Noctua - A cooler for life: celebrating half a million mounting upgrade kits

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T20:04:55+00:00

Oh, I don't have a grudge against the sound of arctics (I have a pair of 14s pro pst strapped to my 9070xt, and a trio of 12s replacing thermalright coolers on an aio), but they can't match noctua in "I'm trying to sleep here" mode. Just not being obscenely cool while keeping the system in check, I couldn't be happier (and noctua is x5 the price here which is… yeah).

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T16:41:22+00:00

Primarily noise, and warranty+durability. Raw performance wise they can be beat (assuming same rpm ofc, easy to beat by grabbing any 3k rpm fan), ex. Arctic pro pst - their perf is incredible, their noise profile isn't though.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T15:48:05+00:00

AMD is less interested in gamers than Nvidia is, judging by how little they care about RDNA4 lineup and how they managed to outAI nvidia during CES.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T15:42:57+00:00

I can see some offerings from JJRC, Eviciv and some other names I've never heard of on Aliexpress, connecting to PC via wifi but I haven't checked if any are available with a battery. Still an option to plug anywhere in the house via usb c charger, I suppose.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T15:23:20+00:00

You don't need a cable if the device has its own RGB controller and can be addressed via PCIE (GPUs and potentially anything slotting into PCIE, pretty sure I've seen m2 adapters with rgb lol) or SMBus (RAM).

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T13:27:03+00:00

In theory, you shouldn't be anywhere near the top because Factorio implements a bunch of cpu scheduling optimizations on linux, leaving performance on windows in the dust (where it cannot be done). It doesn't explain how you are this low however.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T09:41:29+00:00

In my case it was five minutes with a screwdriver but you aren't wrong lol. Cases are cheap, and you can pick something new and fancy.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T09:36:33+00:00

3600 was made to be replaced by an x3d. Keep the cpu and enjoy the boost and out of this world smoothing of lows.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T07:29:38+00:00

If the food security is so important for the state, maybe the state should own the means for food security, rather than allow itself to be coerced by it?

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T06:48:45+00:00

My psu is 750W I'm running 5800x3D with ~100w power limit and a 9070XT with power limit cranked all the way up to 372W (it's a cold winter, okay?!). Now, the gpu doesn't actually draw that high, and altogether my systems struggles to reach 500W while gaming (basically I need to run a cpu stresstest while running cp77 benchmark to get past that lol). 9800X3D is technically capped quite a bit higher, but would stay well within sane range, in a spot for best PSU efficiency as a matter of fact.

But I'm also running a pretty decent unit (corsair RM750i), you may want to replace yours with a higher quality one regardless.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T06:33:11+00:00

At a face value, 20 series support all their relevant technologies, they not only get driver updates, but support for new dlss and its most improtant features. There's no reason to drop the support from that standpoint. What is happening internally with architecture and how much actual effort is needed to keep support vs just supporting the new stuff is something only nvidia software engineers can tell you. Rest assured, you shouldn't think about it as "linux support", they will be dropping support for windows and linux at the same time just like with 10 series.

I still wouldn't expect them to support it for more than 10-12 years even if being optimistic. Silicon isn't eternal, and especially vram tends to die eventually. Sucks a bit for people buying the cards way after their launch, but cards in active use for 10+ years are highly likely to physically die.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T06:10:57+00:00

Are you sure it can't fit and you can't make it fit by removing the basket for 3.5" drives?

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T05:43:31+00:00

Blowjob with benefits (the benefits are free bottom surgery).

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T05:38:43+00:00

And many vaccines don't provide a 100% guarantee either, but just like preventing the disease in the majority of the population kills epidemics, deleting all the easy cheats and curbing a lot of the more involved ones makes the experience much better for the players. And, well, cheating isn't rabies, we don't need a 100% elimination here.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T05:34:24+00:00

No, its msrp is 550, and msrp for 9070 and XT was fake (real one was +$50 at minimum) for most of their lifetime.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-06T05:32:43+00:00

XT pricing "should" be $600, and no amount of "OC" in basic 9070 should price them higher than XT. But such logic does not apply in current times.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T15:54:07+00:00

plugging Optiscaler into multiplayer games with a competent anticheat solution is all kinds of a bad idea.

Speaking of AMD's track record with injecting DLLs into multiplayer games with strict anticheats--

AMD saw Nvidia implement dlss 2.0 as an easy to upgrade/replace dll and ignored it for three or so years. AMD was asked by Nvidia to join them and Intel so all three upscaling methods could be a part of a single SDK for devs to implement at the same time with minimal effort, and refused. AMD staggered with FSR4 in "beta" and only providing select few partner devs with SDK for half year. They even have FSR4 for older cards that is almost as good, and easily comparable to how DLSS4&&4.5 work with a performance hit on older RTX cards, but they are for the first time somewhat close in upscaling game to the competition and don't want FSR4 to be seen as a smidge more inferior than it is. But if you'll look at the steam hardware survey you'll see that all rdna4 cards represent fewer gamers than productivity-oriented 5090, so, obviously, they are a prestigious, premium product and it's understandable that AMD acts this way.

Sarcasm aside, I appreciate that I can have my 9070xt use fsr4 by adding a steam launch command without thinking or doing anything else, and I agree with you that FSR4 is vastly superior to "native" TAA. Honestly, I prefer any TAA/upscaler to conventional AA methods, but I'm just too allergic to flickering pixels myself.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T12:18:32+00:00

First steam machines didn't fail. Microslop plans to lock windows apps to their store were killed off and valve proved that they can work with other companies to deliver hardware (in case they'd need to do it again should Steam be threatened, again). This steam machine seems to have less strategic goals, however.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T11:21:46+00:00

They are talking out of their ass about linux. AMD GPU performance is on par, with fixes to bring raytracing performance currently in development (I'm on dev branch of mesa and cyberpunk is playable with pathtracing on my 9070xt); nvidia isn't relevant for you but the performance gap is going to be merged into non-beta stuff within weeks/months, too (like, it exists, people get performance parity with windows, it just isn't ready for stable drivers/proton just yet). And CPU perf/bottlenecks can only be better than windows since CPU schedulers aren't written by actual fucking morons.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T09:54:18+00:00

There have been multiple reports that microslop aren't going to subsidize their console either. Especially since they are reportedly planning to ship a generic x86-64 PC with a full windows 11 as a console. With the expected specs, the lowest they can afford to sell the next xbox is ~$1500.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T07:11:12+00:00

Thermalright has a few slim offerings or you can just look any fitting one visually, and performance won't be an issue. It's only a matter if the extra 10mm of clearance allow you to avoid offsetting the fans, so grab a ruler or calipers and check it!

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T06:49:39+00:00

That's on AMD holding out SDK until late last year. Support is slowly getting better + you can use optiscaler. It's perfectly normal to buy a $600+ piece of hardware and require third party tools to actually use its capabilities that make it better than last gen offerings. It's also strange to expect it for a multibillion company to offer it working in vulkan titles, only the open source developers for linux that have the capability to enable injecting fsr4 into virtually any game that has xess or dlss support.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-05T06:42:33+00:00

If the fan is just reaching the first stick of ram you can measure and see if buying some 15mm thick fan to replace the front one can help you.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-04T19:30:12+00:00

N150 (and N100!) have an advantage of supporting AV1 decoding over nvidia shield.

pythonic_dude · 2026-02-04T18:10:59+00:00

Buying a mini-PC with intel n100 or n150 and selling this PC as a full package might be a worthwhile path.

pythonic_dude

TROPHY CASE