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Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

bawfuls posted:

I need a good KVM switch to use my ~gaming mouse and keyboard~ (and monitor) with my work laptop at home.
Do you require compatibility with GSync or Freesync (variable framerate)?

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Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

bawfuls posted:

I don't think so. How can I check to be sure?
Your monitor specs (and marketing materials) will list if it supports GSync or Freesync, though you might have to enable it in a menu. Unless you're using a gaming laptop, the laptop is not likely to support variable framerate. If you have a PC with a discrete GPU, the PC likely supports it. Different versions of DisplayPort and HDMI support different framerates, so it's a question of finding a KVM which will support that framerate.

Like Party Boat alludes to, if your monitor supports variable framerate, then it likely has multiple inputs as well.

FCKGW posted:

I work in a lab with 4000 desktop PCs hooked to KVMs and they all just blow out after a while, it's nuts.
Is that due to a ground fault or something?

Vir fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Aug 19, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

TheParadigm posted:

Due to how radio recievers work, shouldn't the attack range be limited by the size of the attackers antenna, assuming they're okay with just sending one way commands?

Antenna gain is not linearly related to size. You can build an antenna which has more power in one direction (like a Yagi-Uda, parabolic or wave guide), or use a stronger transmitter, to increase the range. But the wavelength has to be matched (more or less) with the antenna size, and at these microwave frequencies, there's limited benefit from having an antenna much bigger than a cell phone. Structures like walls help dampen these microwave signals, and since these particular frequencies are pretty free-for-all to use, there is a lot of interference from other devices. Even poorly shielded USB 3 hard drive enclosures tend to radiate in the same frequencies that these receivers use.

Vir fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 21, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Fauxtool posted:

Does the bluetooth transmitter/receiver im describing exist?
Yes, something like that exists, like the Sena SR10 BT two-way radio adapter. It lets you use Bluetooth headsets with radios that only have analog microphone and speaker connections. It's made for motorcycle radio, and I think it only gives you mono audio, but there might be variants which support stereo audio. If not, you might need to get two switchable transmitter/receiver devices and hope you can connect both to the same headset.

Vir fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Aug 24, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Supermicro server? Is noise an concern, or is it OK if it sounds like a helicopter taking off?

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Gyshall posted:

Quieter would be better, but I'll take a look at those.
A 1U server with any kind of performance is going to be loud under load;- it's going to be stacked with tiny fans trying to do the same cooling job as PC fans in a much tighter space. That's fine if you have a server room and vertical density is more important than loudness. But it's not what you want if you have a rack in your sound mixing room or living room, because then you care about how loud it is. You can get rack-mountable ATX PC cases with room for big fans ans lots of disks inside, and it'll likely be cheaper than buying an enterprise server.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Vacuuming and brushing will create some static electricity; maybe it's an over-blown danger, but I never vacuum or brush a PCB for that reason. Some hardware stores sell isopropyl alcohol specifically made for cleaning electronics, and that might be a safer product to use.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
When you use compressed air, you use it in short bursts. So while the dust particles moving across the surface of the PC might cause some slight electrical action, I think a much bigger issue is a buildup of static electricity on the plastic brush and vacuum hose of a vacuum cleaner. Most of the compressed air cannisters sold are actually butane gas, which comes out wet.

I would personally avoid vacuuming and brushing any electronic components. I know fine dust can stick on them, but I'd rather use a non-conductive wet wipe if it needs to be cleaned - preferably isopropyl alcohol sold for the purpose. I'm not too worried about compressed butane cannisters. I have no experience with using air from a compressor on electronics, but I'd probably make sure to do that in a humid environment if I was going to do it.

Vir fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Aug 30, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

fennesz posted:

I'm not particularly worried about size as my case is large.
Note that when some case manuals list available room for a PSU, it includes the cables. For example, I saw one case list 200 mm of space, but it would only comfortably fit modular PSUs of 140mm depths or less while using the harddrive trays in the case basement.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Typical goon recommendation for that would be the Arctic Freezer 34 CO https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Tjm323/arctic-freezer-34-co-cpu-cooler-acfre00051a Depends where you are and the prices.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Do you need HDMI 2.0, USB-C or DisplayPort montior switching; if the latter what bandwidth do you need? (As in, do you need high framerates/variable framerates.)


:shepicide:

Vir fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Sep 3, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
There are lightning protection systems which are built to work even during direct lightning strikes, but that's a comedy option unless you're designing broadcast towers or critical infrastructure. There are some amateur radio operators who have that kind of gear, because they have club repeaters co-located on actual broadcast towers or have built their own towers. All of them generally ground and/or disconnect everything in their home station whenever they're not on using it though.

Fake edit: Great timing, my lightning strike alert just went off.

Real edit: Thunder shaking my house right now.

Vir fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Sep 4, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Vir posted:

Real edit: Thunder shaking my house right now.
Thor just meming with his lightning strikes. Currently posting in the dark.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
We don't even know if PCIe gen 4 is worth it yet. If you can't find a buyer for the B450, then an M.2 PCIe card might make a bit more sense. A B450 should be OK even for Zen 3. Personally I don't bother upgrading unless there's an appreciable performance uplift to gain from it.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
The PC Building megathread sticky can also help you out if you're using it as the basis for an upgrade.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Vir posted:

We don't even know if PCIe gen 4 is worth it yet.
Turns out that it is not, at least until direct texture loading from PCIe gen 4 SSDs into PCIe gen 4 GPU VRAM becomes widely utilized in games:

repiv posted:

techpowerup measured the effect of pcie4

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-pci-express-scaling/27.html

1% faster on pcie4 babyyy :rice:

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
It's normal for the Ryzen CPUs to boost pretty agressively when something is happening. AMD has made some updates to their power plans, so updating the Ryzen chipset drivers, Bios/UEFI and the operating system might improve things. 1usmus also reccomends that

quote:

Global C-state Control, CPPC Preferred Cores, and AMD Cool'n'Quiet should always be set to "Enabled".
1usmus also has made a custom power profile which you can install if you want: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/1usmus-power-plan-for-amd-ryzen-new-developments/

If your CPU fans are a bit agressive in ramping up and down, you might have a hysterisis setting in the Bios/UEFI or in your motherboard fan control software which gives you a delay on ramp-down in particular, so that the fan speed doesn't change so rapidly. Edit: Or you can make the fan curve a bit flatter, so speed changes aren't so noticeable.

Vir fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Sep 17, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
USB C can deliver 12 volt power, but I've never seen an enclosure for 3.5 inch drives which use it to power the drive. Selling something like that would be a frustrating experience, since so many customers would plug it into their laptop and expect it to be able to power the enclosure. That would be just as terrible as trying to plug in a string of MacBooks into each other and expect one charger to power them all.

Maybe you can use something like this instead: https://www.amazon.com/4-Pin-Molex-Connector-5-5mm-2-1mm/dp/B0121QHR2E

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

I started playing around with trying to reduce and unify all my connections with Type-C. I got a Type-C KVM for two devices so I can easily switch between my work laptop and my home desktop. I then got a dock that can take all of my peripherals and two monitors. Where I got stuck is controlling the two monitors with my desktop's GPU. They are HDMI cables and all I have is one Type-C connector from the hub. I'm guessing this video card can't route all the traffic somehow to a motherboard port. Do the new graphics cards with Type-C ports support other USB devices working through them?

Asus makes devices which seems to take the output from DisplayPort(s) and multiplex it into Type-C. Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?



https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessories/THUNDERBOLTEX-3-TR/

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessories/ThunderboltEX-3/

Vir fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Sep 21, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

VelociBacon posted:

Marilyn Manson had his bottom 2 PCI-E slots removed so he could do this
Nice reference.

DarkestLite posted:

Here’s a screenshot from the manual. MAG B550M Bazooka


You're good. Here's one of the advantages of having a micro-ATX B550 boards rather than a full-size ATX B550 board: Both of your M.2 slots are dedicated, the top one from the CPU and the bottom one from the chipset. Some of the full size B550 boards share lanes between an M.2 slot and one of the PCIe slot, so you can't use both at the same time. But I checked the block diagram, and you can use all your board devices at the same time.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Usage and operating temperature are the main reasons why lead acid batteries degrade. APC claims that

APC posted:

The optimum operating temperature for a lead-acid battery is 20-25° C (68-77° F). Elevated temperature reduces longevity. As a guideline, every 8° C (15° F) rise in temperature will cut the battery life in half.
If you have frequent power cuts, a bigger battery will actually last longer because you don't discharge it as heavily. Due to how to the battery chemistry and internal resistance works, doubling your capacity will more than double your run time. The better manufacturers will have a runtime graph on their website or manual which shows how long runtime you can expect at different loads, and it's not a linear graph.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

FCKGW posted:

I have a UPS in my attic which gets to 140F and it's not good on those batteries!
That is straight up fire hazard, especially if it's a multi-cell battery. At least they won't explode, because they have a vent which will release sulfuric gas, but boiling lead acid batteries can cause thermal runaway, shorts and fires. Get that poo poo out of your attic space and move it to an occupied space where you can keep an eye on it.

https://www.imca-int.com/alert/1572/near-miss-fire-explosion-thermal-runaway-lead-acid-battery/

Lead acid battery fires aren't as dramatic as LiPo fires, but if you need an UPS in the attic get a battery made for that temperature range. Edit: Even automotive AGM batteries are cutting it close with 140F, but at least they are made to work in hot engine bays, which regular sealed UPS batteries aren't.

Vir fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Sep 29, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
The ridiculous thing is that USB 3 devices - if not properly shielded - emit interference in frequencies very close to 2.4 GHz Wifi and Bluetooth frequencies. Some wireless mouse and keyboard dongles also operate in this frequency. 5 GHz is around the 2nd harmonic of 2.4 GHz. So if there weren't enough problems with devices using the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz unlicensed bands, USB 3.0 comes in there and emits interference in those same bands.

External USB 3.0 devices should be shielded and have ferrite beads on their wires to dampen the emissions. So if you have an external USB 3.0 drive, it might emit a lot of interference. I've seem some plastic enclosures be problem free, but others have been noisemakers. A full metal enclosure is usually better.

Your USB 2.0 cables or any other wires coming out of your case might be emitting that USB 3.0 radiation. So first try unplugging everything that doesn't need to be plugged in and slap some ferrite beads on the wires and see if that might solve the issue.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Yep. You could also adjust the fan curve on the GPU to be flatter, and reduce the power target just slightly, if you're willing to sacrifice a tiny bit of performance for lower noise. If you want to put in more fans, I'd put it at H, but I'd adjust the fans first.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Comfortador posted:

Cisco UCS c240 m3 with HDDs
(...) It looks like it's got 16 15k 300 GB drives in it.
A lot of diskless c240 m3 servers were recently sold on ebay for about USD 40 in Germany and a diskless C240 M3 S2 (dual CPU) went for about USD 350 in the UK. If there's no passwords, company info or personal data on the drives, then the drives might make it worth more than that. I would check what your company's asset handoff policy is, and if there's some value cutoff for what is considered e-waste vs. what is sold off. (e: Securely erasing harddrives takes time and a bit of expertise, so sending the harddrives to be grind down or degaussed might be a better use of company resources.)

Vir fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Oct 1, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Adding more wire leads to more voltage drop, depending on power draw and wire gauge. Extensions don't help, but PCIe cables are also rather over-specced, as in they carry less power than what the cable physically can draw. Since you'll be drawing only half of what each cable is rated for anyway, those sleeves should be fine.

Personally I would have gone for custom sleeved cables made for the modular power supply, but then again I have a tighter case to work with and don't mind looks.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Comedy option: Flip the fans on the radiator and make your case comically positive pressure.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Do a test run with an open case and a desk fan pointed into it; that should tell you if it's a case airflow issue or a GPU heatsink/thermal paste issue.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Rolo posted:

I made a mistake in thinking the b550 chip had PCIe 4 cpu support
One of the PCIe slots, and one of the M.2 slots on a B550 board do support PCIe v.4, namely the ones directly connected to the CPU. The only significant difference between a B550 and x570 board is that you won't have PCIe v.4 slots coming off the chipset. Which model do you have?

As long as you don't stick your GPU in the secondary PCIe slot, your 3080 and your CPU speak PCIe v.4 with each other already.

Vir fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Oct 19, 2020

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Rolo posted:

It’s a Gigabyte B550m DS3H.
The top PCIe slot and the top M.2 slot are both PCIe v.4, so you didn't mess up in any way. If PCIe v. 4 becomes essential for performance in the future, just leave the top M.2. slot free for a v.4 drive.

B550 is a great choice for a microATX board, actually, since X570 is a bit overkill in terms of making room for everything on the board. For an EATX board, X570 makes more sense. The only possible disadvantage I can see is if you were planning on running bridge-less dual-GPU, in which case PCIe v.4 on both PCIe slots might be an advantage, but that is a very weirdly specific application which few games support.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
You're welcome. That sort of block diagram does belong in the motherboard manual too, but it's not always included.

nitsuga posted:

Only semi-related, but is an A520 motherboard socially acceptable? I’m thinking of an ITX build with one of these: https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A520M-ITXac/index.asp
Yes there are acceptable ITX A520 boards, because you can even turn on memory overclocking (XMP/D.O.C.P.) on A520 boards, and you only lose manual CPU overclocking which does nothing practical on Zen 2 CPUs anyway. That board even has a PCIe v.4 M.2 slot. The PCIe slot is v3 but as discussed earlier v4 isn't really necessary at the moment. v.4 will really come to its own when it comes to pushing more data through an x1 or x4 slot, but as that board only has an x16 slot anyway,.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Scruffpuff posted:

How would I change the fan configuration to get that GPU heat out of the system while giving the AIO radiator a cooler spot?
Can you move the radiator to an intake? If it doesn't reach the front intakes, you could make one of the top fans an intake. Use a fan made for pressure, so just move the fan with the rad. It'll cause some re-circulation of air, but the rad will be cooler than when it's sucking case air.
If you do this, make sure your CPU/pump is not the highest point of the cooler loop, or air will accumulate in your CPU block and wear out your pump. If you use weird intake configurations like rear intake and top intake, make sure it's filtered for dust.

Vir fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Mar 16, 2021

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Another question is if the fan pushing air through the radiator is made for the purpose (dynamic pressure) and if it's running fast enough. The radiator gives more impedance to air than the other exhaust locations, so you might just not have enough air moving through it. Lots of warm air moving across a component cools it down more than a little cold air does. If the inside of your case is just getting too warm, then increasing the speed of the intake fans might be the solution. But if too little air is moving through the radiator, then the speed of that fan needs to be following the CPU temperature, or it might need to be replaced with a fan made for radiators.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Scruffpuff posted:

This could be it. The fan moving across the radiator is the same fans I've got everywhere, a set of 120mm, connected to the same power and running at the same speed. I'm going to investigate this next and see what I can do to replace that with a fan fit for purpose. Thanks!
Yeah, that's likely the solution. The top fans are starving the radiator of air, and even worse they are taking away some of the cool intake air before it makes it to the rear radiator. This means your GPU and motherboard are nice and cool, but the radiator sips warm air from the GPU.

If there's space for it, you might put a fan behind and ahead of the radiator in push-pull configuration, on a CPU-bound fan curve. That might improve airflow through the radiator without having to buy more fans, although it's not the ideal configuration. That means two fans on the radiator and only one fan in the rear top. You might even be better off without the top fan altogether - just test it with and without it.

Vir fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Mar 16, 2021

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

Ajaxify posted:

Please help us goons. Surely one of you is neckbearded enough to still be using a physical KVM switch in your home in TYOOL 2021
I've given up on KVM switches and instead use multi-input monitors. The LevelOneTechs YouTube channel used to sell a Displayport 1.4 switch, and they have the HDMI 2.0 switch still available. The only KVM I can find locally only supports Displayport 1.2, unfortunately. I suppose the Monitor/Display megathread knows more about this: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3372494

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?

SirTagz posted:

ATM I get either poo poo audio and the mic works or I get good audio and the mic does not work. Is this a regular situation when gaming?
Sounds like the headset is dropping from full A2DP audio quality to phone quality audio in HFP or HSP whenever you use the microphone. This is typical of many Bluetooth headsets and speakers, and might be unavoidable to get the audio stream through the Bluetooth bandwidth. Which motherboard and/or Bluetooth module are you using? Unless this is fixable with changing settings somewhere, you might have to use a separate microphone to get good quality audio.

Edit: The only way I imagine to fix this is if you can force the audio to be transmitted in a better compression algorithm which leaves more bandwidth for the microphone, but I'm not sure if this is possible

Vir fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Mar 22, 2021

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Personally I only use metal enclosures. USB 3 switching can interfere with 5 GHz WiFi, as well as other types of consumer wireless stuff that works in the 5 GHz range. A well designed controller helps, and so do cables with ferrites on them (the cylinders near the plugs) and a metal case. You'll likely be fine with most unshielded enclosures as well - but in case you lose connection to your USB harddrive when you turn on your WiFi, or you can't use your wireless mouse when you plug in the harddrive, you know where the cause likely lies.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Two backup drives - if your backup system supports it - is better than one. That way, if you have a catastrophic failure that kills your whole system during backup, you'll still have a slightly older backup which survived.

Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Drives made for NAS applications supposedly have vibration sensors because they're made to deal with the vibrations from other drives in the same cabinet. Whether these drives just park the heads whenever vibrations get too bad, spin down like an unbalanced washing machine, or do some other magic with the rotation speed to avoid harmonics and resonance, I have no idea about. The NAS thread might know more about that.

Edit: I'm bringing up NAS drives because the LaCie branded external drives I bought some time ago actually contain Seagate Ironwolf Pro NAS CMR drives inside them.

Vir fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Apr 22, 2021

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Vir
Dec 14, 2007

Does it tickle when your Body Thetans flap their wings, eh Beatrice?
Ramping up the case fans might also help, by getting more cool air to the CPU and GPU. If the GPU fans are maxing out but the case fans are running at like 20%, then the case fans should be going quicker than that.

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