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I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for
by randerson 7mo ago
I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.
- SlightlyLeftPad 7mo agoSilver lining: literally all Macs are a total steal right now.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoGood Mac Pro models are still spendy, but the M3/M4 laptops are great if your software use-cases are met. =3
- Choco31415 7mo agoI’m still doing great even with an M2!
- xandrius 7mo agoStill loving my M1 to be honest!
- JSR_FDED 7mo agoIt’s super annoying. I’m salivating over all the new announcements but my M1 16GB 1TB will likely last another 5 years.
- joemi 7mo agoSame here. I've never had a machine feel so great for so long before!
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoThe SSD don't last forever, after about 3 to 4 years of daily use the drive/system should be replaced. At >5 years, one could hit retention issues and corruption losses. Good excuse to upgrade though, as a $1500 recovery bill would not be cool. Best regards =3
- markdown 7mo agoNever used a computer less than 8yrs and never had an ssd have an issue in that time.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- silversmith 7mo agoThis advice brought to you by the "change your oil every three months" crowd.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoI removed my anecdote and flash wear explanation, because of cranky folks like yourself. The corrosion inhibitors in petrol engine oil get fully depleted within about a year with most brands. One may certainly sell the machine before you see acidified lubricant related problems, but the motor will not reach its full operational lifespan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve .) I do agree that anyone with a CVT style transmission likely won't have to worry, as that entire section will probably need replaced before you see significant hydrodynamic bearing damage. "Buy cheap, buy twice" as they say... ymmv, best of luck. =3
- xandrius 7mo agoAs a side note, I absolutely cannot imagine being upset of having a machine lasting long. Sure it's nice the shiny new thing but has capitalism infiltrated people's mind that much? All my previous laptops died on me several times and became frankestein's monsters before I let them rest for a final time (to be often repurposed to other family/friends' machines).
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoWith intermittent use one may get a lot more life out of the SSD than other users, but eventually flash will run out of spare-sectors and start to fail. Most M1 systems I saw use on-board BGA110 NAND flash, and thus maintenance/upgrades on the SSD are difficult. Most users don't have a hot air rework station or x-ray inspection machines to do this modification correctly. The MTBF statistics can move around a lot depending on the use-case, but eventually people will run out of luck ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_time_between_failures .) Not sure why people get upset by this fact, as not all Apple hardware models were built to be disposable. =3
- remus 7mo agoI mean they're still expensive, they just seem relatively good value because everything else has gotten more expensive.
- moralestapia 7mo agoYeah, that's what @SlightlyLeftPad said.
- joemi 7mo agoAll value is relative, so everything else getting more expensive is essentially the same as macs getting cheaper.
- Bombthecat 7mo agoJust a matter of time until Apple also increases the price...
- layer8 7mo agoIt's not the same, unless you are simultaneously also getting richer.
- eru 7mo agoOther electronics have gotten more expensive, yes. But other hobbies haven't.
- jmward01 7mo agoAnyone have a good take on how well Asahi linux keeps the power management working on mac hardware? The biggest killer feature for me of mac hardware is the battery/weight. I have found it hard to get a good laptop in the linux ecosystem mainly because of power consumption. If Asahi doesn't really impact the battery life then I would seriously consider going that route. Similar question about support for pytorch on linux/arm64 / Asahi.
- erxam 7mo agoI think it's improved from when I last tried it, but it still isn't great. You can get like 60% of the battery life compared to macOS. Someone with more recent knowledge correct me on this, but I believe idling is the biggest power drain in Asahi. You will want to shutdown and/or hibernate whenever possible.
- oblio 7mo agoHow good is Mac virtualization? Would it be doable to put an Ubuntu inside a VM and just run it full screen all the time?
- whilenot-dev 7mo agoBought a used MacBook Air M2 past summer to run Asahi linux exclusively on it, the installation went hassle-free. One charge lasts 9+ hours easily, sometimes up to 12 hours. Thunderbolt, DP Alt Mode and TouchID would be nice to haves, but I'm super happy how everything runs. Thank you everyone on the Asahi team! I think the support for linux/arm64 is already very good in general, can't answer on pytorch though. The only app I'm really missing is Signal Desktop. The virtualization to run games is a noticeable performance hit and shows occasional glitches in the Steam overlay, but all my games run smoothly.
- cromka 7mo agoHey, just letting you know you can get aarch64 Signal Desktop from Terra repository!
- haunter 7mo agoToo bad I can’t play the games I want to play on them
- realo 7mo agoHint : GE Force Now ssshhhhh... do not tell anyone I told you...
- haunter 7mo agoIt's horrible. Bad quality, bad latency, can't mod the games etc. And worse you have to pay for it when you already have a more than capable computer.
- john_strinlai 7mo agoi wouldnt go as far to say "its horrible". i would never recommend it to someone who otherwise has a capable computer, of course, but it really isnt that bad. i gave it a pretty thorough test out of curiosity, and when they sponsored a few streamers i watch, it was totally fine. with the caveat that you have a decent internet connection and its probably not good for twitchy games like counter strike. and, as far as i know, there is limited support for modding and some unsupported workarounds.
- gazook89 7mo agoI used Shadow PC for a long time. Never any issues over several years. Lots of reasons in preferred it over GeForce. I can expound on that later if needed
- cyanydeez 7mo agoThe AMD395+ PCs have unified memory and since it's not tied to a garbage OS nor reasonably affected by future dram costs, it's a better choice for reasonable people, unless you're going for greater than 128GB
- whyenot 7mo agoI bought a Mac Mini in February and maxed out the ram and storage. Now, it seems like that was a prescient move, but honestly I really only bought it for photo editing and playing the new World of Warcraft expansion (don't judge me!).
- xandrius 7mo agoSerious question: how does WoW still appeal to players except for habit social connections to keep them locked into the game? I used to spend nights and love the game, now, even with all these expansions it feels exactly like it was in 2006 but without what happened to the gaming world in the past 20 years.
- whyenot 7mo agoIt's still fun. The social connections are also hugely important to me. One of my characters is in the same active guild that I joined in 2006. It's hard to put into words how meaningful that is to me. The game has improved, the newly re-done Silvermoon City is beautiful and richly detailed, but you are right, in many ways it's the same game as 20+ years ago, except made more casual-friendly in a lot of ways. I like it and there really isn't anything else like it out there. ...and surprising to me, if you believe Blizzard, there are around 9 million people who still play.
- xandrius 7mo agoAlright so I 100% understand you, and now I know I'm not totally crazy. I think because I used to play on private servers, I don't have that long-standing connection to a group, which is probably what keeps many people still there. But yeah, I'd jump on a WoW 2 but the gameplay and quest system is so outdated that just doesn't give me good vibes anymore.
- SenHeng 7mo agoI don’t know. I still fire up FF14 every couple of weeks for a few dungeon runs. No more social interactions with the various channels, I barely talk to my party even. I think it’s just familiarity and not wanting to learn a whole new system when I’m looking to shut my brain down for a couple hours.
- elorant 7mo agoYou pay an $1k extra just to get the model with 1TB disk. How is that a steal?
- thejazzman 7mo agopro tip: don't
- eru 7mo agoNot really a steal, just that the price differences have narrowed.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoWe used those Tripp Lite LC1200 to knock down the noise floor (14dB) on remote equipment. These line-conditioners actually perform well given the cost, but never buy used surge-arresters given the finite spike hit-count. Best of luck =3
- cyberax 7mo agoThese devices are basically autotransformers. So they reduce the noise by providing inductive filtering. But they don't really protect against strong surges by themselves. So Tripp Lite uses a regular varistor for that, just like any other surge protector. In Europe you'd be far better off buying a voltage relay and adding it to your electrical panel, but it's not usually possible with the non-modular US electrical panels.
- Joel_Mckay 7mo agoThe simple line-conditioners were surprisingly effective, and are a fraction of the cost of lab/medical grade galvanic isolation ferroresonant transformers. =3
- FreezingKeeper 7mo agoWhat’s with the ‘cock and balls’ emoticon?
- amatecha 7mo agowelcome to the internet, sometimes people make smiley faces :)
- rationalist 7mo agoYou can find all types of people on the Internet, even some without noses :-)
- Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
- srik 7mo agoLiving in developing countries taught me to never plugin expensive computers without a surge protector UPS.
- porkloin 7mo agoHonestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.
- xandrius 7mo agoDoesn't even sound like a developed country to me. Is that the US or something?
- nerdsniper 7mo agoI work on embedded systems. I can often see whether my A/C or other appliances are running on my oscilloscope signals. They often affect the output of USB power supplies.
- eru 7mo agoEh, if these surges are rare enough, then you are statistical better off just risking your 'expensive' hardware to a one in a trillion possibility rather than spending money on gear you don't need. Do you live in a bunker to protect against artillery shells?
- Onavo 7mo agoDo you still need a UPS if you have one of those household (Powerwall style) battery packs? Also Apple switched mode power supplies are pretty well built. But then again there's horror stories like https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1maegvb/i_burned_my_mac_mini_m4_due_to_a_voltage_surge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1maegvb/i_burned...
- bob1029 7mo agoYes. The power walls are like cheap UPS topology. You could still get whacked with a transient from the grid before the ATS decides to island the house.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- ScoobleDoodle 7mo agoI have a UPS with surge protection which I plug my computer into for this reason. Do others do the same or use something else?
- bpye 7mo agoOver the last two years I bought 2 4TB SSDs, 64GB DDR5 ECC UDIMM and 4 14TB HDDs. I couldn't justify buying any of them today.
- rationalist 7mo agoIt sounds like it won't affect prices that much? > South Korean memory giant SK hynix has since said it had diversified supplies for helium and secured sufficient inventory. Meanwhile, TSMC said that it doesn’t currently anticipate a notable impact following Ras Laffan going offline, but that it’s monitoring the situation.
- jmyeet 7mo agoI bought a PC in early 2021 IIRC. It was good for the time and a good deal for a high end PC. IIRC it was $2800 and had a 6900 XTX. Last year I accidentally killed it. The CPU temps were higher than I'd like (~85C). the thermal grease can become hard and ineffective over time so I figured I'd replace it. Instead, it had become like cement and by twisting the AIO off, I snapped the socket on the motherboard. This was an expensive mistake as I both looked into buying a replacement motherboard and CPU but that quickly gets to the price of a new PC. Paying someone to rebuild my PC is expensive and I'm beyond the age of wanting to fully remove a motherboard and effectively rebuild my entire PC myself. So I didn't know what to do with it. Anyway, I ended up buying various alternatives like a NUC with 32GB of RAM, a laptop (with a 4080) and a Mac Mini. But I also ended up buying a new 9800X3D PC with a 5070Ti. Like I said, it was an expensive mistake. But I decided for no particular reason to upgrade the (already good) 32GB of DDR5-6000 to 64GB with a $200 kit of DDR5-6000. This was in July I think. I also upgraded my laptop to 64GB for no readily apparent reason. I recently checked and that $200 64GB kit now costs $950. SSDs are through the roof too but through complete accident I'm surrounded by about 5 PCs and a bunch of spare RAM. I don't see myself upgrading anytime soon. I will say that there are some good deals (relative to current pricing) for combos including CPU, motherboard and memory or even some pretty good prebuilts.
- smilbandit 7mo agoI got to get me some new surge protectors and not the cheapies. maybe a small ups.
- bobsmooth 7mo agoThankfully UPSes are still cheap. Get one before Sam buys the entire yearly production of cyberpower.