u/MaybeMayoi

I've wanted to build a SFFPC for living room gaming for years. My previous PC was mini ITX but it was built in a Cooler Master Elite 130 case which at 20L felt big. I sold that for a Steam Deck when they came out which I was happy with being hooked up in my living room via the official dock. It was of course lacking in power though and so I've been thinking about building again. I planned a build last year in a Metalfish T60 case which is 9L but with the Steam Machine rumors I waited. In hindsight I shouldn't have but it is what it is.

Last year I was going for as cheap as possible, but the Steam Machine price gave me the excuse to put more power into this build than I originally was going to. I am VERY happy with the way it turned out. It's a mix of new and used parts. I didn't care if the parts were new or used, just that they came from a reputable place with a return policy. Fortunately all the parts seem fine. I don't live in the US so these prices are converted to USD.

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 9600X $163.38

CPU Cooler Thermalright axp90-x47 full copper $31.87

CPU fan adapter for 120mm fan $12.22

GPU AMD Radeon RX9060XT 16GB $294.95

RAM G.Skill 16GB DDR5-6000 $152.94

Case Metalfish T60 w/ PCIE 4.0 riser $68.71

Power Supply Silverstone SFX Series Full Modular 80 Plus Gold Certified SFX Power Supply 650W SST-SX650-G-Rev $134.21

Motherboard ASRock B650I Lightning WiFi $154.30

Case fans Arctic 120x25mm X3 $46.33

SSD 1tb Samsung NVMe pcie 4.0 $106.55

Total	$1,058.91

The CPU cooler has an adapter on it to mount the larger 120mm fan. It still fits in the case no problem. The case being able to fit two full sized fans at the top for exhaust is great. I'm very happy with how quiet this build turned out to be. It matches my entertainment center cabinet too which is nice. I'm running Bazzite for the first time which has been problem free so far.

My older sister recommended this to me something like 15 years ago. For some reason it always seemed too intense and I was intimidated. I fell out of reading for awhile but I got back into it recently and have been trying to catch up on what I missed out on.

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After finishing it I googled the book. The top result was a Reddit post that said "Neuromancer... I don't get it." And I just laughed and laughed. I loved it, but there was just so much. So many new terms and ideas. While reading I realized that I shouldn't fight it and just let it all wash over me.

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I have to say, the story really picks up in the second half. It was much more focused with clear goals, and that was my favorite part. The ending was great.

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Being a human in 2026 who finally read this book, I'm finally recognizing all the influence this book has had. I'm thinking back on all the cyberpunk and cyberpunk adjacent media I've experienced and can recognize so many references. It must be like being a fantasy fan finally reading the Lord of the Rings.

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People have said Neuromancer is impossible to adapt to a visual medium. I completely disagree! The visuals are always explicitly described. I'm very much looking forward to the Apple+ show that was announced. I want to see the Kuang doing its thing so bad.

I've been trying to figure out how to get vertical written languages like Japanese on my X4 with CrossPoint and I think I figured out a decent way.

First I decided I wanted to use vanilla CrossPoint (no forks). I didn't want to install a huge font package onto my X4 like Japanese tends to have. Also CrossPoint wouldn't have the text vertical anyway even if I did. That left me with figuring out a way to convert EPUBs to XTC for vertical Japanese.

Fortunately, that's a solved problem! This open source Japanese EPUB to XTC converter exists: https://github.com/miya-bee/tategaki-xtc-gui-studio

It doesn't have fancy progress bars but you can choose to include a page counter at least. You can pay 500 JPY for a Windows exe but honestly it's super easy to run by just pulling down the source code for free. There's an English readme file with the three commands it takes to get it set up.

I use Calibre to manage my ebooks. It took me a bit to figure out how to get Calibre to play nicely with XTC but it turns out all you need to do is select the book you want to add the XTC version to. When you select the book it should show the cover on the right side of Calibre. Just drag the XTC file over there and click "Yes" on the pop up. This adds the XTC file as another version of the book.

Now the tricky part was getting it to play nice with the CrossPoint Reader Calibre plugin. Apparently the plugin was only designed for sending EPUBs so I updated the driver file to send XTC files as well. I added a pull request so hopefully that makes it into an upcoming release. This way you can turn on Calibre Wireless on the X4, right click the book you want to send in Calibre, hover over "Send to device" then select "Send specific format to". This will allow you to select the XTC file and away it goes.

There are limitations with this. You are losing the ability to browse by chapters for one thing. There isn't even a menu available when you are in the book. The file sizes are very large compared to EPUBs too. But this is good enough for me for now.