An Awesome Build For An Awesome Guy:
"Can I get a Gaming PC for £500?"... "Yes", "Good, build me one for £1000 then"... "yes". Was pretty much how this went. I was given no more guidance other than "Don't care about looks, just make it work.". Obviously by looking at this images you can see that I did some colour matching, not that it was hard to find red and black AMD gear.
What Would I Change?:
Working to a budget is always a challenge, there's always that part that cost a little more but
Cooling 'n' stuffs:
Just cooling the processor isn't enough, VRM and to a lesser extent, VRAM need some attention too. These heat sinks were pretty cheap and came with a terrible thermal pad that wouldn't stick at all. So I took these off and used the smallest amount of MX2 paste as possible. I also had to spread the paste by hand because the heat sinks are under any kind of retention. Didn't take long after I got the hang of spreading the paste.
I have some photos but I've been having phone
What Did I do?:
This is Avexir RAM that has had the heat sinks removed. To keep the ram cool inside my new custom case I have got some basic ally heat sinks. However, the yellow LEDs are not covered up which I thought would be a bad look but I'm not sure now. Once I've got everything in the case I will decide if I want to cover the LEDs with small pits of electrical tape. These are the only images that I managed to get due very bad camera support with my ROM. While I'm working on this, I don't
Microsoft is at it again. Recently, they held a small conference to discuss their upcoming Windows 10 operating system in a bit more detail than they had before. Not only did they announce who will receive the update for free, they also make a few other announcements that were pretty, well, unusual for Microsoft (in my opinion). Let’s dig in.
First off, the biggest surprise to me was Microsoft phasing out Internet Explorer in favor of a new web browser. Now, at first glance, I thought the
For CES each year, I rely on one YouTube channel to report to me new and interesting tech that almost always appeals to me. LinusTechTips has been my guide to CES since 2013, and I also follow him for PAX, E3, and Computex (in addition to his many other wonderful tech guides and overviews). This year, some of the things that struck me were Seagate’s 7mm external USB 3.0 hard drive. It goes well with a trend I found going along with CES this year, thin. The drive itself is 500GB, using a 5mm driv
This blog is just going to be a place for me to share the current events articles I type up for my Cisco course in college. Each week, we are required to write a brief document (1-2 pages) and submit it to our instructor in order to recieve credit for our online posting requirement set by the college itself. I generally pick a wide range of items that are of relevance to each other, then (of course), write my article.
My main reason for posting these in a LTT blog is that I feel quite proud of
What I Did:
After I fixed the DVD drive and installed Ubuntu on this machine I discovered that the WiFi card was broken as it wouldn't register. I replaced that with one from a HP mini and let everything update. Three weeks after, it was too slow for me. Only 2GB of RAM was killing me so I nabbed another stick and tried swapping the processor. No luck with that but the RAM upgrade went fine. Next was the HDD, Kingston 300V 60GB SSD is the boot drive now. I got rid of the DVD drive all together
What?:
I've attached a Corsair H60 AIO to a 290x reference from MSI. Insane... Yes... Dangerous?... Yes... Cool?... You tell me people.
To see more on this, go to my other blog Smokey Attempts: The Red Mod.
Whats Next?:
Regular update to each blog, and some cool stuff on this blog by tonight hopefully. I should be able to make a start on another build late this evening and I will by uploading entries with images today and tomorrow.
Thank You :)
Oh My Jesus...:
First step in modding the 290x is to actually mount the CPU AIO to the card. I have no VRM or VRAM cooling yet, so expect no overclocking or even bench marking beyond idle temps today. Check out my other blog, Smokey Attempts: The Red Mod, for more detail. Here are some images of the card to wet your appetite.
Whats Next?:
For this blog, not allot I'm afraid. I have some RAM coolers coming Friday and until then I will be posting schematics for the internals of the c
Progress!
My thermal paste arrived this morning so I can re-mount the H60. I have done two things differently this time around, one was to fit the cable ties like this...
and the other was to add more paste.
Moreover, I checked the coverage of the paste and if covers the die which is great. I did this by pressing the cooler by hand before tightening the cable ties. Now, I didn't press down super hard, in fact there were still some blogs of paste that needed to be pushed down a little more
Wow, That's A Lot Of Hardware...:
So about a month ago I tore my rig apart for a clean. This was during my move from the office to bedroom. I took the whole of my case apart and blasted it with an air compressor. Broke out the wet wipes too, got everything looking nice and fresh. I've got some images of the hardware laid out but nothing of the actual job. I did this within three hours so everything apart from the HDD and the GPU got taken apart. This is before I got me second 290x.
Why Won't You Leave Me Along Dog!:
Litteraly all morning this thing has been sat there looking at me. I've no idea what to do, I can't yell at a puppy. It's really distracting. Bloody thing, still... better that a child I suppose.
Whats Next?:
More of the same here, a lot of waiting. There is a possibility of some updates to this blog tonight because I'm checking hardware for a build I have soon. Stay tuned on my other blogs for cool modding content, will probably end in tears...
Thank You
I used to be a pretty big fan of the Opera browser. It never got much market share, but it was feature-rich, had a highly customizable interface, session management, and was developed in the direction the community wanted rather than what Opera Software ASA wanted, and the dev team at Opera was very willing to listen to this feedback. It was awesome.
Then Opera 15 came out. It was missing a lot of features that made Opera Opera. No tab stacking, no private tabs, no built-in email or IRC client,
Why Did I Do This?:
The Avexir RAM I have in my rig had yellow and black heat sinks with yellow LEDs. The color scheme of my next build is white and black so I had to change this. While I can't remove the LEDs I can just small amounts of tape and aftermarket heat sinks to cover them. As the RAM doesn't seem to get above room temp, I am not worried about leaving them naked. However, the LEDs may cause a problem if they get too hot but I doubt they will.
Here Are Some Images:
First Stick,
Nothing big or exiting but here it is.
http://imgur.com/cH9JQMR
i go through a cheap one almost every semester so i decided to suck it up and pay almost 30 bucks for this, it better be worth it. But i trust corsair and they in my limited experiance with them have never made a bad product
What Happened?:
Heres what I did; powered down the PC, turned off PSU, held power button for 10secs, removed all RAM, removed RAM heatsinks, rebooted, duel BIOS repaired by corrupted BIOS, rebooted, boot failed, went into BIOS and changed RAM profile to 2134Mhz, rebooted, failed, rebooted with same settings, sucsess and RAM is at 2134MHz.
Does anyone know what I could have done to cause this? And is it a sign of damaged components?
Whats Next?:
Two builds coming up soon that I will be
My Testing Equipment:
While I'm not a professional technician I do have an assortment of tools for testing and what not. A lot of them are probably bad for this and that reason but I've had no trouble with them. So here's a list of the things that I have in my repair bag;
An old laptop, Dell Inspiron 1501, running ether Ubuntu or Windows 10 depending on what mood I'm in.
A thirmaltake PSU tester. Basic yes but very functional.
A post card for PCI that works on some motherboards, the ma
Whats The Problem?:
My initial plans for the build was to have the PSU fan downfacing so that I can rawer air in from ventelation holes in the bottom of the drawer. However since the bottom compartment will be very thin I thought it hard to get dust filters the right size.
Solutions:
The way I see it I could ether put a filter on the PSU fan, not ideal because there will still be dust in the bottom compartment. Alternitavly I could mount the PSU so that it drawers hot air from the drawer and
Who The Hell Is This Guy?:
Who the hell are you? I'm a roofer from Cambridgeshire England. Gaming is not a big deal for me whereas hardware is. I have a pretty decent rig that I an currently planning to mod into a custom case: Smokey Attempts: PC In A Drawer :. Long time watcher, first time community member. What better time to start blogging that when I'm already planning something pretty mental. So I hope you enjoy, don't use my other blogs as a guide as I WILL make mistakes. Cheers.
What Am
How Much Longer?:
eBay claims my VRM and VRAM coolers will arrive next this friday. I know this is an estimate so I might be looking at a delivery next week which will mean no big updates this weekend. Possibly next week I will get the time to mod the test card but I am working on a couple of other builds which are taking up some time. I may do a short blog entry on them on my main blog: Smokey's Chronicles :. Keep up to date with my personal build at my other blog: Smokey Attempts: PC In A Dr
Where Am I Getting It From?:
I'm sure there are many more places over seas where you an get modding supplies but in the UK we are limited to websites like Kustompcs.co.uk and Overclockers.co.uk. These sites offer great ready built mods and a wide selection of coolers, heat sinks and fans but lack things like velcro reels, screws, nuts and wood glue. So I'm getting all of the stuff for this build, barring the MDF, from eBay. I have finished the list of items I need and added some that I want, li
What Did I Do?:
To prep the 290x for VRAM, VRM and Processor cooling, I stripped it down. This is an MSI reference PCB card. It came with a stock cooler but unfortunately I cannot show you the removal of the cooler as it's already done but OC3D have a Corsair HG10 review where you can see it step by step. So, moving on, Here are some images of the nude card. Note I have also removed the PCIe cover because this card is being used in my current custom case. You can see the progress of this build
What Is The Red Mod?:
The Corsair HG10 and NZXT's Kraken G10 are two examples of Mounting solutions for GPUs that don't require you to cable tie it together. Another important thing to note is that these solutions have built in VRM and VRAM cooling. Whereas the red mod is much more "bodged". It basically lets you fix an AIO to a GPU with cable ties as tension screws. Geil make VRM coolers for the 290 and 290x but I can't say for other cards as I've not looked into it. VRAM coolers are so easy t
