How much RAM and power should a video post processing computer have?

[Tyler Purcell]

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Ok so at least $3.2k of non upgradable landfill-friendly resource that does 20fps extra on a very specific use case that would affect a very low percentage of some professional environments and exactly zero of semi-professionnal ones.

Nope, people are running M1's still today and when they sell on Ebay, another group will use them. Not only that, but unlike your PC's, if you pay $149/year you can have unlimited support including 2 yearly catastrophic damage replacements. Please, tell me what PC company does that, I'm all ears. These Apple Silicon systems will have WAY more life than any X86 system, it's not even a contest. Then when they're all used up, Apple will still give you cash for them and they have a robot that disassembles them and recycles the materials to build new computers. Landfills aren't full of Apple Silicon MacBooks, they're full of X86 garbage because 99.95% of users, don't upgrade their systems. They use them and throw them away when they are not useful or break. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

I think you have issues understanding how the windows update system works.

I mean, both me and my partner have been supporting windows environments for decades. We're pretty good at getting windows to do what we want. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

No environnement in the world should have vulnerability scanning disabled, this is not 2005 and defender is not McAfee. I can guarantee you it does not affect I/O throughput.

It actually stops capture when it scans. It's a bug in Windows 11, it's fine on Windows 10. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

There's alot of secure technology under the good of windows that you are not updated on. Windows has security rings, memory isolation, secure boot and plenty of enclaves similar to MacOs. 

So yes, if you have a system with the TPM, boot locker can encrypt the boot volume locally. However, all of those keys are stored on Microsoft's cloud if you're online. Plus, you can easily boot the system off another drive and read the encrypted volume even if you don't have a password. Plus, if there are any issues with windows, you have to first unlock your windows volume with your 48 digit key, which you of course need to memorize or have on a fucking piece of paper. How is that "secure"? Also, if the recovery does not work, you're basically wiping and starting from scratch. This is a huge problem and it's why nobody uses it. So when the FBI calls Microsoft and says "we need to get into XYZ's computer", they just give them the keys and they're in. 

Apple uses the T2 chip, which is a hardware based Secure Enclave that is done properly. If your computer does not boot for whatever reason, if you get a display at all, you can still login to the hardware like normally and unlock your data. If there is no screen, but the system still powers on, you can hold down the "T" key and the system will be mountable by a recovery tool on a secondary system. That recovery tool will request authentication from Apple's servers if you aren't already logged into your iCloud account. 

The difference is that, on windows if you can't boot the system at all, you are fucked. You can't access your data. On Mac, if the system does not boot, you have 2 options to get your data off. There is NO option on windows, you are completely screwed. Not only that, Apple refuses to give customer data to anyone. So there is no way for the FBI to randomly issue a subpoena and have access to your hardware. Microsoft doesn't bat an eye and will hand it over at any time. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

These differences affect a very small subset of use-cases, and you're reading too much into the spec, we know Apple had good integration and a solid OS to support it, but it now has zero killer apps outside maybe Logic, all of them exist elsewhere too.

Clearly you don't use mac's, you're quoting information from the 1990's. Today, nearly everything creative use has a port to Apple Silicon and if it doesn't, the port is on the way currently. Maya, Blender, Z Brush and C4D for instance, 100% native right now. Fusion 360, where a bad port, also works great, we use it daily. FCP, the entire Adobe Suite, Resolve and Baselight, all native. Pro Tools and Avid are ports, but they work fine. I use Canva and Pixelmator products for my image editing, they're all native. Flame and Nuke have been Apple Silicon native for a few years now. There are also lots of native AI tools due to Mac OS like LM Studio and Diffusion Bee. For games, around 80% of the Steam library runs through Crossover on Mac OS OR is already native through steam or the App Store. Now that Steam supports ARM systems natively, we should see support grow at an accelerated rate. Crossover 25 will have a major update shortly which utilizes the superior X12/Vulcan engines in Mac OS 26 Tahoe. Metal FX engine in the M5 is also 3x faster than prior silicon, with a future release unlocking the 2x upscaling in real time on hardware without using a single core of the GPU. 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

50 Macs doing what? Editing?Windows Servers doing what? Active directory? Exchange? What exactly?

Yea; editing, graphic design, 3D design (mostly C4D, but we had one Flame license), scanning stills, rendering outputs for delivery, color grading and post audio suites, all the bookkeeping, marketing and sales teams also are 100% on Mac. That company also has a huge AI department running some custom sauce tools for their marketing team, all on Mac. In fact, that company also has a fleet of around 30 personal MacBook Pro's that haven't been seen by anyone unless people get laid off, then they get wiped and given to the new hire. 

The windows servers run DNS, Backups (multiple tape libraries), automation for storage, Active Directory, Aspera server, Vantage server blades, etc. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

As for Linux being a joke I will only say this:

Autodesk Flame.

huh? Flame has been Apple native for over a decade. Apple silicon took a while, but the port was native as of 2023. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Linux is where most of the technology is going to be moving probably including Wndows in the end.

Linux is not for users, it's for offline systems that technicians play with. It has zero support. Steam OS is the first version of a Linux GUI that gives hope for a future of the OS, due to its wide adoption and open source. However, it's still very limited in function. Until they crack the cloud services and offer more than what gamers need, it will be a toy. If you consider Linux a usable OS, then you aren't a computer user, you are a computer technician. You like to play with computers, not do work on them. 

8 hours ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

You had a few bad experiences with some hardware and are extrapolating as universal truths, I assure you it's not the case.

I've been an Apple certified tech since 1998, I've been building custom PC's since the late 80's. I have built and supported the top entertainment industry leaders around the world. You have literally watched programming made on the systems my company installed as we were the number 1 Avid/protools installer and supporter globally. That changed with Avid's new leadership, but it doesn't negate the fact that was my business for years. When our top technicians couldn't figure things out, I would get pinged and it was my job to fix the systemic issues, which were nearly entirely linux or Windows issues. Luckily, most users can figure out Mac issues on their own and don't need to worry about 5 different ways to access a terminal like on Windows or memorize basic terminal commands just to install shit on linux properly. 

[Tyler Purcell]

44 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Tyler, there's zero evidence to place a modern operating system like Windows 11 in any kind of instability scope, it can do what all modern systems do and has zero issues in performance or stability. If you don't like it, fine.

Really? WOW you must live on an island with no internet. The entire internet is full, 100% full of Windows 11 issues. It's such an epidemic, people are literally leaving the platform in droves to keep their windows 10 systems running AND/OR to Linux because you know, they have nothing else to do but support computers for a living. I literally can't open a single YouTube, instagram or twitter feed, without seeing people complaining about Windows 11. It's literally the worst operating system Microsoft has ever made, makes Vista look like some stroke of genius. 

44 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Further, and in my opinion comparisons and nostalgia on Windows NT 4.0 is at best problematic, and reductive from the pain one had to go to place that system in the right order in the first place, I don't think anyone sane would want to live through the setup of a HP Pentium III cluster of those nowadays, but it was nice when done correctly., Try to do a tape restore from a crash though and call me after.

I mean, I use to support NT for a living, but it was such a long time ago, I can't tell you what version it was. 

44 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Apple has its own stupid stories with MacBook Pro's from 2012 with the Nvidia GPU's, the iPhone 4, and the ridiculously bad butterfly keyboard, the regression in minimum storage space...and the list goes on, that don't mean they are characterized by those.

Yea, the Apple X86 systems blew hard core. Intel and nVidia are by far the worst tech companies to exist and both of them will be scooped up when the AI bubble bursts. Luckily, we're rapidly approaching 6 years since Apple dumped X86 and you're talking about 15 year old systems like they're just coming out. Does new tech not hit your country? 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

4 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Nope, people are running M1's still today and when they sell on Ebay, another group will use them. Not only that, but unlike your PC's, if you pay $149/year you can have unlimited support including 2 yearly catastrophic damage replacements. Please, tell me what PC company does that, I'm all ears. These Apple Silicon systems will have WAY more life than any X86 system, it's not even a contest. Then when they're all used up, Apple will still give you cash for them and they have a robot that disassembles them and recycles the materials to build new computers. Landfills aren't full of Apple Silicon MacBooks, they're full of X86 garbage because 99.95% of users, don't upgrade their systems. They use them and throw them away when they are not useful or break. 

The unlimited support does end at some point (I believe you can extend up to five years) but that's a really good service.

The rest of your statement is 100% incorrect

8 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I mean, both me and my partner have been supporting windows environments for decades. We're pretty good at getting windows to do what we want. 

You don't fully know how they work though.

9 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

So yes, if you have a system with the TPM, boot locker can encrypt the boot volume locally. However, all of those keys are stored on Microsoft's cloud if you're online. Plus, you can easily boot the system off another drive and read the encrypted volume even if you don't have a password. Plus, if there are any issues with windows, you have to first unlock your windows volume with your 48 digit key, which you of course need to memorize or have on a fucking piece of paper. How is that "secure"? Also, if the recovery does not work, you're basically wiping and starting from scratch. This is a huge problem and it's why nobody uses it. So when the FBI calls Microsoft and says "we need to get into XYZ's computer", they just give them the keys and they're in. 

Half-truths and alot of mistakes in your statements, that show that you don't exactly know how bitlocker works and that "piece of paper" sentence is just an example.

11 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Clearly you don't use mac's, you're quoting information from the 1990's. Today, nearly everything creative use has a port to Apple Silicon and if it doesn't, the port is on the way currently.

You are not reading my posts, I didn't say Apple doesn't have app support, it does - I said it doesn't have killer apps, it doesn't. It's a good solid system.

12 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

. If you consider Linux a usable OS, then you aren't a computer user, you are a computer technician. You like to play with computers, not do work on them. 

Clearly you have major gaps in computer knowledge to say that.

 

16 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

You have literally watched programming made on the systems my company installed as we were the number 1 Avid/protools installer and supporter globally.

That, literally has zero to do with anything.

 

18 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Luckily, most users can figure out Mac issues on their own and don't need to worry about 5 different ways to access a terminal like on Windows or memorize basic terminal commands just to install shit on linux properly. 

That's not a serious statement and is straight out of a Wire article.

Tyler, what's happening here, is that I think you are too attached to the technical choices you make and will go at great lengths to prove they are the right ones, the thing you are not willing to accept is that there is more context to what you think you know.

 

[Tyler Purcell]

42 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

 

Then I'm very confused. What is the spec of the machine you built? Above you mentioned the ASUS motherboard so I looked for an equivalent for the same CPU (Threadripper 9000). What is in your system?

Phoenix is very much multi-threaded. Here are all 32 cores on our machine running dryclean right now:

Maxing out all cores is the opposite of multi-threading. 

A multi-threaded program can put separate tasks on individual cores. So your 100% maxed out chip, would actually be bouncing around, as it swaps between tasks. 

Phoenix's behavior, shows it's not multithreaded at all. It utilizes all the cores like one big single task. 

42 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

This machine was built about 3 years ago and cost under $5000 at the time. It was roughly half the price of an equivalent HP or Dell workstation.

I have no idea how you did that. The 5970X 32 core threadripper, which is what existed at that time, was $3200 retail alone. Motherboard would have been $850. So between those two parts, you were around $4k. So let's say you got a case, power supply and ram, those combined would be around a grand. No NVME boot drive, no NVME cache array, no GPU, no 25G card, No USB 3.2 2x2 or Thunderbolt card, No keyboard, mouse or displays. Reality is, even without displays, you're looking at $8k for the full kit unless you're buying VERY OLD tech. 

42 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

We only run Phoenix on that machine, and we are able to do most tasks at just under real time, which is more than fast enough. Most Phoenix DVO plugins have been multi-threaded for years. Some are not but one of the things they've been consistently improving, since about 2022, is multi-threading. They recommended we get a CPU with as many cores as possible, in fact. 
 

Well yea, of course they want more cores, because more cores = more performance, duhh. 

We have tested Phoenix across multiple systems and found that higher clocks = better performance. So running 16 core higher clock CPU, actually performs better than a 24 core threadripper with a lower clock. Now obviously a 32 core would be faster, but I haven't tested a 5xxx series TR with Phoenix, only a 7xxx 32 core, which it ran well. Neither our 9950X3D/5080 or the 7970X/4090 system we built, could playback dry-clean, with re-sharpening and scratch tools in an 4k DPX sequence in real time. They were both close, but not fully capable of doing it. Mind you, this was last year, so who knows if they did major updates since then. I haven't used Phoenix in a while. 

42 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

12 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, the Apple X86 systems blew hard core. Intel and nVidia are by far the worst tech companies to exist and both of them will be scooped up when the AI bubble bursts. Luckily, we're rapidly approaching 6 years since Apple dumped X86 and you're talking about 15 year old systems like they're just coming out. Does new tech not hit your country? 

Not reading my posts again, I said that Apple should not be negatively characterized by some blunders. I will ignore the rest of the statement

14 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Really? WOW you must live on an island with no internet. The entire internet is full, 100% full of Windows 11 issues. It's such an epidemic, people are literally leaving the platform in droves to keep their windows 10 systems running AND/OR to Linux because you know, they have nothing else to do but support computers for a living. I literally can't open a single YouTube, instagram or twitter feed, without seeing people complaining about Windows 11. It's literally the worst operating system Microsoft has ever made, makes Vista look like some stroke of genius. 

Hyperbole and confirmation bias.

The fun story about the whole thing is that I do have an apple M3 laptop, I have no complaints about it nor about all my other systems but I don't get too attached to these decisions.

[Tyler Purcell]

6 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Tyler, what's happening here, is that I think you are too attached to the technical choices you make and will go at great lengths to prove they are the right ones, the thing you are not willing to accept is that there is more context to what you think you know.

Im literally a certified technician, I quit being in the film industry for 12 years and my business was engineering post facilities. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

Just now, Tyler Purcell said:

Im literally a certified technician, I quit being in the film industry for 12 years and my business was engineering post facilities

I respect that, but that don't negate that there are too many factual mistakes in your statements.

Tyler, I have tons of respect for your film camera knowledge but you have major gaps in understanding information technology, I'm sorry.

[Tyler Purcell]

24 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Tyler, I have tons of respect for your film camera knowledge but you have major gaps in understanding information technology, I'm sorry.

I can backup every single claim. Where do you wanna start? 

[Tyler Purcell]

32 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

Hyperbole and confirmation bias.

Wait, so you're saying the millions of people out there who have issues, and the hundreds of thousands of videos about the issues, they're all wrong, but you're right? 

32 minutes ago, Aristeidis Tyropolis said:

The fun story about the whole thing is that I do have an apple M3 laptop, I have no complaints about it nor about all my other systems but I don't get too attached to these decisions.

Ok so are you even attempting to run an Apple ecosystem, or is it just something to play with? 

[Perry Paolantonio]

38 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Maxing out all cores is the opposite of multi-threading. 

Picking nits here because in the end it doesn't really matter that much as long as the software is taking full advantage of the hardware. Before about 2020/2021 Phoenix DVO plugins were not doing that. They were mostly all single-threaded and required the highest end Xeons at the fastest speed possible because only one core would be in use at any given time, and it would take forever to get anything done. When we first switched to Phoenix most DVO plugins were very slow. If you looked at the task manager, you'd see one core running at about 90% with all the rest flatlined at zero. It would jump around from core to core with each new instance of the plugin (which means at each shot when the current task finished and the next one was assigned a core), but it did not run on all cores concurrently and it was painfully slow. At the time DigitalVision's recommendation was fewer cores, higher clock speed. 

With time they began taking advantage of machines with many cores, and now recommend Threadrippers, which is why we built the system we did. And it runs rings around the old plugins. We saw improvements with software updates as they came out, on the same hardware (which has not changed since that system was built). 

So whether it's true preemptive multithreading, or whether it's just taking advantage of the available cores in ways it didn't previously, is neither here nor there. The point is that the software can take advantage of the cores that are there and your assertion that it will do better on a single-core high clock system is bunk. Here is the formula they gave me:

Multiply the number of CPUs by the clock speed and you get a number. Do the same for another CPU. Buy the CPU where the result of that calculation is higher. In some cases yes, a low clock/more core machine will be faster than a high clock/fewer core machine. But most modern CPUs are at least 6 cores at this point, and 3-4GHz clocks are fairly commonplace. an 8-core CPU from the same family as a 6-core CPU, where both are running at the same clock speed, is going to be faster for applications that take advantage of it. 

And FWIW, I do know what multi-threading is, having written several applications that take advantage of it. It is not necessarily the fastest way to do things and in some cases can be slower than simply maxing out the system's available resources. 

 

 

38 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I have no idea how you did that.

do I really have to do this? Here's the receipt from NewEgg. You are correct on the approximate cost of the hardware. But you are bringing in monitors, which don't belong in an apples-to-apples comparison of hardware because you're going to use the same monitors regardless of the underlying computer. Don't muddy the water here to try to create cover for yourself. I know what my budget was for the Phoenix system we built, and I know what we paid. But here goes:

• The GPU is an RTX4070 and cost about $550 from Microcenter. 
• The enclosure was a rackmount case we already had, but would have been $150 if I had to buy it. 
• The heatsink/fan setup was as barebones as you can get, I don't believe in all these stupid fancy cooling systems, which are unnecessary unless you're overclocking, which we aren't. 
• The cache is an internal RAID-0 6Gbps SATAIII drives that can easily handle 4k DPX (which is what we use for our cache files in Phoenix). They run off of a Highpoint RocketRaid because you don't need anything fancy to do RAID-0. It would hsve cost $150 but we already had it. We recycled the drives, so maybe that would have been a few hundred bucks more to pick up a stash of older 6gbps SATA drives on ebay. it's a scratch disk, no point in spending a fortune on that. 
• The NIC is one we had, but would have been about $45 used, the only way to get this model at the time (Mellanox ConnectX III 40Gbps)

So all in, yeah maybe a shade over $5k even if you bought the stuff we already had, but nowhere near the $8000 you're suggesting. 

 

 

Edited January 27 by Perry Paolantonio

[Tyler Purcell]

2 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Here's the receipt from NewEgg. You are correct on the approximate cost of the hardware. But you are bringing in monitors, which don't belong in an apples-to-apples comparison of hardware because you're going to use the same monitors regardless of the underlying computer. Don't muddy the water here to try to create cover for yourself. I know what my budget was for the Phoenix system we built, and I know what we paid. But here goes:

What CPU did you get? I didn't see that in the receipt. Also a 4070 is hardly a GPU for doing serious work. Kinda hard to compare apples to apples, if you're using professional grade CPU/GPU with consumer grade GPU's. 

[Perry Paolantonio]

1 minute ago, Tyler Purcell said:

What CPU did you get? I didn't see that in the receipt. Also a 4070 is hardly a GPU for doing serious work. Kinda hard to compare apples to apples, if you're using professional grade CPU/GPU with consumer grade GPU's. 

It says right in the receipt I posted. you can look for yourself. 

Phoenix doesn't require a high end GPU because it's CPU bound. Thus, we got the 4070. It's all you need. Unless you're running Nucoda on that same machine, there is no advantage to a faster GPU in Phoenix. 

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

17 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I can backup every single claim. Where do you wanna start? 

I am sorry Tyler but you cannot and you haven't -  you have derailed the discussion with your personal choices and half-truths.

I asked you earlier as an example about your random strawman argument about Windows Servers needing "people", and you didn't even answer my question, because probably you don't even read what people ask you.

Your factual errors are too many to correct and won't help you in any way.

10 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Wait, so you're saying the millions of people out there who have issues, and the hundreds of thousands of videos about the issues, they're all wrong, but you're right? 

You understand I hope, how statistics work I presume?

10 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Ok so are you even attempting to run an Apple ecosystem, or is it just something to play with? 

This is not a place to provide credentials so I won't do that - what I will say I don't have any bias against Apple, I actually like many of their products and as I said, I am not attached to any of my technical decisions in particular. 

 

Edited January 27 by Aristeidis Tyropolis

[Tyler Purcell]

2 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

It says right in the receipt I posted. you can look for yourself. 

Phoenix doesn't require a high end GPU because it's CPU bound. Thus, we got the 4070. It's all you need. Unless you're running Nucoda on that same machine, there is no advantage to a faster GPU in Phoenix. 

Ah sorry missed it, I've never seen a bundle SKU before like that. 

So wait, you only run Phoenix on that system? Do you have a bay just for color? 

[Perry Paolantonio]

11 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

So wait, you only run Phoenix on that system? Do you have a bay just for color? 

Yes. Why would we tie up our color room with restoration? Those are different tasks done by different people and often have to be done at the same time. 

[Perry Paolantonio]

FWIW, I had to build a simple PC to upgrade the host for our microfilm scanner this weekend. I paid $480 for the parts from microcenter. The specs are: 

• $350: AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D / MSI PRO B850M-VC WIFI6E / GSkill 16GB DDR5 RAM Bundle
• $25 (open box): Coolermaster mATX enclosure
• $25: Coolermaster CPU Cooler
• $45: Thermaltake 600W PSU
• $6.99: Inland keyboard

We already had a mouse and monitor from the old machine but wanted a better keyboard. I also had a spare 250GB SSD drive for the OS so I just used that. I installed Windows 10 on it since it will run offline. It only has the onboard GPU, and that's sharing the 16GB RAM, I believe. So, this would be a pretty sub-optimal spec for anything related to video, you'd think. Total assembly time was about an hour. Took about another hour to install windows, all necessary drivers, and all available Windows 10 updates, and then to delete all the crap from Windows I don't need on the machine. 

This PC is not spec'd for Resolve, that's not the intent here - it's built for another purpose entirely. But just for kicks I installed Resolve 20 Studio on it. I loaded up a 4k ProRes 4444 file from the system SSD, so reasonably quick but no speed demon. ProRes will require a decent amount of CPU to decode on Windows, making it a good test. I rendered it out to both an HD ProRes 422HQ and an H.264 MP4 file so the only processing I was doing was a scaling operation on export, in addition to the compression. Both rendered at about realtime. 

This is a  sub-$500 PC. My point is (well points are):

1. It doesn't have to be a crazy high end machine to get reasonable enough performance for simple tasks
2. This is probably a machine that with a couple tweaks (modest GPU, more RAM, faster system drive), could do a fair bit more
3. This is likely a machine that would work for Daniel's needs, with software that's more industry standard and usable than what he's currently working with.
4. It can be built in a relatively short amount of time, on a tight budget. If you don't know how to build a machine like this, find someone who you know who does, have them help you, buy them some beer. 

We had been thinking of getting a used MacPro rack to replace our Linux resolve system but now that Windows can render ProRes, and seeing how it performed on this dinky little box, I'm more confident than ever that we should just build a moderately fast Ryzen machine on a gaming motherboard and let Resolve have at it. 

Tyler: if you'd like, I can include the receipts.

Edited February 25 by Perry Paolantonio

[Tyler Purcell]

So on Amazon, I see 248 + 99 + 299 =646 

The deals you get are just not possible by other people. I tried to build the Threadripper you spec'd, 100% impossible. I use to sell/support this stuff for a living. I talked to my vendor Ingram Micro, they laughed at me. Pricing you quoted even on your receipt is less than their cost. So whatever, I mean people get great deals on stuff all day. I only care about retail pricing because that's what everyone else on the planet pays.

Its unfortunate so many of the software packages in this industry are windows or linux only, I really wish we could use cheap mac's for it. I tried to get PFClean to work, but it really needs a decent system. I may try again if the M5 Ultra is any good. It's still faster than Phoenix and DRS Nova, but still struggles a bit. 

 

 

[Perry Paolantonio]

Quote

The deals you get are just not possible by other people.

So sorry, Tyler. I completely forgot to mention the part about how I get deep discounts wherever I shop, that nobody else does. One of the perks of being me, I suppose. 

 

Quote

 I tried to build the Threadripper you spec'd, 100% impossible.

Try harder next time, man.

Let me share a little secret: You can still buy that Mobo/CPU/RAM bundle for the same price at the same retailer I mentioned in my post yesterday: https://www.microcenter.com/product/5007290/amd-ryzen-5-7500x3d,-msi-b850m-vc-pro-wifi-am5,-gskill-flare-x5-series-16gb-ddr5-6000,-computer-build-bundle

Micro Center has 31 stores across the US, in most regions and major metro areas, from the East coast to the West. There's even one near you. And they ship! 

But because you probably still don't believe me, or at some point this sale will end and that link might not work, here is the receipt, as promised.:

 

(I know you'll try to "get" me on some weird invented technicality, so just to head that off... In the invoice they split the RAM from the CPU/Motherboard, but it's a bundle despite the split SKUs. Add the bundle in the link above to your cart and you'll see it appear as two items at full price, and it'll show you the bundle savings):

 

When I told my kid this morning that some guy online didn't believe that I bought the computer that he picked up with me this weekend, he asked "is that guy living in a simulation?" (which I think is 11-year-old for "what's up with him?")

Gotta admit, as utterly infuriating as these conversations have become, your compulsion to argue easily provable facts is fascinating.