The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Quick request for a spot check:
I've had the build for a new pc in my apartment trickling in. So far, I've ordered/received/have:
The audio quality of my phone is good enough that I'd be happy to use it as a mic, and as a webcam. I have Bluetooth earphones and a mouse that I like. I think the PC came with power cables, but I haven't unboxed it yet. Wired internet is not an option, so I have to settle for wifi running off a 5g uncapped service. Should be fine, if not ideal.
?buy:
Am I missing anything? Any QOL improvements?
A cheap UPS to give you the time to do a proper shutdown in case of power failure.
Even in India, I never particularly missed an UPS despite the worse electricity infrastructure. I think blackouts where I currently live in Scotland are on the scale of hours a year, so I'm willing to do without it. I'll keep that in mind in case my optimism is disabused, thank you.
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And protect from voltage transients. Power supplies are incredible at eating anything you throw at them, but tree branches on power lines can cut mains voltage in half several times a second.
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Get a PS5 controller.
Compatibility with a pc, while not non-existent, can be a headache at times. I prefer the Xbox layout too!
For the sake of others reading this: There's no headache. Some games have native support, others require an app like DSX. Takes a few minutes to set up the first time. Reliable after that.
There aren't many PC games that support the unique DualSense features, but I strongly prefer the shape and feel of the PS5 controller over the XS one.
That's fair. I've heard of DSX, but only just looked into it in more detail and found out it does a good job of getting proprietary PS5 controller features to work in games without native support.
I still find the ergonomics awkward, though that's likely an idiosyncratic thing. I like my left thumb resting on the d-pad, instead of the stick.
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Get a cheap set of cable ties -- I'm a big fan of velcro, but there are moderately good magnetic or flex-plastic ones. Good wire management starts on day one, and if you let it get bad you'll never fix it.
A moderately good USB dock can make your life a lot more pleasant, both to just have extra options to put a plug in, and since USB-C ports fit pleasantly-and-destructively inside USB-A ports. They're not very expensive, but the lowest-end ones can be worse than nothing; expect 15-25 USD for something notTemu grade. Some, but far from all, B560s support Thunderbolt, either stock or as a generally pretty cheap add-in card, and while desktop users will seldom if ever want to use it as an expansion for graphics cards, it can be useful for data transfer or other high-throughput peripherals.
Contra ToaKraka, I'm not a huge booster for RAID at home, since there's a lot of subtle failure modes and it doesn't protect you from the most common failures (RAID is not a backup). That said, a cheap USB platter drive can set you back around 50-80 USD, be trivial to automate, and save a lot of potential frustrations even if everything Is On The Cloud. Does require regularly unplugging it to get the most out of it.
If you have available PCIE slots, NVME expansion cards will set you back 10-30 USD, depending on quality, and are a nice way to bulk up on storage if your motherboard is limited. That said, unless you get a B560 in mini-ITX, I'd expect three slots in a prebuilt, and that's more than enough for most users.
Your monitor and GPU will very likely support HDMI, knowing nothing other than the stats you provide, but double-check both support and compatibility -- a lot of highest-framerate options work best over DisplayPort. Adapters are cheap (though I'd recommend splurging around ~15 USD), but they suck to have to wait a weak for, and with tiny number of exceptions these adapters are unidirection.
There's some specialty things (eg, if you get water cooling, a cheap pump shutoff humidity sensor can save you a lot of frustration; if you do a lot of console- or simulator-like gaming there are some recs I can give for gamepads or throttles; VR headsets can change a lot of interests), but I'll assume that if you had those constraints you'd have mentioned them (and water cooling is pretty marginal today).
Thank you, that's excellent advice.
Why is that the case?
Since I ended up opting for a TV instead of a monitor (a 4K OLED VRR TV is cheaper than a smaller QHD OLED monitor), HDMI 2.1 is the only option. I've confirmed compatibility.
This PC is watercooled. I didn't want that, but since it was the cheapest model with a Ryzen 9800X3D and an RTX 5080, my frugality won out. Is that humidity sensor easy to install?
I am somewhat interested in a controller, I prefer the Xbox layout over a PS4/5 one. I'm familiar with VR, I owned a Quest 2, but didn't bring it over from India. There's not much room to properly use it, unfortunately.
Having a spinning secondary disk that's constantly plugged into your computer helps prevent some concerns that overlap with RAID benefits (eg, single disk hardware failure) and some that RAID can't help with ("oops I overwrote this file I need"). It only partially mitigates catastrophic physical risks (such as theft), and does not mitigate at all mitigate catastrophic malware or user error concerns. I have dealt with multiple users who've had ransomware not only hit their main drive, but every drive plugged into every computer on their home network; I've seen a couple people accidentally overwrite their storage drives when reinstalling Windows or Linux.
This is a low risk, especially if you're computer-savvy, but it's also very low-cost.
Ah, sorry, misread that.
No, unfortunately. There used to be some decent commercial ones, but the brands I know about look to have stopped manufacture. That probably means that, with the growth of good AIOs, leaks are a lot less common, but I do know of a few major AIO manufacturers that have had recalls over leaks.
I've usually stuck with condensate cutoff switches and put them inline for the power cable, but this requires some familiarity with wiring and crimping 110v or 220v AC power. Home water leak detectors can be useful and they're literally set-and-forget (modulo The Apps), but make sure to get one that has a humidity function, not just direct drip detection. Be aware that they won't shut off the system, they'll just beep at you to do so.
It's reasonable to skip one, and most people do. If you do not use a leak detector, do regularly inspect (1/month) your PC internals, especially at fittings near the CPU waterblock, for any signs of corrosion, 'grit', or dampness. I'd also recommend being extremely aware of the PC's intended physical orientation: AIOs are very dependent on gravity feeding the pump, .
Thank you, that's very helpful. I've never handled a water cooled rig before, so fingers crossed I don't break anything.
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More storage is always good. 2tb nvmes are as cheap as they're going to get right now (as is ram: big memory chip oversupply), so you may as well buy plenty of both. As long as your mobo has m2 slots for the drives ofc
I'm quite confident that it does have spares, but I haven't unboxed it yet (I need to move it over), and the manufacturer is rather coy about the specific brand of B650 motherboard in use. I'd expect, given the price I paid for it, there should be a few handy.
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The point of an SSD is to provide fast loading times for your operating system and your video games. In my personal experience, a 1-TB internal drive is good enough. But if you keep a lot of bloated modern video games installed simultaneously then you may need something bigger.
If you need storage for your collection of 4K60 dashcam videos, there is no need for an SSD's high speed, so you should instead use HDDs (16-TB, 24-TB, etc.)—preferably in a RAID 6/RAIDZ2 configuration, to prevent data loss. Note that RAID does not work well with external USB enclosures, so you would be better served using a separate, lower-power, Linux-running computer as a server and connecting it to your main computer with Samba. But that may be beyond your price range.
I have an unfortunate habit of downloading games that are maybe 50 gigs in size and then adding on several hundred gigs of mods. I think I was well past 300 gb for Arma 3, and even poor old Rimworld, which is sub 1 gb by itself, bloated to 17+.
I can see a good deal for 4tb M.2 NVME drives with decent reviews, so I'm inclined to future proof. I'm not the target audience for a RAID setup, anything critical is likely a small file and backed up to the cloud.
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