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The original Apple Watch lineup is officially obsolete
  • There are very affordable g-shocks with multi band, using radio signals to accurately set the time every night with an atomic clock as the source. I mean if accuracy is an issue.

    The solar models also charge using sunlight and fluorescent lights but will still last about 1-2 years in darkness. Regular wear will always keep it charged.

    Not to say an Apple Watch isn’t right for you. Just stating that non-smart watch options exist for those who just want to tell time, date, weekday, accurately with added stuff like alarms and stopwatch etc.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • So a faster CPU might improve performance in Act 3 of BG3? Sign me up! It did indeed seem like a CPU issue since there was no stuttering or frame drops, but characters just standing around thinking long and hard about their turns during combat. Partial towards that upgrade since the 2600x is fine for most cases and this specific issue is likely to be patched by devs.

    I'm leaning towards AMD mainly because I have had no bad experiences with dealing with their drivers on Linux and because their mid-range cards actually have more VRAM than the card from 2017 that I'm trying to replace. My RM650x should be fine driving a RX 6700xt or even a 6800xt, so neither should be too power hungry for this setup.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • Those are all fair considerations. My free time outside of work mostly consists of some housework, dog-related activities, and gaming. I honestly doubt it's going to change much until we can afford to finally buy a house, and children are out of the question for us. Even when the house-buying day comes it'll probably only be a brief disruption to our normal schedules for a few months before we settle back into the routine. Of course with the extras that come with keeping a house in a livable condition.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • What did you replace the 1070 with? Are you planning a full platform change or just a beefier CPU in the AM4 for your next upgrade?

    I built it about 4.5 years ago now. I'd say with the amount of use I've gotten out of it that it's definitely provided value, not exclusively as a gaming platform. If I didn't care much about demanding gaming, high graphics settings, and FPS I'd probably just keep it as it is now for another 4-5 years. There's not really much wrong with it and it does run Terraria.

    Parts are currently on sale which is why I'm considering this upgrade only now, unless I'm being bamboozled by the online store. Gotta cross-check with historic prices and other stores first.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • Yeah, cheers! I feel that, this 580 has been serving for way longer than I expected it to when I first bought it. Had some issues with crashing first couple of days after getting Baldur's Gate 3, but it hasn't crashed since I replaced the thermal paste couple of weeks ago. I guess it was a perfect storm of dried up thermal paste, brand new game, and ungodly high temperatures here with no AC.

    My bios is probably ways out of date since I typically only flash it when I need a fix or a feature such as in this case. Thanks for the heads up!

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • All excellent points. It's tempting to get a 6800xt.

    After reading up on benchmarking data it appears I can still get a real performance gain from the 6800xt over the 6700xt still without swapping the CPU. This makes me think the 5800x3d is way overkill for the kinds of GPUs I'm looking at. I have the impression that it will be bottlenecked by the GPU unless I'm getting a 7900XT or something super high-end to pair with it.

    At least with the 6700xt the benchmark data I found looked almost identical between a 5800x and a 5800x3d, though not sure how accurate the data is. All that said the price difference between the 6700xt and 6800xt can fully pay for a 5800x which may offer a more balanced upgrade for the system overall. Then I can overclock the GPU once we can afford a house with AC in 30 years or so.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • Yeah, I feel like I haven't rushed the upgrades too soon with the GPU. It has been almost impossible to get one at a normal price these past three years though.

    Some spending is flowing over the top of the spending dam, but I don't think it's about to give structurally. We're also spending a bit on vacation around this same time, it feels worse to spend a lot at once but honestly it doesn't make a difference if we spend it now or spread out as long as it's isn't a pattern.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC
  • Or perhaps I’m going about this all wrong and I should instead spend half of that budget on repairing my PS5 and the other half on continuously buying new controllers after they get stick drift.

  • Request for advice: talk me out of upgrading my PC

    Hi, I’ve got a fairly modest computer by today’s standard and I’m looking to upgrade the GPU and perhaps also the CPU. Mostly I use it for playing games and your other typical PC tasks, not much video editing and stuff of that sort. Mostly MMOs, sandbox games, RPGs, CRPGs and the occasional sim or 4X.

    At the time I’m having a blast with Baldur’s Gate 3 (me and everyone else), and it runs fine (albeit with a fairly hot GPU topping out around 89 C, but ambient is around 35 tbf) on High settings. Only thing I noticed is some occasionally long turn times of enemies “thinking” during combat. Also been meaning to play Elden Ring but my PS5’s GPU died early in the game (just after console warranty expired), so I’m tempted to get it for PC.

    Currently got:

    • Asus Prime B450M-A
    • Ryzen 5 2600X
    • MSI RX 580 8GB
    • Corsair DDR4 16 GB (2x8GB dual-channel) 3200 memory
    • 650 W PSU

    I think the biggest performance gain would come from upgrading the GPU. Where I had something like a 6700 XT (currently at 330 € here) in mind.

    Is it nonsensical to also upgrade the CPU to a 5800X3D (currently 320 €) instead of just waiting a couple more years and going with whatever platform is current then? Not interested in buying all new memory nor a higher-rated PSU now. Thinking the mentioned CPU can squeeze at least five more years or so out of this motherboard before I need a bigger upgrade. Perhaps it would also help with turn times?

    Probably around 150 € can be recouped by selling my old parts once I have flashed the BIOS and no longer need the old CPU.

    25
    Recommendations of non-Apple products with similar longevity?
  • For phones 5+ years of updates is good compared to the alternatives, and is why I have one. For a computer, on the other hand, it’s just not very impressive. Perhaps FairPhones come close (don’t know how long their software is supported but their selling point is longevity), but their specs aren’t that impressive. On the flip side you get something repairable.

    MacBooks are often built better with higher quality materials than many other laptops, but it is essentially a computer. Most computers that have high enough specs will always run the latest version of most Linux distributions or Windows barring any need for weird drivers from the past century. Feels a little iffy to have a perfectly good computer that won’t update software anymore just because. Up until recently you could just install some Linux OS on your old MacBooks when it went out of support but honestly I don’t know whether you can still do that after they started making non-x86 stuff.

    With all that said, haven’t seen many laptops physically outlive MacBooks’ updates. With the exception of some ThinkPads and possibly some XPS models. Plastic laptops with plastic hinges tend to struggle keeping up, especially if the display is on the larger side. A large gaming laptop living the life of a typical MacBook, going to cafes and university in a backpack every day is probably gonna have more stress on hinges etc.

    As for HP I have only heard bad stuff about them for the last 10 years or so. Don’t think I’ll buy stuff from them due to their evil printers that won’t scan without ink etc.

    Not many specific recommendations here but just some observations I have made. Hope it’s helpful.

  • The Main Lesson From ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Should Be ‘People Hate Microtransactions’
  • Isn’t the whole point of pest control to kill ‘em [the pests] dead? Like, to have recurring business from the same customer one would have to not actually solve their problem. Barring any reintroduction of pests with seasonality as you suggested, or otherwise.

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