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That's what I'd expect. 3DMark 2001 is almost certainly single threaded, and GPU throughput has gone up massively compared to the improvements we've seen in CPU single thread performance. i9-10980/64GB DDR4-3600 quad channel/3090. No OC. And yeah, it thinks I have Celerons, like 2-3 plants...

I'm actually not all that surprised. Unlike a lot of server NICs Mellanox/NVidia ConnectX cards actually have official support for client Windows. I have a few ConnectX-4 cards, and one of those will pretty much hit 10Gb in an old ass Ivy Bridge Xeon E5-2687W machine (used eBay CPU upgrade...

There are hacks to enable it on pretty ancient hardware, but then you're dealing with hacks and YMMV. Might be fun to try. The oldest rig I have is an Ivy Bridge (2013) socket 2011 Xeon E5-2687W machine. Stuff an RTX3060Ti in it and give a hack a try. Of course if it works for me that...

I have an Ivy Bridge socket 2011 machine. I pretty much quit using it last fall, but it had 64GB of ram and I'd upgraded it to a Xeon E5-2687Wv2 (8 cores, 4.0GHz max turbo) CPU off eBay (used server pull) a few years back for like $120 or something. So basically as fast as you can get for that...

Your poll has no good options. You should sacrifice them to the beer gods. In other words, make a temp controller out of those obsolete parts and brew a batch of lager.

I use a Dell P4317Q (43", 4k, 60Hz, IPS) as my productivity monitor along with a couple of 24" 1920x1200 60Hz IPS side screens in portrait mode. I like the big slab of uninterrupted real estate it offers. 43" is big enough to run with scaling off at 4k. For gaming I use an LG 48GQ900 4k OLED...

Between those two personally I'd go with the AX10000 if you game on WiFi and the AX6000 if not. The point of the second radio is to keep all the traffic from other devices out of the way for lower gaming latency. The extra 5GHz radio in the AX10000 otherwise just gives you a second network and...

This is the first thing you should try. Pretty much everyone needs glasses eventually. You might have perfect vision until you're 40 or 50 or whatever, but if you don't die young eventually your eyes are going to get old and you'll need glasses. Or you might need them at 30 or 25. I'm 47 and...

I wouldn't call someone who builds rigs for others an IT pro unless they did it for a living or at least for a decent amount of income as a side gig. IMHO Pro = professional = gets paid for the work. Exactly what sort of work counts and how much of it you need are the subjective parts. A lot...

I have an LG 48GQ900 OLED monitor, and it has a matte coating. That works for me. Want matte, get the monitor. Want glossy, get the TV. I went with the LG monitor because the Asus and Gigabyte OLED monitors Microcenter had were too glossy for my office. I like a shiny screen in my living...

I've done something like that for my dad a bunch of times. My parents paid for my CS degree, and I can afford it. Basically dad likes computer games. Mom thinks it's a waste of time and gives him shit if he spends too much $ on computer gaming stuff. An occasional game is no problem but mom...

As far as the computer goes you don't need a lot of parts these days for a basic rig. Not including monitor(s), mouse, keyboard and perhaps speakers & microphone, it's basically: Case PSU Mainboard CPU Ram M.2 SSD Maybe vid card if they want to run games or AI stuff. The big question is what...

Personally I agree with your initial instinct. I'd go to a newer platform as long as you have the budget for it. You could speed that machine up with some more ram and an SSD, but that CPU came out 10 years ago. It'll never be snappy without a CPU upgrade, and you're talking about doing a...

Really depends on what you want to do with it. If you just want to mess around or run some services that don't need much hardware, get a corporate mini/micro office PC used off of eBay. Mini doesn't work for me since my Linux box doubles as a file server. Need a bigger case for disks, so it's...

I'm not much of a fan because it's a little small vertically and it's curved. Until game devs and/or GPU vendors start implementing curvature correction a curved monitor screws up the projection. Game rendering assumes the monitor is flat. Curved can be good on a large VA screen since it...

TN? That is just plain out of my wheelhouse. I'm pretty sure the only TN screen I've ever owned was the 14" LCD I stuffed into a "grape" iMac chassis back around 2004 or so along with an overclocked Athlon XP and Radeon GPU. Tossed the CRT and used the space to build a gaming PC in the iMac...

OLED text isn't crap unless you're really sensitive or just being picky. It was fine IMHO. I spent a week programming on an OLED and it was ok. Just not as good as IPS. Yeah you get some fringing like back in the CRT days, but readability was fine. Still, the best setup is a multi-monitor...

4k looks nice on a 27" if you enable scaling, but I agree with the others that at 27" I'd rather have a 2560x1440 OLED than a 4k LCD for gaming. The one thing that would get me to go with an LCD in your situation is if you're going to be using the same screen for work or spend a lot of time at...

Overkill. Just how we like it around here. :D

A Mikrotik? That'll do it. I have some of their stuff -- an RB5009UG+S+IN router and a CRS326-24S+2Q+RM 10Gb switch. A Hex should be ok at speeds up to gigabit as long as you don't do anything too complicated. They're cheap and don't have a real powerful CPU. I bought the RB5009 because I...

RJ45. That's why it's hot. 10GBase-T pulls a lot more power than fiber modules or a DAC cable. A lot of SFP+ switches have restrictions on how many RJ45 modules you can use. Just hack up some cooling for it. Once upon a time I had a slot fan with the slot part removed and wired for 7V...

If you want all RJ45 copper you likely want a switch with it built in. 10GBase-T SFP+ modules are not cheap, plus a lot of SFP+ switches have limits on how many they can take because they draw a lot more power and run hotter than optical SFP+. It's common for a 24-port switch to only be able...

It's probably possible to force a game onto the X3D cores if you can alt-tab out of it. Just pull up task manager and set affinity. Not sure which ones are the X3D cores, but I don't have one of these chips to play around with. I used to have to do that with some games years ago when I was...

Same game as always. Chess. Nobody throws super computers at CP2077 or Alan Wake or whatever, buy they build them to win at chess.

I have the same problem, sort of. 70yo mom won't accept anything that won't fit in her TV cabinet. It's 36" wide and 42-43" displays are typically 36.75". So so close but no go. My parents have a 40" TV that fits, but there don't seem to be any 40" upgrade options. Like if you want 4k it's...

It's a little more complicated. "Mesh" is a marketing buzzword, not a technical spec. Not all "mesh" kits actually support fast roaming/steering. Then some routers support fast roaming but not WiFi backhaul and they call this "mesh" too. Buy more than one, put all but one in AP mode, wire...

That should work. Basic managed switches aren't too complicated. They're usually configured with a web interface or sometimes an application. Check this if you don't use Windows. Essentially you'll just want to add a VLAN that matches what your ISP wants (same VLAN number) to both ports...

Actually I think you'll run into a serious roadblock. DirectX7 doesn't support a resolution wider than 2048. UT99 works at 1920x1080, but can't go past that. I actually ran into this problem in 2003 or so with 3 CRTs hooked up to a Matrox Parhelia. UT99 runs really well on a Parhelia. I...

They also make these U-shaped window units if your windows will accommodate one. Compressor goes on the outside. Their selling point is they're a lot quieter than regular window units. Example...

I was thinking write, not read. Ok you can install Windows but what happens if you do a write to that USB drive? If you're just installing Windows or drivers you're reading not writing. At any rate the idea is to look for faults that are not network problems. So try writing to that USB...

I'm leaning towards a borked mainboard as my best guess. My bet is the SATA drive you pulled is fine but the port is toast. If that drive hadn't caused issues and you hadn't reinstalled Windows I'd be thinking software, but because of those two and your tests with multiple NICs I'm thinking...

The TP-Link ER605 is an Omada SDN device, so you can run it standalone or with a controller. You've got 3 options for a controller. You can buy their hardware controller for a couple hundred bucks, run their free Java-based software controller on a computer, or use a cloud controller. I run...

First thing I'd do is try different ports on the switch and router. Next I'd get another switch, because gigabit switches are cheap. After that I'd just take a box of cat6, a crimper, and a couple plugs and set up a test cable. Or just buy a long enough cable. I have a crimper and tend to...

Some desktop & HEDT boards have support for non-standard and expensive DDR3 16GB DIMMs, but other than that it's max 8GB per DIMM. I have an old Socket 2011 board that will support those non-standard DIMMs, but they're so expensive I'd be better off just getting a new proc, board and ram. I...

My view on guys like this is if they complain a lot about a matte finish it's probably good. If they like a monitor it's shit for my use in my home office. Tried both in my home office/computer room and shiny is just too much glare. That said I like a shiny finish on my living room TV, but...

I haven't moved it since I set it up, but I still like having wheels. Wheel will make it easy to get out of the way for cleaning and such. I might also roll it out into the living room to watch movies on it. It's as big as my TV and my TV isn't an OLED. I've been meaning to get a new TV, but...

Depends on what LCD you're comparing it with. I recently went through this. I've got a 43" Dell IPS 60Hz 4k screen I've had for years. Tried replacing it with a 43" 4k Samsung Neo G7 LCD, which was cheap at $500. Had issues with DisplayPort and HDMI, and the thing just plain looked ugly at...

Good move. I just wouldn't trust a 10yo PSU for anything important. They're ok to use for stogie tent terminals, but not for anything heavy or where a PSU failure would risk damaging valuable reasonably up to date hardware. I think I still have a PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510W sitting...

I'm still running one of those (PCP&C 950W Silencer) in a rig I built in 2012 but I'm sure as hell not going to stuff a high end vid card in that box. These days the system is pulling less power than it did when it was new. Back in the day it was my main gaming rig. Socket 2011, SLI, 3x27"...

I'm not aware of one on the LG 48GQ900 4k 48" "Ultragear" gaming monitor I picked up. As best I can tell it's a TV with a more aggressive AG coating (main reason I went with this model) and a DisplayPort input. I don't find the text on it terrible at all. I actually think it's better than the...