Hardware

Computers

Philosophy

I like full-sized form factor builds for expandability, ease of maintenance, and generally cheaper and more available used parts.

Similarly, I prefer air-cooling over water-cooling for better reliability and repairability.

And I hate RGBs.

Desktop PCServerLaptops

My PC runs Windows 11 and is mostly use for gaming.

• BenQ Zowie XL2566K

I mostly play VALORANT so the 25" size and 360Hz refresh rate goes well together. I don't recommend this monitor, however, as it is 1080p and a TN panel. My dream monitor would be a 25" 1440p OLED at 360Hz.

• GIGABYTE X570S AORUS Master
• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
• Noctua NH-D15 chromax.Black

AM4 is more than adequate for my fidelity and performance needs right now. I don't intend to upgrade to AM5. The next platform upgrade would likely be AM6 or Intel's equivalent.

• Fractal Torrent
• EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra
• Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus 1TB
• Crucial P3 3.0 4TB
• be quiet! Dark Power 12 1000W

My home server runs Unraid. The primary usage is for media archival and consumption. It also hosts my Home Assistant, Gitea, and Mastodon instance. See .wiki/self-hosted.

• Fractal Meshify 2 XL

I maxed out this case with 20 3.5" drives. I'll start to rotate out older and smaller capacity drives on upgrades for next few years. On the next platform upgrade (in ~5 years), I'll probably move to a rackmounted form factor.

• ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming X
• AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
• Noctua NH-D15 chromax.Black
• PNY RTX 4000
• Micron 32GB DDR4-3200 ECC UDIMM 2Rx8 CL22 MTA18ASF4G72AZ-3G2R
• 178TB of mixed 3.5" drives: retail, shucked, and used

Main data array (150TB), formatted in XFS and runs with 2 drives (2x 14TB) as parities.

Disk Prices (US) is convenient price checking/tracking tool for drive prices.

• 2x 1TB WD SN750 NVMes

Primary cache that holds app and configuration data. They are formmatted in ZFS and run in RAID1

• 2x 2TB Crucial MX500 2.5"

Secondary cache used for temporary data and faster decrompression. They are formated in btrfs and run in RAID0.

• be quiet! Dark Power 12 1000W

• Apple 14" Macbook Pro M3 Max, 36GB unified memory

This is my de-facto workhorse. The hardware and form factor is perfect for my use case. I plan on renewing AppleCare for it when it expires and don't intend on upgrading for the foreseeable future.

• Lenovo Thinkpad X1C6

This was my old laptop and used for about 6 years. It runs macOS, see .wiki/projects/x1c6-hackintosh.

Mobile

• iPhone 14 Pro

It's an iPhone: nothing more, nothing less. It's much more powerful than what I use it for, especially since I don't care for photos. The battery life is what matters most to me. Should Apple releases a new iPhone Mini, I'd likely swap to that.

• iPad Mini 6^th Gen

I use the iPad Mini to read the web, comics, mangas, and the occasional textbooks. It's also how I watch movies and shows on the treadmill.

• Kobo Clara BW

This is my default device for reading books. And since the majority of my book-reading are before bedtime, it lives primarily on my headboard or nightstand.

Runs koreader/koreader

Consoles

• Steam Deck OLED LE

I love my Steam Deck OLED. I previously had a standard Steam Deck and cannot recommend the OLED model enough. I use it at my desk, in bed, and on travel. I play mostly indie and emulated titles on it.

• Nintendo Switch OLED

This is solely for Nintendo exclusive games.

• ANBERNIC RG35XXSP

I use this to mostly play Pokemon ROM hacks.

Runs MuOS instead of the stock operating system.

Miscellaneous

• Apple AirTag
• Yubikey 5C

Tip

Yubikey can also be used for GnuPG and SSH.

See drduh/YubiKey-Guide