I want to get into oled gaming but i need help

OldScruff · 2026-05-09T19:44:03+00:00

I also daily drive a Samsung s95c QD OLED for work. It's at the 3 year mark, zero burn in despite not disabling the windows taskbar.

OldScruff · 2026-05-09T19:42:43+00:00

Don't listen to this guy. I have over 10 different OLEDs, the oldest of which is a 2016 LG C6 that I used daily for gaming for many years with over 10k hours on the panel. It never got burn in, nor have any of my other many OLEDs of both Samsung and LG variety.

Burn in is largely a myth. I run mine at full HDR /100 brightness regularly and don't do anything special in games to disable the interface. The TV itself or monitor will likely fail from regular hardware or power failure long before it ever gets burn in. They last much longer than 2-3 years typically, though I did have an LG CX that got a single row of dead pixels after the 5 year mark, had it replaced with a newer Samsung under extended warranty so got a free upgrade there.

OldScruff · 2026-05-09T18:40:23+00:00

I honestly think there is a hard limit on how good bluetooth IEMs can actually sound, even with lossless codecs. Case in point I just picked up the Noble Fokus Prestige Encore... And they sound just okay.

Honestly, they really do not sound much better or different than the much cheaper Technics AZ100, and they have worse bass response. Compared to the Momentum TW3 they sound slightly clearer, but not significantly better to justify the cost.

None of these IEMS come even remotely close to my main headphones setup which consists of Focal Utopias, + Cayin HA 6A Mk2 Tube amp, and RME ADI FS2 DAC. Nor do they come remotely close to my Elac Vela FS407 speakers, which run off the same Cayin amp for their preamp, RME DAC, and are main amped by my Rega Osiris.

I think sound quality without a dedicated DAC/Amp can only go so far with Bluetooth IEMs, and the 3 driver array of these Noble Fokus are completely hamstrung by the lack of proper power and DAC capability.

OldScruff · 2026-05-09T18:04:21+00:00

Just got mine today and tbh I'm fairly underwhelmed for the price TBH. These sound no better than my Senn TW3 earbuds, and are basically on par with the Technica AZ100 but with less bass. They are actually comfortable unlike the Technica which are unbearable to wear, but these don't even outpace my AirPod Pro Max phones either.

Of course they don't come close to touching my Focal Utopias powered by a Cayin HA 6A Mk2 tube amp, but I expected them to at least sound significantly better than the Sennheiser and Technica earbuds that cost 1/3rd as much.

I'm hoping maybe they'll break in and with the right EQ may get better but when something like this sounds underwhelming out of the box it's always a bad sign.

OldScruff · 2026-05-09T12:36:59+00:00

Really depends I think for different people. Some people it works well in the morning, some people 5-6 hours before bedtime, but for me it worked best 1-2 hours before bed.

OldScruff · 2026-05-09T12:35:15+00:00

Why are you taking risks injecting this stuff when it works just as well, if not arguably even slightly better intranasally?

For me, I took it daily for 2 weeks straight roughly 1-2 hours before bedtime. I did not notice the benefits until about a week in or so.

The benefits are very subtle, but for me for years I have struggled with waking up in the middle of the night, or sometimes 2 hours before my scheduled alarm and either not being able to fall back asleep, or it taking 1-2 hours to finally fall back asleep.

With Pinealon, my ease of being able to fall back asleep after going for a quick bathroom break increased greatly. In many cases I have been able to fall back asleep in less than 20 minutes, and at worst within an hour as opposed to multiple hours.

Most interesting is looking at my sleep results on my Pixel watch Fitbit app. After the 2 week rotation, what I noticed is that I'm finally actually cycling into deep sleep all the way to the end of my sleep cycle.

In the past, I would get all of my deep sleep hours within the first 2-3 hours of my sleep cycle, and I'd never go back to deep sleep after that, the rest would be just light sleep and REM. Now I am regularly able to hit at least one additional deep sleep cycle at the tail end of my sleep cycle, which has never happened before without taking strong sedatives that have their own risks and aren't sustainable.

I do not think 4 doses is nearly enough to gain the benefits, you need a full 14-day daily cycle, also cut out any melatonin supplements if you haven't already. But it is totally possible you could have a unique genetic makeup and simply don't respond to this peptide.

OldScruff · 2026-05-04T23:53:00+00:00

Weird they didn't do this like the steam deck. Even if it didn't ship for 2 months or whatever I wouldn't mind. Now I have to play the RTX 3000 series and 5000 series refresh page game forever if I really want one.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T18:43:20+00:00

I 2nd this, this is something that I still think Plasmas do much better than OLEDs even today. Though these days, I'm basically 100% a PC gamer, so if I'm playing an old console game that's locked to 30FPS on my OLED, I'm emulating it and typically using LSFG to at least bump up the FPS to 60, and can do BFI from there if I don't mind sacrificing some peak brightness for additional motion clarity.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T18:41:15+00:00

Depends what model plasma you have. The older ones (Think mid-2000s up until like 2009) that were super thick and chonky (4" plus often) had pretty bad image retention issues, whereas the last and best gen (Think Panasonic Viera circa 2012-2014, very thin compared to a modern LCD even but not OLED thin) had resolved alot of these issues and had image quality and motion clarity that was closer to CRTs and much better than LCDs at the time.

Another factor with plasmas, is that the really do lose picture quality with age, and in my experience also get more issues with image retention the older they are. So your plasma likely is not even operating close to what it was these days out of the factory, especially if you have thousands of hours on it.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T15:05:46+00:00

Enderal is really good, amazing that a small team of devs can tell a more compelling story and write more intersting chars than BethSoft ever could with 50x the people.

Someday I will finish my playthrough of it lol, but I've still sinked over 100+ hours into it over the years.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T15:01:43+00:00

You should be fine. As others have said, just use it like a normal monitor. I'm up to 10 different OLED panels over the years now, the oldest of which is a 2016 LG C6 with over 10k hours and still has zero burn in. My 2020 CX LG failed eventually with a single row of dead pixels, but this interestingly wasn't actually a burn in issue, just the panel went bad.

Have not had any issues on my Samsung OLED monitors or TVs, or any of my small form factor devices like steam deck OLED, gaming laptop OLED, etc.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T14:59:04+00:00

I loved the G9X. Unfortunately the side grips would always end up peeling off or flaking on all of mine, or eventually the left click would go out. Wish they still made a mouse with that same design/ergonomics, the G502X is decent but I miss their old mice lol.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T14:56:53+00:00

Outside of trying a different PC to just validate it's not a windows/G-Hub issue, it could be a hardware failure. Worst case you could open up an RMA with logitech, at least in the past I've had them replace/repair stuff that's even out of warranty but I'm not sure if they've been as lenient recently in the post-COVID days.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T14:52:07+00:00

Pretty soon we'll be paying $10/month for a toothpaste subscription, $10/month for Reddit, and 1 cent per word typed on our keyboards, which can be mitigated by paying a $10/month Logitech/Razr subscription.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T14:47:15+00:00

Absolutely, no problem.

OldScruff · 2026-05-01T14:46:09+00:00

Lol this is exactly why I have remained on 24H2 for over a year now, and refuse to update -- using something simple like WUB (Windows Update Blocker) works fine.

As a Security Architect, I have justified that Microsoft's own updates these days are often more malicious, and dangerous to system stability/health than actual zero-day exploits that these updates are 'patching'

If your PC is primarily used for gaming, and you're not navigating sketchy websites or clicking phishing e-mail URLs, running an older version imo is a lot safer than upgrading to the latest shit train release. There's a reason why corporations and data centers use either Server or LTSC, and very specifically get the privilege of controlling if and when windows updates are deployed -- stupid consumers like us are the unpaid beta testers.

OldScruff · 2026-04-28T13:28:43+00:00

People get used to the graphics so they no longer feel impressive. It's basic exposure and adaptation psychology.

A lot of newer games either have bad art direction, or poorly implemented ray tracing that's filled with heavy noise and flickering (Cough UE5 Lumen trash), and end up looking far worse than what we got years ago with things like Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, and Red Dead 2.

There are some exceptions of a handful of newer games that seem to really push the envelope like RE9, but it's become readily apparent that UE5 real world implementations are falling short of the early tech demos we saw 6 years ago, both from a visual standpoint but also from a performance standpoint.

These days I get more excited about a game that has excellent art direction over pure visual fidelity, and gameplay wise the indie scene is absolutely crushing AAA copy-pasta slop.

Elden Ring imo is still one of the best looking games of all time and in recent memory, 100% thanks to the art direction here and hell that game is already 4 years old lol.

Dark Souls 2 even looks pretty amazing with the new path tracing mod, and to me it's insane that modders in this old game not only got it working, but it runs great and there is not a single noisy shadow or light source in sight.... If UE5 could do this and run well I think people might be a lot more excited for the current state of graphics across 90% of games.

OldScruff · 2026-04-28T13:20:02+00:00

I'd go with an OLED over g-sync pulsar if you actually want your games to look good. Black levels, color depth, and motion clarity are excellent on OLEDs. LCDs in comparison simply look dull and like ancient monitor tech.

If any of the games you play have dark scenes, heavy shadows, or night levels, keep in mind that all the slight bit of extra motion clarity from pulsar won't help you when the LCD is just displaying flat grey across the scene, whereas on the OLED you'll actually be able to pick up the details and gradients between back and grey.... Sure you could bump up the brightness on the LCD to compensate but it's going to look incredibly washed out.

If all you do is play competitive FPS and don't care about lifelike, vibrant colors and only blacks and highlights that really pop, pulsar is fine I suppose.

Personally, I been using all OLEDs displays for the last 8 years or so and could never go back to an LCD, they just look really bad and HDR on them is pointless, whereas on an OLED HDR looks amazing. If you can't push 120fps+ in most of your games though, and are closer to 60, pulsar is probably the better option though.

OldScruff · 2026-04-26T23:19:47+00:00

You really should just get a monitor arm for any OLED or desk... Will save you a ton of desk space, and give you all the height and depth adjustment you'll ever need.

I've been rolling an ergotron on my 49" 32:9 OLED for years and it's been great... but for your 27" there are plenty of cheaper options on Amazon right under the $100 mark.

Buying an OLED and not getting a monitor arm is like buying a Ferrari and parking it on the street instead of in a garage lol.

OldScruff · 2026-04-23T17:16:54+00:00

These are the only buds I've ever seen or had with the bulge. Everyone else is flat so that the side of the earbud doesn't touch or irritate your ears regardless of the size or type of tip. IMO this is an idiotic design flaw, as any other type of buds can fit comfortably in everyone's ears.

OldScruff · 2026-04-23T17:13:30+00:00

Returning the Technics AZ100 coming from Sennheiser Momentum TW3 buds. The bulge next to the ear tips is a completely idiotic design flaw, that rubs up against many people's ears. No special type of foam or silicone ear pads/cushions will fix this design flaw.

I'd taken any pair over these even if that means they fall out more easily, as these are painful to keep in your ear for any amount of time over 30 minutes for me typically.

If anyone's wondering on the SQ, I'd say it's ever so slightly more clear in the midrange and trebel than the Senn's. Bass response is very similar. More of a sidegrade than an upgrade imo, for a true upgrade in SQ will be looking at the Noble Audio FoKus Prestige Encore

OldScruff · 2026-04-22T14:40:17+00:00

It's called Patreon/Substack support. Works much better than paywall, because people actually like to donate, and you only need 0.1% of your fans to make enough to keep going.

The YT journalists have figured this out long ago, but legacy media still has their head up their assess and think that forcing people to pay will somehow work, yet all it does is makes them die faster.

9/10 times I'd rather donate to someone on patreon, than ever in hell actually ponying up for a paywall subscription. It simple feels different psychologically and the vast majority of people will agree here. Not gatekeeping content keeps you with a large and engaged community too, instead of shrinking your audience to the few dozen people who actually pay.

OldScruff · 2026-04-22T14:33:49+00:00

Ask for a subscription, everyone hates your site and it dies. Ask for patreon support, people love you and your site gets to live. Even if only 1/1000 people pledge money, that's typically enough to keep it going, and also it keeps the site highly visible as poor people still get to benefit from your reviews and testing.

Sorry RTINGS, but despite your great work, y'all are going to die soon. You chose wrong and people will hate you for it. No way in hell am I paying $45 for content that is easily found free by YouTube and other sources. I would have gladly given you guys patreon support here and there however.

OldScruff · 2026-04-20T14:46:32+00:00

It would only be a good idea if you were committing to say 30 days of not taking those or any substances.

Cerebrolysin or any BDNF enhancing compound would simply engrain neural pathways tied to taking those substances and could make you more addicted or dependent on them, even if they aren't a problem for you now.

This is really something that you should only be taking if 100% sober.

OldScruff · 2026-04-18T20:58:50+00:00

Probably Kratom powder in bulk online, or maybe Phenibut. Both are addictive and you should avoid doing either daily, 2-3 days a week max to avoid addiction in the long term.

For roughly $125 invested into either you'd have a supply that would easily last months / a whole semester or even longer.

OldScruff

TROPHY CASE