Phanteks PH-TC14PE, one of the kings of cool.

So today in the mail delivered to me by DHL was my new Phanteks PH-TC14PE. I went with the blue version simply because I have a MSI board, and blue LED lighting (for the most part) in my rig. It comes in a fairly large and impressive box showing off all the different colors it could have came with instead of the blue.

The reason I chose the Phanteks over a Deepcool Gamer Storm Assassin, a Noctua NH-D14, a Thermalright Silver Arrow, and a Thermaltake Frio Extreme, is simply because the heat-sink comes in a number of different colors. Not only does the heat-sink itself come in different colors but the fan blades are color coordinated to go along with the color of the heat-sink. The different color choices are red, orange, blue, silver and black. I think it would have been nice if they manufactured one in green, but at least the black one will go with a plethora of different gamer color configurations so if you happen to have an odd colored motherboard (either the heat-sinks on the motherboard are a color not featured or the ram heat-sinks are), or a different colored LED setup, you aren't going to be completely left out.


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This is why you don't skip troubleshooting

So today I received the Mushkin ram. Plug it all in to the board, fire up the system to do a memtest. Failed. Hmm, OK well lets try messing with the timings and voltage for an hour to see if it'll cooperate. Nada. Ok, well then I guess I'll see if it'll work with dual channel of just dimm A slots. Hmm, works just fine. Ok, lets try doing single channel of dimm B1 and dimm B1. Nope. It at least showed up as single channel in memtest, but still failed. Ok, lets try doing 3gb using dimm A1 dimm A2 and dimm B2. Nope. This time, it was still showing as dual channel (which it shouldn't because it's only got 3 slots filled) and still failed at around the same test. Out of random testing, decided to also try just the dimm B slots. Fails almost instantly. Well, I guess that the B slots aren't functioning correctly, either a phase isn't working correctly on the board for the B dimms or the memory just doesn't wish to cooperate with the motherboard for whatever reason (cpu not handshaking with the ram correctly). Contacted Newegg today to see if I can get it replaced with 2 2GB sticks instead of the 4 1GB sticks. They were kind enough to refund the tax and item price of the 4 1GB sticks as well as sent me a free way bill to ship back the ram, so I am not really losing any money on the build. This is one thing I really like about Newegg is the fact that they are willing to give you a free shipping label on DOA stuff if you ask them correctly. Maybe this will solve the headache and will allow me to have a properly overclocked board without any fuss. This is why buying used can sometimes be a bit of a gamble, but if the two dimm A's are firing properly hopefully I can get away with the 4 gb on 2 slots without memtest still continuing to fail. I should have probably checked this before sending back the Corsair ram, but I didn't bother to think that something was wrong on the board. Bit disappointed in myself at this moment because of this. Normally I don't space out on these sorts or things, but now I understand why the board was being so uncooperative in the first place. Anyway, the new Mushkin 2x2GB kit is on order now. As this is my fault, I won't be expecting anything extra from my friend that I'm building it for.

New Mail + Looking at HCG-620W and Reiter rig

So today in the mail I was graced with the HCG-620M for the Reiter rig, as well as the I/O Shield for the Broadway rig. The I/O Shield came a bit bent up but I managed to straighten it out with my trusty pair of double sided pliers. I installed the I/O Shield into the system and it makes it look a bit cleaner on the back now.

On Friday I got a slip in the mail for another package and picked it up on Saturday (May 26th). To my surprise, it was my 30g tube of Prolimatech PK-1 thermal paste. It was shipped from Ireland! I was actually kinda surprised and wondered what lie in the package until I opened it and was graced with the 30g tube. I have tons of other thermal pastes, but who could pass up a deal of 30 bucks (plus shipping) for 30g of thermal paste. And the Prolimatech stuff is pretty decent as well, with a thermal conductivity of 10.2W/m-°C and overall excellent performance. Comparing that to a 13 dollar Arctic Silver 5 4g tube, I would have to say that it's definitely a better deal. Because I use so much thermal paste while building systems and also for renewing the thermal paste in my own rig (which is something you should do every few years to make sure that your heat-sink performs the best that it can) getting a massive tube like this is a fair bit more cost effective. I have tried a numerous amounts of thermal pastes and am looking forward to using the Proliamtech for everything in the future. I've tried others like Tuniq TX-4 (which has horrible shelf life btw), Arctic MX-4, Gelid GC-Extreme, Xigmatek PTI-G4512, Xigmatek PTI-G3606, and of course Arctic Silver 5 (which makes a huge mess when you go to clean it off a cpu). Out of those, I preferred the MX-4, it spread on easily and had good thermal performance, but now that I have the Prolimatech stuff I'm sure that I'll enjoy using it over the others I have. That being said, I'm going to eventually use up the left over tubes of my other thermal pastes as I need to.


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Not much progress + Fan Tips and Suggestions

So an update on shipments of parts today. Nothing new to report on the Mushkin ram, just says that it left LAX @ 7:02 yesterday, kinda disappointing but to be expected considering I went with the cheapest Purolator shipping. Will probably be here middle of next week (or sooner if I get lucky). Power supply should also be here any day, then I can start putting some of the hardware into the Reiter rig. By the way, from now on I will be referring to computer cases as rigs simply because I can get carried away where I use case when I am referring to a situation rather than a computer case, so it will cut down on a bit of confusion.

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Got a new 140mm Xigmatek XAF fan in black. They're decent fans, kinda make a bit of noise if you don't put them in carefully. It could possibly be the technology specific to the XAF fans (uses a "Copper Bushing Axis Bearing") that may be causing slight tilting during the spin that may be the cause of the vibration, or it could be that the 90 CFM (amount of air flow) may be causing the fans to warp causing a slight vibration (only really seems to be happening to the one that had a slight defect which may be the culprit). In terms of overall noise when it's not vibrating, you're mostly hearing just the sound of a fast large volume of air with a tiny whine from the motor (which is fine in my opinion). Really any fan under 24dB isn't going to be a huge burden on gaming experience unless you want an absolutely quiet system (in which case you're most likely going to be looking at pricey liquid cooling instead of air cooling). Unfortunately I didn't get around to taking any pictures of the install because I completely spaced out and got 2 hours of sleep since last night so everything is a bit overwhelming right now. Anyway, got a nice optimal airflow path going now in my rig with excellent CFM fans installed that should be fairly reliable (unless that one fan decides to have a catastrophic failure due to the slight defect). I used to be all about Silenx fans, but recently some of them have been giving me a bit of grief (one of them has literally locked up and overheated to the point where it was actually transferring some of the motor heat to the heat-sink, opposite of what it should do), and the old Xigmatek fans were in the system prior to the Silenx fans and they're still running strong (but are covered in dust right now), however they have been removed from the rig and replaced with XAFs (with the exception of the side panel fan which is a CLF 120mm Blue LED fan).
When looking at fans, there's several things to consider, LED vs non-LED, CFM per dB (can become a fair bit important if you want maximum cooling with the most minimal dB), price, CFM vs static pressure (or sometimes labeled as air pressure), and size of the fan.


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Shipping and a bit on Power Supplies

So today I was notified that the Mushkin ram has shipped, which is great. Should be expecting a number of parts in the mail over the next week including another Antec HGC-620W power supply, a couple of I/O shields for the two Core 2 Duo builds, the Mushkin ram, and the motherboard and ram for the Reiter case.

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The Antec PSU is a very good buy for the price, usually is on sale at NCIX and Newegg.ca for between 70-90 dollars (+tax and shipping). It's nearly fully modular aside from the 24pin and the 8pin connectors (which you need both of anyway). Also the finish is pretty nice and it's a single rail PSU (which I'm all about). In my opinion, multi-rail PSU's are a bit of a headache because the CPU ends up being on one and then leaves the other rails to be desired by the gpu and other accessories which can sometimes overflow the rails (especially in a SLI or Crossfire environment). Not too bad on energy efficiency neither for a 80+ Bronze PSU. And in it's price range, for having all Japanese capacitors (which are more reliable and tend to last longer), it's one of my top picks indefinitely besides a XFX PSU. Some other brands tout that they have Japanese capacitors, but in a number of cases it just ends up being the main capacitor that is Japanese and the others are slightly lower grade. That being said, there are brands that even though they don't specify Japanese capacitors they are still of good design, however only are worth picking up if can get it cheaper than an Antec HGC or a XFX.


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Start of something new.

Well, my friends, I started a blog about my work with PCs. This blog will contain hardware, software, and tips for PCs, as well as answering questions others may have about problems or upgrades.

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As a start, today I got some parts for a Core 2 Duo build I am working on for a friend today. It may not be current generation hardware, but it'll definitely play a plethora of games on decent settings at a decent framerate.

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