DJRWolf

You can bypass TPM 2.0 and Microsoft account requirements of Windows 11 by creating a bootable medium with Rufus.
https://pureinfotech.com/rufus-create-bootable-windows-11-usb/
I have done that on my folding rig, it hasn't had any issues yet

I'd assume it doesn't yet, as the Arc optimised driver is coming in kernel 6.8 which most distros will be getting in their next release.

https://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cables-Oculink-Adapter/dp/B07KX87V61
 
What you are looking for is oculink (sff 8612) to m.2.

Are you sure you are not mistaking Gigabytes with Gigabits?

I have a 4tb GM7000, and anecdotally the performance is great, no loading time issues or any reason to think the drive it bottlenecking anything.

One consideration though it that the drive is very thick as far as M.2 drives go. If you have a ITX motherboard where the drives are stacked, or a laptop with tight space tolerances like a Razer, you may not be able to get the GM7000 physically installed. in which case you'd need a single sided 4tb SSD like the Lexar NM790, or a 2tb single sided drive like a 980 or 990 pro.

Well, I'm not sure if they're doing it with Steam gift cards. The news reports were for gift cards for major retail stores (Target, Walmart, etc).

You could in theory still do it with Steam, Epic Games, iTunes, etc by selling the gift cards. Sell a $50 value gift card to somebody for $30-$40. Problem with doing it that way is the person who buys the card has to spend it before the victim. But I'm not sure if Steam/Epic has a way to easily check account balances without redeeming it.
 
Some stores have the ability to check the balance remaining on a gift card by putting the card number on to their website. It's so people can see how much money is left on the card. For example if they had a $100 gift card, used *some* of the value on the card, then wanted to check how much was left later on. Most websites it's just a page where you put in the card number and pin and it gives you the balance.
 
https://www.target.com/guest/gift-card-balance
https://www.walmart.com/account/giftcards/balance
https://secure.store.apple.com/shop/giftcard/balance
 
If you've worked retail you know how annoying it is when customers bring in gift cards and say "I'm not sure if there's anything left on these" and you have to check the balance on a dozen gift cards that have an average of $0.12 left on them. When I worked retail when I was younger the gift cards we sold didn't have a way to check the balance online so I would use a sharpie to write the new remaining balance on the back of the card for people after they used the gift card.

They steal the card details from the unactivated card and then return the cards to the store. They put the card back on the rack of gift cards until it is purchased by a customer. The customer loads credit on to the card. The scammers are using the stores website to check the balance on the card and when they detect a balance has been put on the card they use the details they stole to purchase items with the gift card. When the customer goes to use the card the funds have already been drained from the account.
 
Steal gift card Copy the card details Return the card to the store and place it back on the shelf Customer (victim) buys card and loads credit on card Scammer detects the card has been activated by a balance showing on the website for that card number Probably using some bot that automatically runs through thousands of cards on the store website periodically checking when they've been activated and alerting the scammer when ones been activated, or doing it themselves manually Scammer uses the card details they stole to purchase items draining the funds from the card Days or weeks later the customer (or recipient of the gift card from the customer) goes to use the gift card and finds that it has $0 left on the card Scammer flips the stuff they bought to convert it to cash  
Not really. In most gift cards I've seen it's just one of those black & silver scratch off stickers. You could either cleanly remove the sticker with a razor and enough care to reveal the code and then reapply the same sticker, or if it's a more sophisticated operation they may have the stickers (or a similar enough copy) and just reapply a fresh scratch off sticker over the code. It just needs to be convincing enough that the worker and customer doesn't notice anything suspicious, and most people aren't going to be scrutinising the scratch off security sticker for signs of tampering - especially during holiday periods when stores are really busy.

Been avoiding gift cards for a while, now even less desire to use those...

Don't say I did not warn you that I made the title click bait 😛
 
So I was poking around some old game books I have when I came across my old Prima guide for XCOM: Terror From The Deep. I thumbed though it when I found a section (Page 144) where they talk about a MicroProse QA team member who suggested you can make money in game by building a base next to an alien colony and shooting down supply ships heading to it then selling what you loot. They also said it did not matter how many you shot down as the supply ships are on a set schedule.
 
TL;DR So Jack Sparrow type piracy in an ocean theme game and not Lime Wire type piracy.

What's encurged?
Did you mean encouraged?

Not with 5 of them.
 
Looks like an old product, there probably wasn't 10Gbit chips for that yet, or they were too expensive for that class of product.
 

Only writing affects longevity and to a very low amount.
DRAM is never used to cache writes, so having DRAM doesn't increase longevity by a significant enough amount.
DRAM helps with IOPS, concurrent operations (multiple reads and writes simultaneously) and that's about all ... and modern drivers can take advantage of HMB feature to "borrow" some amount of ram from the computer and use that memory amount to improve IOPS.
 
 

It will be fine, my main pc has a DRAM-less ssd (Crucial BX500 256gb), been using it for like 2 years, hwinfo shows 85% health. You should be fine even if you are actively writing and reading data

DRAM is mainly to keep writes fast as you get OS stalls if the drive cannot keep up with the speed you are trying to write at.  If you are mostly reading it will make no difference as your OS will use system RAM as a read cache anyway.

Also on the larger drives as you have more channels and more SLC cache, it tends to be less of an issue.

The longevity thing is only if you are regularly deleting and writing a lot of data to the drive, then the constant juggle between the SLC cache and the rest of the NAND will wear it out faster.  But even with DRAM that will be an issue unless you use a higher end SSD that uses NAND will less levels, but it all comes down to how much you are writing on a regular basis.

Will be just fine.

See Kingston NV2 1 TB Specs | TechPowerUp SSD Database
and Kingston NV2 1 TB Specs | TechPowerUp SSD Database
There's two different controllers used, but performance shouldn't be very different due to them.
The advertised speeds are 3.5 GB/s read, and 2.1GB /s write ... also see the note at the bottom
 
so if  the 2 TB model uses 4 dies, that could explain the maximum 4 x 66 MB = max 264 MB/s throughput
 
Maybe the reviewer got lucky or got a cherry picked SSD with dies that all have 4 planes and higher throughput.
 

144Hz at 1440p requires about the same amount of bandwidth as 4K 60Hz. 12Gbps for 4K@60 vs 12.7Gbps for 1440@144. DisplayPort 1.2 can carry up to 17.28Gbps, ~4K 75Hz. DisplayPort 1.1 maxes out at half that, and is not capable of 2560x1440 at 144Hz.
 
But there are no 2560x1440 144Hz monitors with DisplayPort 1.1 or below anyway for that exact reason, and the last graphics cards with DP 1.1 were the GeForce 500 series cards, so it's a bit of a moot point, you won't be dealing with a DisplayPort connection below 1.2 with any newer hardware. And if you're just shopping for cables, be aware that DisplayPort cables do not have revisions. There is only one type of DisplayPort cable.

@DJRWolf The new ML140 Elite (Single blue color) are <$20 on Amazon currently:
 
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xjFbt6/corsair-ml140-led-elite-blue-premium-829-cfm-120-mm-fan-co-9050131-ww

GamersNexus and Aris (HardwareBusters) disagree with that, with their new many thousands of euros Lonwgin testing machines xD. If Linus wants LAB32 to compete he's gonna have to get a Longwin as well.
 
@DJRWolfAt the best fan testing available so far here's how both of the fans did:
 
https://web.archive.org/web/20170620105821/http://thermalbench.com/2016/07/29/corsair-ml140-pro-140-mm-fan/3/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180124072600/http://thermalbench.com/2015/08/17/noctua-nf-a14-flx-140mm-fan/3
 
36 dBA at 250FPM for the Noctua (at around a bit more than 1000 RPM (pic below)

And about just under 35 dBA for the ML140 at the same 250 FPM (picture below)

 
They're very similar, so it comes down to your ears, which motor, you like more (especially at lower speeds). But do note that neither are that good noise wise at higher speeds (there's better options). Having said that, ~1000 RPM is like a sweet-spot, upper sweet spot for 140mm fans). So yeah, both are good options.
 
but the Corsair doesn't have the cleanest sound color/sound profile (they seem to have fixed it with the the Elite versions), so if u can find a Corsair ML140 LED Elite for similar price, I'd get the new ML Elite. Otherwise the Noctua.
 

Agree to disagree
There is much more difference between cheapest fans and other. And it's not that simple on the bearing part (Corsair uses maglev on ML140 which is not sleeve, and Noctua A14 uses a Matsushita-based rifled bearing with some extra stuff). They're both incredible quiet. 
 
There's only 3 types of motors/bearings:
 
1. Sleeve (FD, FDB, Fluid, HDB, Hydro, Loop Dynamic, Magnetic-assisted, are all based on sleeve and with big practical/tangible differences between them)
2. Maglev
3. Ball-bearing (DBB, Double-ball bearing)
 
there's nice additions to the first one which can make it match the 2nd and 3rd in their strengths. So basic sleeve in cheap fans is horrible, but better sleeve is quite good. FD/Hydro are not actual true bearings/motors, just marketing speak for rifled bearings (Either Matsushita [which is rifled outside and inside to combat gravity in horizontal orientation, in which basic sleeve suffers], or just rifled on one side, which is a worse cheap imitation). Matsushita patent makes Sleeve godly and beat Ball bearing on everything but raw high temp longevity (~10 years timelines). the patent expired, so everyone is free to use it, but some still use the inferior single side rifled, they used while the Patent existed, to circumvent it, and cause it's cheaper
 
Unfortunately at least one fan seller has used the Hydro/Fluid inter-changeable for either of the 2 types of rifled bearings.
 
It is all, though mostly relevant at lower speeds, and double so for people with sensitive hearing, PCs on the table close to ears. There's also additional unpleasant noises that can show on medium-higher speeds other than motor/bearing problems, and they don't show on dBA measurements, only noise spectrum frequency analysis that hwcooling and expreview do and that GamersNexus will do.
 
@Queen Chrysalis I'm glad you personally haven't had the pleasure of various causes of annoying fan noise, but I've unfortunately had the pleasure 😞, and hundreds upon hundreds of people over the past 10 years as well (that I've talked to, and about fans on various forums and IRL).

Can't go wrong with Noctua. Why the 5v though? Standard for pc is 12v.

Corsair is 20$, Noctua is 23$. For the sound reduction and life extension, Noctua is worth 3$ IMO. And oh look, the good bearing fans from Phanteks are also 20$

Looks good.  You aren't going to get above 4k/60 for media playback for a while--so I see no problem with that as the upper limit.

Anything connected to your PSU could be damaged. This is something I got very lucky on years ago when I had a power supply fail and spray a shower of sparks out the back when it did. Turned out it did not take anything with it but as I said I got lucky. Since then I have been very picky about my PSU's and never cheap out on them.
 
Always get a good PSU because a bad one can take the rest of the system with it.