Inspired by @PicklePete ‘s sim station….
I have a ROG Ally Extreme. It’s the mid-range one. I also have an Xbox Series S and a Switch, but I mostly use the Ally. It’s nice to play Resident Evil 5 in bed at 120 FPS. It’s my little Resident Evil Machine. 2009 me would be so jealous. Star-Lord protects the whole operation. He can get a little mouthy.
Edit: oh, and a Flydigi Vader 4 Pro controller, which give me easy gyro with no fiddling. Love that thing.
I have a new PS5 going in to my 1440p display and audio over S/PDIF into my audio interface and studio monitors
I keep thinking about getting a PS5 but I tend to overdo it every generation and I don’t want to end up owning all of the consoles again.
Me, literally last month: “man, I wish Valve hadn’t killed the SteamBox. Oh well, I’ll get a PS5 and rebuy some games.”
I laughed pretty hard at the announcement 
In 2016, after finishing a few heavy volunteer projects, nearly doing all the heavy lifting, and basking in limelight of their wins, I found myself looking at a couple months of down time where I just wanted to veg…for a little while.
So, I bought my first gaming console, a Xbox One X, and a hardcopy of No Man’s Sky. That console’s hard drive died a few years later, taking what I’d built in NMS with it.
So, I decided I wouldn’t get another console and rather build my own gaming PC (which I had no experience in). Full-sized Phantexs Eclipse tower, water-cooled, 5 140mm fans, loads of RAM, etc., etc. I was surprised after loading the boot software that the beast actually fired up…..and worked!
It’s still working and I’ve thrown a few high demand games at it, and it’s never let me down, even a few years later. Elite Dangerous, Forza Horizon, Sekiro, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth Wukong, Warframe, X4 Foundations.
This is also my main computer and I’m a photographer with over 200k images. I had to find a large monitor that could split duty between very highly detailed work, and the demands of gaming. Those two are usually on opposite ends of the spectrum, so this was tough, at the time.
Recently we also picked up a PS5 that’s now connected to the OLED TV in our living room, for my wife and I to do Cart Racing and the like on. So I guess I did buy another console after all.
Saw the Valve announcement, and figure that could be the last nail in the Xbox coffin, but we’ll see. Pricing will tell part of that tale I guess.
I am finally set to retire my gaming rig that I built in 2015.
For the first time ever, I’m buying a prebuilt tower instead of shopping parts and constructing my own. Picking one of these up from Microcenter this afternoon:
https://www.microcenter.com/product/698874/powerspec-g527-gaming-pc
I gave up in 2021 and just bought an Alienware that I retired this summer. It runs fine but I don’t game much anymore and wanted to get tf away from Windows. If I feel like spinning something up, I can play Cyberpunk 2077 natively on my Mac Studio.
I’d never seen or heard of a Mac Studio before, and just checked some of their builds on B&H. Impressive. We have two Mac laptops, and a Mac Mini connected to our TV. I love how they’ve never needed anything, but when they do, they are hard to work on I had to trash an iMac because they weren’t meant to be worked on at home.
I’m about 80% certain I’m going to end up installing SteamOS on it. Possibly set it to dual-boot between multiple OS’s.
I’ve done linux OS’s several times over the years. I really like it for work, especially for science (I worked for the USGS for awhile), but for home I don’t want to go through the cycle of always finding alternatives for programs, workarounds, or trying to McGuyver stuff to get what I’m after. I just want a system that works.
When I first got into Mac, there was a moderate need for that same McGuyvering, to get productive tools outside of the art space to work on them. That’s gotten better, as has the number of games that are ported to Mac.
I figure SteamOS would sidestep the biggest thing I’d be worried about getting to work: gaming. But dual-boot OS’s gives me an option to not have to worry about that.
Plus I use my laptop for work and most tasks.
Edit:
New PC has a 1TB SSD with Win11. Old PC has 512mb SSD, 1TB HD, and 1TB SSD.
Keep the current 1TB SSD with Win 11 as is. Old 1TB SSD gets a fresh install of SteamO2. The 1TB HD gets used for general, system agnostic file storage: documents, music, videos, etc.
I heard that ended up being real good. It’s been a while since I tried anything truly open-world, not counting the Oblivion remake, which I got into for a minute.
That looks awesome dude! I’m thinking about a minor upgrade to the Ally X but not sure it’s worth it versus the one I have. I like to keep a console around for when I want a AAA game and don’t want to fuck with settings, but I’ll probably stick with a handheld for the PC, I just love the form factor.
It’s been around 20 years since I used a Linux distro as my daily driver, but I been thinking a bit about my computing future and Linux lately. Depending on how invasive all this “agentic operating system" crap (even the name irritates me) that Microsoft is pushing turns out, I may go to Bazzite or Steam OS.
Uninterestingly, I just happened to do a clean Windows 11 install just yesterday and it took me nearly an hour to figure out how to create a local account and get rid of all traces of OneDrive so that it won’t reinstall after every update. At this point I’m just like please, Mr. International Corporation, can you leave my shit alone after I buy it? And miss me with all this AI dogshit while you’re at it.
My primary use for my computer these days is for gaming; everything else I do is household stuff that can be done in a browser or on an Android app. Heck, I could probably cover all of my desktop needs with Samsung Dex (which is fun to play around with, btw). I can see myself using music-related apps in my near future now though, and I don’t know what the state of that is on Linux. I’ll never need professional-levels of that either though, so honestly, Android likely has me covered in that regard if desktop Linux doesn’t.
With gaming, it’s nice to have Game Pass as an option, and that’s the main reason for staying on Windows for now. I like to be able to subscribe for a month when they get something good that I don’t necessarily want to own. I can beat most games in that time frame, and (for now) it’s cheaper than buying most new AA/AAA titles, and I can play/try out other games on there too before the month ends.
Got new rig up and running. All three drives recognized no problem.
Looks like SteamOS is not being supported for desktop use yet. It’s designed for portable devices, but whatever. I suspect they’re going to have it ready to rock probably around the release of the Steam Machine.
This rig will be all ready to install that on my 2TB SSD when it happens.
Edit:
Looked at Bazzite and am going to try that and see what I think.
I think this is what most people are doing.
You can also try the latest Crossover on any mac or linux machine now and see how it does. Proton is better but it’s the same folks.
not a big gamer but i have been seriously eyeing an OLED steam deck. my justification is that as i get older it’s better for my brain to game vs doomscrolling/passively watching. right? right?
Absolutely for sure. Dopamine is a way better addiction than Cortisol
A bit of a old pic from when I first set up my HOTAS desk mounts, but not much has changed, other than removing the desk drawer on the left and I’ve rotated keycaps again since then back to the stock ones from the keychron.
I sold my 1 year old gaming PC, and technics stereo that had been the heart of my gaming and all round entertainment as I needed to be more portable.
I now have a Ryzen 7 5800 laptop with RTX 3080 GPU, and PreSonus Eris 3.5 monitor speakers, which are really good.
I’m not gaming too much, and the laptop manages reasonably well with Davinci Resolve, which is the hardest it has to work most of the time! I’ve got an external M2 for additional storage. The only thing I’ve played recently is Euro Truck Simulator 2. I just love driving around Europe, for real, and in games
Anyway, it is easier to pack and travel with, so I have achieved my goal
I call it my Steam Therapy
