My Spaceship has Evolved!

It's been a long time, but remember this spaceship?


Lexa S: Spaceship

This was my old computer, built in an NZXT Lexa S. I was really proud of it and it lasted quite a long time. It actually still lives today, however it isn't with me anymore and it looks quite different. To begin with, the middle-front LED doesn't work anymore for some reason, I suspect I pulled a bit too much while taking the front cover off, which might have unplugged the wire for it. I probably could easily fix it, but I'm much too lazy to do so. It now looks like this (with, shall I say, extremely bad wire management):


Lexa S: Spring Edition

Perfect for Spring! This is now my mother's computer, equipped with all of my old hardware which used to be an Intel build with an nVidia graphic card. The card as died since then, so I've promptly replaced it with an ATi card, or at least it still was ATi back then when I replaced it. The reason that I got rid of it is because my mother's computer started to get old and funky, so I switched her computer and have her my old Hurricane. Over the time, I got tired of my Lexa S and finally moved on to a full tower, so I took everything and put it in the Lexa S since it is a much better tower than the Hurricane was. In case anyone wonders, it actually is the exact same fans that I had in the blue pictures. I've found myself a new little hobby when it comes to computer building: Welding new LEDs on my fans. I started doing so a few months ago and I have already switched my current config's colors like three times.


Several packs of 3mm and 5mm LEDs of various colors.

As you can see, I have just about every possible color for round LEDs, both in 3mm and 5mm format. Diffused LEDs could look good as well, but would be a waste of money since you can easily transform a round LED into a diffused one with some sand paper, so I'll stick to using normal, round LEDs.

As of now, with the side panel removed, this is what my new computer looks like:


NZXT Phantom: Purplicious

Purple! I bet you didn't expect that, right? While blue remains my favorite color, I got tired of seeing it in my computer for so long. My Phantom was blue at the start, then became Pink and Blue (dual colors on every fans), and eventually became the way it is now. Also, since the LEDs I used for this build are, in reality, UV/Blacklight bulbs, the lighting is helped strongly by the NZXT Hue, which is a hue controller that comes with an LED strip. It supports pretty much every color you could ever think of and also supports different modes, like flashing, fading, or static, all with different speeds and intensities. Either way, it wouldn't be nearly as flashy if it were only the fans. UV lights hardly glow at all unless you put neon colors next to them.


NZXT Phantom

The NZXT Phantom is quite a massive case and has all the wire management I need to keep the inside of my PC clean looking.. or as clean as can be, that is. Corsair power supplies have those extremely thick, meshed wires, making it hard to conceal them in the side panel for wire management. My next purchase will likely end up being a new power supply, but this time you can bet I'll get a fully modular one. It's worth noting that the Phantom has been my dream case ever since it first was unveiled by NZXT. Their latest models became my newest dream, however it also is twice the price, so I decided to stick with the first model.


NZXT Phantom: Top Fans

Above we can see the top fans, which are the only NZXT branded fans in the case. The sole reason for this is also the only negative side of the NZXT Phantom: The 200mm fans are unique. In other words, only the NZXT branded fans will fit in it. The same goes for the side panel which normally holds two 120mm fans and 1 200/230mm fan. Since 120mm is standard, any fan of that size will fit, but for the side 200/230mm fan, only an NZXT will fit, which is a little bit ridiculous seeing as NZXT does not even make 230mm fans. I have since then switched my side panel to a different one which comes with a clear window instead of the 200/230 fan mesh (which can be seen on the first picture of the NZXT Phantom above).

(usually I'd put a full picture of the side here, but unfortunately I didn't take one and I don't feel like moving my monitors again for it)

I recently switched my old Sapphire Toxic HD5850 for a Sapphire Vapor-X HD7950. While not the biggest of upgrades, it's still quite a noticeable upgrade. The main reason for switching is that I accidentally set my GPU fans to manual. Don't ask me how, but it happened. Then, I started up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (which I still play religiously), modded with quite a beast of a mod, and next thing I know, my graphic card was overheating. I realized it soon enough to prevent it from literally dying on me, but it started giving off those crazy, corrupted graphics here and there. Due to this, I decided to switch my graphic card. It isn't a bad purchase anyway, I'm sure it'll come in handy for Metro: Last Light, which comes out a little less than two weeks.


Sapphire Vapor-X HD7950

The other noticeable change I've made is the heatsink. I normally would rely on stock heatsinks because I don't overclock and the only true reason to owning a third-party heatsink is to keep the temperature low even when overclocking. Heatsinks are something I never touched, so I finally decided to take it a step further and the next thing I knew, I was installing this beautiful Corsair H60 on top of my processor. The Corsair Hydro series are what you could consider "water cooling for newbies". It's essentially water cooling closed in an hermetic loop to prevent evaporation and the likes. when running an actual water cooling setup, you normally have to change the water every now and then due to this. Then again, I'm not all that knowledgeable when it comes to water cooling, so I could be wrong on this.


Corsair H60 cooling my Phenom II x4 BE 965

The only complaint I'd have to do about the H60 is the screw threads.. couldn't they be a bit tougher? I had to finish off by using tie-wraps instead of actual screws. The screw threads in the holes of the radiator are extremely weak and will disappear before you even know it. All it took was for me to screw fans on it twice and boom! Screws wouldn't hold in them anymore. Since I didn't feel like going through the whole replacement process, I simply use tie-wraps and it does the job extremely well.

Now, I know my processor might bottleneck my video card in CPU heavy games like Crysis, so I had to overclock it a little to avoid this. Phenoms were amazing processors, but they are starting to get old. I'd like to stick with AMD for my future processor, but sadly they killed off the Phenom series, which is truly a shame as the Phenoms were, without a doubt, the best series AMD ever came up with. Oh well, AMD might not provide the power that Intel does, but AMD remains the best "bang for your bucks" in my opinion (and my heart), even with the FX series.

I definitely need to thank Edge, someone who used to be here on NoobFeed with us. Or at least, if I remember well, his name was Edge. When I built my very first computer, he helped me out a lot in understanding how computers worked.

This ended up as quite a long blog for just a computer. Oh well, stuff happens :]

Oh and, yes, I still run both Linux and Windows. I know I've always been one of the few to run Linux around here, and I still do. Only difference is I switched to Linux Mint because Ubuntu's new interface (called Unity) is.. well.. the worst interface I have ever used after the new Windows interface in Win8 (which is why I'm also still using Windows 7). I'll stop here, otherwise I'll write a few more paragraphs and we don't want that :p

Instead I'll just post some screenshots of both my desktops just for the fun of it, all while making sure I had a decent wallpaper for the public >_>


Linux Mint 14


Windows 7