Blog - SilverDiamond's site

Comparing hardware i use

Zenbook 14 2019

Featuring a i7-10510U it makes you wonder what does i7 even mean when it has so mediocre performance and mediocre battery life.
The 8GB of soldered on lpddr3 can be felt in anything from launching a web browser to trying to compile this site.
The 1080p screen looks good except for the backlight showing the display's age with 2 white spots at above where the hinge is.
Intel UHD graphics somehow are nerfed on linux, the uhd 620 can't comfortably launch garry's mod on linux while on windows it launches fine. Euro truck simulator 2 runs at below 720p and not hitting 30fps.
Setting up howdy for the IR login is simple on fedora (a bit more involved on debian if i recall correctly). The battery holds up well with 214 cycles and a reported health of 67%, it does barely survive 5 hours of local video playback. The touchpad screen is useless, more high resolution than the main display (2160x1080), and the reason the HDMI port is limited to 4k30.
IO is a 3.1 10Gb type A, a 3.1 10Gb type c (no charging, no displayport) and on the right a 2.0 type a, microsd and a headphone jack.
The front camera is nothing to talk about, its low res, slow framerate, pretty sure the ir mode makes it 480p but it works.
The keyboard is fine, theres basically no flex since its aluminum, the sole user replacable component is the SSD, and its an 660P with 512GB of storage you dont need to replace. Linux was sort of a pain to get working with secure boot but it is doable.

Surface Pro 2017 (5th gen)

A dual core i7 7660U that makes the quad core i7 10510U look like a powerhouse. Same story, 8GB of soldered ram. A really high res screen that looks yellow until you add the normal srgb profile on windows when it starts looking normal, at a 3:2 aspect ratio. Intel uhd 640 graphics that arent much different. On linux you can say goodbye to the IR camera as its not supported even with the surface-linux kernel. Battery has held up well but not many charge cycles (cba to check right now), its ass on linux. The touchscreen just is more convenient for certain applications, the pen is just good enough to write on it, the keyboard reminds you how slow your handwriting is but also flexes more than any other thing youre ever going to use. The IO is limited to a single microsd on the back, a single minidp port, a single usb 3 port, a headphone jack and the magnetic surface connect charge/dock port (i dont have a dock, the charger is okay though). Same story about secure boot, youll want it if you want windows to recognise your face + bitlocker. The SSD is soldered on, it is built like an ipad, the battery requires you to remove the screen glue which ill leave ifixit to tell you why thats bad. It also feels as if the igpu or the ram is going bad since i keep seeing graphical artifacts on both the internal display and external ones connected over with a minidisplayport to displayport then displayport to hdmi cable.

My desktop computer

A mishmash of the old one and ""new"" parts when i bought the parts. My old computer was a hp prebuilt with 12GB of ram, a i7-8700, a GTX1080, 128GB nvme ssd, 1TB HDD and a laptop style DVD burner. The upgrade i did in 2022 was buying a i7-12700k, on the cheapest z690 mobo (asus), with the cheapest 512GB ssd (transcend), a 1TB HDD, an asus ROG 850W 80+ Gold PSU, with 32GB of ddr4 (kingston), with a lian li AIO, and a thermaltake case. I took the HDD from the old pc, the GTX1080 and temporarily the SSD to move my stuff over. This desktop just feels right on windows 10 enterprise iot ltsc but ive been mainly using endeavouros on it for 3 years now and you can feel the gpu dying more and more. Repasting the GPU mightve been the worst thing i did since after i put it back toghether it wouldn't post until i reinserted it when it finally went back to normal. It has fallen of the bus at least once now with garry's mod running on it (with vsync at 1080p). The i7-12700k was not that much of an upgrade from the i7-8700, at first you could feel the difference but as time has passed its just not much different.

The ROG Ally

I have too much to say about this thing. Mainly freeing it from windows 11, having bazzite on it and then bazzite putting more gnome shit in my kde system, then moving to cachyos and having to fix sleep when powered in yourself with a udev rule thats on a github issue on the steamos bug tracker. The audio on the ally on linux remains a unsolved issue, upon resume or bootup it makes weird noises instead of playing the audio right and after 15min of playing on the baseus usb c to hdmi and usb3 dock with power delivery it either drops audio samples or the monitor starts delaying the audio all while the visuals are perfectly fine. The battery life is a joke, the screen is as good as its going to get on a 7 inch lcd color wise, the gpu really is like a 1650, the cpu is overkill for what you are doing most of the time on it, the egpu connector still has had no cheap clone that you can put on the open source egpu dock . The fingerprint support for my model has still not been merged into libfprint (it will be eventually), tough luck for those that bought the one with the other fingerprint sensor. You could totally play wireless VR on it at low settings if you had nothing else to play on (ive tried euro truck sim 2 and vrchat on it).

Game controllers

I have both a Xbox Series controller (model 1914) that has developed stick drift on the Y axis on the right stick and a dualsense (one of those coloured ones from the redesign that was supposedly better). The xbox controller has awful linux support out of the gate, installing xone will let you use its headphone jack so long as you dont break it physically, THE ONLY REDEEMING FEATURE IT HAS IS THE AA batteries which you presumably have 8 of and you can have the ones you use in the controllers and the rest to charge. The dualsense controller feels nicer, vibrates nicer, has a touchpad, has gyro, still will suffer from the same stick drift (its not hall effect/TMR), has the resistive triggers that you gotta experience in something like F1 22 before you can say you really have tried them but has no replacable battery. I do not have a ps5 or a xbox, the only console i have is a xbox360 which sits in the living room collecting dust waiting for someone to play just dance on its kinect.

The quest 3s

I bought it just as they were bundling a batman game with it and thankfully have blocked it from internet access. Thanks to freexr it has temporary root at v74. I dont think it has displayport out capability as noone else has talked about that. The displays look washed out and the black levels are very noticable in dark scenes, the resolutions too are not anything to write home about but they will give your PC's gpu something to do. The sound at lower volume produces noticable """bass""" while if you put it to the max volume you wont hear much of it. The passthrough cameras are blurry at best.

I will probably edit this in the future but thank you for reading this yapping session ig.