russemerson

My current setup, running on a GTX680, uses two identical 27" 60Hz 1080p screens, and that's functioned satisfactorily for the last three years. I'm finally getting around to installing my X99 machine w/ dual GTX980Ti GPUs (bought the components, and then had medical issues that kept me away from being able to complete the build for a few months...) (so you can imagine my absolute thrill about the release of the 1080) and my intent is to run one of the ultrawide 1440p screens (I'm thinking X34 Predator or its recently-announced X34P successor) as the main display, but I am also thinking that even the ultrawide isn't going to be enough screen for me, as I am in the habit of keeping certain things (email, a browser, Twitter, etc.) on the "side" screen, while doing my primary activity (gaming or what have you) on the "main" screen. With me so far? OK, so, I am fully cognizant of the fact that in such a situation, the secondary display doesn't need to be a refresh-rate beast. If it can handle YouTube or VLC, that's good enough. The question is: under Win10, are screens of different dimensions and different refresh rates going to "play well" together? Or am I worrying myself over nothing?

I use a 1'x3' section of pegboard hanging on hooks screwed into the back edge of the desktop, with everything - cables, power bricks, even my router - zip-tied to it.

Yeah, about that.... (Buildlog coming Real Soon Now™.)

I'm digging that headset. Real wood? Not just on the cans, IYKWIMAITYD.

I swear, if Snef wasn't building PCs, hiring out as a photographer would be a valid career choice. I'm just glad for both.

I'd very definitely use a cooler for the POST - particularly if you have to spend any length of time troubleshooting. For my upcoming (Real Soon Now!) 5820K build, which will be water cooled, I bought an air cooler specifically for POSTing - I expect to re-use that cooler elsewhere in the future, but even if I don't, it's relatively cheap insurance.

California born-and-bred, though my mom grew up in a very Dutch community (Hanenburgs and Kingmas and Koppenols, oh my!) in Michigan before marrying my dad and moving out here. When I was a kid I thought "De Vries" was as common a name as "Smith."

As an American of Dutch extraction (my mother's parents came over when they were very, very young), I'm just here to say hello. In English, because I never learned any Dutch, I'm afraid.

Could be an optimization kind of problem. I can't speak to Win10, but in Win7 I would try this - Win10 may be similar: Right click on the problem folder and select Properties. Go to the Customize tab On the "Optimize this folder for" pulldown, try "General items." Click OK. That usually works for me. Again, this is in Win7. YMMV.

It's been so long since I either took or proctored the exam, I have no idea what it's like these days. But I surely do wish you the best of luck.

Caselabs has some HDD mounts which, though perhaps a bit pricey, would likely work in many builds.

Not PCs, but in my job doing network support, I routinely encounter routers and switches with uptimes of over five years. Just last week I saw the longest I'd ever personally seen, a router that had been up for over eight years.

I feel your pain. Though good at it, I never liked math. Fortunately for me, all the math I need to do is binary and hex, usually only counting up to 255. TCP/IP FTW. (Edit: I did much more math in school than I ever have done in my career. I suspect most fields are like that... but when you need that small bit of math, you really need it.)

Oh, and one further note: in the IT professions, certifications can often be more valuable than degrees (though ideally you'd have both.) For networking, I'd rather hire a high-school educated CCIE than a "virgin" MIT grad. In any case, I wish you the best of luck.

Whatever you do end up doing, remember that it's a never-ending learning process. You cannot just acquire one set of skills/knowledge and expect it to carry you through a career unless you're very very lucky... but only an idiot counts on luck. My own story... I go out of college after my time in the Army and went to work for Cisco as a tech support guy. I didn't know jack about routers and whatnot - back in the '90s, very few people really did - but I did two things: I made myself an expert in one technology, and spread myself around other technologies to pick up what I could. Now, 20 years later, the one technology I was (still am, really) an expert in is pretty much a dead letter (not too many people using ISDN anymore...) but my spreading around to other facets of networking has kept me employed, and nowadays I spend most of my time dealing with routing protocols and network hardware. The point being, be prepared to never stop studying and learning. Hardware, software, networking, protocols... it's all a moving target. If constant education (usually not formal - lots of reading and self-motivation involved) sounds like something you don't want to do, I would advise finding another field. IT subjects change too much and too rapidly to treat education as a one-time thing.