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My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

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Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How quickly is quickly? I've never had a CPU break on me, I still have laptops in storage a decade old that work fine, only they're too slow for the modern web. Perhaps 90C is reasonable for the time you will be using the device.

Individual transistors will break, the cpu will continue to work, but it will run slower. That's probably why your old laptops are "too slow for the modern web". " Some circuits and buses are protected by error correcting codes (ECC). If a transistor becomes marginal—meaning that it works most of the time, but occasionally fails—and thus only causes occasional glitches in those buses, then the processor may continue…

The Linux kernel will complain loudly if ECC, etc kick in.

It is more likely that the thermal paste will degrade, the heatsink will get dusty, or things will start requiring missing GPU APIs, and fall back to software rendering.

Transistor efficiency also drops over time (creating more heat). Usually capacitors or connectors fail before that matters though.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#112
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens with eyeballs as well as ears. Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11, or people who don't mind (or even prefer!) Windows font rendering.

I confess I am somewhat impervious to bad kerning myself. I thought about fixing that (there's online exercises that one can take) but then I realized that there's potentially so much bad kerning out there I would be making my life more miserable for no reason.

https://xkcd.com/1015/

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#113
post #69
post #50

One small note: HDPlex has a 250W GaN PSU which is also fanless and shockingly compact. https://hdplex.com/hdplex-fanless-250w-gan-aio-atx-psu.html it is also moduler and supports chaining. Altogether a very very interesting brand new product.

Are they still in business? Their last blog update was two and a half years ago, and most if not all of their products are out of stock? I have the first generation of their cases still in use and it's absolutely rock solid quality. But seeing the activity on their forum and web shop go down I'm not sure I can recommend them anymore.

They absolutely are. You can see for example there are a few of these GaN PSUs in stock in Asia and US is expected to get stock on Monday. https://smallformfactor.net/forum/ has lots of satisfied buyers and a month ago /r/sffpc was abuzz with people getting \these and fitting them in various cases. I exchanged an email with Larry on September 21 last. He is certainly not great on social media, like, their twitter account exists but is completely empty.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#114

Doesn't using a single DIMM for memory really kill the performance? I thought basically all Intel & AMD CPUs have two channels of memory controllers. So for optimal bandwidth on the memory you need to use a multiple of two memory sticks.

well you can check ram bandwidth usage (read and write) and it max out in some instances (5950X 3200CL16 dual channel) while compiling

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#115

Unfortunately the author won't be able to comment on HN since he got banned 10 years ago. As a result, he created another site some might know https://lobste.rs https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news

Seems to be back:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=there

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#116

I enjoy reading posts like this, which delve into personal setups and the intentions behind them. However, I found this a bit puzzling: > While not an absolute requirement, integrated speakers would be a nice option on the monitor so I wouldn't have to buy separate ones and find a place for them on my desk. For such a methodically constructed workspace, especially one that goes out of its way to avoid fan noise, I'd…

I appreciate a quiet setup, but I don't actually care all that much about the quality of the PC speakers; most of the time I use it just to watch a short video, or maybe a presentation or interview. As long as it doesn't sound absolutely horribly tinny it's "good enough". For more "serious listening" I use headphones.

I sort of assumed headphones were the OP's actual primary audio source. Makes more sense. I end up using headphones half the time anyway because that allows for more convenient audio options when taking calls on multiple devices throughout the day.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#118
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people who argued that "4k is pointless, you can't see the different with 2k anw".

For gaming or videos I actually can’t tell the difference between 4K and 1440p. For text rendering I absolutely can.

As an aside, many 4k/1440p videos are not really 4k or 1440p, vs how we would classify a 4k/1440p monitor. Video is mostly 4k/1440p light levels, but less than that w.r.t. color information.

A common video subsampling setup is 4:2:0.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

In addition, common video compression techniques (at least the simple ones that I could still understand) basically reconstruct blocks of pixels. Reconstruction is lossy, at best.

If I had to guess, something similar could be done in games as part of their optimizations.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#119

Unfortunately the author won't be able to comment on HN since he got banned 10 years ago. As a result, he created another site some might know https://lobste.rs https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news

That's fucking funny considering they let people like Andrew Aurenheimer brag about being the CTO of the daily stormer on here for years now. The more pettiness I see on the internet the less I bother

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#120
post #18

Something I've learned from discussing computer hardware informally online over the years is that people have vastly different standards for what it means for fans to be "silent" in use. So much so that it's hardly worth discussing, because someone will insist that such and such fan or actively-cooled device is silent, and then you buy it and it sounds like crap. I suspect it's "Cloth Ears" in many cases.

Pretty hard for "fanless" to make fan noise though!
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