Built using Martin's old case, picked up on 2020-09-17, built on 2020-09-18.
Dedicating it for work use, with much better performance than unicorn, the Intel 7200U-based laptop that it replaces.
- Inwin 301 case
- ASrock B450M Pro4 motherboard
- Corsair RM550x PSU
- Noctua NH-U12S cooler
- My existing Asus Strix GTX 960 4gb
Added parts that I bought:
- AMD Ryzen 3100
- 16gb (2x8) G.Skill Flare X 3200MHz CL16 DDR4 (F4-3200C16D-16GFX)
- WD Blue SN550 500gb
Installed with Pop_OS! 20.04, an Ubuntu-based distro from System76.
Upgraded to Pop_OS! 22.04 LTS on 2022-05-04.
Potential case upgrade
I'd like to cycle this setup to a Mini-ITX case, which I'd take from wa-chan. That'd be a few changes which need buying:
- ASRock A520M-ITX/ac mobo, $108 from JW
- Noctua NH-L12S cooler, $117 from JW
- Whatever case that wa-chan gets
- SFX PSU for suomi, either Silverstone SX-B 300W non-modular for $60 from PCCG, or Corsair SFX-450 for $125 from Centrecom
The price varies a fair bit depending on how you buy:
- 370 from JW, with Corsair from JW
- 355 from JW, with Corsair from Centrecom
- 305 from JW, with Silverstone from PCCG
- 315 from JW, with Silverstone from JW
A better PSU is worth $50-55, and convenience of single supplier is worth $10-15. The ssupd case is gonna be $240-250, which is the single biggest cost here.
Potential GPU upgrade
I suspect that the GTX960 is having trouble reliably pushing 4k@60, or the cable is dodgy. It drops out at random, usually 4-5 times in a row before settling down again, a few times a day.
Technically this can only be done at 4:2:0 subsampling on HDMI 1.4, which I think is the cabling I have. It's unclear if the card itself support HDMI 2.0, but the LG work monitor does: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/lg/32ud99-w (HDMI 2.0, DP 1.2)
A GTX1030 is a viable upgrade, it's cheap and does HDMI 2.0b output. I'll probably have to get yet another HDMI cable, but meh.
Inno3D for $119: https://www.mwave.com.au/product/inno3d-geforce-gt-1030-2gb-video-card-ac43379
Asus for $139: https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/graphics-cards/nvidia/68505-gt1030-sl-2g-brk
users
- furinkan
services
- ssh
issues
There is a particular annoying problem with the GPU drivers at the moment, it seems that after an unlock/unsuspect, Chrome's rendering freaks out and makes glitches everywhere. Knew straightaway that this was gonna be an acceleration issue, but not being able to use GPU acceleration really sucks.
This is what I'm afflicted with as best I can tell: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1113040
- Switching off hardware acceleration in Chrome's settings makes it go away, I think that's perfectly reliable
- Enabling the Vulkan API is an absolute no-go, performance becomes absolutely unusable
- The suggestion to add CLI flags doesn't seem to be helping
I used the .desktop file trick mentioned here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1273399/problems-with-chrome-browser-after-suspend-the-computer-on-ubuntu-20-04/1277746#1277746
It's hard to tell for sure whether it's doing anything, because the flags don't carry into anything I can observe in the output of ps
Everyone says you only need one of them, so I went with --use-gl=desktop
Maybe just switching off acceleration is the way to go for now.