Not a Console Peasant

One of the advantages of being a member of the PC master race is that I'm not beholden to the whims of Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony if I want more performance out of my video game experience. I can upgrade my PC whenever I please.

And "whenever I please" last happened around 2013 or so. It's been a while. Let's change that.

The AMD Radeon RX-7800-XT was released about a year ago, and strikes a decent balance between price and performance. It's also available in a 2-fan formfactor which is shorter than some of the top end graphics cards. This is important for me, as my well traveled Antec Sonata case can only fit about 11 inches of graphics card, and this XFX SWFT 210 trims away all its vowels to conveniently land at about 11 inches.

I also decided to upgrade my RAM as well, partly because having 16G of RAM feels weird when I'm about to install a 16G graphics card.

Do I really need the extra RAM? No. Is it hilariously cheap? Yes.

Anyway, let's crack open the case. As we can see here, there's about 11-1/2 inches of space before we hit the drive bay mounting rails.

And getting an 11 inch card in and out of here is... a task.

I got a lot of miles out of this old card, let me tell you.

But with that cleared out of the way, there's lots of room now to get the new RAM sticks installed.

And then we get to the best part.

Oh yeah, that's worth every penny.

But this is about where I ran into a teensy, tiny little issue. You see, you remember when I said I had 11-1/2 inches of space before hitting the drive bays? Well, that's 11-1/2 inches from the back of the case, not from the IO panel, which is apparently where these cards are measured from. When measuring there, I get 11 inches even, and the old card fits with just a whisker of space to spare.

10-7/8 inches is a bit of a squeeze, but clearance is clearance.

However, remember when I said the new card is about 11 inches long? Well it turns out that it's 11-1/8 inches long, and that 3/4 of a barleycorn difference pushes things from "fits" to "not fits".

So that leaves me with a conundrum. I could buy a new case, but it's such a bother digging all the gubbins out of the old one and bolting things up to the new one, plus it's money I don't really want to spend. And well, no amount of wishful thinking, hare-brained ideas or cockamamie scheming is going to just magically make the card fit.

So that leaves me with only one logical choice: pack the card up and return it for a refund.

The thought of having to send this card back is as frustrating as it is disappointing, but part of being a mature, responsible adult is recognizing when things aren't going to plan and cutting your losses before you get in over your head.

And this is just one of those times when I'm not going to win, I just have to accept that the universe has had the last laugh and not every story has a happy ending.

Ah well, it was a beautiful dream, even if it was never meant to be.

Waterer is Wetter

As you may remember from previous blog entries, I've been in the process of tracking down and silencing some water hammer caused by my sprinkler system. Various attempts so far have yielded limited results, but in previous instalments we'll recall that I did localize the most likely source to being the water filter cartridge in my fridge.

I had repaired the original filter cap, so that it would lock into the housing as it was originally intended to, but upon closer examination...

It seems that this didn't quite go as planned. The cap is installed correctly, as is the filter, but for whatever reason it's about a quarter inch too long to engage with the housing.

It may be that the filter is too long, or it may be that the cap isn't intended to lock into the housing when a filter is installed, and instead is only meant to do so during the initial shipment before a filter is in place.

I'm really not sure what the story here is, but I do know a solution to it.

And that solution is a little folded up wedge of cardboard, shoved in next to the filter. I moved the cap upwards to get a clear photo, the filter itself isn't that far askew.

I also took the opportunity to install a new filter, since the timer in the fridge indicated it had been about a year since the last filter change.

As per usual, I forgot that changing the filter introduces a lot of air into the lines, which gets compressed when you start filling a glass, and then, when the solenoid closes, expands back to its original size.

On the bright side, the floor is clean now.

Water is Wet

So I was watering my garden the other day, and I noticed that I was getting a lot more watered than the plants were. Something was not right with my wand of moistening.

Particularly here, where the handle joins the shaft.

And as it turns out, the issue was pretty easy to track down.

That is one very cracked piece of plastic.

I initially considered ambling on down to Home Despot to drop $15 on a new one, but on a lark I decided to email Melnor's warranty support to see if they might send me a replacement handle for less than $15, so that I could keep the remains of this one out of the landfill.

Their answer?

They just sent a replacement handle for free. Sweet!

It is indeed much less broken than the old one.

And now that it's all back together, I can get back to watering the plants instead of my legs.