Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Had a bit of an up and down kinda weekend but it all turned out good enough to post up here as an overall outcome.

I was sitting at my PC on Friday evening doing the usual amount of crap-watching on YouTube and my PC went "eeerrk" and completely went to a blank screen. Power still on, all the usual sort of case noises and stuff. I figured that something had gone pop due to the heat as the fans had all ramped up at the time. Tried power cycling, nothing, power came on, but not even posting. Big downer time, thought stuff it and went to bed.

Got up Saturday and hauled the PC downstairs (not a small job when your case is a CM ATCS 840... the thing is huge and weighs so much). Opened it all up, cleaned out everything (sooo much dust, even with filters on all intakes), tried to relocate my radiator so that I could put the 2 x 230mm fans back in the case roof (told you it was big...), but nope, rad too big for where I wanted to put it. Anyways, reseated everything, hooked it all up again and yay, all working again and a LOT cooler now.

So that was one awesome bit, no need to try and find money from somewhere to fix a PC. The other most awesome bit was when I was putting my PC back under the desk I saw a hint of a colour that I remembered and there it was, my custom Boker Kwaiken knife that I had not seen for a couple of years at least. I knew it was about somewhere, but it had been knocked off the desk and gotten stuck down the side. Much yay and rejoicing.

 

Oh.my.god.

I bought two lots of cable extensions, and wanted to change them around to match my build.



I was literally sweating. I hate depinning cables. Any way, a mate of mine keeps banging on about "this tool"



And I am thinking "Dude it's going to suck why would I spend six quid on sucking?". What I did not realise is it is the best tool ever made. This took me 5 minutes. I really couldn't believe it. No force AT ALL, no yanking and heaving, no split fingers.



It's absolutely bloody amazing.

 

Yup, it is an absolute life-changer when you realise (and get) that there is a special little tool for a particular job. The amount of time that has been saved with things like PC building, working on cars, model making and so on after someone has pointed out that there is a cheap little tool that has been around for years.

 

That's an elegant little knife but I know I wouldn't get on with the blade shape

 

Oh I had all of the tools dude. Problem is they were crap. I originally had one like this.



The problem is they were garbage. Total garbage. The pins that went in were so fat you had to shove it in so hard that they would bend every time. Then, eventually, they would snap. Because it was so tight it meant you had to force shove the cable in from the back side to get the tool in without pushing the pin back down so that it didn't engage. This one? literally falls in. The biggest improvement however is that you can actually pull the cable without removing the tool. The other ones were such a tight fit that they would grip the pin so you had to take the tool out. Which, usually resulted in the pins engaging again and it just not coming out at all.

You're right though, it is totally life changing. I wasn't going to buy "have to remove the cables" cable combs but now I am sorely tempted.

 

Got a little play with my new work PC this morning, before it and 3 more like it are deployed to our department later in the week.

Old PC (Dell Optiplex 7050, c2016):-

• Core i7-7700
• Quadro K2200
• 16GB RAM
• 500GB NVMe SSD

New PC (Dell Precision 3660):-

• Core i7-12700
• RTX A4000
• 32GB RAM
• 1TB NVMe SSD

Both CPU & GPU have jumped 4-5 generations, and it really shows. This new PC flies!

 

Oh my, that is beautiful

 

One cheeky ask later and after the dust settled from an eventful morning, I set about unboxing a rather nice curved monitor at work.

 

Thank you. It is just a standard model that I have added some tesseract pattern scales from Custom Scale Division:



I also added the back spacer:



I have a load more plans, I am part way through polishing the blade, or at least parts of it and I really want to get the steel liners engine turned. I did thing about a custom regrind for the blade, but that is a bit spendy so we shall see.

 

As soon as I'd tried my new works PC (see above), I started talking about new monitors to replace our aged pairs of Dell 23" ones.
I proposed one of Gigabyte's 43" 4K 144Hz ones, that we can get for around £575 ex VAT each.
Part of my pitch was "As our desks face into the middle of the office, monitors that big will double as COVID shields.

 

Remove all the character of the house why don't you.

 

If the box is intact this is one of those times where "It'll buff out" comes in.

 

It's late, I am not tired and the house is far too quiet now we no longer have our Rabbit (for a silent animal they sure can make some noise when they want to!).

So what better way to spend the time than completely dismantling my PC and setting it up on the test bench....



Method to my madness as I wanted to test out whether the higher memory temps I was seeing on the 3090 post pad replacement are a result of a poor mount or lack of airflow/space in the NR200P. Turns out it is the latter as memory temps are now 88c steady state after a pro longed Heaven loop (hit 104 pre pad replacement and 96 in the NR200). Oh and core temps are down from 73 to 61..

Now my thought is to strap the two Noctua's I have to the bottom of the case with it sat on some risers (so the fans fit). That can be tomorrows (todays?!) job now....

 

Handed in my notice. I quite like my job, and especially like the people I work with, but after missing out on two different promotions I figured it's time to leave. I've been told more money is on the table but it's too little too late. So many mixed feelings right now but mostly feels awesome!

 

A pair on 15mm 120s will fit under the 3090.

 

I got those recently. Very slim.

 

Yep, I was just trying to use what I already have lying around

Ta, Do you have the model number of them? I am guessing the P12 slim? Don't really want to pay ~ £20 each for Noctua's

 

That was my thought process exactly.

Yup they're P12 slim.

 

Had a bit of brass neck and ended up with just over an 11% day rate pay rise!
Very happy boy