JUST BOUGHT: Victus by HP 15L Gaming Desktop TG02-0346st. Anything I should know or invest in?

[bigwackluis]

I just bought this desktop it has the following:

• NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 (12 GB GDDR6 dedicated) with LHR, Display Connectors: HDMI*1, DP*3
• 512 GB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• 16 GB DDR4-3200 RAM (2 x 8 GB)
• 500 W 80 Plus Bronze cerfified power supply mc
• Realtek Wi-Fi 6 (2x2) and Bluetooth® 5.2 combo (Supporting Gigabit data rate)
• Windows 11 Home Plus
• Intel® Core™ i5- 12400 (2.5 GHz up to 4.4 GHz , 18 MB L3 cache, 12 cores )

I was wondering if y'all think there is anything I should also invest in to boost said performance. This is my first desktop and will take any advice. I was thinking of getting a liquid cooler for the CPU.

[Radium_Angel]

Make sure the VRMs are well cooled

[Dedayog]

16 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Make sure the VRMs are well cooled

Most people who buy prebuilts don't worry about that, especially with a 12400.  Just have a decent case with airflow, which will cool the VRMs anyway.

 

Don't get a liquid cooler for a 12400.  Get a better CPU with that money.

 

I assume a 1080p monitor?

[bigwackluis]

6 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Most people who buy prebuilts don't worry about that, especially with a 12400.  Just have a decent case with airflow, which will cool the VRMs anyway.

 

Don't get a liquid cooler for a 12400.  Get a better CPU with that money.

 

I assume a 1080p monitor?

Yeah, it's a 1080p but only 60hz so I may get a newer and better monitor later.

[Chikensoops]

Might wanna add more storage for games and such, at least 1tb. A good HDD would be cheap and work fairly well just as storage.

[Radium_Angel]

20 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Most people who buy prebuilts don't worry about that

Right, but the OP is asking what he should do with the system. Given this is an HP, which has a proven track record of making shit systems, cooling the VRMs is, IMO, a vlid and cheap option to prolong the life of the motherboard

[bigwackluis]

On 1/30/2023 at 6:16 PM, Radium_Angel said:

Right, but the OP is asking what he should do with the system. Given this is an HP, which has a proven track record of making shit systems, cooling the VRMs is, IMO, a vlid and cheap option to prolong the life of the motherboard

what should I do to keep them cool?

[Radium_Angel]

4 hours ago, bigwackluis said:

what should I do to keep them cool?

Airflow across them and (if it were my system) some tiny VRM-specific heatsinks. I bought a pack off eBay, only a few dollars.

[E-waste]

On 1/30/2023 at 7:33 PM, bigwackluis said:

Wi-fi

I have a tech tip, in Windows, you can turn on your wifi, then enable the "stationary" hotspot feature (desktops aren't very mobile) and create your own software-based access point.

 

This is with the Microsoft wi-fi direct feature, you'll see this inside "device manager" and, listed as "local area connection #" in the advanced network settings / adapter options.

 

So with this, you quite literally have your very own, customizable access point, you can change the name, passphrase, wireless mode (right click properties on your main wifi adapter for that one specifically), and most importantly:

 

Your choice of IP address (joking, no but you can choose anything in the class C range of 192 168 137. # your number choice as the last number group.

 

For the gateway, 192.168.137.1 seems to work.

 

More importantly than that though is you can change the DNS setting, separate from your main wifi and so close-range wireless devices can go through a local dns filter like adguard or pi-hole to reduce network traffic and data uploads.

 

This can also be done for the same pc your using, without the hotspot feature, using virtualbox and "bridged" network adapter using your wifi device, inside the virtual machine settings for each virtual system.  It's really not that complicated until you start blocking too many microsoft domains.  If you can just let one through it will realize you have internet.  If you block absolutely all of them, you'll have to load a website (yes, while it says "no internet) before windows will allow you to use the " hotspot " wireless feature.

 

To me, that's worth the hassle, but to some it's a kin to shoveling shit.  Some people just won't even bother, too much work, like the bit about the "conspiracy fly" on family guy.

 

To me, it feels like allowing shit to flow through the network if I don't use a filter, and it can also help track malicious network activity, or catch telemetry domains you probably never asked to connect.

 

Examples:

 

Link to pi-hole blog post from several years ago with multiple parts of examples!

 

https://pi-hole.net/blog/2017/02/22/what-really-happens-on-your-network-find-out-with-pi-hole/

 

Also I just thought of the night light option.  F.lux is a program created in 2008 that still gets updates today, and it's supposed to turn your monitor into a candle-light information center after sunset.  I think f.lux is better than night light because it has numbers you can use, and more customization.