As I’m not going to be near the current desktop PC for a while, I decided to build up the bits I have incoming into a proper PC here. It’s still a bit of a behemoth, so I think I should continue with that name for this instance. Spec sheet: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x; 12C/24T 3.8-4.6 GHz, 70Mb cache 16Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3600 CL22 RGB Corsair H115i Pro 2x140mm AIO closed-loop watercooler Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming motherboard Asus RTX 2080 DUAL O8G EVO graphics card Corsair Force MP510 960Gb NVMe SSD Corsair HX1200i PSU with red/black Cablemod Pro cables …

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More hardware incoming! As the circumstances update, it’s looks likely it’ll be a little while longer before I’ll be able to dig through my main desktop for the planned upgrade process. Given that, I’ve decided to go a little further down the upgade path for my main desktop. A moderately large Corsair order went in to my supplier of choice. First part is an Obsidian 750D Airflow case, with an HX1200i PSU to be installed. Then, there’s an H115i Pro to complete that Corsair package. There’s availability ìssues with the HX1000i that I was hoping to get, so I went …

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If you lot ever engineer a direct replacement to the current Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, with properly backlit and transparent key letterings, you will have a definite winner on your hands. My go-to preference for a keyboard is the above-mentioned Ergonomic 4000 and I’ve had the use of a few over the past few years. The feel and fit is pretty good for me, I really like the UK key layout as done on this keyboard. The only thing it’s missing is having the keys backlit or throughlit, to aid use in the dark. Backlighting to illuminate the gaps between …

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It would appear that the motherboard I’m getting (Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming) has an onboard RGB controller as one of the options built on. There’s two 4-pin RGB headers, and two 3-pin addressable headers. A quick look around the Alibaba showrooms, suggests there’s a reasonably large amount of products that are supported by the Asus Aura RGB ecosystem – the motherboard light accents, the tops of the Corsair Vengeance RAM modules, even the AMD-supplied fan on the Wraith Prism CPU cooler is RGB.. I’m fairly sure that I’ll set things to be temperature-controlled if I can. Gentle purple for …

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I built myself a PC in 2011, and it’s finally due a major update/refresh. It’ll still be a bit of a behemoth.. The 2011 build was a hex-core Intel i7-3930k watercooled with a Corsair H100, 16Gb DDR3, with originally a Radeon 5770, with an Intel i520 SSD and 4x 1Tb harddrives for a Raid 10, all sitting on an Asus P9X79-Pro motherboard. A pretty decent spec of a machine, and a very good performer especially when overclocked. Over the past 9 years I updated the graphics first to a GTX660 in 2012 and recently to an RTX2080. The CPU was …

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So Covid-19 had reared it’s little coronated head on the Island of Ireland. And the country is ill-prepared for the probability of what’s going to happen. Here’s a middle of the road scenario based on the current data available. Cases appear to be doubling every ~6 days. 15% or so need hospital care, and about 5% of those needs ICU-level care. Deaths are averaging at about 3.5% at the moment. Given there’s about 22 cases in Ireland (excluding the North for this one), we can expect the following: March 9th; 22 cases, March 15th; 44 cases, March 21st; 88 cases …

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We are often told that speed cameras are a tool to improve road safety. However, the method of implementation does not fit that requirement. To do speed cameras correctly and use them as a tool to improve road safety, there are a few prerequisites. The locations that are high-risk need to be correctly identified, ideally to within a 50m stretch of road. This would allow camera monitoring to happen at very specific areas that are known to be accident blackspots. This does not refer to 20km lengths of road – as currently used for criteria of camera location selection. The …

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One of the definitions of timezone being correct for a location, is that the average Sun is due south at local noon on the clock. This means that there’s about the same length of time from sunrise to 12:00, as there is the length of time between 12:00 and sunset. In historical times, the local church would ring the bells based on the local time, such that at 12:00 the Sun would due south. Of course, due to different places being at different longitudes, the Sun would be due south at different absolute times. There’s 4 minutes difference for each …

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