BoxOfRain 2 days ago

Ironically I built a Linux box for mainly local models with some RGBs because I wanted tasteful accent lights to match the room, but my motherboard isn't supported by OpenRGB so they're stuck on either nothing or 'unicorn vomit' mode until some indefinite point in the future. This is the first time I've run into a stereotypically Linux issue in nearly a decade (on sane hardware) I think!

Not a fan of those aquarium PC cases though, they sacrifice airflow for aesthetics which isn't a great shout. I have a 5090 and a 9950X in a more traditional case and my temperatures are fine with air cooling alone. Not sure you'd get away with that in an aquarium case with poorer airflow, at least without it sounding like a hairdryer all day.

  • wlesieutre 2 days ago

    Anyone know of a living successor to Silent PC Review? Was a great site back in the day but it shut down and got replaced with a marketing slop page.

    Great reviews back you could get cases with multi-layered sound deadening side panels instead of windows.

    • herdymerzbow 2 days ago

      Do you run linux at the moment? I've personally found my switch to CachyOS from Windows 11 one of the biggest factors in making my PC run silent/near silent. Happy to elaborate if you're curious.

    • efreak 2 days ago

      I never understood the giant focus on side windows. If you want to see your components while you're using your PC, why not just build inside a transparent case, or build on a workbench/open style (caseless)

      • p_ing a day ago

        ATX spec is designed for positive pressure/airflow, so you’ll generally run hotter in open air.

pluralmonad 2 days ago

I feel like that makes sense. Linux users are messing with all the control given to them in software by a free OS, while windows user get only what they're allowed in software and Microsoft has not figured out how to keep them from modifying their hardware... yet. So the flashy LED folks are making their modifications where still allowed.

tombert 2 days ago

Maybe the people who go hardcore like that, with the obnoxious PC cases, but there are lots of casual-to-less-casual gamers out there who will be happy enough with Bazzite.

There’s a whole spectrum of PC gamers, and I think Linux+Proton can appeal to most of them. Let the people spending $10,000 on a glowing case make their own bad decisions.

  • hedora 2 days ago

    FWIW: I have a pile of old Intel / NVIDIA machines that no longer boot Windows. They're all > 2GHz, > 8GB DRAM, and have more than enough horsepower to run modern casual titles. Next to that pile, I have a pile of games that no longer run under Windows.

    I also have a glowing case PC. Out of the box, it's possible to change the fan light color patterns from Linux.

    I had one problem putting Devuan on it:

    If you plug the gaming keyboard 2.4GHz dongle into the monitor, the bios doesn't enumerate far enough down the USB tree to find it. So, you can't enter the bios and tell it to boot from USB. Then, the windows setup screen pops up.

    After a few force reboots (M$ removed the "shut down cleanly" button from the language chooser), Windows goes into deep diagnostics mode on each boot trying to figure out why it keeps crashing out during the install flow. So, each debug step of "why can't I get into the bios?" takes a few minutes.

    The solution was to plug the keyboard dongle directly into the box. The only time the fan has come on after boot (I think it likes to knock the dust off itself when it turns on) was when I told it to download my steam library all at once.

    • efreak 2 days ago

      > M$ removed the "shut down cleanly" button from the language chooser

      Not sure what language chooser you're talking about here, but if you're trying to shutdown Windows without hybrid shutdown to access the uefi, there's two switches you can use with shutdown.exe: `shutdown /s /t 0` will perform a full shutdown without hibernating the system session (not hybrid shutdown, that can be done with another parameter). If you want to reboot into your UEFI menu, use `shutdown /r /fw /t 0`

      I may be confusing the time parameter, it might be `/t now` and not `/t 0`; I usually use a dedicated command to reboot to UEFI via slickrun.