I need a new monitor

I’ve got my eye on one of those programming monitors from BenQ. They look nice, and the matte front-lit option seems really appealing for sprints.

I’m rocking an HP 24ec right now, it’s from like… 2016-ish. I’ve long since lost the power supply, and use a third party cheapo power supply that can barely do the job. Scratch that, could barely do the job. The PSU is dying, and fast. It runs hotter than it ever used to, I get flickering from dirty off-spec power on the screen (apartment life is great y’all). And If I change too many things on screen at once the whole thing turns off for a few seconds. It’s honestly a bizarre failure mode. It’s been doing this more frequently for a few months now, and I’m so fuckin sick of it. Can’t afford a new monitor though. Especially the one I want.

At what point do I grab a $70 smart-tv in the right size and just never hook it up to the web?

I don’t do much gaming anymore, it’d be nice to have a display I can actually drive at the rate I’m cranking frames out. What’s the point of current gen hardware if you’re locked to 1080×60?

I need to fix my 3070 too. I was using it as a compute card until my brain fell out of my ass and I adjusted wires (to fix thermal issues) while the machine was on. One bright flash later and thats a dead gpu, damaged PCI lanes, and an NVME drive that needs to be pre-initialized before the system is brought online or I can’t boot.

Describing this, I think it’s become clear I actually need a new computer, but this one is only from 2020, 6 years isn’t very old for a PC. I used a Compaq Armada from 1995 until 2008. But damage is damage, and this HTPC case is a lot of work to keep cool.

I’m imagining the comments in the “rate my battlestation” post now. I’ve got optical drives and HDDs connected by sata cables just flooding out of the back of the machine, a bent to hell case cover to accommodate my too large tower cooler (air coolers are like $30, water coolers start at 3x that), and on top of that my fans aren’t even PWM, just straight DCV modulated which is not only jank, but impossible to properly control.

I think I need a new rig… entirely.

I’ll stick with a monitor, and maybe when I finally get out of school I’ll look into a mac pro or something.

Maybe by the time I am ready to look for a new PC Gershwin Desktop will be baked enough to daily drive.