pangaea

They allow verification on landlines/call-only phones via automated phone call if I'm not mistaken but assuming everyone has a phone that isn't VOIP or prepaid is an even worse assumption and takes the problem a step further IMO.

I don't regularly use gmail as I have my own email server so I didn't bother securing my Google account with 2FA. Don't see how that would help though. Borrowing someone else's phone to verify my Discord seems like a lot of trouble and would put them in a similar situation should they use Discord. I don't ever plan on switching to a conventional cell plan for myself unless they offer prices that can compete with prepaid (I have friends who pay $50/month or more when I only pay $20/month for similar or sometimes better service).

In order to have a verified phone on your Discord account (required for the official LTT Discord), you have to have a phone number that isn't prepaid or VOIP. My cellphone is on a prepaid plan and I don't have a POTS (old school land line) phone either. So I would request that you lift this restriction since I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to have a phone number that isn't prepaid or VOIP.

Selection of cases, accessories, and even replacement parts for the LG V20 is excellent. To this day, I have yet to see even one case or accessory for my obscure off-brand Chinese phone. Great point.

I have a 2013ish PC that runs many of those and similar games in 1080p maxed out settings (specs in my signature) to an experience that's well above playable. Don't bother upgrading until you have a good reason to (e.g. you're not getting the performance you want or something breaks).

If you want a budget gaming build, there are plenty of workstation PCs on eBay for less than half the cost of the one this thread was based around with more "normal" looking specs. Get this https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z220-Workstation-SFF-Desktop-PC-BOOTS-Core-i7-3770-3-40GHz-16GB-RAM-1TB-HD/192685456746?hash=item2cdcf2bd6a:g:8k8AAOSw9yJbmCMn:rk:6:pf:0 and stick a gaming GPU, maybe an SSD as well into it. Easily a $350 gaming PC.

The difference in your electric bill would be nothing compared to what it would cost to rent a similar spec dedicated server.

The price-to-performance ratio of used workstation hardware is usually pretty good. I wouldn't expect it to beat a $2k high end gaming machine for gaming performance but getting a cheap used workstation PC and slapping a graphics card in it is definitely something I would recommend for budget to mid-range gamers. This machine specifically I wouldn't recommend for gaming though, it'd be a better home server (e.g. for RSPS or a large Minecraft server) or budget workstation.

I did a few tests and it does seem to use the eGPU for all tasks regardless of what screen I run them on. The simple solution to that is to not use the laptop's screen for any GPU-intensive tasks but I would prefer that tasks be handled by the GPU connected to that screen for enhanced multitasking (though I suppose such a thing would ruin the seamless experience you get, being able to just drag things across screens). Many people will have a laptop with an internal GPU that's good enough for Youtube videos but not good enough to run their favorite game at 4K with ultra settings. There is definitely a huge performance hit if I run anything even remotely GPU intensive on the laptop's screen, as I said in my test the benchmark's screen having a sliver showing on the laptop's screen completely ruined performance all the way down to 1/7 of what I got on with the card being used normally on the desktop. After correcting this issue and using only the monitor connected to the eGPU, the performance hit was only ~13%, possibly a lot less due to the nature of the fact that I was using the laptop's CPU instead of the 6 core FX.

Used an AMD 7950 GPU and Windows 10 for both setups
 
Desktop used:

-AMD FX-6 CPU
 
-12GB DDR3 RAM
 
-GPU installed internally on a cheap microatx motherboard
 
Laptop:
 
-Intel i7-4600M vPro CPU
 
-16GB DDR3 RAM
 
-GPU installed via an expresscard adapter
 
I ran a benchmark with uningine heaven and got the following results (higher is better)
 
Desktop
 
FPS: 29
 
Score: 730
 
Min FPS: 7.9
 
Max FPS: 62.9
 
eGPU
 
FPS: 25
 
Score: 630
 
Min FPS: 14.6
 
Max FPS: 50
 
I will also note that the eGPU ran ~20C cooler than installing it internally in the desktop due to it being in open air rather than inside of a case. For both tests I used DX11/ultra quality/extreme tessellation. I used the same 1080p monitor for both tests however I recommend watching out for the benchmark not "bleeding over" onto the laptop's integrated display as this will cause a giant unfair performance hit. When I first did the test I made this mistake with a small sliver showing on the laptop's integrated screen and it got a score of only 300.
 
In conclusion the internal install performed better but not by a big enough margin to make or break your average gaming experience.

This would make an excellent LTT video now that I think about it, to discuss when people with ~5 year old hardware are going to feel the push to upgrade.

In order to have a verified phone on your Discord account (required for the official LTT Discord), you have to have a phone number that isn't prepaid or VOIP. My cellphone is on a prepaid plan and I don't have a POTS (old school land line) phone either. So I would request that you lift this restriction since I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to have a phone number that isn't prepaid or VOIP.

Ryzen has a higher instructions per clock throughput due to the following:
Each core of the FX series have fewer execution resources than Ryzen Ryzen has a floating point unit per core, as opposed to shared between two cores on FX Ryzen has better optimizations on the front-end for decoding, re-ordering, and branch prediction of instructions. Ryzen can service two threads per core if there's enough spare execution resources. vs. the FX's one per core

Some eBay listings will say, some won't.

Some eBay listings will say, some won't.

Used workstation desktop (working PC w/ 8GB RAM, Xeon CPU, and a Windows 10 license) - $200 (eBay)
 
AMD RX560 - $180 (Amazon)
 
Cheap eBay monitor - $50
 
Keyboard/mouse bundle - $12 (my local Best Buy)
 
Cheap earbuds - $8 (Amazon)
 
even with the monitor and peripherals we're within a $450 budget ($380 just for the PC and GPU).

So there has been an interesting twist in each one so far such as water cooling, RGB, having to pay for food/transportation, etc. So since most so far have focused on gaming pcs, why not do a workstation one? Benchmarks based on CAD, 3D rendering, virtualization, CPU intensive mathematical/statistical calculations, etc. A twist could be to allow 1 item to be researched and ordered from Amazon/ebay ahead of time (still coming out of the budget). I'm not sure how good the Craigslist market is for workstation hardware so it would be helpful.
 
Adding displays into the budget and having bonus points for multi monitors seems interesting as well.