Computers? Bullshit.
So I’m watching some damn thing on the intertubes the other day, right? And then I get a phone call, so I kink my headphones off of one ear so I can hear the answering machine lying for me — since hell if I can be bothered — and I notice something odd. There’s a noise coming from my computer that sounds like some cable or other has drifted into a fan. So I open it up and, hey, all the fans appear to be unobstructed.
So here’s my plan. I’ll start pulling components out and cleaning them, because, hey, they’re pretty dirty. So I take out the PSU, figuring that it’s probably the rear fan giving me issues, and then I discover that it probably actually isn’t the rear fan on account of apparently my PSU ain’t got a fan in that location. So, okay, the other fan. Doesn’t look obstructed. I can spin it around with my fingers. Hmm. So I successfully remember — on the first try! — how to rig an ATX PSU to power on without connecting it to an ATX motherboard, and I don’t even electrocute myself in the process. And, yeah, thing works fine. So it must be some other component.
So now, about an hour into this process, I decide it’s time to do what I should have done in the first place, and test all the fans to see which one is balky. My fan-testing method is what I always considered pretty much the standard fan test: stick a paintbrush into the fans one at a time and see which one makes the rattling noise go away. My wife found this endlessly amusing, though she was a bit unnerved by the huge overheating alarm that began sounding when I stopped the CPU fan. It took about six seconds to find the culprit: the video card.
A quick glance at the calendar confirmed my suspicions: Saturday 3 July.
Is there some sort of federal mandate that says all consumer electronics are required to fail at the beginning of holiday weekends? No sooner is it fourth of July weekend than my PS2 and my faithful, long-suffering GeForce 8800 GT — Alpha Dog Edition, muthafucka, which came with a free copy of some super-popular game that I can’t recall and never played because, hey, it didn’t come with a Steam copy, and who the fuck remembers how to install games off of DVDs anymore? Not me — both suddenly fail to proceed.
That’s the story of how I ended up with this: the GeForce 9800 GTX+. It’s an absolute wanker video card, running a bit over ten inches long and two slots tall. To give you a better idea of how ridiculously overlarge this video card is, I’ve prepared this image. The thing is so goddamn big it even came with a case badge that says "powered by EVGA," since I guess there’s really no reason to own a three-pound video card unless you’re gonna brag about it.
So I have the gigantic video card — which, even in my decidedly non-miniscule case just barely manages not to foul anything, and pushes right up against the drive cage. Also, I have a PSU with a clear fan lit with blue LEDs, but that wasn’t on purpose; the product listing billed it as like a serious rackmount server PSU, and apparently I didn’t click through the pictures to spot the one with the LEDs shouting "HAY RICERZ GET ME FOR UR PHAT SYSTEMZ." Is there any possible excuse for me not to go all-out and just get one of these?
