Date: 2025-05-12 Last Update: 2025-05-17 Upgrade by downgrade -------------------- Recently I upgraded my computer setup. I had some curved 24' VA monitor, not bad, but I did not like curvature and some gaming features, like high refresh rate and other nonsense. While all those things can be setup and disabled, I don't like things I don't use. I tried several monitors, all were crap ;/ The worst was probably official Raspberry Pi 15'6 monitor. No blue light filter, connectors at the back were hard to reach, stand was not good. Most importantly I found that I can't use small screen even I would wish. My eyes are not so good at looking at small objects. The most chilling for my eyes is big screen enough that I can put monitor more far from my face, set brightness as low as possible and obviously some low blue light. I got Lenovo ThinkVision T24i-30, 23,8 inch screen, 60Hz, HDMI, DisplayPort, audio jack output and few USB ports. Audio jack was important for me as my Raspberry Pi 5 does not have one, so it sends audio over HDMI to monitor and monitor sends it to my cheap speakers. I am satisfied with this display. No high refresh rate, no gaming features, it does not consume electricity like a Tesla car. As bonus I got some VESA stand, as my table is small, so I can move monitor more to the edge of the table. I should definitely get better table as with current chair this combo hurts my whole body hard. Next upgrade was to get rid of Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT and SSD and upgrade by downgrade to SD card. I got rid of official Raspberry Pi active cooler and got passive Edatec plates. I have impression that temperature is even lower than previously with active cooler placed under the M.2 hat. Now this setup is more simple and minimal without any fuss or crap. I am still working on peripherals like keyboard and mouse. That is not that easy. Mouse is easier, currently I use Canyon M-10, 5 eur piece and it is pretty good and usable. It's pretty hard to get some simple low DPI and low polling rate mouse without any Las Vegas modes so it's not like clown gear. There are many, but they are pretty bad. I had Logitech G102 lighting. Good mouse, ergonomics but it was still kitchen sink edition even all nonsense was turned off. The hardest thing is probably good keyboard without any Christmas tree features. Well now it is the hardest, after I got the monitor ;/ I had Keychron V1 with blue switches. Great keyboard for typing but again it had more than it should. I tried some random cheap pieces and all were really bad. I tried Cherry Stream Keyboard TKL recently. It was usable, but maybe only in ideal position and environment which will obviously never happen. I can have dry fingers or really tired and it felt a bit hard to press keys then or fingers just slipped out of key. It felt good at the beginning, but more I used it, the less I liked it. It was similar to old ThinkPad keyboards, but quality was not there. It has no any feature, no backlight, no RGB, no N-Key Rollover, no anti-ghosting, no shit ;/ Just keys you can press, that I want. What is nice and rare, Cherry website has a lot of information about their keyboards in datasheets. It's nice to know some technical details instead of just marketing slogans and hype words what is the case with most products today. To be well informed helps to get things you really want. I can't get Ducky keyboard out of my head for some time now. I had one for a short period in the past and I liked the whole package, typing quality. That time I think I did not like switches I choose. I have to say, I am not fan of aluminum body, and too open top of keyboards. Touching aluminium is not pleasant for me. So one Ducky keyboard will be at my table soon. Sadly not really the version I wanted, but it was only available I was able to get in short time with possibility of easy return. If I will like it, then I can order exact version from other store. I think I will write separate article about keyboards. Most of them are so bad by design. I think even our legacy layout is not the best. TKL version feel too bulky too. Maybe something like 60 or 65% is enough. Those "tactical multitool" peripherals can eat instead of 0,1 W something like 1 W. Hillarious what is one fucking watt. Not much if your streaming deck command center ask for 100 watts and more. If my Raspeberry Pi 5 takes around 5 watts, that's 20% of the whole power consumption just by connecting keyboard and mouse. It's not really about that extra 1 watt, but about the sanity. Fucking keyboard and mouse can't take 20% power of the computer. I am not going to save the planet or play some ideology game. I just want to remain balanced in head. I think I failed at it long time ago ;/ It's like logic alarm, common sense. I just want to type and click, not to configure a nuclear reactor. So I wrote about power consumption, current setup eats like 12 W. Raspberry Pi 5 3-7 W. Monitor around 8 W. Pretty cool Ursula ye? Powered by Russian uranium in Slovak nuclear power plant. Thank you brothers for those rocks. We know how to suck energy from them here. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to people of China and all surounding nations who worked hard for a litle to make all those cool things I use now. My current extensions on the table: Lenovo ThinkVision T24i-30 140 eur Raspberry Pi 5 - 8GB RAM 88 eur Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C 14 eur Raspberry Pi microHDMI 7 eur Raspberry Pi 32 GB microSD 8 eur EDATEC passive cooling case 8 eur Keyboard ??? ??? eur Canyon M-10 5 eur -------------------------------------- All shit 270 eur My server stays as it was from the beginning: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B - 2GB RAM 50 eur Raspberry Pi 15W USB-C Power Supply 10 eur Raspberry Pi 32 GB microSD 8 eur Joy-IT Armor Case Block 9 eur -------------------------------------------- All in one 77 eur Seriously now, don't envy me, show me that you have something good. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Interesting fact: Too many Linux distributions? Nope, mostly just downstreams. There are just few independend distributions. The rest are derivatives, remixes and other mostly broken bloat.