Thread for Linus Tech Tips Video Suggestions

[mariushm]

2 hours ago, GeoHandle said:

Recently watched the sound card video, so how about a video comparing no sound card vs low end sound card vs high end sound card in different situations (gaming, movies, music etc), and if they have any effect on performance in game (both in terms of fps and how well you play).

 

These days you often don't even need a sound card, just a monitor with stereo output / headphones output.

Modern video cards have an integrated sound card that's needed to route the audio through the HDMI cable to your monitor. The monitor can decode the audio signal and make it available on its speakers and on that audio output jack.

 

If you guys still don't get it ... Windows mixes the audio from applications into an uncompressed stream of digital 1s and 0s which the sound card chip simply has to decode using its DACs (digital to analogue converters) and then route the analogue signals to through optional audio amplifiers.

You can either use digital outputs (Toslink or Coax)  or use the analogue outputs.

 

The difference in audio quality between sound cards will be in the background noise and interference the chip picks from around it when performing this conversion from digital bits to analogue and amplification. A higher end sound chip (ex alc1220) will have higher quality DAC circuits and better internal audio amplifier than an older ALC892 for example. 

How well the area where the sound chip is separated or insulated from electrical noise and interference from other things on the motherboard can also effect the quality of the sound.

None of this affects how much resources Windows needs to create the sound that's sent to the sound card

[Founders]

On 12/22/2019 at 10:08 PM, OlympicAssEater said:

Do Stadia review

I’m sure they will, who knows maybe they’ve done something on it already and just haven’t released the video yet.

20 hours ago, Yogi_DaBear221 said:

I'd recommend a video on best game controllers for the PC. Like the best ones for feel, aesthetics, controls of course, extras like extra buttons and stuff, then compare them to using just a regular Xbox One or PS4 controller when it comes to latency, responsiveness, and anything else they can think of. 

I’d be interested in something like that. I’ve been using a standard wired Xbox controllers for the longest time now. Corsair recently acquired SCUF Gaming to get into controllers. If they’re successful with it more companies will probably follow suite into developing better options. LTT could do a round up of the best options at a given price bracket.

5 hours ago, Nuklearfire said:

How about a video like the our wifes Build a PC one of the Fans of the Channel Build a PC and the Winner can take his PC home

I believe they’ve done something similar to that. Just search ‘build off’ on the channel and you should find it.

[Founders]

@LinusTech Do you have any server room updates/videos in the works? 

[Kilrah]

There's one on floatplane now, so yes soon...

[Founders]

20 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

There's one on floatplane now, so yes soon...

Great! Thanks for the heads up!

[Neildoe]

On 10/12/2019 at 3:01 AM, tzenrick said:

Get together with AvE, and build him a computer that can chew through Autodesk Fusion 360. Then he can use it to build you a badass heatsink to test out. His current machine has some problems... 

 

OH yes please do a video with AvE!!! 

[SenKa]

https://petapixel.com/2019/12/26/this-docking-station-turns-the-mac-mini-into-a-creative-powerhouse/

 

Very promising if it comes to fruition, I’m sure these guys would kill for an LTT spot.

 

For those too lazy to click the link, here’s what’s up:

 

CNC machined dock for the Mac Mini that adds support for 2 dual slot GPU’s and 4 SSD’s. The reasoning being that the current gen mini has more than enough CPU horsepower to video edit but is let down by no dGPU options and low storage (for those who edit locally). 

[Nexblitzer]

On 12/24/2019 at 1:53 AM, mariushm said:

There's other things besides SSDs  (SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC) ... there's Optane which they covered.

There's other memory types FRAM, FeRAM , MRAM, ReRAM, other types of memory besides NAND

 

GlobalFoundries Teams Up with Singapore University for ReRAM Project : https://www.anandtech.com/show/15034/globalfoundries-teams-up-with-singapore-university-for-reram-project

Western Digital to Use 3D ReRAM as Storage Class Memory for Special-Purpose SSDs : https://www.anandtech.com/show/10562/western-digital-to-use-3d-reram-as-storage-class-memory-for-specialpurpose-ssds

 

MRAM stuff: https://www.anandtech.com/SearchResults?q=mram

Samsung Ships First Commercial Embedded MRAM (eMRAM) Product : https://www.anandtech.com/SearchResults?q=mram

Everspin Begins Production of 1Gb STT-MRAM: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14580/everspin-begins-production-of-1gb-sttmram

 

There's stuff like hyper memory cube and other 3d memory concepts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Memory_Cube

 

RAM drives were done and nothing new : just a FPGA with a memory controller and a softcore (maybe) which emulates a SATA device.

 

 

 

 

 

They in fact may be better binned chips, running at lower power because they have to be used in industrial environments where the temperature ranges can be larger (think for example behind an advertising billboard full of leds which produce heat or in the middle of the day during summer, or middle of the night in winter somewhere)

Those boards are interesting because they often contain LVDS or other connectors which allow you to connect directly to a lcd panel, they have multiple video outputs and some nice features (mini pcie , m.2 connectors, usb connectors on the board or sd card controllers on board (to plug a usb / sd card and boot an os without having to use a SSD/HDD)

I'm aware of ECC being supported, but don't really think they have a lot of features that can be "explored" which would matter for the major audience of LTT. Doubt there's many features in fact probably just some stuff that would help businesses and network administrators to manage computers in offices.

 

 

Fair points for all RAM types that could be further explored. And that was my point with the RYZEN PRO chips, i just wanted to see things from a business perspective.

[Kilrah]

Looks like it's just derated chips with added memory encryption and a few other security features...

[Nexblitzer]

On 12/25/2019 at 5:21 AM, turgsh01 said:

After watching this video: 

 

 

I'm now curious... I know CPUs are far more powerful than they ever were... but onboard audio does still technically require CPU to work. So my question is, and this might be a video idea worth considering, would having a discrete sound card improve CPU performance by a factor of more than like 1%? Because if so, then it might still be worth buying one since you can just carry over the sound card from computer to computer (it's not like they're being improved much anymore).

Realistically a 1% performance gain is non-beneficial in nearly every high performance task, unless were talking about things like AI development, Deep learning and all other massive server based computing tasks. And a sound card in the modern era is more so an extension to amplify and extend the audio quality produced from you CPU. So yes there may be a slight, and soo very slight performance gain, but you probably wouldn't even notice on games or powerful workloads, considering the sheer magnitude of performance CPU's have now compared to then.

[Michael Howard]

Thought.....
LTT being well versed in Video comparisons with proper methods of bench tests, I cannot find Videos on testing the difference between the Nvidia Shield Pro and the Raspberry Pi 4B. I would assume the Shield would be better because of the graphics engine. But the new Pi has more processing power I assume. Using your own great quality video's on Kodi 18.5 would be great to see.

2) You guys maybe not a strong in Audio as Video, But what if you then compared both for audio and then added something like an external DAC (for example https://www.schiit.com/products)

Of course you would have fun talking about this little piece of shit and how well it does or does not work.

In closing a Nvidia Shield video and sound comparison vs a Pi 4B with a DAC.

Not on YouTube that I can find. Be the first.

Thank you

[minibois]

In the last two years or so I have been getting more interested in racing games. Right now I am mostly playing them with a controller, but I want to get a steering wheel/pedal combo in the future.

In the past, LinusTechTips had some reviews on those and even on those 'cockpits' and such.

 

Would be awesome to see a video (review) on some steering wheels, but a video on certain cockpits or even DIY cockpits would be really cool too!

Taking an old chair from a car and converting that into a racing cockpit!

[Aero_db]

ok here's my video idea....

 

With the growing need for anonymize our data with VPN connections to places like express VPN etc, and cloudflares 1.1.1.1 DNS service... home networks should be able to a protect all the data leaving the home network into the web. 

 

but here is the issue, many routers, like my google wifi mesh network, dont allow for this. ( a VPN from my edge router to a VPN provider). 

 

any videos like this, with or without a solution to my particular issue, would be very interesting. 

[Stewrt]

Video Idea! 

I received a new prebuilt system for Christmas, or maybe I built myself a new system over Christmas break.  

What are some basic settings I can change or verify to optimize the system to perform its best (for school and gaming).  I'm talking about the multitude of bios settings and graphics card settings. 

 

Three or four simple things to check and what each setting means.  A slow walkthrough for a new enthusiast. 

 

Thanks,

Stewrt

[mamamia88]

How about you do a video comparing the best thermal paste with the worst cooler, and the best cooler with the worst thermal paste.

[Founders]

On 12/27/2019 at 5:11 PM, minibois said:

In the last two years or so I have been getting more interested in racing games. Right now I am mostly playing them with a controller, but I want to get a steering wheel/pedal combo in the future.

In the past, LinusTechTips had some reviews on those and even on those 'cockpits' and such.

 

Would be awesome to see a video (review) on some steering wheels, but a video on certain cockpits or even DIY cockpits would be really cool too!

Taking an old chair from a car and converting that into a racing cockpit!

That sounds pretty interesting considering how much some of those pre-configured setups can cost. Maybe they can test two different setups, one using ultrawide curved panels and one using a VR headset. Then they can compare the two and list both the advantages and disadvantage of each option. 

[Aisaaax]

Hello!

I think it would be a cool video if you made some kind of a guide for gaming TV setups (mainly PS4/5 and X-box). It's really hard understanding which TV I am supposed to buy for my living room to enjoy that. Obviously, I'm not talking about 3-5 thousand dollar flagships that you've reviewed plenty of on this channel - but more of a general guide on which characteristics are good and not. Sadly, I really can't afford those huge expensive TV's like ASUS PG65UQ that you've recently made video about. So I have to chose something more budget-friendly, but I just don't really know what to look for.

 

You're making great content! Happy New Year!

[Kiwilicious!]

Working with animation/cgi/vfx it is great to see rendering with cinebench on benchmarks, but with GPU rendering gaining popularity, it would be cool to see future graphics cards tested with a renderer like redshift, octane or anything similiar. Another thing I'd love to see, is some alternatives to mice in 3D work. Most reviews of pen tablets on YouTube are done in a vacuum and only focuses on drawing. It's hard getting a bigger picture of what is available on the market and how it compares. (pen tablets with and without screens, 3D mice)

[JohnMelz]

Hello,

 

Can you guys do a video about the best CPUs for music production based on the benchmarks from DAWbench? There's a large and growing number of home recording studios and enthusiasts and there's only old and outdated dawbench statistics (probably because they cannot get a hold of the newest AMD/Intel processors) There's a lot of people asking for this info in many music production forums.

 

Apparently, AMD chips have a latency issue that makes it less suitable for music production than the Intel chips... This hasn't been tested on all the AMD 3rd gen chips yet.

 

If you could run these on all most popular software such as Cubase, Ableton Live, Studio One Pro, FL Studio, Reason, Protools, Logic X Pro, Bitwig, and Reaper, and separate the statistics per software, that would be awesome! (all these programs have 30 day trials)

 

 

Here are the links for more info:

 

http://www.dawbench.com/

 

http://www.scanproaudio.info/tag/dawbench/

 

Thank you in advance!

Cheers!

[mamamia88]

How about you build like 5 systems at various budgets? Hook them up to identical monitors and use the same kb/mouse. Then take a bunch of random people who are console or complete non gamers and find out at which price point people stop being able to tell the difference. Anyone who guesses 7 out of 10 or better gets entered into a raffle and takes home the most expensive one

[hishnash]

Full disk encryption, and cracking it.

there are a few differnt types of full disk encryption however many of them are not that hard to bite force. 

(https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2016/06/breaking-bitlocker-encryption-brute-forcing-the-backdoor-part-i/)

in short any system that has the following features can be broken very easily:

* the drive can be removed from the device and used in another device with the users password

* the encryption uses a user entered password (not a physical crypto key)

* when the user enters the password the system is able to determine (within a sort time frame independent of the drives size) that the Password is correct.

any system with the above features can be easily broken by copying the (small portion of) the encrypted drive into memory on a high performance system and brute forcing to guess the users password. In the case of a stolen system you can start with letters that are easy to enter (based on the keyboard layout of the device you `stole` the drive from)

would also be interesting to have a discussion of other full disk encryption such as those that lock the drive to the device or lock the drive using a physical crypto key. A breakdown of the pros and cons of these systems.

[Letgomyleghoe]

On 12/12/2019 at 6:52 PM, harryk said:

Find businesses big and small who are actually purchasing multiple top-end Mac Pro's or otherwise equivalent $50k desktop machines. I'm really interested in hearing about their use cases and what factors they considered when making the purchase. How do they benefit from Xeon processors and ECC memory? What about >1TB of memory? How does having desktop machines compare to utilizing servers/clusters/cloud computing? 

 

Inspired by this thread

 

that abomination of mine got extremely toxic, i may or may not have been a part of that toxicity

[NoMansLand]

On 3/21/2019 at 5:19 AM, Slottr said:

Been looking at home security recently and stumbled upon the Wyze cam, I'd be interested in seeing something about that

Budget home security or something along those lines

I know i'm a bit slow to the party - but I would love to see this. Which Linux Distro is best for a NVR? Is Shinobi or Zoneminder better?

[PurpleCodes]

I am in the progress of making my home a traditional "smart home" seeing what I can make smart. would be cool to see a video about how someone could actually make a smart home beyond just google assistant/alexa integrations. I use Home Assistant which is fantastic and runs on a raspberry pi.

[Aisaaax]

17 hours ago, Aisaaax said:

I think it would be a cool video if you made some kind of a guide for gaming TV setups

Sorry, I couldn't help but post an update. So it so happens in the last two days I was in a bunch of electronics shops, and was asking the shop assistants about TV's.

Here's a couple anecdotal cases of shop-assistant BS when I'm trying to ask them the question and get them to help me chose a TV:

1) "For PS4 you need to buy ONLY Sony TV. They have a special chip, and when you plug in your console - they detect that it's a PS4, and they uncrease graphics quality by up to 30-40%!"

2) "You need yo buy 10-bit display. What does 10-bit do, you ask? Why, it increases performance. Your TV will not lag with 10-bit display!" (how does bigger color bitrate makes the TV lag less, when it actually should increase CPU load - is beyond me)

 

I WISH I was making this up. Hopefully, it cracks some of you up just as much as it does me.

Seems like they're in a dire need of a Secret Shopper there.