Random Hardware topics

[neogunhero]

That is likely going to be a thermal pad and you don't need to replace them. They can be reused. Up to you if you want to replace it.

One thing I'll need to make sure is the thickness of the pad vs the ones I have. Mine are 1mm thick, stackable up to 2mm without performance loss. If the translucent thermal pad attached to the heatsink is any thicker (it may be from what I remember), I shouldn't replace it. Also it depends on how easy it would be to rip out the old one without leaving behind adhesive residue.

The new drive comes in today, and it had a graphene thermal spreader attached already. Using that plus the heatsink will already improve thermals as my current drive that will be replaced doesn't have the graphene spreader.



Since this is going to be a clean install, it’s time for a clean set up. I’ll be doing a very deep clean on all my components tonight. Removing keycaps and soaking them in soapy water, disinfecting all surfaces, dusting PC, all of that. I tend to keep my set up tidy, but dust build up is inevitable. It's been a while since I did such a deep cleaning, I'm strangely kind of excited to do it.

 

[Colif]

Since this is going to be a clean install, it’s time for a clean set up. I’ll be doing a very deep clean on all my components tonight. Removing keycaps and soaking them in soapy water, disinfecting all surfaces, dusting PC, all of that. I tend to keep my set up tidy, but dust build up is inevitable. It's been a while since I did such a deep cleaning, I'm strangely kind of excited to do it.

Oldest PC part I own now are my speakers. They being replaced next year so not cleaning it. Next would be monitor I guess. I keep front clean so I can see it but rear is probably dusty but entire room being taken apart in a few months so I fix that later. I can't see it
PC might need a clean, hard to see dust in a white case

 

[neogunhero]

Got the new SSD last night, put that in and got Windows 11 up and running. Fully configured how I like it. Very similar to Windows 10 in many ways, so I'm happy.

The whole process took so much longer than I had expected. I ended up removing the entire HDD hotswap bay that was preinstalled in the case. That shows how old my case is, probably a good 8 years or more. I'm having a hard time finding the exact one, I used to be able to find it on Newegg but it's not there or on Amazon anymore. I know the brand is Rosewill, but everything I can find for sale is their newer cases. eBay didn't show much luck either.

Here are some before and after-ish photos of the PC.

Spoiler: Before and After-ish

I say after-ish because I had to make a tweak. I have my M2 SATA in an enclosure, but saw the second M2 slot on the mobo and forgot why I had the enclosure. I proceeded to slot it into the mobo, but it never showed up in Windows. I checked the mobo manual, and for whatever reason, the second slot M2B does not support SATA M2, only PCIe 2.0 x4. The top slot does support SATA, but it also support PCIe 3.0 x4, which I need to get faster speeds on the main drive. That was the whole reason why I bought the SSD enclosure two years ago, I totally forgot. On the second photo right above the grey fans on the right there is a small metal tab with a hole, I just mounted the encloser in there and it works perfectly I also cleaned up the cable management more after doing that.

That HDD hotswap bay has sat there since I got this case 6-7 years ago and I just never thought to take it out. I used it in the past with a 1TB WD Black HDD which is gone now. It blocks that bottom fan, but I always had good enough temps so I never bothered. There were a good 8 screws holding it to the case, but I knew it could come out individually so I kept trying. I then screwed the SATA SSD to the bottom there by the fan. I never save benchmarks or anything so I can't compare but it will surely bring some better airflow to the whole system.

Windows 11 is working just fine, configured a lot of it myself then used some programs like Shutup10++ to disable lots of other stuff. The whole process from start to finish was about 4 hours, I was up until 2am doing this which is wild late for me these days.

 

[Zed Clampet]

How soon you forget



My next PC is likely Intel but they have to exist and be competitive to let me buy one

CEO is apparently in hot water because our president hates the fact that he's Chinese or something like that?

No, that's not it. It's because he's been talking about giving up on fabricating chips after Intel accepted $8 billion dollars to expand their fabrication business.

That dude in charge of the US isn't going to let them go anywhere. They announced yesterday that the government is acquiring 10 percent of Intel. The US wants them fabricating chips really, really badly.

And per the numbers I saw, their GPU business is actually doing okay, but they are mostly being used in laptops right now.