Ten Years!

Started noticing more hard drive noises than usual from my desktop... While the drives were idle. Found a SMART warning on one of my 1TB spinning drives; backed-up the data, pulled the drive, checked the date code... August 2010! Nice :)

Started Below and got back into Knights And Bikes... Both are so great, visually; both have really interesting (albeit very different) narratives... And both have kinda tedious core gameplay loops :(

Buy Low, Sell High

Found all the things in-stock at MSRP or on-sale...

Final build:

• Ryzen 5 5600X
• ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS
• 2x8GB 3600MHz DDR4 CL16 (B-Die)
• MSI 3070 VENTUS 2X OC
• 500GB WD BLACK SN850 PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
• 512GB ADATA Ultimate SU800 SATA 6Gb/s SSD
• Samsung HMD Odyssey+
• Audient iD14 (MKI)
• Cooler Master G750M

Just gotta figure-out a case and throw-in some data drives... Would splurge for a LIAN LI LANCOOL II Mesh Performance, but they're sold-out everywhere; saw a few over the holidays, but I balked. Still have that iStarUSA D-400 in the meantime, I guess.

I figure I put ~$500 into my current computer over the past ten years, going from the i7-930+X58 to the 3930K+X79, from the GTX 780 to the 1070... I'm keeping all the other parts, but should be able to get ~$1000 CDN for it after throwing-in a barely-used Corsair CX500 I already have, and an old 7200RPM HDD. Otherwise, it'll go to a friend or family member in need.

Spoiled

Horizon Zero Dawn is really impressive, and I really like it... But after Breath of the Wild, it feels kinda janky; facial animations, falling and climbing mechanics and animations, targeting enemies, superfluous voiceover and dialogue, muddled HUD that gets lost in the background, unreasonably dark areas...  I even kinda miss the stamina meter. I know it's not the same game, but it's hard to not draw comparisons and really only serves to remind me of what a stellar achievement BotW is.

Metro Exodus is just plain broken though; played on the highest settings without issue for a while, and then one day, after loading a saved game, it just started stuttering. Latest drivers, verified the installation, tried safe mode, etc... Still stuttering. Hesitant to re-download it because it's so big. Disappointed.

Duck Season, however, was frigging rad. Going for the seventh ending and then all the extras that unlocks now. Actually got goosebumps, and even yelped out loud more than once... I'm sure I looked like a fool, but it was worth it!

Oh! Finally went through Prey: Typhon Hunter's TranStar VR campaign; good stuff in there!

Finding a Ryzen 5 5600X has proven to be silly, more than anything else. Plenty of local shipments, and the profiteers aren't too bad, but we're in a province-wide lockdown and stores aren't accepting any kinds of online ordering or reservations, aren't answering their phones, and are encouraging customers to just show-up and try their luck... While there are reports of police pulling people over and issuing fines for unnecessary travel. Yeesh.

That's a wrap...

Finished-up with some games...

Control: AWE was good. Nice cliffhanger. RTX is pretty :)

Ion Fury put up a good challenge toward the end, but final boss was frustrating; won't be getting the DLC

Streets of Rage 4 was solid, but I still prefer the old ones. Felt great, music was alright, the final boss was maybe kind of a little too hard, will replay to unlock characters one day.

THPS1+2 was so nice; went through all the stages - didn't 100% it, but will come back to it for fun.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut has aged surprisingly well, though I don't really feel the need to finish it? Gonna give 2 an honest try as well, in anticipation of the RTX update to The Witcher 3.

First Step

3070 overclocks nicely to ~1865MHz from the 1755MHz factory OC. Next step is a case with better airflow, then I think an 5600X+X570+16GB of 3600MHz CL16 DDR4 RAM, then a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe SSD.

Finished BotW, and it was great. The second DLC pack though? Can't access any of the new story content without going through four camps+shrines where one hit kills us? Sure, but it seems odd that the trial to learn the new melee weapon (to the point that they remove all others) can also be won by wearing Majora's mask, picking enemies off with old ranged-weapons, and save-scumming. It's not impossible to do it properly - I got through all four with minimal out-loud swearing - but it's a noticeable spike in difficulty with an odd workaround, and I saw a number of parents complaining online that they had to pass it for their kids. Such a bizarre choice, to wall-off the main attraction of the $30 DLC while the hardcore options are available right away in what is ostensibly a family game.

"Not today, my good man; I'm feeling saucy!"

The cheapest used 3070s I can find online right now are $900~$1100 CDN (the cheaper of those are Kijiji pick-ups), and the new ones are hovering around $1400~$1600... And I just found a new MSI 3070 VENTUS 2X OC for $799. The same shop had a GIGABYTE 3070 GAMING OC for $769 (higher boost, one more fan, physically larger) as well, but it got sniped as I was adding it to my cart. $799 is a little high (this model started around $750) and I still have reservations about VRAM limitations; but times are strange, I totally got caught-up in the excitement, and when the 6800 street price turned-out to be $999 I got off that bandwagon... Sorry AMD, but I will eventually still buy your Ryzen 5 5600X (or equivalent) to properly support this new GPU.

My brother got me a Steam gift card for Christmas, so I snagged Boneworks, Half-Life: Alyx, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Streets of Rage 4 - all on sale. Finishing BotW first though, and distracted by THPS1+2 because it was on-sale on the Epic Games Store and I had one of those $14-off coupons :) Speaking of, decent free holiday game selection on there, but I already own most of them :(

Oldies

Turns-out all 1660-based video cards have been tough to find lately. Ended-up getting a 1660 Ti for $370 CDN from Best Buy to go into that i7-3820 Flight Sim computer; he says it runs great at 1080p on High :) The other 3820's onboard sound doesn't seem to be working properly - everything detects and output levels look correct, but only hear static - but that's fine because it's gonna be using an external audio interface anyway.

Dusted-off my Commodore 128 over the holidays - 1902 monitor still works great, but 1571 disk drive doesn't seem to be spinning. I plan to fix it, but decided to go with an SD2IEC as well; this one stuck with me because it's cheaper than all the others and appears to have a serial pass-through.

My partner imported the black Game Gear Micro for me, and tracked-down a new NES Classic Edition for a reasonable price... Kinda caught-up in it all now, and tempted to get the blue GG Micro, could maybe justify the SNES Classic Edition for StarFox 2, the quality and selection on the Genesis and TG16 minis are actually incredible, the Neo Geo Mini looks great even if they fucked-up the joystick and the HDMI output, and the Astro City mini... Oh man, that thing looks so neat... But now we're in the $1000 range (not including accessories and peripherals) for a bunch of easily-emulated collector shit that I own the originals of anyway 😅

Oh, and motion controls for BotW in Cemu using my phone over WiFi... Wild.

Two of Three

Got two new old computers from a studio that was decommissioning them; common parts between them are:

• i7-3820
• Cooler Master HSF (Hyper 212?)
• ASUS P9X79
• 4x4GB PC3-10600 (quad-channel)
• Cooler Master HAF (912?)
• LG M-DISC DVD burner

...Otherwise, they have decent 500~600W 80 PLUS Bronze PSUs. There's a third one coming, but they're still using it for a little while longer.

So I added a 500GB 7200RPM HDD to one, and I'm giving it to a friend who really wants to play Flight Simulator 2020 but only has an ancient Mac Book; I figure a 1660 SUPER will serve him well in there. Get a 27" 1080p monitor, toss-in an SSD, and then not really much more to do in terms of upgrades - and  it saves him, like, $500 up-front. Merry Christmas!

The other will likely go to that indie recording studio I mentioned a few posts ago, while the i7-930 will finally go to a friend with many hard drives who wants to build a 14-drive storage server :)

The fun part about these computers, however, was how poorly they were assembled! Upside-down PSUs! Horrible cable management - but there were zip-ties, so they tried and failed! An eight-pin PCIe power connector with only seven pins connected! A CPU mounted 180-degrees-off with both clamps latched and the huge HSF unit tightly screwed-into the motherboard! They couldn't figure-out why it wouldn't boot; I was surprised the CPU hadn't snapped!

You crazy son of a bitch, you did it.

Finally picked-up Breath of the Wild (for Wii U, and got all the DLC) and while I'm sure this isn't exactly a hot take, it's nice to see Miyamoto's original vision finally realised after over 30 years. It stands on the shoulders of a lot of games that came before - and they stood on the shoulders of previous Zelda games, themselves - but it gets it right in such a special way that it all feels so magically organic; classic Nintendo. Also tried-out Cemu and wow... Emulators have a come a long way since I started trying Game Boy games on my PC in the mid-'90s.

Took the copper HSF from my caseless 486DX-33 and installed it on my 486DX2-66 because why not. Also noted that my DX2-66 is an SX807 variant, so it has the SL low power enhancements but no write-back support. Neat. Also dusted-off my Fujitsu FKB4700, but put it away when I realised the key inputs would lock-up the PS/2 port if I tried to use the arrow keys with the right-Shift key... No good for the DOS games :(

As for RX 6800 v RTX 3070... Hrm. In terms of games, the former has a small advantage for now with SAM (and I guess Rage Mode?) but desperately needs to catch-up when it comes to raytracing and super-sampling - and I expect it will, so those are likely non-issues in the long run. What is actually interesting (because it's not upgradeable on the latter) is that the Radeon has twice the VRAM and Infinity Cache. Also curious to see how professional applications start to support AMD. Plenty remains to be seen, but I think Ryzen 5 5600X + Radeon RX 6800 may be the long-term solution.

the Video?

Update from previous post:  Have a feeling that the sweetspot for PC builds is about look something like: Ryzen 5 5600X + RX 6800 + PCIe 4.0 NVMe - that $80 US price-premium seems justified.

Wrapping-up the Porta-Pi build...Fried my 1GB Pi 4B after following the build guide's wiring instructions (crappy USB-C cable?), so I bought a 2GB model (same price as the 1GB model now) and it's running on a separate adapter from the video driver and amp; worked-out a stereo issue with the amp; got creative while manually mapping the six buttons; settled on lr-mame2003 as the main emulator w/fbneo for incompatible titles; had to buy a new crimping tool and soldering iron - both of mine were too big; and the non-removable top panel made working on this vertical unit kind of a pain... But it's pretty cool! Also discovered Cosmo Gang the Video thanks to this project, and I'm pretty happy about it :)

Quakespasm

Arcane Dimensions 1.80 is out and what they've done with Quake is incredible. Play it.

Hotshot Racing is still great fun.

Wrapped-up FarCry Primal, and while it feels a little more aimless than its predecessors, I think it may be my favourite in the series so far.

Porta-Pi build is coming along; just gotta glue some wood, solder the power switch, and build the controls; everything else is gravy.

3D printed drive rails for the Antec case weren't tall enough; need a few more mm for test print #2.

Have a feeling that the sweetspot for PC builds is about look something like: Ryzen 5 5600X + RTX 3070 + PCIe 4.0 NVMe

Nuts :(

So the many-harddrived-computer experiment stalled because I couldn't find all of the drive rails for the Antec Titan 550 case :(

Currently looks like:

• i7-930
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 (rev. 2.0)
• 6x2GB PC3-10666 (triple-channel)
• Radeon HD 5850
• 2x7200RPM 320GB HDDs (RAID 0)
• Corsair CX500

I have four 250GB HDDs ready to go for the RAID 10 array, but no way to securely mount them in that case :( After searching for spare parts online, had a bright idea and now my buddy's gonna be printing a set of these for me to try-out.

I did replace the 500GB HDD in my Xubuntu Core 2 Quad with two 160GB drives in RAID 0 though, so that was fun.

Premiere

Got a call from a friend on Saturday asking me to build him a video editing computer real quick; here's what I had by Sunday:

• Ryzen 9 3900X
• Gigabyte X570 UD
• 2x16GB PC4-25600 (dual channel)
• 500GB PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe M.2 (system drive)
• 512GB SATA III SSD (scratch/cache drive)
• 2x Blackmagic Design DeckLink Duo 2
• Seasonic SSR-650FM
• Fractal Design Meshify C

Threw-in my Radeon HD 5450, but recommended he look for an RTX 2060 SUPER down the road, and maybe another 32GB of RAM if he starts working in 8K.

What really got me was how friggin' fast Windows 10 installed on this thing! Like, it only took a few minutes! Also, setting ultra fast boot + Windows fast startup gets it going in a few seconds.

Also, AMD's Wraith Prism Cooler having RGB enabled by default is annoying... You have to manage another cable, take-up a USB header on the motherboard, and install Cooler Master software to turn it off 😒

Minor

New spare parts = minor update to secondary desktop:

• i7-950
• ASUS P6X58D Premium
• 3x4GB PC3-12800 (triple-channel)
• 2x ATi FirePro 3D V8800
• 64GB OCZ Vertex 2
• 500GB 7200RPM HDD
• Plextor PX-880SA
• Antec TP-650
• Lian Li PC-68

Upgrades to parents' desktop, too:

• i5-2500
• ASUS P8Z68V-LX
• 4GB+2x2GB PC3-12800 (dual-channel)
• Radeon HD 6950
• 128GB OCZ Vertex 4
• 1TB 7200RPM HDD
• Corsair TX650
• Lian Li PC-68

And a new basic recording studio computer for my friend?

• i7-930
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 (rev. 2.0)
• 6x2GB PC3-10666 (triple-channel)
• Radeon HD 5450

...Except that Gigabyte motherboard supports up to 14 hard drives, and I have a bunch of the spinning kind lying around. I also have a pretty big case just sitting there, empty. Maybe a 6Gb/s RAID0 system drive and a 3Gb/s RAID10 data drive? Just for fun? I mean, why not, right?

Also, finished Hexen II and man, that game is all kinds of rough. Need to talk more about that series some time soon; my memories were brought into question after recently playing through the first three games and their expansion packs... Still have to finish-up Portal of Peaevus and Heretic II though. Also, GRAVEN.

Toasty!

The Radeon 8500 in the 9x build just kinda died... Fan spins, but that's it. Replaced it with an 8500LE, but then realised that fan had seized... At which point I looked wistfully at my overheated 9700 Pro. So, in went the GeForce 3 Ti 200... And I quickly noticed that quality control on NVIDIA's 9x drivers seems a little lax; reproducible NVIDIA control panel crashes, a BSOD, a seemingly broken uninstaller... Got it all going eventually, and ran hardware diagnostics just to make sure it wasn't something else causing the instability. Also, the sound effects + CD Audio starting working together in Hexen II for no apparent reason.

Otherwise, I recently completed a project that involved expanding, upgrading, and re-provisioning a Linux-based renderfarm that now collectively sports over 2.7TB of RAM, just over 800 CPU threads turboing up to 3.7GHz, and 84 GPUs delivering over 760 TFLOPs in a single 21-node rack. It gets noisy sometimes... And also kinda warm.

Oh! Hotshot Racing is rad, and I'm really enjoying it!

3114

So going all-SATA on the DFI NFII Ultra Infinity was a fun exercise; finding the correct Silicon Image 3114 controller drivers and getting them onto a floppy disk took a couple of tries - needed the "SATALink" variant 😒 After that, however, Windows XP SP3 was good to go, and all of a sudden I had no more computers to build. Put fresh batteries in all of them, and now it's time to take stock of what's left; see what's worth keeping, what's destined for the e-waste station, what I can give away and what I hope to get a few bucks for.

Anyway, I installed Hexen II and Portal of Praevus on the 98 SE computer and... Yeesh. It's hooked-up to an old 1680x1050 LCD, and the closest video mode the game wanted to support was 1280x960... Which that Pentium II cannot handle on its own. To get GL Hexen running, I had to remove the game's custom opengl32.dll, and then things were pretty great on the Radeon 8500... Except there was no sound; just CD audio. Manually re-installing the sound card drivers via Device Manager got sound working, but not at the same time as the CD audio, so... That's weird? Anyway, the same visual glitches present on the Steam release are still there on era-correct hardware so I guess I'll just play it on steam until I get to the Mission Pack? Ergh.

XP on an XP

Built the XP computer; haven't installed Windows yet. Put it all in a nice, compact Antec mid-tower with a 480W Antec PSU. Speaking of cases, I found-out that the case I put the Pentium II in is apparently pretty sought-after, so that's kinda neat.

Between stalling on DOOM VFR and waiting for "DOOM Eternal – The Ancient Gods, Part One", I idly played through the first three episodes of the original DOOM in Chocolate DOOM, and then revisited Heretic and Hexen when I finished configuring the DOS computer; and realised I never played Deathknights of the Dark Citadel, so I grabbed the latest GZDOOM and it turns-out that game if frickin' difficult! Finished a playthrough as the cleric though, and it was kinda great; like, actual puzzle solving and not just a key/fake-wall hunt. Well-into episode two of Heretic now, and likely going through Hexen again as well; and then Hexen II and Portal of Praevus on the 98 SE computer before finally getting back to Heretic II; I never finished the former two, and loved the latter back when it was first released :)

Otherwise, Need for Speed: The Run was on-sale for $10, so I ploughed throw that pretty quickly. It's kinda rough in every possible way, but still enjoyable. Cool cars, nice-enough graphics, and some truly stand-out moments (the controlled avalanche race, the tractor traffic, and the subway tunnels) couldn't save driving mechanics that are somehow simultaneously 'realistically' clunky and unbelievably ridiculous, an unpolished rewind system that would drop me into inescapable crashes, awful cutscenes, and painful dialogue though.

Control: AWE is out, I've started it, it's surreal, and I'm in; let's go...

Second Edition

Wrapped-up the DOS build and got going with the Windows 98 SE build - the latter looks like this:

• 300MHz Pentium II
• Intel AL440LX
• 192MB SDRAM
• 128MB AGP Radeon 8500
• 16MB PCI Voodoo Banshee
• Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX
• 6.4GB HDD
• DVD-ROM

There're some bottlenecks and concessions in there - e.g. AGP 4X card on an AGP 2X board, 66MHz FSB - but aside from Windows 98 being painfully slow and unsupportive until you get all your drivers installed, it went pretty smoothly. I could've built it around a 500Mhz K6-2 or a Socket A platform, but this PII still holds its own and has a special place in my heart :) Opted for no NIC since that thing really shouldn't be going online anyway, the second GPU is just for Glide support, I don't think I ever had the breakout box for the Audigy... Both this and the DOS computer are being built from whatever I've kept over the past 30 years; not investing any money in these projects.

Getting back to the DOS computer, I replaced the SB16-controlled CD-ROM with a regular IDE DVD-ROM and it works just fine (can read data DVDs in DOS!), set-up a three-button Logitech serial mouse (had to replace the ball), and installed Windows 3.1; with the mach32 and SB16 drivers installed and configured, it looks and sounds great - 1024x768, 65K colours, video playback acceleration, a decent audio editing suite! Also tracked-down a copy of UNARJ and installed some more games I had on old floppies. All of the new drivers ate-up a little too much RAM, but EMM386 cleared that up. Speaking of RAM, I wouldn't mind upgrading it to 64MB and adding a secondary cache (it supports up to 256KB), but there's no real need so I think this one's done.

Next up is the Windows XP computer - Currently looking like:

• Athlon XP 3200+
• DFI NFII Ultra Infinity
• 2GB DDR400 (dual channel)
• 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro
• Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

...Really just need to decide on a PSU and a case. Also have an Athlon 64 3500+, but that 3200+ is another part I learned a lot on and one was top-of-the line at the time so yeah, nostalgia :)

Getting Ready...

In anticipation of the AWE DLC for Control, I played through The Foundation DLC, both DLCs for Alan Wake, and Alan Wake's American Nightmare... All four experiences are worth it for their contributions to the narrative; The Signal's kind of a mess in terms of gameplay, but The Writer feels more balanced; American Nightmare handles traditional action better than its predecessor, but in doing so kinda misses the point of the original game. Regardless, excited for AWE!

Also decided to revisit Far Cry with all the sales on 5 and New Dawn alongside the announcement of 6. So Blood Dragon kinda sucks; it felt stilted and boring, was only barely funny, and I'm glad it was only four hours long. Far Cry: Primal, however, is right up my alley; very much enjoying that one. I think 4 did the spiritual journey missions better, but Primal feels like the better overall game.

Oh, also finally tried Steep a little while ago; not what I expected, but really interesting. Will get back to it.

Finally, my brother got that Mario Lego set for me, and it actually kinda works! Bluetooth functionality alongside the app is slick, and gameplay can get surprisingly challenging as a sort of score-attack experience. Doubt I'll be getting the expansion sets, but this is a really neat experiment.

Recent Recommendations

Friends asking for build recommendations lately, so...

Budget gaming for ~$800 CDN:

• Ryzen 3 3100 
• Gigabyte B550M DS3H
• 2 x 8 GB DDR4-3200
• ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB M.2 NVME SSD
• 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM HDD
• GTX 1650 SUPER
• be quiet! System Power U9 400W

Budget VM server for ~$575 CDN:

• Ryzen 5 2600
• ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0
• 2 x 16 GB DDR4-3200
• ADATA Ultimate SU800 256 GB 2.5" SSD
• be quiet! System Power U9 400W

...I figure they can do whatever they want for cases, and I imagine the VM host is gonna have an interesting storage setup regardless of what they start with.