In light of video card prices and lack of spending money, I decided to up-downgrade..futuregrade? my main PC's video card from a GTX285 to a GTX550Ti that was left in an abandoned system.
The 550 isn't as powerful as the older card, but it supports DirectX 11 so it's more compatible with things I now want to do on this machine.

So the middling GTX550Ti is in place, the main appeal being that I can conveniently mess with Assetto Corsa modding without having to get on my modern gaming PC. I'm sure it's also less power hungry.
Besides, it bothered me to think I was using up the GTX285's life to run spreadsheets.
The old heavyweight will go on the shelf until I can dedicate this system back to WinXP.

Got Kodi 19.4 Matrix to play Blu-Ray movies from the LG Blu-Ray Writer (I wrote the firmware to the drive first after I backed up the original firmware to play it safe) by copying the DLL file twice from the MakeMKV software and renaming the file from libmmbd.dll to libaasc.dll and libbdplus.dll to decode/decrypt the Blu-Ray algorithms (doesn't mess up the Blu-Rays themselves, just only decodes/decrypts the algorithm). One of the Blu-Rays needs a good surface cleaning and the other I tested works just fine, so my gaming laptop has a Blu-Ray writer for watching movies and the Samsung external DVD burner will be utilized for archiving out-of-region movies and the Blu-Ray Writer can do the same thing as well for DVDs (going to test that theory) and I'll see if out-of-region Blu-Rays can be archived or played as well with this libredrive firmware.

My best friend was about to trash his old i7-920 tower but I kind of liked the case, so I took it home and upgraded it a bit: bought a Xeon, swapped the PSU from my slow i5, updated the BIOS, replaced its ATi 5870 with a 750Ti, replaced its 3x2gb of DDR3 with 6x8gb, added an SSD, added a second DVDRW, bought a HDD, etc. Looks like it's the most recent/fastest system I have around so it's my new daily driver =p Also bought a Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus for it... Very OK DAC, nice headphone amp, not fond of the SB Command software or its enhancements so it works in direct-out mode all the time, not using the RGB stuff at all.

Case: CM Sniper Original
CPU: Intel Xeon X5690 @ 3.46GHz
MB: Asus P6TD Deluxe
PSU: EVGA SuperNova 850 P5
RAM: 48GB DDR3@1333MHz (6x8gb modules)
GPU: MSI N750Ti-2GD5/OC (has VGA!)
Optical: Samsung SH-224DB, LG GH24NSD1 (trash)
Storage: Crucial 250gb SSD / Seagate 4TB HDD (smr 🙁)
Extras: ASMedia USB3.1 PCIe, Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus, 3.5" card reader

Since my trip to get ready for the exams is rather painfully long and slow, I had to find a way to keep myself out of boredom.

Maybe I am boring for doing this, but for me it felt much more of a challenge than playing Ricochet Lost Worlds Recharged half of the day. About the same amount of mouse movements, and it's more simple than Photoshop once you get the hang of it. For those curious what I did, I took a character from an anime, and turned it into another character from another anime. (I smell a "yo dawg" unintentional pun here)

Retired the Threadripper 2950x to be a gaming rig for my brother and moved my work machine to be my daily driver .. now its time to build a new work machine !! Though that will likely wait till Sapphire Rapids X is released since I have zero interest in using desktop parts in a workstation, it'll actually be fun having a new HEDT platform to mess around with and im hoping Intel will allow dual socket versions for us normies.

The work rig is a 10980xe, 64gb DDR4 4000 CL15, GeForce RTX 3080ti and 30tb of storage (Mostly NVME/SSD) on a ASUS Extreme Omega, overkill for a daily driver but a fun rig to use. (Originally had 128gb but it was slower memory so I sold it to buy the faster memory)

Setting up a new trackingboard and I can't find my HDMI to DisplayPort cables that we had budgeted out months ago.. Christ, I want to hit someone. Everything I've been doing lately has been riddled with setbacks and now this shit.

Got the ASUS Prime X480-Pro installed along with all of the items I've used on the AM3+ build, however, I'm waiting for the RAM to arrive so I can get the upgrade fully completed.

I removed the old paste from the CPU and heatsink and applied new paste on the Ryzen 5 2600X CPU to play it safe, removed the CMOS battery to clear any setting, and once I get the RAM installed, I'll test it out on my 43" UHD TV to make sure it's working 100% before I get a pair of nice gaming monitors for it.

Here's the gallery of the system: https://imgur.com/a/ib9nBsT

Today I'm building a dinky m-ATX project PC to sit alongside my main ATX project PC (which itself sits alongside my actual newish main non- project PC). It's built around a 4c8t ivybridge Xeon CPU on a cheapo 1155 motherboard with 8GB of DDR3.

It's going to have a 256GB SSD (because my 750GB one is in the ATX project PC) and a GTX 560ti as it is the most powerful small and 'low' power GPU I have that will work in the case. I'll put Windows 7 on it probably.

What can I say I just like building PCs.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-06-17, 22:18:

Setting up a new trackingboard and I can't find my HDMI to DisplayPort cables that we had budgeted out months ago.. Christ, I want to hit someone. Everything I've been doing lately has been riddled with setbacks and now this shit.

I thought you couldn't do HDMI to DP? They aren't compatible but DP to HDMI is. Because DP includes 'backwards compatible' stuff. I remember having this problem connecting a work laptop to my monitor...

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2022-06-19, 07:46:

creepingnet wrote on 2022-06-17, 22:18:

Setting up a new trackingboard and I can't find my HDMI to DisplayPort cables that we had budgeted out months ago.. Christ, I want to hit someone. Everything I've been doing lately has been riddled with setbacks and now this shit.

I thought you couldn't do HDMI to DP? They aren't compatible but DP to HDMI is. Because DP includes 'backwards compatible' stuff. I remember having this problem connecting a work laptop to my monitor...

Displayport to HDMI monitor - I get them backwards sometimes. They work just fine. I think they may have some special circuitry within the cable end(s) to allow them to work.

For my own DR purposes (and start to maybe end up shutting down my home server cluster to save on electricity bills) I've spun up a cloud hosted server and started moving my email server etc over to it. Got the inbuilt Windows VPN working from it to my home Sophos firewall which let me join it to my domain and become a domain controller.

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-27, 13:35:

For my own DR purposes (and start to maybe end up shutting down my home server cluster to save on electricity bills) I've spun up a cloud hosted server and started moving my email server etc over to it. Got the inbuilt Windows VPN working from it to my home Sophos firewall which let me join it to my domain and become a domain controller.

Is power getting that high in the UK ?

Though I guess it does depend on how big your cluster is 🤣.

I dont know how viable Solar would be in the UK, I guess it depends on your locality and how much sun you get per year.
I run a 6Kw Solar setup here so my power bills are not as bad as they could be, have you thought about supplementing your power with a small solar setup ?
Even running the home/servers off the Solar for daylight hours would go a long way to cutting power costs.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-27, 15:16:

Is power getting that high in the UK ? […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-27, 13:35:

For my own DR purposes (and start to maybe end up shutting down my home server cluster to save on electricity bills) I've spun up a cloud hosted server and started moving my email server etc over to it. Got the inbuilt Windows VPN working from it to my home Sophos firewall which let me join it to my domain and become a domain controller.

Is power getting that high in the UK ?

Though I guess it does depend on how big your cluster is 🤣.

I dont know how viable Solar would be in the UK, I guess it depends on your locality and how much sun you get per year.
I run a 6Kw Solar setup here so my power bills are not as bad as they could be, have you thought about supplementing your power with a small solar setup ?
Even running the home/servers off the Solar for daylight hours would go a long way to cutting power costs.

My monthly energy bill (gas and electricity) is over £400 now 🙁 about a 1/4 of that is my server rack!

Yeah I do actually have a small solar setup - 3x300W panels (not very well positioned so I get max of about 4kWh each day out of it this time of year at height of summer, next to nothing in winter!). Reducing down to 1 small switch, 1 small server and my QNAP NAS I won't be far off running it for free for at a decent chunk of the year 😀

Heh, maybe need to see what LTT Linus is up to with the water loops on his servers at the super-house so you can claim some heat value back.

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-27, 23:06:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-27, 15:16:

Is power getting that high in the UK ? […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-27, 13:35:

For my own DR purposes (and start to maybe end up shutting down my home server cluster to save on electricity bills) I've spun up a cloud hosted server and started moving my email server etc over to it. Got the inbuilt Windows VPN working from it to my home Sophos firewall which let me join it to my domain and become a domain controller.

Is power getting that high in the UK ?

Though I guess it does depend on how big your cluster is 🤣.

I dont know how viable Solar would be in the UK, I guess it depends on your locality and how much sun you get per year.
I run a 6Kw Solar setup here so my power bills are not as bad as they could be, have you thought about supplementing your power with a small solar setup ?
Even running the home/servers off the Solar for daylight hours would go a long way to cutting power costs.

My monthly energy bill (gas and electricity) is over £400 now 🙁 about a 1/4 of that is my server rack!

Yeah I do actually have a small solar setup - 3x300W panels (not very well positioned so I get max of about 4kWh each day out of it this time of year at height of summer, next to nothing in winter!). Reducing down to 1 small switch, 1 small server and my QNAP NAS I won't be far off running it for free for at a decent chunk of the year 😀

Holy shit ...400 quid a month so about 2830 AUD a quarter, yeah thats way more than power costs here, lucky if my quarterly power bill is 500 dollars, though its actual cost without the 6Kw solar setup would likely be double that.

That's one hell of a server rack !

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-28, 01:58:

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-27, 23:06:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-27, 15:16:

Is power getting that high in the UK ? […]
Show full quote

Is power getting that high in the UK ?

Though I guess it does depend on how big your cluster is 🤣.

I dont know how viable Solar would be in the UK, I guess it depends on your locality and how much sun you get per year.
I run a 6Kw Solar setup here so my power bills are not as bad as they could be, have you thought about supplementing your power with a small solar setup ?
Even running the home/servers off the Solar for daylight hours would go a long way to cutting power costs.

My monthly energy bill (gas and electricity) is over £400 now 🙁 about a 1/4 of that is my server rack!

Yeah I do actually have a small solar setup - 3x300W panels (not very well positioned so I get max of about 4kWh each day out of it this time of year at height of summer, next to nothing in winter!). Reducing down to 1 small switch, 1 small server and my QNAP NAS I won't be far off running it for free for at a decent chunk of the year 😀

Holy shit ...400 quid a month so about 2830 AUD a quarter, yeah thats way more than power costs here, lucky if my quarterly power bill is 500 dollars, though its actual cost without the 6Kw solar setup would likely be double that.

That's one hell of a server rack !

No it's just we're charged 33p per kWh now here! The server rack is 3 little basic 1U Lenovo servers and a QNAP NAS with a couple small fanless switches - draws about 350W including the UPS.

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-28, 08:38:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-28, 01:58:

SteveC wrote on 2022-06-27, 23:06:

My monthly energy bill (gas and electricity) is over £400 now 🙁 about a 1/4 of that is my server rack!

Yeah I do actually have a small solar setup - 3x300W panels (not very well positioned so I get max of about 4kWh each day out of it this time of year at height of summer, next to nothing in winter!). Reducing down to 1 small switch, 1 small server and my QNAP NAS I won't be far off running it for free for at a decent chunk of the year 😀

Holy shit ...400 quid a month so about 2830 AUD a quarter, yeah thats way more than power costs here, lucky if my quarterly power bill is 500 dollars, though its actual cost without the 6Kw solar setup would likely be double that.

That's one hell of a server rack !

No it's just we're charged 33p per kWh now here! The server rack is 3 little basic 1U Lenovo servers and a QNAP NAS with a couple small fanless switches - draws about 350W including the UPS.

Remind me to not move to the UK, thats insane for energy pricing.

Recloned the 160GB HDD to the 500GB SSD to use half of the storage so I can install Linux.

Linux was a pain to get it working with the 9400M on a MacBook Late 2008 Unibody until I found commands to repair the 340 drivers.

Also added the rEFIned boot manager to make it snazzy. That and so I can switch between Linux and Mac OS 10.11.6 El Capitan.

Fighting with a Med program tonight getting 2+ hours Overtime as I work over a slow-as-a-TRS-80-Trying-To-FTP-Half-Life VPN connection. The waiting is the hardest part. Hell, my Tandy 1000A downloads a 250MB File faster than this using HTGET in mTCP. I'm literally writing this as I wait for a tab to open in the config settings - damn Citrix apps.

And kind of stuck since this guy needs to get in to see the information, rats. And I still need to login and pay rent tonight.

jeeze, I think I'm going to spend my weekend - when I'm not cleaning - playing with the 486s.....at least they're snappy.

I installed a 1TB nVME drive in my ASUS FX502VM laptop along with a new battery since the old one wasn't charging all the way and the laptop would die after 5 minutes of being unplugged. I moved my files over from the 480GB SSD to the 1TB nVME drive and I re-installed Fortnight and COD on the drive along with Conarium (I haven't played that game in years and good thing the cloud sync for Epic works as intended).