Be Excellent To Each Other

I very nearly fell out with Wolfenstein The New Order (WNO from here on in) last night.

The game gets off to a dreadful start IMO, with a big generic in-flight dumb action sequence, very much on rails, all explosions and bangs and ZOMG ACTION, followed by crash-landing and then dodging BIG MECHA DOG and swimming a bit and then running up a beach and then straight into what appears to be a by-the-numbers SHOOTY SHOOTY average FPS with last-gen style graphics.

Feeling thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing I made desultory progress, to a section where I appeared to have two points of interest/progress on the map, with no indication as to which was the one to go for, I chose to blow up a door and then go through it, only to find that in doing so I'd immediately locked off the area I'd just been in, despite there being a secret at the place I chose not to go through, hence I wouldn't be able to 100% complete the level. (It has a very DOOM-esque system for the collectibles.)

I mean, I could actually see the area I'd just been in over the big door I'd blown up, but it had fallen in such a way that I couldn't jump over it to go back and see what the secret was. The game uses the same INSTA CHECKPOINT system that DOOM does, so it's not even like I could return to the previous checkpoint, because it'd checkpointed the second I'd blown up the door and gone through it.

By now I was irritated, so through gritted teeth I chose the RESTART LEVEL option and acknowledged the warning that I'd lose ALL MY PROGRESS. So there I was, right back at the start of the game again. Thanks for that.

Now, for added shits and giggles, the game decided not to show me any of the onscreen prompts to perform the various manoeuvres that we all know will NEVER BE USED AT ANY POINT IN THE GAME AGAIN. The one that really had me stuck was the contortion you have to perform to do some sort of special crouch which allows you to shoot a Nazi's feet through a slit at the bottom of a door, so he will open the door to see who shot his feet, so you can kill him and then progress.

Seriously, the whole game came to a grinding halt until I finally worked out it was a combination of three keys at a time, think it was RUN BACKWARDS, LEAN FROM COVER and CROUCH or something like that.

Once I'd got back to the 'choice of two paths' bit I then realised they were two ways into the same area, I got my secret on my through option two, (thus making 100% completion possible), and from there on in the whole game got a lot better.

The level design tightened up, I had stealth options in the form of a knife, throwing knife, and silenced handgun, everything just got a lot more interesting and engaging after the idiotic bombast of the opening sequences. There were many secret things too, I like finding secrets. I was also getting my head around the perks system, of particular interest was the STEALTH tree so I worked on that which then fed into making the game better. (You can also cheese the perks in exactly the same way you can cheese the challenges and suchlike in DOOM, so if there's a sleeping kampenfuckenhounden (sic?) just after a checkpoint, do a stealth kill, reload the checkpoint, then stealth kill it again, doesn't take long to get five stealth kills on kampenfuckenhoundens.)

Anyway, by the end of the first level I'd gone from being close to binning off the whole game, to really rather enjoying myself, took a look at the start of level two and that seemed really promising, decent cinematic setting things up as well.

Will play more tonight.

It is linear as fuck at the start. Hang in there though man it does open up nicely Some great shooting fun to be had too.

I just realised I posted that in completely the wrong PC thread.

Insofar as there can ever be such a thing as a 'wrong' PC thread because they're all brilliant.

Oooohhhh look Titan X is now available.

I'll take two and SLI them! Lol.

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/10ser ... Web-Banner

Is that just for one graphics card?

Yeah. I know, right? nVidia's ability to monetise gamers who don't understand (or possibly care about) the law of diminishing returns is terrifying. The Titan cards started out as workstation things for professional users doing lots of GP-GPU (where the price tag is somewhat justified), but gamers kept buying them so (unsurprisingly) nVidia kept selling them.

It's the same in almost any hobby you would care to name, though. There are always some who must have the "best" gear even where it will make pretty much shit all difference to anything.

But it 'gives you the power to accomplish things you never thought possible', so I might get one if it means I'll suddenly be able to play the piano and speak 20 languages.

Or it could just be that people who are absolutely loaded don't particularly baulk at dropping a grand on a graphics card, even though they know they're paying twice the price for about 40% more performance than a 1080, and that the 1080Ti will be along in a few months.

If I could drop a grand on a graphics card without giving a shit about the money, I'd have one.

My 1070 is amazing, and was £380.

My Xbox One is amazing and was £399.

Am I doing this right?

Citation needed

You told me those goggles would make me fly better!

No.

Buy a PS4.

I think that was a citation.

Me too.

If would too.

And then I'd blend it.

I'd do that, but hydraulic press it at the same time

yeah, any hobby gets this, I guess. It is just a lot of money.

Yes my bike cost me £1000 so about the same for a hobbie

This is making me reconsider buying that expensive wine decanter

Cheap wine decanter, expensive wine.

I've been beavering away on my case lately. Loads of things I did not like when it came, so I've been modding it so it will be really tidy inside. Got quite a few parts to it now (they're all drying).



Doing a serious nip and tuck job. Hopefully soon the paint will set up (it's celly, so takes a couple of weeks to fully harden) and I can get it all back together The paint booth has been invaluable (oh yeah, it cost £15.89).

Here's what I have been up to today

Firstly the completed nose cone assembly.



I'm very happy with that. Especially as it literally came from junk.

Here is the back/side PSU cover and the radiator covers (they are numbered )



The front of the PSU box / control panel.



The SATA port cover.



And finally the "main deck"



The only panel I have left to do now is the upper deck where the SSDs will live. However, I now need to focus on wiring and fitting lots of LEDs (and of course the cathodes) so I will probably tackle the SSDs last.

I absolutely love this phase of a mod. It's when all of the ideas you have had comes to fruition.

AJOBTHAT
SLOWLYKILLSYOU

Bruises that won't heal

Nvidia's Pascal laptop GPUs are now available and they're basically identical to their desktop counterparts, which is pretty incredible.

(Previous generations of Nvidia's mobile GPUs were rather naughtily named, the 960M for example wasn't a 960 desktop part at all, but actually a rebranded 750Ti desktop GPU.)

In particular the GTX1060(M) (there is no M suffix anymore hence the brackets) has been put into a 14 inch laptop and kicks DOOM around at 1080p@ULTRA@75FPS+

Gsync displays are also being pushed hard, and will be working at up to 120Hz instead of the previous cap of 75Hz.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... me-changer

EDIT - I suspect the numbers below may flatter the true situation a bit, and I'd expect to see some far more aggressive thermal throttling in laptop enclosures, but it's still impressive stuff.

My understanding is that gsync is close to free in laptops, because the display is wired straight to the GPU anyway and so the custom processing stuff a desktop gsync screen needs to unpick the magic signalling coming out of this graphics card isn't needed. However, many laptops with gsync internal screens can't do gsync on external monitors, which is a bummer.

Yes there was a big hoo har recently about no Gsync module being found in a Gsync laptop over at PCPER. Every one (well, the owners of the site) assumed that the actual module must not do anything and thus was a con.

It's good to finally see that a 1080 in a laptop equates to a 1080 in a desktop, but until Pascal it just wasn't possible. I mean sure, they didn't have to over do the naming scheme (which was misleading and a bit of a con) but it was more down to power consumption on a desktop GPU. I would imagine with Pascal we are finally so efficient that it's possible to actually use the same die in a laptop without killing the battery in ten seconds flat.

Mind you, they'll want paying for it. Laptop GPUs (replaceable ones) cost two to three times that of a desktop GPU so I would say this is only for the rich. What I would like to see are more of those desktop things that hold a full sized GPU and connect to the laptop. Once we see that on cheaper laptops and not just crazy priced Razers and so on (or proprietary Alienware ones) things will be good for laptop owners

The current "gate" atm is the 1060 3gb. It has less VRAM than the 1060 6gb, the memory is slower and *shock horror* contains less cores, so isn't really a 1060 at all. It's more of like a 1050ti.

JC, talk me through what those parts you made are for. Are they for hiding stuff? Do they fit over things? That last one gives off a GFX type vibe to me.

Anyone want one of those IcyBox things that JC pointed me towards? Got one for my new laptop to replace the DVD drive with an SSD, but HP apparently don't use standard sizes or anything so the faceplates and hooks don't fit.

£17.50.

Some of them are cover panels yes. I did some work on the rig when I first got it (like blue cables etc) but nothing major. I decided a couple of months back after being inspired by a friend of mine to convert the inside so it looks like an alien space ship. The glyphs you see are from Alienware's actual font that they use, and they all decode into messages

You can see here what some of the pieces are.



Some make up a box that sits in the bottom others are just covers. The PSU will be completely boxed in, as will all of the wiring coming out of the PSU. I've done a shit load of work to the rig but I didn't think any one here would be terribly interested so I've not really posted much about it, but this is how it looks ATM (in progress obviously)



I'm in the "black out" phase. I have modded all of the add in cards (sound graphics etc) and painted all of the edges of them black so they don't stick out. I've also made plates for each card, fitted some hose seperators for nitrous systems etc.

This piece here is the floor (look back at the first pic)



Which has two cathodes fitted pushing light through a 3mm strip.

This thing here.



That's a nose cone I made using what modders call "the ghetto lathe". IE - a drill.



OK, so it goes 5mm black acrylic sheet - 5mm smoked acrylic sheet - 5mm black acrylic sheet - 5mm smoked acrylic sheet - 3mm black acrylic sheet. Then you shape it with alu sandpaper and then polish it. I added laquer when it was finished.



The cap of it was made from the centre of a fan, using the same method.



LEDS !



It goes here, on the front bottom intake panel (centre of the fan)

The front intake panel is now complete.



Just waiting for the glue to dry, it should be good tomorrow. Then I soldered the loom onto the switches. This loom provides two +/- 5v for the LEDs in the switches, as well as 12v switched (for the cathodes) and 5v switched (for the SSD UFO and nose cone).



I've promised myself a new XXL mouse mat and wrist rest but only when the build is complete. Here it is all lit up.



And all working as it should

I have decided I want custom GPU cables made up with a 14 pin comb x4. So they should be in some time next week, then I can press on and build it all

Why on Earth do your photos have that RISE OF THE TRIAD stamp on them?

Because that is the name of the project I've used on PC modding forums.

Alienware call this chassis the triad, so I thought it was fitting to name it that.

Ah! All I knew was that it's the name of some ancient PC game.

Yeah that's where I got the name idea from

JC: I admire the effort you put into modding your PCs, and (although it's not always to my taste) it looks like the work is well done with a good finish.

But - whats up with that pink and blue keyboard?

hahaha It's my 60% mech board with blue switches so I can change the keys really quickly. I have a couple of keysets for it, this one is called "Miami" and is a throw back to the 80s. Not for every one, but reminds me of the first time I ever got some pink,yellow and orange luminous socks for Christmas They come with a key puller that literally clips down and then you yank them off. I can do a full change in about two minutes.

I dunno, in a sea of black I guess this makes me smile. No doubt I will get bored of it but instead of changing out the board itself (which I love for its size and so on) I can just get new key caps

I've just ordered the last two cables I need, then I can begin assembly. I decided at the last minute to buy some black and blue PCIE power cables with captive combs to keep them tidier.

Video plz.

Next time I do a swap I will record it

Next time I do a swap I will record it

Next time I do a swap I will record it

Ffs

is that funky keyboard jammed?

Nah dodgy 3G signal. I'm out ATM

Gah, one of my case fans has passed onto the next world (the 120mm exhaust fan). I thought I'd noticed the CPU and GPU fans being a bit noisier than usual the last couple of days (and even the power supply fan, which is normally inaudible), but it was only when I was down on the floor for something else that I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the fan wasn't spinning at all.

(The CPU and GPU fans, of course, will spin up faster depending on the temperature of the components they're charged with cooling, and without an operational exhaust fan the whole inside of the PC will have been getting a lot hotter. And I guess the power supply fan was having to speed up as the PSU was now acting as a proxy exhaust and pulling in the additional heat from inside the case which then needed dispersing.)

Can't complain really, it's one of the case's original fans, and the case is over 11 years old.

In fact, sums wise it's (at least) 4015 days old, and let's say conservatively that it's done 7 hours per day, that fan has lasted 28100 hours of operation, which isn't too bad.

I've now done a clean-up job on all the fans in the case and the exhaust fan has sort of come back to life a little bit, but it's not kicking much out in the way of RPM and isn't exhausting much hot air - so it clearly needs to be replaced.

In fact, come to think about it, I can cannibalise a fan out of the other identical case I have in the house, which contains my now-deceased Windows XP PC, that's got a couple of reasonable 120mm fans in it. (They are however distinctly louder than the fans in my case, as the ones in my case were an upgrade from the standard case fans.)

I'll buy a new PC. At some point. Eventually.

I started out today with the rig moved around so I could work on it easily.



After some jiggling I realised that the SATA cables Tom sent me (hail the Tom) were not long enough to loop around and then go to the SSD floor. It was OK though, as thankfully I had a couple of joiners left kicking around from an old project.



I then fitted the SATA port cover.



And finally completely built the SSD panel.



And fitted it.



Then I started to wire up the side panel but catastrophe hit and the positive wire for the nose cone snapped off so it was out with the soldering tools ! the nose cone also decided it wanted to fall off too.



Then I fitted the main floor and glued the nose cone to the fan.



Then I fitted the radiator covers.



And then the back side PSU cover.



Then I powered the rig on.



And pressed in the two buttons whilst holding my breath...



And tidied everything up.



Then tested the lights again.



Wicked, nice and subtle ! let's take a peek in the rig..



And a rig pic.



So all I have left to do now is fit the new PCIE extensions, fit the mobo cooling cover (for the top fets) and well, that's really about it. Hard to believe that in one more hour or so of modding this will be all done !