What kind of 'puters are you guys rocking?

Four-year-old predator helios 300 for my work machine. It's a cheap boring gaming laptop that sits shoved under a desk dating from 2019-2020 when it was impossible to get GPUs.

The computer I'm on right now is the one I feel is worth mentioning though. It's a HP Elite X2 1012 G2, which is unironically in my top 3 favorite computers ever which is really fucking weird to say about a HP product. If anyone's got a need for a middlerange tablet (i7-7600u/16GB) which is absolutely fucking loaded with every weird optional you could ever want - call-supporting cell modem, huge resolution, microsd reader, detachable keyboard that doesn't suck, NFC, rear camera, wacom support, easily user-servicable battery/ssd, thunderbolt 3 - these can be had for between 80-150$ used right now on eBay because most corporates are phasing them out due to their batteries reaching end-of-life (a 30$ 10-minute piss easy repair).

I dropped another 150$ to rice the shit out of this thing and got a new battery, 2TB ssd, thunderbolt dock, otterbox and stylus and now it gets 8+ hours of battery life. Shit owns and it even pushes an eGPU well. It's not the newest or fastest computer but it is a massive ridiculous chunk of hardware for sub-300$.

I look forward to upgrading to the (now-current) G8 in another 4 years when they get phased out by corporate.

One thing worth mentioning for anyone who might actually want one of these : The only downside is that they're picky about which power delivery sources they'll charge from due to being using a very early PD chip. If you're planning to get a dock get this one (and ignore the amazon price, they're 20 bucks tops on ebay).
 
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i9-12900 + 32 GB DDR4-3200 + AMD Radeon 6700 XT

It's last year's NUC Extreme, and I'm in love. I really like the tiny form factor and the huge number of ports.
 
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TheRedChair said:
Here is my specs. Please note that this is a truly multi-use rig that is designed for WATT vs Performance vs Cost. All items we on sale when purchased. It screams all day and the max load is under 300Watts at any given time, but at the present moment as I type this it is running @ 100 watts or less.

1. CPU: Ryzen 5900OEM CPU. Reason BEST DAMN PERFORMACE vs WATTAGE.

2. GPU: AMD RX5700. Reason. BEST DAMNED GPU vs Price and incredibly great when undervoltage/underclocked.

3. 64GB OloY PC 4000 Blade Memory. Reason. SAMSUNG RAM + INCREDIBLE PRICE + QUALITY PRODUCT. Underclocked to PC 3600 @ 14-14-14-34 timings 7.8 latency compared to 7.5 latency if set @ PC4000

4. Samsung 860 EVO 500GB. Reason Better than the 870 overall. Primary OS/software goes here.

5. WD 2TB 7200 rpm hard drive. Reason quality storage.

6. ICY Dock Duo Swap carriage for both Storage Units. Reason. Hot Swappable at any given time.

MSI X570 A-Pro. Reason. To prove a fucking point that the asshole influencers on Youtube stated that this MB was Garbage. Weak and hot MOSFET design.

Answer. 33+ fucking years dealing with tech. A computer is the total package not just components slapped together. This MB is great if you know what you are doing. Proved the point of 3 years of no issues, especially heat. As long as you are not one of those overclocking people that overclocks everything, this motherboard is stable as hell.

7. Case Corsair 400r or 500r. Reason. IMHO one of if not the best case of its time. I swear by them and have several in storage to the day I die. They are just that good in giving me what I want, which is versatility, cooling ability and cost.

8. PSU Roswell 850watt 80+ Gold. Reason. Excellent tier 2 platform that uses Japanese capacitors. Since everything runs 300watts or less the PSU just hums along without taking any stress.

9. LG Blu Ray player. Reason. I play a lot of movies on my rig.

10. Pixeo PX329 32" monitor. Reason Excellent monitor. for it's size and price.

11. CPU Cooler Hyper T2 dual custom fan set up. Reason The CPU cooler is small (dual 92mm), its light, and it gets the job done @65 watts up to 130 watts. It = a 120mm single fan CPU but smaller and light and increases air flow in the rig.

12. 2, 140mm Artic 3 pin and a Corsair 120mm in the back. Reason. Artic just Rocks... period. Corsair is fine.

Total cost out the door, including the monitor is under $2000 or $72 per month @ 28 months. It is a shitload more if I part things out, but I'm not one of those guys.

This rig can do everything well including Overwatch @ 215fps+ Any type of video/music editing, streaming and so on.

This rig beats the shit out of a lot of rigs out there at the incredible wattage that it uses.

NOTE: As stated I know my tech. As stated I specialize in airflow management and will spend hours fine tuning my rig to keep things cool. And finally I do not believe in water cooling as IMHO it is a money sink for the eye candy. ALSO there is A LOT of fucking maintenance to those water cooling setups that I don't want to deal with.

This is a REAL Multimedia rig that will do everything that I want it to so for years to come. This is one of those investments I will do because I've done the research in the tech industry. So I know what I need to make things work.
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If I copied this build would I have a computer that I could edit videos with? I’ve been wanting to get into video editing but I’m having paralysis by analysis with the computer purchase.
 
William Tyndale said:
If I copied this build would I have a computer that I could edit videos with? I’ve been wanting to get into video editing but I’m having paralysis by analysis with the computer purchase.
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Interesting assessment. IMHO yes. I did some video editing on my 3600 and 1800X years ago.

However and this is important All this depends on pricing of current components. For the past 2 months I've seen some incredibly retarded action on pricing.

It is important to do your research and ask yourself? What is this going to be used for.

Is it purely Gaming?
Is it purely Business?
Is it a Budget Machine?
Is it a Bleeding Edge Machine?
Is it a Utility Machine, which can do a lot of things good but not great?

Each one is a different buy and a different point/performance cost.

My build is a Utility Build. A multi-media machine that I can play games, do video, streaming etc. But is a build that is also a long term build as well.

My case has the 4, 5.25 Drives. 2 of them are used up by a Blu Ray player (so I can watch DVD's) and a Icy Dock Duo Dock setup which you can pull out your HDD and Your SATA SSD out and slot it in with a different OS or additional storage. So I can throw in a Cheap Western Digital 2+ or more GB HD and have my OS and programs on the SSD.

This is how I have my Linux set up. It on a separate SSD. I swap out windows and Tinker around with Zornin Linux 16.2. Reason It feels a lot like Windows. I also in the future will be able to mess around with Virtual Machine with the Linux setup.

Also if my computer crashes I have my back up OS on another SSD and can plug it in and later mess with what is going wrong with the current OS giving me problems.

Next there is Longevity. The core build started in 2019. It is a Utility Build and it is based on 34 years of tech experience. My case is a 2011 Corsair Carbide 500R (400R is also good and in certain ways better).

This case style IMHO is the best case to keep things cool with a minimal amount of fans thereby prolonging the life of your components. This is why I have 2 cases in storage. I like them that much. But it all depends on your tastes as well.

I Had to make choices And I chose the Best Bang for the buck with the ability to expand for the future. This means that this gave me the ability to buy components later down the road.

Un my computer I also undervolted both my CPU and Video card to achieve lower wattage usage with little to a slight increase in performance. (8% CPU performance increase under CineBench)

In 2019 I had a AMD 3600 and 32 BG of Ram and the entire Rig was under $950 with tax and shipping. In late 2021 I got a deal on the Ram and on the CPU to today's component specs.

I've spent a few more months tweaking my rig to get as much performance as possible while not suffering wattage increases.

I will tell you that my rig is A LOT LESS than the Alien Ware Version of a similar build that came out in 2021.

Again it all comes down to you and your actions on how you want your build. My build suits me because of my now 34 years of building rigs. This build may not suit you and you might feel disappointed if you did an exact build.

IMHO Do not copy exactly what I have posted up. BUT GET THE IDEA on the concept of building a Utility Computer for LONG TERM use. Myself I plan to use this setup for 2 or so years, because I know that the rest of the world does not live on bleeding edge technology.


 
William Tyndale said:
If I copied this build would I have a computer that I could edit videos with? I’ve been wanting to get into video editing but I’m having paralysis by analysis with the computer purchase.
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You might want to consider just buying a Macbook Pro or a Mac Studio. These are the most popular computers among video editing professionals for a reason, Apple Silicon has some great hardware acceleration and MacOS has impeccable software support in the creative field. It's definitely going to be your best experience. You can install Windows in a virtual machine, Parallels is really easy to use, so you won't be locked into only using MacOS either if that's a concern.

If you want to build your own computer, this is what I'd recommend: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XDzmZw
It's pretty cheap components, but enough performance to edit 4k without problem.
If you want to speed up AV1 encoding (unneccessary for editing, but nice if you want to do streaming) you can add an Intel Arc A380, and if you want to game you can add an RTX3080. The HDD is optional, but I'd advise against cheaping out on it. Make sure you buy CMR drives. The alternative, SMR, is insufferably slow once you get past half full, so drives sold intended for NASes (or Enterprise, but those are pricey) are usually the best option, they'll almost certainly be CMR. A single HDD is going to struggle with scrubbing video, so the SSD is a bit bigger than you strictly need. That way you can move the files you're currently working on over to it as temporary storage.

Whether you build a PC or buy a mac, depending on how much video you want to keep, especially raw video, you will need a lot of storage. One HDD is fine to start out with, but when you run out of space you'll want to look into switching to a NAS. It's pretty easy to set up a NAS, though you'll want at least three drives to begin with. You can use RAIDZ/RAID5 to provide two drives worth of storage, and one drive of redundancy. That way if a drive fails, you don't lose any data. If you do set up a NAS, get two ~200GB NVME SSDs for it as well, using them as ZFS metadata devices will be an enormous improvement in storage performance.
 
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I have quite an underpowered monitor compared to the rest of my gaming rig. I've been hesitant to upgrade since I don't do a lot of gaming these days, but even still I like my computer to be fast nonetheless. Here is what I have:

ASUS VE248 1080p monitor at 60hz
ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming (AM4)
16GB DDR4 Memory @ 3000mhz
EVGA GTX 1080
500GB WD NVME SSD
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit of course
be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Black - This is by far the best case I've ever owned. Lots of airflow, super quiet, amazing temps
 
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ducktales4gameboy said:
HP Elite X2 1012 G2,
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I have a hand-me-down of one of those that sent me on a voyage of convertibles. Love the screen of that thing but could not stand the fans. Granted, they're not really that loud, I'm just very touchy. I think what annoyed me the most is the random times they'd come on and having no way to control them in Linux. Also you forgot the infrared camera for Face-ID purposes.

I ended up at a similar unit, it's a bit lower-specced Thinkpad X1 Gen2 tablet with Core M kaby lake. Worse screen, (well less PPI anyways, in direct comparison they look pretty similar except with tiny fonts tbh) worse CPU, but fanless. Even though it has it's own foot, I bought a small tablet stand with integrated dock for it (so it's more at face level for ergonomic purposes) and put a mechanical keyboard in front and it's the same here, somehow it became my favorite computer. These things were intended to be basically x86-flavored tablets+notebook option and as tablet they IMO kinda suck but as "semi-mobile", tiny-footprint x86-Desktops they're golden and also unbeatable price-wise, much more useful than any tiny ARM system or something, and as you said - great build quality you won't find in some random netbook for the same price. Also if you enable Firefox' touchscreen features (swipe scrolling, pinch-zoom etc.) the touchscreen is surprisingly nice and useful.
 
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I think I forgot the front camera because I immediately turned it off in the bios, heh.

A friend who's been a ThinkPad holdout since the 90s agrees about the X1s. It makes me happy that you can get hardware as good as both of these for this cheap because up through 2020 Thunderbolt 3 was nearly impossible to find on anything in the sub-500 range, plopping the thing down on a desk and hooking up to a full 3 monitor and peripherals work setup with one cable owns.
 
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I just added an ASUS Tuf laptop to my pile of computers.
8-core Ryzen 6800H
32 GB DDR5
Geforce 3050

I just took it around with me on a 3-week vacation. It seems pretty sturdy, so that's nice. It seems like modern hardware is pretty retardedly overkill in power, because it crushed the games I played on it. The only thing I don't like is how noisy and hot it gets during gaming, but well, it's a laptop. What I do like about it is I can switch off the discrete GPU completely without rebooting to the BIOS. The 3050 runs hotter than the iGPU even for things like video playback, so there's really no point to using it except in a modern game. Surprisingly, the iGPU can handle Deep Rock Galactic just fine on a mix of medium & low settings at 1080p.
 
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I'm not going to give that many details to avoid doxing myself, but I have a haswell architecture 4c/8t processor, 16GB of RAM, and a GTX 1060 6gb card. It still honestly is kinda a beast even though I know we live in a time where i3s come with 4c/8t.
 
i5-7600, RTX 2060 6GB and 16GB of DDR4-2400 is working out for me as my desktop setup, although I definitely need a new mainboard that supports faster RAM...

Laptop has an i5-11400H, RTX 3050 mobile, and 16GB of DDR4-3200, very handy system to take outside but it eats battery because Intel.
 
Ever since I gave up on desktop like a decade ago because I just keep moving all the time and it's a pain to have big stuff like towers and monitors in suitcases, I have been using a good old Thinkpad W530.

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It does everything I ask it to, it's fast, great screen, great keyboard. Whenever something doesn't work anymore I just swap the component, and there you go. I love when serviceability was a thing.

Next device I'll get will probably be a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, sadly.
I dislike more modern Thinkpads (and laptops altogether) because it's getting chinkier with time and loses serviceability and ruggedness, but I would like for something thinner and with more modern IO, so I don't have much of a choice. I bought a T440p for my brother that is a step in the right direction and it's a fantastic machine, but still not there.
 
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3700X/3080/16GB DDR4 3200 home built here. I've been on the fence about building a new rig for a while. I have a new case already (my current Phanteks Enthoo Evolv is heavy as fuck by itself and want something lighter) but haven't made up my mind on the rest yet. My daughter keeps bugging me to get on with it because she wants my 3080 paired with her 5800X. She has my old 2080ti at the moment so she can damn well wait.
 
i7 4790k, 980Ti Hybrid, 16GB DDR3 and countless solid states in a mastercase pro 5. Built in 2015 and still rocking it today. Upgrades eventually to modern MB, ram, cpu and gpu.

Also an ASUS ROG Zephyrus M15 laptop from like 2020 when I started working on the road a lot.
 
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