[HN Gopher] My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)
Author : aliqot
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-10-28 06:57 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jcs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (jcs.org)
| rcarmo wrote:
| I am using exactly the same monitor right now (it has a tendency
| to burn-in with pink edges, so I put it on my living room for
| occasional "different desktop" usage with my laptops). It is
| pretty amazing.
| BrandonS113 wrote:
| I got the same Streacom DB4, with a fast processor, and Ubuntu.
| It is wonderful to have a system running at full speed for days
| on all cores, and no sound. None. No fans. And it looks good,
| first PC I ever kept on my desk.
| Faelian2 wrote:
| My first thought when reading the title was "Oh, I guess he must
| have an issue with his fan drivers".
| rollcat wrote:
| Check out this guy's other work. He'd write his own driver or
| maybe even build his own fans.
| causality0 wrote:
| I once put considerable effort into making my setup as silent as
| possible. Then I realized I could have it as loud as needed as
| long as it was in another room. So now I either use my television
| with cables run through my crawlspace to my office or a remote
| desktop on my silent tablet.
| noindiecred wrote:
| OP wonders if there's a version of the Thinkpad keyboard with a
| metal case. The Tex Kodachi has the Thinkpad layout in an
| aluminum case, but it's unfortunately out of stock on the
| manufacturer's website:
|
| https://tex.com.tw/collections/keyboard/products/kodachi
|
| The Tex Shinobi _isn't_ metal, so no help there, but it might
| have a little more rigidity and still has that Thinkpad layout:
|
| https://tex.com.tw/collections/keyboard/products/shinobi
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| From experience, the Shinobi is definitely more solid than the
| lenovo keyboard he was using, but definitely not creak-free.
|
| The guy behind these keyboards is making a new 60% with a
| trackpoint that can be ordered with an aluminum chassis.
| jansan wrote:
| Those Thinkpad keyboards look really sweet. They were even made
| under the IBM brand, but those seem to be ultra rare.
|
| https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=ibm88xxultranav
| ehnto wrote:
| I have my PC setup to be fanless for the majority of tasks,
| except for gaming pretty much. With a massive CPU heatsink I can
| tune fan profiles to only turn on when nearing a maximum
| temperature. I run the equipment fairly hot, in other words. My
| fan curve is just one giant step, with hysteresis so they don't
| cycle on and off near that step temp.
|
| I am likely trading some component lifetime for silence, but it's
| a trade I am willing to make.
| bullen wrote:
| I put downvolted fans that are inaudible on my passive setups.
| That way I get both silence and longevity. The added benefit
| that if the fan dies the hardware lives.
|
| My thumb rule for temperatures is if you can hold your finger
| on it indefinitely it's cool enough.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Nice. This is one of the cases where "the rule of thumb" can
| be understood (almost) literally.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Wow, the author has some interesting history with HN! Banned
| because of problematic moderation, and then went onto create
| lobsters.rs. I had no idea it was created out of frustration.
| https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I have similar but not so extreme inclinations towards fan noise.
| I settled to build my desktop with a simple NZXT case, intel 8th
| gen CPU running Arch Linux with CPU governor set to Performance.
| The pSU is an ATX power supply that is rated for 750W, while I
| could barely get to half that with full load(which means PSU's
| fans almost never need to spin up). The CPU is cooled by an
| oversized NH D-15 Noctua air cooler with two 15" fans that are
| set in BIOS to only spin up when temps get quite high(which never
| does unless I run synthetic benchmarks).
|
| I have been so happy about this system that I almost never talk
| about it. It is a tool that does its job well to my needs and
| gets out of the way.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Undervolting/power limiting could work well as well. The latest
| gen CPUs apparently get like 95% of their performance when
| limited to only like 1/3 of the max power.
| scns wrote:
| 105 instead of 170W TDP get you 95% on a 7950X, so ~60%.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| One option here is to wire up the fans to run at 7V (connect
| negative to 5V line), or even 10V (by connecting to -5V and
| +5V).
|
| But getting software control to bump that up to 12V when needed
| could take some extra steps/hardware. But if you use the system
| lightly enough, it'll be cooler in its norma state and might
| not need the extra cooling oomph.
|
| Heat kills!
| onli wrote:
| That's not necessary anymore, the fans are either PWM or
| voltage controlled by software in every modern system. The
| noctua fans are also rather quiet by default.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I made my PC basically silent by swapping out the included
| Corsair case fans with Noctuas. I can only hear it if the
| CPU or GPU crank up to full load.
| chx wrote:
| One small note: HDPlex has a 250W GaN PSU which is also fanless
| and shockingly compact. https://hdplex.com/hdplex-
| fanless-250w-gan-aio-atx-psu.html it is also moduler and supports
| chaining. Altogether a very very interesting brand new product.
| xorcist wrote:
| Are they still in business? Their last blog update was two and
| a half years ago, and most if not all of their products are out
| of stock?
|
| I have the first generation of their cases still in use and
| it's absolutely rock solid quality. But seeing the activity on
| their forum and web shop go down I'm not sure I can recommend
| them anymore.
| chx wrote:
| They absolutely are. You can see for example there are a few
| of these GaN PSUs in stock in Asia and US is expected to get
| stock on Monday. https://smallformfactor.net/forum/ has lots
| of satisfied buyers and a month ago /r/sffpc was abuzz with
| people getting \these and fitting them in various cases. I
| exchanged an email with Larry on September 21 last. He is
| certainly not great on social media, like, their twitter
| account exists but is completely empty.
| anemoiac wrote:
| I enjoy reading posts like this, which delve into personal setups
| and the intentions behind them. However, I found this a bit
| puzzling:
|
| > _While not an absolute requirement, integrated speakers would
| be a nice option on the monitor so I wouldn 't have to buy
| separate ones and find a place for them on my desk._
|
| For such a methodically constructed workspace, especially one
| that goes out of its way to avoid fan noise, I'd assume the OP
| would have wanted at least middling audio quality. I wouldn't
| consider myself an audiophile, yet I've never used a computer
| monitor's onboard speakers by choice. Almost any other solution
| would likely be superior to whatever microscopic "speakers" are
| crammed into that 21.5" monitor...
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I appreciate a quiet setup, but I don't actually care all that
| much about the quality of the PC speakers; most of the time I
| use it just to watch a short video, or maybe a presentation or
| interview. As long as it doesn't sound absolutely horribly
| tinny it's "good enough". For more "serious listening" I use
| headphones.
| anemoiac wrote:
| I sort of assumed headphones were the OP's actual primary
| audio source. Makes more sense. I end up using headphones
| half the time anyway because that allows for more convenient
| audio options when taking calls on multiple devices
| throughout the day.
| Havoc wrote:
| I don't super care about my desktop, but spent significant
| premiums to keep my home server stuff fan-less since that is
| 24/7.
|
| Needs to be silent when I'm sleeping. When using the desktop I've
| got music and headphones going anyway
| Avlin67 wrote:
| what the purpose/advantages of openbsd ? (completly open minded
| question)
| hedora wrote:
| The entire operating system is extremely well documented and
| thought out. Everything is done the traditional Unix way, so
| you don't end up with problems from churning half-baked
| subsystems. It's also routinely + repeatedly security audited.
| If they can't maintain quality+security for some subsystem
| (e.g., their bluetooth stack), then they delete it.
|
| I run it on my router. I've had zero problems in many, many
| years.
| haunter wrote:
| Nice! My brother made a fanless gaming PC and it's pretty nice.
| Sadly GTX 1650 was the last GPU available with a passive cooler
| [0]. So sooner or later it will be EOL. Afaik no RTX card was
| ever released with a passive cooler
|
| 0, https://www.palit.com/palit/vgapro.php?id=3494
| eMSF wrote:
| You'd gave to be quite lucky to buy a high-power GPU like that
| which, under load, wouldn't have coil whine significantly
| louder than quiet case fans. (GPU fans usually aren't that
| quiet even at lowest operating speeds but these days 0rpm modes
| on low loads are pretty much a standard feature.)
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; I got an AMD 6600xt, and it's not noticeable in my
| quiet, but not fanless case. Also it adds a few very large,
| very low RPM fans that only spin up under load. Those help
| pull air through the case, helping other stuff stay in
| passive / low RPM mode.
|
| It is counterintuitive, but many fans can end up being
| quieter than a few fans.
| bullen wrote:
| I downgraded to low profile passive MSI 1030 DDR5. Anything
| above 30W is overkill.
| patrakov wrote:
| You can still order Compulab Airtop 3 with Quadro RTX 4000 8 GB
| in a fanless configuration. See https://fit-
| iot.com/web/product/airtop3-build-to-order/
| ochoseis wrote:
| > Since the LG UltraFine exposes a USB HID device to control its
| brightness, I wrote a driver to attach to it and expose the
| brightness adjustment through wsconsctl display.brightness.
|
| Wow, that is impressive both from the device _and_ from the
| author. I wonder how many displays support controls over USB?
| Personally, I hate having to manually adjust my display's
| brightness in the evening.
|
| Edit: This got me curious and after digging it looks like some
| utilities can actually control the hardware backlight brightness,
| like xbacklight on linux:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/backlight#xbacklight
|
| You can also use xrandr to control the signal brightness, but
| that's not really the same as controlling the hardware.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| I'm surprised more people don't know about ddc (which works
| over displayport). Been using it with this gnome extension on
| Fedora for a while now.
|
| https://github.com/daitj/gnome-display-brightness-ddcutil
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I use a wrapper script around ddccontrol. Combined with
| backlight, I can set both monitors at once.
| dont__panic wrote:
| For anyone in macOS, I highly recommend MonitorControl
| (https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl#readme).
|
| No affiliation, just a happy user for nearly 2 years now.
| amendegree wrote:
| I use display-switch which is a rust wrapper around ddcutil
| plus some usb-port sniffing to switch my 3 monitors between
| my work laptop and personal desktop.
|
| The issue is that not every monitor has full ddc support,
| especially consumer-targeted monitors. anything for pros will
| usually have pretty good support but those usually don't have
| great refresh rates at reasonable prices. (I noticed LG is
| especially bad about supporting ddc)
| deanc wrote:
| > The main bulk of the case is held up 2" off the surface by two
| large feet, which only leaves 2" between the motherboard and my
| table. This makes it a bit difficult to plug in certain cables
| like a DisplayPort cable with a large connector, but my desk has
| a grommet in the corner where the case sits so the majority of
| the cables can pass straight down through the desk.
|
| You can buy right angle DP & HDMI cables that are perfect for
| this.
| DethNinja wrote:
| This is pretty neat.
|
| I wonder what would be the maximum CPU & Ram you can go without
| installing any moving parts (fan or pump) on a mini itx board.
|
| Has anyone got a setup if you want to use more than 12 cpu cores?
| patrakov wrote:
| If you are talking about virtual cores (aka threads), then yes,
| such thing exists, it is called Compulab Airtop 3. You can
| order it with a Xeon E-2278GE, which has 8 cores | 16 threads |
| 4.70 GHz | 80W
|
| https://fit-iot.com/web/product/airtop3-build-to-order/
| scns wrote:
| You can use a 16 core Ryzen 7950X and cap it at 65W to get 12%
| more performance than a 5950X. With the additional heatpipe you
| could do 105W TDP and get 31% more than a 5950X and only lose
| 5% compared to the stock 170W TDP. It has a GPU built in.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33231081
|
| (edit) Maximum RAM depends on the Motherboard. My guess would
| be 64GB.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33368511 ?
| schipplock wrote:
| I just realized that his tiny screen consumes 120W when turned
| on.
|
| Does any of you have a recommendation for a screen that doesn't
| consume so much energy?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Does any of you have a recommendation for a screen that
| doesn't consume so much energy?
|
| Are you after a physical tiny screen doing 4K/retina or after
| something huge not retina?
|
| My LG 38" does 3840x1600. I'm using it since five years now and
| I much prefer to work on that than to work on my M1 Mac
| laptop's tiny retina screen. The 38" consumes less than 50W
| without being set in eco mode.
| jansan wrote:
| My monitor (ASUS ProArt PA278QV), which calls itself
| "professional", has a power consumption of less than 20W. Even
| if his monitor has higher resoltion and better brightness, I am
| a bit surprised that the difference is that big.
| christophilus wrote:
| Your comment made me check my own (LG Ultrafine 5k) and it's
| 140W... That's crazy. I love this monitor, but am interested in
| a high quality, lower power option if anyone knows of one.
| mgraupner wrote:
| Did you really measure these 140 W or does the power brick
| says 140 W?
| glowingly wrote:
| My LG monitor has a brick that goes to 65W, but the
| measured power consumption is ~20W at the wall. ~12W in
| short idle (screen turned off less than ~1 min ago). ~0W in
| deep sleep, which is where it spends most of its time.
|
| I am running on minimum brightness, since I'm indoors.
| mhb wrote:
| Crazy? At 20 cents/kWh, running it for 12 hours a day costs
| 34 cents per day or $123/year.
| hedora wrote:
| My entire house idles at 500W.
|
| That includes two fridges, a freezer, a NAS, multiple
| internet uplinks, lighting, an always-on desktop, a half-
| dozen IoT gizmos and five wireless access points.
|
| The house averages 1-2 kW (including laundry, water heater,
| water treatment, hvac, dishwasher, oven, cooktop, etc).
|
| A 140W monitor would meaningfully increase these numbers.
| bullen wrote:
| I use 19" 5:4 Eizo and 15" 4:3 Beetronics, they are 9-21W and
| 13.8W respectively.
| Tade0 wrote:
| This monitor has high power consumption because it's geared
| towards professionals with its high brightnes and colour
| correctness.
|
| I checked the power brick and datasheet on my LG 27GP950-B and
| the ratings are 110W and 86W(HDR mode) respectively.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| It'd be really nice if the author would have posted what the
| ambient temperature was when all of the thermal pics were taken.
| pmontra wrote:
| "After [...] learning that all future Intel "Evo"-branded laptops
| would lack S3 suspend"
|
| By the way, is there any laptop left that sleeps in S3 mode /
| sleep to RAM. Possibly an AMD one. I just checked and it seems
| that it's more and more difficult to find one that even has a
| BIOS switch to enable it again. The target is running Linux, not
| Windows.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Here comes your daily LG Gram ad.
| debdut wrote:
| > I wrote a driver
|
| you lost me there
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| "future Intel "Evo"-branded laptops would lack S3 suspend"
|
| What is this about? Why would Intel remove a power saving option?
| kaszanka wrote:
| They replaced it with S0ix where the operating system remains
| running (Microsoft variously calls it "connected standby",
| "modern standby").
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29122687
| hedora wrote:
| Has anyone gotten it working yet? This is the reason Dell no
| longer supports transporting windows laptops in bags, right?
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Very well done :) I have an aversion to sound that borders on a
| "disability", lol the biggest fights I had with my girlfriend was
| about sounds (The minute, the repeating and the periodic ones)"
|
| The one where we argued if the UPS 20sec alarm two rooms away is
| "not that bad" or "ice-picks-in-my-brain" was especially
| dividing.
|
| Ex-girlfriends aside... I really like your setup and you are so
| right about the RGB crap ! Computer hardware and
| sneakers('Tekkies' if your a South African) both follow the
| "Xmass-Tree school for design.
|
| The marketing copy writing is as insulting as color-schemes.
|
| Their ad-copy and slogans, makes me feel like I'm about to be a
| general in a internet-dragon-slaying army or secret agent.
|
| EDIT: I almost feel there is a gap in the market for a
| manufacturer to be competitive solely on a predictive-and-simple
| naming schemes alone !
| psychphysic wrote:
| Do consider mindfulness for your sensitivity to sound.
|
| Many people are simply more sensitive to sounds than others.
|
| Most of those people can develope more tolerance by practising
| attention focusing.
|
| It's a skill we've lost since we took so much control of our
| environment.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Good tip ! :)
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| This might be a hard pill to swallow, but if a romantic partner
| is dismissive of something like "this makes a noise that is
| really distressing/painful/annoying" there is really only one
| explanation: this person doesn't care about you or your well
| being. Leave now. There is truly nothing to argue about with
| someone's subjective experience. Your real argument was about
| if your well being matters or not.
| mosselman wrote:
| Whenever anyone posts anything about their partner that isn't
| purely positive, people will come out of the woodworks to
| tell them to end the relationship.
|
| From this one little anecdote you can't judge that
| relationship.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| You can probably judge that relationship at least a little
| from:
|
| > Ex-girlfriends aside...
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Haha true :)
|
| Well, we did break up. If I had to sum it up in once
| sentence. We had very different "stress-profiles". We
| still good friends 3 years later and I get regular
| updates about our dogs (though they all live in a
| different country)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27947696 - July 2021 (141
| comments)
| ginko wrote:
| I build a fanless (Linux) desktop with the mainboard from a Ryzen
| mini PC[0] and an after-market fanless case[1] designed for it.
|
| Works like a charm. It's absolutely silent and the temperatures
| are actually better than with the stock Asus case.
|
| [0] https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/mini-pcs/pn-
| series/mi...
|
| [1]
| https://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.deta...
| amendegree wrote:
| I don't understand people who use just one monitor, how do you
| cross reference effectively?
| davidbanham wrote:
| I run a pretty-much-fanless Arch Linux desktop. It's a Lenovo
| m920q I bought second hand, ex lease on eBay. Super simple, no
| fuss at all. Comes with remote KVM in the motherboard. (The
| security implications are totally probably fine)
|
| It's totally silent in normal use. (Go web dev mostly)
|
| Occasionally the fans will start up to alert me to the fact that
| I've landed on some social scummy website that's crammed with 20
| banner ads on the one page and is probably trying to mine
| something in the background as well. I shut that browser tab and
| the noise goes away.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I've had my eye on these 1 liter PCs to replace my aging
| Haswell Xeon based server (Dell PowerEdge T20). My system still
| works great and is completely silent but it's very old and a
| second one I had died recently. I use external hard drives so I
| really don't need a traditionally sized system.
|
| I'd need to squeeze 64GB of ram in though, as the 32 I have
| currently is occasionally limiting depending on the VMs I'm
| running.
| trabant00 wrote:
| This is some form of laptop Stockholm Syndrome. Why would you
| crank your neck, type on a cramped keyboard and use a tiny mouse?
| Fan noise is also not a problem with a huge Noctua fan and
| positioning the tower under the desk. And my personal pet peeve:
| small monitor.
|
| > I've always chosen smaller (<= 14") laptop screens since I find
| too much horizontal space distracting. I prefer to separate tasks
| with virtual desktops rather than have everything on one giant
| screen.
|
| Get a HUGE monitor, position it far away: you get the same
| relative size and relative pixel density, but your eyes can stay
| a lot more relaxed focusing at a decent distance.
| hedora wrote:
| > _Get a HUGE monitor, position it far away: you get the same
| relative size and relative pixel density, but your eyes can
| stay a lot more relaxed focusing at a decent distance._
|
| I also age over time. Can confirm this is a better strategy.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| I envy the person who has the time to build their own custom rig
| and even write a device driver to access monitor controls.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| And skill
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| True, but time can beget skill, so it's the ultimate resource
| :-)
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| Why people insist in BSDs when Linux works better?
| hedora wrote:
| Competition is good. Also, there is no universal definition of
| "better".
| meta-level wrote:
| I have almost the same setup, but with Linux/Fedora instead and
| the Ryzen 4750 without 'G' but a card. I even made the same
| thermal images out of curiosity :)
| alberth wrote:
| Unfortunately the author won't be able to comment on HN since he
| got banned 10 years ago.
|
| As a result, he created another site some might know
| https://lobste.rs
|
| https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| That's fucking funny considering they let people like Andrew
| Aurenheimer brag about being the CTO of the daily stormer on
| here for years now. The more pettiness I see on the internet
| the less I bother
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Seems to be back:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=there
| alberth wrote:
| Crazy to see that someone has 18,000+ karma points and only
| posted 6 times in the last 10-years.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Anybody wanna invite me to lobste.rs ?
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Sure. email in my profile.
| [deleted]
| bullen wrote:
| Streacom cases are great but the cube has an unwieldy shape to
| fit anywhere but on a desk. I opted for the flat version:
| http://move.rupy.se/file/xeon_1030.png
| musicale wrote:
| But then it wouldn't have the retro (NeXT, Cobalt/Sun/Gateway,
| Apple...) cube aesthetic.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Do you have a link handy for that case?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Doesn't using a single DIMM for memory really kill the
| performance? I thought basically all Intel & AMD CPUs have two
| channels of memory controllers. So for optimal bandwidth on the
| memory you need to use a multiple of two memory sticks.
| Avlin67 wrote:
| well you can check ram bandwidth usage (read and write) and it
| max out in some instances (5950X 3200CL16 dual channel) while
| compiling
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It's perhaps a bit worse in terms of raw throughput. It likely
| doesn't impact the user experience in any perceivable way,
| though.
| flyingfences wrote:
| On a chip with integrated graphics, though, throughput starts
| to matter a bit more.
| tsak wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. It finally made me realise that I could
| disable the stupid LED lights on my B550 mainboard (same AMD CPU
| as the guy in the linked article).
|
| I'm running a similar setup with Linux (Manjaro) and a Streacom
| FC8 case with a Nano PSU (no coil whine).
| gigatexal wrote:
| Every time anything about OpenBSD comes up on HN I just remark
| internally how simple and straightforward it is.
| vogon_laureate wrote:
| I love how I can run ps and know what every process running on
| it is.
| everyone wrote:
| I was wondering how they can run that cpu without any cooling..
| Then they say it goes up to 90degC .. That's way too hot! thats
| like laptop / mac temperatures. It will function sure, but it
| wont last, it will degrade relatively quickly.
| pestatije wrote:
| > maxing out all cores
| medstrom wrote:
| How quickly is quickly? I've never had a CPU break on me, I
| still have laptops in storage a decade old that work fine, only
| they're too slow for the modern web. Perhaps 90C is reasonable
| for the time you will be using the device.
| everyone wrote:
| Individual transistors will break, the cpu will continue to
| work, but it will run slower. That's probably why your old
| laptops are "too slow for the modern web".
|
| " Some circuits and buses are protected by error correcting
| codes (ECC). If a transistor becomes marginal--meaning that
| it works most of the time, but occasionally fails--and thus
| only causes occasional glitches in those buses, then the
| processor may continue to function. However, it will likely
| trigger ECC correction events and suffer performance
| degradation. These ECC events are a sign it's time to replace
| the processor. If that transistor fails completely, the
| processor may still limp along, but it will not be running at
| full spec if it does. "
| hedora wrote:
| The Linux kernel will complain loudly if ECC, etc kick in.
|
| It is more likely that the thermal paste will degrade, the
| heatsink will get dusty, or things will start requiring
| missing GPU APIs, and fall back to software rendering.
|
| Transistor efficiency also drops over time (creating more
| heat). Usually capacitors or connectors fail before that
| matters though.
| onli wrote:
| This specific processor should support an eco mode, minimizing
| that problem. I'm not sure ofc the board enables the option.
|
| Also relevant for the ryzen 7000 processors, where that mode
| limits performance minimally but saves a lot of energy. Sadly
| not on by default, but seems to be a regular AM5 feature now.
|
| I personally would use a regular case with the noctua passive
| cooler, then add a case fan to only start on high temps. But my
| setup right now is so quiet it does not seem necessary (5675c
| cooled by an aio, fans and pumps throttled, noise isolated case
| - not audible for me on idle and very quiet on load thanks to a
| low fan curve, set by the excellent fan2go).
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| Uncommon (?) monitor configuration. Never really thought to lay
| one down like that. Anyone do this and have opinions? I think I
| enjoy the space underneath for papers and pens too much, also it
| would be awkward with two screens - though perhaps a vertical
| stack would work well. I think some laptops come with "keyboard
| screens" (not touch bar) now.
| ehnto wrote:
| I imagine it's promoting fairly poor posture. I would end up
| with a migraine from the neck strain.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Just like using a laptop.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I got a stand from Flio to help with that a few years ago
| [1]. It folds up into a thin laptop-sized rectangle, so
| it's easy to take with me.
|
| Looks like the certificate on their site expired though, so
| I've no idea whether they're still in business.
|
| [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482077604/flio-up-
| the-1...
| lifty wrote:
| Yes, the posture seems bad to me as well. Maybe I am missing
| something.
| pmontra wrote:
| Well, I've been using laptops since the late 90s, no problems
| whatsoever looking at a screen close to my keyboard. No strain
| to my neck or back and of course I'm not so young anymore. I
| can't imagine having to raise my head and look straight ahead
| all the time. What for? On the other side, as cyclist I'm used
| at spending hours with my head raised much more than that to
| look ahead. At least I rest when working :-)
| schipplock wrote:
| My neck would hurt in a matter of hours. Not recommended.
| frou_dh wrote:
| Something I've learned from discussing computer hardware
| informally online over the years is that people have vastly
| different standards for what it means for fans to be "silent" in
| use. So much so that it's hardly worth discussing, because
| someone will insist that such and such fan or actively-cooled
| device is silent, and then you buy it and it sounds like crap. I
| suspect it's "Cloth Ears" in many cases.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Pretty hard for "fanless" to make fan noise though!
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I think it's not just different standards (quiet = "I can't
| hear it when blasting Call of Duty at an unhealthy volume") but
| likely the prevalence of hearing damage. A 30 dB noise is way
| less noticeable if your threshold of hearing is in the 10-30 dB
| range instead of the -10 to 10 dB range. Likewise the ability
| of people to perceive separate noises simultaneously differs.
|
| (Likewise many people say they can't hear the noise ANC
| headphones produce - it seems likely to me that they're either
| in a too loud environment so it's masked at all times, have
| hearing damage or both. It'd be interesting to see the Venn
| diagram with people who complain you can't turn up phone
| headphones to be loud enough any more - mumble mumble the EU
| took it from us! Meanwhile the volume step size of AirPods is
| too coarse for me because I'm only ever using the lowest four
| or so "clicks", rarely exceeding 50 dB per HealthKit).
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > Likewise many people say they can't hear the noise ANC
| headphones produce - it seems likely to me that they're
| either in a too loud environment so it's masked at all times,
| have hearing damage or both.
|
| On my old QC-35 I couldn't hear it, but it's pretty
| noticeable on the QC-45 I got after those broke.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I have terrible hearing (plus age) and I still find most
| devices have uselessly coarse AND loud volume levels. I
| almost never exceed the first 2-3 'clicks' unless I want to
| wake my neighbors. Worst offenders are cheap monitor and/or
| laptop builtin speakers. I remember one where out of 15
| avalable clicks, level 2 was already unbearably loud.
|
| When PulseAudio added "absolute volume control" support, I
| found out it would sometimes fake in extra clicks in which
| the actual volume would NOT change, but gave the impression
| of granularity. Wonders of HDA & usb audio...
| psychphysic wrote:
| We definitely have different physiological sensitivity to
| stimuli, and sensitivity can be unintuitive (sounds we can be
| either made more or less noticeable depending on noise), we
| also differ in our processing ability and finally our
| conscious and unconscious ability to direct attention.
|
| This leads to interesting things like for many a white noise
| source (actually pink noise) nicely blots out most other
| auditory stimuli by helping direct attention away. Yet the
| noise source itself heightens sensitivity (why some people
| find ANC annoying).
|
| Finally some people simply can not direct their attention
| strongly and it's worsening.
|
| Hypersensitivity it's being swallowed up as an autism trait
| but many people simply aren't as trained at directing
| attention than we were in the past since we have such loud
| hobbies.
|
| Mindfulness does wonders here.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Half the time it's because their AirPods are gummed up with
| earwax and it actually is too quiet.
| flakeoil wrote:
| It's also dependent on the room/building you are in. If you
| would try the fan in an office type environment (even without
| any people there) you would probably think it is quiet. But
| then when you bring it home the fan suddenly sounds very loud.
|
| It's mostly due to the background noise such as active
| ventilation, air conditioning, other computers/servers/printers
| with fans etc in the office, which you might not have in your
| house.
|
| The empty office might seem very quiet, but in terms background
| fan like noise it's not.
|
| Traffic noise could also be a similar background noise factor.
| BrotherBisquick wrote:
| This happens with eyeballs as well as ears.
|
| Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11, or
| people who don't mind (or even prefer!) Windows font rendering.
| kriops wrote:
| Windows font rendering is fine as long as you don't use
| scaling, right?
| jrootabega wrote:
| Maybe my perceptions are out of date, but cleartype, while
| technically allowing higher font dpi, had a rainbow/screen
| door effect that stood out like a sore thumb for many of
| us.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The effect depends on the screen technology you use.
| Windows guesses the pixel layout, but you can tweak
| ClearType to fit your screen better. You can open a
| wizard that takes you through six steps and asks you to
| select the rectangle with the best text (out of six
| rectangles) to tweak it to your liking.
|
| When the subpixels don't align, ClearType can be ugly as
| hell, but for me the default guesses always worked out.
| jrootabega wrote:
| On displays with high enough resolution/dpi, maybe. But
| isn't it just inevitable that if there are red subpixels
| on one side of your text, and blue on the other, that it
| would be noticeable?
|
| OK, I played around with it and I was able to make it
| more and less noticeable depending on which boxes I
| picked. Guess I'll never know if that was possible when I
| first started noticing it 20 years ago, with worse
| monitors and better eyeballs :(
| anikom15 wrote:
| It can still be seen with the correct subpixel layout.
| vel0city wrote:
| I wonder if virtualization software messing with how
| ClearType assumes subpixel layouts could cause a lot of
| the dislike for ClearType in the Mac crowd, as many Mac
| users possibly predominately handled Windows in things
| like Parallels? I don't have any knowledge about how
| ClearType behaves in software like Parallels so I could
| be entirely off-base with that idea.
|
| The only time I had dislike for ClearType was when I'd
| rotate a monitor from landscape to portrait. This makes
| sense, since the subpixel layout is then wrong. So, I'd
| usually just redo the ClearType settings when rotated and
| use the monitor in that orientation for a while instead
| of constantly switching.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The virtualisation problem may definitely play a role! In
| my experience, ClearType in a VM is often very very
| wrong. I think it may even be off by default if Windows
| can't find details about the current screen.
|
| Alternatively, you may be getting the "RDP" experience
| for optimized drivers, which is just very blocky.
|
| I prefer ClearType over whatever macOS does (or did, been
| a while since I had a Hackintosh) but combining different
| rendering styles is always jarring. Helping Mac people
| through remote desktop always made the text look wrong to
| me, probably for the same reason. When you expect text to
| look a certain way, alternative renderers are always
| wrong.
|
| This is also something I notice with some custom GUI
| libraries that implement their own font rendering. I've
| dropped several GUI tools because I just got frustrated
| by how their text always looked different from normal
| text.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| In my observations it's the reverse. Windows font rendering
| looks ok to me (if a bit "off") on my laptop with 1.5x UI
| scale, but underwhelming at 1.x. At 1.x fonts look badly
| kerned and a bit misshapen, and that cleans itself up quite
| a bit at 1.x and beyond.
|
| macOS and Linux rendering looking better to me regardless
| of render scale. Good kerning and no beating font glyphs
| into odd shapes to fit a pixel grid on screens with pixel
| density high enough that it isn't necessary (we're not
| running 1024x768 LCDs any more).
| hedora wrote:
| There are driver options to remove screen tearing in X11. (At
| least for Intel, Nvidia and AMD cards).
|
| Also, font rendering has gotten worse under Linux in recent
| years (due to fractional scaling).
|
| I should probably just switch to a BSD that doesn't include
| Wayland support before it is too late. That'd fix my
| desktop's incessant pulseaudio and systemd screwups too...
| jgillich wrote:
| True, I have never in my life noticed screen tearing, X11 or
| otherwise.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Or people who argued that "the eye can't see more than 60fps"
| favadi wrote:
| Or people who argued that "4k is pointless, you can't see
| the different with 2k anw".
| Gigachad wrote:
| For gaming or videos I actually can't tell the difference
| between 4K and 1440p. For text rendering I absolutely
| can.
| glowingly wrote:
| As an aside, many 4k/1440p videos are not really 4k or
| 1440p, vs how we would classify a 4k/1440p monitor. Video
| is mostly 4k/1440p light levels, but less than that
| w.r.t. color information.
|
| A common video subsampling setup is 4:2:0.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling
|
| In addition, common video compression techniques (at
| least the simple ones that I could still understand)
| basically reconstruct blocks of pixels. Reconstruction is
| lossy, at best.
|
| If I had to guess, something similar could be done in
| games as part of their optimizations.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| I think even for phones anything above 1080p, is kinda
| pointless. Just a drain on the battery.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This really depends on the size of the screen. For most
| laptops, I'd argue that 4k is useless; 1440p is high-res
| enough that you get perfect clarity anyway.
|
| For 83" TVs you obviously need more pixels to get a good
| viewing experience because you don't position yourself
| several meters in front of the screen to make the pixels
| unnoticable.
| t-3 wrote:
| For me, there's only a difference for the text console.
| For GUIs I have to halve the resolution to make things
| usable so it doesn't really help anything.
| otikik wrote:
| I confess I am somewhat impervious to bad kerning myself. I
| thought about fixing that (there's online exercises that one
| can take) but then I realized that there's potentially so
| much bad kerning out there I would be making my life more
| miserable for no reason.
| phonepostingsux wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1015/
| otikik wrote:
| Thanks, I didn't know this one :)
| weberer wrote:
| >Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11
|
| Most people are using a compositor that came with their DE,
| so screen tearing never happens.
| Macha wrote:
| The people who prefer Apple's or Window's font rendering are
| able to observe it so that's much more subjective preference
| compared to people who are literally unable to hear e.g. an
| x570 chipset fan and claim their system is silent
| Firther wrote:
| Screen tearing in X11 is a tricky one since there's a dozen
| ways to deal with it and 10 times more ways for it to go
| wrong, which is just enough uncertainty that you can never be
| sure if it's supposed to be that way. I know I've spent hours
| trying to deal with screen tearing by fiddling with desktop
| compositors that are supposed to prevent tearing out of the
| box only to fall back to the trusty AMDGPU/Radeon TearFree
| setting which has always just worked for me.
| eMSF wrote:
| PCs usually aren't completely silent under load anyway (at
| least none that I've owned). No fan is silent at nominal
| voltage (and unmodulated) but when slowed down to a low enough
| RPM they can easily be less audible than GPU coils, many
| monitors, powered on speakers, room lighting, ... (and "more
| silent" than a powerful PC's static parts under load).
| smm11 wrote:
| Nice work!
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