Fender Stratocaster from ’88

Here is my newest aquisition: A Fender Stratocaster from the 80s!

The nice feature on this Strat is that the bridge pickup (black) can be split.
So although it is a humbucker it can be switched to single coil.

The action on the neck is totally awsome on this guitar, nice an low strings with no buzz.

The new Focus

Since my last posting much time has passed. Measurable in years eaven.
Thus over the past time my focus has shifted away from the power user
consumer IT technologies and back to good old Vacuumtube AMPs and electric guitars
from the 70s era to present day guitars.

In my next couple of posts I will introduce some to you…

Thank’s for following my not so regularly updated blog & stay tuned for more to come!

Intel Core i7-5960X

It has been a long while since my last post and I have been busy with new hardware and with new Operating systems and other things of interest to me, but essentially this post is about my gaming rig, which I built back in January 2015 and am only now finding the time to write a few words about.

First things first, the system specs:
Once again I chose to stay with an ASUS Rampage Series Mainboard. I have always faired well with them in the past, and judging by the Reviews, apart from the pricetag, the MoBo is spectacular.

R5E

Since this is the new Intel Core i7 Haswell-E Processor, which has 8 Cores (and each core in turn 2 threads) packing 20MB of Intel SmartCache and supporting only DDR4 RAM, I figured it’s bound to pack huge amounts of processing power.
Intel i7 5960X Specs

That combined with 2 ASUS ROG NVidia GTX980 STRIX 4GB graphics cards in SLI should put me well ahead of most Enthusiast computer users.

ASUS GTX 980 STRIX OC

The sound card has also been “upgraded” from a Creative SoundBlaster to an ASUS Xonar Phoebus Solo. And yes, I also have the problem with 5.1 Surround Sound via the optical SPDIF.

As a mouse I’m now using the Razer Ouroboros, away from the previously used Cyborg-Gaming M.M.O. 7.

The Monitor has not been changed, still with Samsung’s UHD 28″.

Detailed Specs:
Motherboard: Asus Rampage 5 Extreme
RAM: G.Skill – 32GB DDR4@2666MHz
HDD: Samsung M.2 950 Pro SSD 512GB (this deserves a writeup on it’s own)
Graphics: 2 x ASUS STRIX GTX980 4GB (in SLI)
PSU: Corsair 1200W (unchanged from the last system)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NHD-14
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X

Samsung U28D590D 4K Monitor

Couldn’t resist getting one of these Samsung 4K UHD Monitors!

28″, 1ms (GTG) refresh and a resolution of 3840×2160

A problem I had with the new screen was that my R9 290x would cause the screen to black out randomly for 2 – 5 seconds at about 10 minute intervals.
The solution was to get a NVidia ASUS GTX780Ti DC2 OC