ASUS PRIME H770 with M.2 and PCIe port layout

7 watts idle on Intel 12th/13th gen: the foundation for building a low power server/NAS

Maybe a poem will help remember complicated power-saving settings for SSDs. Here goes. “ALPM for SATA, not N-V-M-e. The latter needs ASPM, and A-P-S-T”. Hallmark, here I come. And hey, while we’re on the topic of low power consumption…

Single vs Multi-Monitor power consumption of the Radeon 5600 XT on the i3-10320

Curbing the “gas guzzling” tendencies of AMD Radeon Multi-Monitor

Triple your computer’s idle power consumption by installing an AMD Radeon video card! And by “triple”, I might mean “quintuple”. After all, why should your computer sip 11 watts running Notepad.exe when it could be a 54 watt space heater running Notepad.exe?

Zotac GeForce 1660 Super fan Repair oil location

Oiling up the buzzing fans on the Zotac GeForce 1660 SUPER

Just when you were starting to worry about all the plastic GPU fans going to landfills, “big oil” swoops in to save the day!

TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750 (v5) - modding with some heatsinks

Don’t you go dying on me! Modding the TP-Link Archer C7 (v5) (AC1750)

Making sure the new router will work cool and reliably for years.

8 port SATA (PCE8SAT-M01) - Exposing the Marvell 88SE9215 and JMicron JMB575

8 port SATA on a PCIE 1x lane! Looking at the PCE8SAT-M01 expansion card.

Trying to find an 8 port SATA card that ran on a PCIE x1 slot didn’t result in many options. Fortunately, the lowest-cost option seems to work pretty well!

Olmaster MR-8802 - top shelf pieces removed

Modding the Olmaster MR-8802 (5.25 to 3.5/2.5-inch bay adapter) to hold four 15mm drives

It’s surprising how difficult it is to find a 5.25″ adapter that lets me jam four 15mm 2.5″ drives in it. Also surprising: how long it’s been since I intentionally melted plastic with a soldering iron.

Shucking the Seagate Backup Plus 10TB - opening it up with guitar picks

Bigger shucks! Shucking the Seagate Backup Plus 10TB (STEL1000400 – ST10000DM0004)

Buying external hard drives is kind of like buying *internal* hard drives except you can often save upwards of $100. Also you get a free enclosure for your old hard drive.

The Canon G6020 ready to be set up

Cheap Ink: The Canon Pixma G6020 – My Early Impressions

Gone are the days of buying 10 printers on Black Friday, pulling the ink out, and leaving the printers themselves by the dumpster!

The ASRock J4005B-ITX

9w idle: creating a low power home NAS / file server with 4 storage drives

Putting together a NAS with low power draw, and thus low operating costs.

Brother MFC-J995DW Resetting Purge Count for Ink Pad 01

How To: Resetting the ink absorber pad on the Brother MFC-J995DW

Usually I tape reset instructions for Brother printers to the printer. This one is a little more complex, so I took some pictures.

Brother MFC-J995DW vs Canon PIXMA G4210 vs Epson ET-2700

Brother MFC-J995DW: why not Canon or Epson (reviewish)

One of the reasons I want a printer to last a long time is that comparing printers *takes* a long time! This time I ended up with a Brother inkjet!

Intel Integrated UHD 620 - game performance of various RAM combinations

Faster gaming on Intel UHD 620 (Kaby Lake R) by upgrading RAM

Intel integrated graphics is a “slow potato” you say? Fair enough. But let’s try to make this slow potato as fast as we can.

Dell Inspiron 5570 - removing the side and top bezel clips

Inspiron 5570 Adventures part 2: IPS display upgrade

The Inspiron 5570 didn’t come with an IPS panel as an option. But can we put in an IPS panel for… another model…? (admittedly a bad teaser – obviously the answer is yes).

CPU Timed Benchmark Tests

Performance Improvements: Undervolting Kaby Lake (R) Mobile

It used to be that *over-volting* was the way to get more performance. Then throttling came along. How times have changed…!

Dell 5570 Canadian Keyboard

Adventures with the Dell Inspiron 5570 (i5 8250u, 15.6″, 1080p)

Opening this Dell up and checking out components. The fight I had getting it open. Hackintoshing. Linux. Undervolting. Bios modding. Compliments. Complaints. It’s all in here!

ASUS X541NA Keyboard

ASUS Vivobook Max X541NA – First Impressions and Beyond (reviewish)

I like ASUS. I also like really low cost laptops. The X541 kind of marries those 2 things. Let’s see how this marriage worked out.

Seagate STEA4000400

How to shuck the Seagate Expansion 4TB portable (STEA4000400), and why…

Low heat, power consumption, and price… what’s not to love!? Oh right, using sharp knives to get the thing out of the enclosure.

The i3-6300 and GB H110N inside the Antec Case (hard drive behind)

Building a low power PC on Skylake – 10 watts idle

I wanted a computer that had low idle power consumption and could handle some casual gaming. Was I successful?

Antec ISK 110 case front

My Antec ISK 110 review – 21 pics and some thoughts

Been quite a while since my last case review, but while waiting on a motherboard to arrive, I figured it was time for another!

Gigabyte H55M-UD2H bios settings for headless support

Off with his head! (headless GA-H55M-UD2H)

I decided to use my old Gigabyte H55M-UD2H motherboard in a NAS server I was putting together. While I was fine with using a video card to install the OS, I didn’t want the video card sucking up the extra watts while it was running. Turned out, getting this Gigabyte motherboard to boot headless wasn’t too terribly difficult.