[Death_Block]

Computer 1:
Display: 55" LG OLED C1 (viewing videos), 48" LG 48QD900-B OLED 120Hz/138HzOC gaming monitor (for browsing, and gaming)
Case: BeQuiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev 2
PSU: 1000W BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 Blackout Edition
Motherboard: Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII FORMULA
CPU: AMD 5950X
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz
GPU: Gigabyte GamingOC RTX 4090
Storage: 2TB SeaGate FireCuda M.2 (OS and video editing/storage); 2TB Western Digital SN850 M.2 (games, mostly); 4TB Samsung 870QVO 2.5" SSD (video and document storage, redundant backup files)
OS: Windows 11

Computer 2:
Display: 49" Sony X950H LED TV
Case: Corsair 4000D, with LianLi UNI fans
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
PSU: EVGA 1200W P3
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z690 EDGE
CPU: Intel 12700K
RAM: 128GB DDR4 G.Skill TridentZ 3200MHz
GPU: MSI SUPRIM X RTX 3090
Storage: 1TB Samsung 970 PRO M.2
OS: Windows 10

Computer 3 (Home Theater in a Box):
Display: Epson 5050UBe projector on a 110" projector screen
Case: Hyte Revolt 3 ITX case
Cooler: Noctua NH-C14S
PSU: Corsair SF750 (750W)
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming (m-ITX)
CPU: AMD 5700X
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance 3333MHz
GPU: Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080
Storage: 1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2
OS: Windows 11

Laptop:
Gigabyte Aorus 17G YD, 17.3" Laptop
300Hz 1080p IPS display
CPU: i7-11800H
RAM: 32GB DDR4
GPU: RTX 3080/8GB
Storage: 2TB Samsung 980 Pro (replaced from the stock M.2)
OS: Windows 10

EDIT:
I also have a NAS, the Synology DS1520+, with:
4x 14TB HDDs in JBOD, and a 18TB HDD for redundancy/backup of important files/video and audio editing stuff
That was a redundant backup for my 6-year old (still running!) Western Digital Duo 2x 8TB HDD storage in RAID0

This thread is post what you have, not what you want.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Build a FreeBSD desktop from it

Late hit, but I have my FreeBSD music server up tonight since some of the music I wanted to hear is not available on the two streaming services I have.

This box only has 8G of RAM, and I gave almost half to zfs arc. It runs samba, minidlna, and OpenBSD's httpd. zfs root mirror, total 16T of fairly good enterprise drives.
4 core Xeon, no hyperthreading. Performance is perfectly fine given I'm the only one using it. I like that it has low activity compared to the hundreds of processes on a typical Linux desktop setup nowadays.

 

[Trihexagonal]

The two I use most are Lenovo Thinkpad W520 that orignally came loaded with Win7Pro I bought used on ebay for between $200-$300 each delivered. Both have Intel Core i7-2760QM @ 2.40GH and 8GB RAM with 500GB TravelStar HDD utilizing UFS.

This one runs FreeBSD 13.1 and plays YouTube videos from my playlists that are scrobbled to my last.fm account. I have Audacious play a different playlist at the same time and scrobble that as well for a total of almost 81,000 songs played logged to my account this year only.

The other W520 runs FreeBSD 13.0 and serves as my offline multimedia machine for the bedroom. Neither are ever short on resources and I'm very happy with them.


I used to have a Beginners Tutorial on "How To Build A FreeBSD Desktop From Scratch" but took it down after the FreeBSD forums blatant Copyright Infringement of my forum post of it.

That version addresses FreeBSD 13.0 but there was very little change in version bumps and is still applicable for anyone interested in running one. I walk you through the build process, using ports to compile 3rd party programs and show you all the Security and System files that needs editing once you hit the desktop.

You can substitute pkg and save a lot of time, the experience differential not so important if you just want a really nice .mp3 player.

I won't link to it and neither will Google, but is still up there under the name of Deleted Member as Author. This the Second time they tried to ghost the King of the Dead.

As I type:

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I like FreeBSD as a server, as a desktop not so much. NetBSD was probably my favorite BSD for desktop, I love pkgsrc. I have had NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD running on something or other since around 2005. I prefer Solaris 10 over all of them, and I haven't gotten into Solaris 11. The main reason I used FreeBSD on this box was for ZFS.

 

[Trihexagonal]

2005 is when I became a Beta Tester for PC-BSD and first got my hands on FreeBSD. Less Moore, of the Moore Bros, tried to ghost me years later, too, once they figred out who I was to them:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thr...e-firewall-manager-breaks-pf-firewall.324417/

I had attempted FreeBSD before but the text installer looked too cryptic and beyond my skill level at the time, which it was. PC-BSD got me to the desktop which was all I needed. I taught myself to use ports, never looked at the Hallowed Handbook once, and in 2012 built my first FreeBSD desktop from scratch using a tutorial someone else wrote.

My long-term goal was to learn to use UNIX, wasted $10 buying the Open Solaris Bible and had a Solaris desktop going before I got through the intro.

I've never tried NetBSD. I've had OpenBSD boxen before but FreeBSD felt more polished as a desktop. Probably due to having more experience with, and being more familiar with the workings of it.

Here are shots of my Solaris and OpenIndiana desktops.

 

[Kukuk]

Because I wanted to play with an Arc GPU I ordered an A770.

I also want to support a third player in the GPU market, but the main reason was to play with it. Not sure if I want to keep it as an AV1 encoder after I'm done playing with it, or sell it on.

 

[Kukuk]

Well, I used it for a few days, but I just couldn't stomach it much longer. It's so hard to gauge how powerful it is, because performance and features are all over the place. Even playing one of the included games, Gotham Knights, I couldn't get a consistent experience. It ran well some of the time (at 60FPS), but would also drop into the mid-40s for no reason, even with XeSS. On top of that, ray tracing caused the game to crash. Really, Intel? If you're going to include the game, it looks really bad for you to not make sure it runs flawlessly and feature-complete.

The plus side is, XeSS looks very good, and shows a lot of promise. No idea how much it improved performance, though, as turning it off seemed to cause a bug making the game render at super low resolution.

Cyberpunk ran like junk, despite being a DX12 game.

This is with RT, mind you, but with FSR 2.1. Without RT it ran at like 30-ish, but with dips below 30.

AC Valhalla ran nice. Better than Odyssey, and MUCH better than Origins. Origins stuck to 24FPS, regardless of settings.

I played odd assortments of games here and there, and if they ran alright they typically had frame pacing issue, causing constant hiccups.

I'll probably shelf the card for a few months to see if things get better. I was hoping there'd be one or two games that were a pleasant surprise, and I guess AC Valhalla might have fit that description, but nothing else impressed me.

Also a really dumb quirk with this card: No RGB control or temperature reporting without connecting the card to an internal USB header. (?????)

 

[KcMsterpce]

Well, I used it for a few days, but I just couldn't stomach it much longer. It's so hard to gauge how powerful it is, because performance and features are all over the place. Even playing one of the included games, Gotham Knights, I couldn't get a consistent experience. It ran well some of the time (at 60FPS), but would also drop into the mid-40s for no reason, even with XeSS. On top of that, ray tracing caused the game to crash. Really, Intel? If you're going to include the game, it looks really bad for you to not make sure it runs flawlessly and feature-complete.

The plus side is, XeSS looks very good, and shows a lot of promise. No idea how much it improved performance, though, as turning it off seemed to cause a bug making the game render at super low resolution.


Cyberpunk ran like junk, despite being a DX12 game.


This is with RT, mind you, but with FSR 2.1. Without RT it ran at like 30-ish, but with dips below 30.



AC Valhalla ran nice. Better than Odyssey, and MUCH better than Origins. Origins stuck to 24FPS, regardless of settings.

I played odd assortments of games here and there, and if they ran alright they typically had frame pacing issue, causing constant hiccups.

I'll probably shelf the card for a few months to see if things get better. I was hoping there'd be one or two games that were a pleasant surprise, and I guess AC Valhalla might have fit that description, but nothing else impressed me.

Also a really dumb quirk with this card: No RGB control or temperature reporting without connecting the card to an internal USB header. (?????)

To be fair, Gotham Knights is notorious for being an awful, awful PC game. It is entirely CPU dependent. Even with a 4090, framerate drops like a ROCK continuously, going from (let's just throw a number out there) 60fps, down ZERO, then back to unending microstutters and literal game stutters, no matter the hardware. You'll fair a little better with a 7900x than say, an 8700k. But it is still not gonna be a smooth gaming experience.

I respect that you pitched in with the hope of encouraging another GPU contender. Sadly, their video drivers are so astonishingly bad that many people can't even see the install program unless they use the integrated GPU for a display, install the driver, then reboot to do the rest hahaha

I want to support a new GPU, but also, since Intel already makes mega-billions each year - and they can't even get their drivers to function at the most basic level - I won't pitch in on a purchase. I wouldn't exactly be helping "The Little Guy" or The Underdog, and it might even further enable Intel to give less concern about doing the BASIC THINGS correctly at release (haha).

 

[Kukuk]

It's really astonishing how broken the drivers are, considering Intel has been making integrated graphics for decades; They really shouldn't be this far behind.

Just to further illustrate how bad it is: running Windows games on Steam Deck, through emulation layers, is a more consistent and pleasant experience.

I feel like the inconsistency here would be more forgivable if, at the very least, the latest game releases worked perfectly.

 

[KcMsterpce]

It's really astonishing how broken the drivers are, considering Intel has been making integrated graphics for decades; They really shouldn't be this far behind.

Just to further illustrate how bad it is: running Windows games on Steam Deck, through emulation layers, is a more consistent and pleasant experience.

I feel like the inconsistency here would be more forgivable if, at the very least, the latest game releases worked perfectly.

Yeah, I think in time they'll get their stuff in order more than it is now.
As for the drivers issue, it reminds me a lot of when AMD and ATI merged. They couldn't put out a good graphics driver package to save their lives. It took YEARS (3-5 years) before they finally started showing a competitive run against Nvidia. I hope it won't take that long for Intel.
I also hope Intel will continue to sink money into the project, and get it going smooth. I don't like how Nvidia has really gone off the rails this generation, and there needs to be more competition to keep them from ripping off customers and treating the scene like a greed harvester. I think it would be better of the worked harder on sticking to innovation AND fair pricing.

 

[rivonlol]

12700K
3090ti
32gb ddr5

 

[Eagle_Driver]

I have had many computers since Head-Fi was launched way back in 2001, but my current system consists of:

• Intel i7-12700K
• 64 GB DDR4-3600 RAM (yes, I stuck with DDR4 rather than moving to DDR5 RAM for the time being)
• GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER (carried over from my previous AMD Ryzen 9 5900X PC, which I stopped using due to its abnormally high idle power consumption, and subsequently sold off)
• Two 1 TB Samsung 980 PRO m.2 PCI-e 4.0 SSDs

Will be getting a new GPU within the next few months.

 

[Kukuk]

Cobbled together another computer from parts I had laying around. Was waiting for a case to get here, but it still hasn't shipped.

So I dunno if anybody knows; I certainly don't, and I'm not really sure if Microsoft even knows, but how the hell does Windows licensing work? I had a digital key tied to the motherboard seen in this picture, then transferred it to my new motherboard. The transfer of the key worked just fine, and my main computer is properly activated.

I installed Windows 11 on this pieced-together computer, and signed in with my MS account expecting to tell me it's not activated; which is what I was fine with. This computer is meant to be a novelty to screw around with Arc, so I really did not need the quality of life improvements that come with properly activated Windows. Strangely enough, this did activate, even as a new system tied to my account, rather than registering as a hardware change. My main PC is still activated as well.

 

[KcMsterpce]

I installed Windows 11 on this pieced-together computer, and signed in with my MS account expecting to tell me it's not activated; which is what I was fine with. This computer is meant to be a novelty to screw around with Arc, so I really did not need the quality of life improvements that come with properly activated Windows. Strangely enough, this did activate, even as a new system tied to my account, rather than registering as a hardware change. My main PC is still activated as well.

You are probably fine for now. If Microsoft activated that copy, you're good. I, personally, haven't had a redacted product once it was activated. However, it is possible that once you reformat/reinstall either of those computers, Microsoft may choose to not authenticate. Just be ready. You could try calling the Microsoft Product Key verification phone number if that happens, and... I'd say 50/50 that it will work.
I have had several OEM Windows keys work for a completely new build. But these days, they are more stringent and it's less likely to work, compared to even 5 years ago.

 

[Kukuk]

It's just weird because I would not have expected a digital key to just pop up out of nowhere. When I first moved over all my other hardware from the motherboard above, to the new motherboard it did actually show up as un-activated until I registered the hardware change and transferred the digital key.

The only theory I have is it's because it's Win 11, and my main PC is using Win 10. I know there's a free upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, but I had assumed that just transferred the digital key; maybe it's just a separate key entirely and the new system is the "upgrade".

At any rate, it's fun to tinker with Arc when it's not in my main system. Actually, if all games ran like Spiderman does on the A770, it would be a very pleasant experience using Arc.

High settings, Max RT, 4K/Balanced XeSS.