new medium sized gaming system in a form T1 case

 The Graphic card side is shown here. I used a 2 fan pny rtx4070 after removing the shroud, and cable tying 2 noctua 120 * 15 mm fans to the heat sink.

The fans are a few millimeters from the mesh when the case is closed, but there is no rattling sound. They left enough room at the top of the case for a thin all in one water cooler, but, for this low wattage system, I used 2 phanteks t30 fans. These are the best 120 mm fans that i have found. they move a lot of air, make almost no sound, and are adjustable to low medium or high on each fan.

The motherboard side, with the asrock a620i mb mounted with the amd 7600x processor. cooling the processor is the noctua L12 cooler. I had to try mounting it several ways to get the cooler to fit in the very restrictive case. 

 

This processor is impressing the heck out of me, and games well better than the intel 13600 KF, using much less power, and producing much much less heat. I actually tried the intel processor in this case, but it could not be air cooled.

 This low end motherboard is very impressive for 120 bucks, with a fixed io shield, 2 m.2 slots, and a somewhat beefy power solution for the cpu. It has 3 full sized fan ports, so you dont need those stupid little dongles that plug into the miniature ports on high end mbs. And, there are no daughter boards poking up from the board to cause issues and block airflow. There is one m.2 slot on the front, with a nice heat sink, and the second is on the back, with no heat sink. This is much better than the stack of 2 m.2 drives with their complicated attachment that you see on most boards now.

 

The board is free of rgb, as is the case. I do not understand the rgb craze, perhaps because i am 66. i do not want a light show in my case. I want a nearly silent gaming computer that stays super cool. 

For drawbacks, this motherboard lacks usb 4, or even fast usb 3 ports. there is a single usb-c port, and it is slow as well. Otherwise, i have no complaints.

 

The power supply is the corsair 750 sff. It is spaced out from the center, so that the hot air that blows through the back of the 4070 has a nice way to depart. also, if the fan operates, it gets cool air right through the mesh, and not a mix of cool outside air and hot air from inside the case. Of course, this psu is not working hard with a 200 watt gpu, and a 75 - 100 watt cpu. So, it mostly operates in it's fan-less mode. 

 

I do not want to give the impression that i am only doing crossword puzzles and looking at you tube videos on this machine. I am playing doom 2016, cyberpunk 2077 etc on a 360 hz 2k monitor. I am downloading large files and making large file transfers, even while gaming. The processor and the video card have no trouble with these tasks, and so far, I believe that there is no reason to upgrade the amd 7600x until i get a more powerful video card. I do intend to eventually upgrade to the 9800x3d and something like the upcoming rtx 5080.

 

 but, for now, i am gaming at between 120 to 200 fps, and it is not a good deal to spend 4 times as much to get up to 250 fps.

trying to build a nearly impossible computer system. very small, very quiet, very low power consumption and nontheless not too bad for gaming and photo editing.

 Here is my first attempt. The equipment is:  

hdplex 500 watt atx power supply, 

noctua L12s cooler,

gigabyte b550 itx motherboard,

amd 5600G processor,

gigabyte low profile rtx 4060 gpu.

 

In this iteration of the design, I have tried to replace the stock fans of the low profile graphics card with larger noctua fans. this did not lower the temperature or the noise level, so i later went back to the stock shroud and cooler. 

The case for the early prototype is actually part of the shroud for a trace sw4024 inverter.

With either cooling solution, the low profile graphics card was fantastic in this build. both small and quiet, as well as gaming nearly as well as the much larger rtx 4070 for older games. For video playback, the 4060 does the rtx super-resolution quite well. It should be noted that super-resolution would cut out when i undervolted the card to 0.90 or 0.95 volts instead of the default 1.1 volts that it goes to under load. One has to run this tiny card full bore to enjoy all of the rtx enhancements. It uses as little as 100 watts while gaming, and around 80 watts to upscale a movie in real time.

The older amd 5600G processor can not keep up with the more modern graphics card, so there are very long load times when the scene changes in a game. To fix this, I ordered an inexpensive am5 motherboard, a amd 7600x processor, and the newer ddr5 memory. I hope that these parts will better compliment the tiny graphics powerhouse.

I should mention that although the 4060 was received poorly because it has little memory and a low power limit, this low profile model is quite at home in a small form factor gaming build. I highly recommend this gpu for it's low noise, low heat, and it's more than adequate gaming. One games at ultra settings at 1080 p and medium setting at 1440 P.

alf tries an iphone

My brother michael sent me the iphone 13 max pro, so that i could experience a modern apple device. He had found it too large, and went instead with the smaller se model.

The first thing that i noticed is that the iphone is very hard to set up. it takes about a dozen times more effort than an android phone, and requires a credit card number to get a single 'free' program from the apple store. I put free in quotes because there is pretty much nothing at the store. lots of good looking apps, that do not work and simply beg you to invest in the fully paid app. It is quite scammy, because the price of the apps is in super small typeset, as if they hope that you will mistake the paid apps for free, and never notice the charge on your credit card.

The setup process was a nightmare, with dozens of emails containing secret numbers that need to be plugged into the phone. The phone tries to make an iron clad apple id that can be used exactly like your drivers license to prove who you are. This is a pretty good idea, but it does not work well. It is better to emulate your desktop computer on an android phone, and continue to prove your identity to each site that you visit. It is clear that apple is making it's users into a product that can be further exploited [similar to what facebook/meta does]

The real nightmare began when i hooked the iphone 13 pro max to my pc computer to get some songs and movies and eBooks on there. I was advised to get itunes to move files onto there, but itunes sent me to microsoft store. that store did not like me, and refused to give me a copy of the program. so, i pirated an old version of itunes [which would not connect to a new iphone]. but, it did allow me to upgrade to the new version without visiting the microsoft store.

Once i had this software, i could finally see the iphone in the app, but not it's contents. it was tedious to move files onto the phone, because the device does not recognize common types of music or video files. it needs itunes to convert your files to the special apple file, and a program on the phone needs to accept the file.

audio books were worse, because they import into itunes as music files, and you need to click about a dozen different things to change every file separately from a song to a book. I guess apple folks enjoy all of this nonsense. but, for a pc and android user, it causes a stomach ache.

Windows 11 can see the iphone automatically, but it can not copy a file onto there, and can only access the photos that you have taken. Unlike the android device, the contents of the phone are trapped on there. there is no sd card, so no way to get around this restriction. It becomes clear that the phone is a way to sell you programs and media rather than a useful computer. I tried about a dozen programs that claim to be able to give better communication with the device, but they were all super limited or broken altogether. More attempts to get money. It is funny that a file browser is included as part of the ios operating system, because it does not show the contents of the tablet.

After these disappointments in using the phone as a device for listening to music and audio books, and watching movies, I started using it as a phone. I found that the face id works well, except in dark conditions where the front facing camera can not make out your face.

the iMessage program is indeed good, but super frustrating as it much prefers other iphone users. i was able to download google apps in the stupid apple store, but found that they are throttled down, so that they work much more slowly than on an android phone.

 

Each new discovery like this made me sick to my stomach again. The device in my hand is not a cooperative effort with a free operating system. It is a closed ecosystem, meant to work poorly unless you have all apple products.

The single port on the iphone 13 is a totally non standard lightening connector, so that no other devices may be connected. It is a good connector, that can be inserted in either orientation. The screen is good, and has variable refresh rate. so, it runs at 10 refreshes per second when you are looking at a still screen, and 120 hz when scrolling. This saves battery, and the 13 pro max has a large battery.

Siri is an AI that listens to your questions, and replies cleverly. It is about as good as google gemini, but resides on the iphone itself. this is a big upgrade, because you can still change your speaking to typing even when out of service. it is much faster, because you are talking to an AI model that is built into the phone, instead of one that resides on a server far away. This is a big plus for the iphone. Apple has gambled that the built in AI will make up for the tablets mind blowing flaws.

The camera on a phone is of huge importance to me, as I no longer haul a giant digital camera everywhere I go. I was excited to try the iphone 13 pro max's 3 camera system and compare it to the similar system on the Samsung s20 ultra 5g. Both of these phones have 3 cameras, a flash, and a depth sensor. In the iphone, the 3 cameras are all 12 megapixels, where the samsung has a 108 mp wide angle, a 48 mp zoom, and a 12 mp ultra wide. The wide angle and zoom cameras on the samsung are much better, even though it is a model from a year earlier. The ulta wide on the iphone is better,  because it focuses, and can be used as a decent macro camera for very close subjects. Also, the 3 cameras on the iphone are better integrated, so that you can switch seamlessly between them. you can switch instantly during a video, and it is not jarring to watch. So, for stills, the samsung s20 wins easily. But for video, the iphone is better.

As a phone handset, the iphone works exactly like the samsung. It has good sound, both when held to the ear and when using speaker phone. It has good antennas and gets the same number of bars. it's hotspot power is similar. For some reason, the iphone only allows a single computer or table to share it's internet, so that is a big negative. you have to turn a connected device off to get another device on line.  Also, the hotspot turns itself off all the time, which is a total hassle. for someone who uses plenty of wifi devices, this purposeful crippling of the iphone hotspot feature is very annoying.

[I was later to find out that if you ask siri to turn on the hot spot, it stays on!]

The network gets confused a lot, and needs to be reset almost daily. This is just a poor implementation, and a total deal breaker for anyone who depends on a phone for their internet service.

the Ios operating system has frequent incremental updates, meant more to break iphones that are jailbroken, or that use various methods to unlock the phone for use with other carriers. The updates are hard to avoid, and reset privacy setting hidden deep in the settings menu to their default, and less private, setting. This is a flagrant attempt at surveillance, and another total deal breaker for anyone who has tried android tablets and prefers privacy.

In summary, the iphone 13 max pro is not for pc users. It will frustrate them and try to get them to purchase expensive media and software that is normally given away for free. The price is much too high for a device that refuses to communicate with PCs and android devices , and has a crippled hot spot ability. The way that it forces the user to use a terrible broken program to convert and feed files slowly onto the device is criminal. And, the insistence of a valid credit card number to set up the apple id is chilling. It is usable as a phone, but poor as a music player or book reader. [Especially if you use media off line, instead of buying files at the apple store]. In short, this device is only for apple aficionados. Do not listen to the apple die-hards when they sing the iPhone's praises. They are people who refuse to learn about computers, and prefer to wait on long lines each time apple releases a new product so that they can be spoon fed their expensive i Messages , i Tunes, i Books and i Movies.