I think you need to take a step back and ask if ARM makes sense if you’re translating x86 instructions 100% of the time. Unless you’re hoping people will develop new games for ARM and you won’t use your SD to play existing titles much, but that seems like a 180° shift to me.

It doesn’t always scale down though. There’s always an efficiency curve so we really can’t speculate. I agree, we have to wait and see.

I wouldn’t count AMD out. The whole reason the Steam Deck is so successful is because of AMDs Mobile GPU, not necessarily it’s CPU. AMD has been able to make some very efficient GPUs lately, so I do belive with a couple new architectures and die shrinks we will get the generational leap they’re talking about.

ARM sounds nice, and it might one day be, but getting x86 translation working flawlessly WITHOUT performance/battery costs at the same time as proton is just asking a heck of a lot.

ARM does best when it’s doing ARM things. Since all games are built for x86 with nobody having any intention of compiling for native ARM, I don’t really see the point. The whole reason i like the Steam Deck is to play older back catalog games, and those are all x86. Apple pulls it off because they only translate x86 when they have to.

Yes. There are a couple different ways to do that.

Absolutely. It sounds ideal for something like that.

The issue is they sit in this odd place from a price perspective. I can get an N4000 based stick PC with 4GB RAM and eMMC storage for $140 CAD, or a vastly better performing N95 based mini PC with 8GB RAM, real SSD, and additional outputs for $50 more.

The stick PC really only makes sense if you need that form factor, or if you’re on a really tight budget. The improvements for $50 are just too much to ignore.

Your wishlist sounds almost identical to mine. As frustrating as the limitations of streamers are, they are easy to use. HDMI CEC makes single remote setups possible, easy volume changes, input switching, etc. Apps are vetted so they “just work”.

As for casting, most platforms support running Miracast or AirPlay receivers. Google is the stickler here that won’t let you run a Google Cast receiver (or at least I haven’t found one) and also doesn’t implement Miracast on Pixel devices. It’s such a shame because I vastly prefer casting the URL to the TV and letting it source the content than mirroring my phone all the time.

Yeah, those were on my radar as well. I haven’t yet had a chance to look into what the Linux compatibility is like, but that sounds promising that you were able to do it.

The big downside I see is that while the power consumption is low, they’re running a really old SoC, usually based on Intel N4000 (launched late 2017). Looking around it seems to have h.265 decode which is the most important one to look out for. It doesn’t support AV1, but that’s mostly streaming services and not that common (I think?). There may be other disadvantages I’m not thinking of at the moment.

What was the performance like for you?

I do have surround sound, but I wasn’t aware of that being an issue with a PC solution. Have you encountered issues getting that to work?

All my current self-hosting is running off an N100 mini-PC. OPNsense, NginX, Home Assistant, Unifi Controller, Docker host, etc. They are fantastic, it just seems a bit overkill for sitting behind the TV and playing Plex/Jellyfin and the occasional web stream in a browser. There’s really not much competition though as all the products below it offer a lot older processors that don’t have very up to date HW decode.

You can install Bazzite instead of Windows to solve the above problems.

I recognize thr average person won’t do this, but you can get the same steam deck experience by installing Bazzite.

Now the controller issue I definitely agree with. They need a second gen Steam Controller pronto!

You don’t have to follow that link, it just has a few more technical details than the official Ikea site. That said I’m not a shill, just a cheapskate :P

I already have a smaller travel USB-C charger for my deck which is working great, but I’ve wanted to have a few extra around in places where I dock but haven’t been able to justify the price.

People are right that you can get similar priced chargers on Amazon, but they are random Chinese brands and while I’m sure Ikea’s is a rebrand itself, I would hope a large company like them would have ensured it was decent quality and won’t burn down the houses they furnish with particle board :P

That would have to wait for a SD2 as it would need a completely new APU. I think this is the best refresh we could hope for without major changes that would warrant a new version. One thing I wish they’d been able to do is get VRR on the screen. The fact they didn’t means there must be some technical limitation.

I think it’s unlikely that it’s a controller, but the days of 2.4ghz only are long gone. Sure you can still cheap out on it, but it’s not that expensive anymore. I could see a controller using a chipset that had it.

Are you using the Unbound built into OPNsense, or something else? I ask because it’s easy to configure Unbound in OPNsense for DoT. If your ISP isn’t blocking DoT it will be just as secure.

And yes, it will be much more private. Right now if you’re using neither DoT or DoH your ISP will be able to see all your DNS requests in the clear. With either of the above it will be encrypted and they will not be able to read them.

How would you change his setup to prevent ARP attacks? More network segmentation (clients and servers on separate VLANs) or does OPNsense additional protections I should look into?

What are too currently using for your OpenWRT router? I just got one of these and I would highly recommend it: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq4HxaS

Get the N100 barebones version because you can slap an SSD and RAM in there for cheaper and have more selection. It has four 2.5Gb NICs and the internal PCIE slot for a WiFI card if you really want, though I would recommend getting a Ubiquiti AP to go along with it.

You can put OPNsense on it bare metal, or proxmox and then run your network related VMs there instead of your main server. Your choice.

I don’t have a problem with large games if I get the option of what I want to download. Most often these large sizes are because it forces you to get full 4K textures and multiple copies of the audio files for languages you don’t speak.

I would bet half the size of this game is unnecessary for the average player. We really need the ability to download the core game and then these add-ons separately.

Yup. Mexican, Indian, a lot of cuisine from poorer countries figured this out long ago. Beans or lentils over rice with the right spices, incredible. The restaurant version will add a lot of fat and heavy cream but if you make it yourself you can adjust that so it’s not unhealthy.