StriderTR wrote on 2025-08-30, 21:49:

Swapping out my original Ender 3 with a newer, faster, and the overall "better" Ender 3 V3 SE.

Got the V3 for my wife last year, but, she's not using it. So, it's mine now. She didn't like the manual filament swapping for color changes. Going to have to get her a multi-color unit.

My old Ender 3 served me well, have a ton of upgrades on it, but this V3 is so much nicer. Going to make my 3D printing life easier. 😀

* laughs in Creality K1C *

i didnt like how manual the ender 3 is, so i decided to make my life a little easier. (and then proceeded to make several mods because of course...why not?)

Living wrote on 2025-09-01, 15:49:

StriderTR wrote on 2025-08-30, 21:49:

Swapping out my original Ender 3 with a newer, faster, and the overall "better" Ender 3 V3 SE.

Got the V3 for my wife last year, but, she's not using it. So, it's mine now. She didn't like the manual filament swapping for color changes. Going to have to get her a multi-color unit.

My old Ender 3 served me well, have a ton of upgrades on it, but this V3 is so much nicer. Going to make my 3D printing life easier. 😀

* laughs in Creality K1C *

i didnt like how manual the ender 3 is, so i decided to make my life a little easier. (and then proceeded to make several mods because of course...why not?)

Heh, yeah. The Ender 3 is indeed very manual. 🤣

But, that's what I wanted to start with. I wanted to build the printer, set it up, and get a firm understanding of how they function before I really dove in and started spending money on the hobby. So, the original Ender 3 made sense. It's about as DIY as you can get. I'm glad I did. All standard 3D printers operate on the same basic principals, learning these from the ground up, along with all the troubleshooting, taught me a lot.

The Ender 3 V3 SE is much less manual. It does everything pretty much on its own. However, it's still missing two features I want. An auto filament change system for easier multi-color printing, and a higher print speed. While the V3 SE is much faster than the original Ender 3, it realistically tops out at about 180MMs, closer to 150MM on many prints.

So, I'm looking at buying a couple Flashforge AD5X 4-Color printers. I know people who use and love them. For my needs, they will work fine.

Why do I need 3 printers up and running? I'm starting up a little 3D printing shop to print common household items, outdoor items, decor, tool, and setting up a section dedicated to modern and retro computer accessories. 😀

ratfink wrote on 2025-08-31, 12:57:

Decided to cut my losses (time and mental headroom as well as money and space) and recycle my Ryzen 7 mobo/cpu/ram/gpu. Case has already gone along with its sticky rubber. Rest goes today.

Have moved to Windows 11 on a mini PC.

I'm feeling that too, except my Ryzen is six months old. I was not expecting this kind of power consumption, and now I've found reviews showing that a cheaper Core Ultra 5 245K is slightly faster than the 9700X while having lower power consumption outside of heavy all-core loads. Of course, those heavy all-core loads are the only thing anyone uses to determine "efficiency," so AMD gets better ratings. I just found a Guru3D review showing full system power consumption of 45W at idle with an RTX 4090, while I'm seeing 54W with integrated graphics. So far, that looks like an outlier, but maybe there's something preventing the chipset or a motherboard peripheral from idling down (the block of metal "chipset heatsink" gets so hot that I can only touch it for a few seconds, but none of the sensor readings show anything in that 55-60°C range).

The next question is what to get to replace it. I'm seeing some weird mixed power consumption measurements on Intel platforms (sometimes in my expected idle power consumption range of 20-25W and some matching my Ryzen), so I think I would go with a mini-PC with a mobile or embedded CPU. Then would I want to get a high-end model that can do everything or keep the big space heater Ryzen around to use when I need the extra performance? I was going to hand down my old i5-8500 to my parents since they're still on a 7th-gen CPU without the technical knowledge (my mom) or patience (my dad) to force-install Windows 11 or use Linux.

lti wrote on 2025-09-01, 19:02:

The next question is what to get to replace it... I think I would go with a mini-PC with a mobile or embedded CPU. Then would I want to get a high-end model that can do everything or keep the big space heater Ryzen around to use when I need the extra performance?

My Ryzen 7 had started to die anyway, and I then killed it completely through a serious of unfortunate events (lol).

For what it's worth I bought a GMKtec K8 (or K8 Plus in some descriptions) with 64gb ram, 1TB SSD, Ryzen 7 8845HS, 11 pre-installed. Apparently:

"AMD Radeon 780M 12 Cores Graphics Card; AMD RONA 3 graphics architecture; performance is almost close to that of a full NVIDIA GTX 1650 Ti"

and

"AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS features “Hawk Point” AI NPU, which increases the NPU's power by 6 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to 16 TOPS in the NPU. The new 2024 Ryzen AI chip is able to accelerate AI software capabilities in your PC to optimize AI workloads, improve AI processing efficiencies, and unlock exciting experiences like AI-powered noise cancellation."

I haven't tried any games yet, only photo software, but so far it's been a nice smooth experience for about £500. The top of the range Ryzen 9 models from the same company are twice that and more.

Thinking of getting a second mini-PC for linux (partly for Wine), but I can't work out what would be a sensible purchase, whether to try a different manufacturer etc.