AlessioCoco

@Tobility Wow, van life sounds like a massive step! If you don't mind me asking, what made you decide to make the move?
The setup with the XR glasses definitely makes a lot of sense for a tight space like that!

@StooMonster Thank you!

Haha I honestly didn't know MarineTraffic was a thing or that you could just track billionaire yachts like that. Pretty cool spot by your friend!

@StooMonster Didn't know I shared the birthday with Valve! Born the year later, in '97.
Not sure if I'm thrilled about the 30th year milestone, though 😆

@EvilSpaceLasagna1 It probably does come down a lot to your personal setup and usage. In my case, it's a visible issue and not just with blacks — the way I'd describe it is that all colors end up looking ever so slightly "lifted", almost like a faint veil over everything. And this is despite the room facing northwest with no direct sunlight ever entering it at all. I guess it also comes down to whether you're someone who's fine gaming in near-total darkness or not — personally I like having ambient light piercing through the window when I'm at the PC during the day, whether I'm watching a movie, gaming or working.

To be fair to QD-OLED though, WOLED has its own downside: HDR is less "poppy" overall, and gradation on greys, blues, etc. isn't quite as clean as what QD-OLED does. It's really a pick-your-poison situation between the two panel types — neither of these quirks bothers me enough to regret the choice though. I've never really used hdr that much.

One thing worth mentioning for your ASUS purchase: out of all the monitors I've owned, the OSD menu I liked best was actually Asus's — just has more options in there, like Black Frame Insertion, VRR flicker solution, and a few other genuinely useful things the others didn't offer.

As for the LG/McAfee thing — yeah, I actually caught the Gamers Nexus video myself too, about a week after making the purchase. I haven't run into it myself, not sure if it's because I bought mine used or because I'm in an EU country, honestly not sure which (if either) is the actual reason.

@EvilSpaceLasagna1 Honestly I went back and forth on how to vote too — torn between 6 and 10. Ended up going with 10 in the end mostly because I've only had the E-cores parked for less than a week.
Also didn't disable mine outright in BIOS — there's a neat trick on some boards (mine's an ASUS) called Legacy Game Compatibility Mode that lets you toggle the E-cores on/off on the fly with Scroll Lock, no reboot needed. Handy for testing per-game without committing to it full time.

I've actually got the LG 32GX850A, which is practically the same TrueBlack glossy WOLED panel as the XG32UCWMG you're eyeing, just the 165Hz version. Been a bit of a journey getting here too: started on an Asus WOLED at 1440p (visible pixel structure was the dealbreaker there), then a QD-OLED at 4K (great colors, but the shifting under ambient light bugged me more than I expected), and now landed on this one — no more of either issue.

Thankfully sites like Wallapop and Vinted exist, being able to buy and resell along the way is basically what made hopping between panels like that affordable in the first place.
Genuinely the happiest I've been with a display — hope yours turns out just as good when it arrives.

At this point though, between monitor names and motherboard names, I've just given up trying to make sense of them.😅

Voted 10 (intel i5 12600K), though funnily enough I've had the 4 E-cores parked for a while now. Games like Returnal run noticeably more stable with way less stutter — turns out the hybrid scheduling isn't always as smart as it should be, at least on my setup

@matmartin Same story here! I picked up the Asus XG27AQDMG (1440p) back in March last year for basically the exact same reasoning — didn't want to "need" a newer 80-class card just to drive 2160p properly.
Made the jump to 4K this year though, and I'm still running the same RTX 3080. Genuinely no regrets — DLSS at 4K holds up way better than I expected, even on a card that's almost years old now. Being a glossy OLED makes it even sweeter, the clarity/color really sells the resolution bump on top of everything else.

@KevinSelder I believe you found the reason why already. They don't need to sell millions of machines at a cheaper than production cost to sell their ecosystem, because they have a monopoly in the PC space. They're gonna be the preferred store either way. And they can't see the point of loosing money, if it doesn't bring any tangible advantage.

@Granadico I totally get your frustration, battery life on modern handhelds is a step backward compared to the GBA days.
However, the short battery life on the Switch 2 isn't actually because the hardware is 'power hungry' or inefficient. It's because Nintendo chose a physically very small battery.

The Switch 2 only has a 5,220 mAh (19.3 Wh) battery. To put that into perspective, it's actually smaller than the battery inside many normal smartphones today—especially Asian flagships like the Xiaomi 15 Pro / Ultra, which pack massive 6,000 mAh cells into a tiny chassis.

If you look at PC handhelds, they are on a completely different level: a standard ROG Ally has double the capacity (40 Wh), and the ROG Ally X has four times the capacity (80 Wh).

So the system is actually incredibly efficient for what it does. Nintendo just sacrificed battery capacity to keep the console thin and relatively light. To counterbalance the actual large footprint, I suppose.

@Pesky_wabbit I agree. I switched to the alienware aw2725q from the asus xg27aqdmg, and it's plenty sharp for my taste.
I'm overall very happy with the switch because the display is noticeably sharper and the full-color uniformity is absolutely perfect compared to the WOLED, I did lose some overall brightness though. More importantly, I've noticed a hit in the depth of blacks and dark colors in general when there is ambient light in the room, even if it's just coming from a simple window with a curtain. I already knew about the purple tint issue beforehand, but I honestly hoped it would be less noticeable in my setup.

@MattGPT I hadn't thought about that but it would be cool to see it tested.

Looks like a dog bone, kind of cute though.

@MattGPT Interesting point on the base consoles. I wonder if this will be the first time we see a significant gap between the Series X and PS5. Xbox has native INT8 support baked into its RDNA 2 implementation, but PS5 doesn't. If FSR 4 relies on that, the Series X could theoretically run the algorithm more efficiently while the PS5 deals with the emulation overhead.

A new laptop is not on my to buy list. But, I'm definitely interested in discovering the impact Nvidia would make by entering the ARM on Windows market. Will it deliver what Apple did by ditching Intel based x86 chips for their in house M series ones? I hope so. I believe it would benefit the newer gaming handhelds' generations, as well.

I’m relatively new to the PC world. My previous build of mid-2023 was actually the first one I've ever built; after switching from an Xbox Series S.
I upgraded about a year ago, moving from a Ryzen 5 3600 paired with an RTX 2080 to an i5-12600K and an RTX 3080. I kept my 16GB of DDR4 because I didn't feel like I needed, or need, any more than that amount and, as usual, bought everything used online. Seeing the current prices, I’m so glad I made the jump when I did!