Pihole is technically working on a mini-PC I set up successfully with lubuntu, just not with DNS. I can access the web server, albeit not login because the two-factor sigil doesn’t load in the text based web browser I use to access it from the device it’s on. Getting DNS working would require turning my ISP’s router into a bridge and connecting it to my own router, then configuring both, plus the mini-PC. I would have no problem doing this but my boyfriend would continuously complain and belittle me for spending too long on it, or using too much electricity or whatever else, so I effectively can’t do this
Nagios is technically also running on the mini-PC. It is not configured. Configuring it isn’t even terribly useful since my network is constantly changing and nothing has a defined use. It works alongside the pihole, through the magic of editing config files to use different ports
w3m and lynx are cool, I feel like if I live past 60 I am obligated at some point to never use more than a CLI again. I don’t know why.
I remembered that SSH -X is a thing. Maybe that will have a point eventually. Probably not.
I am angry about a lot of computer things right now, and this is combining with other forms of anger in a way that could either make me sleep for the entire day or break everything in the house with a baseball bat
AM4 motherboards are on sale right now, and while “maybe I can upgrade my stuff to AM5…” was a fun idea a few months ago, DDR5 RAM tripling in price has ruled that out.
So! I’ve got a Ryzen 5 5600 CPU and a 4070 Super, plus 32 GB of RAM. My motherboard is this sucker here:
Would there be any tangible benefit, apart from getting another NVME slot and WIFI 6, to getting one of these?
Or this?
It’d be nice to not have to work on this mini ITX board ever again, though I could repurpose it along with my old case/power supply/GPU/RAM and maaaaybe my 2400G CPU to make a half assed 1080p “I’ve got a Steam Machine at home.” I guess that’s the draw from this project.
eh, I don’t think it would. The big difference between b350 and b550 is pcie 3 vs 4 but even a 4090 only loses a few percent performance from pcie3 so whatever. If you need more nvme slots you could get a pci-e card for pretty cheap - since nvme drives already attach directly to the bus the pcie adapter cards are more or less just electrical adapters without expensive logic chips. that assumes you have room on your little mITX board/case though
also worth noting re: nvme slots - nvme drives have gone up quite a bit in price as well, though not as bad as ddr5
but if getting away from mITX and building a little steam box is interesting then go for it, just don’t expect to really get a lot more capabilities out of a new motherboard for your main machine
whelp, today steam decided that steamwebhelper.exe is not responding. I have looked up solutions, and there appear to be about 600 of them. none of the ones that aren’t extremely tedious have worked. very excited to dive into this one right after I kill myself.
Keep hearing how Valve is trying to temper expectations for the price of the GabeCube and am getting bummed out. I think they were asked if it’d be priced competitively with current consoles and they pretty much said no.
My spare case (that I could build a sorta Steam Machine out of) is like four times the size of that thing. But if it costs less to just make my own cumbersome one, well. Shit.
The living room PC is kind of a delicate concept. This new steam machine seems like a perfect compromise of heat/noise/size vs. performance/thrift but i don’t know if anybody actually wants that.
Couldn’t sleep last night so I did a bunch of drowsy half-assed research and found (based on speculation articles and whatnot) that even if I did do my hardware swap plan to make a little couch gaming PC, I’d have to spend a bunch of money to make something that would still be underpowered compared to the Steam Machine. Also a huge eyesore in the living room.
So I’m just going to replace my half-fried Western Digital SSD on my desktop and throw a bunch of PS2 games on there. That’ll sate my need to tinker.
counterargument: PC gaming is a completely insane, awful hobby, that requires you to do hours of bizarre maintenance and invest up front in consumer products that have only a bare expectation of actually working right, and Valve is the only company that’s come even close to meeting this nonsense in reasonable terms (their generous refund policy is a load bearing part of being able to ship a commercial platform based on wine). I think this will be a massive, deserved success.
