Meganter

When a cat decides to give birth under your roof in an unaccessible area of course...
 
This lil guy was the last one of the three kittens that were born inside the roof. It took 2 months to get them out (until the mother stopped coming to feed them) and this little one really wanted to stay.
 
They are now all reunited in their new foster home.

5 sec while cleaning up..
 
and he is in a box, and seriously he is not a big boy (3.2kg) but he is long, and it is a SMALL box.

Note: It's important to note that I wouldn't really consider this as being a review, per se. I'm not well enough versed when it comes to the world of audio to be able to provide a detailed analysis of things like frequency response, imaging, etc. and to directly compare them to other products on the market. This is more about my impressions and what I think of these headphones just as a regular user, so if you're okay with that, let's proceed.
 
The HE400se is HIFIMAN's latest addition to their planar magnetic headphone lineup, and also their most affordable, coming in at $149. I managed to get them for around €170 here in Europe.
They're not cheap by any means, but that doesn't mean that they can't be a great value, depending on how many of HIFIMAN's more expensive yet very well regarded products' qualities have been brought down over to them.
 

 
 
HIFIMAN seems to put a lot of care into the packaging for their products, though obviously some things had to be cut down a little with the HE400se to meet the targeted price point. Things are very simple here, with the headphones only being accompanied by a cable, a 3.5mm to 1/4" adapter and some paperwork.
 

 
Speaking of cutting down… that cable. It’s just plain horrible. It’s microphonic, looks cheap and is an absolute nightmare when it comes to tangling.
 

 
I would really just consider getting a custom cable to go with these headphones from the get-go. Granted this does kind of go against the “value” aspect of the HE400se, but I feel it’s worth spending the extra bit of money for a much better overall experience. I went with a 2.5mm balanced cable from Meze Audio, which I then paired with a 2.5mm to 4.4mm adapter to plug into my iFi ZEN DAC.
 

 
The headphones feel good in terms of their build quality, with good quality plastics, a metal frame and very soft faux leather and fabric. They're quite comfortable over long listening sessions. I'd say they're pretty similar to my old Beyerdynamic Custom One Pros in that aspect.
 

 
Obviously the most important thing when it comes to headphones is the sound, and I’ve got to say that I’m impressed. Whatever I throw at them, they deliver a very punchy yet detailed sound, without ever going overboard on anything. The bass is satisfying but controlled, mids are very clear giving a great reproduction of vocals, and highs sound smooth and bright enough without ever being jarring/piercing to my ears. They also have a great soundstage, though the downside of this is that the sound leakage and isolation performance is very poor, because of the planar drivers and open design.
 

 
To end this off, I feel like I really got my money’s worth with the HE400se, offering me an excellent listening experience through and through.
I just have to say though that if you’re looking to buy these, I wouldn’t just look at the price of the headphones themselves. Sure, they might be a great value on paper, but you’ll ideally want to add a replacement cable and an amplifier to the cost to get the most out of them, since as I’ve said previously the stock cable is trash and they’re also not exactly the easiest things to power (I definitely wouldn’t recommend them if all you’re looking for is a pair of headphones to plug into your phone).

We can take watch from here.

Her watch hasn't ended.

I am putting this system together because my main system is used for to much. Farming, plotting, eth mining, gaming, streaming and sometimes all at once. I had the board and chipset already so itnonly
made sense to build a system just for the gaming and streaming. 
 
The system. 
-The case is thermaltake.
-The board is the Gigabyte B550 Vision D
-Chip is the 3900x 
-Ram is 32gb 4000mhz Trident Z cl18
-GPU is Arous Master 3080
-Storage is a 2tb nvme and a 4tb sata ssd. 
-Cooling is a combo of alpha cool and ekwb. 
-The color of the Asiahorse extensions is ice blue and the coolant was mixed to match with white ekwb crypto and Thermaltake blue dye. It was mixed in the system as it looks much lighter in the tube than the jug. It was hard to get the color to match as it’s a three part mixture and not easy to get an exact match. 
 
I plan to wall mount it today. It should go nice with the 3 CX OLED screens and the setup in the gaming room. I will retire the unicorn vomit machine to a work system. 

So a while back I acquired this old IBM Aptiva from 1995. Originally it came with a Pentium 1 CPU running at I think 166 MHz. 
 
I think its a really cool case design and the chassis is way overbuilt in true IBM fashion. The outer shell and front face plate slide forward and reveal the inner chassis.
 
Here we have a view of the original internal setup of the Aptiva. It uses a riser board to get 8 expansion slots in a relatively short case. 
 
 
 
The original back panel is very much not standard ATX. 

 
 
 
I went ahead and removed all of the original electronics so it was down to the bare chassis. From here I marked out all the parts that I wanted to cut.

 
 
 
After some fun shop time and some work with the grinder I had the entire rear panel removed, along with the bottom part of the front panel.

 
 
 
I fabricated a new back panel from a new bit of sheet metal. The lines are a little rough in places but not too bad for a part that doesn't get seen very often.
It took forever and has given me the push to start working on my DIY CNC machine again so this sort of thing will be easier in the future.

 
 
 
I painted the back panel along with the rest of the case, and installed some 3D printed fan grilles. I think using grey filament would have been nicer,
but blue is what I had on hand so its what I use. 

 
 
 
I installed the new motherboard, an Asrock B450 mATX board. I went with a Ryzen 3600 for the CPU and 16gb of memory for now. Pretend
that the graphics card is new and fancy instead of the old GT430 I had installed for testing in this picture.

 
 
 
Here it is with the front cover on again and the original Pentium CPU in front for scale. Overall I am very happy with how the project turned out. Unlike many older 
computer cases it has great airflow so thermals have been awesome so far. 

 
 

My past post on my old system: 
I feel like I should do a separate post, because all parts of current PC are all new. (Except for storage)
 
My current PC: (Picture)
 
Specs:
CPU                      Ryzen 7 5800x          
CPU Cooler          Noctua NH-D15 Chromax                        
Motherboard         MSI B550 Tomahawk
RAM                     G.Skill Ripjaws 2x16GB CL16 3600MHz
Graphic Card       EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra                  
Power Supply      Corsair SF 750watt Platinum
Case                    Lian Li Lancool 2 Mesh (White)
Storage                Crucial P1 1TB || Samsung 860 Evo 1TB || Crucial MX500 1TB || WD Blue HDD 1TB
Accessories         2x Noctua NF-A14 Chromax || 4x Noctua NF-F12 Chromax
                            Lian Li Lancool 2 RBG Strip || Lian Li Lancool 2 Hot Swap Drive Bay PCB
                            Asia Horse Zebra Cable Kit || Uphere GPU Brace Support
 
Note:
The 3 RGB fan that came with the case started to show signs of failure 3 months in. They produce a lot of noise, replaced them with my Noctuas. CPU PBO Setting: PPT 115 TDC 80 EDC 100 with negative 5 all core curve optimizer || Cinebench R23 MC 14600 SC 1550 || Temerature: 70C gaming, 76C R23 MC run. CPU Cooler 70% fan speed for 60C to 80C. Graphic Card undervolting: 1920MHz at 862mv - 67C under stress test at 70% fan speed. Is there any way I can mount my CPU cooler to make it go bottom to top? I have u12s mounting hardware as well, but none of the brackets will allow me to do so. I have tried intel's bracket as well, no luck, the heatsink's screw won't line up.

CEC Warp Core

The Warp Core is a culmination of 4 months of work and over 200 hours of shopping, planning, fitting, building, rebuilding, re-rebuilding, busting, fixing, modding and testing until it was rocksteady and ready to take on the heaviest loads this hardware is capable of on a water loop.
Beautiful, Chaotic, Powerful and an undeniable statement piece; this PC was an absolute pleasure to build and we miss it in the shop every day.
(Below the parts list is detailed build information)

Parts List:

~CPU: Intel i9 9900k 8C/16T
~GPU: EVGA 2080TI SC Ultra 11GB
~RAM: 32GB (4x8) Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3200mhz, CL16
~Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus X Formula
~Storage1: Samsung Evo Plus 1TB NVME M.2
~Storage2: Crucial P2 1TB NVME M.2
~Power Supply: Enermax MaxRevo 1350W 80+ Gold
~Case: GamerStorm Quadsteller (Modified)
~Cable Extensions: LinkUp Orange
~RGB: Corsair DRGB Strips (2 x 4 pack)
~RGB: Corsair DRGB Lighting Node
~RGB: 2 x EZDIY DRGB Diffused Strips
~Fans: 2 x Noctua Chromax Black
~Fans: 3 x AI Aureola Duo 80mm ARGB Ring
~Fans: 7 x Antec Prizm 120ARGB

Waterloop

>CPU Block: EK-Quantum Velocity LGA1151
>GPU Block: EK-Vector 2080TI
>Main Pump: SWIFTECH MCP35X
>Top Pump: XSPC Photon
>Reservoir: 2 x 300mm
>Tubing: PrimoChill PrimoFlex 3/8x5/8 10ft
>Coolant: Corsair XL5 1L Blue x 2
----Fittings----
>BitsPower 15 x 3/8x5/8 Compression Matte Black
>BitsPower 4 x 3/8x5/8 45 DEG Rotary Matte Black
>Bitspower 1 x 3/8x5/8 T-Fitting Matte Black
>BitsPower 2 x 3/8x5/8 MiniValve Matte Black
>BitsPower 6 x 3/8x5/8 Various Extenders
__________________________________________________

Build Story and Information:
The Warp Core started out as a motherboard, a case and an idea that quickly turned into sketches, head scratching and many long hours.

Performance Choices:

Motherboard: Honest is; we started this build less than 4 months after establishing our company and we got this Maximus Formula X board for a steal; absolutely certain we could make something stunning with it. The board is performant, stays cool and is beautiful.

CPU: The baddest CPU that can fit on the Z370 chipset; simple as that.

GPU: We started out with an Asus GeForce RTX 2080TI O11G Dual-Fan OC Edition aaaaaaand…. The memory died 😭… we still have it as a memento in our shop. In the end, we settled on the EVGA 2080TI SC Ultra 11GB as a replacement due to the global price spikes and availability issues at the time at building making it extraordinarily difficult to find another ASUS card.

RAM: The Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB is longstanding, reliable RAM that mixes fabulously with the i9 9900k. At 3200mhz and CL16 this RAM just makes sense.

Storage: The most notably performant PCIE 3.0 NVME available was the obvious choice here backed up by some peppy NVME game storage.

Power Supply: 1350W of headspace on a rig that can pull nearly 800W from the wall… yes please.

Aesthetic Choices:

The Case:
We ended up having to Dremel fit the reservoirs, top pump and a few other items in order to get a clean and performant system. The Quadstellar Case underwent further modification with the removal of the front opaque flaps in order to show off our signature RGB styling and to further improve cooling. Working in a 70lb water cooled system on a slant produced further loop issues for draining and filling that we ended up working some creative plumbing magic to fix.

The Lighting:
The Warp Core is equipped with over 200 Addressable LEDs inside 11 x Digital RGB Ring Fans, 9 x DRGB light strips, 4 x DRGB RAM modules, GPU and CPU Water Blocks and motherboard lights. The Warp Core's lighting functionality and customizability is through the roof. We ended up running everything through OpenRGB for full Digital control over multiple inputs: this allowed us to set 9 one-click lighting profiles for hassle-free instant lighting swaps.

The Water Loop:
Our goal here was to provide an alien looking, wild and wildly effective water loop with a true CEC signature look. Our inspiration here is in the name. We wanted it to look imposing, complex and exactly what you’d expect opening up a starship warp drive.
We built in a dual valve system to drain this loop with a chimney. The whole system holds over a half gallon of liquid and including the 28 fittings, dual res and rad; the loop is right at 14ft in length.

Performance Numbers:

The Warp Core’s water loop was set up with an extended and dedicated top loop splitting off of the combined dual reservoir for the GPU. This configuration outputs extra head pressure into the radiator allowing for a distro block level of efficiency without a distro block.

The i9 9900k will turbo on it’s own up to 5.1Ghz all-core without thermal throttling. The 2080TI was able to outperform some lower-end RTX 3080s rocking extremely stable frames and temps while never going above the loop water temp. The GPU maxed out around 65C after 6 hours at 100% full system load while benchmarking at 22.2C ambient room temperature.

In our 100% system load testing, this system pulls a continuous 750W+ from the wall. We maxed out the GPU VRMs at 367W along with the thermal transfer capacity of the 9900k die size sporting our IC-Diamond thermal paste topping out around 85C at 5.1GHz All-Core. At one point we considered de-lidding the 9900k and applying liquid metal, but ultimately decided against it as this was a more sustainable thermal solution.

Summary:

As CEC’s first Ultra Custom, the Warp Core was both a success story and learning experience. We have several more Ultra Custom Rigs in the works and are looking forward to bringing those into the limelight!  
 
 
 


 
 
 

 
 

 

 
 

Her watch hasn't ended.

Her watch hasn't ended.

Her watch hasn't ended.

Hi, 

finally upgraded my obsidian 1000D with a custom loop and wanted to share the results. 
It turned pretty nice. 

Parts for the custom loop are all from corsair hydro x series. I was positively suprised with the quality of all of the elements and how they fit together.  
In the front i've got 2x 480 fatty rads  , coolant sits at 25 C and CPU iddles at 31 with ultra slow fan speed. 
It's a lot quiter than the AIO config i had before , did not expect it to be this much. 
 
One thing i would say the miss is some f-f connections to connect for example two tubes.
I had a 48 cm distance between cpu and front rad to cover and had to do it in the simpliest possible way. 
 


 

Y'all weird.

My two little guys sleeping, the one on the left (Bear) will be 20 years old around July 4th if he makes it and I believe he will.
He still gets around decently on his own but unfortunately due to his age he's blind, however he still knows more or less where he is and where everything is at too.
Sometimes he sleeps with his eyes open/partially open like he's doing in this pic.

She attacc 
 

This is my cat Treman looking like he is high on cat nip.
And then a more normal one too.

This was the day we got him from our local shelter. He still does this with my wife and I. Just walks up and sits and stares. 

My 3 fur babies 

This new cat, she finally has a name, her name is Toffii.