#i know for sure it's a physical thing or a non-updated driver but idk how to update it

[mewomanjericao]

fUCK i might have to get my computer brianwashed again 💔💔💔💔💔

[thebookworm0001]

Words cannot express how much i want either a gaming laptop or a pc

Friend, I understand you completely. It’s why I saved up for a long time to build my own. Did you come here for a how-to on how to build one for yourself? Probably not! But I’m gonna tell you how anyway because it is significantly cheaper to build yourself a pc than to buy one (and laptops are even more expensive).

So! You wanna build a computer? Here’s what you need:

-Motherboard. All the things plug into this. Very Important. Do not break. When handling, touch metal beforehand so you don’t shock it with static and fry it. Comes in 3 sizes aka form factors: ATX (standard). mATX (smaller). itx (holy shit its tiny) smaller=/=cheaper! all pretty much have the same layout and all come with a manual. front panel connectors are a bitch.

-CPU. Your processor! The thing that processes all the ones and zeros into shit you actually understand. Very expensive. Very delicate. Do not drop. Needs something to keep it cool. Lots of cpus will come with a cpu fan in the box but not all. They touch the cpu with a weird paste called thermal paste that helps heat go away. Fans or liquid cooling will screw into the motherboard over the cpu.

-GPU. The most expensive part of your build, probably. If you’re building a gaming pc it’ll probably be ~1/3 of your budget. It’s the thing that makes everything pretty and visible. Gotta have a graphics card to see what the ones and zeros are doing. Two brands rule the GPU market: Nvidia and AMD. Idk if one is better than the other but I went AMD because i could get a better one for cheaper so.

-RAM. Your computer’s short-term memory. Lots of RAM means more tabs of Google Chrome open at a time. 16 gigs will get you through just about anything. 32 is generally overkill. 8 is less than you want for a dedicated gaming pc since most newer games have a higher RAM demand.

-Storage. Comes in two forms: a physical hard drive (reliable but kinda slow at this point when compared to an ssd. definitely your cheapest option) or a solid-state drive (smaller than a HD. much faster. more expensive. generally comes either as a 2.5″ brick-looking thing or a stick called an m.2 which is even more expensive and even faster) You want enough of this to store your operating system and games on. Lots of people go with a base of 1 TB (1000 gigabytes) because games take up a lot of room. 500 can get you through if your library is smaller or you don’t mind rotating games on and off the computer. can get one big storage thing or as many as you want. some people have a smaller ssd to hold the operating system and frequently used games (so they load fast) and store everything else on a much larger hd.

-Power Supply. Pretty self explanatory. The thing that powers all the other things. You want one that gives you enough power for all the parts to work at the same time at max capacity. Don’t cheap out on this they can do weird shit like explode and break all your parts. Come in three types: non-modular, semi-modular, and modular. it just determines how many power cords are permanently attached to the power supply. non-modular are cheaper, but tend to have mustard-and-ketchup colored cords (not pretty) and they can be a pain to manage. you gotta hide those extra cords you aren’t using somewhere (which is why people like cases with a ‘shroud’ or little box that hides the power supply). Modular are more expensive but it’s really nice to only plug in the cables you need. 

-Operating system. Yeah you built the computer but you gotta have a thing that lets you interact with it. Windows is the most common. You can also get it for free. Kinda. Gotta flash drive? Go here and download the windows installer, stick the usb into your new computer and BAM! Windows is installed. You’ll have a nasty watermark and be unable to put your own background on it without an activation key (~$130 for Windows 10) but you can use it.

-Case. The thing you put everything else into. Can be plain black boxes or wierd illuminati pyramid things. Make sure the size matches up with your motherboard form factor. There are these little screws called standoffs in the case that secure the motherboard to it. The standoffs have to match up or the motherboard won’t fit. Power supplies and graphics cards also have to fit inside the case - make sure it’s big enough. Those dimensions will be listed with the info for the case and the individual parts. Case can come with fans or without. (You need fans. They keep your parts from heating up - which kills them. there’s also water cooling but its more expensive and scares the heck out of me. most cases only really need the fans that come with but you can add more.)

That’s it! (well. plus a monitor and keyboard and mouse and speakers/headphones but those aren’t the computer. also optional: rgb - the fun lights that make your case look like a unicorn barfed inside it. can be part of your fans or just strips of lights. lots of gaming motherboards have rgb built in. i like rgb.)

Sites like https://pcpartpicker.com/ will help you figure out the parts you need and if they’re compatible. Because it sucks to buy your parts and realize they don’t go together. The big ones? Motherboard and cpu. CPUs are generally made by either Intel or AMD. Currently, AMD is the best bang for your buck. Motherboards are designed to work with one brand of cpu - and generally specific chipsets. Motherboards will tell you the chipsets or series they work with (eg a 3000 series chipset which means it can work with any ryzen 3000 cpu like a Ryzen 5 3600 or 9 3900x). Motherboards will also only work with specific RAM depending on your CPU. There’s a support page on their sites that gives cpu and ram compatibility. RAM support pages show up like this:

which sucks (this is for the B550M AORUS ELITE (rev. 1.0) board from Gigabyte)

just google that module pin and the right shit will pop up. that first one is the  VENGEANCE® LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 4000MHz C19 Memory Kit - Red (aka corsair’s vengence lpx line of ram with 4 8gb sticks of ram that run at 4000 megahertz in a fancy red case - you can see all that info in the pin number if you pay attention but its easier to google. the faster the ram [that MHz number] the more expensive. the more gigabytes the more expensive. ram also comes with rgb options. they are more expensive.)

Always makes sure stuff is compatible. Pcpartpicker will tell you if something isn’t. It’s very helpful. but also check the motherboard support lists. nothing else has compatibility issues generally: manufacturers want you to be able to use whatever parts you can get with their stuff so you keep buying from them.

sites like https://benchmarks.ul.com/ https://www.gpucheck.com/ and https://www.userbenchmark.com/ are great for comparing. wanna know if you can get a cheaper part that works just as well? go to these places. 

benchmarks.ul

gpucheck (RX Vega 56 vs AMD Radeon Rx 5600 xt)

userbenchmark (Jedi: Fallen Order recommended parts vs my own build)

Newegg.com is a really great place to buy your parts and it usually has the cheapest prices. Make sure to shop around though. pcpartspicker is pretty good about telling you where the best prices are, but sometimes amazon or newegg will drop their prices randomly. also with the plague times, prices and availability are fucking weird right now. stuff will be out of stock for weeks. just. pay attention and check frequently.

I really like this video for trying to figure out budgets. Only have $300 to spend? They got you. Have $3000? They’ve got a guide for that as well. There’s a ton of budget build guides out there but this is the most recent one I like. Motherboard prices could be down a bit due to the very recent release of the b550 chipset, but again, plague times are making computer parts more expensive. That channel has a ton of reviews actually (and step-by-step guides for building) and is geared toward the gaming-minded so if they say a laptop or prebuilt computer is good and fits your budget, check it out. Prebuilts make life easier for you, but you can end up getting a less-than-stellar quality with the additional cost of construction. plus building your own means you know exactly what to do when it comes time to upgrade your parts. 

once you put everything where it should go, turn it on! it might not work, that’s okay. you might not have plugged something in all the way! or maybe a part was dead on arrival. get that fixed and install your operating system. once that’s done - get connected to the internets (if you don’t have a wifi card installed you gotta plug that sucker into the wall via an ethernet cable) and start downloading drivers from the motherboard manufacturer’s website and the gpu manufacturer’s website. your motherboard might come with a dvd of them but if you don’t have an optical drive (dvd player) that doesn’t help you. update your operating system. then download your games and play! (you can also do this thing called overclocking where you go into the bios when your computer is loading and max out all your hardware’s settings but that isn’t necessary for casual gameplay and can also void your warranties)

i hope you enjoyed that infodump you didn’t ask for!

[ramentravel]

20170430

Wulai is LIT how come I aint ever been here before!!!

We started the day off by going to bitan!

Couldn’t find my old socks so I wore my new ones.

THESE ARE SO CUTE I LOVE.

I actually went to bitan four years ago with jobo and steven and damn did we have an adventure. I’ll honestly never forget that day lmao

mrt was empty on the way over so i snapped a pic!

This time my parents and I took it easy by just walking around and crossing the bridge!

It was bright and sunny in the morning so I was actually pretty hot. This time I put on sunscreen and used my umbrella at almost all times though lol

Since it was hot we stopped by 7 eleven and got some ice cream! Since I got one of the ice creams I always used to get, this time I decided to get the other.

It was so good omg, better than I remembered tbh. No wonder I used to get it so often

After that I was like “where are we going dad” and he was like “wulai” and I’m like “the fuck is that? I’ve never heard of this place, must be boring” but anyways we got on the grueling bus ride in which we stood for like 40 minutes on a swervy mountain road with rickety handholds and it was just. A mess. We got there in the end but I was in extreme mental and physical pain by the end of it lmao

BUT it was worth it cause wulai is totally gorgeous!

By the time we got to the marketplace it was already lunchtime but we popped into the aboriginal museum to check out the stuff there first!

It was very cool and had free admission! it was super informative and I’m glad we went. The facial tattoos that the Atayal people use is also really pretty!

After the museum we got lunch at some random restaurant that I didn’t take a pic of. BUT the food was actually surprisingly really good!

We got bamboo rice, purple rice, some fish thing, and two vegetable dishes. I thought it’d be too much for 3 people but turns out it was perfect since we finished it all and didn’t feel uncomfortably full! it was a little expensive but I can appreciate that they didn’t rip us off with bad tourist trap food. Like japan did lmao I SEE U JAPAN AND I CAN READ (SOME) JAPANESE OK

Anyways more scenery of wulai.

After lunch we were like… ok are we done or do we hike 50 minutes up to the mountains (keep in mind I am Weak and my mom’s knees aren’t doing so well)??? In the end we took a taxi up which was AMAZING and totally worth it. Saved my life. Saved all of our lives

At the top (I think?) we decided to take a cable car to the hotel at the top of wulai! It used to be a hotel called yunxian and it was constructed when mom and dad were just babies. It was a luxury hotel for $$$rich$$$ people and had amusement parks and gardens attached. I knew none of this so damn was I IN FOR THE TIME OF MY LIFE

So here’s pics from the cable car

Once at the top it was just… *100 emoji* weather was SO nice and it was just beautiful all around. Amazing foliage and wildlife and it was just… gorgeous. We spent some time just sitting there by the cable car and taking in the nice weather and everything. We’ve really been blessed on this trip with good weather; it’s going to get hot again tomorrow and then with the month of may comes humidity, mosquitos, and summer, BUT we won’t be here so we dodged it right in time!

But anyways. Back to wulai

this plant is so cute!!!!!!!!

Afterwards we began the stairs up to the hotel. There were a few cute landmarks along the way!

The small Buddhist temple seemed well-visited! I’m glad it’s not neglected.

We even saw little statues on the cliffside! This pic was taken on a steep rock; idk how anyone got them up there!

After a few hundred steps (probably over 200 but idk for sure tbh) we made it!!

Saw a dragonfly by the bathroom. It was huuuge

We spent some time with our feet in the water but actually it was FREEZING COLD though I got used to it after a while. My feet turned bright pink lmao

Honestly I can’t remember all of the sections of the hotel/resort so I’ll just picdump nau

Lovers’ swing except im single :(

This was a very unstable looking bridge that we crossed anyways. The handrails had rusted and broken off and the concrete foundation was crumbling a little bit, but to my surprise my parents just walked on it like it wasn’t a big deal. It was pretty high up and did not look safe… but whatever. It was very fun! And it led to a beautiful train-track kind of forest… thing. Very Ghibli

#aesthetix (i’m actually looking at a very large ant on the post)

The amusement park part was probably my favorite! The resort is (probably) not used anymore and all of the equipment is old and unattended so it has a post-apocalyptic feeling to it. Y’all know I’m all bout that. BUT the best part is, IT’S ACTUALLY STILL IN USE like you can pop in some money and go on these rides for real!!! I didn’t do that tho I just took some pics

There are some old stages in use too! Accompanied by fish and black swans. Only time I’ve seen black swans was when we were visiting that chiang kai shek garden with black army swans I think. Nts maybe I can find that blog post in helloformosa? Edit: FOUND IT!

I had a BLAST at the archery “field” which apparently I didn’t take a pic of (took plenty of videos though!) dad and I both tried and we were pretty consistently good! It made me wanna do archery again L it’s so fun and the weight that I got was so light I was like “damn I can do this” lol

Three games of archery or paintball was 180! so we went for two rounds of archery and one round of paintball

On second thought maybe paintball isn’t the best word to describe this but whatever. This was fun too! More of dad’s thing I think lol

last few pics of wulai!

After that we went back down the cable car and took a taxi all the way back to xindian (where bitan is and where we started our day)!

Taxi driver was super funny; she is an aboriginal herself and talked a lot about her job and family and customs… she talked NON-STOP. I fell asleep for most of it but she said that her family still goes hunting (but not often) and she used to accompany her father to hunting sessions! And she and her family still speak the aboriginal language. They also eat the traditional foods, like the bamboo rice we had but she said that traditionally it’s just white rice, not the sticky rice we ate with meat and other condiments! It was very interesting and she had a very cute and easy-to-understand accent :)

Once we got to xindian we took the jieyun back to Taipei so we could go explore Taibei dixijie!

Aka

Otaku hell

Or heaven depending on how u wanna look at it

All these brief pics of figurine storefronts don’t even capture the true scale of all the figurines. There are SO MANY of these shops. I didn’t go into any as 1. I don’t collect figurines, 2. I am done getting my friends gifts (FINALLY), 3. I’m with my parents and if they go in and see these titty nee-chans with their plastic panties out for the world to see then they will smite and disown me so no thanks

It was fun though and we did buy a few things! Mostly hygiene stuff (got some brush thing for cleaning and some nail stuff) and some more earrings… they’re so nice here I can’t help myself lol

ALSO GUESS WHAT I SAW!!!!!

Is this familiar? EDIT: turns out today i went to bitan and taipei dixiajie. and when i went with steven and jobo, i went to bitan and taipei dixiajie in one day too lol

We didn’t go in. again

This time we decided to eat a little bit before heading to a night market so we went to some random 鍋類 place which was actually surprisingly delicious. And it was only 119 kuai so like 4 dollars? I didn’t even finish my rice and it also came with unlimited milk tea or lemon black tea. It was so good fml

After semi-filling our tummies we started to make our way to the night market!

On our way we saw this beautiful temple… honestly it was stunning; seems like it’s not popular though L it has stone-carved walls like longshanshi does!

And then we made it to our destination: ningxia yeshi!

these shrimp were HUUUGE

the line for this rice-stuffed squid was so long!

it’s literally in front of an elementary school wtf

Today I was feeling much better and had an appetite so I got lots of food! Takoyaki, huasheng quan bingqilin, and jidangao!

Everything was so good fml I love it :’( why did I have to get my appetite back on the NIGHT I leave Taiwan???

It also occurred to me I haven’t gotten bubble tea on this entire trip cause of my stupid indigestion problem and I thought it was too hot to get a milk drink so I always got that grapefruit drink instead. FML I REGRET IT I HOPE THERE WILL BE ONE MORE CHANCE SOMEHOW

EDIT: actually i got bubble tea at sharetea once in jinshan!

We stopped by the mitsukoshi and shops by zhongshan jieyun zhan and I got some skincare from too cool for school! Which is apparently an American brand wtf

We also got bread for breakfast tomorrow!

And I also stopped by banila co to get some clean it zero, too UGUU SO MUCH MONEY SPENT IN SO LITTLE TIME

After that we came back to our bnb and this is the last night we’re spending in Taiwan! Ok now that I think about it more, it just gets more and more depressing lol

I love this place so much :’( I didn’t cry like I thought I might when we landed but I sincerely love it here. Tbh at first I felt extremely out of place but I’ve gotten more comfortable since (maybe after I got my hair cut? Lol) and now I feel sad to leave. But I know japan will be super fun and I’m looking forward to eating all the good food and seeing the CUTE SHIT there!!!! THE TRUE MOTHERLAND OF GUDETAMA AND

SAUCE.K!

DON’T WORRY I DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT HIM!

I will update tomorrow hopefully! Fingers crossed japan goes well!!!!!!

GOOD NIGHT!