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Oh then will I have something for you to ogle soon. It's about 3 feet tall, solid xtraa thicc steel, water cooled, and 'vintage' circa 2000. The guts are getting swapped out to something slightly more recent, a first gen Core based Xeon X3470 on a board with very strong VRM because that CPU can suck some serious power! I'll probably break my OCZ 600W PSU, it's always had coil whine and I think the fan is starting to die, not that I don't have a shortage of fans I can replace the bad one with lol.

Haha, could really cram some serious computing power into an old tower with plenty of air space. I liked the first gaming towers that were lit and and liquid cooling, so cool.

Oh this is liquid cooled and has a window and I've got some lighting I can add as well. If I can get the temps right with a properly installed waterblock on the Xeon then I'll feel comfortable installing a Ryzen system under water with it, I just wish I had a way to pass CPU temp to the fan controller so I've still got some homework to do.

Hmmm.... Just have the fan on all the time?

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Alright here's what I'm working with, but it's not cleaned up to show mine yet.
https://koolance.com/pc2-601bw-liquid-cooling-system-black
I'm missing all the panels behind the front door for some reason, I'll have to figure something out to replace them with. I'm also missing one of the hard drive caddies but I think I have it around somewhere. And one of the 80mm fan holders. I used to run all 3 80mm fans as intake because the top radiator was 3 80mm exhaust fans. I have a specially bent metal air deflector to blow air down over the motherboard so the VRM gets cooling.

The board I used to have in there was a Asus P4C-800E
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1133
It had everything.

You've inspired me to make a laptop just so I can play Final Fantasy XIV, since I'm too cheap to buy PS+ for one game. If only such were higher on my priorities list. Sigh, what I get for having three expensive hobbies. Since being pretty isn't a hobby it's a lifestyle, so it doesn't count as a fourth.

Scrubbed out and washed the case, blasted it out clean with the garden hose, wiped it dry, it's been sitting in front of a fan drying. Tomorrow I'll either clay cloth the car or I'll start swapping the board over to the giant case made of heavy steel and razor blade sheet metal edges.


My Silverstone PWM fan hub came, turns out my one H87 board's 4 pin chassis fan header isn't PWM or something as the hub defaulted to it's full speed on that header but on the CPU header it was fine so I'm just keying all the case fans off the PWM CPU fan speed signal. It's nice and quiet now, even with the CPU full loaded, AND I still have room for 4 more fans (not that I could fit 4 more fans in that case).

Every time I see PWM I think of synthesizers. Just thought you might like to know that about me.

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Not sure what it means in that context, for cooling fans it's Pulse Width Modulation which is the same way some LED's and other devices are controlled for brightness or speed.

PWM is the same with synthesizers; Pulse Width Modulation. It's when you use a low frequency oscillator to effect a pulse wave's(traditionally) cycle and you can alter the speed of the cycle sweep by changing the frequency of the LFO as well as the intensity by setting how much the LFO effects the signal. You'll also have a manual control for the actual pulse width that will set it to a specific spot in the cycle, which 50% is a square wave.

This post has been edited by Box: Jul 10, 2019 - 8:03 PM

That probably made as much sense to me as it does to you if I started talking about vdroop and load line calibrations.

At least the premise of PWM is the same in either case.

Heck yeah, progress!

I got the Xeon stuff up and running in the Koolance case, messing around with CPU voltages now some. I need some case fans for it but I don't feel like laying out for good ones right now and there's no point buying crappy ones when nothing else uses 80mm and I'll just end up buying twice for the good ones later. I'll scrounge up some 80mm fans from my boxes of crap and make something work well enough. I've named this one 'The Monolith'. I can't screw with overclocking until I have some air blowing over the very beefy VRM coolers but with over 100 amps flowing through them and into the socket I NEED air blowing over the board! I should probably cut a hole under the board so I can blow air behind it too to try to cool the back of the socket and the pins in it. What's the max power for an 1156 socket? LOL

Found a red COB "DRL" LED strip in the basement that can run off 5V dimly, stuck that on the top panel inside 'The Cube' and it looks pretty awesome glowing some dim red light from the case.

Just grab an electric leaf blower, there ya go plenty of air independent from the CPU.

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You know, I know you're kidding but....I do have a couple very strong blowers in the basement, one is a bouncy house inflator I got off a curb that MOVES some air. I found a pair of 80mm mismatched fans and my old air deflector for it, it's annoying in tone now but the VRM are plenty cooled. I got it at 3.84ghz and started backing the voltage down some but then I got bored and I think I'll just pick it back up some other time. Scores a whopping 600 points in Cinebench R15 where as my i7 4950HQ does 800 points AND only uses 50W of power doing so. Whatevers I kind of want to put in a thicker radiator and modern water block but nothing uses 1/4 inch ID so I'd need a block, rad, pump/res, and new tubing and still need to figure out how to get the Koolance control board to read block temps properly. I may just get the block first and some G1/4 to 6mm nipple fittings and then figure out how to mount the thermistor needed for the Koolance board. I guess I could just Dremel out a divot in the base plate off to the side to glue it into, that's essentially what the Koolance block does. Yay more money, I'm taking a break from spending on computers for a while.

And it would be pointless because I'd be buying an Intel block when I want to house an AMD system in that case anyway. Not that it looks like they can overclock, they're not even hitting their claimed boost clocks. What a ****ty product launch...

Hmmm... down the rabbit hole like anything else that involves customization. Also bothered with looking up the rec specs for FFXIV:
Final Fantasy XIV Recommended Requirements

CPU: Intel Core i7 (2.66 GHz) or faster
RAM: 4 GB
OS: Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 with 768 MB VRAM or equivalent
TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 768 MB
HARDWARE T&L: Yes
PIXEL SHADER: 4.0
VERTEX SHADER: 4.0
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 15 GB

Hmmm....

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Since they don't spec what gen of i7 they're likely referring to 1st gen parts which also jives with the age of that video card. That's like 10+ year old hardware and it should be fairly cheap to put it together from used parts. When you're ready to start buying parts I can help you find deals on eBay or wherever if you'd like.

I thought it sounded like fairly minimal stuff these days, then again the game came out in 2010? So I guess that'd be about right.

So finally decided to give Fallout another try with Fallout 4 GOTY Edition, but everyone selling on Amazon is overpriced and I can't exactly go to Wal-Mart or Gamestop currently. Meh... It's on super sale on Steam currently but I don't have a computer to play it. Sigh...

Stop being so picky and just get a desktop PC built for cheap for gaming.

Desktop no bueno with fibro because of bleh computer chairs. That's ok, Dragon Age Inquisition with all the expansions was on super sale for like $12 in the Playstation Store so just got that since it was one I had been looking into as well. Fallout 4 will happen when it happens I suppose.

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So how do you use a laptop? Do you just hover in the fetal position in mid air?

Recliner, that way I'm not putting any pressure on myself anywhere like a computer chair that's killing me in 5-10 minutes. I've thought about turning a car seat into a computer chair, but would need a welder and stuff to make it.

Oh yeah and in typical games with character creation fashion it took me a good 2 hours to make my character in Dragon Age. I've gotten pretty good at putting myself into games since she looks just like my character in Monster Hunter which looks like one of my characters in Skyrim which looks like me. I swear I'm not being vain, if anything I think it helps me better accept myself in a way by seeing a woman that looks just like me and is treated as such at all times within the game(s). That and it's reassuring in a way that I can get the female characters a lot closer to me than I can the male ones, so that also helps in a way and makes me feel better. Silly I guess.

Speaking of such, apparently in Fallout 4 you're forced into a heterosexual relationship. BOOOOOOOOOO.... Oh well, I guess I'll make the male character as pretty as possible and name him Ashley or something only for him to die 10-15 minutes later. Which I'm not averted to being with a male so long as they're feminine, but those are so few and far between in the real world. In Japanese media they're everywhere though, damn you Japan and your obsession with pretty males!


Kuja really looks gorgeous, I mean glorious, in the new Dissidia.

They make things that mount the monitor non an arm and hold a keyboard and mouse so you can game reclined.

Hmmm, may have to look into that then. Especially if that and a complete tower could be gotten for less than a comparable laptop. Already have a LCD monitor, though it's only 19" and a wireless mouse and keyboard so would just need the tower. Though as of now all of the games I want for the most part are on some iteration of console or mobile.

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Just presenting options, the nice thing about a desktop PC is that you can toss in new parts here and there to keep it's performance inline with your needs. Used parts can be scored cheaply from time to time if you're patient.

A VESA mount arm for the monitor would let you position it where you want, like hovering over you.
https://www.amazon.com/Monitor-Mount-Stand-...g/dp/B078455485 as an example, that could be mounted to the side of the recliner on a base of some kind as simple or elaborate as you wanted.

An articulating keyboard and mouse platform https://www.amazon.com/AVLT-Power-Premium-A...r/dp/B07PYDRQDV could allow you to swing them over your lap while in the chair.

They actually do make workstations with all this built in already, but they're quite expensive. You could probably get close for much cheaper, I'm sure once you start poking around you'll find something to make it work if you want. A laptop with a midrange GPU like a GTX 960M starts at $500 on the used market and you're locked into what you get with it, you can upgrade and add some more RAM or a larger SSD but for the most part all laptops now feature soldered CPU's and while some may use a GPU on a riser card often the BIOS simply won't accept a different GPU card being installed, and if it's even possible to swap in a better MXM GPU card they're prohibitively expensive. a GTX 1060 MXM card is $350-$400, a desktop GTX 1060 is in the $200-250 range and can be scored lower sometimes.

I would say maybe after selling the Firebird and getting a Miata, but then all resources and time will be going to that. Maybe after that and HRT finalizing I can get my life half ass sorted for once, and then I can buy some super duper gaming pc to under utilize.

Doesn't have to be super duper, a budget build would play the games you want to play plenty fine. $400-500 would build a pretty good mid range PC for gaming at 1080P Ultra or 1440P High settings at 60fps in most games from the past few years. It's about picking parts with the most value.

i5 4590 $65
16GB ddr3 $70
Z87 board $90
RX 580 8GB $120
$550W PSU $75
Case $50
Fans $40 (good fans are great)
That's an under $500 build, roughly using current eBay pricing, that would play a lot of games. I'm sure there's more recent hardware that would be even better, I'm just kind of mimicking one of my slapdash builds that I slowly parted together over a year.

And you can put purple lights inside it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oQsggzUO1Q
Light changes brightness in response to CPU temp, but this LED has a pretty piss poor voltage range. I need a better one that'll light at lower voltages to actually do the effect properly.

This post has been edited by Bitter: Jul 31, 2019 - 7:36 PM

I do like purple. That's how you market things to me, make them purple.