Temporary Setup after Moving
There is not much here in the way of customisation. The table was not quite wide enough so I added an extension for the computer. I also built a "Dolly" into that and assembled it in such a way that the computer would rotate, but was fixed via a metal padlock that had a single shaft. The Padlock was concealed in a plastic box which had the bottom cut out. It is visible in the top right picture below the CPU temperature. The monitor was of course fabulous (I broke it after about a year) and although there was no KVM switching, I used MS MWB which was really good and I had a curser that would go from green to red depending on what computer I was using.
Below are some images of the monitor showing a few ways to use it and how I used it. If you have a grand to spare, there are worse things.
My main build uses the MSI X570 Ace. I have an AMD 3900X. 64Gbs Corsair Vengeance Pro 3600DDR2 (note: if you don't enable XMP in bios, it is 3200!). Aorus 240 water cooler, but the fans were incompatible with mystic light, so I purchased the Cooler Master MasterFan SF240P ARGB (pic4) that I got from Amazon.com. The GPU is an MSI 5700XT. I have five NVME drives, but expansion for seven courtesy of the two Adata expansion cards in PCI 3&5 (one will have to be SATA). I have the lighting scheme set to CPU temperature. The PSU is a Leadex Gold III 850W PSU with full ARGB including ports (pic3), which came from Germany. The computer itself sits on an extension and is attached to a dolly for system rotational situations, but cannot come off unless unlocked. The DVD is just temporary as it was USB, but decoding was being affected, so I disassembled and plugged it into SATA, which doesn't sleep as USB devices when the stream slows or have other related issues. The case is a Chinese import that I got from Canada (but you can get different variants here). And my Chair came from Amazon.fr. There is nothing you can buy here!
My secondary computer is the famous Intel NUC Hades Canyon. I bought it just as it was about to be surpassed by the Ghost. I paid over £800 for the bare bones, and this was worth £1500 when I'd finished. I noticed they're still selling a basic configuration for £1200+. The good thing about intel is their automatic updates. I got a BIOS update around mid-November 2020. which is not bad considering they don't make them anymore. I wanted something small yet capable. This for example will run Forza 4 at 5120x1440 at 40fps on high settings. Whilst my AMD quotes 70fps for Ultra, I generally have to limit it to 50- 60fps, or it crashes. The NUC uses around 35w despite being rated for over 100W. It is very quiet but when I used it for video rendering it couldn't displace the heat fast enough and would sit at around 90 degrees despite the fans being on full blast. I set the eyes on the skull for CPU load, but all the lights are customisable. It has more ports than Spain and is an impressive machine. Like all Intel Nucs, I have never seen a crash, glitch, or anything. It is an ideal backup machine and a good partner for my main build.
