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Greeting once again LTT. following the completion of Project Nalu recently, I had some discussions on facebook regarding what I was planing next. I can Finally give out the next project. My 5th retro PC build, Project Ruby. Project Ruby is be based around 2005-6 hardware. Below I will have an ever updating list of hardware as I confirm the final parts. Unlike Project Nalu where it was aimed at the end of era agp. Project Ruby is something slightly different. Ruby will be a high end multimedia gaming PC. What do I mean by that? back before HDMI ports where added and the switch to "HD" gaming. ATI used to make GPU's sporting the name "All-In-Wonder" These where GPU's with an onboard analog/digital TV tuner as well as a huge array of VIVO ports. This build will mix high end gaming with live tv & AV capture capabilities. Think the ability to watch a live Cricket match, while playing & capturing Nintendo 64 gameplay footage, then switching to something like Crysis for a bit of serious gaming. This original post will be dynamic and update each step, things may change and evolve along the way so keep an eye on it for major updates to the build. However I will post photos, benchmarks & comments about the build process along the way down the thread as well. Core Hardware - so far. AMD Athlon FX-62 2.8Ghz AM2 ABIT AM2 Motherboard (TBA) 4x2Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 800Mhz ATI Radeon X1950XTX 512Mb (Crossfire variant) ATI Radeon X1800XL All-In-Wonder 256Mb Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro WD Raptor SATA Drives WD Storage Drives Lian Li PC Case (TBA) This is very early in the process, so updates will be slow, especially since I will also be going overseas for a 3 week holidays in feb. I am hoping to post photos of the main hardware before then. I do already have a couple of the parts in my display cabinet so they will be posted up soon.

Picking up some RAM later today borrowing off a friend, I've also just got this Ryzen 3100 and a RX 570 2nd hand so I can test my other main components the motherboard and power supply. I want a 4900X or whatever they are releasing with 12 cores later this year as well as a possibly a RTX 3070 or whatever their high to mid range card will be.. in the meantime I can buy RAM and Nvme storage I will also post a picture of the build initially together with these components in a few days and I'll see what it can do

TL:DR and Temps at the bottom. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across the Morpheus II cooler and grabbed it on a whim. I had never seen an aftermarket GPU air cooler and read some good things about it. Why not buy one and have something new to play with? I figured worst case, I wasted $85 (after shipping from the UK) More likely it'll be quieter, at least. But maybe it'll perform better and let me push my card a bit further, although I was a little worried about vrm and memory temps. Sapphire's cooler works well in that department, especially if you sacrifice some noise. But it really hits a wall with die temps. I found extreme diminishing returns above 50% fan speed, and it screams like a banshee. I decided to use 2 Noctua P12 redux fans. I would have liked to try some Arctic P12s, as I've heard good things about them, but I had the Noctuas already. That 5 pack of Arctic's for $30 on Amazon is tempting though... I also purchased some alphacool copper heatsinks for the VRMs and RAM (10x10 and 14x14), but I wasn't sure if they would fit under the Morpheus. I did everything in steps to establish how much each change affected temperature. My temperature benchmark was Furmark at 1440p with all stock GPU settings, except fan curve. Case fans were locked at my max curve speed, 60%. I let Furmark run until temps settled out, but at least 15 minutes. My ambient temperatures will be noted, but are usually at 70F +/- 2 degrees. I also pulled the cooler when I got the card just to look at the cooler design, and repasted with Noctua H2 paste so it isn't technically stock. I found no temperature change from the repaste though. Evening One: I pulled the backplate and fan shroud, then mounted the two P12s with some zip ties to the stock cooler and started up Furmark. The first thing I noticed was that the new fans are roughly equal in noise at full speed to the stock fans at about 40%, and with a lower pitch sound that I prefer. I ran my stock fan curve at 50% max and was satisfied with temps but not with noise, so this alone was a great upgrade for me. Memory temps saw a nice improvement at the same noise level, but not compared to stock fans at 50%. I noticed that die temps were pretty close. Fan speed maxed on the stock fans gives similar die temps to 50%, but I never paid close attention to memory or vrm temps at high stock fan speeds. Evening Two: I pulled the card all the way apart and started test fitting the included heatsinks to the memory chips and VRMs etc. Unfortunately the Morpheus didn't come with enough of the right size/shape Heatsinks to apply to the RAM, VRM and various other chips that the stock sapphire cooler contacts. The Alphacool heatsinks hadn't come yet, so I applied 1mm Thermal Grizzly minus 8 pads to the chips and reinstalled the stock cooler with the Morpheus included thermal compound. I wanted to see if there was any difference in thermal pad quality. The Morpheus thermal compound gave me about 5C higher temps and a larger Delta between junction and average temps, so I decided to pull the cooler again and repaste. After some isopropyl and gentle scrubbing with a soft toothbrush to clean the extra goop off, I repasted with some older Noctua H1 I had left over. Disaster! It wouldn't post. After clearing CMOS and reseating the GPU, I was worried I killed the card somehow. I would get the Aorus splash screen, then reboot. Couldn't enter bios as well. It was late and I headed to bed. I would do troubleshooting the next evening. Evening Three: I had a stroke of luck, my tower booted up and everything was normal. My first guess was some unevaporated Iso had been causing an issue. Junction temps ended up even worse than with the Morpheus Paste. I thought I had a mounting pressure issue or bad paste job. Pulled the cooler again, paste looked good but I believe I zip tied my fans too tightly and tweaked the cooler and PCB just enough to mess with die contact. Cleaned the board up and started prepping for copper heatsink application. When cleaning again, I found that Iso will wick under the PCB layer around the die and takes some encouragement to dry/get out of there. I got as much out/dry as I could with compressed nitrogen. Evening Four: Alphacool heatsinks arrived. They definitely get a thumbs up from me. Well packaged, well made and not too expensive. The RAM heatsinks won't clear the cooler in all places though. Heatpipes and mounting hardware interfere somewhat. I attempted to use a bandsaw to trim the heatsinks quickly… I don't recommend it. Once you hit the fins, they bend/bind and rip the heatsink out of your holding implement. A very fine saw might work, especially hand powered, but I don't have one. I then switched to tin snips, and while it's not the prettiest, it's functional. Most of the fins I could simply bend out of the way, but some required trimming. I don't love the VRM solution Morpheus provides, but it works. I couldn't find a copper VRM heatsink and the copper ones I have are too big. Once the heatsinks were trimmed and passed test fitment, it was on to attaching them. I used the included double sided "thermal tape" with pretty good luck. There is plenty of extra to use if you mess up or if it moves and touches you etc. Once they were all attached, I applied conformal coating (2 coats) to the die area in preparation for TG Conductonaut. Evening Six: Getting close! Heatsinks attached and seem well adhered. Conformal coating is dry and everything is ready for the cooler to be mounted. Spread TG Conductonaut on the die and cooler and mounted to the card. Attached fans with included clips (which kind of suck and barely hold the fans on) and seated the card. On to final testing! Wow. This cooler is impressive! Memory and VRM temps are a bit higher, but those die temps! Played with overclocking the card and was thoroughly impressed with temperatures. I am running the same OC I did before but with power limit increased to 25%. I don't love the memory and VRM temps, I want better performance everywhere. I found Arctic makes a thermal adhesive, and reports say when cut with their same version of thermal paste (Arctic Alumina), you can make a semi permanent bond. The adhesive is rated at 8 w/mK, which is the same as the Thermal Grizzly thermal pads I have and the material layer will be thinner. If anyone has a source for a good copper GPU VRM heatsink, let me know. The aluminum one is fine, but it's aluminum and not copper. I'm going to purchase more low profile RAM heatsinks as well so I can get rid of a couple of my hacked up ones. TL:DR I wanted to try to improve the temps on my Sapphire Pulse 5700XT with new fans and a custom cooler. Performed tests at each stage. All tests done with case fans locked and stock GPU bios with only GPU fan speed being modified/held. Furmark was ran until temps stabilized, then HWInfo reset and recorded for 5 minutes. Stock Card - 40% Fan Speed Ambient Temp: 70F GPU Temp: 74C GPU Junction Temp: 87C Memory Junction Temp: 88C VRM Temp: 75C Average Clock Speed: 1803Mhz Average Power Draw: 193W Stock Card - 50% Fan Speed Ambient Temp: 70F GPU Temp: 71C GPU Junction Temp: 84C Memory Junction Temp: 82C VRM Temp: 69C Average Clock Speed: 1808Mhz ASIC Power Draw: 193W 2 Noctua P12 Redux on stock cooler - 100% Fan Speed Ambient Temp: 71F GPU Temp: 71C GPU Junction Temp: 85C Memory Junction Temp: 84C VRM Temp: 69C Average Clock Speed: 1811Mhz ASIC Power Draw: 193W Morpheus Core II Stock Settings Ambient Temp: 74C GPU Temp: 53C GPU Junction Temp: 65C Memory Junction Temp: 88C VRM Temp: 70C Average Clock Speed: 1819Mhz Average Power Draw: 193W Morpheus Core II High Power Limit OC Ambient Temp: 74F GPU Temp: 61C GPU Junction Temp: 80C Memory Junction Temp: 96C VRM Temp: 88C Average Clock Speed: 2060Mhz Average Power Draw: 255W

Updated: 10:53 on 1/27/16 (BUILD 2696 AVAILABLE!) (Code now protected under the GNU General Public License Version 3) GNU General Public License and Warranty Disclaimer: Official Website: http://www.NostradamusCoding.webs.com PREVIEW THE CODE ONLINE HERE: https://ide.c9.io/clockworking/nostradamus Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/nostradamus-programming/ Introduction After using the Spherical RPG Game Engine API I have realized I need something more powerful, yet simple enough for beginners and novices to learn to use while featuring some of the graphical capablities that the spherical game engine features. To achieve this I am writing my own programming language. I cannot garantee that GUI creation will be a feature but it is a goal I would like to achieve. However, instead of writing my interpreter and compiler in C/C# or C++ Or some other language that natively supports creating programs with a graphical interface, I have decided that instead I am going to write my own language in a compilable python variant. I know some of you are asking why I'm not just using C or C# and that's because the language I am creating is only an experiment. I want it to be open-source and easy to modify, while also being simple to use as a learning tool to introduce graphical programming yet also providing some more advanced features such as multi-threading, file manipulation, and web access. If you have read through this; thank you, I really apreciate it.

Hey guys, I'm working on another design for the site, this time it's meant to be a more Material based design, it's not done yet, so this is an early design and so please keep that in mind. If you don't like material, don't sit here and complain, but if you want to share ideas then go ahead. I downsized the image to fit the screen better, sorry for low quality. High Quality Version: http://i.imgur.com/0ob28xU.png Current version;

The purpose of this project is to replace the "case" of my M0n0wall system, and viably build a proper cardboard case. But, I don't believe this will be a practical case for many people. I can do this because I have the time, tools, supplies, and desire to build this. As this progresses I will give my verdict on whether this/these cases are worth anyones' time and effort. For now it's an arts/crafts project and should be treated like such until determined otherwise. Final Build Measurements and Tolerences Known Proper Tools Aquired Materials Inspected and approved Preliminary Templates *Drill Templates Blank Cutting Templates Sheet metal cutting templates for mounting MOBO and PSU, and cut Electrical grounding for the case Other case half templates with one tooless Drive bay that accepts 3.5" and 2.5" drives without tools Safety InspectionFire/Stress Tests 4K Video Documentation In Progress *10s Intro Show Old Case and New Case side by side and Explain projectWhy this was necessary What this accomplishes List required materials Explain the template while showing the carboard layers being cut in a timelapseGive the exact number of layers of a specific type of cardboard to use Explain the Cutting templates as a timelapse of the cutting being done Assemble the board and test it Close case and enjoy new network case make by me Closing Remarks Pros/Cons and Practicality high doubts Likes/Dislikes of the build Planned Improvements in the MKII and NAS.1 If this build doesn't make it too much of a hassle Edit VideoSpecial Effects, cutting, and time lapsing Delete in camera audio and dictate over. Do a final once over after 2 days away for fresh perspective, and either start over, quit, or go with it Release the Video. Legend * Incomplete Completed Not Started Yet The Drill template to ATX Form Factor... This Odd looking template is all 6 cutting templates compressed down into one form. Since most of the templates for this side of the case shared the same profile I compressed them into one shape. The hook is for cable management, and it's curved to give it more strength while lowering the need for more materials. There are two base heights that are divided up for air channels. The lower one will rest against the surface, and the other height will be for fans. The PSU will make use of the flutes in the cardboard for airflow (MKII will be set up a little differently, but I don't have to worry about that right now). The total interior height is the height of an expansion slot. This is because everything else is shorter than that. Now the estimated dimensions are as follows. length 457.4mm + 10mm front + 10mm back / 3.175mm 144 layers and 150 layers of cardboard with the extra 2cm. height 111.3mm + 10mm top + 20mm or 10mm at bottom depth 315.15mm + 10%20mm extension

So been planing the PC build since July time and finally got the money and tools. The idea behind this case is for LAN events, as I have got kinda annoyed of lugging my PC in separate bits (Keyboard, monitor, mouse, system, headphones) to LAN. I have set it up with the basics for now to get it running and will add additional components/modifications over time. Right now just asking for some feedback from you guys and to help give suggestions. System: Core i5 4th Gen 3.5 gHZ AMD r7770 fx 2gb (Upgrading) PSU 550 Watt +80 gold plus SanDisk 60GB SSD Asus asus h87m-plus D-link 300 wireless nano adapter Logitech Wireless keyboard/Track-pad (Pieces of the case where taken from an old case that I used) EDIT: New photos of how I'm thinking on attaching the monitor and a little bit of air cooling (Still thinking it through )

Ok guys here is a list for a new build im doing for my personal rig. This is a preliminary list of parts because i will be upgrading most of it later on and adding watercooling as well! Because i have so many things to upgrade i will likely post two build logs in the build logs section. One of this list and one of the upgraded list. The theme (if you cant tell) is dark and dangerous...like a dungeon! Case: Rosewill Throne, Black Mobo: Asrock Z77 Extreme4 CPU: Intel i5-2500k (will be upgraded to i7-3770k) CPU Cooler: H80i GPU: nVidia GTX 480 (old and soon to be upgraded to 7XX) RAM: 8gb Corsair XMS3 @ 1600mHz (will be upgraded to 16gb of Vengeance @ 1866mHz) PSU: XFX XXX PRO 650W 80+ HDDs: 500gb WD Blue and 250gb hitactchi SSDs: (Soon to be added) At some point a custom liquid cooling loop will be added to this build when all the upgrades are completed. I expect to use swiftech gear. Tell me what you guys think and be sure to look for the build logs to come!