256 GigaBITs (=32GB) of ram is pretty low
It’s not as much as a lot of people have, but it definitely isn’t low.
Me: Only have 8GB Ram at hand
A hybrid drive… in MY 2024?
I need a new CPU… that new Marvel game has shown me two things
- Western Developers still have open contempt for the concept of Optimization
- I’ve upgraded EVERYTHING over the years… except for my CPU
If you’re talking about Marvel Rivals, then it’s not made by a “Western developer”, but NetEase, a Chinese studio…
That makes the poor optimization even worse because NetEase games could run on a Galaxy S2 if you could find one that got service
HHD+
Horny hard disk. Incidentally it’s infinitely better than HDD.
What, the Horny Droopy Dick?
In the opposite end, what is the cheapest device that you could watch YT on? I’m thinking one of those retro game consoles, which are like $60, run Linux, and have WiFi.
I used to be able to watch linux on a 30 bucks android tv device in which I installed coreelec.
Sadly youtube apps on there stopped working for me a while ago due the war on adblocks. But the device was perfectly capable of playing YouTube.
I suppose that with tubearchivist and jellyfin you could still somehow watch youtube.
Runs flawlessly on my raspberry pi (4, 2 GB RAM, bought new for 28€)
*requires a keyboard and screen
I’ll sell you my old phone for $10.
Got a new system and I’m playing diablo 2 and balatro on it…
That 4x animation speed is worth it.
Me neither. Obviously, this has to be used for hyper realistic VR interactive porn.
Someone who is not me wants to know how big of a difference would there be between like a 2070 super and a 4090 for some of that stuff?
They also want to know if there’s some more recent stuff they don’t know about yet.
One should keep bit rate in mind in order to experience a smoother experience. Or so I’ve read.
I’ve had my valve index for 5 years and never heard about bit rate affecting it - what am I looking for?
Hmm… Quality.
My guess is that you’ll get less diminishing returns if you focus on the haptical hardware, rather than the graphics.
The guy who is asking has some stuff in that department, he’s more interested in the visuals now
If he’s that desperate and has the money to spend, he’ll probably enjoy it. I’m not sure if I’d call that grade of… dedication to porn very… healthy.
Damn. I haven’t built a new computer in 10 years.
Are we seriously here now? DAAAAAAMN
I got old.
Not THAT far. But 32GB RAM is getting more common, though I haven’t heard of many people using 64, let alone more than that.
Also, storage is usually not that extreme, though multiple terabytes are also getting more common on the higher end.
Just this month, I upgraded to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD so it isn’t that extreme for most people.
CPU and GPU - wise, most people aren’t running the best of the best, and there are still plenty of people using 10-series Nvidia GPUs, with most people seemingly using 20-series or 30-series GPUs, (and usually not the best cards for these generations)
I just now upgraded to 64GB of DDR4 from eBay. But that’s because my Blender projects were getting really big and I’d crashed a few times. Linux is awesome but is really scary how it just hard-freezed or mercilessly thrashes when low on memory. 😬
…That and I finally get glorious RGB RAM lighting up my case. :D weee!
For gaming? I haven’t seen that much RAM be usedul yet. And in Blender… likely because I have a crazy amount of undo levels enabled and have Firefox open…a few tabs…maybe more than a few tabs…maybe a lot of tabs…
really scary how it just hard-freezed or mercilessly thrashes when low on memory.
That’s what the swap partition is for?
I only watch free tube in 12k.
I’m all for doing this, but I’m not particularly interested in compiling kernel modules to make my base hardware work, which is why I used VMware until June when my iMac died. This worked for me for 15 years. My Mac had 64 GB of RAM and was plenty fast to run my main Debian desktop inside a VM with several other VMs doing duty as Docker hosts, client test environments, research environments and plenty more.
Now I’m trying to figure out which bare bones modern hardware I can buy in Australia that will run Debian out of the box with no surprises.
I’ve started investigating EC2 instances, but the desktop UI experience seems pretty crap.
If you’re trying to do VDI in the cloud, that can get expensive fast on account of the GPU processing needed
Most of the protocols I know of the run CPU-only (and I’m perfectly happy to be proven wrong and introduced to something new) tend to fray at high latency or high resolution. The usual top two I’ve seen are VNC and RDP (XRDP project on Linux), with NoMachine and plain x11 over SSH being right behind that. I think NoMachine had the best performance of those three, but it’s been a hot minute since I’ve personally used it. XRDP is the one I’ve used the most often, but getting login/lock/unlock working was fiddly at first but seems to be stable holding.
Jumping from the “basic connection, maybe barely but not always suitable for video” to “ultra high grade high speed”, we have Parsec and Sunshine+Moonlight. Parsec is currently limited to only Windows/Mac hosting (with Linux client available), and both Parsec and Sunshine require or recommend a reasonable GPU to handle the encoding stage (although I believe Sunshine may support an X264 encoder which may exert a heavy CPU tax depending on your resolution). The specific problem of sourcing a GPU in the cloud (since you mention EC2) becomes the expensive part. This class of remote access tends to fray at high resolution and frame rate less because it’s designed to transport video and games, rather than taking shortcuts to get a minimum desktop visible.
Yeah, I was getting ready to use NoMachine on a recommendation, until I saw the macos uninstall script and the lack of any progress by the development team, going so far as to delete knowledge base articles and promising updates on the next release three versions ago.
An added wrinkle is getting local USB devices visible on a VDI, like say a local thumb drive (in this case it’s a Zoom H5 audio recorder) so I can edit audio, not to mention, getting actual audio across the network, let alone being synchronised.
It’s not trivial :)
At the moment I’m experimenting with a proxmox cluster, but any VM from VMware don’t just run, so for ancient operating systems in a VM like Win98se, you need drivers which are no longer available … odd since that’s precisely why I run it in a VM. Not to mention that the Proxmox UI expects you to run a series of commands in the console every time you want to add a drive, something which happens fairly often.
For shits and giggles try finding a way to properly shutdown a cluster without having to write scripts or shut each node down individually.
As I said, not trivial :)
Pretty much anything… I haven’t compiled a kernel module in quite a few years on any Debian system, and thats basically all I run. Was 15 years ago the last time you tried installing Linux on bare metal? Because things have definitely changed since 2009.
If you want to avoid GPU hassles, go with Intel or AMD. Everything will autodetect.
Also avoid Broadcom BCM43602 WiFi at all cost.
LoL, my side hurts from laughing because of how true this is. 😂😂😂
To be fair, I’d just recommend avoiding WiFi in general.
Intel WiFi would be on my recommended list, or anything atheros. I can’t understand self-hosting over WiFi though.
I’ve installed Debian on several bits of bare metal hardware since, Raspberry pi, suddenly doesn’t detect the usb wifi dongle that worked in the previous release. Or the hours trying to get an extended Mac USB keyboard to work properly.
Supermicro servers that didn’t support the on board video card in VGA mode (for a text console).
Then there was a solid-state “terminal” device which didn’t have support for the onboard ethernet controller.
It’s not been without challenge, hence my reluctance. I moved to VMware to stabilise the experience and it was the best decision I’ve ever made, other than standardizing on Debian.
I note that I’ve been installing Debian for a while. This is me in 2000:
Now thats a message that makes me miss my pizza box (and my DEC space heater).
Choosing a Mac keyboard I’m unsurprised you had to put in some extra work. The supermicro is odd, unless you got that one board some years back - I think it was an x9dri? - which was all kinds of finicky, even with VMware where I had to disable some power management features or it broke USB.
Pretty much any standard hardware will do. I’d also mention you dont really need server grade hardware at this point, a cluster of desktop grade will outperform for the price (unless you’ve got heavy and sustained loads, different story there, but that’s not the majority of self hosters).
I’m running proxmox nodes on tiny/mini/micros for the most part, where all my self hosting happens, a couple ryzen machines with arch or Debian, an OL box for some work stuff, etc. Less power use with T/M/M than my server grade hardware (which I still have sometimes for work stuff and testing), and performance with my cluster is on par or better IMO.
I miss my SPARC, it had to be given away when I started travelling around Australia for five years. The last IBM ThinkPad replaced it, anyone remember recompiling kernels to support the PATA/SATA driver so you could boot the thing? I never did get all the onboard hardware to work and one day someone in the Debian X11 team decided that using multiple monitors as a single desktop wasn’t required any longer.
I bought a 17” MacBook Pro and installed VMware on it, never looked back.
I take your point on not needing server hardware. The proxmox cluster was a gift on the way to landfill when my iMac died. I’m using it to figure out which platform to migrate to after Broadcom bought VMware.
I think it would be irresponsible to go back to it in light of the developments since the purchase.
I think it would be irresponsible to go back to it in light of the developments since the purchase.
Absolutely agree. I’m actually shifting client hardware over from VMWare, last one is slated for end of Jan actually.
Laptops I’d say are more problematic because the hardware choices are usually less standard stuff and more whatever cheap bits they can shove in, I think the worst recent issue though with a (lenovo) thinkpad was brightness controls not working. So I used ahkx11, AFAIK no Wayland support yet, but that’s fine for the like 8 or 9 year old laptop its on (now my wife’s laptop).
I have a tendency to stick to the CLI for… Just about everything tbh, but regarding the shutdown bit, startup order and delay is the reverse for the shutdown process, no scripting needed if your issue is just proper sequencing.
And I get it, a bunch of my hardware has been getting decommissioned hardware one way or the other! I just mostly take home the little desktops most buy these days (can’t wait to get a couple of the slightly fat ones for my rack, those little guys are monsters).
When I used to be interested in hardware I would buy it with half of the top of the line money, the rest invest it in some fund and then buy an upgrade in two years with that investment. Or at least that used to be the case when GPU and all the components had a tendency to become a fancy vintage museums after 2 years. You would be laughed at if you said something about future proofing.
I miss that.
Me with my 3090 pc playing only Stardew Valley: 🗿
Started playing this for the first time today on an RG35xxSP.
That 3090 is living a stress free life
A raspberry pi 5 can play YouTube in HD just fine, so if you wanna save 4000 bucks maybe do that instead
If there were not for youtube shitty war on adblocks I was able to watch youtube 1080p on a 30 bucks android tv thingy.
I would have to check is someone built an alternative app to keep watching it because power of the device was no issue. When running on a minimal kodi installation it just worked fine.
That was the joke.
I mean, yeah, I realize it was the joke. I think I was just adding context some people may not know about. I didn’t know a rpi could do that task until I started researching media PC options.
You can also just buy a used laptop or business computer which is infinitely better and cheaper.
Removed by mod
Cheaper than a raspberry? O.o
Used stuff is generally cheaper than new stuff.
Yeah, but I wouldn’t be sure used stuff below 100€/$/whatever could handle the internet too well, nowadays.
Anything made in the past 10-15 years still works great, I have a couple of really old thin clients that I bought for around $20 and dumped my pis when the prices were way up. One runs octoprint and the other one runs Lubuntu out in the garage so I can look up vehicle specs and other things while I’m out there. I have a fifth Gen Intel laptop that still works great. I have a desktop with a Ryzen 3000 series that works just fine both bought used for under $100. Raspberry pi is good for certain tasks, but using it for a desktop makes little sense. Even now I’m working this message on an Android phone that was around $100 with no issues.
CPU power hasn’t changed much, they’ve added more features over the years, but power hasn’t changed a lot, only Windows has gotten more bloated so you need more ram to run it.
Pi 5 desktop kit is like $150 isn’t it?
Yeah you can beat that performance and price with some used hardware. Will cost more in power though.
Well, actually with 150$ you could buy a used business SFF/tiny PC with an 8th/9th gen i5 CPU and I don’t think that it will consume that much more than a rpi.
Only at idle.
At peak the sff PCs are going to be at least triple the ~30W of the pi 5.
Edit: You’ll get way more out of the sff though, which is what I was saying. Tiny/mini/micro is my entire self hosted environment (as well as lab and work setup for the most part).
At peak the sff PCs are going to be at least triple the ~30W of the pi 5.
Are you sure? I think that for the same tasks, the i5 (at least 9th gen) is more power efficient than the rpi 5. I was a pi guy, I had them all over the places, but like you, I’m now using SFF/tiny used PCs (when I don’t need GPIO).
At least as far as my setup, yeah. Ive got 5th-10th gens, under high loads I’ll see a spike to 80+ watts, the highest is 170W but those have nvidia quadros in them.
Edit: For gpio now I’ll just use an esp32 or something instead.
My only pi usage these days is work stuff, and orangepi is supported there. In terms of arm, also Jetson, but that’s kind of outside the discussion here.
You could get away with nothing but the Pi, depending on what you’ve got lying around.
Sure, depends on needs of course. Just saying I can see how someone could arrive at a better price point than a pi with more performance.
Just not more per watt (except in more burst demanding scenarios).
The pi foundation lost a lot of goodwill with me though, so I stick to the alternatives (orangepi for example) if I need one.
Edit: I a whole word.
oh man, I tried an orangepi and I cannot express how sketchy that thing was, top to bottom. It had a lot of power but that is the one good side it had (it was a lot more expensive than a rpi too). That shitty flashing utility alone make it worth picking something different.
I had so much trouble trying different OSes on it. I think actually none of them felt stable and I tried like 5 (multiple versions of each) I think.
Ive got very specific needs when it comes to pi-alikes, so I can only speak to how ive used it.
I still won’t support the pi foundation though.
By the time you factor in a case, cooling, SD card, and power supply a Pi can cost about as much (~$100) as an off lease i5.
Guess it depends on how much hardware you already got lying around. I could scrounge up an SD card, an old phone charger, a fan, keyboard and mouse from my supply and I’ve got a 3D printer.
I’m all for recycling though. I’m just not sure if a $100 i5 system could handle all that bloat on the web.
Also: I really like AV1. 😅
Have you had success with phone chargers? My RPi4 is very picky about power and is unstable on anything but the official power supply.
If you have that lying around, you can still beat a pi 5 by only buying an i5 motherboard instead of an entire pc. As to handling the bloat, it’s faster.
SD card, sure.
Old phone charger? Might not be strong enough to power a Pi 4/5; this isn’t the Pi 3 days with a microUSB.
“… and I’ve got a 3D printer.“
Yeah, you’re “ahead” of most people with that one.
This i5 could probably handle it, and you’ve got $$$ left over for an SSD.
Go with the 8500 i5 instead. I have that with a 1650 for the kids.
Agreed.
Was proving that you can find a half way decent machine that’s more capable than a Pi5 at the same price point (~$100)
Yes. Here’s a random listing on CL.
Phenom X4? That thing probably can’t really handle YT HD streams.
HP
Kinda says it all.
Yep. First of all, the person who said an RPI5 can show YouTube HD just fine is lying. It’s still stuttery and drops frames (better than the RPI4b, but still not great). Second, you’ll end up dropping well north of $100 for the RPI5, active cooler, case, memory card (not even mentioning an m2 hat), power supply, and cable / adapter to feed standard HDMI.
You can find some really solid used laptops and towers in that price range, not to mention the n100 NUC. And they’ll all stream YouTube HD much better, as well as provide a much smoother desktop experience overall.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me a RPI, I run a couple myself. They’re just not great daily drivers, especially if you want to stream HD content.
I’m the person you’re accusing of lying. To your point, there are some dropped frames but that’s not a problem for me, and I figure most people wouldn’t notice 10 dropped frames out of every 1000, or whatever similar ratio it is. I have a rpi for a media PC and I’m happy with it. I play HD video in several web apps and only the shittiest of them (prime and paramount+) ever have a noticeable issue with playback.
People who complain about rpi’s being expensive kinda make me scratch my head. Like, do you not count the accessories you buy for other hardware? It seems the comparison is between the RPI and every single thing you buy for it, vs a laptop/PC itself with no accessories (which you will almost certainly be buying some amount of). I get that it sucks that these devices have gone up in price, but yeah, the accessories aren’t all that much more than any other device. You could have a very solid RPI setup for $120 all-in. And it would be more durable than some sketchy Acer laptop.
Youtube on the RPI5 drops frames and is stuttery. If that’s fine for you, great. But I’d argue it’s not what people consider a good viewing experience. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBQosbjl9Jw&t=278s and https://youtu.be/nBtOEmUqASQ?t=797 if you’d like more info.
The accessories I mentioned for the RPI5 are the bare essentials just to get the thing to power up, boot to a web browser, and connect to a monitor to try to play YouTube, which is the foundation of your original comment. Please show me where a $120 used laptop or desktop tower needs additional hardware purchases to boot and plug in an HDMI cable.
You’re picking the wrong fight with the wrong guy, friend. I’m a huge RPI advocate and I think they are great tools for specific use cases. I simply want to point out that if folks are considering it in the hopes that it’s a small and cheap way to watch YouTube, they’re gonna have a bad time.
My Pi5 setup with a very fast SD card plays YouTube without dropping frames or stuttering at 1080p, that other guy is wrong. The UI is slow and a bit janky, but once YT is loaded and fullscreen, it plays perfectly. It plays 24/7 on a TV in our living room for my partner’s WFH and for our cats when they’re done.
Thank you for that validation! I actually just tested mine and saw the same results as you describe. I would drop about 30-50 frames going full screen and then only one here or there every few minutes. It is damned close to perfect.
Yeah what i did is i got one of those dell thin client laptops. It runs great. I just open up parsec and can remote in to my server that has an i9 and 256gb ram with a 4090 and like 100tb hdd and 4tb nvme
Change that last to “Time to play some 8bit games upscaled to 4K”
“finally upgraded my steam deck to 1TB” plays Vampire Survivor
Gonna need a Threadripper to get the most out of NewTube.
