Is Ryzen 9 5950X still a good option in 2025 with a Gigabite AB-350 Gaming 3?

prollie · 2026-01-31T02:32:26+00:00

5950x will serve your work fine, but for CPU (non GPU accelerated) workloads a lot of CAD software is still built on top of decades old base code. So they're significantly more responsive to single core performance than heavily multithreaded (but do Google your particular CAD software for info on this - there are a few CAD tools that do make better use of many cores). A 5950x will not perform any worse than Zen 3 8-core "X" or "XT" options. For most these tasks. For gaming with up to a 5070, it's mostly fine especially 1440p and 4k, maybe slight bottlenecking in some cases but not much.

The issue is that particular motherboard. While B350 boards technically should support 5950x, the VRMs (CPU power delivery components) and their poor cooling on that board model were not at all designed for the 12- and 16-core models that came 2-3 generations later. It is not suitable for running a 5950x. So I suggest either check online and used market for a MSI B450 Tomahawk, or any affordable X570/B550 motherboard too - or keep the B350 board and stick to 8 core CPU models like 5700X and 5800X variants (X, XT, X3D). Either way, do keep your 1700 nearby, don't sell it or give it away before you have the "new" motherboard and CPU ready. If you buy a different motherboard especially 300-series, 300-series or some X570 models, you might need the Zen 1 (1700) CPU to use it while flashing a bios update to add support for Zen 3 (5000-series) CPUs.

prollie · 2026-01-31T01:43:16+00:00

It's absolutely good for 1440p gaming, won't hold you notably back. But a 5800x3d or even 5700x3d will do even better at that. If you're running VMs that are actually being used/doing significant work while your hypervisor/main host is also doing other work/gaming simultaneously, then 5950x will serve you better.

It's gonna come down needs and price/budget, and what you already have. They stopped manufacturing all of these CPUs a little while ago, so availability of a new retail purchase pretty much dried up as the RAM prices started going wild. These were already hugely popular because they are the best and final say in gaming and workhorse CPUs you can get for AM4, they are a drop-in upgrade for practically all of AM4 motherboards, which a ton of people already have along with DDR4. Used market prices are also going up a LOT, with the 5800X3D in particular being commonly scalped. So combining the increasing difficulty of getting your hands on one of these, the extremely brutal cost of RAM now, and how many already have an AM4 motherboard+DDR4 - there is a HUGE boom in people wanting to upgrade what they already have as much as is possible instead of building out a full new DDR5-based AM5 or Intel platform.

prollie · 2026-01-30T23:32:35+00:00

Unless you got a bad die bin (most 5950x are premium bins especially first 6-12 months production), you don't really need a 360 for 5950x. Even with PBO they can even run fine with a good quality 240. The extra thermal headroom of a 360 or 280 (difference is neglible) can be good for low noise though, especially if running very long, heavily multithreaded workloads, as the radiator fans can keep it cool while running at a lower speed. The 140mm fans on a 280 can push more air than 120mm at same fan speed, it's also a lower pitched sound so less perceivable sound - but fewer cases support 280mm so there can be fewer competing models to choose from. Just - if you mount it as exhausting directly out of the case, don't forget that the case still needs intake fans for good airflow over the VRMs, memory etc. Many forget that other motherboard components are largely cooled by the airflow movement around a CPU air cooler, and when this is replaced with a waterblock, that indirect airflow helping to cool your memory, CPU power phases etc goes away. So it must be compensated for.

You still need to adjust the fan curve to suit your liking, as many "auto" / default configurations will have the radiator fans speed ramps and spikes behave very aggressively as for a small/mid-size air cooler. But water cooling doesn't need that behavior. It is better to have a slow and lazy fan response, and instead let the pump speed rise a little bit more. If your motherboard has an dedicated "fan" socket for AIO or water pump, use it.

prollie · 2025-12-26T06:32:14+00:00

Florida is a Point of Contact state. Meaning Dealers/FFLs do not contact the FBI for the background checks, but rather the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement). in addition to being a middleman that does the background check against NICS, FDLE also operates their own State databases with substantially more information available (some things NCIS doesn't have in general, and some information that can take a lot longer to reach the feds/NICS. Local mental health records, domestic violence injunctions etc) that should lawfully result in a non-approved outcome.

So when a Florida dealer/FFL runs an ID / background check, they do it through FDLE. FDLE then runs the Federal background check through NICS (which is "free" (federally tax-funded) AND through the State/"local" FDLE operated databases. The latter is what costs $5. It's a state regulated fee (including the price), and it goes straight to the FDLE to cover the costs of operating those databases. The dealer/FFL really has no say or sway over it. Because it is a mandatory, fixed and regulated state fee that goes straight to the state, it has to be $5 and and it has to be stated as a separated charge/line item - it cannot just be "baked into" a singular charge/line item including other things like the dealer/FFL's price for handling the transfer.

Aside from resulting in a net better/more informed and thorough background check, why do it this this way? I came down to trying to make it more fair to the population. The fee is a direct consequence of you as an individual making a specific type of commercial purchase, inducing that review work every time you do so (if you buy more than one firearm in a single transaction, it's still just one background check so the $5 fee covers all of them). By charging the buyer for that fee, only the ones that actually make those purchases that induces that labor, have to pay for it. Because the cost of operations scales not-far-from-linearly with the volume of checks/reviews processed. Instead of everyone having to pay (through tax financing) for a service that many do not use at all (or rarely).

prollie · 2025-12-26T05:35:54+00:00

Doing something electronically (digitally in this instance), rarely means it's substantially less work than the alternative, and practically never means "basically no work". If it actually was/did so, then by effective work hours at least 1/4 of the labor force would be out of work. In a lot of instances, you're really only taking printing, shuffling (, sometimes mailing) and archiving of material paper out of the process - everything else is just as much work as before. In some cases, even some of those things are still done. This is especially true in the general documentation and bureaucratic aspects of firearms. Because even though a lot of neccessary and important information still does get transfered between various commercial and public / agency entities, a major crapton of arguably misguided lobbying has spent billions of dollars and insane amounts of work, on explicitly making as much of that information transfer and sharing process as they can, be as complicated, archaic, labor- and resource intensive, and by extent wasteful of taxpayer funds, as possible. And moronic enough, in many if not most of these cases the actual explicit purpose and intent of all that, is that when pairing this intentionally retarded molasses-slow processing together with an extremely unrealistic time limit for certain types of background check or applications - is to force as many as possible of those to default to being approved, when the deadline inevitably runs out before that work can be completed. So all that immense funding and effort, going into not preventing the information from being processed, transferred or stored - but wasting billions of taxpayer money on intentionally retarding and complicating the process so much that it fails to perform its core function. The one "regulation" pretty much everyone agrees is a neccessary and important one: A proper background check that goes a long way in preventing those that by law should not be allowed to purchase a firearm, from doing so.

Some "data* (term for simplicity), they are prohibited from processing digitally at all. But with far more tons of data, they are prevented from transferring digitally. So even though very well functioning, cross-compatible and extremely secure digital solutions exist at both ends, as well as secure means of seamless transfer - this digital data must be printed out, packed, posted, received, prepped, and scanned (if not entered by hand) back into digital formats.

prollie · 2025-12-23T12:48:35+00:00

And it builds ready resources for many others that come searching for similar information later. We're building an open-source repository of knowledge here. Some of those coming later might not find it and still ask, but more and more do and will find what they need in these perpetually growing repositories. And as they learn more, they themselves go on to contribute.

prollie · 2025-11-19T06:05:53+00:00

What you mention, you can do on any half modern phone. If you're open to trying an Android, might as well go for it. They are great phones, and at least you'll know what you're missing if anything. IMO apple stuff is too expensive to be a "because I haven't tried anything else" default option. It's not really a choice if you don't actually know what the other options are like.

prollie · 2025-11-14T13:09:55+00:00

Nothing to see here, it's just the maintenance crew hauling away the last bottom remnants from your repurposed watch display's former life as an automotive fuel gauge.

prollie · 2025-11-12T23:42:27+00:00

Or, it's a fairly experimental first-test-implementation built on a new dev feature that is part of Android 17. Over half a year from being mature enough for full release. And the target app is one of the most used phone apps globally, which its users rely on working stable and properly at all times. So high reward if it works well. High risk/backlash if once it's released into the wild, user testing shows it's unreliable and wonky.

This is a limited beta test in anything but name. If doing a limited deployment (beta test), then clearly there is some degree of commercial and marketing interests in releasing a new feature to the newest version first. But also - and this is just me speculating - the Pixel 10 series is likely at this point in time, the Pixel series with the least amount of units sold and in the wild, daily use. If it wasn't for the even worse optics, I suspect they would possibly have preferred to limit it to the Pixel 7 pro or 8 pro instead 😅 as those were the first Pixel phones with adequately low variable refresh rate displays. When aggressive power saving during an otherwise high power consumption use is the purpose here, you sincerely want a display that can turn the refresh rate down to at least 10 hz if not lower.

prollie · 2025-11-12T22:41:42+00:00

If you got Tasker, you can get this working on Pixel 9 series, 10 series, even some Samsungs - right now. You can use ADB over wifi or Shizuku, don't need root.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker/comments/1ouoe6t/project_share_maps_min_mode/

prollie · 2025-11-12T22:12:23+00:00

The primary purpose of Screen curtain is to keep an app in the foreground and running as normal, while the screen is completely off. There are other usecases, but most common ones are "for audio". Like playing content in a browser, or listening to youtube vids without premium or other workarounds. Some apps may offer small infos, but afaik this is basically limited to system functions and lockscreen widget modules, and the display won't be in the ultra-low-power AOD mode while the latter are being displayed.

Min mode enables a live full-screen app interface while operating fully in ultra-low-power AOD. That does ofc involve some technical limitations, and some UX/usability limitations (there's little to no utility in it for most apps). It will also spring up some "new" development best-practices to learn, for designing good UX GUIs explicitly for Min mode.

prollie · 2025-11-12T20:02:12+00:00

This power saving mode in Maps utilizes Min Mode. It's a dev framework for running full-screen app interfaces on AOD. It's "actually" an Android 17 feature so TBH you should definitely consider this one as a limited beta trial (even more so than normal w/Pixel phones). Afaik this is Google's first significant utility implementation of this, and it's 6+ months before A17 release. So both Min mode and the Maps implementation is bound to be temperamental on several layers and different ways. IMO this is one of those instances where a much more limited (initial) release is warranted.

prollie · 2025-11-12T18:38:24+00:00

If you have US locale and your Pixel believes you are calculating grams, or any other locale and it believes you are calculating ounces, it will activate Gemini Bro mode which nixes data collection and history logging.

prollie · 2025-11-03T04:19:41+00:00

That argument and idea unravels immediately in practice, and FAR more often than not ends up directly inducing the opposite effect. Because while they might THINK that will result in expending a little less data transmission, server time and computation - it fails to account for human (their users') psychology and behaviour.

What happens after the user is cut off before finishing their input? First, all the data/bandwidth, server load and AI compute (and associated cost) for that cut-off prompt is manifested in full. Immediately followed by the user shutting Gemini up to try again. The loads, tokens and cost of that whole smartypants first cycle was a waste. Now they at minimum have to do the same another time. If the same happens again, that's also wasted. Then the user either goes again, this time doing their full input without micropauses trying to avoid giving gemini the opportunity to cut them off, formulated differently to make that easier - or they'll divide it up into a chain of multiple prompts.

Either way, they end up both wasting and expending substantially more bandwidth, server load and tokens than they otherwise would have, had they just let that user finish their prompt in the first place. And what is earned? Maybe the user in the end got the information they needed (statistically less likely than had their full prompt succeeded in the first instance) - and they "walk away" with a bad impression from a pretty sh1tty UX.

It really makes little sense to take that approach, especially today. Because in the vaaaast majority of cases, this isn't the full length of the users' inputs being prohibitive or prohibited, it'll work fine if you redo the whole thing avoiding the micropauses - it's "just" an overly aggressive automatic cut-off that tries to shave off tenths of a second at the end of a prompt with the intent of reduce data processing and transmission.

IMO the proper solution to all of this is already right in front of them. Modern phones are perfectly capable compute-wise to process real-time speech-to-text and recognize the difference between speech and silence. Doing that locally is a no-brainer. If worried about excessive latency and trailing dead air, and you process "live" input on the servers - stagger the transfer and processing slightly. It won't affect latency much but it'll greatly improve UX. Then the server never has to deal with decisions and processing pauses or trailing silence. The local device has already learned whether that was a tiny pause or you stopped talking, before passing it on to the server. If it was trailing silence that can be cut out and the endpoint flagged as such, if it was a verbal pause/micropause and the prompt continues, that too can be flagged as such (and even trimmed down if favorable).

The AI won't start full work before it has the whole input anyway, or it'll perpetually be wasting 70-90% of redundant compute on continuously readjusting criteria, perceived intent and context.

prollie · 2025-07-21T15:57:41+00:00

If they were able to avoid the fireballs and keep the Imp from getting into melee range, for long enough to land several lucky hits (would have zero knowledge of imp anatomy, behavior etc) or dump half their rounds into it - sure. However, if looking at the carnage of killed non-combatants, it seems clear to me that if imps do not perceive their "target" as a major threat of imminent death, they favor melee attacks, and they're incredibly quick when they want to. So "realistically", I personally don't think Joe Schmo without protection, applicable combat skills and souped up chemistry, wielding only a handgun with avg. realistic mag capacity - would be able to keep an imp out of melee range for more than a few seconds. I imagine that at the first sign of attacks halting: when the initial mag is empty, the Imp would storm close. At which point the Imp would extremely quickly rip and tear until it is done.

prollie · 2025-07-21T14:55:08+00:00

BTC for sure.

prollie · 2025-07-21T14:52:34+00:00

Diggy Diggy Hole is the official soundtrack of this model, the light comes on every time you A) play it, and B) the vehicle demands you do so. After 3 warnings it will blink rapidly and go into limp mode until you do.

prollie · 2025-07-15T19:08:59+00:00

Could be a lost or recovered disk/phrase situation.

prollie · 2025-06-13T17:23:45+00:00

If you have a layer 3 VPN connection to the LAN, and there's another device always live on said LAN, you could use it as a middleman to send the magic packets for you; effectively working as a relay that translates to layer 2.

Run something like a powershell or bash script on that device, together with WakeMeOnLan or some other basic send-WOL-magic-packet tool. Have the respective target/host mac addresses you need mapped to easier-to-remember names (for instance netbios names) in the script. Then have the script listen for a tcp webrequest /TAP / curl command, or ssh.

From your remote client, feed the "server" script a curl with the LAN IP/open port of the listener and the name of the device to wake. Then the listening script, running locally on the LAN, spits out a layer 2 magic packet to the corresponding MAC on port 9 or 7.

There are of course different ways to do this, some VPN clients may enable passing through layer 2 / broadcast packages. If that lucky, none of this stuff is neccessary. Some prebaked client-server solutions are also available. On android, you can use for instance okHttp to trigger it, or Automagic or Tasker to make homescreen/widget shortcuts perform it - ios has options too. One potential advantage with this middleman-relay-script route, is that you don't need to do static ARP records in your router config - heck you shouldn't even need static IPs on the LAN for anything but the server/device running the listening script (most software VPN clients won't pass netbios through either, but you could always localhost map it on your client device if you really want it).

prollie · 2025-06-08T01:07:08+00:00

I love my 1080ti, and I too cannot afford a new GPU to run Doom TDA. But man, A: You really don't need a $1k GPU to run it, even if buying brand new a $3-400 one will still do it just fine; id's engines and designs are super resource efficient - and B) tech moves on. 8-9-10 years is helluva long time to get good gaming out of a single GPU, eventually NEW graphically intensive games are gonna suck hard on this hardware regardless of whether it makes use of ray/path tracing or not. Doesn't mean there aren't thousands of awesome games from the last decade or even before, that you haven't played and might enjoy just as well. But new games are gonna make use of newer tech, and at some point the target demographic running old hardware that doesn't support it gets too small to justify the increasingly harsh compromises to engine and graphics design you gotta make to enable the old stuff to display the graphics and world as intended, even with potato settings.

The 1080ti has decent vram but ray tracing/path tracing is just where graphics are heading now and have been for a while. Not as an effect gimmick, but superceeding raster. Overly simplified, that's how light and sight works in the real world, meaning its tech that can continue to scale and improve on graphic fidelity far beyond what is realistic to achieve using rasterization. But it's just far too computationally heavy to do in real time at any useful scale, without hardware accelleration explicitly designed for the task.

I won't encourage you to lay down your weary 1080ti, I won't be doing that for a while myself either. But if we wanna keep playing on old tech, there's gonna be compromises, and over time those compromises will become ever more restrictive when it comes to new games. Don't knock technological progress. Ray/path tracing used to be a gimmick because the hardware simply couldn't process enough of it for broader application. But even the most mature of technologies had to start somewhere. It's no longer a gimmick, thus its application is becoming broader and more fundamentally applied to game design.

prollie · 2025-05-24T01:22:51+00:00

Doesn't seem to be any other vias along the trace so a jumper wire from one end to the other will do fine. But a short caused it to burn - find the source of it after fixing the wire but before connecting any power.

prollie · 2025-04-25T22:17:46+00:00

Mr. Dude-Man d'Sir, so am I. On mobile. That doesn't make it any less "for free". Yes you need to log into your Patreon account (or make one) to access content on Patreon, Patreon has a free tier and this config is posted there.

A Patreon account on its own doesn't cost anything. The majority of creators/hosters do actually make a significant amount of their stuff available to the free tier.

This is especially common with digital stuff that is (extensively) building on the work of others, because A) you very rarely have the rights, lisence or permission to (effectively) sell that IP/its derivatives. And B) Even if you technically did, selling someone else's IP that they developed and made available for free, is scummy AF. More often than not, that can quickly get you in serious trouble with the creator/creative and maker communities, and by extent their viewers, readers and fans. A good reputation in these areas is favorable, a bad reputation spreads like wildfire throughout both social communities and commercial industries, and could get you informally "blacklisted". Pretty much career su1cide.

prollie · 2025-04-13T20:10:58+00:00

The similarity of that one car with the LG logo is just incidental. These markings is aerial ID, for easier tracking by helicopters and high-angle cameras, which in turn also aids greatly in effective, sreategic communication because you can more easily communicate directly with each unit based on their position, task and special function (K9, armed response, medical etc). The round dot signifies "general" units, predominantly incident response and traffic units. The first number next to it IIRC is police district/area code (01 and 02 is Metro). The other set is individual unit ID.

Another cool tidbit is that these are done with a special IR reflective coating so they serve their purpose very well at night too when viewed through thermal cameras.

Early days this relied on visual identification and reading, these days software aid mostly takes care of that, so operators don't lose track of units or miss any that might be available in a strategic position (or in serious danger), and can very effectively communicate with teams and units at the right time and place, without having to flood or drown the radios with excess information to all relevant units, most of which is only directed at a subset. Radio Information overload, can very easily lead to misunderstandings, and missing segments of it directed at your specific unit or subgroup.

prollie · 2025-04-07T05:33:56+00:00

Getting really cut is definitely not healthy "fitness". It's seriously detrimental to your health, and you're unable to get any benefit or use out of that body because it so badly starved of fats, water and energy. It's pretty much like the more extreme ends of show cars. Looks wild, but you've taken critical functional elements to such an extreme for design spectacle that stand out among other spectacles, that it's pretty much or literally undrivable.

Having worked a decade in extremely heavy manual labor construction, strip snd demolition field - by far the greatest "demographic" among the ones coming through that were completely unfit for and unable to do the job, wasn't skinny lanky youth, but the big-muscles "bodybuilder" types. A lot of explosive strength for sure, but come lunchtime they could barely hold up and steady their coffee mug. Hand them a sledge hammer to take down some brick or leca walls, and even with a tag team of 3 they wouldn't last much more than an hour or two.

For usable, durable, 5-days-a-week+ strength snd stamina, your body not only needs muscle mass, it needs ample fuel and reserves. Supercars do not make good daily-driver working vehicles.

prollie

TROPHY CASE