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Wellness Wednesday for April 2, 2025

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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).

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Thank you, that's excellent advice.

Does require regularly unplugging it to get the most out of it.

Why is that the case?

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.

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.

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).

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.

Why is that the case?

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.

Since I ended up opting for a TV ...

Ah, sorry, misread that.

Is that humidity sensor easy to install?

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.