I have a question: Why pick Anduin for Hierophant? He isn't a Paladin and he has not really "Establish" anything. You would better off picking a different Paladin character like the default Paladin hero Uther or Turalyon.
Seems like the "Permanent Echo" mechanic is really needlessly complicated and prevent these cards from being discounted to 0 like the mechanic intended? I feel like you should reword those cards similar to Vision of Darkness (This permanently stays in your hand).
Oh yeah, and I also think about the number of people that would've tried to boycott the game (or at least demanding raising the age rating) if it had came out today.
Somehow I don't think Gran Turismo 2 having the song "Sex Type Thing" by Stone Temple Pilots would've won people over if that game was new either.
This was a very cool, yet disturbing, reference. If this was a modern game, everyone woulda have figured that out within minutes of the game releasing because of how everyone is a super sleuth these days. It does make me wonder how many other weird things have slipped into our old favourite games.
Every time there's a GoG sale, I'm always amazed at how small the game library is compared to Steam's.
By the way, since all of the RollerCoaster Tycoon games are on sale, I'd also like to mention the RollerCoaster Tycoon Bundle, currently on sale for $12.49. It has all of the 3 games up there in the article, and RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, which was a mobile port of the first two games combined and then ported to PC.
Now, if "mobile game ported to PC" raises any red flags, that's understandable, but RCT Classic is really good. Plays just like the originals, only with slightly different UI. It's a really good port and it's a recommendation to own for fans of the classic games.
Previously, Roboquest in all of these sale articles linked to the base version. From this point onward, we'll be linking to the deluxe version instead, which also contains the soundtrack and art book. If you noticed a strange increase in the price, this is why. You can of course, still buy the base version if you want and it'll cost less.
If you notice any other games on sale that you want other people to know about, feel free to share it in the comments.
This is a very primitively designed thread at the moment. I wanted to get all of the Major Arcana out there after I completed them because I really enjoy I work I made with them, but this will evolve into a full custom expansion.
Hey! Been mute a few weeks as I was on my honeymoon and with tons of work.
Also after a decade, I decided to stop playing Hearthstone as It started asking for more and more of my daily diminishing time. Wich is making me leave games that want me to play daily.
(As A side note, I LOVE the New website look btw)
As I was travelling I got to use my switch 2 quite a bit. Played through Silksong, Age of Imprisionment and Pokemon Legends ZA. (Hoping the New DLC is great after the nice and terrible events we had. (Diance and Mewtwo in that order)
On PC I am currently playing Expedition 33 and I see why It gets so much recognition. It is an amazing game since the very start and It only gets better. (I was able to go in totally blind so that makes It better. If you know you know)
As soon as I finish It, I Will probably take a closer look at the skills 2.0 update for Payday 3 wich looks great and Will surelly go back to AC ODyssey While also playing DK Bananza.
When you see Gran Turismo 7 in your dashboard, it'll have a popup for a 5,000,000 Credits download.
This is NOT the Power Pack DLC!!!
Do NOT buy this unless you really want the extra 5,000,000 Credits.
THISis the Power Pack DLC
If you don't already have the DLC, choosing the sailboat option on game's overworld map will bring you to the DLC's store page where you can buy. Buying this gives you the Power Pack DLC and 5,000,000 Credits and costs the exact same amount as the 5,000,000 Credits download pack. Make sure you buy the right one.
XL Rafaam Warlock Deck 3.0 Is The Best To Have Super Fun At Across the Timeways | Hearthstone If you can't copy the deck code you can always get all of my decks on my website, or join my Discord, Twitter and Instagram! Good luck, my friends! My opponents: 00:00 Aggro Warlock 03:30 Rafaam Warlock 14:20 Control Warlock 16:30 Whizbang Rogue Deck code: Wild Rafaam 3.0 Class: Warlock Format: Wild # 1x (0) Cursed Catacombs 1x (1) Rotheart Dryad 1x (1) Supreme Archaeology 1x (2) Astalor Bloodsworn 1x (2) Defile 1x (2) Drain Soul 1x (2) Fractured Power 1x (2) Plot Twist 1x (2) Watcher of the Sun 1x (2) Zephrys the Great 1x (3) "Health" Drink 1x (3) Dark Skies 1x (3) Full-Blown Evil 1x (3) Prince Renathal 1x (3) Sense Demons 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon 1x (4) E.T.C., Band Manager 1x (2) Plot Twist 1x (5) Kobold Stickyfinger 1x (5) Platebreaker 1x (4) Gaslight Gatekeeper 1x (4) Kazakus 1x (4) RAFAAM LADDER!! 1x (4) Siphon Soul 1x (5) Ancient of Yore 1x (6) Aranasi Broodmother 1x (6) Khartut Defender 1x (6) Reno Jackson 1x (7) Chrono-Lord Deios 1x (7) Lor'themar Theron 1x (8) Reno, Lone Ranger 1x (9) Ysera, Emerald Aspect 1x (10) Timethief Rafaam 1x (1) Tiny Rafaam 1x (2) Green Rafaam 1x (4) Explorer Rafaam 1x (5) Warchief Rafaam 1x (7) Mindflayer R'faam 1x (6) Calamitous Rafaam 1x (8) Giant Rafaam 1x (3) Murloc Rafaam 1x (9) Archmage Rafaam 1x (125) The Ceaseless Expanse # AAEBAf0GKNwGwxbYuwLnywLD6gLalgPamwOhoQProwP8owPrrAOCoATnoATbowSX7wTvogXipAX9xAWt7QWangavqAaTywaq6gap9QbZggffgge2lAeEmQeIpQeJpQeKpQeRpQeTpQeUpQeVpQeWpQeXpQeapQeqrQeZsQcAAAED2psD/cQF+7AD/cQFiLED/cQFAAA= # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone #ChristianHearthstone#AcrosstheTimeways#Hearthstone Across the Timeways
About the Corsair cables: the most relevant difference between type 4 and type 5 is that the plug at the PSU side is different: other pin corners are rounded vs square. The page you linked doesn't show the PSU side plugs, only the peripheral side plugs.
For local LLMs, the 5070 Ti can generate text faster than I can read for the size of models that can fit into its VRAM, so in practical terms, it's fast enough. The 5080 only has 7% more memory bandwidth than the 5070 Ti and that is definitely the bottleneck here: nvidia-smi shows 65% compute utilization and 200W power draw (out of 300W) during text generation, so it's not able to use all those compute cores. Given that you have a 3080 Ti, which actually has slightly more memory bandwidth than a 5070 Ti due to a wider bus, you might only see a 5% performance boost for LLMs from upgrading to a 5080, which isn't noticeable in practice.
Honestly, the 5070 Ti with 16GB is not really letting me run models that the 3060 12GB couldn't, as llama.cpp has the option to distribute the model layers between CPU and GPU, which means you get a performance hit when the model doesn't fit into VRAM entirely, but you can still run it. The 5070 Ti does run noticeably faster, which is nice, but it's not a game changer. Originally, I was waiting for the 5070 Ti Super with 24GB that might appear around this time, but with the memory prices spiking, the latest rumors are that it will either be released second half of 2026 or not at all.
In practice, the limiting factor in LLM performance isn't generation speed, but model size, as larger models tend to produce better quality output. So a 5090 would definitely be better, but pairing a 5070 Ti with a 5060 Ti 16GB might actually give similar performance for a fraction of the price. Or get a Strix Halo (Ryzen AI MAX) system with 96GB or 128GB of memory, then you can run huge LLMs; they're not cheap, but it should still be less than a 5090 and could run 120B parameter models quantized to 5/6 bits. Actually, the Mac Studio you mentioned should be a pretty decent LLM machine, as it has a GPU with access to a large amount of shared RAM, similar to Strix Halo.
Image generation (Stable Diffusion etc.) seems to be far less constrained by memory bandwidth, as I get near 100% compute utilization there. Also the performance difference between 3060 and 5070 Ti is much bigger compared to LLMs.
While AI is fun to play with, it hasn't done much for my productivity yet. It can be useful as a sparring partner to get ideas you might not have thought of, especially in a solo project where you don't have a human around to bounce ideas off. But it's not reliable enough to just use the output as-is: you have to check and correct it, if you care about quality.
I think the AI bubble will burst at some point, but I wasn't willing to wait for that to happen, as it could be many months or even a couple of years. In the dot-com bubble, people knew the market was crazy quite some time before the bubble burst and in the case of AI we haven't even reached consensus yet that there is a bubble. Also it's not a given that GPU prices will come down immediately: either NVIDIA or AMD must be willing to start a price war and they might be comfortable selling fewer cards at a higher profit margin instead. That's a down side of having so few players in a market.
CPU is definitely almost never going to be a bottleneck going forward, and I love that we've gotten to that point in time because damn, it used to be a struggle bus.
The 7800X3D's big brother, 9800X3D, was one that I had considered due to the gaming performance boosts (and some workloads) but ultimately, pure core counts won due to the just absurd amount of parallel tasks I run where my old 8c/16t would max out easily.
As far as RAM goes, yeah, if I did go 32 I wouldn't be happy. I was willing to just because the prices are so absurd right now, but I've hit 32 GB of usage on my old system quite reliably and I'd rather not hit any kind of disk cache on Windows when that happens. My Mac Studio has 64 GB and it's just become my new baseline because of that and how it has enhanced the way I work. At times I may have a dozen different 3d models open in printing slicing software, each consuming 2-4 GB of RAM which does not work too well on a system with only 32 GB. I definitely have created my own unique set of problems but, that's the beauty of having options.
Honestly, if RAM prices weren't so stupid, I'd maybe have even gone 128. I would love to run a virtualized desktop with a dedicated Windows and Linux environment, plus run some containerized (kubernetes) workloads on other cores/ram on the same hardware for one really kickass box. The only thing that stops me from doing that is some games (particularly those with anticheat) do not like to or will not run in a virtualized environment. I'm big on virtualization but even bigger on container orchestration, so I'd love a single box like that. Realistically though, I'm going to just need to get a couple of more mini pcs to add to my local kubernetes cluster.
You definitely made the right call in waiting on the 5070 Ti there, it's a great card with plenty of VRAM (as you said) and once the prices stopped being silly, it's really a no-brainer for the upgrade. I'm a little worried right now that GPU prices are about to skyrocket due to memory costs increasing which has me considering just doing the 5080 now, but 3080 Ti handles everything I need it to without an issue so it's a silly optimization to make.
Personally, I've moved up the ladder from 60 series cards (sup 560 and 760), to 70 (oh hey there 970), and then finally to 80 (1080ti hype) and it just feels like I need to stay on 80 even with the absurd pricing they come with. I know that I would be happy with a 5070 Ti, they certainly kick serious ass, but the better potential for local AI workloads, that small speed increase might be worth it. I don't really do any local AI stuff, but it has been fun to play around with and if I did for some reason want to make more use of it in general, the option would be nice to have since renting GPUs is too expensive. I used to rent the hardware Out of Games ran on but ultimately now the business owns the hardware and the costs are a fraction of what they used to be every month and soon the cost of ownership will start being a financial win for the website.
Though, I do wonder if the Super variants that are rumored will actually come with 24 GB of VRAM because that would be the real thing to wait for. A 5080 Super would be more competitively priced than the 5090 with its whopping 32 GB, which, yes, there are definitely even limits for me lol. I'd love a 5090 but the potential energy consumption is just too insane and I know the moment I go to the 90 series, I'm going to want to stay on the 90 series.
AMD is definitely not playing great on the AI/ML field right now though as you've found. I wish their graphics cards were more competitive on all fronts because it would force Nvidia's hand (hopefully) to reduce prices at least a bit. GPU costs skyrocketed during the start of the pandemic and they never really went down. We had already seen GPU costs rise before that, but then with the scarce supply, it normalized really expensive GPUs. Our GPUs are definitely more complicated today than ever before, but the premium Nvidia is making on them is too damn high.
Funny enough, I have a new RM850X that uses Type 4 cables and I had to go look at the official Corsair page for cable compatibility and my Type 4 cables do not look like their Type 4 cables - they have the sleeves of the Type 5. I did however receive a EPS12V cable that is labelled as a Type 4 though... why the hell did you have to make this so complicated Corsair. I too really do dislike companies reusing model numbers when specs change. Its like the NVME SSD fiasco a couple of years ago when the onboard NAND and controllers changed and completely destroyed the drive's performance. I can't recall who was at fault for that one so I won't name names, but the years of reviews of how good the drives were and then all of a sudden people weren't getting the same performance... absolute bullshit. Corsair should have just called the new one the RM850z, PC enthusiasts love their X and Z.
I like how you included the reasoning behind the part picks. I tend to spend quite some time figuring out the parts I want before building a new PC and it's interesting to see how someone else does it.
Regarding core count, I find that it's actually pretty rare for the CPU to be the bottleneck these days, except for games. Often when the CPU needs to process a lot of data, it ends up having to wait for memory or I/O for that data to arrive. And in cases where the CPU is the bottleneck, it's often because the program either doesn't utilize threads effectively or the problem is inherently difficult to parallelize. For my PC last year I went with the 7800X3D for that reason (lower core count, but less limited by RAM bandwidth due to larger L3 cache), although I must say that particular CPU happened to be cheap at that time; the price shot up a few months later and I might have bought a different model in those circumstances.
If you're running lots of applications you probably gain more from having more RAM than from more CPU cores. And in Linux any leftover RAM is used as disk cache, so it's never a complete waste. Like you, I figured that I could probably manage with 32 GB, but 64 GB was cheaper per gigabyte and over time I would likely need more RAM, so I got 64.
Also like you, I kept my old GPU last year instead of replacing it, because at the time I had a 1080p 60 Hz monitor and an RTX 3060 12GB was fast enough to drive that with reasonable quality settings. I upgraded to a 4K monitor earlier this year and I was actually surprised that the 3060 was still mostly usable in 4K, with slightly lower settings and DLSS enabled. However, it was still a bit underpowered, so once the new generation of GPUs finally went under MSRP I got an RTX 5070 Ti.
I considered going for the RX 9070 XT instead, but from experiences I read online AMD's consumer GPUs are still not great for machine learning and I like to experiment with that as well. I had a Radeon 5500 XT before the RTX 3060 and the GPU hanging itself on some diffusion model and then taking the desktop with it was not an experience I wanted to repeat. If it had been just for games though, I'd probably have gone with AMD, especially as I exclusively run Linux.
My reason for picking the 5070 Ti from NVIDIA's lineup was that the 5060 Ti didn't feel like enough of a step up coming from to the 3060, the 5070 didn't have enough VRAM and the 5080 is like 15% faster than the 5070 Ti for 40% more money. It is by far the most expensive internal PC component I ever bought, which didn't feel great, but it seems like the price/performance ratio is likely to get worse rather than better in the near future, so I got a beefy card now and hope to keep it for a long time.
I kept my old Corsair RM750x power supply because it was still good. Like the RM850x, this 2021 model didn't come with a 12-pin GPU power cable, but I was able to order such a cable for 15 euros including shipping. For anyone in the same situation: make sure you get a "type 4" Corsair cable for the 2021 PSU models; the newer models use a "type 5" cable which won't fit. I could instead have used the 6-pin to 12-pin adapter that came with the GPU, but even though my PC case in windowless, I like to keep it tidy inside, to avoid cables blocking fans/airflow.
As an aside, I really hate it when components change specs without changing names. If they had called the 2024 models RM751x/RM851x instead, there would be no confusion.
God, 20 years of Xbox. It's wild to think that it has been that long.
I never owned an original Xbox, nor did I own a 360 though almost everyone i knew did - I was a Nintendo kid.
My first ever memory with Xbox was when I went to a tournament to play Halo without ever playing the game or the console. It was taking place at EB Games and then my store didn't have enough registrations so we were transferred to another one a couple of towns over at their large mall. I had absolutely zero idea what I was doing and it reinforced that I really did not like playing shooters with a mouse.
That did end up making me interested in the game though, and I did buy it at a later date when I realized it was out on PC as well.
My first Xbox console was the Xbox One. I bought it mainly as a Forza machine though I also played GTA V, Halo 5: Guardians, and various random titles. It was such a funny looking console, I wasn't the biggest fan of the design of it, the 360 was such a beautiful and iconic beast. Then I upgraded to a Project Scorpio edition Xbox One X on launch day because I wanted more power out of it and that sweet 4K resolution. I still love how it said "Project Scorpio" on the console and controller in that green text, it was wild that they didn't do the same thing for the Xbox Series X (Code named Project Scarlet) because I had hoped to add another unique piece to my collection of consoles.
Of course, the Series X was purchased on launch day as well because we wanted even more power, we wanted faster loading, and the beauty of raytracing and true 4k potential. Admittedly, I haven't played my Series X as much as I had hoped, though Forza runs so beautifully on it and with Game Pass, I've definitely played a wider variety of games on it than the Xbox One family.
PC will always have my heart though and it's nice to see that Microsoft has been focusing their efforts more on PC and cross-platform instead of a closed ecosystem: Xbox Play Anywhere. It's interesting to see where the Xbox brand will go in the future and I do wonder if the new Steam Machine can get enough support, could we see Xbox appear more on it in some way? Sideloaded app store? I would love to see Microsoft fully embrace Xbox on Linux.
And now I can add Kaze to my list of perfect Steam games.
The achievement for beating the game in less than 2 hours is not difficult. I had a few really stupid deaths, and I still beat the game in less than 1:10.
This is a huge update for the game. Walls were such a pain to deal with back in the day... and I suppose for the past 100 years as well that the game has been out. Bravo to the team on OpenRCT2 for the patch.
007: First Light is supposed to be an origin story with a younger version of the character, yet the Aston Martin Valhalla didn't exist until 2019 and didn't enter the production stage until 2025.
The continuity of James Bond truly is just whatever you want it to be.
It's funny, I haven't played any of this year's nominations for Game of the Year.
I never finished the original Death Stranding because I wanted to wait for it to come out on PC because I just hate playing a lot of games with a controller that would clearly be better with keyboard and mouse which is why I never gave 2 a go.
Clair Obscur looks like a beautiful game and ever person I have talked to had nothing but amazing things to say about it, it just wasn't really my type of game. I fully expect it to win Game of the Year.
Donkey Kong... I bought it and never had time to play it yet. I was waiting for "the right moment" to just sink into it but that moment never came. I've heard a mix of commentary on the game but I really don't believe for a moment that this deserves to be here at the top. Is it there just because Nintendo didn't have a first-party title in the category? Feels rigged lol.
Hades II I understand is missing a bit of the charm from the first game, but otherwise is a solid game. The timeline on it feels... rushed maybe? I'm looking forward to diving into it in the future, because the first one was amazing, but the second iteration really didn't seem to have the same OMG AMAZING that the first did.
Hollow Knight: Silksong being in this category makes sense. It sold a boat load of copies, the number of positive reviews is huge, and I mean, it is Hollow Knight its bound to be great. It's still on Game Pass so go give it a play if you haven't.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, I had to look this one up because I could have sworn this was a last year release but no, it was the beginning of February. I remember hearing a lot about it, I know people have been positive about the game, but is it Game of the Year worthy?
It's a shame Metroid Prime 4: Beyond comes out in a couple of weeks because I bet this would have been on the list if it did. I hope next year's awards showcases it because December may as well be 2026 but also, next year is looking insane for games. Grand Theft Auto VI, The Witcher IV, and Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, just to name a few, will likely eclipse it and I'll be making the same comment next year about how Metroid is only on the list because Nintendo didn't have anything better. Let's be real though, GTA 6 is a titan and a half and it's already won Game of the Year for 2026.
I am happy to see Borderlands 4 didn't make it. It feels messed up to feel that way because historically speaking, I've loved Borderlands titles. I just had zero desire to pick it up and from everything I've heard, I made the right call; 2K and Gearbox have lost the plot. I'll give it a go at 75% off when it gets a huge discount next year at some point, but yeah, we'll be waiting on that one.
The Eldritch Fate (WIP) - Custom Expansion (All 22 of the Major Arcana adapted into Hearthstone)
I have a question: Why pick Anduin for Hierophant? He isn't a Paladin and he has not really "Establish" anything. You would better off picking a different Paladin character like the default Paladin hero Uther or Turalyon.
The Eldritch Fate (WIP) - Custom Expansion (All 22 of the Major Arcana adapted into Hearthstone)
Seems like the "Permanent Echo" mechanic is really needlessly complicated and prevent these cards from being discounted to 0 like the mechanic intended? I feel like you should reword those cards similar to Vision of Darkness (This permanently stays in your hand).
Gran Turismo 3 Contained a Reference to a Mass Shooting That No One Spotted for Nearly 25 Years
Oh yeah, and I also think about the number of people that would've tried to boycott the game (or at least demanding raising the age rating) if it had came out today.
Somehow I don't think Gran Turismo 2 having the song "Sex Type Thing" by Stone Temple Pilots would've won people over if that game was new either.
People truly just were different back then.
Gran Turismo 3 Contained a Reference to a Mass Shooting That No One Spotted for Nearly 25 Years
This was a very cool, yet disturbing, reference. If this was a modern game, everyone woulda have figured that out within minutes of the game releasing because of how everyone is a super sleuth these days. It does make me wonder how many other weird things have slipped into our old favourite games.
The GoG Winter Sale Has Started - Get Huge Discounts on Games Until January 3
Every time there's a GoG sale, I'm always amazed at how small the game library is compared to Steam's.
By the way, since all of the RollerCoaster Tycoon games are on sale, I'd also like to mention the RollerCoaster Tycoon Bundle, currently on sale for $12.49. It has all of the 3 games up there in the article, and RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, which was a mobile port of the first two games combined and then ported to PC.
Now, if "mobile game ported to PC" raises any red flags, that's understandable, but RCT Classic is really good. Plays just like the originals, only with slightly different UI. It's a really good port and it's a recommendation to own for fans of the classic games.
Epic Games Holiday Sales Has Started - Get Huge Discounts on Games Until January 8
Previously, Roboquest in all of these sale articles linked to the base version. From this point onward, we'll be linking to the deluxe version instead, which also contains the soundtrack and art book. If you noticed a strange increase in the price, this is why. You can of course, still buy the base version if you want and it'll cost less.
If you notice any other games on sale that you want other people to know about, feel free to share it in the comments.
Gang of Dragon Is a Spiritual Sibling From the Creator of Yakuza/Like a Dragon
Let it be known that I have officially coined the term "spiritual sibling" in our team's staff chat.
The Eldritch Fate (WIP) - Custom Expansion (All 22 of the Major Arcana adapted into Hearthstone)
This is a very primitively designed thread at the moment. I wanted to get all of the Major Arcana out there after I completed them because I really enjoy I work I made with them, but this will evolve into a full custom expansion.
The Eldritch Fate (WIP) - Custom Expansion (All 22 of the Major Arcana adapted into Hearthstone)
Mini-set
To come later. Reserving post now.
What Are You Playing? - Dynamic December 2025
Hey! Been mute a few weeks as I was on my honeymoon and with tons of work.
Also after a decade, I decided to stop playing Hearthstone as It started asking for more and more of my daily diminishing time. Wich is making me leave games that want me to play daily.
(As A side note, I LOVE the New website look btw)
As I was travelling I got to use my switch 2 quite a bit. Played through Silksong, Age of Imprisionment and Pokemon Legends ZA. (Hoping the New DLC is great after the nice and terrible events we had. (Diance and Mewtwo in that order)
On PC I am currently playing Expedition 33 and I see why It gets so much recognition. It is an amazing game since the very start and It only gets better. (I was able to go in totally blind so that makes It better. If you know you know)
As soon as I finish It, I Will probably take a closer look at the skills 2.0 update for Payday 3 wich looks great and Will surelly go back to AC ODyssey While also playing DK Bananza.
Power Pack Paid DLC Added to Gran Turismo 7 in the Spec III Update
Just a little FYI.
When you see Gran Turismo 7 in your dashboard, it'll have a popup for a 5,000,000 Credits download.
This is NOT the Power Pack DLC!!!
Do NOT buy this unless you really want the extra 5,000,000 Credits.
THIS is the Power Pack DLC
If you don't already have the DLC, choosing the sailboat option on game's overworld map will bring you to the DLC's store page where you can buy. Buying this gives you the Power Pack DLC and 5,000,000 Credits and costs the exact same amount as the 5,000,000 Credits download pack. Make sure you buy the right one.
XL Rafaam Warlock Deck 3.0 Is The Best To Have Super Fun At Across the Timeways | Hearthstone
XL Rafaam Warlock Deck 3.0 Is The Best To Have Super Fun At Across the Timeways | Hearthstone If you can't copy the deck code you can always get all of my decks on my website, or join my Discord, Twitter and Instagram! Good luck, my friends! My opponents: 00:00 Aggro Warlock 03:30 Rafaam Warlock 14:20 Control Warlock 16:30 Whizbang Rogue Deck code: Wild Rafaam 3.0 Class: Warlock Format: Wild # 1x (0) Cursed Catacombs 1x (1) Rotheart Dryad 1x (1) Supreme Archaeology 1x (2) Astalor Bloodsworn 1x (2) Defile 1x (2) Drain Soul 1x (2) Fractured Power 1x (2) Plot Twist 1x (2) Watcher of the Sun 1x (2) Zephrys the Great 1x (3) "Health" Drink 1x (3) Dark Skies 1x (3) Full-Blown Evil 1x (3) Prince Renathal 1x (3) Sense Demons 1x (3) Zola the Gorgon 1x (4) E.T.C., Band Manager 1x (2) Plot Twist 1x (5) Kobold Stickyfinger 1x (5) Platebreaker 1x (4) Gaslight Gatekeeper 1x (4) Kazakus 1x (4) RAFAAM LADDER!! 1x (4) Siphon Soul 1x (5) Ancient of Yore 1x (6) Aranasi Broodmother 1x (6) Khartut Defender 1x (6) Reno Jackson 1x (7) Chrono-Lord Deios 1x (7) Lor'themar Theron 1x (8) Reno, Lone Ranger 1x (9) Ysera, Emerald Aspect 1x (10) Timethief Rafaam 1x (1) Tiny Rafaam 1x (2) Green Rafaam 1x (4) Explorer Rafaam 1x (5) Warchief Rafaam 1x (7) Mindflayer R'faam 1x (6) Calamitous Rafaam 1x (8) Giant Rafaam 1x (3) Murloc Rafaam 1x (9) Archmage Rafaam 1x (125) The Ceaseless Expanse # AAEBAf0GKNwGwxbYuwLnywLD6gLalgPamwOhoQProwP8owPrrAOCoATnoATbowSX7wTvogXipAX9xAWt7QWangavqAaTywaq6gap9QbZggffgge2lAeEmQeIpQeJpQeKpQeRpQeTpQeUpQeVpQeWpQeXpQeapQeqrQeZsQcAAAED2psD/cQF+7AD/cQFiLED/cQFAAA= # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone #ChristianHearthstone #AcrosstheTimeways #Hearthstone Across the Timeways
How I Finally Built a New Powerful Gaming + Editing PC Using Black Friday Deals
About the Corsair cables: the most relevant difference between type 4 and type 5 is that the plug at the PSU side is different: other pin corners are rounded vs square. The page you linked doesn't show the PSU side plugs, only the peripheral side plugs.
How I Finally Built a New Powerful Gaming + Editing PC Using Black Friday Deals
For local LLMs, the 5070 Ti can generate text faster than I can read for the size of models that can fit into its VRAM, so in practical terms, it's fast enough. The 5080 only has 7% more memory bandwidth than the 5070 Ti and that is definitely the bottleneck here: nvidia-smi shows 65% compute utilization and 200W power draw (out of 300W) during text generation, so it's not able to use all those compute cores. Given that you have a 3080 Ti, which actually has slightly more memory bandwidth than a 5070 Ti due to a wider bus, you might only see a 5% performance boost for LLMs from upgrading to a 5080, which isn't noticeable in practice.
Honestly, the 5070 Ti with 16GB is not really letting me run models that the 3060 12GB couldn't, as llama.cpp has the option to distribute the model layers between CPU and GPU, which means you get a performance hit when the model doesn't fit into VRAM entirely, but you can still run it. The 5070 Ti does run noticeably faster, which is nice, but it's not a game changer. Originally, I was waiting for the 5070 Ti Super with 24GB that might appear around this time, but with the memory prices spiking, the latest rumors are that it will either be released second half of 2026 or not at all.
In practice, the limiting factor in LLM performance isn't generation speed, but model size, as larger models tend to produce better quality output. So a 5090 would definitely be better, but pairing a 5070 Ti with a 5060 Ti 16GB might actually give similar performance for a fraction of the price. Or get a Strix Halo (Ryzen AI MAX) system with 96GB or 128GB of memory, then you can run huge LLMs; they're not cheap, but it should still be less than a 5090 and could run 120B parameter models quantized to 5/6 bits. Actually, the Mac Studio you mentioned should be a pretty decent LLM machine, as it has a GPU with access to a large amount of shared RAM, similar to Strix Halo.
Image generation (Stable Diffusion etc.) seems to be far less constrained by memory bandwidth, as I get near 100% compute utilization there. Also the performance difference between 3060 and 5070 Ti is much bigger compared to LLMs.
While AI is fun to play with, it hasn't done much for my productivity yet. It can be useful as a sparring partner to get ideas you might not have thought of, especially in a solo project where you don't have a human around to bounce ideas off. But it's not reliable enough to just use the output as-is: you have to check and correct it, if you care about quality.
I think the AI bubble will burst at some point, but I wasn't willing to wait for that to happen, as it could be many months or even a couple of years. In the dot-com bubble, people knew the market was crazy quite some time before the bubble burst and in the case of AI we haven't even reached consensus yet that there is a bubble. Also it's not a given that GPU prices will come down immediately: either NVIDIA or AMD must be willing to start a price war and they might be comfortable selling fewer cards at a higher profit margin instead. That's a down side of having so few players in a market.
How I Finally Built a New Powerful Gaming + Editing PC Using Black Friday Deals
Hey, thanks for the reply!
CPU is definitely almost never going to be a bottleneck going forward, and I love that we've gotten to that point in time because damn, it used to be a struggle bus.
The 7800X3D's big brother, 9800X3D, was one that I had considered due to the gaming performance boosts (and some workloads) but ultimately, pure core counts won due to the just absurd amount of parallel tasks I run where my old 8c/16t would max out easily.
As far as RAM goes, yeah, if I did go 32 I wouldn't be happy. I was willing to just because the prices are so absurd right now, but I've hit 32 GB of usage on my old system quite reliably and I'd rather not hit any kind of disk cache on Windows when that happens. My Mac Studio has 64 GB and it's just become my new baseline because of that and how it has enhanced the way I work. At times I may have a dozen different 3d models open in printing slicing software, each consuming 2-4 GB of RAM which does not work too well on a system with only 32 GB. I definitely have created my own unique set of problems but, that's the beauty of having options.
Honestly, if RAM prices weren't so stupid, I'd maybe have even gone 128. I would love to run a virtualized desktop with a dedicated Windows and Linux environment, plus run some containerized (kubernetes) workloads on other cores/ram on the same hardware for one really kickass box. The only thing that stops me from doing that is some games (particularly those with anticheat) do not like to or will not run in a virtualized environment. I'm big on virtualization but even bigger on container orchestration, so I'd love a single box like that. Realistically though, I'm going to just need to get a couple of more mini pcs to add to my local kubernetes cluster.
You definitely made the right call in waiting on the 5070 Ti there, it's a great card with plenty of VRAM (as you said) and once the prices stopped being silly, it's really a no-brainer for the upgrade. I'm a little worried right now that GPU prices are about to skyrocket due to memory costs increasing which has me considering just doing the 5080 now, but 3080 Ti handles everything I need it to without an issue so it's a silly optimization to make.
Personally, I've moved up the ladder from 60 series cards (sup 560 and 760), to 70 (oh hey there 970), and then finally to 80 (1080ti hype) and it just feels like I need to stay on 80 even with the absurd pricing they come with. I know that I would be happy with a 5070 Ti, they certainly kick serious ass, but the better potential for local AI workloads, that small speed increase might be worth it. I don't really do any local AI stuff, but it has been fun to play around with and if I did for some reason want to make more use of it in general, the option would be nice to have since renting GPUs is too expensive. I used to rent the hardware Out of Games ran on but ultimately now the business owns the hardware and the costs are a fraction of what they used to be every month and soon the cost of ownership will start being a financial win for the website.
Though, I do wonder if the Super variants that are rumored will actually come with 24 GB of VRAM because that would be the real thing to wait for. A 5080 Super would be more competitively priced than the 5090 with its whopping 32 GB, which, yes, there are definitely even limits for me lol. I'd love a 5090 but the potential energy consumption is just too insane and I know the moment I go to the 90 series, I'm going to want to stay on the 90 series.
AMD is definitely not playing great on the AI/ML field right now though as you've found. I wish their graphics cards were more competitive on all fronts because it would force Nvidia's hand (hopefully) to reduce prices at least a bit. GPU costs skyrocketed during the start of the pandemic and they never really went down. We had already seen GPU costs rise before that, but then with the scarce supply, it normalized really expensive GPUs. Our GPUs are definitely more complicated today than ever before, but the premium Nvidia is making on them is too damn high.
Funny enough, I have a new RM850X that uses Type 4 cables and I had to go look at the official Corsair page for cable compatibility and my Type 4 cables do not look like their Type 4 cables - they have the sleeves of the Type 5. I did however receive a EPS12V cable that is labelled as a Type 4 though... why the hell did you have to make this so complicated Corsair. I too really do dislike companies reusing model numbers when specs change. Its like the NVME SSD fiasco a couple of years ago when the onboard NAND and controllers changed and completely destroyed the drive's performance. I can't recall who was at fault for that one so I won't name names, but the years of reviews of how good the drives were and then all of a sudden people weren't getting the same performance... absolute bullshit. Corsair should have just called the new one the RM850z, PC enthusiasts love their X and Z.
How I Finally Built a New Powerful Gaming + Editing PC Using Black Friday Deals
Congrats on your new PC!
I like how you included the reasoning behind the part picks. I tend to spend quite some time figuring out the parts I want before building a new PC and it's interesting to see how someone else does it.
Regarding core count, I find that it's actually pretty rare for the CPU to be the bottleneck these days, except for games. Often when the CPU needs to process a lot of data, it ends up having to wait for memory or I/O for that data to arrive. And in cases where the CPU is the bottleneck, it's often because the program either doesn't utilize threads effectively or the problem is inherently difficult to parallelize. For my PC last year I went with the 7800X3D for that reason (lower core count, but less limited by RAM bandwidth due to larger L3 cache), although I must say that particular CPU happened to be cheap at that time; the price shot up a few months later and I might have bought a different model in those circumstances.
If you're running lots of applications you probably gain more from having more RAM than from more CPU cores. And in Linux any leftover RAM is used as disk cache, so it's never a complete waste. Like you, I figured that I could probably manage with 32 GB, but 64 GB was cheaper per gigabyte and over time I would likely need more RAM, so I got 64.
Also like you, I kept my old GPU last year instead of replacing it, because at the time I had a 1080p 60 Hz monitor and an RTX 3060 12GB was fast enough to drive that with reasonable quality settings. I upgraded to a 4K monitor earlier this year and I was actually surprised that the 3060 was still mostly usable in 4K, with slightly lower settings and DLSS enabled. However, it was still a bit underpowered, so once the new generation of GPUs finally went under MSRP I got an RTX 5070 Ti.
I considered going for the RX 9070 XT instead, but from experiences I read online AMD's consumer GPUs are still not great for machine learning and I like to experiment with that as well. I had a Radeon 5500 XT before the RTX 3060 and the GPU hanging itself on some diffusion model and then taking the desktop with it was not an experience I wanted to repeat. If it had been just for games though, I'd probably have gone with AMD, especially as I exclusively run Linux.
My reason for picking the 5070 Ti from NVIDIA's lineup was that the 5060 Ti didn't feel like enough of a step up coming from to the 3060, the 5070 didn't have enough VRAM and the 5080 is like 15% faster than the 5070 Ti for 40% more money. It is by far the most expensive internal PC component I ever bought, which didn't feel great, but it seems like the price/performance ratio is likely to get worse rather than better in the near future, so I got a beefy card now and hope to keep it for a long time.
I kept my old Corsair RM750x power supply because it was still good. Like the RM850x, this 2021 model didn't come with a 12-pin GPU power cable, but I was able to order such a cable for 15 euros including shipping. For anyone in the same situation: make sure you get a "type 4" Corsair cable for the 2021 PSU models; the newer models use a "type 5" cable which won't fit. I could instead have used the 6-pin to 12-pin adapter that came with the GPU, but even though my PC case in windowless, I like to keep it tidy inside, to avoid cables blocking fans/airflow.
As an aside, I really hate it when components change specs without changing names. If they had called the 2024 models RM751x/RM851x instead, there would be no confusion.
The Xbox 360 Turns 20 Years Old - What Are Your Memories With The Console?
God, 20 years of Xbox. It's wild to think that it has been that long.
I never owned an original Xbox, nor did I own a 360 though almost everyone i knew did - I was a Nintendo kid.
My first ever memory with Xbox was when I went to a tournament to play Halo without ever playing the game or the console. It was taking place at EB Games and then my store didn't have enough registrations so we were transferred to another one a couple of towns over at their large mall. I had absolutely zero idea what I was doing and it reinforced that I really did not like playing shooters with a mouse.
That did end up making me interested in the game though, and I did buy it at a later date when I realized it was out on PC as well.
My first Xbox console was the Xbox One. I bought it mainly as a Forza machine though I also played GTA V, Halo 5: Guardians, and various random titles. It was such a funny looking console, I wasn't the biggest fan of the design of it, the 360 was such a beautiful and iconic beast. Then I upgraded to a Project Scorpio edition Xbox One X on launch day because I wanted more power out of it and that sweet 4K resolution. I still love how it said "Project Scorpio" on the console and controller in that green text, it was wild that they didn't do the same thing for the Xbox Series X (Code named Project Scarlet) because I had hoped to add another unique piece to my collection of consoles.
Of course, the Series X was purchased on launch day as well because we wanted even more power, we wanted faster loading, and the beauty of raytracing and true 4k potential. Admittedly, I haven't played my Series X as much as I had hoped, though Forza runs so beautifully on it and with Game Pass, I've definitely played a wider variety of games on it than the Xbox One family.
PC will always have my heart though and it's nice to see that Microsoft has been focusing their efforts more on PC and cross-platform instead of a closed ecosystem: Xbox Play Anywhere. It's interesting to see where the Xbox brand will go in the future and I do wonder if the new Steam Machine can get enough support, could we see Xbox appear more on it in some way? Sideloaded app store? I would love to see Microsoft fully embrace Xbox on Linux.
What Are You Playing? - Nobel November 2025
And now I can add Kaze to my list of perfect Steam games.
The achievement for beating the game in less than 2 hours is not difficult. I had a few really stupid deaths, and I still beat the game in less than 1:10.
What Are You Playing? - Nobel November 2025
This is a really good DKC-inspired 2D platformer.
I've beaten the main game. All I have left are the "are levels hitless" and the speedrun achievement.
Speedrunning achievements are usually one of the worst types, but I don't reckon this one will be too hard.
OpenRCT2 v0.4.29 Released - New Wall Dragging Tool
This is a huge update for the game. Walls were such a pain to deal with back in the day... and I suppose for the past 100 years as well that the game has been out. Bravo to the team on OpenRCT2 for the patch.
Xbox Partner Preview Recap - All The Games Announced During Team Green's Latest Presentation
007: First Light is supposed to be an origin story with a younger version of the character, yet the Aston Martin Valhalla didn't exist until 2019 and didn't enter the production stage until 2025.
The continuity of James Bond truly is just whatever you want it to be.
Xbox Partner Preview Recap - All The Games Announced During Team Green's Latest Presentation
What a huge showcase today! Clover Pit has been calling my name on Steam for a while, I'm glad to see it's now on Xbox too.
The Game Awards Announces 2025's Nominees - Voting Open
It's funny, I haven't played any of this year's nominations for Game of the Year.
I never finished the original Death Stranding because I wanted to wait for it to come out on PC because I just hate playing a lot of games with a controller that would clearly be better with keyboard and mouse which is why I never gave 2 a go.
Clair Obscur looks like a beautiful game and ever person I have talked to had nothing but amazing things to say about it, it just wasn't really my type of game. I fully expect it to win Game of the Year.
Donkey Kong... I bought it and never had time to play it yet. I was waiting for "the right moment" to just sink into it but that moment never came. I've heard a mix of commentary on the game but I really don't believe for a moment that this deserves to be here at the top. Is it there just because Nintendo didn't have a first-party title in the category? Feels rigged lol.
Hades II I understand is missing a bit of the charm from the first game, but otherwise is a solid game. The timeline on it feels... rushed maybe? I'm looking forward to diving into it in the future, because the first one was amazing, but the second iteration really didn't seem to have the same OMG AMAZING that the first did.
Hollow Knight: Silksong being in this category makes sense. It sold a boat load of copies, the number of positive reviews is huge, and I mean, it is Hollow Knight its bound to be great. It's still on Game Pass so go give it a play if you haven't.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, I had to look this one up because I could have sworn this was a last year release but no, it was the beginning of February. I remember hearing a lot about it, I know people have been positive about the game, but is it Game of the Year worthy?
It's a shame Metroid Prime 4: Beyond comes out in a couple of weeks because I bet this would have been on the list if it did. I hope next year's awards showcases it because December may as well be 2026 but also, next year is looking insane for games. Grand Theft Auto VI, The Witcher IV, and Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, just to name a few, will likely eclipse it and I'll be making the same comment next year about how Metroid is only on the list because Nintendo didn't have anything better. Let's be real though, GTA 6 is a titan and a half and it's already won Game of the Year for 2026.
I am happy to see Borderlands 4 didn't make it. It feels messed up to feel that way because historically speaking, I've loved Borderlands titles. I just had zero desire to pick it up and from everything I've heard, I made the right call; 2K and Gearbox have lost the plot. I'll give it a go at 75% off when it gets a huge discount next year at some point, but yeah, we'll be waiting on that one.
Zelda's New Live Action Movie Begins Filming, First-look at Link & Zelda
Characters are looking real good! I hope we get to see some more teasers because a 2027 release date feels like an infinity amount of time right now.
What Are You Playing? - Nobel November 2025
Im on my usual comfort rotation: rocket league, tag game, and some random puzzle game on my laptop.