Windows 11 must be stopped

[Blumlein 88]

Some of my friends have been asking about the new ultra-compact computers so I have a couple of them coming in to play with. I figure my current htpc design is good for another year at most. Then I'll have to do something, or be left behind. So, might as well get on the job now.

For example: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09GFHF75K

My current design...
View attachment 207119View attachment 207120




Yep... that was part of it. But there's tons of freeware out there to make up for it.

Yes, lots of freeware, and I'd say most is better than what was lost anyway. One reason I'm not so much against Win10.

 

[Doodski]

For example: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09GFHF75K

How big of a drive would this take? Or is it used/connected to a server?

 

[Doodski]

Never mind I see it now>

• [ Upgradable dual-channel memory ] -- No need to worry about insufficient memory. The small PC AM02 calculator is equipped with 8 GB DDR4 and 128 GB M.2 2280 SSD, and the memory can be upgraded to 64 GB (32 GB x dual channel). SSD can also be expanded by swapping to 2TB (supports NVMe).

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Never mind I see it now>[ Upgradable dual-channel memory ] -- No need to worry about insufficient memory. The small PC AM02 calculator is equipped with 8 GB DDR4 and 128 GB M.2 2280 SSD, and the memory can be upgraded to 64 GB (32 GB x dual channel). SSD can also be expanded by swapping to 2TB (supports NVMe).

That was just an example from my wish list. I haven't settled on this particular model as yet. I'm seeing reports of fan noise (not good for HTPC duty) and a couple of other minor issues in various reviews. I plan to order around the end of the month.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Yes, lots of freeware, and I'd say most is better than what was lost anyway. One reason I'm not so much against Win10.

True a lot of freeware is better ...
IRFan View vs Picture Viewer, for example.
MPC-BE vs Media Player... that one's no contest.

 

[Doodski]

That was just an example from my wish list. I haven't settled on this particular model as yet. I'm seeing reports of fan noise (not good for HTPC duty) and a couple of other minor issues in various reviews. I plan to order around the end of the month.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 3 VGA can put out some good frame rates on 3D games. Towards the end of the list there are some games that are good games that tested with good frames rates like 65 FPS and higher up to I think 114 FPS I was seeing. So it can do them if they are compatible with the VGA.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 3 VGA can put out some good frame rates on 3D games. Towards the end of the list there are some games that are good games that tested with good frames rates like 65 FPS and higher up to I think 114 FPS I was seeing. So it can do them if they are compatible with the VGA.

I'm not much of a gamer ... so this is good to know.

One nice thing about AMD SOC processors is they do give good attention to graphics.
The photos I posted earlier are using AMD Athlon low power processors and the video is gorgeous.

 

[Doodski]

I'm not much of a gamer ... so this is good to know.

One nice thing about AMD SOC processors is they do give good attention to graphics.
The photos I posted earlier are using AMD Athlon low power processors and the video is gorgeous.

AMD has done very good business in those portable and smaller die CPU's they make for notebooks and stuff like this HTCP. Desktop they are scoring huge with their multi-core prowess. But for gaming Intel is where it's @. Processor speed is all important. Not the total cores for the stuff I do. So going with that I saved money on a K series processor and will overclock it when I get around to it. Right now I'm maxing out my 166 frame per sec monitor and the video card is handling it very well @ 1440p. So no need to overclock yet. Video games these days are all about the eye candy and frame rate. Sometimes I have to stop and take a look around or I miss all the candy in the action.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

AMD has done very good business in those portable and smaller die CPU's they make for notebooks and stuff like this HTCP. Desktop they are scoring huge with their multi-core prowess. But for gaming Intel is where it's @. Processor speed is all important. Not the total cores for the stuff I do. So going with that I saved money on a K series processor and will overclock it when I get around to it. Right now I'm maxing out my 166 frame per sec monitor and the video card is handling it very well @ 1440p. So no need to overclock yet. Video games these days are all about the eye candy and frame rate. Sometimes I have to stop and take a look around or I miss all the candy in the action.

I obviously don't have a survey to quote ... but among my 100 or so clients, I'd say about 10 of the use the little HTPCs for games. Most have multi-input TV sets with their own consoles attached. Almost half are purely movies. Music, the best part, is only really a side thing during intermission or background when doing something else. But there are a couple of dozen hard core audiophiles I've helped with some very exotic setups.

My "bragging rights" system is one of the little HTPCs in my photos, hooked up to a rack of 3 Crown XLS 1002 amps, feeding a 5.0 Fluance Signature speaker set with a home brew sub under the screen. Now that is impressive!

LOL... cute story .... when I was setting that system up, at one point we were discussing setting the amplifier gains to limit the SPL in the room so the question was "how loud will it go, flat out?" .... Well, we did our tests. Then his wife and kids came home and she was making spaghetti for supper. I forgot we had the system cranked full on... so to give it a final check before heading out I put on the beginning of National Treasure: Book of Secrets ... Well the movie starts with fireworks... so mad dive for the mute button! Then I hears my friends wife upstairs cursing up a royal storm... Spaghetti all over the dining room, even dangling from the ceiling! My bad!

 

[Blumlein 88]

I just received a few days ago a BenQ X3000i LED based gaming projector. Not much of a gamer, but it has stellar reviews for picture quality. Boy does it look terrific whether regular HD or 4k or 4k HDR. It also has very, very low lag as it was made for gaming. It is a terrific looking projector for movies and such. For a gamer it would really be great too. Plus with the 4 LED light sources it is quite bright with excellent color saturation and accuracy which should last 20,000 hrs or more. Anyone interested in such might want to check it out. My 110 inch screen looks awesome with it. I think they rate it for good up to 150 inch screen. I may have to add a video card to my desktop Lenovo server since the built in card only does HD. The Roku 4k stick looks great.

 

[Doodski]

My "bragging rights" system is one of the little HTPCs in my photos, hooked up to a rack of 3 Crown XLS 1002 amps, feeding a 5.0 Fluance Signature speaker set with a home brew sub under the screen. Now that is impressive!

Lots of power with 4 woofers @ front. of course it's going to thump and have very good wallop. I find the muting ccty on the newer motherboards to be perfect. Not a peep of anything out of them and the audio ccty. So it should be safe for direct to amp connections if the voltage output is enough. @amirm tested his Z390 Gigabyte motherboard with ALC1220 CODEC and it maxed out at ~1.14 V.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

I just received a few days ago a BenQ X3000i LED based gaming projector. Not much of a gamer, but it has stellar reviews for picture quality. Boy does it look terrific whether regular HD or 4k or 4k HDR. It also has very, very low lag as it was made for gaming. It is a terrific looking projector for movies and such. For a gamer it would really be great too. Plus with the 4 LED light sources it is quite bright with excellent color saturation and accuracy which should last 20,000 hrs or more. Anyone interested in such might want to check it out. My 110 inch screen looks awesome with it. I think they rate it for good up to 150 inch screen. I may have to add a video card to my desktop Lenovo server since the built in card only does HD. The Roku 4k stick looks great.

Took a glance at the product page ... looks very impressive.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

Lots of power with 4 woofers @ front. of course it's going to thump and have very good wallop. I find the muting ccty on the newer motherboards to be perfect. Not a peep of anything out of them and the audio ccty. So it should be safe for direct to amp connections if the voltage output is enough. @amirm tested his Z390 Gigabyte motherboard with ALC1220 CODEC and it maxed out at ~1.14 V.

That's one thing I will say for ASRock motherboards... they do care about the audio portion. Usually they use RealTek chips and looking up the specs they come in pretty darn close to Amir's top DACs... I did hook up direct from the mini-trs on the computer to the amps... the XLS amps have dual sensitivity (.7 and 1.5 volts iirc) and yeah with 1200 watts on hand that room can be just devastatingly loud.

We eventually did set the gains back. Limiting the overall sound to 100db but even that is "rock your world" stuff.

 

[Doodski]

That's one thing I will say for ASRock motherboards... they do care about the audio portion. Usually they use RealTek chips and looking up the specs they come in pretty darn close to Amir's top DACs... I did hook up direct from the mini-trs on the computer to the amps... the XLS amps have dual sensitivity (.7 and 1.5 volts iirc) and yeah with 1200 watts on hand that room can be just devastatingly loud.

I run a Z690 chipset and it has Realtek audio although it works differently now compared to the previous motherboards. I can't remember what the hardware difference is. As a side note ASUS guaranteed it via email to work at 13 Ohms at the headphone jack with no issue stating, "The headphone is in the normal range so our audio should detect them."

 

[Deleted member 46664]

I run a Z690 chipset and it has Realtek audio although it works differently now compared to the previous motherboards. I can't remember what the hardware difference is. As a side note ASUS guaranteed it via email to work at 13 Ohms at the headphone jack with no issue stating, "The headphone is in the normal range so our audio should detect them."

Now there's the rub... as much as the RealTek chip promises great audio, I don't much care for their drivers. I usually let them run on the Windows default drivers and use software in the HTPC to manage them. Fortunately the ASRock motherboard automatically sets itself up for 5.1 in Windows with the default drivers, so all is easy.

Surprisingly ... most of the systems I set up (especially the "soundbar killers") are stereo.

 

[Doodski]

Now there's the rub... as much as the RealTek chip promises great audio, I don't much care for their drivers. I usually let them run on the Windows default drivers and use software in the HTPC to manage them. Fortunately the ASRock motherboard automatically sets itself up for 5.1 in Windows with the default drivers, so all is easy.

Surprisingly ... most of the systems I set up (especially the "soundbar killers") are stereo.

I believe I had to install the ASUS Realtek drivers because of device manager needing those. Been awhile but I'm pretty sure.

 

[Deleted member 46664]

I believe I had to install the ASUS Realtek drivers because of device manager needing those. Been awhile but I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, Realtek has generic drivers but they recommend you go to the motherboard site to download them. Apparently there are some options on their chips that are implemented differently with some chipsets so it does become motherboard specific. One of the rare cases where the drivers on the CD are the best... go figure.

Anyhow it's 3:30am where I am. Now that all the hoopla has died down we managed a pretty decent conversation... but I gotta get some sleep unless I want to be totally useless in the morning....

Cheers!

 

[Chromatischism]

Long ago I used Black Viper's service configurations and had some success. Now I never look at services. I have heaps of power in the box. This box better last me 7-8 years at minimum.

Wasn't the change over/upgrade to Win 10 a situation of loosing software too that was useful? Fax, pictures viewer, media player and others?

I used a registry fix to bring back the picture viewer as I hated the new one. It never displayed images at 1:1 pixel mapping so they never looked sharp. And there was no snap to 100% button. At random times the next/previous controls stopped working. A baffling piece of software.

Anyway I actually broke down and installed a popular third party viewer, though it's much slower to open than the windows viewer.

You need Movies & TV to play Atmos files, so media player has been superceded. In fact I never used it all these years anyway.

 

[JanesJr1]

I'm fairly new to windows so not sure how to take this but some of it sounds serious. Everything on your hard drive is encrypted and Bill Gates holds the key?

I have my beefs with Microsoft, but I don't buy this rant. He seems to have two key points that could have been stated in < 1 minute, and the rest is just ranting. Neither of those two things holds true in my Microsoft Windows 11 world.

1. I use Windows 11, and I have the options to run the OS (a) with or without Secure boot; and (b) run bimodal BIOS/UEFI (though I haven't tried it; Lenovo says the option is in there, though I don't know what it would get me).

2. For my business, I have never shared my Bitlocker keys with Microsoft. Still haven't, and I'm running Windows 11. It's still just an option that is offered to the user, not required.

Is everything a conspiracy? I have other things I care about a lot more that I wish MS would do.

 

[krabapple]

I'm fairly new to windows so not sure how to take this but some of it sounds serious. Everything on your hard drive is encrypted and Bill Gates holds the key?

Whenever it's accompanied by an avatar of a dude yelling, you can be sure an 'instructional' youtube video is a waste of time.