adm0n

Thank you that's probably what's happening. I will get a new dedicated headset.

I think when you start using the microphone of the XM4s windows automatically switches you over to Bluetooth hands free audio, which has a vastly lower audio quality from what you are normally getting. And I'm not quite sure if there is a way to use the mic without it.
 
But besides that, the headphones doesn't support Bluetooth low latency mode, so you are likely getting 200ms+ audio delay on windows (android somehow manages fine without it though). So I'd recommend getting either a clip on mic and using them wired or getting a new dedicated headset.

If you have more performance than you need or are willing to invest some time, you can usually tune your hardware for efficiency a bit. Look up how to undervolt your hardware. That way you can usually remove the power draw of your GPU/CPU a bit without influencing their performance. If you are willing to give up a bit of performance, the results are usually even greater.

Reduce fan speed. Removing sidepanels can help if you have an prebuilt or a case with bad ventilation.

Based on what you say, there is very little anyone can help you. Your PC doesn't produce any kind of logs, so if you have the time, I'd try to at least figure out which device is causing your issues.
 
It sound a bit like a power problem, because your PC just stops. So based on that it could be a PSU/GPU/CPU or Motherboard problem. (Also possible but less likely are SSD/RAM/USB device problems).
 
So if you have any USB devices connected to your PC, that you don't trust, I'd disconnect them. If you get a short circuit on the USB pins, your PC usually turns off to protect itself.
 
Next, I'd take out your GPU and run your PC with the iGPU of your CPU. You said your PC also dies in idle, so if your PC still happens, you can at least rule out your GPU. 
 
The next troubleshooting steps become trickier though. If you have a friend with a similar PC, you could ask them to swap CPUs and see if he experiences the same issues, otherwise you could try to RMA all possible parts (so CPU/PSU/Motherboard). But you'll probably need to make up some kind of issue for the vendors to accept your RMA. Otherwise they'll say it's not their product that is broken.
 
Other things that could help are:
reinstalling windows running with only one RAM stick running memtest for 12 or 24 hours. check your GPU/CPU temperatures (you probably did this already)

I have an Asus Scar 17 with a 3070TI and it runs anything I've wanted it to even on max settings. Along with having a 240hz 1440p display it's really nice. Though I picked mine up January 2023 on sale for $2k.
 
That being said, as far as gaming laptops go, you shouldn't focus on the hardware too much. Laptop GPUs and CPUs never run as fast as their desktop counterparts. So a laptop 4090 probably won't run any faster than a desktop 4070 and a laptop 4080 will be about the same. Regardless of the Cuda cores and the clock speeds they just can't push enough power to them to see the full potential of the cards. I've never seen a laptop with more than a 300w power brick and a desktop 4080/4090 can use twice that alone. Ultimately what you need to look for is basically everything else; Ram (which you've obviously considered), Storage (same), and whatever other creature comforts tick the rest of your boxes.
 
Now, as far as your selections go... get the 7i, especially since it's on sale right now or else the 9i would be more enticing. Other than the display, which on a 16" screen is not going to be all that noticeable (1440p is the sweet spot I'd say even up to a 27" display), there is absolutely no discernable difference between the two. Plus as you said it's going to be docked most of the time. Other than the cooling might be ever so slightly better on the 9i (which isn't gonna make it any quieter). On that note, a gaming laptop is gonna be loud. There's no way around it, doesn't matter what brand you get, they're all going to be loud. I think Razer's have a more passive approach to cooling but that diminishes performance since it's hitting it's thermal max sooner.
 
So yeah, the 7i while it's still on sale or else the 9i would be a better option.

From what I can tell, the cooling performance of these laptops is pretty similar. The "water cooling" of the legion 9i does nothing and seems to be more of a marketing gag.
From https://www.ultrabookreview.com/66327-lenovo-legion-9i-review/#a7
So the question is, if you want a MiniLED monitor (which is awesome for HDR but has pretty average/bad response times) and is it worth the performance loss and price increase to you?
 
At that price class, if you are tethered to a monitor for most of the time anyway, a desktop with a RTX 4070 could also be a real consideration. You can probably build one for around 1k and with the rest of the money you could still get a nice laptop with a RTX 4060 or similar. When you want to play games on your laptop, you can just stream them from your PC and anything simple can be handled by the laptop directly. So unless you are often out without access to a solid network, but still want to play AAA games maxed, this is a way better solution in my opinion! With the added benefit, that if the GPU is to weak in a couple of years, you can just chug in a new one.

You don't have to throw it out. You can either sell it or use it as a side monitor.
I'm not too familiar with the 4070 super but have you tried anything like changing the fan curve or what not? I'm not entirely sold on that the 4070 super will make less noise than AMD. I can't give you any recommendations in regards to AMD as I use NVidia myself.
 
I mean the GPU isn't exactly overkill but your monitor for example does make it overkill as you never go over 1080. A 4060 would have been enough but nothing wrong with that. The 5600x is also a pretty good CPU honestly and you might notice a difference when going 5700x3D but not only you'll be replacing something that works (looking at your monitor comment) but I'm not really a fan of upgrading within the same generation. I've had multiple friends who find the 5600x just fine though I'm unsure how Cyberpunk 2077 might work for them.
 
I'd like to know what you've done so far in regards to fan curves and stuff and personally I'd keep the GPU (assuming I'm not missing a glaring issue with that GPU) and keep the CPU and just go with a better monitor. It is your money though and I can't make that decision for you but from what I've gathered you don't have a huge problem aside from fan noise. A new CPU won't fix that and replacing the GPU might fix that but I doubt it personally. The monitor also isn't a must but if you want to use the GPU at its best then you could consider an upgrade.
 

Perfect thank you I wasnt expecting any of this I didn't know if it was a big market or not. Thank you very much.

Just looking for "portable blu ray player" brings up a plethora of devices that all basically do what you want.
 
But unless that isn't feasible for your use case, I'd really much rather go with a usb-c blu ray drive. That way you can watch the videos on any laptop, that is almost sure to have a better screen and better battery life. And for modern laptops you can also get a USB-C power bank to increase the battery life even further. Most portable blu ray players will need AC power.

Just looking for "portable blu ray player" brings up a plethora of devices that all basically do what you want.
 
But unless that isn't feasible for your use case, I'd really much rather go with a usb-c blu ray drive. That way you can watch the videos on any laptop, that is almost sure to have a better screen and better battery life. And for modern laptops you can also get a USB-C power bank to increase the battery life even further. Most portable blu ray players will need AC power.

Try running memtest - 
 

The amount of RAM used by games usually depends on how much is available on the latest console generation. So if you have nothing else open on your PC, 16 GB is still enough for almost all games currently, as the current console generation has only 16 GB of RAM as well (and that is combined CPU and GPU RAM!).
 
So my guess would be, that you'd be fine for at least the next console generation, if you get 32 GB of ram. All of that changes, if you have like 16 GB worth of other programs running in the background though!
You CPU/GPU will likely get less relevant before you will need more than 32 GB of RAM for gaming though. So don't worry about that too much.

There are multiple reasons I'd assume.
Some I can think of are
Having a dGPU like that, would take up actual PCIe lanes. So you are either stuck with -8 lanes permanently or you need a PCIe switch Board space for fitting all the components of an actual GPU Cooling and extra VRM Extra Cost It would likely only be viable for lower end GPUs, so it would only make sense if the whole contraption was somehow cheaper than just buying a motherboard and a GPU. But you'll hardly save anything, especially if you don't want to compromise on the motherboard functionality

Yeah, content consumption is like web page browsing and YouTube videos watching, the speakers don't matter that much.
 
Gonna check out system76, probably a high-power cpu. I was looking at the ThinkPad t14 gen 3. Thanks for the help

From what I can tell, you mostly need CPU power, while an iGPU could even be fine for you.
 
If Linux support is important for you, you could check out system76. Otherwise you can never really go wrong with Lenovo Thinkpads. You usually can also find a lot of them used. Just make sure to at least get 32 GB of RAM or look for models with upgradeable RAM. And I wouldn't go lower than 12th gen Intel or 3rd gen Zen.
This highly depends on how your use-case changes and if you are willing to maintain your laptop.
Do you actually want anything specific here? If you always use headphones anyway, I'd just make sure to get a somewhat decent screen. Better speakers can be hit or miss.
 
 
In your position I'd first figure out if you want a low power ~25W or high power ~45+W CPU and then go from there. If a low powered chip would be enough for you, the HP dragonfly series is pretty sweet. But you probably want a higher powered chip. That will likely mean a bulkier design and more fan noise.
 
For a good laptop reviews, I'd check out Notebookcheck.net

I would go to rtings.com, then select the table tool (-> https://www.rtings.com/tv/tools/table) and sort by PC-Monitor.
 

I would go to rtings.com, then select the table tool (-> https://www.rtings.com/tv/tools/table) and sort by PC-Monitor.
 

Happy to help!

To answer some of your questions
 
Fell the same way. I'm actively using a TV as a PC monitor, as it was just way cheaper. I just don't connect it to wifi, so the only thing I have to deal with, is going through a few steps to change the brightness. Otherwise you shouldn't really need to access the UI all that much.
 
I cannot speak for all TVs, but newer ones usually have an option to allow an input to be full RGB instead of being subsampled, and use full range instead of limited range.
The one thing, you might need to contend with is the subpixel layout, which might be different from what your PC expects. For example my TV has a BGR (blue green red) instead of RGB (red green blue) layout, which could make text look blurry. But luckily it being 4k makes up for that.
 
You should probably consider whether your want to get a LED or OLED TV, the latter is susceptible to "burn in", which basically means, that if the same image is shown on the screen for a long time, it might be slightly retained on the screen. UI elements of an OS are a likely culprit for this, but you will likely get multiple years out of your TV until this becomes a problem, if you buy a newer one.
 
You likely will need some kind of AMP, because whatever audio output the TV provides, it won't deliver enough actual power to power any kind of speaker. So either you will need powered speakers (with a build in amp) or a dedicated one. The most seamless experience would be using eARC. You can read up on that if you want!

Happy to help!

To answer some of your questions
 
Fell the same way. I'm actively using a TV as a PC monitor, as it was just way cheaper. I just don't connect it to wifi, so the only thing I have to deal with, is going through a few steps to change the brightness. Otherwise you shouldn't really need to access the UI all that much.
 
I cannot speak for all TVs, but newer ones usually have an option to allow an input to be full RGB instead of being subsampled, and use full range instead of limited range.
The one thing, you might need to contend with is the subpixel layout, which might be different from what your PC expects. For example my TV has a BGR (blue green red) instead of RGB (red green blue) layout, which could make text look blurry. But luckily it being 4k makes up for that.
 
You should probably consider whether your want to get a LED or OLED TV, the latter is susceptible to "burn in", which basically means, that if the same image is shown on the screen for a long time, it might be slightly retained on the screen. UI elements of an OS are a likely culprit for this, but you will likely get multiple years out of your TV until this becomes a problem, if you buy a newer one.
 
You likely will need some kind of AMP, because whatever audio output the TV provides, it won't deliver enough actual power to power any kind of speaker. So either you will need powered speakers (with a build in amp) or a dedicated one. The most seamless experience would be using eARC. You can read up on that if you want!

An AIO on this build isn't worth it. Get a 2 tower air cooler, like a thermaltake peerless assassin or phantom spirit.
 
Also, the 990 is a quality drive, but it is a poor value for money. Look at cheaper options.
 
3rd, avoid RGB ram and avoid buying 2 seperate sticks, get a cheaper kit that is atleast (2x16GB) 6000Mhz and CL36.
 
Also, the motherboard seems a little expensive, look for cheaper well reviewed options that have the features you want
 
Then try to fit a 4070 into the budget.

I also second always using a virtual environment for every project! You save yourself a lot of hassle that way.
 
If you don't want to use venv for it, I really liked using anaconda. It is able to even install non python dependencies that are needed for packages.
 
But using them or not, is more of a efficiency thing. If you continue to just do everything system wide, you will eventually run into a very annoying problem. And figure out, that it would be easier to just setup virtual environments for each of your projects after the fact, compared to trying to fix it system wide. So ... no matter how much you avoid virtual environments, they will almost surely find you and force you to use them.

I always use virtual environments for Python projects. It's really just a question of whether you want to install libraries for your current project only or for the entire system.
 
In my experience, they're most useful for managing different versions of libraries. For example, I recently started working on a project that required an older version of a library that I was already using for some other programs. Instead of installing the older version system-wide and potentially having version conflicts, you can just install it in a virtual environment for the one project. In cases like this, the developers will include a requirements.txt file which contains a list of libraries to use and their version numbers. This makes it super easy to get a new virtual environment up and running with just a few commands.

Thanks for the insight I will be sure to check out "OOP C" when I get to that level 😉

I find C++ too complicated and my goals are to be doing embedded system and kernel programming stuff(ik I am far from it now) so I thought C might be better here. Not to mention I find C simple & easy to understand.