n3rd.org

It’s been a while since I got my new computer and so far I am really happy with it. It runs rock solid and is plenty fast for everything that I’m using it for. But what I’m most impressed with is not its speed, it’s how clean and organized its interior looks. My old PC was a bloody mess:

Power cables all over the place and there isn’t really a whole lot you can do about it. So much for air flow. Now with the new one it’s a totally different story due to three main reasons:

• SATA
  Fewer and much thinner cables. In terms of connectors IDE was a god damn nightmare.
• Cable Management
  The case has several very helpful features that help keeping the clutter to a minimum. Most of the cables are stashed away nicely behind the motherboard tray.
• Modular PSU
  This is just fantastic. Simply remove all the power cables that you don’t need and you don’t even have to bother with them in the first place. Totally worth the extra couple bucks.

There’s admittedly a little less hardware in it (one HDD and DVD drive instead of two), but that wouldn’t have changed much. Compared to my old PC the new one is the Martha Stewart of computers, behold:

Another thing that surprised me a little was how huge everything has gotten. Take a look at the graphics card or the CPU heatsink, it’s easily twice the size of its predecessor. On the upside the fan runs at less then 1000 rpm at barely makes any noise at all, even if the processor operates under full load for hours. I was a little worried that the graphics card would be a little too noisy under “office conditions”, but it’s hardly noticeable. All in all it’s a really silent machine for the punch that it packs. Makes me a happy camper :)