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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I used to own both a Series X, PS5 and have my gaming PC (all in the same room - desktop currently has an i5 13500, RTX 3090 24GB, 4TB of NVME storage & 128GB ram)

    Got myself a 5m hdmi lead capable of driving my 4k/120 TV and just ended up using my pc for everything now.

    I just switch sources between my monitor and tv when I want to game on the couch. Any mouse/keyboard input needed, I do it on the Unified remote app on my phone and fire up Steam big picture on the tv.

    Sold the PS5 and XBOX and ditched two more subscriptions hitting me every month.

    No regrets so far.




  • Working really great for me. I originally just bought it to run Pihole on a dedicated machine and have a secondary pihole instance on my Unraid server in case either of them went down but leaving it sitting there with just PiVPN and Pihole duties seemed wasteful.

    I’m getting even more out of it running some of the lighter containers on it with plenty of spare room to do more.

    I’ve logged/uploaded my upgrade process here just so you can get some ideas on what I did.
    https://imgur.com/a/ExcLdtt

    It is bulkier than a raspberry pi, being around the size of a router but the low cost and being able to utilise hardware that I had sitting doing nothing made me go this route rather than just getting a pi.


  • If you want something small and cheap, it might be worth getting a used thin client PC.

    I got a cheap £20 Igel thin client from eBay as raspberry pi’s were still far too expensive, plus I already had a spare 4GB ddr3 sodimm to drop into it and a 120gb wd green ssd that I’d stripped from its case and fitted internally into the thin client.

    After upgrading it one ended up with a 1.2ghz AMD GX-412 cpu, 4gb DDR3, 120gb sata ssd and an external usb 3 1tb hard drive i also had laying around.

    As a component of my homelab, it’s running Debian 12, docker with a few containers (pigallery 2, Libreddit, portainer, searXNG), it’s my backup Emby server and my main Pihole and PiVPN client.

    Completely silent, sips power and still has capacity spare to run more containers and other projects that catch my interest.

    https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Igel/ud/ud3/M340C/




  • I hate where the internet is right now.

    Anyone trying to get information written by a human or decent benchmarks of CPUs is in for a real crap time.

    Just tested i5 12400 vs i3 12100f and was met with results in this order:

    1. Userbenchmark
    2. Userbenchmark
    3. CPU-Monkey
    4. 3 shitty YouTube videos of obviously fake gameplay benchmarks (that’s a whole other thing on YouTube)
    5. Technical city
    6. cpubenchmark.net - the first kind of decent result as it’s from the people at passmark.
    7. versus (dot com)
    8. gadget versus
    9. pc Praha (dot cz)
    10. cpu-compare
    11. cpu-panda

    The crap just goes on. SEO optimised lists of (at best) affiliate link laden spec sheets with no real information form an actual human.




  • Where to start…

    Odyssey 2/Philips Videopac

    • Munchkin

    PacMan Clone with a map editor. Spent far too much time on that game as a kid. Simple as hell but a decent clone.

    **ZX Spectrum **

    • Arkanoid
    • R Type

    Excellent Arcade ports on the lowly ZX Spectrum. Amazed me that I could play Arcade level titles in my living room.

    Nintendo Gameboy

    • Tetris

    One of the best ways to play Tetris. The gameplay, the sound, the console itself. Pinnacle of handheld gaming.

    Sega 32X

    • Virtua Racing
    • Doom
    • StarWars Arcade

    Both StarWars Arcade and Virtua Racing were excellent Arcade ports and Doom on the 32x was real special to me, after experiencing the SNES port of Doom, the 32x was leagues ahead.

    Commodore Amiga

    • Lemmings
    • Worms
    • Cannon Fodder

    I could list endless amounts of Amiga classics but Lemmings is one of my all time favourite games.
    Worms was multiplayer perfection and cannon fodder shows me that rat has never been so much fun.

    Sega Saturn

    • Duke Nukem 3D
    • Quake
    • Powerslave/Exhumed

    All running of the same engine. Fantastic fits person showers on the weakest of the goth gen consoles.

    I could go on all night but I must stop…