Saturday, September 24, 2016

Desktop PC Power Supply Replacement and Dust Mitigation

My 10 year old PC Power & Cooling power supply unit died. So, I bought another one by the same company. Here is to another 10+ years!

In around fall 2006 having suffered a power supply failure I did a lot of research on desktop power supplies before purchasing a replacement. A company I came across was PC Power & Cooling. They had papers on their site discussing the importance of large capacitors, heat sinks, and a strong high amperage single 12V rail (at a time when power supply wattage was rapidly climbing but on dedicated rails). The said their power supplies were such high quality that they only needed a single 80mm fan to cool their power supply and were offering a 3 or 5 year warranty when 1 year was industry standard.




Friday, September 23, 2016

Ikea Brimnes 3 Door Wardrobe (and why it is "disposable furniture")



To start, the Ikea Brimnes Wardrobe functions well, and I have no particular quality issues so far. More so, for our purposes this gives my wife the full usage of the walk-in closet and works better for us. We bought the wardrobe as cheap, disposable furniture for our move to Florida knowing it may not last a move thereafter.
I am not going to give instruction on how to build this; the Ikea instructions are comprehensive. I would recommend using two people when placing this against a wall once assembled.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Ikea SKARSTA Sit/Stand Desk



This is what met desk, in slightly cleaner times, looks like right now.

First a review of the Ikea SKARSTA Sit/Stand Desk and then a detailed assembly.
As a desk it works great. Despite have two monitors and a lamp all weighted to one side of it there is little or no tilt even when lifting the desk to max height. The surface seems fine, if not particularly to my style. And, having bought the larger of the desk surfaces for this there is quite a lot of real estate. The metal frame is solid and works great.
My only complaint about the desk is that when cranking it up, it makes an awful racket. My wife’s is much quieter, but still noisy as you get toward the top of its extension.

Electronics Cleaning, Receiver

I have owned this Yamaha RX-777 stereo receiver since 2004 or 2005, bought at Abt, and it has come with me everywhere (except Israel) that I have lived since high school. It is a wonderful mid-grade stereo receiver. But, I have not ever cleaned it out. I decided to pull off the cover and give it an air can cleaning and vacuuming. It looks much better now.
As for the receiver itself, I may replace it at some point just to have one with digital input in the rear so that less processing is done on my desktop before it hits my receiver. But this is not a high priority and does not factor into my desire for an audiophile quality system at some point.

Dusty:



Thursday, September 15, 2016

Self Storage Shelving, Part 2

In the original post on self storage shelving, I showed the shelves my wife and I assembled and used in our self storage unit. These are the images of the fully packed unit when we were done.

Not really much to discuss here, this is just the result. Primarily loads of vertical space to use.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Self Storage Shelving

My wife and I are renting a storage unit while we spend ~7 months living in Florida. We are keeping a good amount of the stuff we do not need to take with us (but we would like to have when we finally have more permanent living quarters or a house) in a self storage unit.
We have done this before but found that we wasted a lot of vertical space and had to be very concerned with how things we stacked.
This time we bought a few Husky Steel Garage Shelving Units in order to better maximize our storage space and it makes a world of difference.
The shelves are 77 in. wide, 78 in. high, and 24 in. deep. Each shelf (when evenly spaced as here) is rated for 2,000 lbs. per shelf.


Monday, August 29, 2016

Knife Sharpening

I have had this Calphalon Contemporary 8" Chef's Knife since around fall 2008 when Linens 'n Things was undergoing liquidation and I decided to buy a chef's knife on sale while a college student. It is not a bad knife per se, it is just not a great knife, and you can probably do better by spending a little more (I currently have two Fibrox® Pro 8-Inch Chef's Knife and they are much better knives, but I digress). Within the first year of ownership of the Calphalon Contemporary 8" Chef's Knife one of the people I shared an apartment with put this big nick in the blade by cutting a spaghetti squash on a granite counter top with no cutting board (do not suggest).


Saturday, April 9, 2016

Desktop PC Overhaul

I was having some temperature and blue screen issues on my desktop recently. For one the original fan on my Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler died on me. I performed a little surgery and replaced its fan with a non-PWM case fan I had as a temporary solution (without removing the CPU cooler). I was regularly sitting at ~40 C idle which was rather warm.
So, I decided it was time for a CPU cooler change and figured I would try one of those close loop liquid systems. After reading lots of reviews, forum posts, comparisons, and so on I elected to go with the Corsair Hydro Series H110i because it used the CoolIt water pump and had good performance reviews, even if deemed a bit noisy.
One problem though is I use a Cooler Master HAF X full tower case. This case has been fun so far, but one issue for this particular cooler (which I knew when I ordered the cooler) is that this case only has holes for mounting 120 mm radiators at the top, not 140 mm radiators. So, some light modding would be involved.
I apologize for the image quality, lighting in the room was not great and I was doing this late at night and also had to use flash on a lot of shots. Thinking about it I should have taken of the circular polarizing filter as it would have let more light in.
Corsair Hydro Series H110i  box:


Sunday, January 24, 2016

Glasses from Used Bottles

My wife and I occasionally end up with interesting looking bottles. We have decided to convert them into glasses.
I suggest wearing mechanics gloves or something that offers both dexterity and protection when doing this in order to prevent harm to your fingers and hands. Goggles and a mask are also a good idea for safety equipment.