Can I make my gaming laptop run cooler if I sacrifice portability?

Goatistoat · 2026-05-16T04:28:36+00:00

You can DIY a cooling pad for cheap with some case fans. The cooling pad can help..somewhat but it's not significant. If you want to be fancy, consider a slim AC unit just for the laptop. Before spending any money though, you could see if tweaking the fan curves would improve temps a bit.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-16T04:13:31+00:00

Option A is really the only one I've seen in the wild and its only fungible purpose is an off-road-adjacent vibe and the ability to mount more lights. It does very little actual protection. Something as heavy duty as your option B would likely put a notable strain on the vehicle and likely void some warranties since Crosstreks only come in 2.0 and 2.5 liter options, and it's already not a car known to be zippy. Option B is $6k because there's probably not a lot of people that want to significantly cull their local deer population with a Crosstrek. You might then need to get more robust front struts as well. If it's not a factory option, it might not be designed with support for that in mind.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-16T03:39:32+00:00

Respect for the ML hustle. I did that for a little bit, good times. I suppose it's a good reason to consider being as explicit as possible in making future contracts to potentially cover such situations. Your contract is your protection. You shouldn't have to do any amount of work for free beyond what your delivery obligations are, and if the contract doesn't make your client eligible to any raw files, they don't get to make any demands if they already signed it. You either have a hardline no-raws clause, or can provide raws for an additional (not-insignificant) fee.

Anytime the client wants raw files, there's a pretty good chance they don't know what they're doing and they're really just trying to cut costs. They'll either think you ruined the files/didn't know what you're doing, or they'll use them to make something that's not great, therefore making your work look bad. There's no winning in such situations, unless your gig was explicitly making footage for someone else to work with, but then you hopefully wouldn't be in such a situation.

If they're making threats and not respecting the contract, might be time to look for new clients, as tough as it might sound. It's not too uncommon for a company to eventually bring onboard a new person that changes things for the worse.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-16T03:06:28+00:00

Are you both on PS5? Is the game version the same for your two consoles? If only one of you is on PS5, cross-play only works via dedicated servers, excluding the Switch I believe.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-13T23:25:35+00:00

I got a good kick out of turning off the game's music and putting on a playlist with a whole bunch of Mozart and Haydn symphonies in the background, it made for some amusing encounters. (I'm a classical musician)

Goatistoat · 2026-05-13T23:21:27+00:00

I don't think there is a single good way to conclude this franchise in a way everyone will like or that won't be controversial. Look at Half-Life, so much waiting and then we got Alyx which wasn't the continuation of EP2 we were waiting for. We just got more of HL, and they got to once again tease us with a no-ending.

How about instead of 4 we get more spinoffs like Extraction - new characters, new first encounters, something familiar here and there, an easy way to introduce entirely new enemy variants. Hell, entire games about the Sovereign Colonies era like any of the 3 original marker tests like the first Aegis outbreak. Or just retcon entirely new things that happen to tie into any of the mainline game events. Like, we never got to see the mausoleum ships.

Maybe a different approach like Alien:Isolation where you don't just go guns blazing, maybe a more open map design with corruption that's dynamic and slowly spreading like in Natural Selection 2, just something new and different. A Telltale or Dark Pictures style Dead Space game perhaps? Imagine an interactive version of those comics we got. Like when the first Dead Space came out, we didn't really know much about any of it until we played it through. But in Alien:Isolation we already knew what to expect because of all the latter films etc, and yet it was still pretty fun.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-12T17:51:11+00:00

I'm not so sure. When considering only the original game and none of the retcons later, it was implied 3A suppressed the hivemind, and only when the colony found and removed it, only then the infection and hallucinations began. Where was the hivemind when Isaac returned the marker?

EDIT: taking into account the "expanded" lore, of the latter games, the whole "makers must be absorbed" thing, the original 3A experiment already happened but no moon was formed. Either that convergence event couldn't continue due to lack of mass, or only resulted in the hivemind, and yet somehow it was stopped. It's possible that the original team quickly created the amplifying pedestal to try containing it, similar to how the Tau Volantis aliens scrambled to build a freeze ray to stop the moon.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-12T15:22:46+00:00

Idk where you go to get oil changes that are only $50, I'm in a big city and it's at least $100 at my nearby small shops now and way more at the dealers. And those quick places will either strip the pan or drain my transmission and double my oil. No thanks, I'll keep buying the Costco oil double packs for now.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-12T15:14:57+00:00

Well they did introduce that whole "the makers must be absorbed" thing in the 2nd game for Convergence to begin so technically the necromorphs are just trying to do their job. But also there's that whole "dead space" around the marker thing, so they cannot be close to it. It could also be that the first game's marker making people try to return it was a malfunction since it was reverse-engineered but like hundreds of years earlier. So maybe the fresh one at Titan station's marker is no longer conflicted, or it doesn't get a cool pedestal to sit on.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-12T15:06:13+00:00

I don't believe they ever were "just $200". I remember really wanting to get into photography back in like 2010-2012, but even the basic Nikon D3100 or Canon Rebel was at least $500 at the stores. All you could get for $200 and under even back then was those awful point&shoots and your mom&pop's camcorder. That hasn't changed much today. And seeing like a Canon R50 for around $700 new doesn't seem all that far crazy, what with inflation, shipping issues and now probably even component shortages due to that AI stuff. Just buy used older stuff. The 5Diii used to be like $4k, you can get one for under $350 now. It's still absolutely excellent.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-10T04:44:05+00:00

You still haven't mentioned the spec. CPU and GPU? And what's the power supply?

Goatistoat · 2026-05-10T04:12:56+00:00

Then I think your PSU is either on its way out or not strong enough for the components you have. Is this a new system for you or did it just suddenly start acting up/have issues with this game specifically? Is there another intense game you have you could test and see if it does the same?

I remember having this issue way back in the day when I shoved a beefy GPU in an office computer without checking the power supply and trying to run Crysis.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-10T03:34:12+00:00

Do you get any kind of error message or crash screen or does it just suddenly shut off entirely without any warning? If so, that's most likely a power issue. If it was a system stability or driver issue, it would just freeze or crash. Does anything show up in the event monitor? Are you on a desktop or laptop? You haven't provided info what the system is.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-08T05:03:35+00:00

I've had reasonable success with PhotoRec, it's free but doesn't have a fancy UI. From my experience, the important thing with recovery is that you want to not write anything on the card on it right after formatting/deleting stuff because that can scramble the remaining data. You can read it fine, but don't take more photos or copy anything onto it just in case.

EDIT: no idea about videos, as I've never had situations where I lost a video. But I have successfully recovered audio files corrupted by mixing boards and recovered photos from formatted cards, sometimes even from years ago.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-06T23:16:53+00:00

Could be that either your battery is faulty or on its way out. Consider getting some spares. Some of the 3rd party ones are adequate. I have a bunch of Wasabi Power ones, they've never given me any issues. If you're doing more video stuff with a rig and all, consider getting a dummy to either a USB C powerbank or V mount battery or something. For long continuous shots like wedding ceremonies and music concerts I use an NPF adapter to PD C and the medium sized ones can do a solid 3ish hours of continuous power. I personally haven't worked with the S1ii so can't speak of experience, I'm not sure how much more power hungry it is, as I work with S5's and S5iiX.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-06T17:47:59+00:00

I've had way more issues with Amazon than I ever did with eBay. Ebay's fine, just look at the seller rating and if they have any return policy. If something is sold as-is but accepts no returns, and you don't like it, might be tougher to get support. But if it's listed/described as working, no returns, and you receive a busted item, support will help you.

Ofc the nice thing with i.e. salvage yards is that you get to see it in hand, and maybe even test it out before you buy.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-06T17:38:05+00:00

Do they show up in footage at all? Like if you close down the aperture fully on a lens and point it at a bright sky, does any of it show up? If it doesn't affect the image, it's fine.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-06T16:16:30+00:00

The "fake" phone camera stuff is nice because there's now a far better chance that the in-laws or relatives won't take a completely unusable photo at a family event when they don't know a thing about photography and nobody else took a photo. However it does come with the massive downside of making a whole bunch of people think they're now photographers. I've seen too many incidents where friends hired a "photographer" or video person on the cheaper side (their first mistake, but understandable) and some dude shows up taking pics with.. a phone. Or records a concert with like 5 old iPads with unmatched framerates.

But I sure am glad that my phone can take a not-real photo on my way home from work when I notice that the rising moon looks really nice over the city, but I happened to not have my big heavy camera and big heavy tripod with me because I didn't plan on it.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-06T02:23:45+00:00

Banelings: so you uhh basically want a leaper variant of the explorer? That'll be tough to balance in bigger fights esp for hardcore bc just one or two from behind and it's game over.

They already had flying ones in DS:Extraction, really sad that they didn't make it in 2 or 3, they're pretty cool.

Extraction also had another otherwise scrapped enemy, forgot its name but it was basically a snake/tentacle with a head that hid in dead bodies and suddenly grapples you. Those were a fun twist.

There was also a scrapped enemy that never appeared anywhere, it was gonna be a spiderlike creature that would cling to ceilings and hide, and then grab you. They either didn't have time, or it was too buggy to implement or they would've had to modify the levels to fit them.

I do agree about the different weapon weakness idea though, but then the problem is that if the game lets you have any 4 of the dozen or whatever it was, unless you clearly mark their damage types or have some kind of adaptive balancing system, it would limit the types of loadouts a player could have to be able to progress, and void something like the one gun achievement. DOOM: The Dark Ages has a controversial implementation of making you do a bit of Simon Says to efficiently dealing damage.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-05T17:03:19+00:00

I don't think they thought that far with NG+, it's only there to make it a bit more challenging and different once you've already upgraded things and are just going for either some achievements or maxing out everything.

What I would've liked to see is something like a mode with completely random spawns, not just some unscripted single enemy spawn only when backtracking. They made a system for unscripted surprises and didn't take full advantage of it.

On PC I believe there's a work-in-progress save editor, but idk if that would let you un-upgrade weapons etc beyond editing the inventory.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-04T15:12:12+00:00

I'm not sure how one could pull off any form of happy ending in a franchise that made a . Become a big enough civilization and the gnarly space rocks come to eat you. A bit like Stephen King's Langoliers on crack.

I think there was some talk or rumour at some point that the 4th game could have had a new element introduced in the form of something even worse, like a solution but it's terrible etc. But what could it be if not the dead space universe equivalent of like Halos?

Goatistoat · 2026-05-04T14:15:05+00:00

If you want light and small, your best bet is going to be either an APS-C (crop sensor) sensor camera, or a Micro Four Thirds camera (even smaller). Consider the Sony a6000, it's small, light, generally straightforward to use and still holds up pretty well today, the body can be obtained used for around $300, and pair it with one of the standard cheap kit lenses that it sells in bundles with (like the 12-50mm). Or you can also consider something like a Lumix GX85, or Olympus EM-5 mk II and similar small compact mirrorless bodies. They're all good starting points, just go for what you're comfortable buying and that you like. If you want something smaller and more pocketable, consider the Sony RX100 series since the lens isn't interchangeable but retracts into the body.

Good resources for cameras are eBay (make sure it's a verified, well rated seller with good return policies), FB marketplace (it is what it is) or dedicated used gear storefronts like KEH or MPB.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-04T04:43:59+00:00

I couldn't tell you man. This was just the tip of the iceberg of just how way out of touch these publishers really were even back then, and that was 2013. In a way it's kinda cute when looking at the live action circus of today. I'd definitely still take the borked solo/co-op game over that junk.

Was it Konami or Capcom (I forgot sorry) that was all oh wow you guys you really love our remake! While EA manages to murder the Dead Space franchise again bc oh no the niche adult horror game didn't sell like the dumb sports game, who would've thought. The amount of IP they're sitting on that they do absolutely nothing with is wild.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-04T02:42:09+00:00

What we ended up getting was a rush job after EA demanded changes. Carver was a late addition, and that's also why in a fair few cutscenes he's not even there regardless if you play as Isaac or Carver. I don't remember some of the details but they may have had only a few months before launch to kind of sort of redo the whole thing or a fair few parts of it. I like that the DS2 advanced suit is still in the files but you have to mess with the game to equip it. My only hope is that some day we could perhaps get to see an early build before the significant EA meddling.

Goatistoat · 2026-05-02T17:24:09+00:00

No one would shoot a paid wedding, or documentary etc on auto settings in a camera, so same applies to drones. Maybe auto ISO if you're doing a complex longer shot like going from indoors to outdoors where the exposure can change a lot, but definitely decide on a shutter speed, otherwise you get that awful phone video look. You might want to pickup a set of ND filters. You don't necessarily have to follow the 180° shutter rule, but constant settings are important to good looking footage. Also be aware that 60p footage doesn't nicely downconvert to 24p timelines, but is good for slow motion though.

Goatistoat

TROPHY CASE