgy so the fans spin at 100% all the time)

Yeah it's gotten to the point where we needed some redundancy, so that's why we have a spare system or two lying around in case of component failure. It all sounds hardcore but our current systems are just hand-me-downs, because building new systems just for one-day a week use is waaay too wasteful.

Still, I'm blown away by the value of old workstations, and it's becoming a bit of a hobby to hunt for good deals on used hardware.

 

[U-3C]

I have a weekly LAN party so we always need at least 4 systems. One of our original sandy bridge builds is starting to go, and getting a replacement motherboard is surprisingly expensive! I might replace my main system with one of them, or maybe upgrade the Z820 workstation after I repair it. (ambient temp sensor is dodgy so the fans spin at 100% all the time)

Yeah it's gotten to the point where we needed some redundancy, so that's why we have a spare system or two lying around in case of component failure. It all sounds hardcore but our current systems are just hand-me-downs, because building new systems just for one-day a week use is waaay too wasteful.

Still, I'm blown away by the value of old workstations, and it's becoming a bit of a hobby to hunt for good deals on used hardware.

Cool! Happy you guys have those parties.

Space is the main reason I don't hunt for old hardware online, even though I want to tinker with them. Still struggling to place my current desktop comfortably, so I doubt I'll enjoy another few computers taking up space.

Currently clearing up some space for a Vive in my room. Placement is even more important now!

Always fun to help friends who are not into this stuff solve some problems though.

------------

Just goofed off at MIGS today. Met a lot of cool reps for various things I've never crossed paths with. Really awesome to learn about brands and services in industries I have no clue about. Sadly, this year felt a lot more dead and empty than before. Didn't even get to see the big players like WB, Edios, Behavior. Those guys usually always show up. WB took up like 1/6 of the whole floor last year and even had a life sized Batman if I remember correctly. There's also significantly less merchandise. Quite a few people noted that. In the past, companies made so much marketing stuff just for this summit. This year, the booths with any merchandise to give out are just trying to get rid of old stock. I guess yields weren't that great this time around.

Usually I'd go for the second day but I feel like I talked to everyone I wanted to talk to in one morning somehow. There was so much empty space compared to previous year.

The rep for Dolby Atmos had an XPS 13. Sadly the DAC stopped working so a basic Schiit stack to the rescue!

Also, what would be a game dev conference without some workstation hardware. :3




Fun fact, last year, the big sponsor with their logo on everything was Warner Brothers. This year, it was Nutaku!




So happy the tote bag they give you when you get your pass had a kawaii chibi mascot of a western hentai company. \(^~^)/



---------------

Got to try the Oculus Rift one last time. No OG Vives or Vive Pros sadly. Also saw a Nolo for the first time!

This time, I tried to adjust everything on the Oculus and ultimately, it's not that comfortable for my face, regardless if I wear glasses or not.

Was hoping to try a Vive with a Deluxe Audio Strap. I've tried both the Vive Pro and the stock Vive, but never the DAS. The similar mechanism feels great on the Pro, but it's not identical so one test before a purchase would have been nice.

Now just waiting for a bundle since Black Friday is around the corner.

 

[deadlylover]

The HP Z820 uses an NPN transistor's base emitter diode junction to sense the ambient temperature, when it fails the system fans go full awoo on start-up and can't be overwritten even with the BIOS idle speed control. The transistor (2N3904 in this case) is located on the front panel power button + speaker assembly, it's under some heatshrink on the speaker connector end. I think any jelly bean NPN transistor will do but I replaced mine with an MPSW42 I had on hand because in my sick twisted mind, a 1W 300V transistor will be more robust, who knows.

Computer is nice and quiet now, apparently this is a very common issue. go figure. Hrmmm I wonder if it's worth Noctua'ing this baby up, there is a lot of "bearing noise" even when the fans are slow. Maybe a drop of oil will help...

 

[castleofargh]

The HP Z820 uses an NPN transistor's base emitter diode junction to sense the ambient temperature, when it fails the system fans go full awoo on start-up and can't be overwritten even with the BIOS idle speed control. The transistor (2N3904 in this case) is located on the front panel power button + speaker assembly, it's under some heatshrink on the speaker connector end. I think any jelly bean NPN transistor will do but I replaced mine with an MPSW42 I had on hand because in my sick twisted mind, a 1W 300V transistor will be more robust, who knows.

Computer is nice and quiet now, apparently this is a very common issue. go figure. Hrmmm I wonder if it's worth Noctua'ing this baby up, there is a lot of "bearing noise" even when the fans are slow. Maybe a drop of oil will help...

my latest fan issue was "solved" with a bios update. of course I tried pretty much everything else before that because I'm a moron. the fan on the GPU was starting at boot, would stop after a sec and start again after maybe 5secs but by then it was too late and the motherboard was telling me to evacuate women and children first. as it was a new fan, of course I assumed that it was bad in some way(something to do with detecting the voltage when turning or whatever actual method to confirm the rotation speed). I wasted a good afternoon on that.
of course it did nothing for my original reason to try and change the fan. because that would mean I actually did something meaningful, and we just can't have that in here ^_^. I get a low freq modulation of the fan noise(somewhere between 1 and 2hz), it's not a loud fan noise to begin with but somehow the modulation pisses me off more than the fan noise itself.
I thought it would be some structural stuff on the PC or the fan creating a resonance and shaking the fan at that freq, but I've noticed that my fridge has that same slow modulation when the compressor turns on, and the other night I also heard it in the noise of a washing machine down my street when passing in front of their window. so now I'm wondering if I'm going full Jim Carrey in "the number 23", or if that weird fluctuation might be in the electrical grid? which is antiquated and unstable anyway, whether I'm right about this or not.

 

[deadlylover]

my latest fan issue was "solved" with a bios update. of course I tried pretty much everything else before that because I'm a moron. the fan on the GPU was starting at boot, would stop after a sec and start again after maybe 5secs but by then it was too late and the motherboard was telling me to evacuate women and children first. as it was a new fan, of course I assumed that it was bad in some way(something to do with detecting the voltage when turning or whatever actual method to confirm the rotation speed). I wasted a good afternoon on that.
of course it did nothing for my original reason to try and change the fan. because that would mean I actually did something meaningful, and we just can't have that in here ^_^. I get a low freq modulation of the fan noise(somewhere between 1 and 2hz), it's not a loud fan noise to begin with but somehow the modulation pisses me off more than the fan noise itself.
I thought it would be some structural stuff on the PC or the fan creating a resonance and shaking the fan at that freq, but I've noticed that my fridge has that same slow modulation when the compressor turns on, and the other night I also heard it in the noise of a washing machine down my street when passing in front of their window. so now I'm wondering if I'm going full Jim Carrey in "the number 23", or if that weird fluctuation might be in the electrical grid? which is antiquated and unstable anyway, whether I'm right about this or not.

I had another fan gremlin recently, this time on one of the Dell T3600 workstations. I noticed hwinfo giving me the option of manually controlling the fan speeds, so I wanted to see what she was capable of, as you do.

I turned on the fans to max.

I won't lie to you my friends it was like a hairdryer on full awoo, I think they were spinning at 5500RPM for a 92mm fan.

Problem is, the fan is controlled by the Embedded Controller and the system forgot how to put the fans on 'auto" (temperature dependant). I didn't notice this at the time and I let the poor CPU cook at 97C for half an hour in a stress test with the fans stuck on low even though I smashed the Auto button on the fan settings.

After troubleshooting for an eternity (so 20 minutes) I loaded BIOS defaults and that didn't fix it. I had to take the BIOS battery out to get the EC to reset.