Tribalinius

I'm really sad to see them go. I was really looking forward buying one of their case next year. Sad times.

Well, I learned something new today.

And what's your point exactly? MS business model seems to work just fine. If they make enough money with XBOX Live to be able to offer free Azure space to non-subscribers, good for them. I've only mentioned Nintendo Cloud saves mainly because it's a feature that has been asked for since the console launched last year and should have been too mind you. It's debatable if it should be included or not without a premium subscription though but it's a fair price for what's included. At 2$ /month to have access to online multiplayer, Nintendo NES games with added online multiplayer and Cloud saves, it's not too shabby. If they keep that price while adding more content to it later down the line, it's even better. For now, most of the multiplayer showstoppers on the console are 1st party. I'm pretty sure Splatoon, Mario Kart and, eventually, Smash are/will not be hosted at Activision or EA servers ;). They still need to maintain and run their infrastructure and, obviously, they also want to make some money out of the service too.

For less than 2$ /month? It's a no-brainer to me honestly. If they add Cloud saves on top of that eventually, it'll be a really good offering. I agree that they need to work on their outdated online platform but it's kind of usable now and it's clearly better than it was before.

I'm going to stick with my regular blocky ThinkPad for now

I vote for a VR video with Denis using these!

something along those lines would be my bet too. It's kind of vague in my head but I remember seeing something on reddit/yt probably 2-3 months ago about nVidia cards all blowing up at the same place around the power delivery going back as far as the 700 series. That would be the kind of board that would be used to test these kind of issues I guess?

My closest EBGames locations saw major changes since GameStop bought ThinkGeek. It went from an 80-20 video game/geek stuff ratio to something like 70/30 geek stuff/video game ratio. It's pretty depressing to look at from a video game collector perspective. I'm on the Switch full set quest and finding "rarer" release day titles or stuff you know is only getting a single print in an EBGames is getting harder nowadays. I absolutely need to rely on preordering/buying online otherwise I would not find anything out there beside Mario Odyssey, BotW or Just Dance. It's the same at WalMart and Best Buy in my area. Funny enough, TRU got a decent selection but I rarely see any deals.

I got a single bag right now but I'm switching to 2 separate bags in the next couple of weeks. One, because I'm starting to have back pain from carrying an overweight bag around, two, I look dumb when I got to important meetings with it and three, there's stuff in it that I will use once or twice a year that are nice to have but wouldn't be an issue to go back to my car to get it. I'll leave the essential in my laptop bag (laptop, iFixit kit, adapters, ethernet\USB\HDMI\VGA\whatever cables, 2.5" HDD, DVD drive, powerbank) and leave the heavier stuff/spare parts (USB cables, cable tester, multi meter, punch tools, routers, switches, keyboards, etc.) in my car trunk since I don't necessarily use it on a daily basis. If I really need it, I'll go back to my car to get it or if I know I'll need it beforehand, I'll grab the second bag before heading out. Who really needs a cable crimper in a business meeting anyway? It really depends on your workload to be honest. If you can't absolutely live without your cable crimper because you are doing telecom installation, you got your answer but you should be considering separating your essential tools from your occasional tools if you do a mix of business\meeting\office\hardware stuff. Dragging a 20-25 pounds bag around is ok but after a couple of years it gets old and as myself you might develop back pain directly due to that after a while ;).

I would not be surprised to see at least an UWP variant to be honest. They are starting to push the platform more and more as Windows 10 is slowly replacing everything else. Office 2019 is ditching the Win32 OneNote, I would guess the rest will follow suit eventually.

Obivously you and I are dealing with each end of the spectrum . A 4 year cycle in a datacenter makes total sense but, with a slow moving SMB, 5-6 years is still ok. Some companies I work with can be years without having any need of a new VM while others require that I'd do that on a nearly daily basis. Sometimes, I get really excited when I get to play with a server cluster once in a while just because I'm bored playing with "normal" stuff .

It really depends of the context. 2 years is very short for an average SMB who leaves it in the closet compared to a datacenter. 4 years is being proactive and 5-6 years is the norm around here. It's an hefty chunk of change when you upgrade an SMB. We just did a quote a couple days ago for a company and we were looking at 13k CAD$ just for a single server. When we finished adding windows/software licenses + our configuration/transfer fees we were at almost 50k CAD$ + an another 10k CAD$ for a brand new phone system. For a 50-75 employee business, 60k CAD$ is a good amount and I clearly understand them to try and spread that on 5-6 years . That's one of the reason why we are making a push for the Cloud in general. Dealing with hardware/software licenses upgrade is a pita for a normal SMB. It generally means a lot of money and downtimes plus whatever hardware problems that might happen down the line. You got a good point, server platforms need to be compatible before you can even think about switching. No one upgrades OEM servers CPUs. You better have a really good reason to do it if you need too. If I don't do it in standalone OEM tower servers (unless it's to drop a second one in it), I hardly imagine anyone doing it in datacenters.

Epyc is getting traction at least and that's good news for everyone in the server market. As leadeater mentionned, not everyone will change their servers by next year and I would not expect companies jumping platform on a whim just for the sake of it. It's usually a very long process and given Epyc is not even a year old yet I'd assume a lot of companies that would be interested in jumping platform will wait to see their long term reliability and/or their next upgrade cycle before considering it and continue buying Intel platform for continuity/compatibility reasons. You don't want to support 2 platforms at the same time unless it's already planned that way or you really hate system engineers . As for new sales, oh boy that thing is a compelling choice. Intel salesmen will need to work harder this time around to convince people buying into their products. 15-20% is realistic, I'd even push up to 25% if they got enough hardware to sell.

That summarize pretty much every old CEOs point of view when it comes to IT nowadays to be honest haha.

"So, you are an IT guy? Can you have a look at my Blu-Ray player, my alarm system, my AC unit and my toaster while you're at it and tell me what's going on with them?" We all got that at one point, people assuming that "IT" makes you instantly an expert on everything with a PCB or, god forbid, a USB port

We don't know for sure but, as many other said, they won't have any new competitor in the ring before 2019. Why rush a product to market with all the expenses that goes with it when all it's going to beat is their own offering at this point anyway? They are going to milk Pascal until Christmas if there's nothing new in the pipe until Q1 from AMD. Personally, I'm sure they are playing the waiting game to see how it pans out with AMD and Intel in 2019 before announcing anything tangible in regards of Ampere. If they see a direct threat to their dominance coming from AMD or Intel, they won't have any other choice than to play ball and reveal a part of their hand but for now, I'm sure we'll only an another sku reshuffle / refresh until Q1 next year. Time will tell

I don't hate him, he probably poured his soul in the project and I'm sure he did his best. We don't know what happened behind the scene at AMD (R&D issues, HBM issues, "Raja", tight schedules, etc.) but the reality is Navi was already well underway when he left and Lisa picked up the pieces that remained in order to finish it. If they can get a 1080Ti redux at half the price, it will already be good but a lot of people are secretly wishing for a home run coming from AMD with Navi. They won't settle for less than that and I fear they will throw the towel with Navi.

I don't want to be pessimistic about Navi but as soon as it will/would show sign of performing better than the best nVidia's offering, nVidia will come out swinging with whatever they have been sitting on for a while to make sure they still dominate the market. Let's not forget Navi is still Raja's baby and Lisa has only been in charge of that mess since Vega's launch. Navi being pushed to 2019 makes it clear to me that the current arch is not doing as great as AMD predicted and will only serve as a stop gap between Vega and "Next Gen" while they figure out what their next moves are going to be. It will just be a sad conclusion of a overhyped train. I don't rule out a unicorn move from AMD but I doubt it will be before "Next Gen" and then probably would go head to head with nVidia on "Next Gen" refresh after that. I'm kind of happy sitting out of a platform upgrade until TR3 to see how it pans out but that PC will be probably bleeding red. The 970\GPP fiascos left a bad taste in my mouth. nVidia products are excellent but fooling customers and holding partners at gunpoint are really awful and scummy tactics. I'm not saying AMD is as white as snow but they pale in comparison with nVidia lately.

The project is probably under a metric ton of NDA for all we know. I really doubt Intel waited for Raja to leave to start their project. I'm sure some of the groundwork has already been done by the time he signed with them. The faster Intel gets his GPU on the market, the better it will be for all of us anyway.

Unless they have been working on it for a while. In that case 2019 might be realistic.

It feels like nVidia, AMD and Intel have guns drawn at each other and they are all waiting and examining each other to predict who's gonna shot who first. It sucks for those who are on the fence of buying/upgrading but clearly the battlefield is slowly shifting toward 2019. nVidia probably has something in the left wing in case AMD pulls out a unicorn or Raja reinvents the wheel at Intel. At this rate, I would not be surprised to see a 1080Ti-Ti refresh just to keep nVidia people happy until Ampere shows up.

1.) Between the two, I'd go with an R6 just because it feels more aesthetically appealing. The reviews are pretty positive for that chassis. Otherwise, with that kind of money, you can probably go all the way to a CaseLabs and custom it to your heart desire. 2.) Thicker radiators will help you out achieve the best cooling performance but you will have to deal with space/compatibility/fan noise issues the thicker you go. I'd settle for something "good enough without having the noise of a Boeing 747 leaving the runaway in my office" kind of setup unless you want to ramp it up to the max. If money is no object, I'd have a look at Hardware Labs Black Ice SR2/GTX/GTR otherwise your choice of EKWB PE/XE is alright, just don't go with the SE or you will be disappointed. 3.) Threadripper revision is out in August. At best Threadripper will be Intel counterparts, at worst Intel might discount the 7980XE. I'm kind of surprised you did not go all in balls to the wall on the motherboard considering you are putting really high end stuff in there, like a Rampage VI Extreme or Apex. 4.) Compression fittings. The amount/sort of fittings really depends on what kind of loop you are planning on (Single vs. Dual, if you want to have fancy angled adapters or plain ones, special connectors like a ball valve for drainage, etc.). If you want to keep it all EK themed, you can buy the regular compression fittings in multipack on their website to save a little bit. 5.) D5 pumps. Personally, I'd use seperate loops to keep my CPU and GPUs apart. If you want to stick to EK, they got pump/res combo. If money is no object, you can make sick looking pump/res combos from Singularity Computers. Most of this is subjective, to each their taste and preferences :p. You just need to be ready to plop down a good chunk of change on your initial watercooling gears/tools depending on what you settle.

Never heard of that before but it makes total sense!

It always come down to $$$... "How far can we stretch it out before a catastrophe happens" is one way to deal project management I guess

@wkdpaul @leadeater Secret stuff is the worst, I've been in companies structure where top brass expects a circle to connect through a square to a triangle without talking to anyone months after deals are signed. That's one of the reason I quit regular IT infrastructure jobs. Geez, we're your IT department, we're the most qualified to tell your decision and timeline to implant it sucks donkey balls! 3 words: LISTEN. TO. US. It's so infuriating when you have to deal with people taking decisions in your back than they start to whine because nothing is working the day after. It's our job to evaluate products in your work environment and the impact of your decisions on your business. That's a total lack of respect to not include us in these meetings, force us on something not planned and sling shit at us right after because it's not working at your liking. I don't have a lot of perks being an external consultant but freedom of speech is one of them. I don't have to hold back in these meetings anymore and I'm not afraid anymore to confront business owners and tell them what I really think about a particular project. It gives me the flexibility and the leverage I did not have before. I've saved a couple of businesses from making costly terribad decisions because they listened the advice/opinion we gave them. You don't want to listen? Your call buddy. I'll be waiting for your call to plug the hole with my magical IT glue when the ship starts to sink. I've been part of that show long enough to know the outcome and the cost of badly managed projects lol. You are right when you say that good decisions can not be made in a vacuum but that vacuum should consists of the key people implicated in these projects. Too many people or the wrong people sitting around the table can steer a project in the wrong direction quite fast.