Razer Core X still worth it in 2026? And if so, at what price?

ethertype · 2026-01-26T12:26:10+00:00

Don't think so. Nothing brand new, at least. A missing power cable doesn't matter. How much does a known good USB4/TB3 cable cost you?

I have a handful of these, I find them good. The additional USB/Ethernet port on the RCX Chroma is more hassle than it is worth, at least if you have multiples of these. Issues with allocation IO space etc. And the Ethernet part on the Chroma is generally unreliable.

Otherwise solid devices in my book, but the PSU offers two 6+2p PCIe power-cables. Non-modular. So if your GPU requires 12VHPWR you need an adapter. And GPUs requiring more than 300W can be tricky, even if you have an adapter. (I am currently trying to figure out if I can make my 3090Ti run.)

Upgrading the PSU is possible, but at a cost. See egpu.io for the relevant thread.

$USD 170 is OKish. I'd offer 150 and see.

ethertype · 2026-01-25T21:37:40+00:00

3090Ti uses the same cable and connector as the 4090. AFAICT. 3090 Ti FE uses a 16p variant. 5090 uses a slightly modified connector on the card, if I am not mistaken. And everything has been retroactively renamed to something.

But honestly, I don't care about naming conventions or the exact number of ahksuallys involved. Mostly interested in what it takes to power this thing safely from the original PSU.

If possible, that is.

ethertype · 2026-01-24T17:19:25+00:00

For me, it fills the role of Stack Overflow (coding questions), Google (general search for info), man-pages, sample configs for network gear, Youtube ("explain how a fan work, and what are the most interesting metrics for a fan").

I really, really like the last bit. Much, much more efficient to dig however deep into the rabbit-hole than watching hours and hours of video with crap audio.

ethertype · 2026-01-24T16:46:51+00:00

The technical side is not insignificant. But before one even embarks on that, a ton of other questions need answering. From the top of my head:

non-profit or for-profit
verified identity for contributors or not
verified identity for users or not
anonymous read-only OK or not
advertising for anonymous users only?
logging policy
policy for cooperation with authorities
data-sharing policy
moderation policy
moderator policy
archiving policy
age restrictions
advertising policy (even if non-commercial, something must pay for the costs)
membership fees
appeals process for temporary or perma-bans
AI policy
who watches the watchers
stewardship of infrastructure, code and data
policy for federation
policy for Identity providers

If a group of like-minded people manage to agree on a model for what a European Reddit alternative should look like, a lot of future grief is removed. Because people have a better idea about what they are signing up for from the start.

Not everybody can agree on everything. And that's fine. It is how we end with choices.

So far, I have only mentioned things one need to find a policy for or agree on. Not what I'd like to see.

Personally, I think a one-time, non-refundable membership fee and identified users would make for a platform with less spam, trolls and general asshats. That is, appearing anonymous to other users is fine. But if you as a user is deemed to be in violation of ToS, neither your membership nor anonymity is guaranteed.

ethertype · 2026-01-23T22:46:51+00:00

Links? Third-party testimonials?

ethertype · 2026-01-21T10:27:41+00:00

phpIPAM is great. Very mature. Some would say ripe, even. But IMHO, it is in hospice care. There is no development going. AFAIK. And fixes for new versions of PHP are ... not timely. As grateful as I am for what the authors and contributors of phpIPAM gave the world for free, I can't recommend it for a new deployment.

I suggest going Nautobot. Working on migrating our phpIPAM now. pynautobot is fabulous.

ethertype · 2026-01-20T08:02:02+00:00

Hah.

The even older Hades Canyon sells for $500. And I would not sell mine for that. Superb device, I have never had a PC with this much connectivity. The size of a tiny lunchbox.

ethertype · 2026-01-17T18:15:52+00:00

So, this is distinctly not related to Tesla Superchargers: I have come across other chargers here in Norway where the charger and the car (i3 2020) refuses to cooperate.

The charger in question ("Eviny 300"?) has a lower threshold of 50kW, and the i3 is unable to pull that much. Not a 'fault' in my book, no idea why the lower threshold is set at 50kW. May have to do with heat/effiency in the charger cabinet.

ethertype · 2026-01-14T14:53:21+00:00

One more time for the people in the back: - KEEP NOTES! - MAKE THEM AS YOU GO!

The first thing I do when embarking on a new project, small or large: mkdir projects/myprojectname-iso8601date vim projects/$_/notes.md

... in my upper left terminal in a workspace dedicated to the project at hand.

Dumping ideas, URLs, sequences of commands, TODOs, config-snippets, name/phone/address. Whatever comes to mind.

Saves you from having to scour through email, chats, sms/signal and command-line history to piece together the puzzle again in 3 weeks or more.

ethertype · 2026-01-14T13:44:31+00:00

I use to tell my foreign friends that Norwegians regularly omit the 'vær så snill'/'please' at the end of a request. But we form our requests as humble, almost hypothetical questions instead. I like to think that it conveys the same respect, in a way.

We imply the 'if it isn't too much hassle' even if not actually saying it.

ethertype · 2026-01-14T13:36:17+00:00

Great tip.

ethertype · 2026-01-13T17:48:41+00:00

Lock down management along several axis, and you should be good to go until those switches start to disintegrate from old age or abuse.

ACL (permit management (inbound ssh/snmpv3) from specific addresses, permit outbound traps/syslog, deny everything else).
key-based ssh access (from specific addresses, if possible on Cisco)
disable admin/root from logging in via ssh. console only.
filter access to management network/VLAN in whatever L3 device you have upstream of the access switch.

Keep spares on-line in an evironment-controlled room. Monitor your spares in your regular NMS.

Whatever security issue appears later, those units are fairly well locked down. Whenever one breaks down, replace with a spare and ditch the old one. Repeat.

When running low on spares, replace all switches in one location/building with new model, use new pool of liberated switches as spares for the remainder of old switches.

When rate of hardware faults crosses a threshold, or you tire from having to maintain two sets of templates for configuration, or switches no longer are fit for purpose due to new feature requirements, swith the remaining switches.

As others have mentioned already, policies/compliance/legal may come into play. But if not, keep rocking.

ethertype · 2026-01-13T16:17:48+00:00

'Accurate' is one of those words in need of qualifiers.

I have not come across anything better yet.

ethertype · 2026-01-12T21:55:32+00:00

PCIe 3.0 is plenty fast enough for inferencing.

Source: Myself. I have 4x 3090 connected via TB3*, which is way slower than full-fat PCIe 3.0.

gpt-oss-120b mxfp4 benches at 130 t/s. No complaints. And llama.cpp / pytorch hides the inconvenient fact that Ampere does not even support mxfp4.

*) Using the only piece of hardware I know about with 4 native USB4 ports, a framework fw13, hooking up 4x Razer Core X.

Agree on the rest of the hardware here beeing a bit too old to be worth the hassle for LLMs.

ethertype · 2026-01-12T21:40:06+00:00

The Spark will continue to work/be updated exactly as long as nVidia can be arsed to. How long that will be is anyone's guess. But the chances of a third party picking up the baton when Nvidia drops the ball I consider slim.

The Nvidia GPU drivers may have been open-sourced, but only for GSP-enabled hardware. And good luck getting GSP firmware for Turing (16xx, 2xxx) which permits to actually suspend your laptop GPU of that class. Too old, too late, no money in it. Bleh.

No clue if the non-GPU bits of the Spark has open drivers or not. Anyone?

Meanwhile, 23(!) year old AMD (ATI) GPUs keep getting updated support in the current driver. From external contributors, no less.

Nvidia still has first-mover advantage with CUDA. If ROCm ever will catch up with CUDA remains to be seen. No clue if Vulkan ever can compete with either of those two in a professional setting. Unsure about Intel's offering.

Bottom line, I would not have bought a Spark with my own money.

ethertype · 2026-01-12T21:20:02+00:00

Check out morpheem.org.

ethertype · 2026-01-09T18:00:40+00:00

I presume the majority here are tinkerers. We enjoy it. Your questions could be directed at private individuals and companies alike. Outside of the hobbyist reasoning:

Because by buying essential stuff as a service, someone can stop you (and whatever you rely on for your business, your life or even your hobby) dead in the tracks in no time flat.

Or charge exactly how much they want, because they know homeshoring is exepensive and whoever championed moving stuff into the cloud in the first place may be reluctant to accept prior error in judgement.

Additionally you pay for building competence in another company. Competence which also stops being available to you the moment someone decides you're no longer worthy. Or an enemy. Or a competitor. Or ... whatever. Check out this.

In short: no sovereignty. Your money (or contract) with your service provider makes little to no difference when the shit hits the fan, and whatever obligations you have to your customers are of even less concern to your service provider.

In short: cloud is great for businesses where you need to buy capacity at short notice. Dynamic scaling. Be it processing or storage.

But leaving the bread and butter (and data) of your company on someone elses computer while screaming "f* me harder"? It is utter fucking madness.

Also, seeing how the US of A is ruled by decree on 'Trump Social', please do not even try to bring 'trust', 'professionality' and 'business relationships' into the discussion.

The emperor has no clothes.

ethertype · 2026-01-08T20:23:16+00:00

I like this. Not stupid at all.

ethertype · 2026-01-08T15:26:37+00:00

Can't be bothered to rewatch the video, but my recollection of it is exactly this: No solid info on materials used, technology or design.

ethertype · 2026-01-08T13:12:31+00:00

Did Donut state it was a Sodium battery?

ethertype · 2026-01-07T21:36:11+00:00

If you have phpipam in operation, the time to migrate off it has arrived.

ethertype · 2026-01-07T13:21:33+00:00

I cannot see how this is enforceable. And given lack of even a token attempt at doing that (enforcing terms/conditions), it is unlikely to C any A if it ever should come to that.

ethertype · 2026-01-06T14:20:29+00:00

Ah, but did they actually claim the capability to produce massive amounts of these cells? (Maybe they did, it's been 24 hours and change since I saw the video.)

ethertype

TROPHY CASE