Morrobotz

I got you Lone star, I got you... My knowledge: I specialize in remote sensing, image analysis, and a bunch of other stuff we are not going to get into. However! I have done amateur photography since I was 12 years old and that was before digital cameras were even a thing. (DO NOT BUY A BUNDLE, the lenses are usaly shit) First off, GLASS! it's all about the glass! Cameras will come and go, technology will get better, but optics never really change (Other than coatings, and lens materials, but if that is a factor for you, your not an amateur). Spending more on a good lens will serve you better and longer than buying the best possible camera body and a cheep lens. Step One: Figure out what lenses you will need for your typical use case. For long exposure shots you will be looking into wide aperture lenses (F2.8 or better) and wide angle, so 18 to 35mm. (Anything bellow 50mm really). Still video is best shot on 35mm to 50mm however it's very scene dependent. As for nature you will be looking more at the 50mm to 100+mm range with an occasional use case for 35mm. Glass can be a confusing topic since there is so-many different types of lenses and the prices go up fast. One of the most important stat on any lens is it's maximum aperture as it's the one thing you can't easily compensate for without notably sacrificing some aspect of your photo. (NOTE: These focal lengths are assuming a full frame sensor, the cameras you are looking at are likely going to be MFT, or APS-C and they have crop factors you need to consider) Step Two: Outline key camera features and performance. Cameras these days have to shoot both high quality images, and good HD video. The most limiting price to performance aspect of a DSLR or Mirror-less is the later, video. While many HD 4k video options exists most of them are rather handcuffed to a given color space, or lack dynamic range. DSLR's and ML's tend to offer up high quality 1080p with a wide range of options rather then 4k with limited options. Given your use case and budget, I would not even think about 4k since the best option for that right now is a used Panasonic GH4 and those start at about $800 to 900. As for the T6i, you may want to avoid it if video is important to you since it lacks what I would call good HD video. As for megapixels, don't even look at the megapixels stats, anything past 16MP is just bonus nachos and dose not actually tell you the quality of the image, just the density. What maters now is dynamic range, and low noise as well as how much buffer space the camera has when rapid shooting. While the T6i has a good 24.2MP APS-C sensor, it's not worth the loss of good vido IMO. In-fact, if you want a really good still camera after you pick up an idea general shooter/video. You can some times find used high end pro grade cameras on the cheep. Step Three: Shopped used equipment. I rarely buy used anything, I'm that type of guy. Camera equipment is my only exception to that. In many cases you can get almost 2x the camera used then if it was new. This is why it's important to know your use case and specs so you can look at used equipment and know if it hits your sweet spot. Given your budget, I would recommend: Canon EOS Rebel SL2 Or looking around that price point and spending the rest on lenses. You may also want to consider going with an Olympus or a Panasonic and getting a lenses mount adapter for MFT to Canon EF. That gets kinda tricky due to crop factor but it really opens up a world of possibilities, particularly if you drop the 600$ later on for a meta-bones speed booster.

I figured this was going to be the case, I saw the RAIJINTEK MORPHEUS II listed and figured I would ask.

It looks like you smeared the entire die and the board in thermal compound... yea you need to clean all of that off completely. You got it all over the bypass capacitors as well, that would cause a dead short to ground. Personally I'm skeptical that those pastes are a full on dielectric, but more like really high impedance, however I don't have any data or testing to prove that. Even if it was non-conductive paste and my hypothesis was true regarding high impedance vs true dielectric, then enough of it would still cause shorts. Clean the board off meticulously and use both distilled water and then 99% rubbing alcohol. Use a very very small dab of thermal compound on the die and test the board out.

Any one have some hard data insight into the effectiveness of aftermarket air cooling for GPUs when stacked up against a custom water-cooling loop? Key question for myself: Is a more expensive and possibly higher maintenance water cooling solution worth it over good aftermarket air coolers? The target system is a Dual GTX 1080 build with reference cards in a Corsair Carbide 540 case. The CPU is using an AIO (Corsair H100i V2). Thank you in advance and please respect the first line, "hard data insight" and not speculative/anecdotal argument fuel. I need the $ to performance math so I and others can decide if it's worth the cost and effort given a use case.

First off WD40 is not exactly a lubricant. It's what you would call a penetrating oil. It's a combination of solvents and mineral oil and not actually a lubricant for regular mechanical parts. Once the solvents flash off (evaporate) you only have the mineral oil left over and that has a rather high ignition point so don't worry about that. The brushless motors use a standard sealed roller bearing for the main fan and they use grease not oil. In-fact your WD40 being primarily a solvent, may have dissolved some of that grease in the bearing (the seals on those bearings are for dust, no low viscosity solvents)

What is the hold up? and yes I have the system to run it.

In wall PC is doable however you need to consider how you would cooling it. From a practical point of view, you are probably better off mounting the computer into the wall the same way you would mount a bathroom mirror/medicine cabinet by making essentially an in wall recess. Otherwise I would recommend mounting the computer some where hidden and do cable runs. You need to cool more than just the CPU and the GPU, the PSU needs cooling, the memory and even the motherboard needs to loose a bit of heat. The heat those ancillary parts make is not that much and the light cooling they get from the case fans feeding your radiators or GPU/CPU coolers is more than enough to do the job. Seal that thing up however, you will still have issues.

I will post some photos after work today. I am still working on ideas for the paint job. These are some of the ideas currently:

You got me skeptical as well, so I put the system under the hardest load I could find that was not 3DMark. So I had it render an intense scene in blender where I set it to do a CPU only render after doing a GPU only render for a benchmark. As a bench mark the scene renders in 6m53.3s with the GPUs (dual GTX 1080). While doing a CPU compute the system loaded down all 12 logic cores ( 6 physical cores ) showing a 97% utilization with a speed of 3.49 GHz (task manager stat). The CPU Package temp reported a peak of 35C and a Motherboard temp of 34C. The ambient temperature is roughly 18C The render took over 22m18s (not the point of the test to compare GPU render to CPU render) These temperatures held steady at the 21m+ mark. I am getting these values from Corsair LINK so maybe it is not reporting correctly... Note: the H100i v2 is showing a temperature of 27.3C (assuming that is coolant temp?) I have not overclocked anything on this system yet as I am still setting it up. There are some flaky things I need to run down. (I have had it fall asleep and not respond to power button or keyboard input. I had to move the GPU's apart and use the larger bridge (Non SLI game pushed GPU2 to 80C had to open up the airflow). I still need to order white braided cable mesh to sleeve the cables. The SLI bridge I am using came with the MB and s just a PCB with connectors so I need to make a cover for it (Likely 3D print one, or cut some acrylic and paint it.) I also want to mod the 1080 side LED's to be white. Some additional storage will get added (SSD) along with figuring out how I want to proceed with the right side of the case.

like THIS?

Children in Africa could be building 1080s. "Trade not aid"

Yea it was built do do double duty as a workstation. Unfortunately not all the workloads I do are optimized for multi-threading. But hey atleast I can run like 9000 instances of chrome on my other screen.

Finished build: ASRock Taichi x99 Core i7 6850K 64G DDR4 Kingston HyperX Savage ( DDR4 2666MHz ) @ 2132MHz stock setup. 2x GTX 1080 (Stock coolers) M.2 SSD Samsun 950 Pro 512G Corsair H100i v2 Corsair HX1000i Corsair Carbide 540 case. Benchmark: Out of the box - no overclocking 3DMark Firestorm ultra: 9,059 3DMark Firestrom Extreme 15,488 Blender Benchmark: 38 seconds. Peak GPU temp 70C Peak CPU temp 35C

You are totally on point here and others kinda brought similar points up. I Totally understand that items come from different places and or sub vendors, that is fine. However, having to provide different order numbers and tracking numbers was a pain and not necessary since I was talking about the order as a whole. The lack of an overarching reference for this order was frustrating. Given the common occurrence of multiple drop shipping points, it would seam logical to me that having a parent number for the order with sub order numbers would make a lot more sense.

TL;DR; What I wanted: To order from one supplier with one order number. Two day delivery service and held at the distribution center for pickup What Happened: Multiple orders and order numbers. delivered to my house I will not be using Newegg or FedEx again (unless they change the over all experience). The story: I ordered my parts from Newegg, All of them, I did not want to deal with multiple retailers and multiple order numbers. All of the parts I was ordering where the same price and only one or two of them where slightly cheaper according to PC part picker (not enough to make me split up the order.) So as I placed the order I was looking for ways to provide instructions to hold the items at the shipping center.. this was not an option so I tried shipping them directly to the FedEx store (an offered option). The system yelled at me saying "This location can not accept items X and Y pick another place) Note It also asked for a sub address location for the store (you know like an apartment number) some thing I did not have, nor was able to look up. So angry and frustrated, I just had it sent to my home. At this point I place the order and then BAM everything blows up, my bank locks my card and only some of the items get payed for. Shockingly neweggs system split the order into 5 different order numbers. So I call my bank to get the card sorted (That did not make me that mad since it is a good protection) I then call new egg and tell them all is well, lets replace the order... turns out I now have to recreate the order for the items that did not get payed for. I felt like a forensic accountant talking to the Newegg rep (Their reps where good) and rebuilding the order. Next day I I log into FedEx to get the packages held.... not an option... I call FedEx with 10,000,000x tracking numbers and they tell me I have to call the shipper. I call NewEgg with my 5000x order number so they can make the changes. They tell me it takes some time for the system to post those changes.. (seriously? its 2016). I call FedEx any ways to confirm the changes and see if they can help at all, and they tell me the same thing (nice person, did their best but they where useless because of FedEx). I wait the next day, no updates and the tracking information tells me it will be out for delivery, so I call FedEx and get a some one who is totally useless who kept repeating "only the shipper can make changes"....... It's my address, It's my items, I payed for the shipping with my card attached to that address.... Your system has an update saying to hold the items.... well apparently not because the system is now telling me they are out for delivery. It was clear the rep was useless so I politely ask him if I could talk to a supervisor and make it clear I understand he is powerless. The supervisor apologizes, and was as nice as possible but also just as useless. I tell him this put a seriously bad taste in my mouse regarding FedEx and will be unlikely to recommend them to any one, or use them myself in the future if it can be avoided. Newegg really needs to consider a way to consolidate order numbers into one order and hault any order that dose not complete in full, to allow for the client to call the bank and sort their card. So long as FedEx in it's current state is the only shipping option from Newegg I will no longer be ordering from them. The Newegg FedEx "you must call the shipper" business relationship is not an acceptable for myself to use Newegg again. FedEx needs to update their system and address the 24 hour delay on changes to a package shipping options. (Note: I did not want signature service since It was more money (seriously) and would result in adding a day to the shipping since I would not be able to pickup the package until the next day) Luckily I was able to get out of work early and arrive 20 minutes after the items had been delivered (no one stole anything). Also good guy FedEx driver (contractors, not actually employees FYI) did me a solid and put my two display boxs behind the larger brown boxs as the branding on the monitor boxes made it obvious what they where. Lastly I am sure there was a valid reasons for everything that happened to me and that Newegg may have that "you must call the shipper" relationship with FedEx to prevent people from steeling delivery however the overall experience was not a satisfying one. What do you think? am I over reacting, did I screw up as a customer? Are my gripes valid?