Jackson

Sadly yes. SLI had amazing potential, but to make it scale well required additional development time that most didn't invest in. I think developers found that since SLI was such a niche group of users that overall, it wasn't worth taking that time and cost to do. Nvidia themselves have all but killed it with the 3000 series.

I picked up an open box alienware 17 r5 laptop for a really good discount at best buy but found out the likely reason it was returned. The headphone jack has low volume and the audio sounds distorted. There's another input jack for the mic, which can be reassigned as headphones through the realtek audio console and after doing that, headphones sound as I would expect with good sound and quality. This is fine, but I'd like to see if I can get the headphone port functional. I've tried quite a bit to see if I can fix this as a software issue, but I'm leading towards hardware at this point. The laptop uses the Realtek ALC3266 chip. Here's what I've tried: Uninstall/Reinstall Realtek drivers Uninstall Realtek driver through device manager to load Windows native drivers (HD Audio Device) Toggled "Audio Enhancements" from the Sound control panel properties Toggled various playback formats Ran Dell's hardware diagnostic utilities with no failures Clean installed Windows Checked audio jacks for damage. I took off the rear panels of the laptop to look at the motherboard itself and saw no visible damage on or around the jacks on the pcb. Tested multiple pairs of headphones to verify they're in working order. Laptop Specs: Intel Core i9 8950HK Nvidia GTX 1080 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 (2x8GB) Windows 10 v1903 Realtek Driver version : 6.0.8699.1 ,A06 (Through Dell), Also used the native Microsoft audio driver on a clean install

Very true. I use Pihole in combination with browser extensions for total ad blocking.

Interesting product, but I would prefer a thinner phone with a removable battery instead. From a pure design standpoint, the LG V20 and G5 did the removable battery design well with metal "premium" materials but lacked an IPxx rating. On the other side, Samsung was able to incorporate a removable battery and IP67 rating with the Galaxy S5, but it was judged "ugly" and "cheap" looking with its plastic materials. If these ideas could be incorporated into a new product I think it would be very exciting to have a "premium" designed phone with a removable battery and IP67 rating or higher. Non-removable batteries just don't promote long lasting devices (> 2 years) on average due to the nature of Li-ion batteries. Instead they create more e-waste due to more "upgrades" from consumers feeling their battery doesn't last as long or is throttling their experience as seen with the iPhone issue. Additionally, with annual flagship releases, people are tempted just to upgrade to have the "latest" thing. We have definitely started to see diminishing returns on smartphone specs in recent years; however people retaining their phones longer is simply bad for business. The ironic thing to me is that when these manufacturers go to make these premium glass and metal designs with non-removable batteries, most users just slap on a case right after purchase anyway. Sure some people don't use a case, but I think its fair to say the average consumer does. Additionally, if a user attempts to replace their "non-replaceable" battery, the resistance seals are broken and it might not be possible to reseal them.

I'm no VPN expert, but since PIA is based in the US, doesn't that make it a part of the so-called "14 Eyes". Even with the claim of no logging, US-based VPNs have been shown to retain identifiable information after government intervention in several cases. Although I do see that PIA has successfully defended itself in court at least once.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108.html I would check some reviews out. I typically see Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut as the top performer for thermal paste. The difference can be very minimal, but as far as "best" is concerned, it seems to be very well regarded.

The primary reason I have an android phone is for the removable battery, sd card slot, headphone jack, and ease of repair (LG V20). Secondary reason is a dislike of Apple's ecosystem. I personally could care less about water proof and IPxx ratings. I've had a cell phone before android and iphone existed and have yet to damage my phone with water. I've had my fair share of exposure to rain as well, no issues. There's obviously a market for IP rated devices as that seems to have completely taken over, but I think the trade off of sealed devices without easily replaceable batteries is higher than most people realize. The #1 complaint I hear from people with a high end phone after a year or so is that the battery just doesn't last like it used to. This in turn can lead to issues like the phone not performing as great a year or so down the line. Case in point with the Apple battery throttling "scandal". The best thing that then happens is the user gets the urge to "upgrade" their device considerably earlier than they might have with a non-degraded battery. I am not saying this happens to all new devices, but it does seem fairly commonly reported. The counter to this might be that you can actually still replace batteries in newer phones; however, this often voids the IP seal and eliminates the whole point of buying a phone with that rating in the first place. It's also a much more involved process that typically requires a heat gun or hair dryer with non-user-friendly adhesives. Also, phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5 were IP67 rated and had removable batteries. With new flagships coming out annually, I think from a business perspective, it didn't make much sense anymore for manufacturers like LG and Samsung to promote long term usage of their own products. Just encourage customers to buy another. Another aspect for me is local storage. With a phone like the LG V20, listening to high quality audio files is a fairly good experience especially paired with something like PowerAmp. I'd rather store my music, and anything else locally than have to depend on cloud storage. High quality photos and video can also eat up storage quickly. The option for SD card expansion makes this a non-issue. It's fairly well known that bluetooth audio devices have yet to catch up to their wired counterparts as far as audio quality is concerned. I don't consider myself an audio snob by any means, but I can definitely tell the difference between a "high end" bluetooth headphone, and a wired headphone at the same price point. I'm all for choice, keep the headphone jack, and bluetooth. Let the user decide. Don't force them to use some adapter or dongle when there's no substantial evidence that's been provided to support the removal of the headphone jack. Lastly, ease of repair goes a long way to a lasting device, but as I pointed out with the battery, this also could translate to less sales of new devices. Why make a phone easily repairable by the customer when you might encourage another sale of your latest device? The LG V20 and G5 for that matter are great examples of an easily user-repairable phone. Just a few screws and you can access every main component of the device. I think the LMG experience with the iMac Pro and Louis Rossman's ongoing relationship with Apple highlight Apple's lack of repair options quite well.

I just replayed Dead Space 1 and despite its slightly aged graphics the game still holds up very well. It has an atmosphere and story to it that just keeps pulling you back in despite the fear of when you're about to get jumped around the corner. It's too bad that the direction of the series went more action/mainstream vs the original solo horror. There's a cool video featuring one of the Dead Space creators, Glen Schofield that really shows the passion they put into making the first game. If that original team had been able to pursue what they wanted without interference we might have a Dead Space 4 by now, or have had a better Dead Space 3.

EVGA is supposed to be launching their Z390 DARK board soon. Potentially at CES. Their FTW board is $229 though, I don't know how much the DARK might be considering it has an insane VRM solution and 17 power phases but I bet it will do quite well with overclocking. https://www.evga.com/articles/01260/evga-z390-motherboard/

As of right now there is no official answer on this. If you're into the rumor hype train, adoredTV claims he was asked to review an x570 board. AMD's latest 7nm EPYC chips support PCIe 4.0 so it would be very exciting to see if that translates to a new AMD consumer board. We're only a day away at this point, I think it's best to just wait it out for the official information from AMD.

Yeah, I have noticed that. I did point out that I removed all of my hard drives from the front cages, but the frame is still there. That SL600M looked promising until I saw that it has terrible CPU temperatures unless you have 1 GPU mounted vertically. I think for 2 GPUs with 2/3 fan coolers that ideally you want a side panel fan blowing directly on them, with an additional smaller fan that can blow air between the two cards. I could rig a fan up to do that in the HAF X I suppose.

This is straight from the AMD keynote description on the CES website. So I think we can expect something somewhat better, but is it Vega II (refresh) or Navi? That is unknown, but not for much longer! https://www.ces.tech/conference/Keynotes/AMD-Keynote.aspx

I'm glad that Linus brought up the price differences between the 60 series cards over the years as I think it's important to take a look back at historical pricing of these cards. To go further, the GTX 1060 actually delivered GTX 980 class performance for $250. That was some incredible value. The best part is that due to the price increases of the RTX 2070 series and onward, Nvidia has the ability to say that the 2060 is a "value" card. It's only a "value" in the context of the new pricing scheme that they've pushed. I also like how the 1070 Ti was available for less than $400 for a few weeks prior to the 2060 launch, but has now gone back up to $450 to reinforce the 2060 price point as "value". We still don't see many games with RTX features, and like it was pointed out in the video, DLSS locked at 4K for a 60 series card seems questionable for the future. The GTX 1160 could fill the more budget friendly gap, but that still won't address the current pricing issues with the 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti.

I don't want to watercool the cards due to the expense of it, but I was more curious about improvements in case design over the past 10 years.

Hmm, that's pretty disappointing. Looks like the HAF X is discontinued now as well. I suppose it makes sense with most users choosing single cards now and enthusiast users being more likely to have liquid cooling for their SLI configs. That leaves air cooled SLI users in a niche spot. While I do like the look of tempered glass cases, I care far more about the cooling that you get over aesthetics.