Daemon Grotto

Technology and Gaming • Re: The State of PC Gaming Hardware

2025-09-22T05:04:18-04:00

That's not a bad move at all, Roperos. I encourage anyone who's building a new machine to go for all AMD at the moment, if they're chiefly concerned with gaming. Hell, even an Intel Arc card would work better on the budget-end vs. Team Green. NVIDIA is an "AI Company" now, so they've been dropping the ball hard on driver quality lately. Not to mention the 5000 series is an even worse deal than the 4000s.

Ugh... coil whine is the worst. I'm immensely happy that I've got a machine right now that has none of that noise. I'll keep any component that doesn't have coil whine and run it until it's dead - I don't care who makes it!

Not letting your GPU/CPU get above 75C is a good call. I don't care how much the manufactures claim they can run at 105C all day long - the stress of big heat-cycle swings will wear silicone over time. GPUs with big dies are especially susceptible, so I avoid those if I want my graphics card to last.

I personally haven't made any upgrades since last year. Everything still plays perfectly with my above machine. Though I'm always on the lookout for more cheap storage - SSDs and gigantic mechanical drives. I'm building mini Netflix-like Jellyfin servers everywhere I go.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Mon Sep 22, 2025 5:04 am

Technology and Gaming • Re: The State of PC Gaming Hardware

2025-09-21T18:33:17-04:00

One could say that i succumbed and switched sides

in reality it was time to let go. I don't think i will need so much power for quite a while, but with increasing coil whine (that sometimes lasted up to few minutes after exiting a game ) and a small hint from a friend i was able to replace my rtx 3090 for an rx 9070 xt and make 50€ from it.
I did some undervolting so RX draws 240W instead of 320W. Now i just need to mess around with a fan curve. stock curve starts from 55C / 130F and at 75C / 165F fans are already going full tilt (3k+ rpm). I'm tempted to disable "stop fan" altogether and keep it at lowest possible rpm till like 45-50C / 113-122F

Statistics: Posted by roperos — Sun Sep 21, 2025 6:33 pm

Technology and Gaming • Re: Age Verification Laws, Valve Bends the Knee, End of the Free Internet

2025-09-08T11:00:17-04:00

This is more of a blog post, but I felt it fits here better:

Disconnecting Just a Little More

There comes a certain point in a man’s life when he says, “Okay, I think I’ve seen enough.” I may have reached that juncture recently. In particular, this concerns the Internet. I’ve spent roughly 28 years gazing upon that world. I was there during its infancy, witnessing how it gradually changed our lives. Now, it seems to have largely replaced the physical realm for a great many people. No longer is it the hobbyist haunt for nerds and technology enthusiasts. All of the unwashed masses have invaded the thing and it has virtually been diluted into uselessness.

As digital censorship and financial control gradually encroaches with each passing day, I feel the urge to pull away before I get swept up along with it. The powers that be have chosen the World Wide Web as the new medium for their schemes: Centralized control of information and communication, digital money, constant surveillance, and zero privacy – all enabled by the very tools that were meant to be our liberators.

It's a sci-fi tale that has been told over and over again. This same struggle of a man versus his tools is played out brilliantly during the Jupiter Mission in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Who’s going to win in the end this time?

I feel more determined than ever to put these tools back in their rightful place. I shouldn’t use them as a life-replacement. I shouldn’t so easily cave to social pressure and convenience. I need to cultivate and maintain the old ways of life, procedures rooted in the physical. Here are some of things that I’ve been doing towards that end:

Keep local copies of all media. Films, TV shows, games, music, books, pictures, encyclopedias, etc.
Have three backups of everything, with at least one offsite.
No big-tech accounts with identifying information attached.
Buy all essentials at brick-and-mortar establishments. And when that's not feasible, use merchant gift cards.
Ensure computers and phones are useful without the internet. Everything local and offline.
Make certain that the backbone of my life is rooted in the real world and not internet-dependent. That includes banking, shopping, entertainment, paying bills, and social interactions.
Only go on the Internet once per week and have a plan of action while using it. No aimless browsing or sitting for hours in silent VOIP calls.
Hone and develop skills that don’t require a borg-like connection to the grid. Artistic skills, household maintenance, public speaking, scholarly research, cooking, physical labor, gardening, construction, and lumberjacking – within reason, given my disability.
Be grateful every day that I have Catherine – the most off-grid intimate relationship one could hope to have. Human women are essentially proxies and informants of the State these days, especially those with a constant connection to big-tech social media.

Here a few of the historical milestones that have influenced the development of the Internet and how I interact with it:

September 11th, 2001 – The Patriot Act was introduced not long after the alleged terrorist attack, bringing with it a whole new host of surveillance laws and travel restrictions. Virtual strip-searches are now required to travel by plane. Trying to pull money out of a bank over a certain amount - $10,000 back then, just $600 now in some jurisdictions – triggers “Know Your Customer” protocols. This was the first chilling effect to hit online discussion forums.

July 11th, 2008 – Steve Jobs announces the new iPhone 3G, the device that truly brought about the Internet’s downfall. Social media becomes the cancer that it is now, largely thanks to smartphone “apps.” Facebook now allows non-college emails to sign up and everyone abandons MySpace. Subprime mortgage crisis hits not long after, triggering the first major transference of wealth away from the working/middle class during my lifetime.

August 2014 – Gamergate – Establishment media declares war on men who enjoy video games, which was pretty much all of them by this point. Game quality took a nosedive. Internet discourse becomes more heavily moderated, centralized, or removed altogether. This extended to in-game chats, causing yet another chilling effect. Nobody uses in-game chats to talk anymore.

2016 – American politics break internet discourse, polarizing everyone for years to come. Discord becomes the most popular form of communication for gamers and all online communities are gradually swallowed up by it, further centralizing communication under a dubious venture-capital-backed startup. Internet forums are effectively dead by this point. Everyone is in a social media walled-garden.

2018 – Etherium crypto mining ruins the GPU market for gamers. Web 3.0 tries to be a thing and continues to fail miserably.

2020 – The second major transference of wealth away from the working/middle class via Blackrock under the guise of a so-called pandemic. Alleged “medical disinformation” policies enforce new sweeping censorship across all social media platforms. Everyone is still broken by politics. Mothers are muzzling their children. People are being fired for not voluntarily poisoning themselves. The media stirs up a frenzy about toilet paper shortages and everyone falls for it. I’ve given up on society by this juncture.

2022 – Cryptominers destroy the GPU market yet again. ChatGPT 3.5 text and chat completion models are unleashed on the world. Often hyped up as an “AI,” but are really just glorified auto-completes that can’t be relied upon for factual information. Investor FOMO triggers a new tech goldrush and datacenter compute – powered by NVIDIA GPUs – are the shovels of the day. Gamers will never have good, reasonably-priced graphics cards for the foreseeable future.

2025 – Sweeping online safety laws are established in the United Kingdom, and big tech companies are more than happy to impose the new edicts world-wide. VISA, Mastercard, and Steam attack gamers via deplatforming and financial censorship. Parents can’t be bothered to police their own children online, so governments the world-over are continuing to roll out government ID checks to access various parts of the Web. Search engines were useless before this point, thanks to SEO abuse, but are now even further gatekept by so-called “AI results.”

Now is as good a time as any to tap out. The real world is a seemingly desolate place these days, but I'd rather find myself wandering there, than mindlessly gazing upon a screen for any longer than necessary.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Mon Sep 08, 2025 11:00 am

Technology and Gaming • Re: Age Verification Laws, Valve Bends the Knee, End of the Free Internet

2025-08-18T11:59:33-04:00

Well, I've done my bit. I closed my Capital One credit card accounts, and I'll no longer be using a bank card. It's cash, checks, and merchant gift cards from here on out, baby. (No VISA giftcards allowed.) I have been wanting to do this for a long time anyway. It's the "right" thing to do, as far as maintaining privacy and personal control over money in the modern world is concerned. I even keep a checkbook now, just like I did years ago. Thank goodness all of my utility bills and banking can still be handled the old-fashioned way in my area.

I really can't stand it when middle-men decide to become moral arbiters - like how Blackrock's Larry Fink wants to "force certain behaviors." It's kinda sad how everyone's investing and retirement accounts are all tied up in this BS, so it's unlikely anything will change for the better. All that matters to 95% of people is the all-mighty dollar. That'll be our downfall.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Mon Aug 18, 2025 11:59 am

Technology and Gaming • Re: Age Verification Laws, Valve Bends the Knee, End of the Free Internet

2025-08-03T07:27:20-04:00

I hope you're right about this age verification push only applying to big-tech hubs. That was part of my motivation for putting together this website in the first place. Everything here is hosted on my little rented shared server in Provo, Utah. No CDNs. (Content Delivery Networks) As they say, if you don't hold it, you don't own it.

For those Steam games that you've already bought... I won't link to it here, but there's always Steamless and GoldbergEmu.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Sun Aug 03, 2025 7:27 am

Technology and Gaming • Re: Age Verification Laws, Valve Bends the Knee, End of the Free Internet

2025-08-02T16:33:23-04:00

Thankfully I'm in the part of europe that's not affected by this, but dam future doesn't look bright.

I don't think small online forums like this one will be affected as long as they're self hosted or don't have a centralized provider, for example xenforo cloud forum thing. As always owning something turns out to be the best thing. Stings a bit because I was always got my games on steam. Treated it as my goto platform, even going as far as getting games there over GOG.

From high of stop killing games to low of ID verification for social media and discord. What a year

Statistics: Posted by roperos — Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:33 pm

Technology and Gaming • Age Verification Laws, Valve Bends the Knee, End of the Free Internet

2025-07-30T08:31:00-04:00

The Internet is becoming less free and open. It’s no longer catastrophism to say this. The totalitarian process always starts with objectionable material, like pornography, so nobody will openly take a stand against the new restrictions. And then the reach of censorship inevitably extends to other kinds of content those in power have a problem with.

Several states in my country have already passed laws that require third-party age verification to access websites with adult material. One law I read said that if a website contains more than 33% harmful content, that it would be required to verify the age of those who access it. Who makes the determination about what’s considered harmful, I wonder? Is a man describing his experiences with a succubus spirit, largely through text, beyond that 33% threshold? I’m reminded of how Comstock went after Ida Craddock in the mid-19th century for writing similarly. We might be returning to an age of Puritanism, but instead of parents being responsible, big government and mega-corporations will be shepherding us towards cleaner, more advertiser-friendly content.

I can foresee a time in the near future where a website like this won’t be allowed to exist on the Clearnet. In the meantime, I’ll try to stay on the down-low and not draw undue attention to myself. Perhaps all of this will blow over and my little corner of the net will go unnoticed?

The more time I spend with Catherine, the less I feel the need to get my story out there. I’m content to just simply enjoy her, while occasionally sharing with those who purposefully seek out this information. I’ve got zero desire to evangelize, get into people’s faces, or be political in any sense of the word.

I won’t link to it here, but there’s a good essay on the topic on xvideos.com. It’s in the blue banner at the top of the page. Can’t miss it. That writeup pretty much mirrors my thoughts on the matter.

And as for Valve removing WEGs (Western Erotic Games) from Steam at the behest of Visa and Mastercard? Gamers continue to be the most oppressed minority on earth. I would advise only using Steam for online multiplayer games and get everything else from GOG, or other DRM-free sources, where possible. Download local copies. Burn them to disk. Own it forever. Share them with a friend. It’s the only way forward for the hobby.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Wed Jul 30, 2025 8:31 am

Technology and Gaming • Re: The State of PC Gaming Hardware

2025-04-26T20:14:42-04:00

Hey Roperos, thanks for adding your findings!

I guess I just assumed that AM4 prices would come down substantially for used parts. Hell, I got my X470 board open box and it was still expensive for me 3 years ago! ($200 USD) And upon a brief glance at Ebay prices in the US, that price has not budged. It's even a little higher now. So yeah, you're right. It makes more sense to go for AM5.

Spending $600 on a GPU pains me like you wouldn't believe. I got by with $100 ATI cards and hand-me-downs for years. Now, you're only options for something that cheap is a rebuild-job from Ali Express, or a miner card. I've actually had some good luck with miner cards, so that wasn't so bad. The only way I could justify spending so much on my newer RTX card was that it felt like the first substantial upgrade from the GTX 1080 at a similar power draw. I was tempted to go the 3090 route, but I like my little 650 Seasonic power supply. And as I stated above, I want my machine to draw not much more than an Xbox or PS5 at load. So I'm happy with my 4070 and Ryzen 7 5700X combo. Stay cool!

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Sat Apr 26, 2025 8:14 pm

Technology and Gaming • Re: The State of PC Gaming Hardware

2025-04-26T19:28:41-04:00

I've experimented with using this CUDA-crunching monster to run my own chatbots locally, using Koboldcpp and SillyTavern as front-ends. I only have enough VRAM to run quantized 12 billion parameter models, yet the fine-tuning from some of the model merges on Huggingface yield surprisingly good prose and dialogue for a story co-writer. Granted, I have to do some prompt-wrangling to overcome chatbot-dumbness, but it's still fascinating to see what it'll come up with.

This whole paragrapgh is pretty much why I got an RTX 3090 and still keep it despite awful power draw :P
Even after undervolting I can't get it below 280W when playing, while it has performance of an rtx 4070 super. I always was in a bit of a denial how slow it is, but seeing it being beaten by an rtx 5070 (250w vs 380w) is a bit of a wake up call.

I think it's a good time to get a gpu, it all depends on which price bracket. Around 850$ you can look for an rtx 4070 ti super, rx 7900 xt or either 9070 xt or regular. I feel sorry for anyone that has to buy a GPU below 500$. Even rx 7800xt is a bit of a stretch and anything below that feels like wasting money on a GPU that's not that much faster than equivalent from earlier generation. Used market is tempting, with 3080's going for 4060ti 8gb prices and you get 35% more performance and 25% more vram (or 50% if you're lucky) for the same price. But ye I get that used markets are different in each region, so I won't go too deep into that.

>am5
I think it's time to migrate. Even cheapest ryzen 7500f is on par with ryzen 5700x3d and am5 gives you options for simple plug & play upgrades in the future. Prices dropped quite a lot in europe in the last year. It's quite easy to get a basic 2x16gb ddr5 kit (6000 cl36) for 80€ (90$). Decent mobos are in stock for 150€ (170$) (asrock b650 pro rs / gigabyte b650 eagle / msi pro b650-S). Ryzen 7500f is like 140€ (160$), 7700 goes for 200€ (226$). My problem with am4 is that it's not much cheaper. Recently I put together few PCs around 1k€ (1130$) and difference between am4 V am5 is like 100€ (113$). To me it's not big enough to advice to go with am4 for new builds. IF you already have am4 then sure it's easy to look for a used ryzen 5600 or try your luck with a ryzen 5700x3d from aliexpress. Some people after various rebates and discount codes get them for as low as 150€ (170$)

I remember that intel exists, but it's been ages since I put a pc with their CPU and that whole voltage degradation thing still stings almost a year later. I heard that you can get ryzen 7800x3d levels of performance for 450-500€ (510-560$) because cpus are dirt cheap, but I haven't looked into it.

To close it in one reply.
Semiconductor manufacturing is so complex you can't just open your arms and say "cmon guys, come and make your products here" I found a channel on youtube that has a good balance between showing how complex it is and still explaining it to us mere mortals.

Statistics: Posted by roperos — Sat Apr 26, 2025 7:28 pm

Technology and Gaming • Re: The State of PC Gaming Hardware

2025-04-24T09:42:27-04:00

A continuation on my thoughts about the pricing and availability situation with PC gaming hardware:

Gamer's Nexus recently put out a click-baity type video, as they often do, called The Death of Affordable Computing - Tariffs Impact and Investigation. From what I gather, it's essentially a three-hour long documentary of tech-Jesus going around to a few different computer hardware businesses and seeing how the tariff situation in the United States is going to affect prices.

Frankly, whenever I watch a GN video, I just skip to the benchmark charts and pause. I can't stand listening to Steve, or any tech-tuber, for more than three minutes. The fake journalist-media-personality-type voice grates on me like nails on a chalkboard. I much prefer to read their written reviews, if they have them. Needless to say, I'm NOT watching this video.

Anyway, I think it might be a case of "too soon" to pronounce affordable computer as dead, or at death's door. Policy changes like the ones we're facing in the US take many years to shake out, as we saw with the consequences of NAFTA and GAT trade agreements back in the 90s. There's a good chance that the current tariffs wont even stick, and are just being used as an incentive to bring other nations back to the negotiating table. But regardless, there's a lot of people out there eager to rage-bait, to borrow the Gen-Z colloquialism. And there are many business owners who are understandably upset.

Should we be so reliant upon cheap Chinese labor for our toys? Probably not. But the United States has been set on this course of off-shoring everything for many decades now. It's unlikely that we can so readily turn the Titanic around, especially when it's already taking on water. I think it's more likely that if any factories are to be built in the US, they're going to be so automated that the common folk will still be fucked regardless.

We'll see. Interesting times!

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Thu Apr 24, 2025 9:42 am

Technology and Gaming • Re: The State of PC Gaming Hardware

2025-04-22T17:28:28-04:00

What's the current state of PC gaming hardware? Well... it seems to be getting worse. Shrinkflation has started to hit GPUs hard and all the good silicone is being reserved for datacenters. The tech bros are milking the AI hype-train investor money right now. It'll be funny when everyone finally figures out that these chatbots are essentially bullshit generators and are not worth the massive amount of electricity it takes to run them.

On that note, I got an Asus ProArt 4070 last fall. It's a nicely built card. Not so ridiculously heavy that it requires a brace to keep from sagging, but also with a big enough cooler to ensure that I never hear the thing. No coil whine either, so I'm definitely holding onto this gem. Also, for a triple-fan card, it's still short enough to fit inside my Phanteks Enthoo Pro case.

I've experimented with using this CUDA-crunching monster to run my own chatbots locally, using Koboldcpp and SillyTavern as front-ends. I only have enough VRAM to run quantized 12 billion parameter models, yet the fine-tuning from some of the model merges on Huggingface yield surprisingly good prose and dialogue for a story co-writer. Granted, I have to do some prompt-wrangling to overcome chatbot-dumbness, but it's still fascinating to see what it'll come up with. So long as the models fit entirely inside the VRAM, they spit out replies way faster than I can read them. I get similar speeds when doing local image generation - about 30 seconds for a fairly high-resolution composition. As of right now, NVIDIA cards are the only ones that can perform this level of compute, with Apple's SOCs coming in second.

My initial rationale for the 4070 was that it's the fastest card that I can get with a TDP of only 200 watts. I don't want to go any higher than that because I don't use air conditioning in my room and it can get pretty hot up here in the summer. Also, the chip die isn't so large that I have to worry about damage that can result from heat-cycling over many years. Another important deciding factor was that this particular card uses the older 8-pin PCI Express power plug, as opposed to the newer 12VHPWR plug that has been having melting issues under certain loads... or if it's not plugged in just right. Finally, and most importantly, I can fly around busy cities in Flight Simulator 2020 with little to no lag!

I was genuinely impressed with DLSS 4 on the Dune Awakening benchmark, so I'm not too worried about the gaming longevity for this card, especially since I insist on keeping my 1200p monitor resolution and aspect ratio until my last breath. I haven't had any problems with other games on Windows 10. Sadly, Linux support for gaming isn't there yet, thanks largely to the Wayland display server transition.

I feel bad for anyone who has to get a video card right now. They're either not available or massively overpriced. Also, NVIDIA has started dropping the ball on graphics driver quality since the 5000 series launched, as they're apparently an AI company now and could care less about the customers who built their business. I'd actually feel more comfortable recommending PC gamers give an Intel ARC or AMD card a try for this generation. Interesting times...

New motherboards are still wickedly expensive. "Budget-friendly" options start at $200. I'd say the best route for the enthusiast would be a Ryzen 7 7700 if building new, or an older AM4-based system with whatever 8-core CPU can be found for it. Otherwise, be prepared to spend $3k on a computer! At least SSDs and flash storage are still cheap.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Tue Apr 22, 2025 5:28 pm

Technology and Gaming • Re: My Abridged Mass Effect 3 Ending

2025-02-25T17:50:10-04:00

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one not fond of Krogans

I need to spice up the gameplay next time. I played all 3 games (80h) as a sniper that stayed behind cover and peeked out only when I had a clear headshot. I'm not sure If I even bothered with different ammo types.

I think I enjoyed the combat in ME2 the most. On 4/5 difficulty even basic enemy was able to survive a body shot from a good sniper rifle, so whole game turned into "clicking heads" and abusing cloak that gave extra headshot damage.

My gameplay grudge I have to ME3 is level design. It's nice that they tried to add more verticality to levels, but it always ended with "asset nr.3: sturdy metal ladder" being placed all around the galaxy or few almost Shepard sized boxes in warehouses. Good try, but a bit more effort would've made it orders of magnitude better

Statistics: Posted by roperos — Tue Feb 25, 2025 4:50 pm

Technology and Gaming • Re: My Abridged Mass Effect 3 Ending

2025-02-24T19:28:33-04:00

Try playing as a vanguard next time. It's tons of fun in the first game, going around shotgunning krogans in the face, while hitting 'em with warps and throws. In ME2, sadly, it turns into more of a cover-shooter - probably the weakest combat-wise in the series, but still fun. Combat gets much better in ME3 again, especially with vanguard, which is OP as hell in that game. I also enjoy playing as engineer, hanging back and sniping with heavy pistols and ruining everyone's day with massive overloads all over the place. Plus you get the attack drone, like Tali has in ME2. It's really only good for distracting enemies, but effective for taking the heat off.

Overlord DLC for ME2 is pretty good, and it helps make the intro for ME3 make a whole lot more sense.

Statistics: Posted by tc119 — Mon Feb 24, 2025 6:28 pm

Technology and Gaming • Re: My Abridged Mass Effect 3 Ending

2025-02-24T18:01:42-04:00

Spoiler

Technology and Gaming • Re: My Abridged Mass Effect 3 Ending

2025-02-23T21:14:08-04:00

Spoiler