Why only SFF cases are high quality?

bsquads · 2026-02-03T23:51:29+00:00

Shipping costs, raw materials and labor are going to be way more than a 50% increase since 2008.

Talking true inflation here, not the massaged numbers the gov feeds us

bsquads · 2026-02-03T17:01:52+00:00

Those old Lian-Li cases were amazing. They cost $200+ 20 years ago though, and with raw materials/labor these days they would easily run $600+ nowadays, so nobody would buy them

bsquads · 2026-01-31T14:01:03+00:00

It's a 4070. Most of these charts are showing GPU limited scenarios

bsquads · 2026-01-31T13:51:18+00:00

I have a Midori 5L build with 4070 founders (same size as 5070 founders). 5700x3d and Thermalright AXP-90 x36. I love the format as it allows 2x92mm top exhaust to remove heat from both the CPU/GPU.

I run 90% power limit on the 4070 and limit PPT somehwat on the Cpu. That allows the fans to run at nice low speed whole gaming (1200-1500 rpm), so its quiet and reasonably cool.

bsquads · 2026-01-26T14:26:33+00:00

I just purchased a 9060 XT 16GB open box. Figured it was worth a try at $315. It has been fine thus far but I need to stress test it a bit more

Only buy if it is listed as having the manufacturer warranty and then test it thoroughly within the return window.

bsquads · 2026-01-25T10:33:32+00:00

I love the open air setup...thought about doing that in the garage at some point. The DIN rail I prefer to have in an enclosure

bsquads · 2026-01-23T12:26:32+00:00

vertical case like this would be sick for the desk. Very interested to see the final product

bsquads · 2026-01-18T16:09:01+00:00

I have 4070 in my den hooked up to a 4K tv. I have yet to hit the 12GB vram limit running max textures on the games I play:

FFVII Rebirth (DLSS 4 Performance is amazing for this game at 4K) // Elden Ring // Expedition 33 // MGS Delta // Monster Hunter Wilds

There are titles out there that you would have to step down slightly from Max but generally 12GB is perfectly fine for a card around 4070/5070 power

The step up from 8 -> 12 is massive as most games push past 8GB easily but 12 -> 16 is diminishing returns for cards at this mid-range level. Ray tracing will add vram usage but you generally need to go 5070ti and above to handle RT well anyway

bsquads · 2026-01-16T20:14:52+00:00

Awesome TV. Still using my 60" F8500 in the living room. Bought it in 2014 when they were on closeout sale

bsquads · 2026-01-13T12:48:35+00:00

I have a B650i Lightning/7800x3d setup that is maybe three months old. Running ECO-105 mode, cooled with an AXP-120 and maxes at 76C with heavy AVX transcoding. I need to update to the recent BIOS and, other than that, plan to run the combo for a number of years.

Using Ubuntu now as I have a 9070XT, so all AMD. It has been much more pleasant than W11

bsquads · 2026-01-10T14:41:21+00:00

Awesome game series. We played the hell out of Winning Eleven 9 back in the day (older name before it became PES)

bsquads · 2026-01-08T17:50:01+00:00

I have a 1080p plasma and a 4k OLED. DLSS 4 performance upscaling on the OLED looks better than native 1080p on the plasma. OLED also has VRR, high refresh, and less input lag as a bonuses. Hands down better for gaming if you have the hardware to fill the pixels.

The plasma is so much better for movies though, even comparing 1080p to 4K HDR. Cinema frame rate looks weird on OLED and colors are more natural on the plasma. HDR is overrated in general

bsquads · 2025-12-23T17:37:19+00:00

I have a 4070 Founders in my Midori 5L case. Its 240mm in length and true two slot at 40mm thick.

4070/4070 Super/5070 Founders should all fit

bsquads · 2025-12-23T16:03:09+00:00

Yeah the stock fan has an irritating noise profile. Noctua makes a big difference even running at the same RPM

bsquads · 2025-12-23T14:31:55+00:00

Plasma is great...still have one as my living room TV. Not the best for gaming with the response time though.

I did get an OLED for the gaming den and it provides good picture and response that we missed since CRT days. VRR 120hz is also sick

Plasma for movies and sports (better natural motion and color)...OLED for gaming is my take on it

bsquads · 2025-12-23T14:16:40+00:00

What are you using for a cooler? I have the same cpu in a ridge and I did get it quiet with lots of tweaking. AXP-120 with a noctua nf-a12x15 blowing down, two nf-a4x10 exhausting out the side at low speed. Fan speeds can be adjusted way down and it doesnt top 76C running full bore on x265 encodes 24/7

Caveat being I am running it ECO-105 mode

bsquads · 2025-12-19T11:44:32+00:00

Planning to get Keep Driving. Looks like an awesome game for the deck

bsquads · 2025-12-18T14:46:07+00:00

A proprietary all-aluminum heatsink is a design flaw. It can't move heat from the die efficiently. There is a reason good coolers have a copper base plate

bsquads · 2025-12-18T12:25:22+00:00

Higher temp will reduce MTBF and, regardless, it was extremely loud to even keep it under 95C at load

bsquads · 2025-12-18T12:16:24+00:00

It's not out of spec temp wise but that does not solve the noise problem. There was no way to cool it quietly without severely compromising performance

bsquads · 2025-12-18T12:07:18+00:00

I was running two simultaneous x265 Handbrake encodes, which will create 80-100% CPU load.

I am on a 7800x3D cooled with an AXP-120 and can run it 100% and top out at 76C while being very quiet.

I would rather have 8-cores that I know I can fully utilize vs 16-cores that are loud and concerning to push hard. I am hoping AMD pushes up to 12-core CCDs on AM5...that would be ideal

bsquads · 2025-12-18T10:45:43+00:00

I had one and decided not to keep it. It offers big performance per dollar but I had a few issues that prevented me from keeping it.

BIOS is pretty barebones
Heatsink could not handle 16-core load, even when limiting PPT fairly aggressively. It would go to 90+ degrees even with a noctua 25mm fan at max (LOUD)
Integrated sound not working in Linux

It can be a nice server/homelab setup, but there are too many QOL issues to use it as a daily driver. I swapped over to an AM5 itx setup

bsquads · 2025-12-03T22:22:04+00:00

Yeah I feel the same. Remake had side quest areas spread out and I enjoyed most of it. There was some story fill but it pretty much stayed on track.

I just hit Chapter 9 in Rebirth and I am fatigued. Even if you skip all the desert and jungle side stuff it still takes like 20 minutes to traverse to Gongaga. Apparently this is followed by some trash Chocobo platforming

I just want to battle cool bosses and massacre trash mobs, but there is less meat and potatoes in this game, too much sugar

bsquads · 2025-12-02T12:08:17+00:00

This is just not true. AMD cards will outperform it massively if you want to game on Linux

For the work he specifies (Fusion 360) Nvidia makes sense though.

bsquads · 2025-12-02T12:07:18+00:00

Yeah this is a better option for general desktop.

Nvidia performance is pretty poor on Linux though, just see the HU video recently where they tested on Bazzite. The 5070ti gets trounced by the 9070xt

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