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games to play without wifi pc
games to play without wifi pc - win
Can i play pc games without any access to internet or wifi?
Hi, i build my first ever pc yesterday and im so excited about that, But unfortunately i don't have internet connection and i'm little confuesd about downlading games, so if i downlad for example FIFA 21, can i play it with no access to internet? Thx in advance
Hey all...I've been pretty exhaustively trying all the current streaming services. I know this is a Stadia group but I thought if anyone out there is curious about what the experience is like on other services, perhaps you could benefit from a layman's experience using each service and trying to make it my "main" service. Like I said, I'm a layman, not a professional reviewer, so there's a lot of things I'm still learning, but having tried all three of the major services, here's my thoughts. Edit: Please bear in mind this is not an exhaustive list, just some thoughts based on a couple of months of on and off testing. I'm certainly not trying to sway or influence anyone's purchasing decisions, just giving some general thoughts that might help when trying to decide which service to look into. I know not everyone can get ahold of / rush out and buy all of the devices I have listed here - I happen to work for a tech company so I have a lot more devices floating around than most other people. Your mileage, of course, may vary! I know there's also Steam Link, but since that requires you to have a PC capable of playing the game in the house somewhere, I'm not considering that a streaming service. Testing Devices:
ChromeCast Ultra (Stadia Only)
iPad Pro 2020
Asus G14
Pixel 2 XL (xCloud only)
iPhone 12 Pro Max (Stadia only)
nVidia Shield (GeForce Now only)
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (Stadia only)
Amazon Luna
Notable Games: Control, lots of highly rated indie titles (Blasphemous, Bloodstained, Iconoclasts) To be fair, I only have about 6 hours on Amazon Luna, but they've been pretty excruciating. My wifi averages about 75-90 MBps, and about half of the games I tried suffered from lag and graphical smear, mostly the Ubisoft+ games. The indie games played fabulously well. Luna is probably the service I have the least to say about. It's $6 a month for Luna on it's own, so it's kindof like the "also-ran" effort - it's cheap, but might be the most forgettable of the bunch. The user interface is better than GeForce Now, worse than Stadia, and unlike Stadia it doesn't seem like Luna can be enhanced with browser extensions. I have Ubisoft+, so I tried to play Immortal: Fenyx Rising on Luna and it was absolutely horrible. Smeared graphics, dropped frames, input lag, the works. It was the only experience across all of the big three services that was literally unplayable. This seemed to be a problem only with the Ubisoft games, however, I have to stress. Pros
Netflix-style game selection, with lots of indie titles you don't see many other places. Control is the only standout AAA title, and it looks and plays fantastically. Indie games were great too.
Integration with Ubisoft+ is seamless and the games just become part of your library.
Twitch integration is pretty cool - nice to see streamers who are playing the game live when you jump into the game page.
Runs in the browser but also has dedicated apps - a plus for me.
Luna is probably the best service for Twitch streamers - it's integrated right into the UI. I don't stream so I wasn't able to test it, but it seems pretty easy.
Cons
Seems to be in Early Access, so I literally don't know anyone else who has gotten an invite.
The pro of having niche indie games is offset by the con of not having a wide game selection. Of all the services, seems like Luna has the least, but broadest, selection.
Seeing an ad for Luna, WHILE PLAYING LUNA, was irrationally annoying. Amazon just can't freaking help themselves I guess.
I signed up for Luna fully expecting to play all of my games claimed through Prime Gaming...literally none of those games are available.
If there's a way to find Luna from the main Amazon home page, they've hid it pretty well. I'm sure it's buried in one of their dozens of menus but I could not for the life of me find a quick and easy way to get to Luna from Amazon dotcom.
This is a very minor point, but Amazon Luna ONLY works on Chrome, while Google Stadia works in either Chrome or Edge Browser (since it's built on Chromium). Probably doesn't make a difference for most people, but to me Edge seems to run better, so I'm docking a point.
GeForce Now
Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Immortals: Fenix Rising, Metro series, Destiny 2 (all paid) I picked up an nVidia Shield specifically for GeForce now, but my wife and I have ended up using it primarily for Kodi and to watch Netflix more than playing any games on it. I'll just say it straight out - GeForce Now sucks ass. It's a broken, shoddy, inconsistent mess. It's actually WORSE on the Shield than it is on PC, because there are so many times when I needed a keyboard to do anything. I tried playing Immortals: Fenyx Rising on GFN on my Shield which required me to log into Ubisoft+. I'm fine with that, since you only have to do it once...but using the Shield remote that came with my Shield, the on-screen keyboard never popped up, forcing me to track down a second keyboard from in my garage and plug in. After I plugged in the physical keyboard....THEN the onscreen keyboard popped up and just mirrored what I pressed on the physical keyboard. What? Why? Games are all over the place as well. Witcher 3 was a nightmare - every time you try to play the game, it wants to install the DLC packs onto whatever virtual machine you've been assigned. Then when you can play, it dips so far under 30 fps it's literally better to just play it on a budget PC with Hairworks off. Plus the Shield ain't cheap - it was like $200 at Best Buy, and didn't include a controller. $100 more gets you a Series S, and $100 LESS gets you a Stadia-enabled Chromecast WITH a solid as hell controller, just for comparison's sake. Pros
Raytracing, I guess. Control looks great?
Links with Steam, GOG, and Epic, so you keep your games if the service goes down at some point in the future. Also technically "cheaper" overall than Stadia cos you can find cheap keys online or Steam sales (which seem to be more frequent than Stadia sales) and still get the game in your GeForce Now.
GFN seems to have the widest selection of enabled games. Not all that impressive since you have to own the game already, but this does give it somewhat of an advantage.
Links to Epic library, which is cool. 80% of my games on Epic were not GFN enabled, which is not as cool.
Cons
Literally the hardest of the big three services to use. Not a "pick up and play" experience. Requires a lot of effort to get working, and even then, inconsistent across platforms.
Even on nVidias own hardware, it can be tricky to figure out what games actually are on GeForce Now and which aren't and get them running right.
Some games just don't play well. Witcher 3 is a buggy, low framerate mess...while Control is smooth as butter. No rhyme or reason as to why. I couldn't get Mankind Divided to play full-screen - it always wanted to play in a window.
Since you're just running a virtual machine, you still have to fiddle with graphical settings. Some games don't look right when first started, and you have to remember to go into the settings and change things to match whatever screen you're on.
Twice I still had to wait in a queue to play even though I paid for the Founder's subscription. Insanely frustrating.
One hour limit to gameplay if you don't pay for the Founder's subscription, and you're stuck waiting in a queue. There were times where I was in a queue of over 300, which translated to upwards of 18 minutes one session, waiting to play. I would go as far as to say, if you don't pay for Founder's, don't bother with GFN at all.
Also, just because I don't have anywhere else to put this, Ubisoft's Cloud Save system is atrocious. This isn't nVidia's fault, I just want to complain about it.
Google Stadia
Notable Games: Cyberpunk 2077 (paid), Hitman: World of Assassination (Pro), Destiny 2 (Pro), Red Dead Redemption II (Paid) Stadia is easily the best overall, but it still has its cons. I came to Stadia thanks to Cyberpunk 2077 so I have the most hours played on Stadia of the big three services. Stadia on the Chromecast Ultra seems to me to be the hands down best way to play streamed games currently. Of all the services, Stadia was the one that felt the least like a "me-too" service and more like a dedicated platform. Almost all of the other services felt like a way for corporations to dip their toe in the water and figure out if there's money to be made, while Stadia feels like someone who really grasps and cares about gaming is at the helm. Pros
Least barrier to entry. Download Chrome or Edge Browser, grab any bluetooth controller, and you're off the races.
No subscription required. You can play any game purchased on Stadia without a subscription with no queue system, no picking a virtual machine, no Steam big picture mode...it's just, hit the Play button and go.
This is a big one for me - seems to have the best "capture" integration. Though, the iOS / Android app could use work (just let me download the image and share it? Why do I need to share a link?) overall, sharing your snaps and vids is pretty easy on Stadia.
Playing with the Stadia controller on my TV after picking up a Chromecast Ultra felt like magic.
Similarly, being able to "pick up and play" games like Cyberpunk 2077 on a Chromebook felt similarly magical. The game looked its best, believe it or not, on a Samsung Chromebook that I tested at Best Buy. Random side note but the Google guy at Best Buy was SO EXCITED that I wanted to check out Stadia on a Chromebook. He was over the moon.
The game selection for Pro does have some interesting titles that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. But see Con 1 below.
Cons
The game selection for Stadia Pro is a tad lackluster at the moment. Definitely enough to keep me playing, but there wasn't really a "must have" title that jumped out at me. Bunch of average, quite playable titles
The game selection for purchases is a little thin as well, seeing as how the service is over a year old at this point. I know it’s on literally every other platform but I would have loved to do a second play through of Control on Stadia, and stuff like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Hades, even some older indie titles like Transistor or Pyre, some of the Lego games...
UI seems like an complete afterthought, which is a little weird since this is a Google product. This is solved a little bit by extensions like Stadia Enhanced, but that's a third party fix so I'm still listing it as a con. No search? Captures seem deprecated?
Probably the highest "cost" to play, since you have to buy the games outright, and sales seem few and far between. If Stadia just vanishes at some point (which, let's be fair, Google has a track record of doing with their services) they haven't really outlined what happens to your library.
No raytracing yet. Not really a con for me personally, but other services offer it.
This may just be a bug but I'm listing it as a con - a number of times the Stadia homepage just wouldn't load. I was left staring at the Stadia logo wondering what was going on for minutes at a time. I'd have to close out of the browser and restart. Not sure if that's an issue with Chrome, but it seemed to happen on Edge browser as well.
Stadia-specific versions of games. Now, hear me out - usually this is a PRO not a con, but in Stadia’s case it seems to be a con as making a wholly new build of a game for a specific platform probably just isn’t in the cards for a lot of developers. That could be what’s slowing down a lot of games coming to Stadia - the time and money required to build a new version of the game. Hopefully we see some “Stadia first” games that will convince other developers to jump on board.
Xbox Game Pass / Game Pass Unlimited / Gold / Live / Play Anywhere / xCloud / Whatever it's being called these days
Notable Games: Nier: Automata BAG Edition, Dragon Quest XI S, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda Xbox Game Pass gets added to this list on a pure technicality. So, technically Xbox Game Pass isn't a streaming service, but I include it because on Android, there actually is a "cloud" option for playing your console Game Pass library. The Cloud streaming works surprisingly well, but you're limited to either an Android tablet or phone because it doesn't seem to work properly on Android TV. I've heard you can sideload onto the nVidia Shield, but that was beyond the scope of what I was trying to accomplish with these reviews...I just want something I can pick up and play. So, yeah if you don't mind playing on your phone, Game Pass Cloud is actually probably the best of the bunch in terms of ease of use and game selection. There are so many things I want to play on Game Pass it's actually a little overwhelming. However, I don't want to stare at a 5" screen for hours to do so. Pros
Wide game selection with lots of games being added every month (almost every week, seems like)
Broad game selection - seems to be some standouts from just about every game genre. I know this seems like a repeat of point one, but they're very different things - it's one thing to just throw a ton of games on your service, its another to make sure you're representing every genre out there, which Game Pass seems to do more admirably than any other service.
Streaming seems to work just fine. I was able to play Dragon Quest: Inquisition on my Android phone with very little issue. Couple of times the connection dropped, but it was no better or worse than Stadia.
It seems like services are stumbling all over themselves to get included in Game Pass.
Cons
Again, inconsistent experience. Offerings are different on console than on PC...why is Torchlight III a console exclusive? Why are all the good games pushed to console and cloud, with PC being an afterthought?
Games seem to come and go randomly - some popular games pop up for a few months and are gone, other seemingly niche titles have been on the service since launch
Probably the biggest con - no streaming on PC, iOS, or Android TV. Baffling choice. Maybe there's business reasons I'm not aware of, but as a user, it's maddening.
Minor point, but good lord Microsoft needs to simplify EVERYTHING related to Xbox. No one can figure out what the hell service we have when I try to talk to people about it - there's Game Pass, but there's also Games with Gold, then there's Live, then there's Game Pass Ultimate, but there's also Play Anywhere, which isn't really a service, just some sort of cross-play, And the number of times people thought I have a Series X when I actually have a One X was insanely frustrating as well. I know this doesn't have anything to do with the service, but jeez man why is everything Microsoft does so haphazard?
Whew! I actually had way more to say on this topic than I thought, I guess. I've probably spent more time and energy on this than I should have, but working from home has given me a lot of time on my hands, so hopefully my experiences can help save someone else some time and effort. Would love some counterpoints as well!
I am 25 years old, made $87,000 last year and expect to make $104,000 this year, live in Minneapolis, and work as a Data Analyst / Data Scientist.
Note: I’m not a citizen, but I’ve been living in the US long enough to be considered a resident alien for tax purposes. On my visa, I cannot work any job that’s not directly related to my major in grad school (IT/computer science), but I can invest in the stock market.
Section One: Assets and Debt
Net Worth: from -$13,603.63 (Jan 2020) to $9,605.97 (Jan 2021) Retirement Balance: $16,000 in my 401(K). I only started working 2 years ago and my company messed up my registration so they basically didn’t put any money into it my first year there (I found out in horror and they gave me around $1,000 to say sorry…). I contribute 9% and my company matches 3%. Savings account balance: $2,500 I have $2,500 set aside as my “emergency fund”, and I’m building back my vacation & study abroad budgets after having to tap into them for a move. My job is very stable and I won't be let go any time soon (unless I quit myself) so I’m not setting aside a big emergency fund for now. Checking account balance: $3,111.01 Investment account: $1,500 in some stocks. I initially dumped half of my 2019 bonus and some monthly contributions (totaling around $4,000) to this account to test strategies. This was my “study fund” and I didn’t care if I’d lose it all. I grew the account to around $10,000 and withdrew almost everything (that went to all the fees I had to pay to break my lease, my brother’s lease, deposit, moving expenses, and new furniture) and left $1,500 worth of stocks in there right now. Credit card debt: $2,243.76 on my BestBuy card and PayPal Credit. I had the money to pay for the items in full but they offered X months interest-free and I wanted to throw money into my debts instead. I always pay off all balances well before the deadline. I also pay all my credit cards in full and have never paid any interest. Student loan debt: $11,046.09 left on my $20,000 loans at 8% for my BA in Biology and Statistics. Day 1 of arriving in the US, they sat us down, handed each of us a pen, and said hey kids here are the terms of your 8% loans, sign the documents now! I just turned 17, didn't even know I had to pay this money back, and remembered thinking "Is 8% a lot?" That's how clueless I was. As a non-citizen, I will never have them canceled, so my plan was to tackle this as soon as possible and I started paying more aggressively until they made it 0% interest since Q4 last year. Car loan: $4,900 left on my $10,000 loan at 8.9%. I didn’t have a long credit history when I bought the car (September 2019) since I only got my first credit card after graduation, so the rate was terrible. I’m planning to pay this all off after my bonus comes in March.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: 2012 - 2016: I had multiple student on-campus jobs all throughout my undergrad, making from $7.25 to $10/hour. After graduation, I couldn't find any job directly related to my majors within 3 months (I had only been searching for Bio lab work), ran out of money, and had to go back home. Honestly, I didn't want to keep doing science either and was very lost back then. 2017: My first full-time job was being a tutor for a private college prep institution when I went back to my home country to “figure out what I wanted to do with my life.” They paid pretty well for the standards of living there ($1,000/mo). I worked that job while self-studying how to code and data science courses on the side and preparing my grad school applications. 2019: I got a job at my current company a semester before I graduated from my MS in Data Science program. This was my first “big girl job.” I started out at $64,000 and couldn’t work for 2 months due to complications in my visa processes so that ate up all my savings that year. By the end of the year, they bumped my salary up to $76,000 and we also had an annual 3% raise, so in total $78,280 + 5% bonus. 2020: One of my teammates left and one thing led to another, I got a title change from Data Analyst to Data Scientist towards the end of the year. I asked for a raise and they bumped it to $96,000 + 5% bonus. 2021: After our annual 3% raise my salary is now $98,880 (+ at least 5% bonus). I think I’m slightly underpaid, but this job is very low-stress and flexible (especially after we WFH). Main Job Monthly Take Home: $5,082.58 Taken from my last paychecks (before the annual raise) Gross salary: $8,000 Tax: $2,081.68 401(k) deduction: $720 Health insurance: $115.74
Section Three: Expenses
Rent & renter’s insurance: $935 for my share for a 2bed/3bath condo. My parents pay a flat $700/mo for my brother’s share. He recently moved here since his school went virtual until at least the end of this semester and our family wanted us to be nearby to take care of each other. Savings contribution: $900 Investment contribution: $420, but will increase once my car loan is paid off. Debt payments:
$1,000 on car loan until paid off.
$200.13 minimum on student loans for now at 0% interest, will increase to $1,100 when car loan is paid off.
$300 for Best Buy & PayPal Credit promotional deals
Car insurance: $127.01 ($762.05 paid in full every 6 months) Car registration: $25 ($300 annual) Donations: $20 monthly (ASPCA), plus several hundreds throughout the year (last year I donated to BLM orgs and local animal shelters) Gas: $0. I drive an electric car. Charging probably drives up my electric bill by a bit, but still cheaper than gas. Also, this means no car maintenance at all until my car battery dies, which probably won’t happen in the next 5 years. Utilities (electric, natural gas): ~$150 Wifi: $40 Cellphone: $10.61 ($108.66 for 6 months and I got a $45 credit from my bank) Groceries: $500 (for 2 people) Subscriptions: $20 (HP Ink, shared Netflix account, YNAB, Disney+) Pet expenses: ~$20 for wet cat food Personal care/hobby: I collect perfumes. Between makeup, skincare, clothes (which I had planned to stop buying this year) and perfume bottles and samples (the majority of my "personal care" expenses...), I averaged $400/mo last year. Without the makeup, skincare and clothes, I budget $150/mo this year for my fragrance hobby. Household supplies:$30 Education: $30 (language/technical textbooks, Udemy/Coursera) Gifts: $30 Credit card fee:$21 ($250 annual)
Section Four: Background
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it? Education is one of the top priorities in our household and this has been instilled in my mind since I was a kid. Perhaps because my grandparents were both professors and my parents both attended grad school, it was expected of us to have at least a bachelor's degree. With that said, my family tried to support our higher education financially as best they could and I'm very thankful for it. During undergrad, I had need-based financial aid and on-campus jobs, and my parents helped with the rest of my tuition. I still had to take (required by the school) a $20,000 loan. My grandmother helped pay for my 2-year master's program. Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances? During high school, I had a measly weekly allowance and my dad had me write out all the transactions in a notebook. I thought it was very silly back then but now thinking back, it was probably some good practice. Other than that, they didn't talk about money at all, and I was absolutely clueless and wasn't interested in personal finance until a couple of years ago. I don't remember how but I think I woke up one day and decided to read every book about personal finance I could find and now I do talk with my dad about finances. What was your first job and why did you get it? My first job was washing dishes as a student worker! We all had to do it our freshman year before we were allowed to find other jobs. I managed to find 3 other jobs (stage crew, sports event worker, and math tutor) and stayed with all of them for 3 years. Did you worry about money growing up? Even though our parents never let on to us about their finances, they made sure that we'd grow up comfortable financially, so I didn't worry because I didn't know anything. Do you worry about money now? Yes. As I grew up, I came to learn more about my parents' financial situation and realized that they've sacrificed a lot for us. I had the majority of my college tuition supported by the school, but my brother doesn't, and tuition in the US isn't cheap, especially when you convert it to our local currency. I also never know for how long I can stay in the US and keep making the same kind of money I'm making now so I'm trying my best to pay down the student loans ASAP. At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net? I became fully financially responsible for myself when I started working at my current company. Before that my student worker jobs paid for my personal expenses in college but my parents still chipped in for tuition. I guess my family back home is my safety net but personally, I wouldn't ask them for help even if bad things happen to me in the future. Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain. Nope.
Diary
Day 1 (Thursday) - $3.35
Alexa wakes me up and turns the light on. I change into my work clothes and head downstairs to my “office.” My boss starts our daily standup call, talking about what we did yesterday and what we plan for the day.
I have my annual review meeting. Everything goes well and my bosses are very pleased with what I’ve done, especially after I transitioned into my new title as a Data Scientist, which honestly brought me more fulfillment in my job as well. We talk about our annual bonus and raise, which I already expected. It’s not a lot of money but hey any money is money and I’m not saying no.
Some people bought my photocards so I gather all the orders and purchase a shipping label since 1 order is with tracked shipping. (Don’t ask me how this works but I’m a K-pop fan and we collect expensive cardboards. Depending on the popularity of the member of the group, profit margins can go up to 400%.) I head to the post office and drop off all the packages ($3.35)
I’ve been waiting for the mailman all day and he finally comes! I’ve been working from home for almost a year now and my back pain is starting to kill me so I decided to “invest” in a $400 chair with lumbar and neck support. My cat happily takes the other chair and starts claiming her territory on it.
Day 2 (Friday) - $206.24
I wake up on cue at Alexa’s daily briefing. Half an hour passes while I ponder on a perfume sample set I saw in someone’s fragrance collection on Reddit.
I eventually give in and purchase the Zoologist sample set ($120.24). It’s within my budget this month, I’ve been eyeing this one for some time now and I can resell it for 80% value once I’m done testing them, so it’s not a huge loss anyway.
Late lunch today. I make a quick lunch with sausages and keto toasts and quickly finish it while watching some YouTube videos on personal finance and updates on $GME (no I did not buy any shares).
When in doubt, throw every leftover food in your fridge in a pan and make fried rice. Side dish is sweet and sour tomato and egg “cloud soup.” Then we have our weekly family video call with my parents back in my home country.
I go down the YouTube rabbit hole again and buy 2 more perfume sample sets ($86.00). All the purchases today (~50 samples) would probably take me months to try out so I promise myself no more until next quarter as I click the pay button.
Day 3 (Saturday) - $71.27
I wake up at 8:45 am and laze around for half an hour, scrolling down Twitter and answering my friend’s questions on how to enter the stock market. Today is my cheat day (I have one every 2-3 weeks), so I contemplate if I should order delivery for lunch. I check YNAB and decide that it’s too expensive, so I go downstairs to make myself a hearty breakfast with a latte, half a croissant, grilled chicken breasts, and snack on some shrimp crackers and tangerines.
I purchase a shipping label ($3.22) and head out to the post office. For some reason I want to smell like a lemon cake today, so I spritz on Xerjoff Lira, put on sunscreen, and head out. This perfume always makes me feel so warm and delicious.
I spend the whole afternoon catching up with my Chinese and Korean lessons for the week.
Suddenly craving some instant noodles, so I immediately get up and head to a local Asian grocery store to shop for instant and pho noodles (I’m planning to make pho for Lunar New Year) and some snacks for my brother ($38.71). We drop by a bubble tea shop nearby and get bubble tea and 2 dessert cakes ($19.71). I usually don’t drink sugary drinks, but since it’s my cheat day, I put in an order and pay for the both of us.
Some more PC orders came in and they’re all with tracked shipping. The post office is closed tomorrow but I’ll just pay now for the shipping labels so that I won’t forget ($9.63).
Day 4 (Sunday) - $0.00
I literally do nothing today until 4 pm.
I make dinner, then finish my Chinese lesson and review the flashcards I made yesterday. That’s enough activity for the day.
One of my friends calls to show me her album haul of the day and I'm tempted, but (fortunately?) there's no kpop store in my city so I make myself forget about buying any more albums.
Day 5 (Monday) - $40.10
I wake up with a headache, not feeling too well, so I request a day off and message my boss. I can’t go back to sleep, so I just lie there in bed for a couple of hours. I suddenly remember that WandaVision is on air, and there are a couple of movies on there I haven’t watched yet, so I subscribe to Disney+ ($7.52) and start binge-watching.
We ran out of soft drinks for my brother, so I have to drive to Costco again after lunch ($32.58). I also need to drop off all the orders that came in over the weekend.
I go to my old apartment for my move-out inspection (I haven't been living there since December but still had to honor the 2-month notice and pay for all the rent). There are a couple of spots that might cost me some deductions in my deposit. Sigh. At least I get to tell them to remove the charges on my lease for February, and they assure me that they will.
I finish binge-watching some movies on Disney+. I see Colourpop is advertising some Valentine’s Day palettes on my feed. I do not need those, I do not need those, I do not need those. I should’ve just unfollowed makeup brands on social media. Some more late-night scrolling, and then I finally go to sleep.
Day 6 (Tuesday) - $8.02
I wake up groggily, still feeling a bit sick. We have a late standup today, so I take my time making my coffee and start working, as my cat also settles in on my lap and starts napping. My head is still aching and I'm not sure if it's the cold or just keto flu so I load up on electrolytes, fish oil, and acetaminophen just in case.
Somebody lowballed me on one of my postings. Ugh I hate it when they do this, but this one is not selling too well, so I meet them halfway. I purchase another shipping label ($3.03).
Today is our bi-monthly deployment date, which means all the engineers (and anyone who has committed changes in our codebase) meet up and sit around until all the merges are deployed into production. I had some changes last week so I just sit there and do my own work until it's my turn. My boss told me this morning he had some test API from one of our new clients so I go to check out some of the data there. Oh how I love me some messy, messy data that nobody knows what to do with.
The repair guy who came to fix our washing machine doesn't leave until 5:15 pm so I drop by the post office late, but just in time as they're collecting the mail! Then I drop by a nearby (rather upscale) grocery store as I'm running out of heavy cream, but everything is so expensive. I compare price per oz and pick up the coffee creamer instead ($4.99).
I heat up the cauliflower rice and leftover curry and eat dinner as I watch Coco (I can't believe I've never actually watched it!) Then I review my Chinese flashcards for a bit, do half an hour of Just Dance until I sweat, play with my cat, and call it a day.
Day 7 (Wednesday) - $3.49
I stayed up quite late yesterday playing a mobile game and finally wake up after snoozing the alarm for the 84th time. My boss starts our standup at our usual time; there's nothing urgent or pressing today so I just take my time. I take a quick nap in the afternoon and go back to work.
I use the last drops of avocado oil to fry up some bulgogi for dinner. Need to go back to Costco for more avocado oil tomorrow, I guess.
After dinner, a friend asks me about perfume samples that she wants to try. I go online to search for them but no dice since they belong to a new collection that only got launched in Europe. I take this time to try out some similar smelling samples in my collection as well.
I review my Chinese flashcards and do some workbook exercises. After an hour, my brain is fried on Chinese but I don't want to go to bed yet, so I pick up a book on my bookcase that I was reading a while ago (A Random Walk Down Wall Street) and read one more chapter.
An order came in so I purchase another shipping label ($3.49), update my budgeting app for a bit, and then head to bed.
Summary
Category
Amount
Note
Food & Drink
$95.99
Groceries
Fun / Entertainment
$7.52
Disney+ subscription
Home & Health
$0.00
Clothes & Beauty
$206.24
Perfume samples
Other*
$22.72
Shipping labels
Total
$309.75
shipping labels not included
*I don’t count the shipping labels as expenses because they’re already factored into the profits I made from my sales, but I included them anyway because they're still charges on my accounts. Any profit goes back to funding my album purchases so... I guess it's a vicious cycle. Overall, a pretty normal week for me in terms of food. I don’t eat out often (I allow myself only one meal and one dessert every month) and have used up my 1 dessert allowance this week so I probably won't have any more this month. I might’ve gone overboard with the perfume purchases this week, but tbh perfumes bring me joy. My mood is lifted and I'm transported to old and new places every time I put on a perfume that I enjoy, so for me, it’s worth it. I try to be frugal whenever I can, but I'll never skimp on education and hobbies that make me happy. Writing this week-long diary, I realize I need to get back to working out, though. I'll probably have to stop procrastinating and pull out my RingFit gears still inside the moving boxes. Playing Just Dance also makes me miss dancing so bad as I used to be active in several dance crews since college (but stopped after I started working full time). I'll try to stick to Just Dance for now to get my cardio until Covid is over and I can get back to in-person dance classes.
[Question] Is This an OK build? Not sure if it will be good enough
CPU: AMD Fx 6350 6 core 3.9 GHz.
GPU: AMD R7 360 2GB.
Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Storage: 1TB HDD
Power supply: LSP 550W
System: Windows 10
I play on using the PC that I'm purchasing second hand for gaming such as Rocket League, Apex Legends, Rust, Fall Guys, Cold War, Warzone, Cyberpunk, Read Dead 2, Kingdom Hearts, and other similar games. I also would love to do some mild Photoshop and Lightroom editing along with OBS + chroma keying with a green screen simultaneously. My intention is to buy this Pre-Built PC as a starting point and slowly upgrade to better parts (currently have about a $200 budget after buying this PC) if they get worn out. I'd appreciate it if anyone has any input or if this is a dead end. Thank you!
What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.
Video Gaming, Streaming, Light Video Editing
What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?
$200 after this trade for any parts that might be outdated.
**When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Will purchase as soon as today.
What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc)
Just the tower and components inside.
Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?
Western US, no microcenter near me.
Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?
Not sure how to, this will be my first PC. But if is something worth learning without decreasing the PC's life, I would definitely consider learning.
Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)
Not really specs look OK to me just not too sure about the longevity of the build.
What type of network connectivity do you need? (Wired and/or WiFi) If WiFi is needed and you would like to find the fastest match for your wireless router, please list any specifics.
Yes i need a motherboard with Wi-Fi.
Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?
I do plan on upgrading to an RGB case sometime in the future just not anytime soon.
Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?
No it already comes with one EDIT: Wow I didn't get any replies yesterday and am astounded by all of your replies, I appreciate everyone that gave me some input and everyone that gave my post visibility! I have decided to try to trade for a different PC and possibly just hold off until prices come down to build me one myself. Thank you everyone!
5800x - adjusting PPT/TDC/EDC Limits on PBO got me minimal drop in R20 multicore scores and major drop in temperatures (90C to 71C), GUIDE INSIDE
A couple days ago I made this post here at AMD discussing my experience cooling the 5800x. Since then, my temps creeped back up to 90C, and then stayed there in every benchmark that I ran. Reseating the cooler still helped, as I didn't immediately shoot up to 90C anymore - but even after upgrading to Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and putting a very healthy amount of thermal paste, it still maxed out at 90C near the end of a Cinebench R20 MC test. After redoing my thermal paste 4 more times, I saw almost no improvement in max temperature, only variation was the amount of time it took to get to 90C. Kryonaut is better in my experience, and takes longer to get to 90C, but I eventually hit 90C. I went on reddit and OC forums and did some more reading, and I found a user who tested two 5800x chips on two motherboards. I can't find the post anymore, but they reported that two different 5800x chips on one motherboard reached a max temp of 90C in Cinebench R20 multicore, and the same two chips on the other motherboard hit max temps around mid 70s in Cinebench R20 multicore. This got me curious, are some of our 5800x's being fed way too much power by the motherboard? Now, I'm not too sure how this all works but that tells me it might be some sort of calibration or BIOS issue.... anyways, to the testing. First, my rig specs:
AMD Ryzen 5800x
Noctua NH-D15 CHROMAX.BLACK
MSI MPG B550 GAMING EDGE WIFI
2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 CL16
WD Black 2TB HDD
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5" SSD
WD SN750 M.2-2280 NVME SSD w/ Heatsink
EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA GAMING
Fractal Design Meshify C
Corsair RMx 850W 80+ Gold
Cooler Master ELV8 GPU Bracket
4x Noctua NF-A14
1x Noctua NF-F12
Note that I may not know entirely what I am talking about with this stuff because it is my first time on Ryzen. I just came from a 4770K so this is new to me. That being said, I wanted to share my experience to see if others can get some benefit. All fans set on max for the entire test. PBO is ON, and these are my curve optimizer settings. This was set based on some testing using HWinfo64 to identify my best cores. I just arbitrarily set some numbers and it seemed to get me ~50-100MHz extra in all core boost. Otherwise it doesn't seem to affect my temps or anything much, I still hit 90C with PBO on or off anyway. I read this post from GN: https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3491-explaining-precision-boost-overdrive-benchmarks-auto-oc The part that was most important in this article for my tests was this: Package Power Tracking (“PPT”): The PPT threshold is the allowed socket power consumption permitted across the voltage rails supplying the socket. Applications with high thread counts, and/or “heavy” threads, can encounter PPT limits that can be alleviated with a raised PPT limit.
Default for Socket AM4 is at least 142W on motherboards rated for 105W TDP processors.
Default for Socket AM4 is at least 88W on motherboards rated for 65W TDP processors.
Thermal Design Current (“TDC”): The maximum current (amps) that can be delivered by a specific motherboard’s voltage regulator configuration in thermally-constrained scenarios.
Default for socket AM4 is at least 95A on motherboards rated for 105W TDP processors.
Default for socket AM4 is at least 60A on motherboards rated for 65W TDP processors.
Electrical Design Current (“EDC”): The maximum current (amps) that can be delivered by a specific motherboard’s voltage regulator configuration in a peak (“spike”) condition for a short period of time.
Default for socket AM4 is 140A on motherboards rated for 105W TDP processors.
Default for socket AM4 is 90A on motherboards rated for 65W TDP processors.
I compared to the AMD default limits which puts the PPT = 500, TDC = 200 and EDC = 220 (from Ryzen Master). It seems interesting that these are set so high, and I thought maybe different motherboards were handling the power delivery different. Now, I'm not an expert at how this stuff works, so I'm not even sure if I'm using the correct terms or the right technical language, but what I found was limiting PPT, TDC, and EDC to certain values on my motherboard gave me a huge temperature benefit with almost no loss in performance. This leads me to believe that some BIOS may be sending way too much power to the 5800x, letting it hit 90C and then throttling based on the temperature. Testing steps:
First I ran some baseline tests with default motherboard limits set in the BIOS, and started decreasing each down from there. First few results were as expected with the Tmax hitting 90C near the end of a Cinebench R20 MC test. R20 is run with no background apps. I only have R20 and HWinfo64 on for monitoring
Based on the GN article, I then set reasonable limits below the maximum values for 105W processors (PPT = 125, TDC = 90, EDC = 125). Setting the PPT saw instant improvements in temps down to 81.3C.
I started to decrease PPT in increments of 5 to see how low I could get the temperature without dropping my R20 MC scores too far. When I felt like the score dropped too low, I would bring the PPT back to a value that had a good balance in performance lost and maximum temperature. Eventually settling on 120. Then I moved onto TDC while holding EDC and PPT constant.
I repeated it again, dropping TDC by 5 and observing temps and scores after. I ended up settling on 85 for now.
Finally, I did this on EDC. I found that my 5800x seems to be highly sensitive to EDC in terms of performance, dropping EDC to 90 dropped my Cinebench R20 scores to almost 5500 with Tmax at 78.8C. I decided that I was going to keep this at 110 because it seemed to have biggest negative impact on scores and the temp gains were not worth it.
Lastly, I went back to TDC and dropped that as low as I could, I found that dropping it to 75 gave me a 3 degree drop in temperature, and the performance dropped within a margin of error. After running ~23 tests, I headed to bed and settled on PPT = 120, TDC = 75, EDC = 110 was giving me a score of 5976 (pretty good for those temperatures!)
Next morning, ambient temps dropped to 21 (setup is in the basement) and PC had some time to chill out, I ran the test twice and saw huge improvements. Tmax = 71.0C and R20 multicore score is 6070, single core is 625. Those are pretty good scores for that temperature! Second trial was similar, CBMC = 6056 and Tmax = 72.0C. See testing results and proof below.
I then reverted my PPT/TDC/EDC limits back to motherboard, ran tests, and boom, Tmax = 90 again, multicore score 6038
Note, another quick way to determine how much your EDC/TDC your CPU is taking during full load is to look at the CPU TDC and EDC measurements in HWinfo64 while you run R20 multicore test. This can help you save time in determining what the limit is. I didn't know this until after and just slowly decreased each parameter by 5 and testing in between. I probably could have saved some time looking at these limits instead and starting there. See my testing results here, (read the notes to understand how I made increments and settled on the numbers that I did):https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11rPc7P0omu3FyDYM8YL8V-HuSIhVywwt2tkCeWWyLq4/edit?usp=sharing Result:https://imgur.com/gallery/zGtAgNr Motherboard settings:https://imgur.com/gallery/rpafxCU I did some digging online to see what other users were experiencing on their CPUs, someone made a drive link compiling data for the 5800x based on their setup. I made a copy on my drive of an old version because the working version got deleted by the original creator. Comparing my performance now with some of the samples here shows that I have decent scores and very good temps now. If someone could explain the technicals behind what is going on here, that would be great! TLDR: Play with your PPT, TDC, and EDC numbers. I saw temps drop from 90C to 71C. I'm not sure the technicalities behind this but it leads me to believe that some motherboards might be feeding your CPU way more power than it needs to hit clocks causing thermal issues. Edit: Here are my R23 scores with PPT = 120, TDC = 75 and EDC = 110
Buying new PC - good value (for 2021) or ripp-off?
Hello, My laptop really wants to die and so I finally have given up on waiting until the components get cheaper. I found a well reviewed German PC builder that let's you customise almost everything and even has graphics cards available. The components that will be in it are: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 6x 3600 MHz Gainward Ghost GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, 6 GB GDDR6 16 GB DDR4-RAM, Dual Channel (2x 8 GB), 3000 MHz, Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GB M.2 SATA SSD Kingston A400 (I have two brandnew 2TB SSDs, so no more internal storage required) 600 Watt be quiet! System Power B9, 87 % Effizienz, 80 Plus Bronze zertifiziert WiFi PCIe Card2400 MBit/s (600 MBit/s @ 2,4 GHz) - CSL PAX-2400 (here is the link to the configuration: https://www.csl-computer.com/k/FT9L8IOm) The total package is about 833 Euros (got a 15 Euro Voucher) incl. Tax (about 1010 USD) There is an option to chose a RX 580 GTS XXX instead for 90 Euro (110 USD) less, which I am considering. Is that acceptable or too expensive? (no hardcore gamer, I use my PC 90% to work but I want to play games in 1080p for the next few years without having to make too many amends in settings) Thanks!
Hey Reddit, I've never posted anything before but honestly, I'm desperate. I'll start it off by saying I (17F) have a very rocky relationship with my parents. My dad's a veteran who lost his legs, and sustained major PTSD that he doesn't get treated, and my mom is very religious and has suffered from many issues, like eating disorders, insomnia, etc. They both have had very, very hard lives, but I genuinely can't take it anymore. I've realised I repressed a lot of memories from my childhood, and I used to think we had a very good relationship. We'd spend time together, play games together, watch movies, etc. But things changed after I started remembering, and started talking to others about the issues. My father used to be violent towards me. I remember being 4 years old and him chasing me to my room, where he tried to punch me (edit: repeatedly). I still remember the sound of his ring hitting his wheelchair as he sped towards me, and I genuinely have nightmares. I've been informed by my mother and grandma that that was an ongoing thing throughout most of my childhood. I grew up in fear, I was CONSTANTLY yelled at or chased, and I just started forgetting everything that happened to me. My grandma informed me about times when I'd run into her room and hide under her vanity table while he waited by the door, calling my name and trying to force me to come out so he could hit me. He stopped doing that as I grew older because he had a change of heart, but he never stopped yelling. Things didn't really get much better from there. They found out I was bisexual and non religious in 2016. They locked me in the house, took away any means of communication to the outside world, and made me feel so guilty for existing that I forced myself to repress my sexuality and my beliefs. They used to put so much pressure on me to get into my current school, till I genuinely considered running away a better option than disappointing them so severely. My dad never really stopped being aggressive towards me, he just stopped being able to catch me, as I learned how to evade him when I got older. As he's handicapped, I usually just hide in an elevated place because he won't be able to reach me until he calms down. I remember him rushing me when I was 13 or 14, and I threw myself off the chair instinctively to get away from him. He grabbed me by the back of the shirt and almost tore it off of me (and choked me) while trying to get me back. I grabbed onto the door frame and managed to get away and run. He's started being more verbally abusive. He will call me ungrateful, spoiled, a brat, a bitch, a snowflake, a whore, and various other things that I genuinely can't make myself remember. I dealt with it. He'd constantly criticize or berate me, I dealt with it. I started being a little more distant from them as I was tired of never remembering any interactions with them and any I did remember ended with me crying and him yelling. He was offended by this distance, claiming he never did anything to deserve this and was hurt that I was pushing them away. He cried. I said he was manipulative because he literally told me "your actions caused my tears" and blamed me constantly for our deteriorating relationship. I started having very bad stress tics because of my family. They are VERY strict (I can be out till 7 PM on a good day), and usually I spend the last hour crying because I'm scared of getting in the car with them and being berated and yelled at. I have a very strong fear of loud noises, I jump every time I hear his ring hit his wheelchair, and I literally had a tic attack where a few of my tics consisted of "please don't let me go home", "they're mean", and "scared". My friends started recording these signs without me being aware of it. Things came to a head a couple days ago. I am sexually active with my boyfriend (17M), we have no means of getting pregnant (he's trans), and I have sexual trauma that I am trying to work through slowly with him. I got assaulted by my cousin twice when I was 11, the second event was an attempted rape. My mom never believed me and covered for him, and convinced my dad he didn't do anything wrong and was just being a boy. I then started getting groomed online because of how lonely I was. It took us a year and a half to even get comfortable enough to have any kind of sexual atmosphere, and this has been helping me work on my issues with vulnerability. Also, it's honestly just a fun thing to do. My parents received a photo from an unknown number about us looking at lingerie together, as I'm trying to feel more confident in myself (I'm recovering from an eating disorder). My mom got me in the car, with me being completely unaware, and then demanded my bag and my phone. I took out a regular bra we had bought, but forgot about the underwear. She found it, and this is where shit hit the fan. She hit me over the head with my bag, turned around in her seat and started hitting me. She kept screaming at me that I was a whore and a slut, and my dad agreed. I froze. They drove me home where they felt the need to tell my grandma that I was no longer a little girl, and I'm a filthy whore and it's all my fault. There was a screaming match between them, where my grandmother blamed them and they blamed me. I just sat there trying to make sure nobody charged me again. She left no bruises, but it kind of.. broke something in me? I guess. They took everything, but they forgot my PC has wifi. I contacted a friend of mine and my boyfriend over discord, and my friend started telling me that I NEED to leave this house. His mother is a psychiatrist, his father works in the media, and another friend of ours father is a diplomat who could pull a few strings. His mother researched how to get me out the legal way, and has found a way where I could be placed in their custody. His parents are VERY nice and healthy, and it would be a good place to finish my last few years of highschool. We had enough evidence of abuse, I have a real chance to escape. But the problem is, I love them. I love my parents so much. I know they're extremely abusive, there are so many things I can't even begin to write here because of the character limit (like them screaming at me over the phone so loudly my friends could hear it various times for GENUINELY no reason). My parents have put all the blame on me for this situation, my mother called me cheap, and they're taking me to get my hymen checked to make sure I'm still a virgin (I am). My mother used my most treasured memory of us (us playing Undertale together and getting soft over the pacifist route) against me, making me feel like a monster for ruining her image of her perfect little girl. They intend for me to stay in their house until I'm married to a Muslim man they approve of, I intend to leave for college. We are SO close to New Year's, and my dad has heavy trauma associated with that. He spent so many years alone after the war and New Year's was always a time associated with loneliness. My friend's mom wants to take me to report the abuse Monday, days before New Year's. Also, I know they love me in their own way, and that me leaving would LITERALLY crush and kill them. They have no other children, and I don't want to make them anymore disappointed than they already are. They have already threatened that if I hurt them again (like with them finding out I was sexually active with my boyfriend of 1.5 years) I would literally be dead to them. I know what this will do to them, but I'm GENUINELY suicidal at this point. I can't live like this anymore, I can't remember anything, I get shamed constantly. They're trying to be nicer to me now but I'm literally sick all the time. I can't leave bed. I'm scared of them. My boyfriend snuck over early in the morning just to hug me while I cried for hours, trying to gently encourage me that I need to leave because he can't lose me like this. I know leaving them will hurt me, and them, and I'll never be able to forgive myself for any of this. This entire situation is so stressful and I GENUINELY don't know what to do. Maybe I should just stay and accept this way of living, but I know it's going to kill me sooner rather than later. Please help. Also, I'm very sorry if this is all over the place or weirdly formatted, I am on mobile and panicking while trying to get my thoughts together, I just want this all to be over. I don't think any of what I wrote makes sense honestly, I just have to get my thoughts down. Edit: I forgot to mention my parents coming into my room every night ever since it happened to reassure me they still love me and they can forgive me in time if I work hard enough, and they give me hugs. My mom wants to replay Undertale with me and it's making me feel so guilty and terrible about even thinking of leaving.
I know this will get downvoted, but... why do you insist on using email authentication?
Email authentication may be the biggest joke I've ever seen. Why would someone ever use email authentication? It is not safe. Emails get compromised literally all the time. You accidentally forgot that you used the same password on a site, and boom! They got your email and your Tibia account. Use an authenticator app, for christs sake!!! Nobody in their right mind uses email authentication. You are not safe! And history has just shown that it is unreliable as well! Everytime you login you must get an email code, that means you must login to your email. If you login on an unsafe place (public wifi) or even got a keylogger, you're screwed! Cus they got your email and password. With an authenticator app, you are so much more safe. And even if you dont have a smartphone, you can use authenticator apps on the PC. Still better than an email! I cringe everytime someone posts about their email authenticator not working. That's like putting on a helmet and then jumping out of a Bugatti at 400km/h thinking you will survive just because of that helmet. It's retarded and someone has to say it. And if you cant figure out how to unlink your email authenticator and login to the game (without authenticator) or by adding an authenticator app, then I dont know what to say to you... Some people in here claim they CAN'T login to the game and have wasted days cus of it. Yes you can login. Just unlink the email authenticator. That actually works. You're just as "safe" without it anyway. //rant done I will embrace the downvotes! Edit: I truly believe the only reason CipSoft added email authentication was because there's a large group of people from Venezuela who plays the game. In Venezuela, a 10 year old smartphone is considered luxury to the majority. Phones are not very affordable there. Surely there's poor people all over the world but Venezuela takes the prize. I truly believe you should ONLY use email authentication if you have no other option... Or only use email authentication temporarily if you want to play but have to leave your phone at home while traveling. But even then, Authy has desktop-compatibility. So there really is no argument why you should ever use email authentication. It blows my mind how the email authentication is done on the very same email you login to Tibia with. You should never ever have the authentication done on the same place which you login to. Ever since CipSoft changed from account numbename to emails, the amount of hacked players has skyrocketed. People sign up on all kinds of websites. Fansites, forums, OTservers, etc... with their main email and password. Theres literally millions of hijacked emails getting publicly distributed on hacking forums every year (just check your email at https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ). Most people dont realize that and dont change their password that often (or not at all!). You should change your email password frequently, and have a really strong combination of numbers/special characters/lower- and uppercase characters. Most people just don't do that. They're lazy. And then to have the same email for Tibia... I mean c'mon. You are begging to get hacked!
Stupidly long and detailed XPS 17 9700 post (lemon checklist, 1h/1d/1w/1m reviews, full teardown w/thoughts, benchmarks, battery life tests, clean W10 install driver ‘kit’, AMA).
Part 1 of 6
Hi everyone, This is my first post so bear with me. I’ve been stalking this sub since the release of the 9x00 series and it has helped me so I figured I’d return the favour. As the title says, this will be a pretty in-depth post of my experience with my XPS 17 9700 (hopefully it doesn’t get detected as spam or something). I’ll try to condense my findings as best I can. If anyone wants the full-fat version, check out the thread I have on my site. I’m happy to try and answer any questions. https://robert-m-personal-projects.shivtr.com/forum_threads/3269521?post=14450772#forum_post_14450772 I came from an XPS 15 9560 (i5 7300HQ / 1050 / 32GB RAM / 2x 960GB SSDs / Intel AC 9260/ FHD / 56Wh), so I will be drawing comparisons to it throughout the post. ____________________
Post contents:
Specs
Lemon Checklist
1 hour, 1 day, 1 week and 1 month reviews
Benchmarking, gaming, battery testing and repate results [In parts 2, 3 and 4]
Teardown with thoughts and trackpad rant [In part 5]
Driver ‘kit’ for doing a clean W10 install [In part 5]
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (x2) [Originally Kioxia KXG60ZNV1T02 1TB]
Sharp SHP14D6 3840 x 2400, 60Hz, 35ms, UHD+ touchscreen
Killer AX500 DBS
97Wh battery
130W charger
Windows 10 Pro
I went for the cheapest config I could with an i9 and 2060. Got in touch with Dell to see if they can sell me one without SSDs, RAM or an OS, they said no. Ordered it from their enterprise site when they had it on discount. The stock setup with 3 years of premium support (they had it on discount and it was only about £50 more than 1 year) cost me about £2954. A stupid amount, I know, but compared to other machines close to this (of which there are maybe 3), this looks like a bargain. I’d also like to say that I don’t know why reviewers keep saying that the WiFi card is Intel-based. The AX500 is a Qualcomm heap of junk, device manager detects it as Qualcomm, command prompt detects it as Qualcomm, all the drivers are Qualcomm and it even has Qualcomm LASER ETCHED into the physical component! Yes, the Precision 5750 (which is nearly identical to the XPS 17 9700) uses an Intel AX201 and is branded as such, but the XPS doesn’t. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a pic of it without the antenna bracket, so you’ll have to take my word for it. ____________________
Lemon checklist:
I’ve compiled this from my stalking of the internet and reading about the blood bath of XPS issues. The bits in the square brackets are how mine fared with each issue.
Trackpad wobble / pre-click - [Semi-Pass]
Can't click trackpad while holding laptop in the air by its corner / Trackpad clicks itself when held in the same way - [Pass]
Weird dead zone on edges of trackpad (not palm rejection), that Dell claim is normal - [Pass]
Early units would not draw the full 130W from their chargers under full load - [Pass]
Backlight bleed - [Pass]
Dead pixels - [Pass]
Lid not closing properly and opening slightly when laptop is being carried sideways - [Pass]
Bent screen / not flush with the body when closed (along the short side) - [Pass]
Inductor / coil whine - [Semi-Pass]
Missing or stripped external screws - [Pass]
Missing or stripped internal screws - [Pass]
Scratches and dents on the panels, especially the bottom - [Pass]
Speaker / TRRS crackle - [Pass]
Dead ports - [Pass]
Overheating - [Pass]
DPC latency - [Pass]
Hot while sleeping / draining battery while sleeping - [Fail]
The trackpad came fine but it developed the issue after some time. See my teardown and subsequent rant further down. The trackpad design is utterly abysmal, and it is only a matter of time before it develops a wobble. The laptop came with a little bit of coil whine that would be drowned out in a room with normal ambient noise, but weirdly, swapping the RAM seemed to eliminate it completely. I don’t know if the sleep heat is a Dell or Windows issue, but it is unacceptable. My 9560 suffered from battery drain during sleep, but not heat. I use hibernate on the 17 to get around this. ____________________
Reviews:
This section might read a little weirdly compared to the rest of the post because I’ve lifted most of it straight from my site.
1-hour review:
The moment I took it out of the box I was surprised at the size of it, it's not much bigger than my XPS 15 9560. All the reviewers keep saying it's super heavy and it puts them off from using it. It's only about 500g heavier than any of the XPS 15s since the 9550 from 2015, that's a small bottle of water. Picking it up for the first time, it was definitely heavier than I thought it'd be, but it's also nowhere near as bad as the reviewers made it out to be. You feel the weight difference in your hand, but when it's in your bag, you really won't feel the difference, especially if you have a good bag or are used to having a reasonably heavy one any way. On the topic of bags, my Wenger easily swallowed this thing. While I was looking it over for any defects, I couldn't help but notice just how well it's built. This thing is like a brick, you could probably kill someone with it. I mean, I'm used to the top notch build of my 9560, but this seems even more sturdy. Opening the lid of my 9560 required the jaws of life, which I loved, because it meant that the screen would not wobble about when it's open. The 17 is really perplexing in that respect. You still need to be the Hulk to open it, but you can now open it with 1 hand as well. I think that's some pretty clever hinge design. The screen is still very sturdy when open. Not quite as good as my 9560, but that's because that has a much smaller and lighter screen. A quick word on the I/O: it's atrocious, completely unacceptable. Dell have followed Apple's nonsense and turned this into another dongle-book. Considering this laptop is a couple of mm thicker than the 9560 (not counting the rubber feet on both), Dell have no excuse to not put in a couple of USB-As and an HDMI. At least the SD reader is still there. You do get given a small USB-C to A and HDMI adapter, but it shouldn't be necessary. RIP I/O, you will be dearly missed. Now, upon powering up my old 9560, the first thing to greet me was a BSOD, not even a POST screen, just a straight blue screen error. Luckily this wasn't the case this time. As an XPS owner of 3 years, I wasn't really as blown away by the crazy bezels on the display as others (I was still impressed), but I am very happy to see that they ditched the chin and moved the camera up top. What did blow me away was the tiny (regardless of how mediocre it actually is) web cam they managed to cram in the top bezel. I also didn't realise just how bright 500 Nits is on a display like this, it's eye searing. I'm used to the supposedly-400 nits of my 9560 and the 250 nits of my external displays (they seem a lot brighter). In terms of colour accuracy, I'm yet to test it with real photos from my dad's DSLR, but I did change the profile from Dell's 'full vivid' one to Adobe RGB. Also, the W10 HDR feature appears to be partially bricked and drops the panel brightness significantly while also enabling adaptive brightness which I can't find a way to turn off, so I'm running it in non-HDR mode, which isn't really a problem for me. While I was doing the initial Windows setup, I noticed the fans spiking to quite a high RPM for a couple of mins and then they died down and turned off altogether. While they were blasting, they weren't that annoying. The fans didn't scrape anything, the bearings sounded fine (no whining or squeaking) and the overall rush of air was very low frequency so it wasn't as disturbing as a high pitch fan system. Compared to the 9560 (which wasn't that disturbing either), the overall frequency is lower and slightly less disturbing. The amplitude is actually lower from what I can make out unless the fans really spin up. The last things I want to touch on in this section are the trackpad and keyboard. The trackpad is massive, and on my unit, all good. No wobble or pre-click or air click. Compared to my 9560, the click is more subtle and muted. It's not as harsh or loud a click noise. I think they've done something to damp the sound or used a better-quality button, but I like it a lot. The keyboard is excellent. I really liked the 9560, this is even better. The keys are slightly bigger, so that's something to get used to, but I got used to it very quickly. The caps also have a satin or matte finish to them which makes them feel better to the skin in my opinion, but I don't see that having a performance impact. As for the switches, they still have 1.3mm travel. Compared to the 9560, they have a lower actuation force (which I really like) and appear to be snappier in their response. Like the 9560, this is also a very quiet keyboard. The only thing I don't like is that Dell removed the Next and Previous media keys, there's only a Play button now. Not too big an issue for me as I have those functions mapped to mouse macros.
1-day review:
About a day later and everything is still good, apart from the wretched audio drivers that Dell keeps using. Realtek audio drivers and Waves audio are a steaming heap of garbage. I spent a large majority of my day trying to get around Waves with EqualiserAPO like I did on the 9560, but I had no luck, the current audio quality is awful. I'm hoping things will be better when I do a clean install of W10 after the SSD swap in the next couple of days. Another thing I noticed was with my multi-display setup. The BIOS on this has the option to bypass the integrated graphics and run all the displays straight off the 2060 which is great. The problem is, that although my 2060 clearly shows the ability to support 4 displays in the Nvidia control panel (and Nvidia told me as much when I contracted them a few months ago), it will only detect 2 of my 3 external displays. The spec sheet of my thunderbolt dock clearly states that it can support 3 displays (top of P22 https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/esuprt_docking_stations/dell-thunderbolt-dock-tb16_concept_guide_en-us.pdf ). I suspect that my HDMI to mini DP cable is dead though. I tried plugging one of the displays in over Thunderbolt instead, but it doesn't get detected unless I unplug one of the other ones. Though with that being said the TB16 spec sheet says nothing about running a display off the TB3 port. [Retroactive insert for Reddit: It ended up being a dead cable, all is good.] Other than the above, the laptop has been great so far. I'm really loving the keyboard, I've typed this entire post on it. Temps have really been behaving themselves, idle and light use temps are sitting in the 39-42 range for both the CPU and GPU on max power settings both in in Dell's software and in W10. I've also told it to only use the 2060 as opposed to switching between the iGPU and dGPU. The fans barely run at these temps. I'm also really not used to seeing 2% CPU utilisation. I'm used to seeing my old i5 7300HQ constantly sweating at 20% and over for even the most menial tasks. Opening a single new Chrome tab would spike it to 100% for a few seconds, now it reaches 20% for less than a second on the i9. The only odd thing I'm noticing is that in task manager, the boost clock is all over the place, the i5 would hold a steady 3.2 GHz, this is going anywhere from 2.8 to 4.5 GHz in a matter of a few readout refreshes, despite temps being fine and no load being applied. I'll keep an eye on this, but it doesn't seem to be impacting performance...for now.
Developments between 1d and 1w reviews:
I noticed some odd banding of colours in a couple of youtube videos. Did some digging and found that you have to uninstall Dell's colour software and restore the original colours in Intel's software. I did that and my screen turned black. My external screens were working and showed that the content was still there on the laptop screen, but it was stuck on black. So I updated the graphics drivers and nothing happened. Tried disabling and then enabling the screen in device manager, nothing. Uninstalling and reinstalling it in device manager, nothing. The screen itself is perfectly fine because I can see the POST screen just fine and fiddle around in the BIOS all on the native screen, so it's not a dead panel. I ended up having to reinstall W10 and then nuke all the Dell and Intel display nonsense until I was running the stock W10 profile. It was just fine after that. I also ran DPC latency tests and they all came back good, it was in the low end of the green on LatencyMon apart from one very short and high spike I saw (but didn’t hear as a distortion). I ran the test twice for about 3 mins (one song) both on the Thunderbolt channel and on the native speakers. There was also no speaker crackling or TRRS crackling. I managed to get the audio to work, but I could not circumvent the Waves Maxxaudio spam. I managed to get a flat response, but EqualiserAPO does not work. In my case, a flat response is what I was looking for, because I have a real external EQ as part of my Hi-Fi, but for normal people, they have no choice but to stick to the Waves nonsense. I’ll keep trying to chip away at the issue when I move to the Samsung SSDs, but for now I’ve got it useable on the Thunderbolt channel which is what I need. While upgrading the SSDs I managed to somehow bring out the trackpad wobble. See the teardown lower down for an explanation. At this point I botched it with 4 layers of Kapton tape beneath the ‘hooks’ at the front of the trackpad. I ended up losing the war with Waves. I turned it off as much as I could, but it is leeched into everything. I noticed is that the battery drained with the sustained load despite drawing the full 130W from the charger (one of the big issues with some 17s was that they didn't draw full power from the charger). This is a deliberate design choice. I blame Apple for it. I blame Apple, because they went all TB3 / USB-C and everyone started to follow. That means that the 17 can only have a USB-C charger. The official USB-C spec says that the max power delivery it supports is 100W. Dell have managed to push it to 130W. 130 is still not enough to feed all the components when they are on full blast, so it has to tap into the battery to make up for it. If they had a traditional barrel jack charger, they could have spec'd any wattage they wanted. They could have gone for 180 or even 240. An observation my friends made was that the mics are trash. It was to be expected, but they said they were much worse than the 9560. I don't use a dedicated mic, because I don't really need one, nor do I own one. The mics on the 9560 are on the leading edge of the laptop, under the trackpad. On the 9700 they are on the top of the screen pointing up (so the same leading edge, but when the laptop is closed). The added distance between the mics and my head apparently makes a huge difference. Windows adaptive brightness is a plague. My old HP suffered from it, my 9560 suffered from it and now so does the 9700. I never managed to solve it on the HP, I solved it on the 9560, but can’t remember how. I think I solved it on the 9700, but I’ll see if it stays that way over the next couple of days. I used the below Github page and files to work around it. Apparently all the fixes online are for older version of W10 that don’t apply to the new one on the 9700...oh, joy. I suspect it was one of those that allowed me to fix it on the 9560. https://github.com/orev/dpst-control Other than that, the only thing I wanted to mention was the for some reason when Geekbench finishes a test run and auto-opens Chrome, 3 and 4 finger touchpad gestures get disabled for some reason. Closing and opening Chrome fixes it. I thought it might be a trackpad driver issue, but the 9560 does the same. I don’t know if it’s a Windows, Chrome or Geekbench issue (or a bit of all), but I can’t seem to replicate it with anything else.
1-week review:
I know I’ve had the laptop for way more than a week, but I’ve been able to properly use it for a week at this point. This review won’t be a traditional review as I got through most of that sort of content in the first-look and in subsequent update posts. This will instead be looking at how the laptop is in general, if any of the initial issues I had are still there or have gotten worse and if anything else has come up. I’m still very happy with it. I don’t think I gave a full update on the multi-screen setup. I said that the new cable worked but didn’t say if all was well past that. All is indeed well, all three external displays are now comfortably running off the 2060. On the topic of the display, the native one has broken me. The quality is miles beyond that of the external ones and the one on the 9560, every time I look away from it and at the external ones, I feel like they’re either broken or something has gone wrong with their settings. Going from the 9560 to the 9700 doesn’t seem like that big a change. But after having spent a week on the 9700 and then having to go back to the 9560 last night, the difference is definitely noticeable. I’m now used to seeing the taskbar looking like it’s sitting on the keyboard deck. On the 9560 I look down and where I expect to see the taskbar, I see the chin bezel. I know it’s a first world problem, but I’m just bringing it up to make a point. Swapping between the machines in one direction is definitely more apparent than in the other. Quickly going back to the GPU, now that the 2060 is being used at all times, the laptop does idle a little warmer than it did initially. Temps have gone from the low to mid 40s to the mid 40s to low 50s. I suspect the undoubtedly terrible thermal paste Dell use is also partly to blame. I’ve also started to notice the fans spooling up more often, especially during YouTube videos. Temps don’t actually rise that much, but the fans come on. That might be a side effect of me running it on the maximum power profile that Dell have in the BIOS. I’m yet to experiment with other profiles like the optimised and quiet ones. I mentioned that during gaming, surface temps got warm, but not uncomfortable. I found that during really long sessions (3h+) with intensive games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the area around the exhaust reached the high 50s at points. The very centre of the keyboard got into the high 40s which is where it starts to get uncomfortable. The area around WASD where your hand usually stays was mostly fine though. To be honest, I expected it to get much hotter and much sooner too. So I’m not disappointed in it, it’s just a point I felt needed bringing up. And of course, the laptop still taps into the battery despite drawing full power from the charger. Again, this is a stupid design choice by Dell and not a defect. One thing that kept bothering me consistently that I didn’t think would was the lack of next and previous media keys. I have macros bound to my mouse, but I found myself going for the keyboard buttons more often. I eventually got fed up and remapped F8 and F9 as the next and prev keys. F8 comes natively mapped as Windows + P (Project screen), so I just remapped Win + P to be previous. F9 was a blank key and didn’t have anything assigned to it. It also meant that when I went to remap it as a shortcut, it remapped F9 both with and without Fn Lock. I did a bit of digging and couldn’t find F9 serving any major purpose in W10 or commonly used software, so I don’t think it’ll impact my usage. The latest build of W10 seems to have copied MacOS in that now Alt + Space brings up a search bar (no idea what was wrong with Win + S, which still works). This can be very annoying in games where I have to use Alt + Space only to have it kick me and bring up the search. So I remapped that shortcut such that left Alt + Space = right Alt + Space. Directly disabling left Alt + Space disables all functionality of the press combination, not just the search shortcut, but right Alt doesn’t seem to trigger the shortcut. I used Microsoft PowerToys to remap the keys. It has a bunch of other features as well and is free. For some reason the 0.27.0 release kept crashing when I tried to remap shortcuts, so I installed the 0.25.0 release and it worked. It ended up asking to be updated to 0.27.0 a couple of days after, but it still works just fine. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/tag/v0.25.0 I managed to get some very basic video editing done, I can’t fully speak to the laptop’s performance in editing as I want to give it a real load, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s much better than the 9560. What I will say though, is that I’m currently limited by RAM. Adobe Premiere Pro was easily eating through 13-16GB RAM on the 9560. I’ve still only got 16GB on this and I saw it limiting itself to no more than 9GB. So I want to see how it’ll perform when it has more RAM. I wanted to pick up some RAM, but for some reason, the kit I wanted went from about £230 to £490 overnight and it’s suddenly out of stock everywhere. My hope is that the price drops as more stock eventually comes in. I’ll wait as long as it takes, because I’m not paying that stupid amount for it. It’s the only CL17 kit I could find, all the other kits are CL22 hence why I don’t just buy something else. I haven’t done any CAD work on it yet, but I have high hopes for it. I did however run some MATLAB simulations earlier today. I won’t get into the details of the sim because they’re long and boring, but it’s a model of a fibre-optic transmitter and receiver system. It was part of an assignment I did for comms in my MSc. I distinctly remember the PC in uni taking 10-15 mins to complete the stock sim before any parameter changes. If I remember off the top of my head, the PCs had 4th gen i7s, 16GB DDR3 RAM if you were lucky (8GB if you weren’t), some old dinky AMD GPU and HDDs. I remember my 9560 getting through the same simulations in a fraction of the time. Of course, anecdotal evidence is useless, so I re-ran the sim on the 9560, unfortunately I didn’t time the uni PCs at the time because I was busy doing my assignment and I’m not about to travel back to campus to run an experiment, so you’ll have take my word on the uni PCs. Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. Below are the results for the 9560 and 9700. The 9700 was significantly faster than the 9560, especially in the latter tests. Something to note in the results is the ‘run time’ value and the ‘run’ value. The run time is how long the test would last for if there was a physical system to be tested. The times for runs 1, 2 and 3 are how long the laptop took to complete the simulation. The 50μs run is stock. https://preview.redd.it/9es710xaxoe61.png?width=517&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf76a81972da405a7303121397a7fff9144a6ac2 https://preview.redd.it/dgs6dkjfxoe61.png?width=443&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae592a46c0cc3094c8c30a0f5d4fef5c55d511fc
1-month review:
Here it is, the 1-month review, I don’t expect this one to be that long as not much has changed. In the 1 week-review, I said that I hadn’t given it a proper video editing load. Well, if you’ve followed the thread, you’d know that I gave it one the other day. In case you missed it, it’s good news. The 9700 shreds the 9560. The 9560 was heavily CPU bottlenecked. The RAM upgrade also made a difference during editing. During rendering, the larger amount of RAM made a difference at higher render resolution (and more complicated projects I’m guessing). I’m still yet to give it a CAD load, but given that it was fine with video editing, I’m expecting it to go through CAD like it’s nothing. The RAM swap also somehow managed to eliminate the coil whine, so that’s also a plus. I’m still loving typing on this keyboard. I’ve been setting up the 9560 as the new family computer and I’ve had to use the keyboard, going between the 9700 and the 9560 is very noticeable. I loved the 9560 keyboard but compared to the 9700 it feels totally mushy. The keyboard deck also doesn’t pick up skin oil and other junk as easily as it did on the 9560. Otherwise, in general, nothing has really changed, and no significant problems have arisen. Now, the bad stuff. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting weird Bluetooth freezes. I’d be using my mouse and then the cursor would freeze for 3-5 secs. This happens randomly and I can’t predict it. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s not frequent enough (maybe a couple of times a day every other day or so) to make me want to smash the laptop to pieces. I suspect it’s the infamously terrible Killer WiFi card. I’ve tried fiddling with the settings and drivers, but nothing has changed. It’s not the mouse because it works just fine on the 9560. The other thing I can’t get over is the apocalyptically abysmal trackpad design. I’ve botched it on mine, but I can’t help but feel that over time it’ll start again as the pads start to get compressed. I’m seriously considering locking the cantilever completely with a pair of thermal pads and eliminating the physical button click. ____________________
Hey all you beautiful people, I recently went over to buildapcforme and asked for my first build which I needed for - school (using photo editing software like GIMP, making online anatomy modules for medical student learning) - music (I use ableton live from time to time) - video editing (I use Sony Vegas, was hoping to use some more software too like Adobe based software but not for this year at least) - light gaming - I was keen to play games like gta v, Witcher 3, and at least try some newer games like fortnite and overwatch This is what the lovely people there recommended: PCPartPicker Part List
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total
$860.59
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-11 20:14 AEDT+1100
With the recommendation that I get a RTX 3060 Ti when it becomes available. As we all know, that’s been very tricky lately and I’m not rethinking my design and the purpose of it. I think I’m not really ready for pc gaming and I’m leaning more towards getting a switch instead and only using the pc for reasons 1-3 above. Would this build suffice without a gpu for those needs? Can I play some games with this build without a GPU, if so which ones? I understand this is a very noob question and I really appreciate any answers y’all can throw at me. I’m based in Australia btw. Thanks I’m advance :)
Shadow PC on the 4K Fire TV Stick [Setup Instructions]
Just wanted to share my experience today setting up Shadow on the Fire TV Stick. Played Star Wars: Fallen Order on ultra settings without a hiccup. Here's the hardware list for setup:
Shadow Boost using Quadro P5000 GPU.
4K Fire TV Stick
8bitdo SN30Pro controller
iOS or Android device
Television (obviously)
The Firestick is located close to our 5G router. It's a basic router that came with the cable service. You can setup anywhere in the house, given you have a mesh network in your home (pods supplied by cable service that extend WiFi around your home). Instructions:
The Firestick comes with an extender cable in the box. This I believe boosts the WiFi signal, so suggested to plug it in.
Connect your controller to the Firestick. XBOX controllers are best, but the cheaper SN30Pro works, since it has the same buttons essentially, and is well-built.
Install "Mouse Toggle" app on Firestick. This gives you mouse functionality needed later. Follow this guide to install it, and despite comments, you can use the 4K Firestick link provided in the article. It works: https://www.firesticktricks.com/mouse-toggle-firestick.html
Install "Downloader" app on Firestick (covered in guide above).
Within Downloader app, navigate to APKMirror and download/install the latest Shadow build for Android. I used the 3.4.4 BETA: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/blade-group/
On your mobile phone or tablet, install the "Fire TV" app from official app store. This gives you a bluetooth keyboard needed later. Once downloaded, connect it to your Firestick using the code provided on screen.
Go to your computer and fire up Shadow PC. If like me you have games on several platforms like Steam, Epic, Amazon, Origin, etc., you'll want to access your installed games that utilize a controller in one interface on the Firestick.
Open Steam, and add the games you want to show up on the Firestick from each platform. Installed Steam games will show up in your library automatically, as you'll be using Steam's Big Picture Mode to navigate on the stick. Games from other platforms must be manually added. Here's a guide: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-to-add-games-to-steam-library/ "scroll to section: Add non-Steam games from other services (such asGOG.com)".
A few tips - favorite the games in Steam you've manually added from other platforms. In this way, they stay separated from your main Steam library for easy removal later. Also, you likely will want to rename the games in Steam as they take on the game's executable file name (which is not pretty).
In Steam settings > Interface > enable “Run Steam when my computer starts” and “Start Steam in Big Picture Mode”.
In Shadow settings, set your bandwidth to a few Mbps lower than recommended, to ensure smooth playback. In my case, they recommended 20 Mbps. I set it to 10 Mbps.
Shut down your Shadow session, note your Shadow username/password, and return to the Fire TV Stick.
Open Shadow app on the Firestick. Login with your credentials. You can use the standard Firestick remote for this part with its built-in keyboard.
Once credentials are entered, you'll be presented with a 6-digit confirmation code sent to your email to approve the connection. Open the "Fire TV" app on your phone and with its keyboard, enter the 6 digits in the email. Then click the "Continue" button in Shadow.
Shadow will ask to convert your Shadow PC to Beta version. This is OK, as it only does it for the session, and nothing gets messed up. When you open Shadow on your computer later, it'll revert back to regular Windows 10 with all your stuff intact.
You should be greeted by Steam in Big Picture Mode when it boots up. From there you can navigate to your installed games library using your XBOX or generic game controller. Launch a game and Bob's your uncle.
If like me you have some Star Wars games from EA, you'll likely need to login to Origin again on the Firestick. Using a combination of "Mouse Toggle" and "Fire TV" apps, you can navigate the Origin login process since it requires keyboard and mouse input. For Mouse Toggle, you press play/pause button twice to enable it, then up/down to move the mouse.
A quick note about bandwidth. The Shadow android app has its own bandwidth setting independent from the standard desktop Shadow settings. By default, it was set to 5 Mbps, so I set it to 10 Mbps (as I know my network can handle that), but YMMV.
It's worth noting that you should keep at least 1GB of storage free on your Firestick at all times for best performance, and the Shadow app uses roughly 55MB of storage space. It keeps next to no additional data or cache. I was pretty shocked at how light it is!
I wanted to document this process in case it helps anyone else. I've heard the 4K Fire TV Stick flakes out on others, but as of January 2021 I had zero issues playing Fallen Order for an hour with the best graphic settings. Also I didn't notice any compression artifacts on a 52" 1080p LCD TV. I don't believe the 30 minute inactivity shutdown is a problem with the android app, so IMO it's worth moving longer gaming sessions to the TV. Less chance of losing in-game progress when you step away for an exercise break. Stay healthy gamers!
HI THERE! I’ve re-created this list, cleaned up some mess and placed many links to their respective sections. This list contains only FOSS apps and most of the links provided here will take you to GITHUB, GITLAB, F-DROID and PLAYSTORE. I'll be adding some hearts beside each application 💖--App is active and is being updated frequently 💚--App is active but updates are a little slow. (Not THAT slow and definitely not dead) 💔--App is abandoned/dead. (Why are dead apps here? Answer: There are some humans out there who love to dig out a corpse and examine it😸) 💛--This link will take you to Playstore 💜--This app...is...uhhh...its either abandoned or the updates are slow as a sloth. IDK what's happing with these apps. (Sometimes its hard for me to point out the app if its abandoned because of the updates....some apps receive updates after a very long time and are not dead. The devs should archive the repo if they're not gonna continue developing it further) These hearts will be added beside each username 💙--The user who suggested that particular app ❤--The DEV of that particular app 🌟SUGGESTIONS TO MORE FOSS APPS ARE WELCOME, when sharing the link for a FOSS app, place the colored heart beside it. I don’t wanna end up placing the wrong colored heart🌟 🌟If any application has a wrong heart beside it OR any link is incorrect OR any app is placed at the wrong section OR if any app goes closed source or turns shady then please do let me know. I'll fix/remove/correct it asap🌟 🌟One more thing...the apps under the sections are listed randomly. Neither of the apps in these sections are ranked from best to worst🌟 ★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆ BROWSERS
AURORA STORE and AURORA DROID💚, this link will take you to auroraoss download section from where you can download both Aurora store(Playstore client without google tracking) and aurora droid(F-droid client).
APPS THAT SAVE BATTERY, ENCRYPTS, HIDES AND LOCKS PERSONAL STUFFS OR EVEN INFORM/ALERT THE USER ABOUT IN-APP TRACKERS OR OTHER FISHY STUFFS COMES HERE 👇
FEED READER💔, Modern desktop application designed to complement existing web-based RSS accounts---u/rat_tat_2_e 💙
FLYM💚, Flym News Reader is a light Android feed reader (RSS/Atom) ---u/Born_Science 💙
FEEDER💖 is a no-nonsense RSS/Atom/JSON feed reader app for Android---u/Some012345💙
READROPS💚 is a multi-services RSS client for Android. Its name is composed of "Read" and "drops", where drops are information drops in an ocean of news---u/Some012345💙
🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴🔵⚫⚪🔴⚫ SIMPLE MOBILE TOOLS💖💛-- Tibbbi❤️ almost all the mostly used applications ranging from Dialer to Gallery is available, they’re all available for free in Fdroid . The playstore version unlocks more and also supports the dev---u/kobeislegend 💙 A friend of mine made a list as well that contains open source applications, there are some apps here in his list which isn’t available in my post. And instead of listing them one by one here’s the LINK to his list, it will lead you to github. This is him: u/Petomeansfart
Hi all, As the title says, this is my first build. I understand that a mini build might not be the best to start on, but I just can't have a massive case so the mini is really my only option. This PC will mainly be used for video editing and some video games (I play more on my PS4, I know, shoot me). I will post below the parts I've selected so far and my main questions are (in order of significance): a) Do you think it will fit in the NR200 case? b) Do any parts seem like weird choices? Is there a better choice? c) Is there anything you would recommend adding or taking away? d) Is there any way I could reasonably shed a couple hundred bucks without taking a massive dip in quality? My original price range was 1800-2000USD, but I went over by a couple hundred bucks. Thanks for any advice! Here's the build (Sorry about the formatting): AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor$481.00 NZXT Kraken X53 73.11 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler$129.99 Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard$390.00 Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory$236.88 Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive$139.99 MSI GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER 4 GB GAMING X Video Card$455.99 Cooler Master MasterBox NR200P Mini ITX Desktop Case$99.99 Corsair SF 450 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply$98.99 Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit$119.99 Noctua A12x15 PWM chromax.black.swap 55.44 CFM 120 mm Fan$24.90 Noctua A12x15 PWM chromax.black.swap 55.44 CFM 120 mm Fan$24.90 Total:$2202.62 Edit: Just wanted to give you all an update. Thanks to all your advice I was able to tweek my build, find the parts, and bring the price down. Between amazon and a local vender I was able to get all these parts new for about $1700 USD: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core, 24-thread unlocked desktop processor with Wraith Prism LED Cooler MSI MPG B550I GAMING EDGE WIFI Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 - Multi Compatible All-in-One CPU AIO Water Cooler, Compatible with Intel & AMD, Efficient PWM Controlled Pump, Fan Speed: 200-1700 RPM (Controlled via PWM) - Black Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 AMD Optimized Memory – Black Samsung (MZ-V7E1T0BW) 970 EVO SSD 1TB - M.2 NVMe Interface Internal Solid State Drive with V-NAND Technology, Black/RedMSI GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB VENTUS Super XS OC Video Card Cooler Master NR200P SFF Small Form Factor Mini-ITX Case with Tempered glass or Vented Panel Option, PCI Riser Cable, Triple-slot GPU, Tool-Free and 360 Degree Accessibility Corsair RMX Series (2018), RM650x, 650 Watt, 80+ Gold Certified, Fully Modular Power Supply ARCTIC BioniX F120 - 120 mm Gaming Case Fan with PWM Sharing Technology (PST), Very quiet motor, Computer, 200–1800 RPM - White (x2) Microsoft Windows 10 Home | Download 3 Ways PWM Fan Splitter - got a different one Anything else I'm missing?
Oculus 2 plus Shadow PC (a cloud-based gaming computer) + Virtual Desktop = The best gaming solution there is, and no wires. (And I used an iMac to do this.)
My company is currently evaluating Shadow PC for some event and experiental activations we do for corporate client. The folks at Shadow were kind enough to bump up my subscription to the basic plan so I could test it out quicker. While we're going to be doing some pretty mid-range stuff with it, we also do VR work on occasion, so of course, I decided to stress test it with the Quest 2 and setting it up to stream games from Steam and the Rift desktop app. I have seen the future of gaming, and it is cloud computing plus a Quest and wireless over Virtual Desktop: It's really the best of both worlds. What you end up with is a combination of high-end gaming PC without having to buy one, the wireless freedom of the Quest, and the great resolution of the Quest's display. There will be hurdles until this is common (like better internet connections everywhere) but this is blowing my mind. And best of all, I'm a Mac user. While I have the Mac set up to dual boot into Windows, that setup took me hours of patches and driver installs. But with Shadow I'm just running a client on the Mac and it's all working. Note: I'm not affiliated with Shadow, I'm paying for the demo account, they were just nice enough to bump me up the list. The link below has a nearly perfect setup guide, but a few things have changed since it was posted, and I thought I'd add those here for reference. All told, once I figured out the few extra steps, the process too about 40 mins to set up, and that included download/install times for Steam, etc., plus the time to restore and rebuild the virtual system.
My Setup
I have a rather ideal setup for using VR on my iMac. I've got Verizon FIOS Gigabit connection (the best money I spend btw). I get about 850-900 up/down over Ethernet. I have an Asus Wifi 6 router (the RTAX88U). The 5Ghz signal is a bit weak in my third floor office (router on the first floor) but close to it I get about 500MB/sec down and 600-700 up on Speedtest on my laptop and on my iPhone. If the more powerful units were available when I bought this, I'd have gotten a higher end one, but this works perfectly and is easy to set up. My Mac is an iMac 2017, and it's connected over Ethernet. I have no doubt that if it were closer to the router it could handle the streaming needs without Ethernet, but if you can connect, do. That's it.
So, here's the stuff I found that's different than the instructions below.
1) As soon as you're set up, restore the Shadow PC environment back to a vanilla Windows 10 factory setting. You can do that in the online admin section. They say that it takes 40 mins after you make the restore request, but it took me only a few minutes. The reason you want to do this is that I kept getting configuration errors with the Steam VR patch. Now, it might work fine for you, but I started over to fix the errors I was getting. 2) After you re-install, follow the directions in the link. BE SURE TO RESTART THE PC WHEN IT TELLS YOU TO. After I refreshed I even went as far to restart after each piece of software I installed because you can't ever reboot too much. You also MUST REMEMBER that quitting the Shadow client on your computer is not the same thing as rebooting. Reboot via the Start menu. 3) Follow the order for installing Oculus, Steam, Steam VR patch, Virtual Desktop on the headset (via Sidequest), Virtual Desktop Streamer app for your desktop. Be sure to reboot when it tells you, but you ALSO should download the Virtual Desktop patch on Sidequest. This isn't in the instructions, but you should do this before you try to set up the Oculus app. When you launch the Oculus app, it'll ask you to plug in the headset, as the instructions say, don't. I found that it would not proceed properly unless I installed the VD patch before I launched the Oculus app. Again, not sure if that's a side effect of the original configuration of Shadow or what, but install that first. 4) When you are in the Oculus app and it asks you to connect, be sure to select Quit. If you hit the "X" to get out of the setup, it doesn't skip the dialog asking you to plug it in, but it cancels the install/launch process. 5) Shadow PC has an Alpha client to eliminate the need to use VD. Don't use it. It's not ready for use, even the keyboard to enter your authentication is dreadful. VD works, and works well. https://www.reddit.com/OculusQuest/comments/frx8yw/how_to_set_up_shadowpc_virtual_desktop_quest_to/ The result is that I've been playing Alyx and Squadrons with no wires, imperceptible lag up on my third floor, and absolutely stunning graphics. It's hard to look at the Quest's native graphics after playing Alyx, but now I can do both things.
So I had some time today to take a look at Cyberpunk on GeForce Now (Founders) vs Stadia. I have two monitors (LG 4K) identical set up side by side so it was easy to compare without video capture. I had this FOMO about not having the BEST version of Cyberpunk. Minus a RTX 3090, since that isn’t an option. I used to be a huge PC gamer up until about 3 years ago. Life changes and I no longer had time to sit in front of a computer for hours playing games. Plus I’d prefer to play on a TV just for the convenience. Personal preference though since I know many people have great PC setups. Originally I was just going to play the game on my PS4 base console until I could find a PS5. But the terrible reviews drove me to Stadia, plus the free bundle was well worth it. I figured it if sucked I’d still use the CCU. I’ve been wanted to see an unbiased comparison of the two streaming services for awhile. But it can be hard to see differences via YouTube. I didn’t know about GeForce Now until after the game released. I’ve been checking out comparisons on YouTube and reading comments. Everyone seems to point out that the game looks better on GeForce Now. I can agree with this, BUT it really wasn’t significantly different at all. Like very hard to tell. Stadia Performance mode is noticeable. But I was comparing in Visual mode. Stadia’s version I ran over WiFi CCU roughly 400MBps and my Mac Mini running GeForce Now was hardwired same internet speed but more consistent connection. Normally I play through CCU wired. Motion Blur and Depth of Field were disabled. I played each until you exited your apartment for the first time and talked with Jackie, plus drove around and viewed the city for about an hour. The lighting is better on GeForce Now due to RayTracing, but Stadia looks comparable which was crazy, this is most likely due to HDR via CCU. Jackie’s hair was better on GeForce Now but his necklace looks significantly better on Stadia. It’s hard to explain but the detail was very compatible, but a tad smoother look on Stadia. Jackie’s face on GeForce now had a little more “wear” on it. It ran smoother on Stadia even over WiFi. Normally I have my CCU hardwired, so it’s even better that way. I thought this was weird, but with setting tweaks on GeForce Now I could get a similar frame rate. There was still a lot of drops with pixel count on GeForce Now that was very noticeable. Graphically it was hard to tell between the two. They both looked good. The one area that GeForce Now shined was the density of NPC and vehicles. Other than that.....they were both very good. Now since it’s streaming, your connection to the server can play a huge part in performance. It’s possible that Nvidia’s servers were not as close to me, or were more congested when I was playing. There are so many variables that’s can’t be seen or compared. If you’ve been debating between the two options you truly can’t go wrong. Graphics were tough to see the difference. And performance can vary based on your personal connection. For me Stadia ran much smoother and that was even over Wi-Fi. If you’re invested in PC gaming GeForce Now is awesome and the cloud saves via Steam work really well. This is the way I’d go if I still was heavy into PC gaming since everything would be linked to the same ecosystem. This would be important to me. I’ll still use my Founders subscription since I wanted to play some older PC games I own via Steam, but did get refunded for Cyberpunk. The convenience of Stadia would be my personal choice though. I invested in 3 CCU so I can play almost anywhere in my house, plus Stadia application is less troublesome on iOS. Many of the games from GeForce were zoomed in too far where I had to lower the pixel count way down. Cyberpunk did not have this issue though, so I’d assume this is going to be based on the specific game, not a GeForce Now issue directly. Hope this may have help ease anyone’s mind about their Stadia choice! Lastly, if you do own Stadia, check out Sekiro! I originally played on my XBox One X (love the game) and I must say it runs much better on Stadia. 60 FPS was noticeable difference with the same graphic quality!
UPDATED JANUARY 18, 2020 UK and Canadian Links included Laptop buying guide 2020 PLEASE SEE THE COMPARISON CHARTS IN THE LINK BETWEEN LAPTOPS OF THE DIFFERENT PRICE RANGES. Under 6000 USD
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Super 8GB GDDR6 with ROG Boost(115+Watt graphics power)
1TB PCIe SSD
300Hz 3ms 15.6” Full HD 1920x1080 IPS-Type PANTONE Validated Display
- Hours
5.3 pounds
9/10
Likes: Newest and very powerful Ryzen 5000 series CPU RTX 3070 GPU Innovative angled secondary display Streamlined, slim design despite feature set innovative attractive keyboard design and layout unique second screen wonderful productivity can handle the most demanding games smoothly Gorgeous design ready for work or play Beautiful displays Good battery life Seriously fast SSDs scifi style design great sound quality and loud speakers stays relative cool when gaming upgradable ssd storage Slim design number of ports including thunderbolt 3 wifi 6 **Under 4000 USD
One of the most bought gaming laptops is the Helios 300. Due to its standard over the years as packing great specifications which delivers a wonderful performance for it's price. Likes:
sturdy build quality
compact, but still fairly heavy
good 240 Hz matte screen
High-End graphics card, capable of running the latest 3D games at high settings.
capable thermal implementation, but the fans need to spin fast and loudly in order to keep the components at bay
15.6 inches Full HD (1920 x 1080) LED Display (144Hz Refresh Rate/240Hz 3ms 15.6” Full HD 1920x1080 IPS-Type Display
4 hours
4.6 lbs
9/10
Likes: well made and compact excellent FHD 144/240 Hz IPS display solid performance, especially in demanding loads versatile Power Profiles 76Wh battery, with support for USB-C charging Number of ports High-End graphics card, capable of running the latest 3D games at high settings.
Likes: Impressive hardware mix for the price 144Hz display Per-key backlighting GeForce RTX 2070 GPU High-End graphics card, capable of running the latest 3D games at high settings.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max P 6GB GDDR6 (65-115 Watt graphics power)
512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
15.6" Narrow Bezel Full HD IPS-Type 144Hz Anti-Glare Display (1920 x 1080)
3 to 4 hours
4.25 lbs
8.9/10
Likes: very small and lightweight given the performance excellent CPU performance sustainability full-size NumPad and arrow keys fast, high quality 144 Hz panel quiet when on Office mode M.2 SSD heat spreaders 2x mini-DisplayPort 2x M.2 2280 slots IR camera High-End graphics card, capable of running the latest 3D games at high settings.
15. 6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) Widescreen LED-backlit IPS Display (144Hz Refresh Rate, 3ms Overdrive Response Time, 300nit Brightness & 72% NTSC)
5 Hours
5.07 pounds
9.2/10
One of the most bought gaming laptops is the Helios 300. Due to its standard over the years as packing great specifications which delivers a wonderful performance for it's price. Likes:
sturdy build quality
compact, but still fairly heavy
good 144 Hz matte screen
High-End graphics card, capable of running the latest 3D games at high settings.
capable thermal implementation, but the fans need to spin fast and loudly in order to keep the components at bay
Likes: Ryzen 7 4800H offers faster multithread performance than the Core i7-10875H GeForce RTX 2060 with 6 GB of VRAM 144-Hz display with good contrast ratio dedicated mouse buttons and integrated USB Type-C port good maintenance options; 3x mass storage, 2x SODIMM good battery life backlit keyboard
These are the best games that don't require WiFi and you can Play these free games without WiFi. Asphalt 9, Hungry Shark, Fallout Shelter, Crossy Road, Plague, Duet, Gangster Vegas, Limbo, etc. are Games that do not require the data connection. Download and play the full version of these games for free with no time limits! Free games are supported by advertisers. In Limbo, you are a little boy that needs to survive this colorless world of the game as he overcomes various obstacles and escape scary monsters. I like the game’s artwork and the atmosphere is simply top-notch here if you like the dark ambient in the games. It’s a must-play for every offline Indie games lover! 17. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Friday the 13th is a fun arcade activity experience game with terror elements that you can play without wifi. Regardless to say, the game clearly should not be recommended to children. But, others can play it without wifi, and it’s a good game that doesn’t need wifi. 11 Best Games That Don’t Need Wifi or Internet Connection. 1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. The latest of the COD series, Black Ops 4 is a game that can be played without Wi-Fi, and one of the games built to allow a more aggressive play that is, of course, a bit more engaging. Play a new IO Games list with millions of players around the world and try to become the longest of the day. All New HTML5 game in the io genre on notFlash.com Temple Run 2, Angry Birds 2, Candy Crush Saga, Plant Vs Zombies 2, Dots & Co, Subway Surfer, Shadow Fight 3, Flow Free, Sudoku, and Asphalt 8: Airborne are the best free “No WiFi games” for iPhone and iPad. However, we also have an extensive list of best offline iPhone games that don’t need WiFi. Smurf’s Village is one of the popular games in the genre of games that need no WiFi. It also includes some interesting mini-games. The game features a slew of interesting characters. Concept of Free Games Without WiFi Or No Wifi Games Free. No wifi games or free games without wifi are the type of games which you can play without wifi or with no internet connection. Nowadays as we know mobile internet connection pack prices are at the pick, and most of the data consumed by this high-graphic games, even if you have enough data connection but sometimes you are at some place Offline games are the answer! Games that don't need internet are actually pretty common and you should be able to fill your spare time with games like Minecraft Pocket Edition, Crashlands, Tales of Lagoona - and plenty of hidden object games too - without wifi.
I hope you like my video and I hope I can get a 1,000 like for . Hey everyone its Prophecy here with my personal Top 10 LAN Games (PC) You Should Play. Hope you like them ENJOY!. Hello Everyone How to play YouTube videos and run Facebook without turning on Internet . It's a very easy and awesome Android Trick , It will increase your ... To download The app which is used in the video so check out here:Name: Xposed Instraller ApkURL: https://repo.xposed.info/module/de.robv.androi... Hah guys I'm sorry 😅Like and subscribe for more funny videos like thisFollow me on my socials:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notboyxd/?hl=enTwitter: ... Please like and subscribe Here is our list of top 10 best free PC games 2020. This list includes the best free to play games which include FPS, Battle Royale and Survival. This list m... Top 10 Best Offline Games For PC in 2020.Hello Guys In this Video We Have Sum Good Games That You Might Be play In Those Days .These Games Are Easily Run You... Hello Friends!!!Today I am going to show you how to play a Game on your PC WITHOUT INTERNET OR DOWNLOAD !!!To Play that game on your Android Device, click on...
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