NTP66's thread of IT

[NTP66]

Air cooling? Absolutely not. AIO water cooler or nothing. This is the one I have, and would absolutely recommend it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0842Z9WYG/. Just make sure that your case can accommodate a water cooler radiator.

[Shyster]

Mrs. 'Om wants a PC to play her stuff on, so I told her she can have mine since I was going to start building a new one anyway. Checked out r/buildapcforme and this balanced option they have pinned looks nice: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Photonman1/saved/Py42kL

Anyone else build a new rig recently?

I built a new gaming computer toward the end of last year, but it's at a much higher price point than I think you would want to pay. Specs in this post here.

I'd second a water cooler. I bought the Deepcool LT720 water cooler, which has a three-fan 360mm radiator, but their two-fan 240mm costs less than the one mentioned above by NTP66. I've had zero problems with it. The Monarch Air case would fit a radiator, if that's the case you want to use. The Ryzen 5 7600 is a 65W processor, so it would do fine with a 240mm cooler.

[Shyster]

I also decided to recently upgrade my Linux machine. The Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 case has mounting spots both for a full-size ATX mobo and for a mini-ITX. My Linux machine is now a Minisforum BD770i mini-ITX that uses an integrated laptop AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX (8C/16T). I put in 64GB of memory, and that computer doesn't do any gaming or anything really all that demanding, so I expect it to last for years. Power comes from an external power brick feeding a HDPLEX DC-ATX power supply. The motherboard has an integrated air cooler, and I have a Noctua 120mm fan sitting on top.

[faftorial]

I also decided to recently upgrade my Linux machine. The Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 case has mounting spots both for a full-size ATX mobo and for a mini-ITX. My Linux machine is now a Minisforum BD770i mini-ITX that uses an integrated laptop AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX (8C/16T). I put in 64GB of memory, and that computer doesn't do any gaming or anything really all that demanding, so I expect it to last for years. Power comes from an external power brick feeding a HDPLEX DC-ATX power supply. The motherboard has an integrated air cooler, and I have a Noctua 120mm fan sitting on top.

What are you doing on that beast that requires such high horsepower?

[Shyster]

What are you doing on that beast that requires such high horsepower?

Ha, nothing. I know it's currently way overpowered and over-memoried, but I did that with the hope that I wouldn't need to touch that hardware again for many years. Plus, that laptop CPU has a lower TDP than desktop chips that AMD will actually sell to consumers, and it's set up to run at very low power when not under stress, which I thought was a good thing for a computer I basically leave on 24/7. If AMD would actually sell the "GE" low-power Ryzens with integrated graphics to anyone other than OEMs, I would have gone with one of those and a mini-ITX mobo, but it's been a peeve of mine for years that those are basically unobtanium unless you buy a prebuilt computer.

The Minisforum BD770i was right around $400, which was price competitive with buying a mobo, CPU, and air cooler separately. For another $100, Minisforum also offers the same board with a 16C/32T Ryzen 9 7945HX. I certainly didn't need that.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Hmm, water cooling has always scared me because of the humidity here...and my fear I would **** something up during the install. I don't overclock, and the Peerless Assassin 120 keeps my 7600x at 60-65 c at full load (and BF 2042 is a very CPU intensive game). It isn't even loud, probably because I have the fan ramped up on the 5700XT and I can't hear it. Maybe for the rebuild I'll look at an AIO. I would really like to liquid cool a GPU because that's the noise maker in my setup.

[NTP66]

Don't let it scare you away, air cooling is for clowns these days. My water cooler setup is dead silent, and even when the fans kick on during high CPU operations, it's still quieter than a traditional fan setup.

[DigitalGypsy66]

You really do have some definite opinions on things, NTP.

[NTP66]

Hey, this is my area of passion, just trying to point you in the direction away from clowniness.

[Shyster]

I remain both surprised and annoyed that water-cooled video cards aren't really a thing yet. There are some cards out there with water blocks, but most of the ones I've seen are set up with connectors only such that you have to run your own custom pump and radiator. And the handful that are set up with AIO water-cooling setups are stupidly expensive.

[NTP66]

I managed to track down two more wireless devices in my house so that I could update the entries in my router. There are still three devices that I have absolutely no **** clue what they are, and their MACs give nothing away. I am gone room by room to inventory wireless devices yet cannot find these. I may just block them in the router and wait for an issue/error to pop up.

[NTP66]

Found one, our EcoQube radon detector. The other two devices are offline, so I'm assuming that they're phones from my daughter's friends.

[DigitalGypsy66]

ICQ is shutting down June 26. Man, those were the good ol' days.

[NTP66]

TIL that ICQ was still around.

[AuthorTony]

My laptop is having a weird issue. I never use the laptop speakers and only use headphones. Lately though, after the headphones have been unplugged and then plugged back in, the audio only plays via the laptop speakers. The only thing that solves the problem is rebooting the computer. Then it plays the audio through the headphones, until the next time they're unplugged, when the cycle begins anew.

Any idea why this is happening and how to fix it?

[faftorial]

My laptop is having a weird issue. I never use the laptop speakers and only use headphones. Lately though, after the headphones have been unplugged and then plugged back in, the audio only plays via the laptop speakers. The only thing that solves the problem is rebooting the computer. Then it plays the audio through the headphones, until the next time they're unplugged, when the cycle begins anew.

Any idea why this is happening and how to fix it?

You can update the drivers for your sound card. If it's windows then it's probably made by RealTek. You can usually go to the laptop maker's website and find the latest version.

[DigitalGypsy66]

YouTube finally figured out how to defeat ublock on Firefox, of all things. I assumed it would happen on Chrome first, but now on YT on Firefox we are getting unskippable 2 minute+ pre-roll ads. I’m traveling, so I’m only using an iPad, which doesn’t allow for extensions on third party browsers anyway. So checking out Brave browser, which seems to block YT ads…unless you are logged in to your account. I’m sure ublock has a fix on the way - and it may be out already - but nice to know Brave semi-works.

I’m thinking YT Premium might a better investment with how much YT my family consumes. It’s certainly more popular than a lot of our streaming providers we use.

[dodint]

YT Premium is the best value in paid streaming.

[Gabe]

Hey guys, looking for some help. We upgraded my wife's home computer to a Win11 machine. I bought PCmover to transfer everything over to the new PC. Everything works except games that were purchased through gamehouse. If I try to open the game from the desktop icon or from the file explorer, it does nothing. everything looks to be installed ok. All other applications migrated just fine. I tried opening the games in question in compatibility mode in other win versions and ran as administrator....nothing. Anyone have any ideas? Thx

[NTP66]

There are a few other things you can try listed here: https://gamehousenew.zendesk.com/hc/en- ... -10-and-11

When you say you transferred the games, did you actually use software to transfer the games and apps? Or did you install the games again from scratch on the new PC? If you used some app, it may have corrupted some of the data in your AppData folder (likely c:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Gamecompanyname). If so, it may be worth a try removing those games and installing fresh to see if they then launch. If they do, then perhaps you just have to copy some license files over to get it working. Might be quicker to contact them about it, too.

[Gabe]

Thanks. Yeah I used PCmover to migrate the user image from one PC to the new one. Works fairly well and just moves user data to the new machine.
I'll try looking at the local folder. Appreciate it

[AuthorTony]

I'm moving my writing website off of Shopify and need to find a new domain provider. The company I'm working with gave me a list of providers. Any recommendations from this list? Preferably something that is easy to use.
123-Reg
Arsys
Bluehost US
Digital Ocean
DNSimple
DreamHost
Dynadot
Gandi
Hetzner
Hover
Hostgator
InmotionHosting
Ionos
IWantMyName
Linode
Locaweb
Name.com
Namebright
Namecheap
NameSilo
Netlify
One.com
OpenSRS
OVH
Porkbun
SiteGround
Strato
Xneelo

[NTP66]

Pretty sure that 5AF is hosted at Bluehost and that Morkle has had a lot of issues with them, including skyrocketing prices. I can’t speak to any of the others, though.

[scb147]

My domain/email is through Ionos (they were known as 1&1 a few years ago), they have been fine for my uses. But I can't speak for anything website related.

[AuthorTony]

Thanks for the feedback and info!