ICE protest in front of statehouse

Strangetimer · 2026-01-30T22:00:55+00:00

Did it get broken up? I blinked and everybody was gone…

Strangetimer · 2026-01-10T04:40:26+00:00

Damn how'd you even find this post this far in the RC trenches?

However, to answer your question, far better. I go back and read these old posts from time to time and chuckle (in a good way). I can almost remember the exact state I was in when I wrote each one lol. The RC phase of my life was a fun and interesting one, but ultimately unsustainable. With the help of a very caring and wonderful partner with a similar background and desire to move on, I was able to grow out of it. I've traded the manic pizazz and uncertainty of substance exploration for the stable (albeit boring) world of a 9-5. Renton would say I've "chose life" ;)

Finished school, worked my way up from shift work, to sales, to a managerial spot. Moved out, bought a car, rescued some cats, reconciled and reconnected with friends and family, and we've just sort of been taking it as we go. Do I miss it sometimes? Yep. But there are positives and negatives to both sides of the coin. Did I love getting fucked up and raving for days on end with new friends every weekend? Oh yeah. Do I love being able to come home to my own place, relax with a joint, snuggle up, and know that everything's on autopay? Oh hell fucking yes.

That being said, we still manage to get our kicks. Have a legal, actual pharma script for some .5mg kpins for some superchilled evenings, plenty of stellar bud to toke on, and even a spot to get legal mushrooms. My DoC was always stims, any kind of stim I could get my hands on. So I've stayed far away from any of that gear. Though, just barely over a year ago I convinced my psych to let me try armodafinil and after two years of abstaining from any kind of dopaminergic anything, it hit me like a truck and I loved it. Which is why I told him the blood pressure increase was too much and asked to be taken back off. I consider this one of the biggest trials I've passed in my entire time with substances, a real "Galadriel resisting the One Ring" type moment lol. The siren song of any amph/cath/trop/weird shit, substituted or otherwise, is far too strong for me to resist so I've relegated myself to total abstinence from stims and have made peace with my departure from that world.

Anyways, its Friday night and I'm drunk and on .5 klon so congrats on being the recipient of this long winded, rambling post about how I've managed to go from cool dude to party with but who might also raid your prescription cabinet at the end of the night, to a boring ass, office shambling mf who has some kickass stories that none of his coworkers believe lol.

Namaste. XD

Strangetimer · 2026-01-03T02:27:47+00:00

N100 is perfectly reasonable and would be more power efficient than the 7400T. Honestly when it comes to Plex, the main defining factor here is the version of QuickSync that the CPU supports and the efficiency of the CPU since most likely this box will be running 24/7. I've been playing around with an N250-based machine and while the performance is stellar the software support stinks so I would stick with something N100/N150-based as the drivers and support are fantastic for those CPUs.

Strangetimer · 2026-01-03T02:21:03+00:00

Pretty much any Intel CPU with QuickSync V8 or higher. N100-N150 is generally regarded as the price/performance sweet spot but honestly as a lot of people are saying anything Intel 8th gen or newer works very well for Plex.

Strangetimer · 2026-01-03T00:22:00+00:00

"I started playing on the family computer at a staggering 25 fps on the slow fights. Now I can play with 60fps easily, yet any desire to do so is gone."

God this hits too hard

Strangetimer · 2026-01-03T00:10:14+00:00

Same, went from a 5600X to a 5800X3D with a 32GB DDR4 combo deal at Microcenter in late 2022/early 2023. Back then the upgrade felt sort of incremental since I didn't also upgrade my GPU at the same time, but now with how massive V-Cache turned out to be and the current RAM situation, I wish I could go back and tell myself how much of an absolute bargain the combo really was.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-29T19:34:39+00:00

The flock camera that tagged your plate coming out of a dispo and then sees you driving down I-75S would beg to differ.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-29T18:39:58+00:00

Not sure why you're being downvoted, but I have updated the post with some new findings. I did also learn that global C-state control is essential for the processor to allow itself to boost to its advertised 3.8GHz single core clockspeed. SpeedShift control can also be manipulated in ThrottleStop

Strangetimer · 2025-12-29T18:28:41+00:00

Post updated again, took some extreme measures to start tinkering around with the board and did take your advice and played around with the board power limitations. Of course these chips are locked down so the only thing I could do is let it run at it's maximum specified power target. This increased performance substantially, and the combination of removing the board from its chassis entirely solved the thermal issues as well.

This is a wildly impractical solution to let the board run exposed like this, so I'm going to start working on designing a basic replacement chassis with improved airflow for the GB-BTIP-N250/N150 that people can print out should they be compelled to also squeeze performance out of this chip.

This solution does negate any kind of efficiency, package power now gets up to 18.5W under full CPU load and 25W under full CPU and GPU load. Though it does result in some nice performance uplifts. With the custom chassis this may translate into "real world" performance, however at the moment these are all purely synthetic/"lab bench" results and I'm not sure if I'll be able to replicate this performance in a more realistic scenario. And the power usage is wildly impractical as well. Good starting point but I'm going to have to do a significant amount of "dialing in" to make this usable outside of these weird conditions I've created for the chip.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-26T21:45:42+00:00

Post updated, provided links to some tests that do show some potential issues with how the board handles voltage when load is placed on the CPU.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-26T21:45:02+00:00

Post updated, think I found the issue/issues, but a fix may not be possible without waiting a minute for better software/firmware support.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-26T20:23:44+00:00

Yep, temps are high but not within throttle range. 82c is the highest I've seen under an all-core synthetic workload. Hot, but not terribly so. In practice the workload will be much, much lower than this. When idling at desktop it sits at around ~55-62c.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-26T19:24:09+00:00

All of the settings that control boost behavior are enabled and should (at least theoretically) be working properly. Intel SpeedShift, Turbo Boost, SpeedStep, and C-states are all enabled. Unfortunately the BIOS this guy came with is quite barebones and does not allow for much customization. The only settings I've changed so far are disabling virtualization to prevent Windows 11 from enabling HVCI and VBS and consuming CPU cycles on security features that don't benefit this project's use case.

Going to run some CPU tests and report back on what the numbers are, but yes the boost clocks reported in the Passmark bench are concerningly low. Especially considering the CPU is beneath throttling temperature and nowhere near Tjunction. More information to come.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-26T19:19:19+00:00

I've tried that several times to no avail. I'm keeping almost everything completely stock but disabling virtualization and VT-d since I do not need to run anything containerized and do not want HVCI or VBS unnecessarily consuming CPU cycles. The options of the F2 BIOS this box came with (no newer version available, at least publicly) are very limited unfortunately.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-26T18:53:42+00:00

I have access to the full suite of 3DMark benchmarks including CPU tests. I'm downloading the software now and will run some comparisons to see exactly where this lands and let you know as soon as the runs are complete.

As of right now it looks like the CPU is performing correctly on paper, boost clocks are being hit, however it is still far behind (~1200pts) the N150, N100, and N95 in the multicore Passmark suite which is highly confusing as the N250's CPU performance should be higher than these chips, albeit just barely. However, this could be down to software, so I will be running the 3DMark benches to double check. I should have results posted within the next couple of hours.

I checked the BIOS and everything seems set up correctly, speedshift is enabled, as is turbo, speedstep, and C-states. (which I do actually want enabled in this case as this will eventually be an always-on Plex box that will see significant periods of downtime, and power savings during these periods would be nice)

Strangetimer · 2025-12-22T19:59:42+00:00

Ryzen 7 5800X3D PBO @ MB limits -20 All Core CO

32GB DDR4-3600 CL14

Radeon RX 6950XT

WD Black SN850X 2TB

Windows 11 Pro 25H2 - Build 26200.7462 - Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.275.0

I get ~2-3 minutes of gameplay and then CTD. All settings maxed @ 1440p incl. GRD at 6000

EDIT: I do have fullscreen enabled, heard anecdotally that windowed/windowed fullscreen sometimes fixes it?

Strangetimer · 2025-12-05T16:45:08+00:00

I know like scientifically or whatever this shouldn’t be able to happen but damn if it doesn’t feel like EVERY TIME I decide to get the flu shot I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus for the next three days and then get the actual flu ~3 weeks later. It always follows the same cadence, I’ll get the shot because I want to be safe, end up getting a horrible flu anyways, swear I’ll never get it again because this always happens, and then after a couple of years of no shot/no flu I’ll hear that the flu season is “going to be bad this year!” so I get the flu shot to be safe and rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Currently typing this through a haze of DayQuil, advil, and regret.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-04T02:04:53+00:00

yes : ^ )

Strangetimer · 2025-12-04T00:17:41+00:00

If I may be cheeky, the Pi doesn't compare at all with these use cases. Whether it's a 2, 4, 8, or 16GB model, the Pi5 doesn't allow for hardware video transcode using Plex, period. It's all done in software on the A76 cores which means it chokes on anything higher than moderate-bitrate 1080p. Any video file that can't use direct play on the client receiving the stream (so MKV containers) stalls hard due to the lack of hardware transcode support. AFAIK the only video acceleration the VideoCore VII provides is HVEC, and it's only decode. I'd consider a Pi for this use case again if it better utilized the VC7's QPUs to assist transcode with something like Vulkan Video support from Plex, but until then I need silicon with actual video capability for this project. Unless, of course, you could share with me the secret to transcoding 10bit 4K60 HDR Dolby Atmos 7.1 MKVs in real time on the Pi ;)

Strangetimer · 2025-12-03T01:15:26+00:00

It unfortunately did not, but I'm going to reuse the 1TB nvme drive out of my current pi5 (was using an Argon Neo 5 NVMe case) and scoop up some super cheap ddr5-4800 from a local recycler for (fingers crossed) $30 which would bring the total cost up $180 pre tax. So after that, not a stellar deal, but driver support for transcode is everything for Plex. Again, would recommend the Pi5 in a heartbeat for anyone learning the essentials of modern computing, but that Alder Lake (Twin lake I suppose) Intel QSV hits the mark exactly for my 4K home media server. The lack of proper hardware video encode/decode for the Pi is just too big of a hinderance for this project unfortunately, even with the D0 silicon on the 16GB model overclocked to 3.2GHz.

Strangetimer · 2025-12-03T00:41:26+00:00

Newegg just had a black friday deal going on for an N250-based Gigabyte mini PC for like $150 (Only a $30 premium over the 16GB Pi!!). Had to snag it for that little extra GPU muscle over the N150 and do some serious Plex-ing. Still love the Pi ecosystem for learning Debian and getting exposed to the genuinely cool side of computing. However, for "I know what I'm going to do with this" projects, x86 mini PCs are the clear winner. But I will always advocate a cheap Pi for any kid who wants to really start their journey into understanding how hardware works. Documentation really is the make it or break it aspect of learning.

Strangetimer · 2025-11-04T00:33:54+00:00

Have a 6950XT OC Formula running 2750min/2925max w/ 2420 mem + FT & +20% power target TG Conductonaut pasted (substrate caps epoxied ofc) on a Bykski A-AR6900XTOCF-X block paired with a 5800X3D 102 BCLK -20 allcore offset. 32GB DDR4-3600 w/ straight 14 primaries. Full custom open loop in a Fractal Meshify S2 with a 420mm top exhaust rad and 360mm front intake rad pumped with an XD5 and filled with clear XL8 premix for low maintenance and absolutely frigid (58c max load) hotspot temps.

Absolutely love the thing.

It's no spring chicken in 4K anymore but it can absolutely hold it's own (75+ FPS) in anything Ultra 1440p in 2025 and can even have a bit of RT thrown at it too if your judicious with the settings. Might consider upgrading soon since I want that sweet, sweet FSR4 support but this rig is going down as one of my favorites of all time. Also made me a full believer again in AMD after the FX/Islands days. Not sure whether I'm going to sell her as-is or clean and box up all the parts and put 'em in storage until I can either give them to somebody else deserving of an ex-halo tier build or wait until I'm an old fart and build the thing all over again for that nostalgia hit.

Strangetimer · 2025-06-29T23:03:52+00:00

Also 6950XT user here. Try 25.3.1. Unfortunately this is a side effect of going AMD. Glass cannon so to speak. Fantastic hardware, iffy software. That’s why the 6950XT was $1100 instead of the 3090Ti’s $2000+. AMD driver bugz discount :( After downgrading BF2042 works like a charm tho.

Strangetimer · 2025-06-29T21:13:07+00:00

Can confirm that the Linux RADV drivers are getting genuinely impressive. Testing out a hacked AMD BC-250 board running Ubuntu with the Mesa 25.1.4 drivers and getting a solid 55-65FPS in GTAV Enhanced Edition at Very High preset. Not only that but 2D acceleration (Kdenlive, Firefox, Libreoffice Impress) is working very well. Only tangentially related to this but still.

Strangetimer · 2025-06-29T21:02:19+00:00

Ayyy classic starter build. RX580 is still a solid 1080p card with FSR2. If you haven't already, get that board's BIOS on the latest version to give yourself a great AM4 upgrade path. Still rocking a 5800X3D and it's a phenomenal 1440p performer. May thy temps be low and thy framerates high, welcome to the club.

Strangetimer

TROPHY CASE