It really depends though, if you want to do analog in or out, relay control, or use existing hats, you are bought/forced into the ecosystem. If you are just using it as a small computer, yeah roll with whatever. To me, it’s always occupied the void between an arduino and a sffpc or when I wanted to do compute and analog/digital control on something.

I had an 8350 machine with 32gb of ram when if was in season and while it never really left me short of power, the intel 4770k and 4790k were better performers. That may not be the case anymore with stuff being more multi-core optimized but at the time, the intel single core performance was so much better than the 8350s which made a bid difference in gaming.

My old rig was an 8350 overclocked to 4.5 on liquid, crossfired 3gb 7950hd’s, and 32gb of matched corsair dominator ddr3 all in a corsair 230t chassis with the bright orange paint and led fans.

Where we are now sure seems to be the direct result of people not getting their asses kicked for being pieces of shit.

Too many people accepted intolerance and bigotry being spread without natural consequences which let the bigots and bullies think they had the right to do it, and in the process, it convinced everyone else that the bullies were the majority.

Yeah if my wife’s family wasn’t here and unwilling to move, I would be somewhere less hostile and more functional too.

To run a heater or ac, you need a significant generator. I have been looking at battery systems and to run an existing residential ac, its like 10k and you need two inverters. Where I am, the power failures have been minimal and manageable (30 minute intervals every couple months) The exception was Hurricane Beryl and we were out of power for 3 days. I intermittently ran a generator for our fridge and the neighbors to charge stuff but even running a window unit was not an option on our 5000w generator. It burned maybe 2 gallons of gas?

Running an electric central air heater is also essentially out of the question. With a gas heater, you just need to run the fan and not heat the elements.

Despite the health risks, that is why we still use. Gas water heaters, gas furnaces, gas dryers, and a gas stove in our house. I want the fallback of running stuff without power. The grid is also shitty to the point (in some areas) that it fried my uncles induction stove, fridge, and ovens even living in a major city.

That also wouldn’t have helped during the winter storm in Austin because the gas supply basically froze and lost pressure so those folks were really hurting.

I think the big built in generators run 15k plus and run off natural gas. I did learn that they also require a maintenance subscription (because of course they do) and thats like 2k a year iirc.

Check your homeowners insurance cost and property taxes before you start talking about how cheap houses are in Texas. It can run $18k/year in insurance and another 10k in property taxes for a $400k house… If you put 80k down on a $400k house, the mortgage is roughly $2100/month in principle and interest, plus another $933ish per month for Property taxes($5000/year), insurance($5000/year), and hoa fees($1200/year). Your housing cost is ~$3k/month. Property taxes go up every year on top of that. They are limited to a 10%/year increase but historically, that translates to basically a guaranteed 10%/year increase, especially in the last 10 years. Insurance premiums have more than doubled in the last 10 years as well.

Welp, you have me soundly beat. My longest is 85 hrs and 6 minutes.

Great, that will show him not to do that again to Venuzuela… They need to vote to preemptively stop him from doing it elsewhere too. Buuuuut the president also has to sign the order if it even passes for it to take effect which is probably a realistic scenario.