I made a bed recently. Go read about it

- Flatworm Friday is now global
- Badass new blogpost about my badass new bed
- Reorganized /about/ a lil
  - New name gained
- Minor CSS changes
- Cleaned out some dead links
- Updated /uses/ to reflect my new mobo

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/uses/compier/index.php b/uses/compier/index.php
index 65aa3ee..563d5d2 100644
--- a/uses/compier/index.php
+++ b/uses/compier/index.php
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
             <source srcset="images/pc1.jxl" type="image/jxl">
             <img src="images/pc1.jpg" alt="Front view of my computer tower. It's black, with solid metal side panels and a mostly grey front panel. It has four 5.25&quot; expansion bays and two 3.25&quot; external expansion bays. The top 5.25&quot; bay contains an optical drive and the rest are filled with a 3D-printed vent for an extra fan. One of the 3.25&quot; bays is occupied by an aftermarket front I/O panel with two USB 3 ports and headphone and mic jacks. Below that is the power and reset buttons and power and hard drive LEDs, and then the stock intake vent. The very bottom piece of said vent has a USB logo printed on it. There's also a Pentium 4 sticker.">
           </picture>
-          <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">"Intel Inside" technically isn't a lie &mdash; the motherboard has an Intel wi-fi controller.</figcaption>
+          <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">The old motherboard had an Intel wifi chip, but as of installing the new one "Intel Inside" isn't even technically true.</figcaption>
         </div>
       </figure>
       <figure class="media">
@@ -28,21 +28,25 @@
             <source srcset="images/pc2.jxl" type="image/jxl">
             <img src="images/pc2.jpg" alt="The inside of my computer. All of the components are promintently visible. Two intake fans are mounted on the bottom, directly below the GPU. My cable management is serviceable, with a lot of extra length crammed in the dead space between the top-mounted PSU and the optical drive. Also visible from this angle are the abnormally large feet.">
           </picture>
-          <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">Yes, I had to cut holes in the bottom for those fans. I also had to get a right angle adapter for the USB 3.0 header since these fans actually block the big dumb cable that hooks up there. Totally worth it &mdash; this is actually a <em>better</em> airflow situation for the GPU than the old case.</figcaption>
+          <figcaption style="margin-top: 0;">Yes, I had to cut holes in the bottom for those fans. I think it looks pretty mint, if you ignore the fact that some of the chunkier expansion options down there are blocked.</figcaption>
         </div>
       </figure>
     </div>
     <h2>Internals</h2>
     <h3>CPU &mdash; AMD Ryzen 7 5700G</h3>
     <p>The Ryzen 7 5700G is basically the 5800 except cheaper and you trade PCIe gen 4 support for an integrated GPU. This was important to me in case my dedicated GPU died or otherwise became unavailable. This has come in useful occasionally.</p>
+    <p>It's a couple generations old at this point, but it's still faster than I probably need. I don't see myself replacing it for a while, to such an extent that as of writing it's now on its second motherboard.</p>
     <h3>CPU Cooler &mdash; Noctua NH-U12A</h3>
     <p>Admittedly, a bit overkill for the 65-watt chip it's attached to. I bought it because I was getting thermal throttling with the stock cooler, but when I took it off to put the new cooler on I discovered I hadn't mounted the stock cooler properly to begin with. The stock cooler, mounted correctly, would probably have sufficed, but frankly that mounting system was dogshit anyway. SecuFirm&trade; gang 4 lyfe.</p>
-    <p>Now that I have it, this cooler is great. Nothing specific to say, it just works and works <em>very</em> well. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first and last CPU cooler I ever buy. My one complaint is that the fan clips are kind of annoying to deal with.</p>
-    <h3>Motherboard &mdash; Gigabyte B550 AORUS PRO AC</h3>
-    <p>Nothing much to say here that you couldn't get from the product page on Newegg. Plenty of external I/O, though internal I/O has proven limited, and has yet to cause any problems with operation. I chose it partly for the included wireless functionality, which now mostly gets used for my bluetooth Xbox controller ever since I upgraded to a wired connection.</p>
-    <p>I recommend this motherboard if for some reason you're building an AM4 gaming system in $CURRENT_YEAR, but be warned that the screws holding the M.2 heatsinks down are made of cheese and <em>will</em> snap off if over-torqued. Don't ask me how I know. Also, the included Wi-Fi antenna is fugly and has an absolutely pathetic mounting magnet.</p>
+    <p>Now that I have it, this cooler is great. Nothing specific to say, it just works and works <em>very</em> well. I wouldn't be surprised if I never replaced this. My one complaint is that the fan clips are kind of annoying to deal with.</p>
+    <h3>Motherboard &mdash; ASRock X570S PG Riptide</h3>
+    <p>It's a motherboard. I replaced my old Gigabyte B550 with this in a successful attempt to fix a strange issue with USB and audio that, after extensive troubleshooting, I can only think to attribute to a dying USB controller.</p>
+    <p>It's pretty good so far. Much more internal I/O but less rear USB 2 than the old one, and I had to bring my own wifi card. Luckily, it has a slot for an M.2 wifi module, and the random Realtek unit I had kicking around from my old laptop has been working without issue. One of my favourite little niceties is that it has USB 3 headers that aren't blocked by my highly aftermarket chassis fans.</p>
+    <p>I have had one major problem so far: when I first installed it, it recognized all my drives, but didn't see any of them as valid boot devices. Updating the four-year-old BIOS and turning CSM on fixed that.</p>
+    <p>I've also learned that you don't actually need to plug in the second CPU power connector if you're only running a 65-watt APU with no serious overclocking to speak of, which was convenient since that particular cable is currently buried in a moving box somewhere in my garage.</p>
+    <p>Bought used, this motherboard didn't come with any of the usual accessories, I/O shield included. Don't worry about that. It's fine.</p>
     <h3>RAM &mdash; G.Skill Ripjaws V 2x16GB DDR4-3600 CL18</h3>
-    <p>Good RAM. No complaints. I thought for a while that the XMP profiles weren't compatible with my CPU or something, but an update to my motherboard's BIOS solved that.</p>
+    <p>Good RAM. No complaints. My old motherboard needed a BIOS update to recognize the XMP profiles, though, so maybe check for that if you're having that issue.</p>
     <h3>Boot SSD &mdash; Samsung 980 500GB (NVMe)</h3>
     <p>Used solely to store my OS and programs. Far bigger than necessary for that purpose, but no issues so far. Plenty fast and all that. I initially assumed it had DRAM, then I learned it didn't, <em>then</em> I learned that it's one of those drives that leeches off of your system memory instead of having an onboard cache, so make of that what you will.</p>
     <h3>Secondary SSD &mdash; WD Blue 2TB (NVMe)</h3>
@@ -54,6 +58,7 @@
     <p>I seem to have accidentally gotten into building sleeper PCs. I promise I didn't mean to &mdash; I was drawn to this case for its superior expandability, greater ease of working-on, and massively increased piezo-buzzer-havingitude compared to the Corsair 110R this machine used to reside in. It just so happens to also be from 2004, back when "Pentium" was the name for Intel's flagship line of CPUs instead of their worst ones and I was learning to walk.</p>
     <p>For all those reasons plus its absolutely charming aesthetic character, I really like this case. Unlike the last guy, I can actually get at the modular PSU without yanking it out and scratching all the paint off. It even constitutes an upgrade in terms of front I/O and airflow, after some aftermarket mods.</p>
     <p>See, this case came with mounts for two 92mm fans, which is better than some of its contemporaries, but not nearly enough for several hundred watts of glistening, sinewy computing muscle. In order to bring it up to modern snuff, I cut a couple slightly sketchy speed holes in the bottom and 3D-printed a bracket and vent for the front drive bays, and mounted the 120mm fans out of my old case in those places. I also fitted some slightly goofy-looking aftermarket rubber feet to give the case more ground clearance to get better airflow from the bottom. Since I now have two entire fans blowing directly onto the GPU, I'd guess that it's actually getting <em>better</em> airflow than in the old case.</p>
+    <p>Ironically, those fans make the machine more annoying to work on by blocking access to the bottom of the motherboard, but that's fine. It should only really be an issue if I need to do a motherboard swap.</p>
     <h3>Power Supply &mdash; EVGA SuperNOVA G6 1000W</h3>
     <p>This power supply is a tad bit overkill for the system it's in &mdash; in spite of my new video card, I'm still running a 65-watt CPU. I've got so much headroom I could probably fit a second of the same GPU in here. I could probably get away with a 750-watt unit, but I've got good &mdash; or at least understandable &mdash; reasons for going this crazy.</p>
     <p>I originally specced out this system with a much more sensible Seasonic Focus GX-650 rated for 650 watts, but despite being, by all accounts, the correct power supply for my use case at the time, it still died suddenly with a loud POP two and a half years into Seasonic's 10-year Worry-Free Warranty&trade;. The RMA process was good, at least.</p>