I’ve just found a solution to an issue that’s been plaguing me since the day I got my ASUS 27″ monitor. Occasionally, when moving it from one place to another (LAN party, moving houses, unplugging and tidying up cables etc) I have an issue with one of my two VE278Q’s turning on. At first I thought I had gotten the power cable for it mixed up with a smaller thinner power cable that wasn’t putting enough power through to boot up the monitor. I would turn the power button on and instead of it allowing me to change sources, the power LED would be white or a purple/violet color instead of the normal Blue=Good, Orange=No Connection. I would fiddle with it for hours and finally get it to work so I dreaded moving it or trying to set it up.

There was one thing I overlooked though – the one causing me issues always had the Display Power cable hooked up to it and the one that was working fine had the DVI plug hooked up to it. I never really put two and two together and I needed one of them to use the Display Port since I have a third monitor (which I plan to replace with a third VE278Q soon) that required the use of the second DVI port on my ATI 6970. Thanks to this amazon review I figured it out. If you try to plug the Display Port plug into the monitor before you turn the monitor on, your power button LED will be white or purple in color. The solution is to simply unplug the Display Port cable from the monitor, unplug the power cable from the monitor, wait a few seconds and plug the power cord back in and then plug the Display Port cable back in. Like the Amazon review puts it “this is a big hassle”. It’s not going to keep me from buying a third one when I can afford to spend another $350 on a monitor, but it’s something that the owners manual doesn’t even acknowledge. As a matter of fact, the owners manual doesn’t even mention a white or purple LED as being a possible state of the power LED. Huge oversight on ASUS’ part.

Hope this helps some other folks out there trying to google “ASUS 27″ VE278Q white LED” or “ASUS 27″ VE278Q purple LED”. God knows I spent a good 30 minutes to find that amazon review. Cheers and enjoy your ginormous screen!

Was helping a friend of mine put together a PC last night and thought I’d share our experience with the Coolermaster Storm Scout case. It’s hands down the best case I’ve ever seen for under $100. There’s no holes for cable management above the motherboard which is a con, but not much of one – that’s simply due to the fact that it’s a midsize case, not a full case.

The main components were:

• Coolermaster Storm Scout Case
• ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
• AMD FX-6100 6-core
• 16gb G-skill Ripjaws
• Fully modular 750w Corsair HX750
• Seagate 1tb 7200rpm HDD
• Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo
• EVGA GTX 560ti 448 core Classified

Some lessons we learned that may or may not be in reviews or on forums… The Hyper 212 overhangs the ram slots making it difficult to fit your RAM in if you face it blowing up/out. We solved this by facing it back/out and blowing out the back of the case instead of the top. The fan barely hangs over the RAM this way but is easily removable with two small clips to have access to your RAM.

Some of Corsair’s power supplies that they call “modular” are in fact only partially modular. Their Professional series seems to be fully modular. The HX750 came in a velvet bag with a nylon/velcro bag full of all the modular cables. They’re extremely long and convenient cables. We were easily able to reach both the hard drive and the CD drive with the same cable.

The GTX560ti 448 Classified is a BEAST in size. We didn’t really realize how long it was going to be. It WILL fit in the top PCI-E slot on the Sabertooth in the Storm Scout case after you remove the rear PCI-E exit covers. You also have to use the extra clearance in the lower CD drive area to stick the rear of it into, then get it parallel to the motherboard and slide it towards the back of the case (putting the connections through the backplate) and down into the PCI-E slot. The clearance is literally probably 1mm. If you want to SLI two of these in your case – prepare to break out the dremel and make a nice little hole for it in the side of the HDD cage. There will still be places to mount your HDD in the HDD cage if you did this. Below is a picture showing the tiny amount of clearance.

Overall – great selection of components and I wouldn’t change a single thing. We did make the mistake of buying 2 SATA cables when the motherboard comes with 4 great looking black with white on the tips tab-locking SATA cables. So if you’re wondering “Will an EVGA GTX 560ti 448 Classified fit inside the Coolermaster Storm Scout?” The answer is yes… but barely.

All of my past free vector Mustache Packs have been extremely popular and continue to drive loads of traffic to the site even when I don’t make posts for weeks/months. I really appreciate all of the positive feedback and the examples everyone has sent me of all the silly uses for the mustaches.

I decided to make a proper “gentleman” version of the mustache pack and include cigars, a monocle, and top hat this time. Just like the Vector Mustache Pack 1 and the Vector Mustache Pack 2, these are totally free and I don’t require any credit at all if you use them. I do enjoy some of the pictures you guys send me and the feedback you leave down in the comments, so if you like it – let me know!

I decided to include a PDF format, an EPS format, and an AI (Adobe Illustrator CS5) format. Grab the one you need below and start classing up your projects!

Handlebars & Cigars PDF
Handlebars & Cigars EPS
Handlebars & Cigars AI (Illustrator CS5)

Be sure to check out the Mustache & Beard Pack 1 and the Mustache & Beard Pack 2!

Hardocp got their hands on one of the first 6990′s for testing. They’re not allowed to say much about the card itself due to limitations given to them by AMD but going by some of the photos they posted I’ve managed to use photoshop and the ruler tool to figure out about how long the card is going to be.

So if you’re waiting on the new 6990 and aren’t sure if it’s going to fit in your case or not – it appears to be 13.5 inches long.

It will obviously take up two PCI slots and is the standard width for cards. It also has two 8-pin connectors for power and measures around 13.5″ long (just going by the one photo).

In comparison, a 9800 GX2 is 10.5″ long and the AMD Radeon 6970 is just shy of 11″ making this new card one behemoth of a card!

This article is up for deletion on Wikipedia and I believe it’s actually a pretty fun read and has some interesting “facts” that a lot of people mis-learn in school or are told wrong when they’re growing up. Anyway… copy/pasting it here in the event it gets deleted. I enjoyed reading it.

History

Ancient to early modern history

• In ancient Rome, Romans did not build rooms called vomitoria in which to purge themselves after a meal. Vomitoria were the entranceways through which crowds entered and exited a stadium.
• There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmet.
• There is no evidence that iron maidens were invented in the Middle Ages or even used for torture, despite being shown so in some media, but instead were pieced together in the 18th century from several artifacts found in museums in order to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition.

Read the rest

I ordered a few discs from DiscGolfCenter before Christmas. I didn’t have anyone recommend them to me and I hadn’t ever ordered from them before. I came across them while searching through Google for different discs. I picked up another Blowfly II (lost my last one…damn!) as well as a 10m Brick, Gremlin GM, and a Defender. Overall the experience was pleasant. The site is anything but visually impressive. It looks like a basic e-commerce site and has some convenient features like the “Top Sellers” and “Customers who bought this also purchased…” Adding items to your basket took me about 5 minutes to figure out and then I realized that there were instructions on each product page that tell you to click the numbers in the chart to choose your color and weight. This is a fine system and once I knew to do that – was extremely easy, but it took me a few minutes to figure out as I’d never seen a system like this.. it’s usually a dropdown menu or radio buttons and an “add to cart” button. The discs arrived relatively quickly and were boxed up nicely. Obviously that’s more of UPS’s deal, but DiscGolfCenter at least got them shipped out relatively quickly (next business day).

I picked up this disc because I’ve seen it on several disc retailer sites but haven’t ever seen one in person or used one. It’s basically a normal looking disc with a big buldge in the center – as you’d expect it to be from the photos… The idea is that you can lob it – like you would a brick or a stone underhanded – into the basket and it won’t catch flight half way there and veer off course and miss the basket by mere inches. I can’t say it’s my favorite putter – that designation might go to my Turbo Putt or something like the Blowfly II. Still – I’m glad I bought it because I like really unique discs (PDGA approved or not) that show someone was thinking outside the box when they designed it. Will I use it? Probably. More likely when I’m playing with new people so they can see how different discs can be from each other (example: The Wheel).

The Defender is another rather unique disc. It’s got little dimples along the edge for additional grip (and I assume the same theory of dimples allowing a golf ball to travel further was probably intentional, but I can’t say whether or not the principle applies to this disc or not). It was a bit “floppier” that I thought it would be, but isn’t near as floppy as say a Blowfly. It’s made by Quest AT – the same guys that made the Brick above, but is a driver not a putter. They claim it to be the farthest flying driver on the market (if everyone who claimed they had the furthest flying disc actually had the furthest flying disc…). I don’t have any extremely long shots on my course, but I can say that the disc does go really really far and does it in about as straight a line as you can get. They say to throw it with a little hyzer and it’ll do it’s magic. It worked for me. I’m not sure if it’s PDGA approved or not. Will it replace my Nuke as my long-drive disc? Doubtful… but I’ll at least carry it around with me because it seems to be a lot more predictable than my Nuke is.

The infamous Gremlin GM. The GM stands for Greater Midrange and is supposed to be a nice balance between a distance and a midrange disc. If you’re not sure which disc to use – pull out your Gremlin. This disc has been around for a long time in one form or another. It was made by Innova for a while and is now produced by Discmania. If you’ve got a couple Sharks or any other cheap Innova discs that you picked up at your local Dicks Sporting Goods or something like that – replace them with the Gremlin and you’ll be more than happy. It’s got a nice grippy feel while at the same time being durable enough to not make you worried about nailing a tree and putting a nice chunk in your disc. I’ll definitely order another one of these soon and plan to have at least 1 on me at all times while I’m out on the course.

I’ve been suggested DiscGolfStation.com and will give it a shot next time I need to order some new discs. Keep any eye out for a review on their site as well as a few other disc impressions/reviews.