Part of the appeal of the Raspberry was I thought experts already assembled the stuff into an image, including whatever Vulcan etc. I saw there's no image for Pi 5 yet, and I'd likely screw something up if I tried to set it up without a preexisting image.
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Tech Gaming Hardware discussion (& Hardware Sales) thread
- Thread starter Madmick
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You can get those same type of images for PC’s that are preconfigured.
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Sorry I didn't answer this right away. Yes, it should. PCIe has more than sufficient lanes to support USB 3.0 bandwidth.
It doesn't look like that's what he was interested in. He's talking about Raspberry Pis, you get the sense he was thinking maybe he could get something while spending under $100, or at least under $150. Sure, you can do a whole lot more with a bit more budget, but sometimes, making recommendations to people means listening to what they want to do, not what you think is ideal.
Here's what I mean: because this is how this goes. Once we start talking about desktops we open maybe with mentions of stuff like those refurbed old office SFF's on Amazon like the Dell Optiplex units, and then adding a low-profile GPU that runs on >75W like the RX 6400, or better, the GTX 3050. But now you're up to ~$275-$325, and then somebody criticizes the Optiplex as already a dead platform, with its 4th gen Intel from 2013, and that its proprietary SFF form factor doesn't offer strong support for future upgrades or expansion. Valid. Okay, so then you either start looking at cases that require the person to build, when maybe they don't have any interest in that, or you start looking at the lowest end gaming-level prebuilts. But even if we're looking at refurbs we're still looking at a budget of $300+. But then somebody highlights that the GPUs in these entry bottom-rung budget gaming PCs are really weak, because it will be something like the RX 5500 or an ancient RX 580, way worse than our original plan with the 3050, unless it's completely unreliable Chinese scammer brands like STG Aubron, have fun rolling the dice with them, and this is true up until we get around to $700-$800 before we start seeing GPUs that actually offer a respectable value among modern hardware. And it's almost never really good until it's in the $900-$1000 range. The person balks. So somebody tries to be cooler than school by linking a bunch of used shit on Facebook marketplace or eBay.
Ultimately, this poor guy seeking advice who just thought maybe he could emulate some cool retro titles reliably for under $100 is being harassed to pour over a bunch of used listings on Facebook that are Greek to him, or peppered with "just build, dude, it isn't that hard", or pressured to "spend the extra money, $1K isn't that much!", when it's 10x what he wanted to spend.
I'm not saying there isn't validity to the debate and all these viewpoints, I'm just saying, it's my habit to try to figure out what I think the person I'm talking to truly wants, and then address his desire as my principle.
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Well said.
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Oh, so the questions about cheap emulation sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Unless someone knows of better, it appears the most capable Windows gaming machines at sub-console prices are Mini PCs running the Ryzen 7 6800H chipset.
A few examples:
Up until yesterday that Firebat was riding a 5-day sale at an all time low of $277 . It's back at $346, so the AOOSTAR is definitely the better buy. RAM speed differences make a big difference to gaming power. But if they interest you keep your eyes peeled because some of these companies might still be clearing them out at sub-$300 prices. [update 8/5: available at $277 again]
This is actually a respectably powerful machine. The CPU is an 8-core boost 4.7 GHz processor with the Zen 3+ architecture on the 6nm fabrication process (the same but slightly improved ark as seen in the Ryzen 7 5800X; it is slightly superior to that CPU). The iGPU is the Radeon 680M. This is the same RDNA 2.0 architecture as in the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S. The 680M is actually identical in pipelines & cache to the 780M and 880M that followed it. The only difference is those may support slightly higher boost clocks and more efficient power consumption due to improved fabrication. The 780M, for example, is the iGPU in the Lenovo Legion Go & ASUS ROG Ally X.
That means the only integrated chipsets you'll see in handhelds, laptops, or Mini PCs that carry appreciably more gaming power are those from AMD that package the almighty Radeon 8060S, Radeon 8050S, or Radeon 890M, and those from Intel that package the latest Arc iGPUs you see in the Core Ultra mobile chipsets (i.e. Arc 140V, Arc 128EU Mobile). You only see these in products that cost around $800+, usually over $1000, including some of the latest handhelds such as the MSI Claw A8, MSI Claw 8 AI+, Ayaneo 3, and the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X. NVIDIA offers nothing in this market.
Nothing can compete with the consoles on value, or at least I thought so until I took this dive. This isn't too far off the Xbox Series S. It trounces the Steam Deck or the Nintendo Switch 2.
This video compares DDR5-4800MHz vs LPDDR5-6400:
A few examples:
- ($277) Firebat A6 (3rd Gen): R7-6800H, 16GB DDR5-4800MHz RAM, 512GB NVMe Gen3 SSD
- ($365) AOOSTAR GEM10: R7-6800H, 32GB LPDDR5-6400MHz RAM, 512GB NVMe Gen4 SSD
Up until yesterday that Firebat was riding a 5-day sale at an all time low of $277 . It's back at $346, so the AOOSTAR is definitely the better buy. RAM speed differences make a big difference to gaming power. But if they interest you keep your eyes peeled because some of these companies might still be clearing them out at sub-$300 prices. [update 8/5: available at $277 again]
This is actually a respectably powerful machine. The CPU is an 8-core boost 4.7 GHz processor with the Zen 3+ architecture on the 6nm fabrication process (the same but slightly improved ark as seen in the Ryzen 7 5800X; it is slightly superior to that CPU). The iGPU is the Radeon 680M. This is the same RDNA 2.0 architecture as in the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S. The 680M is actually identical in pipelines & cache to the 780M and 880M that followed it. The only difference is those may support slightly higher boost clocks and more efficient power consumption due to improved fabrication. The 780M, for example, is the iGPU in the Lenovo Legion Go & ASUS ROG Ally X.
That means the only integrated chipsets you'll see in handhelds, laptops, or Mini PCs that carry appreciably more gaming power are those from AMD that package the almighty Radeon 8060S, Radeon 8050S, or Radeon 890M, and those from Intel that package the latest Arc iGPUs you see in the Core Ultra mobile chipsets (i.e. Arc 140V, Arc 128EU Mobile). You only see these in products that cost around $800+, usually over $1000, including some of the latest handhelds such as the MSI Claw A8, MSI Claw 8 AI+, Ayaneo 3, and the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X. NVIDIA offers nothing in this market.
Nothing can compete with the consoles on value, or at least I thought so until I took this dive. This isn't too far off the Xbox Series S. It trounces the Steam Deck or the Nintendo Switch 2.
| Steam Deck (LCD) | Radeon 680M (4800MHz DDR5) | Radeon 680M (6400MHz LPDDR5) | Xbox Series S | |
| Pixel Bandwidth (GP/s) | 25.6 | 70.4 | 70.4 | 50.1 |
| Textel Bandwidth (GT/s) | 51.2 | 105.6 | 105.6 | 125.2 |
| FP32 (TFLOPS) | 1.64 | 3.38 | 3.38 | 4.01 |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) [MHz-dependent] | 88.0 | 76.8 | 102.4 | [email protected] [email protected] |
| RAM Amount | 16GB | 16GB (up to 64GB) | 32GB (up to 64GB) | 10GB |
This video compares DDR5-4800MHz vs LPDDR5-6400:
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For the first time ever AMD has breached 40% CPU user share in Steams hardware survey:
An it looks like AMD is increasing the L3 cache size by 50% with their upcoming 8+ core 9000 X3D chip.
wccftech.com
An it looks like AMD is increasing the L3 cache size by 50% with their upcoming 8+ core 9000 X3D chip.
AMD Readies Two New 3D V-Cache Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" Desktop CPUs, 8 Core With 96 MB & 16 Core With 192 MB "Dual X3D"
AMD is reportedly preparing two brand new Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" 3D V-Cache desktop CPUs in 8 & 16 core flavors with up to 192 MB cache.
wccftech.com
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Is there any good pre-built PC companies worth checking out? Perhaps with customization options.
I'm still on the one I built 7 years ago (!!!) and it's still a great PC, so my plan was to build another one, but honestly I'm not sure I want to deal with it again and have been dragging my feet. I have too many other projects already. I kind of feel like just buying something that's ready to go.
I'm still on the one I built 7 years ago (!!!) and it's still a great PC, so my plan was to build another one, but honestly I'm not sure I want to deal with it again and have been dragging my feet. I have too many other projects already. I kind of feel like just buying something that's ready to go.
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Mick's post has the gist (Skytech has raised prices more than CyberPower or iBuyPower this year though). Best Buy is the easiest place to buy from but they've also absorbed less of the increased prices this year than other places.
What tier of prebuild are you looking for?
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Price wise I'm thinking around the $1,500 mark.
I'm on an ancient i5-7600K GTX 1060 6GB set-up and still manage to have a good time with gaming with a lot of graphic settings tweaking.
This old one will be my bedroom PC, but I want one for my living room which has a pretty decent sized 4K tv so I'd like to bump the resolution up more.
So sounds like an RTX 5070 prebuild, maybe RTX 5070 Ti if you can wait until the holidays and go over a bit. Do you want it asap or you're willing to wait for sales?
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I can wait. Really I need to buy a couch and other things in the meantime. I mostly just hang out in my room with the PC in here, and move it out into the living room if I have friends over to play fighting games and shit.
I'm also thinking I want something I can add a shitload of hard drives to, but maybe I should build a server for that instead so I can tap both PC's into.
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Bee-link has a similar spec pc, but with 32gb of ram, for $299. You're giving up 2 USB ports and 2.5G ethernet.
I've never heard of Firebat before.
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I have a pretty high end Origin PC, and about 7 years before that I went with Digital Storm.
Both my experiences were fantastic. Of course I paid a pretty high premium for the rigs, but whatever, I just liked the artistry and beauty of what they gave me. I never had a single issue with either except 1) having to refill my water cooling on the digital storm, but that is normal for the amount of time I had it, and 2) my RGB on my OriginPC is a bit iffy at times, but I think that's more the shitty iCue software more than hardware, though maybe it's hardware related. It tends to be my case lights that kind of disappear from being recognized. But the iCue software is really bad from my (and apparently a lot of other people's) experience so it's probably that.
On topic, my plan was to upgrade the GPU at some point(i have a 4080), and my original intent was to get a 60XX something. But I dunno, i don't think it will be worth it to be honest if the 5080 vs 4080 difference is any indication. I'm not an expert on stuff, but it just seems totally not worth the price.
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Oooh, that's a nice find as a third option. Although the 6800H variant is $319, not $299. You linked the correct one, but the $299 option is a Ryzen 7 5825U. That carries the weaker Cezanne-generation version of the Vega 8 iGPU which is built on the much, much older GCN 5.1 architecture, so don't get that one.
Yeah, it sacrifices some USB ports, but that's no biggie, especially since the RAM kicks it up to 32GB of LPDDR5-6300MHz, and the SSD is also PCIe 4.0 like the more expensive AOOSTAR. In addition, yeah, Beelink is a more established brand than AOOSTAR or Firebat (I've seen the latter around for several years).
That does place it nicely smack dab in the middle of the other two. The most expensive AOOSTAR's other most attractive spec, I didn't go out of my way to highlight it, is the 64 Gb/s Oculink port. That feature means one could potentially add a powerful desktop eGPU later on if one desired with an Oculink dock. That's the most meaningful expansion one could pursue with a Mini PC since these obviously aren't built for that. This will sacrifice a bit of performance from that desktop GPU compared to what one would get with a traditional PC build, but one could at least add the most powerful GPUs in existence. That Oculink port runs at the same speed potential as a PCIe 4.0x4 or PCIe 3.0x8 slot.
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That's what NAS boxes are for. A NAS box is just a case that has a built in power supply, bays to hold the drives, and a simple motherboard with its own dedicated, modest chipset to handle the built-in WiFi card and the data exchange of the drives. If you're just storing a bunch of media those are perfect to hold all the media that you then cast using Plex or Kodi or whatever software you use to your TV/screen.
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I swear the 6800H was $299 when I linked it. As you seen above with that Firebat, prices on these things can fluctuate. There's usually at least 15 of these mini-pc's on Amazon's daily deals.
I've seen a lot of hype around Minisforum, but I've seen a lot of horror stories from people trying to get warranty claims. I honestly wouldn't expect to get any sort of warranty from any of these lesser known brands. Beelink is a little more known, so you might get a warranty, but they've been kinda iffy over the years as well.
I'd like to see a known manufacturer make an AMD version of those cobbled together Intel laptop cpu's on desktop motherboards you can find on Aliexpress.
ASRock makes a board with an integrated N100, but nothing with any real performance.
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It will probably drop to that again, then. That's what I was saying for guys to keep their eyes peeled for sub-$300 on this chipset. The key is knowing that chipset as the search term since it tends to be supreme in value. I wouldn't expect good customer service or anything from any of these companies that were established in China. We all know the deal. Sometimes it's a Faustian one if you lose the lottery. Fingers crossed.
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I just figured I'd mention the warranty thing since we have new eyes in here.
Unfortunately, they won't be sub $300 for much longer. There's an $80-$150 tariff going into effect at the end of the month for mini-pc's.
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