RIP Gaming…

I’m going to need a new banner.

My Gaming PC is suffering in two ways.
It’s starting to lag behind now, the CPU is relatively new but the RAM and the GPU are starting to show their age and the value is depreciating.
the second is that simply it’s not being used for what it’s prime purpose was any more. I don’t have time to game and what little time I do get in front of a screen is spent upkeeping the home server or doing side quest things in life.

Since my first foray into the world of OSX with my M1 MBA, it’s been an eye opener, I was so worried about losing my trusty old Photoshop CS5.1 but where Pixelmator stepped in and took over that role cheaply and easily, I’ve always kept the Gaming PC about for video editing for my YouTube channel and to offer the comfort of a real desktop.

The time has come though! The Gaming Pc has been sold and I have pre-ordered a Mac Mini M4, all of my software will move seemlessly from MBA to Mini (and back as the MBA isn’t going anywhere) and I thought why not sell what I have now to fund the next 5 years?

The MikroTik stuff will likely still keep coming as I run the CHR but also now in professional life I am finding myself ever edging further into Cisco so you never know, that might (read will) creep in to the written words as well.

I’m not completely without Windows, I will retain a VM on my trusty UnRaid box as I do want to keep a hand there but for now, we’re going to where the grass is greener!

hAP Mini Configuration

I’ve recorded my hAP Mini config video a couple of times so far and still not found a version I like. It is in the pipelines though however I’m thinking that trying to include low powered device optimisation into the same video is a bad thing. Maybe that should be it’s own video?

Either way I’ve configured my new “toy” a couple of times now and have been really amazed by what I was able to push through it. Bearing in mind this is a low powered single core unit out of the box with a handful of firewall rules and NAT it was able to push 94Mb whilst maintaining only 88% of CPU utilisation (minus whatever it was using for me watching Winbox).

Testament to my previous fasttrack learning curve though, once I put a couple of fasttrack rules into the firewall that same 94Mb was achieved on just 22% of CPU utilisation (again whilst I had Winbox open so minus a few % for that.

I seem to be finding 94Mb as a limitation though, this will no doubt be in part due to the unit only being 10/100 and losing some overhead from that but I’m amazed how viable this thing is, even to the point that it would be able to be used for VDSL in the UK with no detriment.

Please keep your eyes peeled for some soon to come videos regarding the hAP mini, potentially a config and then a more broad stroke efficiency ideas.