mergeconflict263
James: [00:00:00] Frank just install the TPM chip into my computer. 
Frank: [00:00:15] Welcome to 2010. When did those things come out? You know, actually I'm trying to act all smart here, but I had no idea what TPM chips were up until just a few years ago. 
James: [00:00:26] Yeah. I, uh, my good friend, Scott Hanson. Thing, uh, sent me a TPM chip because I'm on my work computer and I need the BitLocker stuff on the sectional drive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I just wanted to have my, this TPM and it will allow me to upgrade to windows 11 if I need to. Um, now that I got my TPM chip, but I'm not gonna, I think I'm gonna rebuild a new computer at some point, but I was like, Scott just has a TPM send around. So I was like, I'll do a little upgrading. I opened up my case.
Boy, was it dusty first and foremost? And I love this motherboard. I love this case. So I'd probably reuse this case. It's very modular. It's very nice. My buddy Jessie gave it to me and, uh, I, you know, I didn't want to remove anything and I'm like down there with my flash and I'm digging around and I'm like, look, and I'm like, where's the TPM?
Where's the TPM. And the TPM chip is like, Honestly, it's, it's like so tiny. It's like the tiniest, it's like a quarter, you know, and I got these big, I got these big, you know, cause, and trying to, I'm trying to like take the little chip and I'm trying to like get it into the eight prongs that are in there and I'm doing the thing and I'm just like trying to.
Into the prongs and that's not working. So then I take out every PCI card and I do all that. And then I plop it in there and then I like TPM installed and I don't know what I'm doing with that TPM, but Frank, I got a TPM 2.0, 
Frank: [00:01:54] oh, oh, okay. I am so lost for words here. Can we rewind a little bit? So physically, what is this TPM chip look like?
It 
James: [00:02:06] looks like a. You know what it looks like. It looks like a tiny, uh, IOT device. That's literally one inch tall by half an inch wide. 
Frank: [00:02:17] Okay. And now where do you physically have to put this device 
James: [00:02:23] into the motherboard? 
Frank: [00:02:25] Directly there's holes for it. And your holes weren't filled. Is that what you're saying?
We're 
James: [00:02:31] so I think it's, I think it's 11 Penn and so there's, there's, there's, you know, it's six pins wide, but one of them is missing, so you know where to put it in. So it's 11 pins total. And you there's little pins that stick out kind of like, 
Frank: [00:02:45] sorry, is this a PCI slot or is it like a custom thing? That's a custom thing.
James: [00:02:49] So it's just like a pin, you know, where you put in, like all of the. When you're building on your motherboard and you have just like, here's a bunch of pins and you put like the reset button and the power button and all those things. It's like 
Frank: [00:03:00] always right next to each other. And they're really tiny. And for some reason they keep putting them in the middle of the headers.
So like, if you're like me and don't bother with cases for computers, you're always trying to find the right tiny little pins to, uh, turn these machines on. And yeah. Yes. Just a little complaint anyways, so, okay. So it looks like headers, it looks like pins sticking up and you're going to jam this thing into the pit.
James: [00:03:25] Uh, I mean, that was my idea, at least was just to just put it in there and, and, um, do it. And I did it. I mean, I had the computer turned off. I turned off the power. I actually have my, I have my desktop machine on like a little wheelie thing and like a little wheely cart and I don't want to unplug every cable.
So I just kinda like tilted on its side. And it's, it's, it's being supported by the wheelie cart is not good at all. In any case. Uh, you know, but, um, yeah, I, uh, 
Frank: [00:03:58] you, you grounded yourself, you know, unplugged the power supply. 
James: [00:04:02] No. Now, no, no, no. I turned, I turned the power bar, the button off on the back of the power supply.
I'm not, I'm not a big fan of grounding myself or, you know, Caring about static electricity at all. I remember when I was opening up Mike and my television recently and replacing stuff and you're like, make sure you ground yourself. And I was like, yeah, I literally, I opened up, you're going to hate me. I opened up my TV and I laid it on carpet, 
Frank: [00:04:31] like a shag.
Okay. I honestly, okay. It's bad. It's bad, but I'll be honest. I have an apartment. I do a lot of electronics on a rug, so I can't talk, but at least I try to ground myself before I do it or anything. And everyone, I hope you understand. He's talking about an LCD, right, please. Don't do that with the cathode Ray tubes.
Oh no, you did that with a plasma. Yeah, it works fine. It's around. Okay. Uh, I've been watching those, uh, DIY videos on YouTube where it's like how to convert your old monitor into a, uh, a smart mirror. And I think I want to make a smart mirror part of my DIY challenges to me, myself, do 
James: [00:05:19] it. I like that. I've always thought about that, but I was like, where am I going to put this?
I guess. 
Frank: [00:05:24] Yeah, I know. But the one, um, monitor that I don't have a use for is a little bit small, so I might as well just turn it into a little mirror thing. I think it would be fun. I've always wanted to tear apart. 
James: [00:05:37] I love opening things up. Uh, that's my, that's my new favorite thing. So we're talking about like, kind of upgrading some machines we talked about before.
Just like if we're gonna do new machines or not machines or upgrade machines, I'm a big fan of opening things up. I'm a, I'm a believer. I'm like the, I fix it. I'm a believer that you should be able to get in there in tinker around. Now, if you mess it up, if you mess it up, That's your fault. That's your bad.
You don't, you don't get a warranty. You open it up. Your warranty is gone, but I'm a believer in that you should open things up. You know, who's not a believer of that. You should open things up. 
Frank: [00:06:14] Oh, Ooh. Calling someone out who you're calling out every 
James: [00:06:18] company ever. 
Frank: [00:06:20] Oh, that trick you got me, you got me. 
James: [00:06:23] It changed.
You remember when there was a time that, you know, you could just open up anything, laptops. Televisions, you know, 
Frank: [00:06:34] cell phones. No one did you don't want to. 
James: [00:06:37] I want to video game counselors, I guess you had to go cause special screwdriver. You know, the tri tip a day back in my day, back in my back and my day, Frank.
Good and that there there's a bill there, isn't there a law on books about like being able to 
Frank: [00:06:56] Europe has one America I think has a little more wild, wild west. I'm sure we have some levels of consumer protections, but for the most part. Yeah. Um, I mean, like, let's say you cracked, open your eyes. You do not have the tools to do any significant repair on there.
The best you can do is replacement of components. And as things become more unified components, then repair becomes harder. Repair is easy when things are all isolated components, but things are getting smaller and more integrated and that's, what's making repair harder. So it's not just nefarious companies.
It's just a direction technology always go. Did you ever 
James: [00:07:38] growing up, just open up stuff and tinker around and anything like that story time? 
Frank: [00:07:44] This is psychology. Um, I had an older brother and my older brother absolutely took apart all my toys and couldn't put them back together again. And so it was always a small.
Life how long my toys would last in the house. And so I was around a tinker, a dad and a tinker brother. I refuse to tinker myself in the early days because I was so angry about all my toys getting broken, but eventually I grew up and became a tinker or two. 
James: [00:08:14] No, you're, you're literally an electrical engineer.
It's like, honestly, the things that you do, the IOT devices, the robotics that is all about. 
Frank: [00:08:24] Yeah. Yeah. That's getting into the weeds for sure. I like PCs because it's a little bit higher level, you know, I don't have to use my electrical engineering degree. I'm still using the knowledge I gained when I was 16 years old and built my first computer.
I still like that because that's more about component matching selection, deciding. Yeah. How you want to budget things? Do I want put more money toward the GPU or the CPU? Do I actually want Ram? Oh gosh. Why are hard drives so expensive right now? Oh, shoot. I forgot to buy a fan. I just did that recently, James, all my professional computer building experience and literally some of it was professional.
I used to do parts sourcing and all that. Uh, I forgot to order the CPU fan complete newbie mistake. I was so embarrassed. Are you going 
James: [00:09:10] to go, uh, fan fan or are you going to go liquid? 
Frank: [00:09:15] Oh, no, just fan fan. I'm not into the over driving machines, lifestyle. I'm into machines that are simple and that work, but more power to you.
If you're into that, 
James: [00:09:27] let me know, tell you. Okay. So when I was in, back in, back in my day, Frank Krueger, uh, when I was in college, uh, which I guess it wasn't that long ago, I guess I'm 15 years ago, 15 years ago, I guess that's half my life ago. And 15 years ago, 16 years ago, I was in college. My roommate, you know, it's a video game school.
And, uh, I had a Dell, I just, my parents got me a Dell, or we went halfsies on, I don't know it was like my college gift or whatever. And I said to Dell, you know, you can't get in and you can't tinker on things. But my roommate was building a computer and he's like, I'm in a liquid cooler. Cause he was playing world of Warcraft and overclocking all this stuff.
But when he liquid cooled it back in 2005, He had, you know, like he put like this container of like liquid in like where you're, you know, we raid or DVD drive would go. Yeah. And he would have to like refill it. Cause like it would like go down because it's not water it's like guru or whatever. Right. He had like liquid in there is, is cause they're old school liquid cooling.
Frank: [00:10:33] It's it's cool. Lent the little place called coolant. We use it because it has a very interesting, um, specific heat. Um, that's weird. It should not be evaporating off like that. I mean, there is technically an evaporator and a condenser in that system, but, um, it shouldn't be going, it should be a slightly more closed system, not quite such an open system.
So that makes me a little bit nervous. 
James: [00:10:58] I, I don't know what kind of it, it freaked me out and I was like, I'm not going to do that. Now I have, I have put a liquid cooling, uh, device on mine. I have like the newer ones and they're fantastic. They're so quiet and no heat. It's a way to. 
Frank: [00:11:15] Yeah, the new ones are absolutely fantastic.
Especially compared to those original ones or the custom jobs people were doing. Um, I just, I don't know, like it only gets hot in Seattle, like one week out of the year. So I just haven't felt the need to put any extreme cooling on any of my computers. Yeah. That's a part where I'm not like the fancy computer builder in that I, I did use to overclock my computers, but I got tired of that because.
It's a, it's a long rabbit hole. You can continue down. Cause then you're, overclocking your Ram and you're, overclocking the front side bias. It's just all bad stuff. So I got out of that biz. Uh, what I try to do is pick good components that are maxing out the motherboards. So if the motherboard. Is maximally capable of what I don't even know.
What is the, what is the memory speed these days? Five gigahertz. If only let's pretend it's five gigahertz. Uh, I would make sure that I got like five gigahertz Ram because. We're programmers. We know what's slow. You know what? Slow reading and writing memory that's slow. So the faster you get your memory, the faster that computer's going to be, you could have the fastest CPU in the world, but if you have slow memory, nothing's going on, you 
James: [00:12:27] need fast memory.
You need fast, um, discs, you know, like, like spinning, spinning a non spinning disc. And preferably I'm really into the PCI hard drive. 
Frank: [00:12:38] Now. Yeah, those are cool. So all the motherboards are also coming with those M dot two sockets. And in the past you would put a SATA drive on there nowadays you put NBME draws on there.
So I am into those, but as, um, as additional storage, absolutely put it onto your, uh, PCI bus. But first I would look to that and to connect her 
James: [00:13:03] on a modern mother. Where do you get, and you get an AMD Intel, would you go with rocket lake? 
Frank: [00:13:09] I went with Intel. Uh, I used to be an AMD person until I started doing neural networks and software isn't compatible on anything because things.
So I was forcing constraining myself to an Intel processor with an Nvidia video card, just because I wanted to use this machine for neural net. But, uh, so this is a long story. I had to go and review all of my Intel core product skew numbers, James, off the top of your head right now, say at first thought, what generation core are we at?
Ah, you knew that one. All right, James, uh, what is the difference between gen 11 and gen 10, uh, 
James: [00:13:58] eligible difference or maybe one is a seven nanometers. 
Frank: [00:14:04] Oh, actually, I don't know the process you might be right there. The one that I know is the L two cash got bigger, um, which is a good thing. Going back to memory makes computers slow.
The bigger you make your caches, the faster, hopefully the computer can run depending on how all the cores collide when they try to read and write that same memory. But, um, I went with a 10th generation core I five. I went with the top of the line. I five. Off the top of my head. I forget what it's called, but maybe let's call it like a 6,400 K the K means faster.
Uh, you can get some of those things without, with an F, which means without video, but I went with 10th generation and this is the pathetic part because it was on prime now. And I could get it overnight. And the 11th generation, I would've had to wait a few days 
James: [00:14:54] and I five interesting. For, yeah. So I have a 6,700 K's so sixth gen, um, which K is, is the top basically, you know, 77.
Is like the top that you can get. I think, I think they have  now too technically, too. They 
Frank: [00:15:12] do. Yeah. The difference I found was the eye fives were six core. The  were, I don't don't put me on eight or 10 and then I have no idea what the  are a lot, a lot. 
James: [00:15:29] I mean, I guess it's a, it's a, it's a pretty big price difference too.
So. 
Frank: [00:15:34] Yeah, I was just looking at what I need for neural networks. I actually don't need too much out of the CPU. Uh, six cores is plenty more cores. Isn't going to help because I'm doing all the work on the GPU. The CPU just has to keep feeding the GPU as much memory as I can, as fast as they can. Okay. 
James: [00:15:52] 5, 10, 10, 10, 600.
K. Is that what you got? 
Frank: [00:15:57] Yeah, I thought there was something after the sixth, but sure. Top of the line, 10th generation I five. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. So then, uh, you get into other boards and of course, Intel changed the pin out on the CPS yet again, so we're on the LGA. What like 1200 or something. There's like 8 billion pins on these processors these days.
Uh, so I had to get a new motherboard. I was trying to reuse parts for me, you know, previous theaters and all that, but Nope, Nope. In talents, a sudden changing everything. Uh, has AMD, have you been looking at AMD? Have they been more stable? Um, the pen counts or have you had to get new motherboards? 
James: [00:16:36] I currently have an Intel on everything.
However, if I do rebuild, I am thinking about going all in on AMD, John Dick. Uh, he went all in on AMD a year and a half ago, and he was very, very happy with the result of it. Um, but I think the pin count. I don't know. I think they're a little bit more compatible, but I do know that my motherboard only supports sixth and seventh gen and that's it.
So if I wanted to up the 
Frank: [00:17:04] previous, yeah, yeah. 
James: [00:17:06] I have the previous ones. So if I wanted to upgrade, I can't even go to eighth or ninth, the gen, because of that, uh, because of the pin and I'm even, I'm a little bit scared of even just replacing. CPU is like, I always thought that if you wanted to upgrade your CPU, you got to get a whole new motherboard, but that is incorrect for my understanding.
You can just rip out the CPU and put it in and put the goo on there and you're done. But I, you know, I, I just, haven't built a computer in a long, in a while now. I guess it's been. Seven years. So 
Frank: [00:17:40] while we're doing, doing story time, then I can tell a story from the past. Uh, our family, one of our is like second big computers we bought was a 4 86 S X 33.
The SX meant that it couldn't do floating point math. DX could do floating point math, but it was coming out at a time when Pentium was on the horizon, but Intel hadn't released a Pentium yet. And so it had a little, um, math processor update hole in it. It was really just a second CPU slot. And when you got around to getting a math processor slash a Pentium in the future, you were able to just drop that chip onto this motherboard.
So not only. You weren't replacing your chip. You were putting it there in addition. So for a long time, I was rocking a Pentium computer that also had a 4 86 chip on it. So this is always bent. There's absolutely no reason to change the pin out unless like the buses change or something really fundamental changes.
I really think it's spicy. The Intel keeps changing the pen out. 
James: [00:18:52] I'm assuming like game D does it as well. So I don't think it's here. I don't think it's just them. It's a game, right? It's at some point the, the, you know, the sockets they want you to, to. To buy new stuff, right? Yeah. 
Frank: [00:19:06] So, but the good news was I had to go buy it.
Um, motherboard. Now we all have our, where do you spend money? Where don't you spend money on computers? I do not spend money on the motherboard. I want the bottom of the basement motherboard, as long as it meets all the minimum specs. Because the way I see it is everyone's just buying chips and putting them on a cutesy layout.
And as long as that cutesy layout works, I'm fine. I don't need any fancy features from a mother board. I'm sure there's a bunch of over Clockers screaming at me or something about biosis and things like that. But overall, I do not care. I get the cheapest one that I can get that doesn't have the worst reviews.
Football. 
James: [00:19:47] Yeah. And it has to meet your requirements. So it has to be able to accept so many gigs of Ram and I'm assuming is gonna need to support however many PCI, uh, E uh, ports that 
Frank: [00:20:00] you need. Yeah, that used to be a big deal. In the past. For me, I was trying to put multiple GPS into a machine, but I kind of learned my lesson.
Like the software is just not very good. So you, unfortunately kind of, if I want to do a multiple GPU stuff, I kind of need multiple motherboards. That's the lesson I learned, unfortunately. Uh, but otherwise, um, what, what's the next big one on your list? Are you looking for anything? You mentioned speed. Ram size.
Oh, I went with, this is a first time for me. I got an HTMI port on my motherboard. Welcome to 2015. 
James: [00:20:38] Uh, I mean, you're going to have a graphics card in there, right? 
Frank: [00:20:42] Uh, yeah, exactly. I am curious. I don't really want the graphics card to be doing graphics though. That's kind of funny. Oh, interesting. You just want to, I'm hoping.
Yeah. I'm curious if I can get the operating system to do it, but it's my next. So who knows? Right? Who knows if he can get anything to work 
James: [00:21:00] that's accurate? Um, yeah. Well, I think that the. The thing that I look at next, surprisingly, and sometimes at the beginning, as I'm putting this list together is I look at the power supply unit.
I'm not going to lie about it. I think that the power supply unit is an underrated asset in your rig. 
Frank: [00:21:23] I agree with you a hundred percent, sorry for interrupting there. I just wanted to be a hundred percent on that because the only reason I haven't brought it up is because I'm lucky. And I had like three nice power supplies just laying around because of past projects.
And they're wonderful. I got a good deal. One day on these, um, one kilowatt ones with all the like fancy plugin things so that you only have to put the minimum amount of wires. Into the computer as possible. I learned the only way to keep a clean case is to just minimize all the wires. Also pro tip to anyone out there after you've built your computer and you have too many wires just cut off the ones that you don't need just to get scissors and just your wire cutters would be better and just cut them off.
It's more important that your case be clean on the inside then that you worry about like upgrading in 20 years, which you'll never do. And any way wires are cheap. So don't worry about. 
James: [00:22:19] The, uh, I'm a big fan of C Sonic. That's what I, as what I have, I always like to get, you know, one of the 80 plus goals, it doesn't need to be titanium or whatever, but I agree.
I try to, I look at an eight 50 or a one kilowatt, even if I'm not going to use it because graphics cards are always using more, more, more, and more. And if you do ever upgrade stuff, you're probably going to update your graphics card. And that's the thing that's going to use a lot of power. Now, that being said, the modular is one I'm a big fan of.
Um, and I think it's what you're talking about. Those are the ones that you, that you plug in place. So they give you a bunch of cords and you just plug them in only the ones you need. And that's how you get a clean case comparing to have to cut wires. Now, that being said, don't be a dummy like me. And misplaced all of those wires because actually quite hard to find some of those wires later on, I had to buy one for us putting in something, uh, Hm.
I needed to find a cord and my power supply is very old, so I needed to go on eBay and it was like $14. 
Frank: [00:23:23] Well, make sure you text me next time, because I have a whole box of them because all these power supplies came with them. But each computer I build needs only like two or three of them. Yeah. So, but I don't want to get rid of them because they're such.
Connectors, and I almost want to start using them for my robotics that they're so nice. It's like big Molex connectors. So let me know next time that happens to you change. Yeah, 
James: [00:23:45] don't go cheap on the power supply unit because I'm looking here, you know, it's like, um, you know, the difference is, you know, it's a little bit more for those modulars, uh, for some of them based on the power.
Why did you need, but you will not be disappointed by. Getting a modular power supply. That that to me was the game changer was the modular power supply. The first time I built one full modular, you got to go full modular. Don't go semi modular, non modular. That's a bunch of BS you want to go all in 100%.
The first time I built a PC with a module. Um, power supply unit. Game-changer just for what you're saying, because you give yourself so much breathing room inside your case and you get to organize those cables. You can thread them through different areas and you're good to go on it. We didn't even talk about the case.
Um, I know that you're a crazy miner that doesn't even use cases and everything's free and wild in the world. You got to get a nice period, free range computing. 
Frank: [00:24:42] I, I, I left the electrons out into the wild. Yeah. Yeah. But the good news is like good cases are cheap now. Yeah. I remember back in the day, like we had cheap cases, but they seemed cheap.
Yes. They felt cheap nowadays you can, gosh, for 50 or a hundred dollars, you can get a really nice case. Yeah, that's a part where you definitely want to splurge. The problem is it's more of just a Amazon Newegg rabbit hole of just, you know, Looking at every case design on the planet. There 
James: [00:25:11] are so many, I like a, the company I used before and I think, yeah, I think they saw some nice ones called Leanne li L I a N space ally.
They have some really nice sleek ones that, you know, I'm not a big, I don't need lights and colors and see-through mirrors on stuff. Um, but they have some nice cases that are still in the a hundred dollar range and, and you're right back in the day. Some of the cases that we would spend money on were like 2 50, 300 bucks.
Cause you're like, I just want a nice looking case, not a piece of garbage, which I've, I've had many, a, a piece of garbage cases and they don't last multiple PCs. Like I think if I built a new PC, I would use the same exact case cause it would fit. So. 
Frank: [00:25:52] I, I loved cases and I loved all the crazy cases of the late nineties and early two thousands.
Like I had one that when you turned the computer on a mechanical door would open and close. It lasted for like one month before all the motors broke, but it was great for that one. Uh, one place where I cheaped out a tiny bit, uh, which I would regret if this was my main machine, but this is not my main machine.
The new motherboards are including USB-C with some PD, that power delivery standard. So my mother board, because all this stuff is just running on the Intel chip. You know, none of this is actually on the motherboard. Um, It has USB 3.2, but it does not have a physical USB-C connector. So I can probably buy something like thing on my bobs or something to do that.
But, um, it didn't come with it, like, you know, sticking out of the back and some of them do, but that's when you start to get into the $200 motherboards and the 300 hour, God forbid, 
James: [00:27:00] you know, That's the one thing that I think is at least nice on my current site is at least I have USB three everywhere.
However, I really would like USBC on more, just outputs because it is more of a standard. Now that is, this is a tricky part on the motherboards and the cases because you know, my case on top has some connectors that are there too. I also would say this when you're picking on a motherboard board though, even though Franklin likes to get the cheapest one, don't skimp on USB port.
Because you don't want to have to have too many external. I mean, you can add on a bunch of, you know, splitters and stuff, but you might overload. I'm a big fan of trying to not have any extender devices. You know, the splitters that like split one USB into 18. I I'm, I'm a fan. Gimme more like dedicated, fully powered USB lanes on my motherboard.
And let me deal with it that way. I think you don't want to skimp on that. That's my opinion. Uh, yeah, 
in 
Frank: [00:28:01] general, you know, it's funny that like, if I was. Uh, my, my computer is indeed free range. It is caseless. But if I was doing a case to computer as my main machine, you know why you have a desktop computer for ports, I would go and buy all those PCI USB things.
Those are not taking up any, um, of your CPU because they have their own little chips on them. They're just running on the PCI lane. So, you know, They're not eating away any resources. And I would fill up every PCI slot USB-C cards because they're just going to be useful. Especially if you get ones with a power delivery, 
James: [00:28:41] I'm a weirdo I have.
Um, maybe I'm not a weirdo, but I do have a, uh, have a, uh, Pia PCIE Wi-Fi card in my desktop, even though it is wired. Okay. Shit. Okay. 
Frank: [00:28:54] Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I don't know, like guys just good for location stuff and other things that don't come with an ethernet connection, even when I have either not connection.
So I like to have a wifi card just for other things. Yeah. It's always also for that very first moment. So I put together this computer and I boot it up. It's great. I even get windows on it. Got windows all happy. I'm sorry. I am going to do it Linux computer, but I'm going to do a dual boot. So it's a windows machine and a Linux machine.
So I got windows on it. It's all happy. And it's like, Hey, I don't have any ether, net drivers or anything. And I'm like, well, that's weird. And I could not figure it out. It was a little bit of that chicken and egg thing where you're like, well, how do I get stuff on here? And I'm like, oh right. You use USB dongles.
And I'm like, well, that's old fashioned. I don't want to do that. And then I went to the internet website to go do that. And I couldn't figure out which driver I wanted or which ne which one I needed because Intel names, everything. At the same bland name. So I couldn't figure out which, uh, driver I needed to.
So I'm like, oh boy, guess what I did. I went over to my old computer, grabbed a wifi card out of it, shoved that into this computer windows had a driver for that. So the wifi connected. I got my, all my real drivers cause uh, windows can look up drivers nowadays. That's kind of a nice feature. And once I got that ball rolling, everything was going.
So it's kind of funny. I do keep that one PCI card around just because I know windows has the driver for it and everything magically works with it. Yeah. I've 
James: [00:30:34] I definitely even have it. Like a random USB Wi-Fi dongle. There's like, from back in the day, I was like, you know, garbage at this point, it's like, it's like wifi B or something like that, BG, but just in case, because you never know when that yeah.
Your drivers aren't going to work. And you're like, oh, I just need to plug this thing in. And it's like, oh cool. Now you have wifi. Like, this is amazing. Or honestly, sometimes I use it because. I sometimes internet goes out and I need to tether. I need to tether my phone. I need to be online. And that's the only way I need that wifi.
That's also the other important part. 
Frank: [00:31:09] Yeah. And pro tip out there, there are websites that list, um, Which I keep on him to call him Juan cards wan because that's what the box always says, right? Wifi card, let's call it a wifi card. Um, they list which chips windows has drivers built in for. And so when you're shopping for one of these, just make sure you get one of those ones and you'll know that even if the machine is completely blank, you can jam it into the USB port and still get wifi.
Just a fun world. Pro tip. I can't believe we're at 31 minutes and I haven't gotten to the part that I really want to talk about. The GPU 
James: [00:31:44] James. Oh, the GPU I've heard of those, the graphical processing units. 
Frank: [00:31:50] You need a to draw the rectangles and the texture maps. Yeah, 
James: [00:31:56] that's correct. That's accurate.
That's exactly. That's all they do. That's all. They're good for. 
Frank: [00:32:00] Um, it occurred to me that I got into neural networks, I think somewhere around like 2017. Maybe even 16, I'll have to look it up sometime. And during that entire time I've been using the same GPU, which is kind of silly because GPS have advanced quite a bit since then.
Uh, I'm using a GTX 10 70, and it's great, but I'm a little bit tired of it. The thing. I know his newer Verde ones are faster. That's great. But even more importantly, newer ones have more memory on them. And what I really want is some memory. So I thought, I, you know, I don't need the latest and greatest James I'm patient I'm patient.
And I know that like all the newest GTX video cards are really hard to get. Especially, because I really wanted on when they first came out and they were just all sold out. You just could not get any of the, uh, 3000 series of GTX cards. And so I thought to myself, I'm like, huh, I wonder if that means that the 2000 series is cheap again.
What do you think James? The 2000 series are they cheap? No, they're all expensive. They're all expensive. It's the worst. I was so upset. I thought for sure, with like the three thousands being unavailable, that I'd be able to get some cheap two thousands, but no, it's just not the case. And what I mean is a 2080 T I, which is kind of the next logical upgrade from my video card.
It's still going for like $1,200. Yeah. 
James: [00:33:37] Wow. You're 
Frank: [00:33:38] much too much, especially for what a three-year-old card at this point. I mean, it's top of the line. It's top of the line three years ago, but 1200 hours. That's ridiculous. But James w we have not entered ridiculous. Cause let me tell you what video card I want.
I want the GTX 30, 90. Why do I want it the 30, 90? Can you 
James: [00:34:00] guess? Uh, does it have a dedicated TPU on. 
Frank: [00:34:06] Oh, all of these technically do, but whatever, that's just marketing. I don't know it's faster or whatever. Uh, it's the Ram, it has 24 a memory on it. 24 8. I know. I've, you know, I was thinking to myself like even big video games, not too many years ago could have fit in 24 gigabytes.
Like you could fit the entire video game into the memory of this video card. And I think that's kind of wonderful. 
James: [00:34:38] Oh my gosh. 
Frank: [00:34:39] So how much would you pay for these 24 gigabytes? 
James: [00:34:42] James' 2,500. Yeah. 
Frank: [00:34:44] Wow. You're actually. So no, you are incorrect, but you did, you did very well by prices, right? Rules. You did excellent because the average is more around 3000, but there are some available for 2,700.
Wow. I had to slow my words down there for a minute because I couldn't believe I was saying 2,700 for a video card. And I had to check myself yes. $2,700. So, so. What video card do you get for your computer? 
James: [00:35:15] Uh, I think you just put your 10 70 back in or whatever and call it a day. 
Frank: [00:35:21] I'm going to be using that card until I die.
I'm going to be 90 years old in bed, like, well, when someone hand me my GTX 10 70, I need to play in my world of 
James: [00:35:31] Warcraft. I literally have a GTX nine 80 and that has gone from computer to computer. Like my friend's computer to my other computer, to this new computer. It just, it just, you just, you know, you can't get rid of that.
It's a solid. 
Frank: [00:35:45] Because the video card is fine. I really don't understand why gamers are spending $3,000 for a video card. It's incomprehensible to me, the only reason I'm considering it is because I know neuro networks, if like I want to use a cloud solution, roughly cost me about a hundred dollars a day to use.
So in 30 days of neural network work, Um, the card would pay for itself. So the real question is, um, uh, if I could sign in blood with the devil or whether they're going to require some kind of like, I don't know, written promise for the future, that I'll do a task for them. I don't know. There's gotta be some deal.
James: [00:36:32] The problem that you have right now is that also you, you know, a chip shortage too, at the same time. And then a lot of these high-end cards are minor cards and there is a lot, you know, of scarcity of these two. So it's hard to get and they're expensive for that reason. So if you wait a year for five, you can get that card for cheaper.
Frank, maybe, probably not. 
Frank: [00:36:54] That's what I've been saying for the last five years with my 10 70, uh, this is all hearsay, but I did hear a funny thing that, uh, with a bit of the crackdown on Bitcoin in China, that some of these video cards are actually going for cheap on the street. So someone was joking that it might be actually worth flying to China and trying to get one of these video cards to bring home.
But I hope that's anecdotal and I'm not going to think about that because that's a bad place. And I'm totally not going to do that. Probably not, 
James: [00:37:26] probably not. Most likely, not, definitely not. 
Frank: [00:37:30] I do not want to put the 10 70 in this computer. I got to find some solution. I hope everyone will write in when they hear this episode and tell me what to buy.
I'm not going to make any decision this week. So everyone has time to write in. Please tell me what to do about my video card situation. And although I love the AMD and ATX, even though I'm building an Intel Nvidia machine, I have to do in video. I'm sorry. It's a software. We as software developers have let the world down and Nvidia is the only thing that can run the 
James: [00:38:00] networks.
I'm a big fan of the Nvidia cars, myself. There's the only ones I've ever owned. I've always had Intel and Nvidia cards, but I don't know. We'll see. W w w when we'll revisit this topic, whenever I decide to build a new computer, if I have to in a year or two years, or five years, or who knows next week, we'll revisit and see where we go and get a full breakdown of all that.
I hear that. There's people on the internet that probably have good lists of recommended configurations, but I don't know. I think half the fun is figuring it out yourself though. Like, you know, it hasn't, it's like, oh, there's a cute tuck, Damien. Like he has the list. And I was like, yeah, well, you know, it's the fun part is spending on 18 hours, figuring out what motherboard I want.
Cause there's so many options and this component and that component putting in spreadsheets and like, Put into Kalka then doing this and doing that. And you're like, that's the fun part about putting together? It's not the putting together the computer. That's not really fun. The fun part is figuring out what parts you want to put, and then when you get them all, and then when you do put them together and you're like, oh, I ordered it.
The role. Whatever 
Frank: [00:39:07] yeah. Was going to say the real joy is when you get like windows or some operating system to actually boot, because up till then, it's just, they're radically a computer. It's all here. It's just a bunch of components from boxes. Yeah. I agree with you. Um, I'm sure there are lists out there, but I love shopping online, especially turning the virus.
Building a computer online is really fun. You get to read so many reviews. James for this $3,000 video card. Do you know which one thing the reviews mentioned most about it? No, it was expensive. No, that it's nice and quiet. Oh, that was good. If you're going to spend $3,000 for a video card, I guess it better be quiet.
I just find it so funny. What, like people latch onto as the most important features of all these things? Uh, yeah, that's the best part. It's the building. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I actually meant Andy physical building too. So unlike you, I liked that part too. 
James: [00:40:06] Oh, no, I enjoy it. Yeah, I'm just saying I was just joking.
I was joking. All right. Well, so that's going to do it. I think. Don't 
Frank: [00:40:14] need to have our answered my question. I'm not putting a nine 80 Vietnam. Just kidding. We can end it, but I'm just saying I'm not putting a nine 80 video card in this, and I'm not putting a 10 70 video card in this. We need a solution.
People send me your suggestions. 
James: [00:40:28] Probably a 10 70. That was my ride. I saw 10 70, uh, let Frank know what he should do. What should he spend his hard earned dollars on, I think at 10 70, he already has it and he could then go out and. Put that into a high yield savings account. And then, you know, 10 years from now, you've got two, 10 seventies, um, anyways, and do it, let us know if you're building a new computer anytime soon, or if you did drop us your list.
I love to see people's bills. Sweet photos hit us up on Twitter at merge conflict. FM. We'd love to see that or in our show notes on merge conflict. Or just really anywhere. That's where we would like for you to go ahead and let us know, but I was gonna do it for this week's podcast. So until next time now I'm James Monson Magno and I'm Frank cruiser.
Thanks for listening.