Threadripper cooling: low profile server air coolers and Thermal Grizzly thermal pad
There are big tower air and water AiO coolers for Threadripper CPUs. There are also Epyc/Threadripper low profile server coolers. To top things off we also got Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut thermal pads that can come in TR4 size. Let's check those options and their cooling performance.
Price to performance of used graphics cards - July 2019
With the release of new graphics cards some may opt to upgrade to a new one while many others could see an opportunity to hit a bargain on a used graphics card. I've decided to check what are the local prices for used graphics cards and how they relate with price/performance to current new cards.
Measuring power draw of DC-DC Pico PSU power supply powering AMD APUs
AMD APUs are a power efficient package of CPU and a capable integrated graphics. They can be used for some gaming not to mention more day to day PC usage. All of that in a small package -but how small actually can you get with an Athlon 200GE or Ryzen 3 2200G? How much power does such system needs and can you use PicoPSU alike DC-DC super compact power supplies for ultra thin and ultra stylish builds? Let's find out.
Testing fancard effectiveness on GPU cooling performance
GPU Fancards aren't a new idea - an expansion card with fans that goes in front of your GPU to help push air through it to then help with the cooling. At least in theory. Fancards didn't really got much traction and are rather an oddity among PC hardware. Let's test some of them and see if they work as intended or just add more fans to the mix without any benefits.
Testing OEM and no-name RX 460 graphics cards
Graphic cards try to appeal to us with impressive cooling solutions, factory overclocks or RGB, lots of RGB. But what happens when a graphics card is destined to live it days as a OEM card in an pre-built PC? Or what it won't end up in a MSI, Gigabye, Sapphire or other well known brand product? Let's take a loot at Medion OEM and Jegy RX 460 cards to find out.
Benchmarking and analyzing World of Warcraft performance
World of Warcraft performance isn't something easily defined. Subsequent patches bring changes to the engine and online character of the game makes accurate benchmarking even harder. Lack of consistent and repeatable benchmark mode makes comparisons or problem debugging even more problematic. In this article I want to go over my benchmark results and methodology for Battle for Azeroth and Classic Stress Test as well as my set of benchmarks spots that try to cover edge cases of this game performance limits.
Solar System imaging cameras and hardware for 2019
In my look at planetary imaging cameras for 2016 I nominated IMX224 as best color sensor and sensors such as IMX178, IMX265, IMX250 and IMX252 as best mono variants. We are almost half a year into 2019 and those picks are still one of the best if not the best. What did changed and what is upcoming for Solar System imaging? Let’s find out.
Getting rid of dust from home and from a computer case
Dust is something not welcomed and the more dust gets to a room or to a computer PC the more often it has to be cleaned. For quite some time I was noticing a much higher dust buildup in my home that in few offices closer to the city center so I've decided to investigate this mystery. Here is my investigation involving air quality sensor, air purifier and winter heating season.
Building a software developer PC based on Ryzen 7 1700
From time to time a company will spend a nice chunk of money on new hardware. Few days ago company I work for - Social WiFi (and Captive Portal Installer) made some upgrades - new PCs for software developers, RAM and SSD upgrades for some old laptops and stuff like that (a new coffee machine!). I participated in the PC upgrade process. We built four Ryzen 7 1700 systems and added a bit of RGB on top of it. Here is the story, parts picked and some benchmarks.
Power and thermal performance of fanless Pentium J5005 PC
Not so long ago I tested a fanless Pentium J5005 motherboard. I did some basic power usage testing but that was done with a powerful ATX power supply. In this article I want to test power usage more precisely with a DC/ATX power adapter. Alongside it I want to test if there will be any thermal throttling when running the system under heavy load in a typical small mini ITX case. How a 10W TDP CPU will perform in those categories?