Buying LEGO as adult…

So, I guess buying LEGO as adult looks something like this hehe. It has been like 2 decades since I last bought LEGO for myself (buying it for cousins and nephews doesn’t quite count) and I thought I should treat myself with this one. And I freaking love it. Was expecting the pot part to be simple assembly, but just the pot itself has like 400 pieces and it’s insanely complex. I wonder if someone at LEGO literally has a job of making this stuff up and figuring out how to do it with the blocks they already make…

It actually looks really neat and from a distance, it looks like an actual plant. And I love it how LEGO reuses their existing parts to make up new stuff. Like, for example, the orchid’s breathing tube/roots coming out of the pot are parts used for LEGO dinosaurs. Or the core of the orchid blossom is a tiny pink frog piece. They even mention it in the assembly manual lol. It’s a cute and cheeky touch and I like it.

I’m actually really amazed how a non-tech toy company just endlessly keeps innovating new stuff and attracting new crowds in this age of everything digital. I know they have been making motorized Technics and Mindstorm models for decades now, but just plain LEGO blocks are still their core product.

Anyway, I think I might buy myself Bonsai tree next, should fit nicely on the other end of the desk. I guess next logical after the Bonsai tree would be… Imperial Star Destroyer. Right? 😀

Why is state of Bluetooth codecs on Windows so awful?!

I’ve been using bluetooth earbuds on my Windows PC for a very long time now, also for gaming because I don’t have any wire bothering me. Been using Apple’s AirPods 2 and they worked great, they even reproduce enough bass to be engaging for all the explosions and music easily. But recently I’ve upgraded to highly acclaimed SoundPeats Air3 Deluxe HS that get very high remarks almost everywhere and they are very accessible because they don’t cost 300€, yet boast some pretty impressive specs like very good audio profile, frequency response up to 40kHz which is rather rare since most go to 20kHz only and they also support AptX and LDAC which aren’t supported on AirPods 2.

And here comes the problem stated in the title of this article. Windows, for whatever dumb reason just pick codecs almost on random at this point. Most bluetooth audio devices these days support SBC and AAC codecs, of which AAC is superior. However, there are also AptX from Qualcomm and LDAC from Sony, both superior to AAC and especially SBC which just sounds horrendous in comparison.

What I don’t understand is why Windows 11 offers ABSOLUTELY NO control over bluetooth codec selection? Whole bluetooth headphones industry exploded and almost everything these days is bluetooth. Sure, audio purists will insist on wires and on PC I’m one of those, but I can’t deny convenience of wireless so I do use it for evenings. But I’m stuck with AAC with absolutely no way in changing that with Windows 11 itself. There is a tweak that can force disable AAC codec in Windows 11 using this registry modificiation:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BthA2dp\Parameters]

“BluetoothAacEnable”=dword:00000000

However in my case, Windows just defaults to SBC codec instead of picking up on AptX, making everything sound like hot garbage. And yes, while LDAC isn’t supported by Windows 11, AptX absolutely is, yet you can’t frigging enable it in any way. Why Microsoft? WHY?

I did find way to use LDAC with this Alternative A2DP Driver tool:

https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/a2dp/

Unfortunately, it’s not free, although it’s quite cheap so if you want to use LDAC, you may want to invest in it because Microsoft sure doesn’t give two flying fucks about state of bluetooth codecs. One would expect a simple, easy way to select codecs in sound settings in Windows and yet you just can’t do it. Ridiculous. Fix this crap Microsoft, it’s embarrassing.

Same company that’s providing the alternate bluetooth driver also offers Bluetooth Tweaker tool which you can use to check which codec is Windows using in your case and also a tool to confirm the above alternate driver is working correctly after enabling LDAC.

https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/tweaker/

This tool is also available for a small fee and of course, you need headphones that support LDAC. You’ll have to check product specs to see if yours do. Cheap ones usually only support AAC while most higher end ones also support LDAC. Both tools have 7 days free trial so you can check things and test it out for few days before you commit to it or not. But I still hope Microsoft will get of their ass and add proper support for codec selection in Windows 11.

EDIT:

Turns out even Linux has Bluetooth in better state. Using Pipewire Audio subsystem and you can use any codec in a matter of 2 clicks. Not only I could use AptX easily on my laptop paired with SounPeats TrueAir 2, I could even select SBC XQ on the other where I had AirPods 2 paired with it. AirPods only support SBC and AAC, no LDAC or AptX, but still, seeing SBC with higher quality profile (XQ probably stands for Xtreme Quality) which sounds way better.

So, again, Microsoft, get your head out of your own ass. First you nuked hardware audio acceleration that was really amazing before Windows Vista and now you’re lagging even behind Linux with bluetooth audio? How pathetic is that?

Finally upgrading my storage with Seagate FireCuda 530 4TB

Years ago, when 2TB drives were the biggest one could buy at the time, I got myself Samsung 850 Pro 2TB drive. I’ve wanted M.2 drive, but no one really had them and 1TB just wasn’t enough so I went with SATA. I think I had it for around 6 years now and it has been serving me with excellence. I don’t think I’ll sell it because it’s just not worth it unless I can get a decent price back, but it’s a SATA drive so probably not.

I’ve always wanted to buy another Samsung in M.2 flavor because their NAND and controllers are really top of the line. But I was saddened to hear Samsung is launching 990 Pro drives soon and they’ll once again come up to 2TB capacity only. No 4TB drives. WHY Samsung? WHY? Who needs another even faster 2TB drive in late 2022 ?

Looking at the product stack that does offer 4TB drives and I just instantly avoided all the PNY, ADATA, Kingston and the likes drives because of their constant components swapping shenanigans where they send top spec drives for reviews and then swap components with less capable ones for retail to jack up margins. I hope your sales are going well lol. Samsung is entirely out of option because it has no 4TB at all, leaving me with Sabrent and WD as reliable options. Both of which are for some reason dramatically more expensive than FireCuda 530 4TB. 100-150€ more. I have no clue why. And FireCuda 530 has really been scoring top performance in all reviews and it’s a reputable vendor which I don’t recall has been doing any really bad things with their drives.

Funny enough that these variants with heatsinks are actually cheaper than naked drives which is odd, but I’ll strip it out of the heatsink anyway and might come in handy sometime later.

I’ll have to reinstall Windows clean and migrate all the data, but I’m excited. It’s gonna be a pretty huge upgrade and I’m finally getting on the M.2 train with my desktop.

 

RTX 3080 Noctua Edition finalized!

Hey, got something for this mod whole month ahead of predicted date. Noice!

I needed these 2 to finish up my mod. Decided to do it in such way that I won’t have to solder a single thing and it went pretty well.

This is as clean as I could get without modifying any cables. Yup, this is fully finalized card now. All the cables neatly tucked inside the card so there is nothing sticking out. Fans are also fully powered and controlled by the card itself. They fire up under load and go into 0 dB mode on desktop. It’s actually cooler in 0 dB too because less plastic crap is covering the fins and when under load, it can push a lot more air with less effort out of those fins. It’s ridiculously quiet now. I can’t believe why manufacturers stick bunch of ugly ass plastic crap on cards instead of going for industrial looks like this.

Just imagine having card identical to this, but with fancier single piece shroud around all 3 fans at exact thickness as the fans and simple text like RTX 3080 on the side of the fans and nothing else. Like, come on. Even ASUS’s official “Noctua Edition” doesn’t look this good with the stupid ugly Noctua’s color scheme.

And here is one when it’s running inside my current system…

Only thing I regret here is that I didn’t get myself a 3D printer 2 years ago and did this mod back then already. I could have enjoyed this RTX 3080 card in absolute silence. But oh well, seeing how RTX 4000 series are already destined to weird shit, I think I’ll just be sticking with this one for a while now. It just got A LOT better now so why not 😀

PROJECT 3D FILES (.STL):

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5807863

Almost finalized RTX 3080 Noctua Edition

I guess I can call this a success. Yes, I’m still waiting for the graphic card to 4pin adapter cables, but it’s running fine using motherboard headers and emulating same fan curve via FanControl software with same 0dB operation below 55°C and with very aggressive fan curve with 100% at 75°C and it usually never even hits that. Testing fans at 100% (2000 RPM) and they are audible, but they are like night and day compared to stock fans. Not only they push significantly more air thanks to thicker fans, they aren’t whiny at all. All I can hear is basically just air rushing through heatsink fin stack and it’s really inoffensive noise.

The prototype printed parts didn’t show any change or deformation from heatsink and heatpipes heat so I’ve just gone ahead and printed the full fat parts. The front took me 3 hours to print, rear part good 2 hours and each of four links on top took 10 minutes.

I’ll post an update when I get the adapter cables and how I’ll hide that to make it visually appealing. See you in about a month when the cables come from China 😀

My first own RTX 3080 Noctua Edition prototype design

Well, after many hours of thinking, measuring and designing 3D models for aesthetic fan retention, this is my first prototype. We’re not doing any ghetto mods here lads, we’re doing it properly!

After considering many options how to attach fans to the card, this is what I came up with. It’s entirely screwless design. On the right side I attached the fan holding frame to the end of heatpipes and on the left side it’s anchored under the metal “armor” that’s above PCB and has two neat notches next to the PCI slot bracket. Fans are held together by those links that are actually T shaped and go in between fans a bit for extra strength. It’s all held together by tension of fans pressuring towards the middle of heatsink which then puts tension on both ends.

Now, this is just basic check how to attach the Noctua fans to the card. There is some more work to do. The ends will be much thicker and shaped to the contour of the card in the corners, but I’m thinking of keeping the sharp lines and edges. I could make them round, but I actually like the sharp lines and corners, gives it more industrial look. And final print will be in black. I’m using white because it’s my prototyping filament as it’s easier to draw on it with marker and you have better visibility. Though Storm Trooper looks aren’t bad either.

Noctua fans conveniently have short cables with extra extension if you need it, which means I won’t have issues with cables and having to cut them or anything. Have already ordered adapters that convert graphic card connector to the motherboard 4pin PWM connector so the fans will run from the card itself and since there is a gap between both heatsink fin stacks, I’ll neatly hide cables in between there. Sucks that they’ll be coming for entire month. AliExpress and all that… So, for now I’ll run the fans from motherboard headers.

My main concern is 3D printed part being attached to the heatpipes end and to the “armor” frame. Which both get very hot during operation and I’m worrying that 3D printed parts will start to melt and expand under weight of fans. Heatpipes are on the absolute far end so I’m suspecting it shouldn’t be hot enough to melt the printed parts, but the “armor” part in which other end is attached may be an issue. Now, printing bed is at 60°C and filament doesn’t melt, it just sticks. In theory, it should be fine since GPU core is usually around 75°C under full load, meaning heatsink shouldn’t ever be that hot, but I’ll just have to stick the card into the case now and test it under heavy heat to see what happens…

You know what this means :)

That’s a stripped out Palit GeForce RTX 3080 GamingPro. Those below are Noctua NF-A9 PWM Chromax 92mm fans. It’s exactly what I’m going to do 😀 The factory fans are tiny little buzzing buggers that drive me nuts under any kind of load because the rest of the system is so quiet. Well, if all goes to plan, this will become a Palit GeForce RTX 3080 Noctua Edition. Similar to what ASUS did officially, just better looking without the silly beige and brown color scheme.

Now I just have to fabricate the platform to hold these fans properly on top of the heatsink and not do it using zip ties. I’ll most likely 3D print the assembly. Which will be fun doing on backup GeForce 8400GS since I need my RTX 3080 in front of me. That thing can’t do 144Hz, can’t do 1440p and Tinkercad runs like poop on it. Fun times ahead!

Got into 3D printing and I love it!

3D printing isn’t anything new. A lot of people on Youtube have been big into 3D printing for like a decade. But it used to be a very expensive hobby with 3D printers costing insane amounts of  money. But prices have dropped and I stumbled upon a 3D printing shop by accident like 2 weeks ago as I was searching for something else and dropped my eyes on Creality Ender 3 S1. It was around 440€ so not really a fortune. Creality is kinda the most mainstream 3D printer maker and I thought, can’t go wrong with most widely used device. Usually great for servicing too thanks to availability of parts as well as info how to operate them and all the tricks.

The issue was that this particular 3D printer was not in stock for whole month. And then I spotted Ender 3 V2 model. Sure, it’s an older, more basic model with no automatic bed leveling and more basic extruder, but I thought, hell, it’s so much cheaper (like half the price) and how hard can it be to level the bed and it’ll be great for learning while saving bunch of money. And I was right!

Assembled it super quickly with included instructions. It was like assembling LEGO Technic 😀 I did an exception and just ignored the included 3D models. Instead, I went ahead and used Tinkercad from Autodesk to just go straight into my own designs and man, I love it. I’ll eventually move to more advanced modeling programs, but I love Tinkercad for how easy it is to work with. From idea to 3D printed models literally in minutes. It’s literally like Minecraft or LEGO building. I just wish it wasn’t an online only tool, but I can forgive it because it’s just so simple to use yet powerful. All other 3D modeling programs are so clumsy and it seems like there is this huge disconnect between input of information and its visualization. Tinkercad is the opposite. It’s literally WYSIWYG. You drop in basic object and define its dimensions and as you’re tinkering with it, you already see how it’ll look like. I kid you not, it’s as simple as drawing basic shapes in MS Paint, but still much more powerful as you can input dimensions of sides directly and you can also lock objects together or substract them by changing objects status to “hole”. If you merge regular object and a “hole” object, the “hole” object will remove the material from the original object, creating a hole. Or an angled edge or whatever you want. It’s an amazing tool to work with.

What I love the most is how easy it is to fabricate parts for real-world practical applications. All I use is measuring caliper and I can basically fabricate anything with it by quickly transferring measurements into Tinkercad. And man it’s actually damn precise. I was mostly rounding measured things down to 0.5mm, but it still fit things perfectly once printed.

Created a holder for my CMOS clear switch that I had in front of the case so I don’t have to take apart my entire case just to bridge the CMOS clear contacts. Before I just had switch dangling in there and now it’s properly held in place with this little thingie I fabricated in like 5 minutes.

Mind you, those walls of the object are just 1mm thick! The blue parts hook into the PC chassis and you slide the switch in from the side so it’s sandwiched between chassis and this printed plastic piece.

And here is the final result…

This was my 2nd printed object of all time and I initially made a mistake of making a solid box with hooks and realized I won’t be able to jam it in. So I just carved away a line of material to give the hooks on one side some springiness and it clicked in beautifully. I’m actually amazed how flexible and springy PLA material is. This bit is covered by front case panel so I don’t care that it’s white and not most aesthetically pleasing, but it works and all I used was measuring caliper to read out dimensions from the case and the switch and transfer them in Tinkercad.

I’ve been playing for a while with various other things and I’ve made some pretty amazing things with it. Probably one of most complex ones is the HEPA filter replacement for my vacuum cleaner so I can mount the vacuum cleaner hose on the exhaust of the Bosch vacuum cleaner, converting vacuum cleaner into a blower. So I can clean dust from my PC without any worry about static electricity or having to use a compressor.

It’s a drop in replacement for HEPA filter so it fits into same slot on the back of vacuum cleaner. I didn’t design or use any gaskets because I don’t require perfect seal like HEPA does.

Now it no longer sucks, it blows! And boy it blows hard! 😀

I’ll be printing more of stuff in the future, might even post finished models to print. It’s pretty cool as it’s the reverse of how I used to fabricate parts for my stuff. I used to take away material from blocks of plastic or metal to create objects. Now I’m adding it till they form a desired shape. And it’s so freaking cool 😀

New VAT rules not that bad in EU after all

With 1st July 2021, EU declared there will be no exemptions on items under certain value like we had till this date. From now on, if you buy something for 1€ or 5000€, you’ll have VAT applied to it. Given I had experience with customs before, the times looked pretty grim for ordering anything outside EU, especially on the cheap from AliExpress as it would add massive extra costs. If stuff is stopped in customs, you get annoying delays, they slapped VAT on top of original price and their extra fees were absurd. Last time I imported stuff and went through customs, their “manipulation fee” was like 8€ or some shit. And I think it’s a fixed fee and not item value based, so if you ordered something for 2€ you’d pay 10€ because of their sticky fingers.

Well, it looks like it’s not that grim after all, at least for AliExpress in particular. AliExpress now charges VAT during purchase already for EU customers which is slight annoyance, but whatever. This is purely based on costs of the item and per my country, the VAT is at 22%. Which is not that terrible addition when buying certain cheaper gadgetry or spare parts for stuff. I was looking for some 3rd party spare parts for my robot vacuum and I got bunch of filters and side brushes for 22€. I paid a bit over 4€ of VAT for it. Given I’d get a single filter and single pair of side brushes for this price for official genuine parts, it was still well worth it. And since VAT was already paid, this means I should be exempt in the customs. They’ll see the VAT was paid and the package should go through without extra costs or delays. At least that was my experience from before anyways, if I paid VAT at purchase time already. And since they know AliExpress automatically charges VAT now, I shouldn’t even be required to provide receipt from purchase, assuming sellers properly equip packages with required documentation. We’ll see in 1 month time when stuff should arrive…

New domain for easy access to my rants

After having issues with my free .tk domain, I’ve decided to dump it and go with full on proper domain. Not through WordPress coz I’m a cheap bastard, so it’ll still be just a simple domain redirect to WordPress blog, but it’ll be easy to remember. Now I just have to change it in all my apps which will be a massive pain in the ass. But oh well.

You can reach my blog via rejzor.com or www.rejzor.com. Easy enough to remember? 🙂