Enter Plasma

Summary Opera has recently posted a rather unique job opportunity on their website’s career page: They are offering a one-time cash payment of 5000$ to a single person, for them to play videogames on their new platform - GX.games - and provide feedback. Cringe name aside, that’s pretty good! Luckily, you can spare yourself the humiliation of trying to build a Gaming CV. You simply need to: The focus here is their “GX.games” platform, which hosts a variety of browser-based games made by small and emerging indie developers. The challenge ends on July 7th, and only one person will be selected for this program. The selected person will then be tasked to play on GX.games for a week, share feedback, and will be paid 5000$ to do so. My thoughts Remember Newgrounds? Is Opera trying to make New-Newgrounds? Would anybody be willing to take bets on whether this will end up making more money than Epic Games Store? Sources Opera job openings https://jobs.opera.com/p/fdeef94eff19-the-best-summer-job-only-for-true-gamers

That's not the point. The point is that 50 before got you this Today 50 gets you this Spot the differences

I think people who complain about modern prices haven't tried building systems 5 years ago. You have no idea how bad it was. Back in the day, one of the best under 50 offers was the Fractal Design Core 1000. It's crap, and it was crap even back in the day. Didn't even cover basic functionality like, oh I don't know, cable management holes. Any half-decent case would cost you at least 70-80. Fancy would be easily over 100. Meanwhile today under 50 you can find cases like the Antec DP501, which comes with all the basic functionalities and even a good amount of fancy. Today, at 70-80+ you get full-on fancy.

The included Nidec fans are a genius idea. For anyone wondering, Nidec fans = (Scythe) Gentle Typhoons. These fans are NOT cheap, they're very sought after from cooling enthusiasts, and are top of the line in quality and performance. You want RGB? You sell them (they go for a significant amount of money), and with the money you raise you buy whatever kind of RGB you want. You don't want RGB? You keep them, and you don't need to upgrade fans because you already have some of the best in the market. Seasonic leaves the choice to you, while at the same time helping you a lot with whatever choice you make. Hard to say if this was actually intended, but it is brilliant regardless. I'm amazed that such a well designed case is coming from a company that has never delivered a case to market before. If anyone from SS is reading, you guys might actually have a serious talent for designing cases. Not my cup of tea (I like small stuff), but if I were into bigger ATX cases I'd be buying it right now.

Sorry for the long disappearance. It was completed, but not without a lot of challenges, a lot of revisions, and a lot of personal drama. Here's the final pics: Older pics of the previous revision and some hint of battlestation: Devotion Beta. I had to disregard some objectives I had in the beginning, like the RGBW cables. But I'm very happy to have reached one of the main objectives which was to stuff a fully overclocked, high end system in a Shift X without turning into a fusion energy experiment Final specs: - Intel 9900K @ 5ghz rock solid - Asus Z390 Strix ITX - 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM - Nvidia RTX 2080 - Corsair SF750 Power supply - Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSD - Phanteks Shift X Case Cooling: - 4x Delta AFB1212SH fans, 1x PC Cooler Corona 120 fan - Watercool Heatkiller CPU block, GPU block, Reservoir - EK DDC pump - HWLabs Nemesis GTS 120 + 240 radiators - Barrow fittings - EK ZMT tubing Other / Accessories: - ADT third party riser for Phanteks Shift & Shift X - EVGA Powerlink for GPU - Initially MDPC-X Carbon BTI sleeving on cables, then made new cables with Silver-plated FEP transparent wires - Full set of stainless steel countersunk screws with black aluminium washers

Bitwit's video is a good explanation. Wire size in sleeved cables actually makes a decent difference, but not really in performance or electrical power: it's more about aesthetics. Thicker wire = thicker looking sleeved cable = more rigid, more malleable Thinner wire = thinner looking cable and/or looser looking sleeve = has a tendency to not be trainable, and go wherever it wants like overcooked spaghetti I personally use 15AWG with big fat MDPC-X sleeve, you can basically give those cables a sharp almost 90° bend and they'll stick to it

UPDATE #3: Some more details, some more pics. Waiting for 2 last parts. So, some more quick things that I did was painting black a couple pieces: GPU PCI-E bracket, AIO bracket, and Light Bars. It's actually my first time trying to paint something, while not professional it turned out decent I think! Got to make more pics while the system was disassembled, and I took the time to finish up the fan cables to make them invisible. PS: both my setup and skills in taking pictures is still not really impressive, so I'm trying to get the hang of doing some manual color correction. If anyone reading knows more than me about this, feel free to share your opinion And finally, back to fully assembled. Goddamn reflections, I'll have to deal with them for the next round of pics. Now just waiting on a couple RGB fans, and new black thumbscrews for the AIO to substitute those dark nickel ones. NEXT: GRAN FINALE

It's noticeable but not incredible. It is specially noticeable on some games that take forever to load - but only some, not everyone. For example my laptop has 500gb NVMe but Battlefront 2 still takes forever to load because of the CPU If money is not an issue, yeah go for it. 1tb nvme is very nice.

I've tried both, they're solid. Known pumps like DDC/D5 are probably more reliable. But here's a hint: for the same price, you can buy 2 chinese pumps. And 2 chinese pumps are more reliable together than one single Laing pump

The difference in numbers in huge, but for gaming and home use it's not that big of a difference. It becomes a huge difference if you make really heavy use of your SSD, but that's not the case for most people. I personally consider it a luxury, get it only if the extra money isn't a big deal for you. If your budget is strict, bigger size > nvme

You can test your drive with an utility called HD Tune until you've seen the SMART readings you won't know if it's bad, might just be Windows being Windows I still fully agree with the 1TB SSD, get it anyways. Get a higher frequency kit of memory. On Amazon.de there's 16GB of Corsair or HyperX kits @3000+ mhz for 80-90-100€ depending on the offer. Your PSU can probably take the upgrades. A better PSU is always nice, but I would keep the priority low. It's worth taking a picture of the label of your PSU, some prebuilts actually have pretty high quality suppliers for those. Depending on your case the D15S might not fit. It's pretty damn huge. Your CPU isn't bottleneck, it's ideal that the GPU is always at 100% during a game, that is the component that you want being taxed the most. For the GPU, unless you get the 1070 Ti used or at an amazing price, you might find better prices for the current offerings: 1660 Ti, 2060, 2070 Also, since you're in Germany: www.geizhals.de. Thank me later

I've used his same materials to build cables in the past, mistakes like that are rare but it can happen sometimes. Contact him and I'm very sure he'll help you out

They're a solid budget offering. Not high end, but great if you don't want to go to an artisan using MDPC-X where you can expect a very high price.

I'd go with a 240 AIO, or a very big air cooler. The View 71 is H U G E and you really want to try to fill it up as much as you can, otherwise it'll look kinda weird. If you can fit in the budget, I've had a good experience with the Asrock Steel Legend B450 board (the mini-ATX version, there's also in standard ATX). I'd also argue that it looks better than the MSI. I've heard meh things about the MSI Armor coolers, but the RX 580 itself is great. I'd recommend maybe going with another cooler style, if you want to stick to MSI they've also got better models. PS: I just saw that you're planning on buying in like 4-5 months. Don't bother looking at prices and components now, everything will be completely different by the time you begin.

The AIO on the GPU is a good idea. It's also the component that benefits most from water. The D15 won't fit in there but there's a lot of other big coolers that will. You could also go double AIO, no shame in that. Could consider a couple Fractal Design Celsius, as they can be daisy chained together. To be completely honest Custom WC is a challenge on its own and I'd recommend you to at least finish your first system and getting more comfortable with tinkering before going there.