My Core i5-13th Gen. updates in 2024- :
Here and there the need arises for fixes and improvements to my “super-PC”...
2024. The CSL 7-port USB3 PCIe Card (power-fed by SATA) did not come back from sleep. Although barely 4 years old, this card was reported to have incompatibilities with Windows 10, so I removed it. I got instead a Glotrends 4-port USB3 PCIe Card (with the new Asus ROG Strix motherboard I did not need so many additional USB3 ports) that also simplified matters because it does not need a separate power input.
The CanoScan 4200F scanner, installed back in 2008 (18 years of flawless service!), worked OK under Windows 10 but soon started scanning only through half the platten. I replaced it with the CanoScan LIDE 400. Unfortunately, although the software installed fine under Windows 10, when attempting to scan there was an insurmountable driver error. Remarkably, it worked fine on the Louqe PC (with exactly the same Windows 10 and Antivirus!), so it remained plugged onto it, via a UBS switch to switch it off when not in use.
In May there was a 1 sec. electricity shortage, the PC went off (with disc errors!) and it was apparent that the Vultech UPS was not working: after uninstalling I tested it and the batteries are gone. It was not worth replacing the latter, because anyway this UPS is quite inefficient (around 83%) and has a maximum power of 800W, while it has to cater for the i5 PSU's 1000W and about 100W of monitors and modem. So I got a replacement that is expensive (€505) but is a true work of art, is expected to last about 4 years and is also very efficient (94%): the APC Back-UPS Pro 2200VA/1320W BGM2200B-GR. A cost analysis revealed a saving of around €60 per year in electricity, net of UPS depreciation.
One of the front 5¼" bays had, in its previous incarnation in the Pentium 4 PC, the Audigy Drive, with circuitry and plenty of audio sockets. Later in the i7 computer I adapted it to house an SSD drive. Now in the new i5W10 PC it became an empty ornament, shown in the right hand side in the picture below. So I replaced it with a simple drawer seen on the left hand side.
For decorative purposes I removed the black front from the Audigy and screwed it onto the drawer. There were now simple holes instead of the sockets, so I affixed to them printouts of the sockets, as shown below. This is mainly a hoax to have fun with visitors.
In August I had to replace the keyboard. The beautiful Logitech 810 that I had bought 7 years later had for a time shown its main drawback: the keys were backlit through a shape made of a material that faded away, no spares were available, and every few months I had to "repaint" them, with poor results. Even worse, the left Control and Shift keys broke inside and I had to keep them in place with screws, and even them they were clunky. Then the spacebar began to randomly repeating the space: enough was enough and I got the well-reviewed Corsair K70 RGB, with Cherry Red mechanical keys, a lovely (and expensive) piece of kit. Unfortunately, as soon as I tried to record a "Hardware Macro", for example assigning Alt-0162 (to get "¢") to Fn+C, this keypress produced "¢ccccccccccccccccccccc". Re-recording the macros just yielded a different number of those extra keypresses, and even worse, the keyboard was producing PageUp and PageDown randomly. I performed the easy factory reset: now I don't have hardware macros for special characters, but at least the keyboard functions normally.
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