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That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
yay!
I'm logged in via my new (and actually working) workstation! It's only taken me the last hour to get Windows installed and my wireless adapter working correctly, but all seems good now. Apparently the MOBO had an external antenna to plug in. I thought that was just for show. I mean, if my phone can do it... But here we are. I'm online and running updates for a very CLEAN pc. In fact, I don't even have Office on here yet. Things look kind of bare at the moment.

System shows my processor, all the ram, and I even learned how to partition my drive during the OS install. I'm still shocked by how QUIET this thing is. I mean, I'm typing here on a website through the PC but I keep glancing at the case to see if the lights are even on. It's that quiet. Very impressive, that.

As noted before, there's no graphics card installed. I did google prices and ...screw that! Geez, people! I could buy a nice guitar for the price of one of those! So that just leaves a secondary SSD drive which, btw, has recently gone up in price =\ I guess retail just ain't retail anymore now that prices fluctuate like a damn stock trade.

Other than that, I guess most everything is done short of a few primary app installations. So, I need to reboot as I see several updates are bottlenecked waiting for me to stop typing here.

Gnite, all. At least until I get on my phone.
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That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Minor update:
Now that I'm back home and recovering from a week long bout with the flu, I've returned to very light work on the pc. For what I can endure, at least, with this exhaustion.

I know the MOBO HDMI out works from last week's BIOS and OS installs. (Wait. Two weeks ago?) But I wanted to connect the second monitor. Hm. It looks like only USB C/Thunderport ports are available. This is new territory (again) so I had to read up. Unluckily, the only thing Best Buy offered was severely priced beyond any reasonable expectation. Luckily, Amazon had a TB3 to display port cable for a sliver of a fraction of the cost. And it can deliver free, on Monday. So yay for monopolistic big brother industry giants to save the almost weekend. All in all, it's still not bad to run multiple displays off just the CPU and MOBO. Hopefully I'll have the energy after a full day back to work to test all this Monday night.



there's a frog in my snake oil
P.S.
Is this becoming my Star Citizen??

Don’t get me started

(And nah you’d need about another $1000 in the GPU to be even near buying a starter package )
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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
^yeah, no GPU for a while. I would like to get into VR but one money sink at a time =\

I forgot to mention in my earlier post that I was terrified that I broke my motherboard when I got back. After getting home, I quickly tossed everything from the rental to my truck to get the rental back before getting hit with another 24-hour bill cycle. When I got back I noticed the PC case was not quite as settled and balanced as I thought I left it, finding it had fallen off its stack and was now 90 degrees on its side in the back of my cab interior. Luckily, I had repacked it (and all of its internal components) back into the original shipping container and foam bracing before the trip. Still. I know the CPU cooler was heavy and tall. I was scared the impact of the fall might have created enough force to possibly snap the mounting bracket or the motherboard itself.

Last night was really the first night I had the strength to deal with unpacking this thing to move it back to my work space. Also, that USB-C to DP cable came in, so I decided to tinker. First, I installed the second SSD. Newbie Tip: Second SSDs are not quite plug-and-play, it seems. My heart stopped after booting up and not seeing the new, second drive in Explorer. I knew I'd had to format, but I did still assume there would be an icon of it to get properties from. NOPE! After a bit more Google-fu, I learned that I needed to confirm the system was even seeing the drive through System Information/Storage/Disks. There it was, listed with all the correct specs so step one accomplished. Next, I found that I needed to use the Partition Manager to format and parting the new drive. Spooky stuff, but after spending 20 minutes over analyzing a three-block window it finally clicked for me. One disk was my first SSD with the OS and sub partitions. The other, empty block was apparently the second, unformatted drive. The cool thing is that the steps are mostly all automatic down to even the volume naming. I spent another 10 minutes researching what I might destroy if I named that incorrectly because I'm obsessive like that. Once satisfied, I clicked a few more buttons and that was that.

My drive now shows as D:, right next to C: in my Explorer window. Whew! Last time I was in this area back in 2001, I accidentally reformatted my college drive losing all my cool lil animations and stories =\

After confirming the drive availability, I then plugged in the new video cable. I've never used USB-C/TB for video. Too, without a dedicated GPU, I kinda doubted this mysticism. But dang if it didn't work. As soon as I powered on the second monitor, I heard a reassuring blink of Windows telling me its got me.

Dual display is now working! All through the MOBO ports. So cool.

If I have the strength this week, I'll start cleaning up the area to try to get a few pics maybe. At least I can insert some of the build pics into earlier posts.



The People's Republic of Clogher
I've been using Minitool Partition Wizard for years instead of partition manager, which is as user friendly as Trump's hair routine.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/free...n-manager.html
__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan



there's a frog in my snake oil
Whew! Last time I was in this area back in 2001, I accidentally reformatted my college drive losing all my cool lil animations and stories =\
You've reminded me of the time, aged 9 or something, that I copied something I'd seen my dad type into a command line. (In my memory it was this: */*). It wiped the folder I was in, which contained all my little experiments in Basic, including two 'chose your own adventure' games...

I reckon I still haven't forgiven computers for that



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Well, here I am like 5 months later finally bothering with pulling pics off my phone. Mostly, my drive was filling up and so I deleted a ton of junk photos then noticed these and remembered why I took them. So, here are a few pics from the Christmas build with a brief recap of what's what.




Silverstone case interior with stock 120mm fans as shipped. Cable management box (top right) sits in the optional third fan slot. Those two fans and box sit directly under the internal drive cage (already removed in pic). This case had been in my AMZ cart for almost a year before the price dropped 20-30 US. Ya for pricing vigilance?







Stock fans replaced with three 120mm Noctua. Added two 80mm fans in rear (bottom) for exhaust. Leaving cable box for hiding clutter later.







EVGA 750G5 installed and ready. I got a $30 mail-in rebate (which, btw, only arrived a few weeks ago) with this and the PSU was already on sale, so I think I got a great deal.







i9-9900k processor. This thing is about the size of a debit card after cutting a third of it off. I was terrified to install it. Luckily, there were arrows to align, guiding the placement. I just knew I'd snap it like a wafer.







Noctua CPU cooling tower installed over the processor. This thing was intimidating too as I had to install a bracing UNDER the motherboard to the base mounts too. The pressure as I tightened those screws was unbearable.







Close up of the cooling tower showing the very spacious gap between the fan and RAM slots. Also, four RAM sticks for a whopping 64Gb. With the drop in price at the time, I was able to get two 32Gb sets for the price of one set just days earlier.







500Gb M.2 SSD installed directly to the motherboard. This is the OS drive plus a few apps as necessary. About a month or so later, I installed a 2Tb M.2 SSD in the gray covered lot just above this one in the pic. The covers look like adorable little coffins---for me to dig a hole, burying my money never to be seen again. Those vampires....







Most everything is installed here except for the drive cage. Cables are still loose as I've not tucked everything into the cable box yet.







Cable management box serving the cause. Front of case is pic right. All front-side switches and ports (power, 2x USB 3 slots, 1/8" mic-in and headphone-out) cables are now routed along the inner case wall, and enter the box on right and exit left where they attach to the motherboard connectors and PSU. The main PSU cables feed into the box (pic left) and are folded and compressed within the box as the lid locks shut. You can see the other end of that dense cable set exiting the box on the top (pic left) to plug into the motherboard just above and out of frame.

You can see the fan power cables just below the Designare logo, riding just above the PSU. Noctua provided a very nice Y adapter and cable extender with each fan. These really helped piggy-back two fans groups into one power source and controller.







Top view, looking down showing the drive cage installed. Everything is now in place and ready for the lid to be reinstalled.




I have no graphics card as the processor should be able to handle what little I'll put it through. My music programs, plugins, and few virtual pianos are all installed. Although I told myself I would not do this, I have since installed Photoshop and Illustrator ...and a copy of World of Warcraft. le sigh.

I could not get the rack mounts to align with my cheap audio rack, but the thing was cheap. And old. I've found a short replacement rack that will fit it but there's no need at the moment so it sits in my AMZ cart for now. Until then, the case looks nice enough on my desktop, sort of in the corner of things. In time I will probably add one more internal SSD for additional virtual instruments, but that's down the road.

So far the PC holds up very nicely. With a clean OS install sans all the corporate bloatware, things are very smooth. I mostly live in this room anymore and have all but abandoned the rest of my house. I need nothing else. Except maybe another guitar or three.
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The Adventure Starts Here!
I couldn't see most of your photos in the beginning there, @ynwtf ... Sadness. The rig looks nice, though! I'm enjoying NOT tinkering with my machine ATM. This crazy business Dell refurb that I bought just over a year ago has been running like a dream, even for all my games and my VR headset. And a much smaller footprint than the ridiculous gaming rig I bought last year. I've been pleasantly surprised.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
I couldn't see most of your photos in the beginning there, @ynwtf ... Sadness. The rig looks nice, though! I'm enjoying NOT tinkering with my machine ATM. This crazy business Dell refurb that I bought just over a year ago has been running like a dream, even for all my games and my VR headset. And a much smaller footprint than the ridiculous gaming rig I bought last year. I've been pleasantly surprised.

That's freaky. I couldn't see them on my mobile just now either so I came back to the PC from which I made the post. Everything appears in the post, but on edit I noticed none of my attachments are showing except 2 of the 10 I uploaded. weird! Thanks for commenting on that.


...and grats on the pc working better than the one you originally ordered!



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Not much happening at work today, so I'll burn some time with a hardware update.

New drive installed.
The 2.5" SSD came in last Wednesday a week ago and I finally got the nerve to dig into the case on Sunday. The drive bay has slots for two 2.5" drives so I've filled one. This is my first SATA connection attempt but all went well. The original two drives note in the Christmas build are M.2 and mount direct to the MOBO. The wonky thing of those expansion slots is that they apparently steal SATA lanes (or wtfever the correct terminology is). So like, of the 6 SATA ports available, the two expansion M.2 drives claim ports 0, 1, 4, and 5, leaving me with only ports 2 and 3 for additional SATA drives. Good thing I love reading manuals else I may have not realized that bit of detail for days after installation.

Having never touched a SATA connection, I had no idea what cables I might need. I nearly ordered one but thought better of it and decided to plunder my box of left over thingies that I kept from my build. Hey! My PSU came with a few SATA power cables, cool. I had to scrounge around for proper drive mount screws though. My case came with a huge variety, but they dumped every. single. type. into just the one baggy. I was concerned I might have to order some just to mount one drive. No need. Found a few.

I did learn one more thing. the SATA power cable is not also the data cable. hm. I assumed the drive just connects to the MOBO and receives power that way. NOPE. Seems those things need TWO cables!!! I never would have thunk it as dinky as they are, though it is obvious after the fact. So off I went to find yet another hidden necessity.

Installed and now properly formatting, I have my third and likely final drive in place. Super jazzed.

Slightly related, I found an interesting arm mount for monitors last week on Amazon. I was looking for a way to place a monitor on my piano/keyboard stand for a while now. Something that I can have in front of me while I'm playing without having to roll over to my desk to edit something. This arm is a weird little octopus of a hydraulic contraption that clams to your desk surface (in my case, a square steel tube frame under my keyboard) that you can lift, rotate, push, and pull into ANY position imaginable within roughly a 0-2' 360 radius sphere? Thing is cool. So after the drive installation, I worked to put this arm into play.

Now if I could just invest as much interest into any other actual life event.



That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
Major work and personal projects have come to stopping points, so I thought I'd bump this thread with an update.

In my last post I mentioned an arm monitor stand. It came in and I was a bit worried with the desk mount portion (it has 2 clamp style options), as I couldn't imagine how a single clamp could support the weight of a monitor. Especially considering that I wasn't mounting to a desk in my case, but instead a 1" x 1" metal bar that makes up the structure of my piano stand. Sketchy doesn't really cover it, but I went for it anyway.

I have to say that I am absolutely thrilled by this device! In spite of the precarious nature in which I have the arm "secured" to my crossbar, it is actually sturdy and handles the weight of my old Dell 24".

The arm itself is pretty great too. It's roughly a 3-hinge/rotate joint arm that connects to a vertical post. The base of the post clamps to your desk (or in my case, a rickety chunk of metal square tubing). Each joint has a an allen wrench socket for tightening or loosening joint tension. Fully extended, the marketing claims a reach of 21" in any direction. Or, you can adjust it so that each arm folds in over the others, minimizing total depth to no more than your typical monitor stand. It's crazy. My monitor is approximately 6" from my wall, but I'm still able to maneuver it in such a position that it sits just so, above and parallel to my piano bed. The joint for the monitor allows pitch up and down, left and right, and can be rotated to place the monitor in a portrait position if needed. This thing is cool.

I did have to tighten the joints a good bit though, especially the one at the monitor back. It kept sagging under the weight. Now, it holds tight and hasn't budged in about a month. The other issue I ran into was that I had to remove the factory mounting plate from my monitor to access the screw holes to mount the arm's plate to. No biggie, but it did have me worried for a bit until I realized this was a removable plate from my monitor's casing.

If any of you need awkward monitor positioning, I can't recommend this item enough.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1



The Adventure Starts Here!
Meanwhile, I haven't had to touch a thing on this little silly Dell machine I bought refurbished.

I did add a refurbished MacBook Pro laptop to my stable -- mostly because there are two pieces of writing/publishing software that are not available for PC, just Mac. So I opted for the oldest Mac laptop in the right size for me (13") to do the job with this software. Paid a whopping $200 for it (including shipping) on eBay. It's been working great. I set it up with an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and DVD drive, all plugged into a long USB hub (with 16 ports!), so that I can still grab the laptop, unplug from the hub, and GO.

I put the laptop itself on a short sofa tray/table I wasn't using, so it's off the desk. So now this little MacBook seems like a desktop machine while I do my publishing/layout work. Not bad for so cheap! (Of course, games are a joke on this thing, so I still do gaming and more serious work on the Dell [dual monitors, better specs, etc.].)

I'm a nerd wannabe.




That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
BTW, ynwtf... we'll need a picture of that monitor arm in action!

Monitor arm, in action.
Please pay no mind or judgment to the random crap on my wall. It all went up in the mid-90s and never came down. This is my old bedroom as a kid. It's now my music space. Christmas lights and all. That blue was a birthday present when I was like 7. Mom painted it all in a sort of Star Wars theme to include curtains, bed sheets, an alarm clock and an R2 toy box. That was a long time ago..... and I've not had the heart to paint over it since. You can see the corner of the newish PC in the lower left there.


Anyhoo. That arm is pretty rugged.


Also, pay no mind to the dust please.





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The Adventure Starts Here!
I hate dusting. I wouldn't notice it for that reason alone. Also, I'm going to be 60 next year and I have my office tricked out with Gumby, Mr. Potato Head, "Weird Al" bobbleheads, posters, and framed tickets from concerts I particularly enjoyed. I also put stickers on the sides of my CPUs and on the lids of my laptops. Oh, and I also have all those small stuffed animals on my writing desk. (See photo above.)

No judgment here!

That IS cool! Looks like you can really move the monitor up and out of the way when you need to. So it clamps to a desk/table like a goosneck lamp does, yes? (I currently have two gooseneck lamps and love them because they swing around easily and they don't take up desk space.)