Fluxmaven

This is a welcome change. I have always had forums.extremehw.net bookmarked and rarely go to the main site.

Nice thing about the Alphacool AIOs are that they are based on their normal custom loop parts. They use standard G1/4 fittings and copper radiators. Makes it easier to expand or upgrade down the line.

Ken Block Killed in Snowmobile Accident WWW.ROADANDTRACK.COM He was 55 years old. RIP

I'm pretty excited about it, looks like it's done well. As far as I know Crunchyroll will be the only option outside of Japan at least initially.

I played through it on PS4 years ago and loved it. I need to finish playing NieR Replicant on PC then replay Automata on PC. Partially just to re-experience it on OLED and also to get hyped up for the the new anime adaptation of Automata that is coming out on the 7th.

So I'm finally making some progress on the sim rig. Dropped the 11900k in a while ago, still need to do all the decals and swap the GPU. Decided to stick with one ecosystem and ditch the Logitech gear in favor of an all Thrustmaster setup. Picked up a TS-PC Racer Ferrari 488 Challenge Edition. I bought one TSS handbrake/sequential shifter that I have configured as a handbrake currently. Not sure if I want to get an H-pattern shifter or just another one of these to use as a sequential. Can't really drift with the paddle shifters on the wheel. Need to figure out a better pedal mounting solution since the mounting plate on this older Playseat Evolution isn't large enough to hit the mounting holes on the Thrustmaster pedals. I jerry rigged it with big ass washers just to test it out and 2 minutes into clutch kicks and chill the pedals came off So, I've got a bit more to buy and other stuff to install but she's coming together finally.

She's been dabbling in CAD for some of her jewelry making which is where it's shortcomings were brought to light.

My mom uses a Mac at home but has a few programs that require Windows. I threw together a basic rig for her a while back but it was starting to show its age. She asked if I had any parts lying around to upgrade it. Old PC i5 6500 ASRock Z270M Pro4 Gigabyte Windforce RX 460 4GB 8GB of 2133Mhz 256GB NVMe + 128GB SATA m.2 I decided to rob the CPU/MOBO/RAM from my travel PC. I'll shuffle around parts from other rigs to get that rig back online and buy myself some upgrades along the way. New(ish) PC i5 11500 MSI B560i Edge RX 460 32GB of 3200Mhz 1TB NVMe Her old build was in a cheap Rosewill case with a non modular ATX PSU. It was also in Florida... So instead of just shipping her a box of parts and rebuilding the PC when I got down there for Christmas, I decided to build her an entire new PC. I picked up a Phanteks Evolv Shift but decided it would look kind of empty. So I gave her my Louqe Raw S1 that I picked up for myself and never used do to thermal concerns with higher end hardware. Everything is a tight fit in this case. I was building it in the Discord chat so a few peeps saw the struggle. the BeQuiet! Shadow Rock LP cooler fit with just a couple millimeters to spare. Supposedly you can use an SFX-L but I tried squeezing in a Seasonic SGX-500 and it wasn't having it. Corsair SF450 worked albeit still a snug fit. Got everything up and running then boxed it up and shipped it to her. I moved over the RX 460 4GB from the previous build because she doesn't really need a dGPU so it didn't make sense to get her anything fancier. The router is a foot away and the PC is hardwired anyway so I stuck the WiFi antenna inside the case. Got it all setup for her. Now I just need to convince her to to buy a bigger desk so next Christmas I can surprise her with some better monitors.

Nice review. Really appreciate the high quality photography throughout.

Bought some more T30s today. Wasn't paying attention and didn't realize they wouldn't ship for a while

I still have my Sega Genesis, one of my modded PSP's, Xbox 360, And my liquid cooled PS4. In the past I Also had an NES, Gameboy Advanced, PS2, and PS3. I always wanted a PC more than consoles, but all my friends had consoles so I didn't seriously start getting into PCs until high school when I started working and could afford to start building them.

Sorry I don't have any recommendations. I just have an old Genovation numpad for when I need one. Haven't touched it since I moved from IT. I can research a few options when I get home in a couple days if you haven't found anything by then.

You're good. It's a gift for my sister so it's not gonna be stealing my style once I give it to her. I wonder what airport security though when they scanned it lol.

Happy holidays and safe travels to anyone that will be doing so.

As much as I would love to see them drop a flagship competitor I knew that wouldn't happen for a while. The midrange is where we really need some more competition. As more platforms like Twitch adopt AV1, the Arc cards should be a great option for the majority of people that just want to game and stream on a single screen. With a name like Battlemage, somebody better come out with a pink anime inspired card that's EHW gamer girl™ certified.

I was wondering if this would get extended. Glad it did since I'm planning on a few more upgrades in the near future.

That's exactly what I'm doing. Closed all of the HVAC vents on the 2nd floor where the office is and leave the door open. It's a balmy 26C in the office but the rest of this floor is comfortable. I need to setup a box fan to blow some of the heat down the hallway

I got confused and didn't think this started until today for some reason... Space heater #1 fired up. Others will be online shortly

Yes, that's the best part NovelKeys is where I would go for BOX switches. They sell them in boxes of 36 so two boxes is enough to cover the board and have a couple spares. The keyset I got doesn't really fit well since it uses nonstandard shift sizes 2.25u/1u as well as 1u keys for everything right of the spacebar. I'd just look around on Amazon to find something that's geared towards 65% boards. EPOMAKER (the ones who make the Mini Cat board, have several different keysets that would all have the correct sizes for that board.

I don't know the activation force of pinks off the top of my head but it's less than Jades and Navies. I like Navies the best of those three. I buy keyboard stuff from all over. Amazon with prime is typically the fastest. The keyboard sites are usually pretty quick. Novelkeys, 1up, thekey.company, cannonkeys, kono, etc. Drop (used to be massdrop) in stock stuff is quick but most stuff on there are group buys that wont ship for a long time. Sites in China can be surprisingly fast or take months. KBDfans is nice to navigate. Aliexpress is kind of a clusterfuck but you can get good deals if you don't mind waiting. I used to browse /r/mechmarket all the time, but its hard to find good deals there. Most posts are people flipping limited group buy stuff for a ton of money.

The Mini Cat before switches or keycaps was $79.49 after tax from Amazon. I'm not a fan of the speed silvers. They are a light weigh linear with a short activation distance. I think I got a bunch of them through a price mistake. They have been sitting on my shelf for a while and I'm glad to be rid of them. AFAIK Kailh Rose are linear switches. Kailh BOX Pink are clicky switches. I have some of those. I actually used one for the ESC key on the Mini Cat. My sister lives in Florida so I'll be enjoying the warm weather there when I give her the board.

Portico75 showed up today. The board itself is awesome for the money. Without extras it was actually cheaper than the Mini Cat board. I picked it up with a bag of SP Star Magic Girl tactile switches, Equals V3 tangerine stabilizers, and a purple coiled cable for just over $100 shipped. Granted that was during their 12 days of Christmas sale. It's marketed towards beginners as being something ready to just drop switches into and go. Mine did have a couple screws that were loose in the bag and others that were about to fall out. I just tightened everything up and moved on. I started popping in the Magical girl switches but decided to try out a linear switch for the first time in a long while. I really like heavy tactile and/or clicky switches and have been pretty anti-linear for years. There are lots of options that weren't around years ago so I picked up some Glorious Lynx to try out and filled out the rest of the board with those. Thankfully it's a hot swappable board so I can take them off easily if I hate them It's easy to program with VIA and I adjusted the keymap a bit to my taste. Not sure which keyset I'll run on it yet. I do have an Aliexpress DSA Astrolokeys knockoff set on the way or I might dig out my EnjoyPBT Sushi keyset.

It's a shame PS5 doesn't support HMB. On most systems modern enough to fully support PCI Gen4, the lack of DRAM isn't really noticeable in real world usage since the drive has HMB. Both the MP600 GS and the WD SN770 are DRAM-less drives and they perform similarly well in a PC but both would be bad in a PS5. After the review I swapped the SN770 for an SK Hynix P41 Platinum which is one of the fastest drives on the market. For just farting around the OS and gaming, there isn't any noticeable difference in performance. I did test the drives on Ryzen 7700x system and they were slightly faster than on the Intel setup. I wanted the review to be easily digestible and to not overload people with information. However if people want to see specific benchmarks or applications tested, or comparisons with different hardware I'm always willing to run them again.