if your board is the same (AB350N), update the BIOS first to the latest or near latest version (make sure you read the BIOS release notes because I’m pretty sure they removed some CPUs from the supported list in later BIOS updates for 300 and 400-series boards but I don’t remember which) and then double check your UEFI for a setting called “Enable Above 4G Decode” or thereabouts, hiding in the menus (there might be a specifically named Re-BAR setting instead or in addition to)
I recall this definitely got added and some boards had it to begin with because being to address more than 4GB of memory was a thing for a long time in Linux before GPU vendors picked up on it for Windows
usually the hacks for getting that running are for old, old platforms (like people bragging they have rebar running on Sandy Bridge) or if the motherboard vendor just never implemented it (which, AMD let 300 series boards 5000 Ryzens so it should definitely be implemented)
I have two different AM4 boards and I can enable it with my 1700X on both
Turns out I had it all along (I updated my motherboard a while back). Turned it on, not gonna mess with memory allotment since that sounds like where most of the trouble occurs.
Looks like you can easily get a Z1 Extreme ROG Ally for under $500. I like mine. The screen is a lot more sensible in resolution and the VRR really makes choppy frame rates doable. The extra $50 you save can be put into a battery which you’ll need for either especially if you do any taxing gaming.
The one caveat is mousing and keyboarding sucks so you’ll wanna set it up beforehand. The steam deck mostly solves this (and when it doesn’t it has trackpads)
I don’t wanna jinx it but I think I may have figured out (or at least mitigated) my constant crashing in some games by taking the meager auto overclock off my CPU.
My current GAMER headset (SteelSeries Arctis 5 Wired) is succumbing to the years of cat-related torture, and I think it’s time to replace it.
For a while, I was considering getting an actual nice stand-alone headphone set, and a separate clip-on mic, but last time I researched this, it seems like it’s hard to find a setup that is both actually better in quality than your standard gaming headset, and not really expensive (as in multiple hundreds of dollars). I used to see a lot of raving and marketing about Antlion mics, but when I read more into it, a lot of people say they are overhyped and overpriced?
So I was thinking maybe I just buy another SteelSeries and move on. It served me well enough. Upon checking the SteelSeries shop for what is current, it seems that if I want a wired model (I do) my options are between the Arctis Nova 1, Arctis Nova 3, and Arctis Nova Pro. The Pro is 250 bucks so lol no. And as far as I can tell, the main difference between the 3 (100 dollars) and the 1 (60 dollars) is that the 3 has RGB, is USB as opposed to 3.5mm, and has a ton of fancy software/driver functionality like equalizers and per-game config and whatever other nonsense that I typically find just gets in the way and I never actually use.
So I am leaning towards the Arctis Nova 1, but have often had issues with running 3.5mm hardware direct from the tap. Of course, the last time I did so was years ago, so I’m not sure if I still have to worry. Are modern motherboard built-in audio chipsets good enough to just use and not worry, these days? Does it depend on the model? I have an AsRock B650E PG Riptide with “7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC897 Audio Codec)”.
Is it worth buying a USB soundcard? If so, is one of those little thumb-sized adapters good enough, eg something like this? Or am I setting myself up for disappointment?
most motherboard audio does still potentially have interference, to the point where a lot of boards come with their own USB sound cards nowadays (technically I have like 3 USB sound cards sitting around despite never having used or purchased one; the strix hive thing that came with my X670E board, the one that came with my HyperX Cloud headset 10 years ago, and the little Apple USB-C to 3.5mm DAC that they sell as a dongle to used wired headphones on a current iPhone). I think they are all pretty equivalently good so you can just get one for cheap if you encounter interference.
in other news, I have to say, I’m really enjoying having an obscene amount of memory and disk for the first time ever. my love of small builds and my tendency to build mid-high-spec PCs and then sit on them for like 7 years means that I’ve always been limited to whatever I can do with 2 memory slots and as many drives as will actually fit in the case – I just had to confirm my memory that my Ivy Bridge build that I used for ten years actually never supported any more than the 16GB that I built it with in 2013 – and the (recent to me) advent of m2 drives and super high capacity ram has been pretty fun…
why is it ineligible? if it has a TPM and technically could upgrade, it’s trivially easy to torrent a pre-validated Windows 11 ISO and put it on a USB stick using Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way or something
I should maybe have more misgivings about doing sensitive work stuff on pirated windows but I have been doing it for 20 years now, I think it’s a generational thing where I basically reject the idea that it’s not free
also it’s stupid that AMD memory controllers are still so sensitive, I figured I was fine just getting DDR5 5200 and dgafing the settings when I first built it (I turned the expo profile on and that was it), but my 7700X is literally like 15% faster on average with DDR5 6000 where UCLK = MCLK = 3000 and FCLK = 2000, made stupider still by the fact that even a lot of good memory only ships with Intel XMP profiles or like a DDR5 6400 Expo profile that performs considerably worse than those exact timings (which are not even the JEDEC standard) which you then usually have to dial in by hand. dumb!! dumb! I know how multipliers and ratios work from overclocking in the past and it is still so stupid!!
anyway between this and the scheduler patch it’s like 25% faster than when I bought it now and it boots way faster thanks to them patching out the memory training nonsense so I gotta hand it to AM5, they sure did ship this platform early
There was a stretch in the early all zoom days where was using a two channel audio interface with an xlr mic plugged in just as my day to day set up and I kinda got into having a giant physical volume knob and easy to access spot to plug my headphones in. I couldn’t decide if it sounded better though.
Yea, I was talking with one of my friends, and in our discussion, it came out/I realized that the most basic USB soundcards don’t support input over the jack, so I would need to actually buy up into one of those slightly fancier dual-jack DACs… This model came up in my googling as a relatively affordable unit.
This would make the full cost of a 3.5mm headset (along with the Y-splitter it comes with) plus the DAC a bit under 200 dollars, after tax. As opposed to the 110 or so if I just bought the USB version of the same headset… Hrrmm… trying to decide if its worth the extra 100 bucks to have a purpose-built DAC going forward.
$200 is in the same price range as 2.4Ghz wireless headsets without noise cancelling, any reason you aren’t considering one of those instead? I like the Razer BlackShark V2 for example.
If you’ve had a bad experience with a wireless headset before, keep in mind that if you avoid Bluetooth, you get back most of the latency and quality advantage of a wired connection.
