I think we can all agree that as far as good quality fan manufacturers go, Noctua is in a league of their own in terms of ugliness. I made a discovery when I was trying to equip a PC with some Noctua fans that I’ve accumulated over the last couple of years though… There are at least 3 different colour schemes for them! All hideous, mind you, but all different.

The crazy thing about this is that I only OWN three Noctua fans. They were purchased at least a few months apart each, but you can clearly see that one has a white frame while the others have beige frames, and one has maroon blades while the other two have brown blades.

I realize this isn’t a car blog, and it’s not the first time I’ve posted about the ub3r Civic, but I was pretty annoyed by the situation I found myself in fairly recently. I woke up in the morning to go to work and found my passenger side window smashed in. The theif took a 5+ year old bottom of the barrel JVC deck faceplate (not even the whole thing) and left everything else including the video card, wireless card, Sony deck in my trunk, change in my ashtray, etc. I mean, seriously! It’s like breaking into someone’s house just to steal the right foot of all of their flipflops. They’re not valuable. They’re not useful to you, and now they’re not useful to me.

Fortunately the total cost was $200 for the window and labour from Boyd (thanks guys) and $50 to install the Sony deck I’ve been meaning to put in FOREVER because I’m a lazy SOB… It just grinds my gears when stuff like this happens. Especially to me!

Well I’m breaking the news a little bit ahead of the official NCIX announcement, but we’ll be creating a workshop that we’re going to start running on Saturday July 11, 2009. It’s something we’re really hoping will be an ongoing project and we’re basically going to give customers who are buying a new PC the option of paying $50 for assembly or paying $50 to attend a workshop on how to build their own PC. There’ll be a free toolkit and free pizza at the workshop so it should be a great experience all around.

I’ll be teaching the first couple of workshops, so there’s a lot of preparation to be done over the next few weeks, but I’m very excited about it.

Well for the PCIe slot repair I’ve hit a pretty big obstacle. I can’t seem to get a hot enough soldering iron at the local “DIY” stores, so I will have to try to go somewhere more specialized. If anyone has an idea where I could find a soldering iron that’s hot enough to work with lead-free solder on a PCB, please hit me with an email. It’s my name at NCIX.com (don’t want the spam screenscrapers grabbing my email addy from my blog)

Also, I’m very disappointed in Corsair. I’m currently in the middle of doing an upgrade on my girlfriend’s computer (she’s moving to i7 on account of I got my hands on a shipping damage eVGA X58 with a broken PCIe slot that I bent back into shape and wedged closed with a white eraser and some bent CPU socket pins that I bent back) and I decided to go SSD while I’m at it because for some reason she’s a stone cold hard drive killer. I remembered the briefing I got from Corsair on their S128 SSD and it seems to me it was all about “oem grade, high quality, high durability components”. I observed some “hitching”, something I hadn’t yet experienced having only used Intel X25-M drives and Corsair “S” series drives. Seems like the M64 mean “Jmicron 64GB drive” I did my best to replicate the IOmeter tests that Anand performed in his epic tale of SSD performance and I observed maximum latencies of up to one second when writing random 4k files over a 4GB section of the disk (100% random writes). It’s a little better than the two second latencies that he was observing, but with inconsistent test benches and methodologies it’s impossible to replicate the results exactly. Either way one second is FAR too high for an SSD.

I guess the most disappointing thing is that (I swear the bit about “uses high quality samsung controller” used to be right on the product page, but the Google cache doesn’t have it) Corsair made such a fuss about their drives using better quality controllers than the competition, so I bought one and here’s what I end up with.

After writing this I did some reading on the Corsair support forum. It looks like the “M” series drives are “not controller specific” and right now they are using a Jmicron controller. Fail.

Well I pulled some strings and I managed to get some SLBEJ or D0 stepping processors locked into a new SKU so that we can sell them as “guaranteed D0″ CPUs. They will cost a few bucks more, but I think it’s reasonable considering that these things are like hen’s teeth and most places won’t guarantee anything.

If you want the link it’s here. I even threw a $25 instant rebate on it.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=38881&vpn=BX80601920%20-%20D0&manufacture=Intel

“So Linus, you’ve probably made some great value upgrades to your system that increase performance while decreasing total cost of ownership.”

At least, that’s what most people would be concerned about with a computer upgrade. Here’s what I’ve actually done over the last couple of weeks:

1. Changed from a Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME to a DFI X58-T3EH8 for looks and to get an extra internal USB header
2. Added a $135CAD (by the time it’s shipped to me from Europe) fan controller
3. Made a whole lot of adapters & sleeved a lot of cables
4. Added another water cooling radiator to the front of my case (a HW Labs Black Ice Pro II that I had lying around)
5. Modded 6 mesh front bay covers to sit in place of the solid aluminum ones that came with my case
6. Took my case apart down to the bare frame and washed it with soapy water (much like I should do to my car

Things still to be done:

1. The fans don’t match, as those of you with a good eye may have noticed, so I need to get some more GELID UV Blue fans for the top, back, and bottom rad. I also need some LED blue fans for the front rad, but I’m not yet decided on that one. I may just add a UV cathode in the front for the UV blue fans I already have there.

No, this is not one of those stupid ads about how you can “make $100,000/wk getting students to click on ads for you. The reality is that the students are probably a lot smarter and more capable than you if you’re clicking on those ads…

No, this cheque is not for $100,000, but it is 3-digits, and it was nice to see some cash coming in from Tech Tips.  We’d ideally like for Tech Tips to be self-sustaining somewhere down the line, but it’ll be quite a while before that happens. For now, a big thanks to my boss for keeping this project going!

BTW, yes… That IS the cameraman, and this photo is taken by the one and only AdamC!

So I ran into a small hitch with the Popcorn Hour A-110 NMT over the weekend. It wouldn’t recognize the shared folders from my Windows Home Server. It turns out the solution was as simple as setting up the Guest account on the WHS with access to all of the media folders that I wanted to share with the Popcorn Hour. It might not be the “ideal” solution, but it’s also not that bad.

As for the Mamba, I discovered a slight annoyance. The mouse doesn’t actually charge (as I had assumed) when you use it in wired mode. You actually have to take it out of wired mode, plug the USB cable into the base station, and put it back on the charger for a few hours before you can use it wirelessly again. This isn’t a problem you’d normally run into if you have good charging habits, but it still kinda annoyed me when I went to use it in wireless mode this morning.

Well I have a performance update on the Mamba now that I’ve had some more time to use it. Spent all day at work on it for office/casual testing. I was using (for 1/2 of the day) the Mantis control cloth mouse pad (my very favorite, but doesn’t track well with my Ikari Laser at home, so I use a QCK at home) and (for the other 1/2 of the day) the Razer Destructor mouse pad. The Mamba and the Destructor is a match made in heaven, but it performed very well on the Mantis Control. It didn’t exhibit any jumping when I picked it up at the end of the pad on either of those two surfaces, unlike the QCK at home. It comes down to make sure that you choose a mousing surface and a mouse from the same vendor for best compatibility.

Used the Mamba and the Carcharias tonight for my Left 4 Dead match with the NCIX Steam guys, and let me tell ya… Maybe it’s because I had already used the Mamba last night, but I think I was MORE impressed by the new Razer headset. This thing is awesome. I mean, it’s not the best pair of headphones in existence, but they’ll stand up proudly to any other pair of $100 headphones, and the mic is significantly better in transmit quality (using Mumble) compared to the Sennheiser PC161 I usually wear around my neck. This is according to the other guys on the channel. They were asking me what I did to make my voice so clear tonight and I told them I was using the new Carcharias.

Here are some shots of the Mamba next to all my other mice. I’m getting more and more impressed with this thing the more I use it. Trying to go back to the G7 for comparison testing tonight was painful. The Mamba’s ergonomics are not my favorite, but I think a big part of that is that for YEARS I “cupped” the mouse isntead of using a fingertip grip. The G9 got me out of that habit a little bit (as you can see from the grips, that’s a VERY used G9), but I still find the G5 and the Ikari Laser more comfortable. The Mamba hangs with them though, and it has the HUGE advantage of being cordless. I kept finding myself wanting to “tug” the cord to free it up, something I do reflexively now to ensure it doesn’t get snared on anything, only to find that there was no cord to get snared!

I game at about 1000DPI, so honestly I couldn’t tell you the difference between most of these laser mice as far as that’s concerned. I can’t IMAGINE playing at 5600DPI, but I know there are people out there who want just that. It’d be far too twitchy for me with that kind of sensitivity, but the Mamba offers 5 adjustable sensitivity settings (more than any other mice here) and on-the-fly switching, so you can easily configure it with a variety of different sensitivity schemes.

Enough about the Mamba, and more about the Carcharias now. It’s more comfortable than the PC161 (which I can’t tolerate anywhere but around my neck) and about equal (maybe just a touch less) to my well broken-in Sennheiser HD555 and the SteelSeries 5H V2. The mic is excellent and the audio quality blew me away. I would challenge anyone to show me a better value pair of headphones for $100CDN. They use an open design, so you get more bass out of them than the SteelSeries, but with the disadvantage of them being less effective at isolating your game sounds from others and the voices of others from your game sounds. They still deliver a less “full” sound than my HD555, and they are a little harsh at high volume, but they deliver what I believe gamers want: Clear highs and deep bass. The mid-range is a little weak, but that won’t matter unless you’re listening to a lot of music. Either way, they are 1/2 the price of the 555s AND you don’t have to look like a dork with a clip-on mic on your shirt.

Don’t get me wrong. The HD555s still kill everything else in that picture for sheer audio quality, but it’s like saying a Mazda RX-8 will outsprint a Honda Fit. Of course it will, but the Honda fit delivers amazing value at a great price, and that’s why you’ll see many more of them on the road.

Well, I wasn’t expecting to get this kind of treatment after the initial arrangement with Razer to get a Mamba sample to demonstrate on Tech Tips!

Today our full reviewer kit arrived in a fancy metal briefcase and it included the Razer Mamba, Razer Carcharias, and (I requested a “recommended mouse pad” from them as well) a Razer Destructor mousing surface. There were also some other little goodies inside that I wasn’t expecting. I guess this attention to detail shouldn’t surprise me that much when the box that the Mamba comes packaged in is rumoured to cost as much as $20USD

I see I’m not the only one on the web who was so impressed by this reviewer kit that they simply had to take pictures of it. Engadget has an enormous gallery of this mouse and the unboxing experience. I just wanted to make this blog post to tease the readers and viewers of Tech Tips and give them an idea of what’s coming down the pipe.

A brief history of mice that I have owned:

Logitech MX700 – My first “expensive” set of peripherals was the Logitech MX Duo. Man that thing was sweet back in the day! I had gone from a generic BALL mouse to what felt like heaven.
Logitech G7 – Then I upgraded my monitor. All of a sudden I’m running at 1920×1200 and it feels SOOO laggy. I couldn’t figure out what it was at first, but turning down the resolution seemed to fix it. The MX700 had to go.
Razer DeathAdder – My first G7 died. I used the DeathAdder only briefly while I waited for my G7 to get back from RMA. I didn’t really like it. It felt kinda… cheap to me, and the tracking didn’t feel that impressive, and it died.
Logitech G5 – I bought one of these after the DeathAdder died and I couldn’t believe what I’d been missing out on. Wired is the way to go for sure!
Logitech G9 – This mouse still sits on my work desk, and I spend about 1/2 of my “mousing time” using it. I no longer use it for gaming though.
SteelSeries Ikari Laser – SteelSeries sent me one of these for the recent Tech Tips we did on “Gaming Essentials”. Its tracking is superior to the G9, and it’s FAR more comfortable to use

The Mamba is a unique product. It has no direct competitors because it is both a corded and a cordless mouse but I will be subjectively putting up against every mouse I have on hand. That means you’ll find out how it compares to the G9, Ikari Laser, and the G7 (the closest thing to a wireless competitor). I’m very excited to try it out, but alas I’m still at work…