Behind The Scenes: Garage and Room
01.28.08 - 11:18pm
What’s it like to be me? Well frankly, it’s downright boring. The few occasional exciting moments I get to witness are typically overshadowed by the massive amount of monotonous work that must occur to keep the tides of progress flowing smoothly. Rather than write about some upcoming hardware I won’t ever touch, some obscure event occurring in a remote region of the globe, or the State of the Union Address, I’ve decided to focus on those boring things that keep this barely floating ship afloat.
My desk is typically strewn with electronic components, a common theme that will pervade through this. Otherwise I’ve got my 1st generation Macbook and my PC’s 225BW, keyboard, and MX Revolution sitting on the desk along with the satellites for the Logitech Z-680’s. My shelves are stashed with random books from school, a few heatsinks, and other random things that I have failed to throw away yet.
I try to keep my room clean and brightly lit to make it easier to get work done. I however tend to have a very “messy” bed but it’s been observed that a messy bed could be a better bed. Otherwise I keep the room clean with the floor only randomly strewn with motherboards and video cards whenever I’m benching.
If I’m not at my desk I am typically in the garage, working on something relating to PC cooling. Currently I’ve got the parts coming together for a 24/7 autocascade and a rebuild on my cascade. When I’m not building refrigeration systems I am typically benching some new hardware on my bench. Right now I’ve got a single-stage, cascade, and a few air-sinks all within reach of my bench platform, makes for an easy swap between different cooling solutions.
That’s about it, nothing special here sadly. I think I might also snap some pictures of my job-site later as that’s a bit more interesting. Confirmed that my 3850’s will be here on Thursday and I’ve been told the X48 board will be here in two weeks, I eagerly await the chance to bench with Crossfire. To tide me over though I’ve got an 640MB 8800GTS which will get some benching love in the next week or so. That’s it, all a bit plain to be honest. Ignore the CPU heatsink also, I just removed the single-stage that I sold but the autocascade will get strapped up in a few weeks time.
Nice Article, Your place is way tidier than mine. How many systems do usually have on at once? I always pictured you having maybe three or four and I only see one screen. Also, what kind of networking have you set up in there?
You would think I’d have a half-dozen or more machines running at a time, but I typically only have that desktop running. I usually also have a second processor, motherboard, and video card which I technically could use to build a second machine but I rarely have the need so they sit on shelves or in the garage, ready for the next bench session. I could set them up to crunch or file-serve but I’m currently in the process of selling off all my 65nm processors and previous generation video cards/motherboards so I’m at an all-time low in hardware. For networking I have a simple Linksys WRT54G powering the wired and wireless sides and a Linksys cable modem servicing the Comcast line. Wish we had the connection to warrant gigabit cabling but it’s just 100 megabit, a slight bottle neck when transferring large files but that’s not a daily occurrence. Time to go pick up an E8400 from Fry’s, should yield 5GHz very easily and maybe offer a run at the current record of ~5500Mhz.
You need to move that poster thing to the left.. it blocks the light switch.