2020 till now
In 2025 I started my own fork of M.A.R.S a ridiculous shooter. A very fun, 2D spaceship flying game.
I made 16 new weapons and many changes including gameplay, more options and GUI.
Located here.
⚠️Warning: work in progress 🚧
In 2025 I did contribute to CaveExpress. A nice 2D flying game.
I made over 60 maps and many changes including gameplay and particles.
Located here.
Long ago in the 90s, as a kid I did play the DOS game Ugh! untill end and I liked it.
Still in the 90s I did program a simple box flying game with a sinus wave below, for 2 players. Hitting each other for score. It’s even visible here on 1st screen under VGA 320 x 200.
I even did start programming something similar to Ugh, it was called by me: Fly&Ants (also on screen here, far right side, middle row). It was meant to be Ugh style, of flying in 2D, but with a fly🪰 (looked more like a cow), that would transport ants🐜 between huts on trees. Yeah, it didn’t last long, but was a very nice demo. It featured a couple of new gameplay ideas: a cloud with rain🌧️ that pushed down, it had a thunder with lightning🌩️ sometimes, that could hit player. You could dive under that tree. And there was a new fountain⛲ with many particles. Including a type that was auto aiming at player. It did push away and you could float when directly over it. Also made scenery wet.
In 2015 I played CaveExpress probably around when it was made.
In 2025, after years of being busy developing Stunt Rally, I played CaveExpress again, it felt a bit short. And I realized I can improve many gameplay things.
The game is available on smartphones and in web browsers. Thus I think it was easier and slower for playing on smartphones with touch. IDK, didn’t try, I don’t need or own any😁. This felt less playable for me on PC, and also when compared to old Ugh.
CaveExpress also features this new gameplay with box packages, to fly them to crusher (target). It has about 90 levels with this type. But had just a few with the Ugh type of transporting people between platforms (called Taxi here).
I first started by recoloring the existing Rock and Ice themes. IMO those were a bit dull and lacking color. I used Krita with many color or Hue curves. I didn’t know if it will be enough. But I did so turn brown Rock into green Jungle and gray-white Ice into orange Desert.
I looked around source code, to change gameplay to faster, and started commiting a lot of changes into my fork. I think I did make first PR with those 2 new sceneries. I saw some commits still, but didn’t know if after 10 years the original author will be still available or willing to change anything in the game. Yet it turned out great, even better than I expected. We quickly got into discussion and I did finish many changes this way, which went into original project repo. I also did a few bug fixes.
Details are in changelog at end, almost all (for 2.6) are my changes.
I did make some smaller and nicer particles for snow weather, rain, wind, etc. I think less particles were meant for smartphones, but on PC having way more is not a problem and looks better.
New sceneries also inspired me to create many new maps. Some were based on Ugh levels (all Taxi type), others my original ideas. Now with 4 themes total, mixing them in one map, also made some maps more interesting. I also made a separate series of 24 letters (a few were already in Ugh), an original Desert series with pyramids and couple of mazes, a series of Races on big maps (including flood escapes) and Villages with both taxi and packages.
I still have some new gameplay ideas to do, on Issues tab. Will see if I get them implemented.
One more thing I’ll mention is CaveExpress source code. Many classes and interfaces. The game features multiplayer and this (I think) made the code more difficult (to read, understand and develop). I need to figure out how to implement things the way it requires, by sending messages, or doing things on client versus server side, even if it wouldn’t be needed at all for local play.
So it is definitely a good C++ learning experience. And for contributing too, since I usually just develop my own projects. Lastly a nice break from the demanding, 3D, black hole of a project that Stunt Rally is.
⏱️Overview
The continuation of our Stunt Rally game using latest Ogre-Next rendering engine.
Available here.
Forum topic with key progress steps and few screenshots.
SR website has Videos, Gallery, Download, etc.
Well it’s probably time I write something about how this goes, it’s been months already.
I took about 5 years break from old Stunt Rally. I was occasionally playing and enjoying it, but also ignoring any flaws, and thinking hard not to get into developing it again more (well that’s also the way for any commercial software).
In January 2022, I started thinking of checking out the new rendering engine Ogre-Next and posted on Ogre forum my topic with many questions to get more knowledge about it’s state.
I has been developed (and used) since years (probably 2015 or so) but I haven’t seen few key features like: Gui, fog, old plugin for grass, no demos for particles or water etc. Old Ogre had plenty. Ogre-Next had many, but not the very broad palette of game related components.
Shortly after I gave it a try and started a small demo (sources here) with nature scene. I was quite surprised by performance, how high and smooth Fps was with lots of vegetation. Contrary to old vegetation plugin we still use in old SR, which was also the worst thing, causing lags and delays while driving. But back then even fog wasn’t part of engine and had to be added with some knowledge. Luckily new Atmosphere component for fog and sun was made not long after.
Since there was no working MyGui fork (was earlier) and all else was difficult, I didn’t move much further.
Even though Ogre-Next is still technically Ogre, about half of everything in code changed. Even using terrain was completely different as the system was new. It was good since it has better performance but it also meant a lot more trouble to use it and later port Stunt Rally stuff into it, and we have an editor for it too and own custom blendmap I made with noise.
Half a year later in October 2022 I got back to my terrain demo, which was based on Ogre-Next terrain sample.
Sources for it are there and I even made a gallery, it looked cool.
I also managed to build MyGui with Ogre-Next (forum topic) and with some help continued its fork, after some trouble later, it was fixed and started working well. This was likely the key point to start porting SR, while also knowing particles work, and my demo works smooth with better Fps and no lags for vegetation.
I then started porting SR still in Oct 2022 and calling it SR3 (3.0 was also latest Ogre-Next version). First by disabling almost everything in old SR code and making it build with Ogre-Next. Then by slowly restoring stuff one at a time and I mean really slowly.
It took months and literally almost everything was causing trouble or not working at first in Ogre-Next. It’s like normal developing, I mean I code then test and fix it to work (yeah the old way, no unit tests, seriously). On top of that, there were few annoying new bugs due to how Ogre-Next works and needed something extra to fix, what was already working normally in Ogre before.
In Feb 2023 MyGui started working and could be used in SR3.
Worse still, during my endless forum topic we found many bugs in Ogre-Next too. It’s like half of my problems end in one. A bit disappointing TBH, but that’s the way with software nowadays. It’s buggy and needs updates constantly. Which brings me to support aspect. If it was great I wouldn’t mind. And mostly it was, but lately I’m waiting 1-3 weeks for response and have many ongoing issues and unanswered questions. It’s a pity that it’s just (putting all contributors aside) mostly a one man’s project. Kind of like with SR too, especially after that one year when there were more programmers.
Last major features were: water and effects (like SSAO), probably the biggest thing. Worse still, it wasn’t developed by me, but mostly by scrawl (and others) back in 2013 or so. So I had to redo another thing in Ogre-Next by myself now. It was difficult but good learning experience. HLMS shaders, are big, complicated, have lots of code and variations, and yeah it’s much more difficult than just using a shader editor and putting together blocks or just installing a water add-on.
We still are missing a few essential ones like: soft particles and HDR with bloom, that old SR had around 2013 already.
Well this section might be of use and have some info. Not just SR3 history like above.
Meanwhile I did think about other engines and shortly looked at 3 of them. There is a big list on wiki too. And I did recently write a tutorial page on CG graphics its Engines section could be better too.
This is my personal view, and let’s keep in mind that I did look at them after SR was already made (took 5 years) and it has its own track / map editor made by me. It is FOSS too.
Bit older than UE I guess but also a huge hub for commercial stuff. Even the tutorial mini game had paid crap one could buy for it. That’s really the first thing that pops out instantly for me. I do hate commercial stuff. I guess you could find something “free” but its like looking for free money in city, roughly for me. It will only be a free commercial for paid stuff.
Sure you can find stuff made already like rivers, vegetation and what not but given that this has a price, it’s instantly not for me. And it never has any other license than “you can only use it for Unity”.
This thing certainly got on my nerves. Turns out I don’t even have a PC for it.
I started by trying to download. Nope, you need to get full sources with deps and then build them on Linux. I tried few times before I realized this needs over 100GB to complete IIRC. Yeah my SDD with OS is still just 128GB and the one new I got has just 512GB and doesn’t really have that much free space.
Whatever, the next thing was a real killer for me. When it finally started (after building for hours) it showed a tiny logo with a tiny text showing that it needs to build shaders, over 4000 of them. I can’t even. And it did compile them on like 6 CPU cores for 30 minutes. Seriously WTF.. and I don’t even use this term. I don’t know for sure, but it wasn’t just once that it had to do this. I remember few times that “building all shaders” time waste, possibly even on each new project created or so.
Well then I realized my PC (with 12 year old CPU) isn’t even in same era, UE5 would need you to first spend a lot of money for PC with latest hardware.. to probably still take a long to even start.
Needless to say it is also a huge hub for commercial add-ons etc.
If we look at SR which has over 200 tracks already and on average 1 of them is just 5MB, not GB we can see the huge gap. One demo in UE5 was 100GB.
I was pleasantly surprised to find waterways plugin for rivers and also seeing it’s MIT license. Feels like the proper way of doing stuff for FLOSS software and games like SR3. Would be nice to have it in SR for sure, but at least I can learn from it and even use sources if I ever find the time for this.
Well, getting back to Godot, it’s big, I don’t have much of experience. It has its way of doing things and may be even extended. But let me sum this all up next.
So let’s end this quick look around. Each game engine has lots of stuff. And I can’t even judge how long would I need to learn it, to estimate how long it would need, to port SR to it (any engine). And how would loading tracks look in it, or how much more complicated editing them would be. I’m pretty sure it’d be a waste of time and effort.
As for game simulation, I guess I could build as a DLL or something to run in it, but that just doesn’t feel right at all. I mean what for, so that I could use engine’s features sure, but I’d need to waste a lot of time (in total) for starting it, clicking everywhere, etc. Lastly learning its issues and their solutions. Every big engine has something specific to it and problems with some things for sure.
Meanwhile I already had a lot of code written to do what and exactly how I wanted it to be, e.g. editor for creating SR tracks.
Obviously it depends. It is a rendering (by rasterization) engine only. So contrary to the game engines listed above, you don’t get anything beside rendering, i.e. no physics (e.g. bullet), no sound (e.g. openal), GUI, scripting, network etc.
It is for advanced users / programmers.
This means you need advanced programming skills to use it fully. Right now I also believe it means you need to find bugs in it yourself too. Surely there are some still and the more I use it the more I find. And I’d expect it to have none OFC, sadly that’s not possible.
There is documentation for it, but I can’t say it is covering all topics you might need. Some features I needed later had solutions that needed to be found in older forum topics. This wasn’t easy since they’re old and I don’t know if it’s still valid and there is also plenty of unneeded text in posts.
And support? Yeah it’s nice and great when it happens but otherwise you’re left alone with it.
I also can’t say it’s popular. Seems it was much more earlier around 2010 and also the Ogre 1.x version is still more popular.
Good things last, it surely has many features, modern ones too like few types of GI, HLMS shaders, etc. It is low level, meaning it can give you more control and optimization. But I don’t have any comparison here, I haven’t used any other just older Ogre.
Surely there are others, eg. bgfx.
The biggest reason is really simple. I made SR in Ogre so moving to Ogre-Next sounded like least effort. Surely old Ogre changed and I got myself stuck to shiny material generator which again scrawl wrote back in 2013 or so. Meanwhile RTSS shaders got better in Ogre, and lately even got auto instancing.
I decided to skip all that and make a bigger step, biggest possible for better hardware and that was using latest Ogre-Next. Even with few things or components missing. It also featured auto instancing by itself which I liked most, secondly the new terrain has less batches too (more performance).
I’ve spend over 1 month in total, exploring the Unreal Engine 5.3 on Linux and gathered some opinions about it. I’ll say upfront: I don’t really like it and this version is not even fully working on Linux. And no: I will not make or port Stunt Rally to it, I know for sure now. This isn’t a strict tutorial, but my gathered experience, many complaints, with some useful links.
Short gallery with showcase here.
Long gallery with many more things shown and including visible bugs.
Well I have been using Ogre rendering engine since about 2007. Over a year ago moved to OgreNext, which is even less popular. I can simply say there is just one person (the developer) who is able to, and does usually answer my questions, or fixes issues.
Naturally at some point I wanted to get at least a basic knowledge of other engines. Since they’re so highly popular and have big forums and communities. And get my own opinion, also regarding what’s best for Stunt Rally (rendering only since we already have simulation and even own track editor).
I made 3 initial choices due to highest popularity: Unreal, Unity, Godot.
I did already check them in 2022, and wrote a little in my Rendering “tutorial”. But ultimately for me, Unity died a sudden death due to their freaking license changes (which shocked lots of developers and made them move). I did check out Godot and so far its best demo for terrain and nature, and it didn’t seem too great at performing there. Which seems also a popular opinion that it doesn’t handle big 3D scenes that well.
So, the goal was not really to move SR to any of them. It was to assess if that’d be even reasonable, and logically prove that it’s not (even only for rendering purpose). Last and quite important reason was to learn “the other side”, new effects and technologies, and know what would be possible to achieve in SR too (someday).
I did try UE on my old PC. Back then in 2020, UE5 had to be built from sources on Linux. Took me like 50 GB of space to download. And few tries to finish, as there was no info (and I had a small SSD). Then few hours to even build. Lastly at start it took 30 min to compile over 5000 freaking shaders. So ugh, yeah, clearly my PC was too old for UE5. I did try later after I bought a new PC. It does still need 5 min for shaders now. And that’s needed when major options are changed.
Still, my impression is that most people would need to buy a new PC to use UE5, unless they already got a new gaming PC. It is really demanding on hardware.
Of course, these are specific to me, using it on Linux. Also to what I was testing: for Stunt Rally try, so in 3D, mainly for driving cars, on gravel and for stunts.
Also I didn’t spend years using UE just maybe over 1 month total. I could be wrong, or assumed something using my anti-commercial logic, or just didn’t care to investigate longer.
I list here all my issues I had using UE5.
I’m kind of in the middle with this topic. Both good and bad.
Quite a lot of stuff can be done using Blueprints. There are games made just using them.
But then you’ll be dependent on them, which means no full control over what’s happening, and just doing what others tell you to do their (commercial) way. There is no avoiding blueprints, even with C++ code.
Another thing is that the list with blocks in blueprints is again huge. Here even a video with main ones. So usually you’ll have to type more to find a block. Even if + or * etc is enough to get simple operations, that’s still just ridiculous for me as a programmer to put a block and connect those lines to it, instead just typing + in code.
But yes, they’re easier to understand for non programmers. Still, I felt like I didn’t know how to do anything at all, when I was starting with blueprints. So it’s not like those were easier to start, just less to set up (no external IDE, compiler).
Lastly big, complex games would require a lot of code, which in blueprints means few times more clicking connecting, picking blocks, to me it feels like slow playing with toys instead of developing. And then area is huge, also hard to find stuff, lots of moving around and zooming. Sure there are comments, same as in code. But much more code can fit in text editor. And it doesn’t go both vertical and horizontal (when done right). Doesn’t need zooming. I find code easier to navigate (definitions, references) too. All can be done faster by keyboard.
There is a cool webiste with lots of blueprints here.
One good part for blueprints (similar to scripts) is their safety, since they show errors, won’t break, etc. While code can crash, corrupt memory, loop infinitely etc. And could take more time to build and test too.
At least at start, because I seem to end them with a view that’s not good.
Well definitely you can learn a lot, not only from using UE in practice, but also from that big number of videos either in their playlist, or lots of other videos from creators around UE. There is also a decent amount of documentation. This can help when starting or using UE, but also for getting information on various subjects around rendering or games etc (just at a smaller fraction).
So it was a cool experience, completely opposite to mine. I mean using an advanced rendering only engine, built from C++ sources. Not just installed, and already with most needed tools. There is a gigantic gap or difference between those. And not only in software size and thus difficulty, but also in the community. It’s a complete opposite too. In UE (or Unity, Godot etc) you can simply even put your question in youtube and find a video (or few) with answer. When I was searching for UE vehicle tutorials there were even few playlists with that.
Still, it’s not reasonable to change rendering or game engine far in production. Only possible at start. And SR is and already was far in production, having my own coded features, even when those engines weren’t available, that popular or so feature full. So clearly just because of that I won’t really be able to change engine. And neither would I have patience to spend 2 years or so, right after I’ve spend over 1 year to move “just” from Ogre to OgreNext.
UE is big, and very commercial, so Windows, NVidia, Visual Studio are default, if not only option here for all things to work. So definitely not for me as a Linux only developer. I think they also use some telemetry, I’m not sure, but I saw urls, sent to their website from UE, as warnings in log, when I didn’t have internet.
Lastly there are plenty open source engines, e.g. listed here, or new list here, also tools here, and a big collection of engine related links here with lots of libraries and sources.
This is a notable but short entry, not much of a project, rather a contribution.
I developed an Exporter code in Stunt Rally 3 Track Editor allowing tracks export for Rigs of Rods (also FOSS game).
BTW also gathered many (CC licensed) assets from SR for use in RoR.
Downloads
for RoR tracks are in this topic. Also require assets from here.
📷Screenshots
gallery from many tracks start here on RoR forum topic. Also older WIP here.
▶️Video here
Shows drive in RoR on one SR track and at end (somewhat outdated) Gui for Export in SR3 Track Editor.
Documentation here.
Explaining differences and how to use SR3 Export for SR or own made tracks for RoR.
I first noticed some interest in this topic. It also has a lot more detail in my posts, screens, and RoR bugs listed too. There wasn’t a lot of interest, so it was actually much more a challenge for me to try. And well it consumed me for like 3 weeks. A lot of C++ coding (76 kB in total) for that Export functionality and even my hands started hurting after (was too much typing late into nights).
The Export also allows others to create tracks for RoR using our SR3 Track Editor.
Finally 130 tracks from SR are available in RoR, so about 55% from 229. Is quite significant at once I think. It was also a lot of fun to drive SR tracks in RoR simulation and BTW learn about RoR code and people involved. Of course I got back to developing SR3 after.
This is a project I started to learn and test newer version of Ogre rendering engine: Ogre-Next.
Later I moved Stunt Rally 3 to use the engine too.
Now also a showcase for nature scene rendering using the engine.
Screenshots here.
Available here. Licensed: MIT.
Unlike my other projects, where I choose GPLv3 that requires releasing modifications, under same license.
It has no Gui or other dependencies and should be easy to build.
At first it was a project to test Ogre-Next and code needed to get things done in it. Surprisingly half (or more) is done different way than in Ogre. But I am also surprised by better performance and optimizations done by the engine.
It is also a good tool to test and fix bugs in Ogre-Next, e.g. many for planar reflections used for water.
Recently I also updated it with some media from Stunt Rally 3 to make it look better and be a showcase.
This is a continuation of my previous kitchen HiFi modding. Now with replaced electronics for power supply, amplifier and input selectors. Only radio and case stayed the same. So roughly half is made by me.
Previously there was here an ancient old power amp chip LA4108, from around 1995 or so when this HiFi was build, with 2 cassette decks. This amp was way too powerful and not quality enough for our times. Since I didn’t need much power, I just remade it with a very simple op amp amplifier, feeding speakers. I also wanted a holder to put my old audio player in place instead of just lying flat and hardly seeing its LCD. Lastly my mother found it hard to see what to press for radio and lost the volume knob behind our kitchen stuff since I moved it on side.
Gallery here.
Well half of my conclusions are already in my previous project for this HiFi back there. I.e. no reason at all to buy new stuff, better to modify this over 20 year old classic, especially after I painted it so funny. It was also working so best to extend it further and make it better for me.
So far I can say it is a joy to use and really good audio quality for me. I didn’t hear any noise, especially not like before. I hope it will last for few years at least, until I come up with something new I’d like to add. Or possibly get my stuff from inside and use new speakers, who knows.
One definite down side is that it took me about 5 days of holiday to do this, so it was way more than I’d like and lots of work still.
Another bad thing is that it uses 4 W power constantly, likely just because of so many voltage regulators here. But I won’t complain about this. I got more power lost in stuff that’s constantly on in the house all the time.
This is a tiny project, that took about 2 days. It uses the “Bluepill” MCU board with small OLED display for info texts and has few buttons to toggle LED lights and relays for audio outputs.
For many years (seems about 20) I was using just old logic chips. And it felt ancient, so I finally decided to do it with bluepill.
Having a small display is nice and informative. With many inputs and outputs left, there is still room for later changes.
This “console” is very useful and has a place just left of my keyboard.
Has no case yet, and I’m not sure if it will, I’m just covering it with a black cloth.
Sources are here.
Actually just using that Arduino .ino since it’s a small project.
I was editing code in VSCodium, then building and uploading using the worst Arduino IDE 1.8.19.
New implementation of my audio player, based on my older cAmp.
Works on GNU/Linux (and should on Windows).
Now using SFML for graphics, and ImGui for the new GUI. Still using (not FOSS) bass for audio.
Available here.
Now with CMake and newer C++17 syntax.
Screenshots here.
Starts with normal playlist, find, track backgrounds explanation with time coloring, tabs adjust, later 3 visualizations, their themes, and rest of Gui windows.
Old cAmp was WinAPI and DirectX only and had bad style, old C++03 too. It was still one of my last college projects.
I did once try moving it to SFML, and almost succeeded. I had no pressing motivation until I started moving to Debian GNU/Linux instead of Windows which required this new version. I made things differently this time and with more experience, hence the Gui and visible options.
The old cAmp was using GPU shaders and cAmp2 doesn’t use them yet. Seems not that needed. And it doesn’t even have hotkeys or threads implemented here. Well there is always something on my “to do” list for this project, like for any other.
Apart from most of the old features (with few important missing) it has some new ones too.
Most notable addition is the Gui with few windows having controls for changing view parameters, adjusting with sliders or showing info. Since ImGui is such a joy to use it was also easy to implement bindable all program keys list and move all options to Gui.
Other new features:
Well it is definitely useful. It’s one of those key programs I need to have at start of any OS (first is my DoubleCmd fork, then this player, 3rd is Firefox with many add-ons).
Yet it’s still missing one crucial feature like moving (reordering) tracks. Kind of funny, but I still don’t need it that much. I just delete whole playlist and add its main folder again to refresh once a while, and keep order in my filenames and subdirs. There are few other features missing too from previous version. But if I’m doing bigger projects (like Stunt Rally 3) or smaller and more interesting ones, then I don’t have time for this nice useful program which I still use every day. If we count the older one too, made in 2009, this would be the longest used program I made.
I described here my PC and its water cooling (WC).
It also features my own fan controller, which motivated me to finally create this page.
Obviously, I’m using my own firmware in heavily modded keyboard with my PC.
Final version pictures here.
I got my first PC in 1992, as seen in my very first post here. I had many more since then. I’ve put my full PC history in last chapter, at bottom.
Until 2004 I had no big issues with PCs and their noise. Those had 2 medium fans (about 9cm), one on CPU other in PSU. Surely those weren’t quiet (just cheap) and were mounted firmly so their vibrations were even amplified.
In 2004 I bought a new Pentium 4 and decided that I had enough of that noise, “a PC should not be heard” I said. So I first started buying “quiet” fans:
Well that was rather a waste of money. Not very expensive, but not very quiet either. Yes until now, I’ve spent much more for WC in total, but it was used in 3 PCs already. I’d even say it was more universal than those “quiet” PC fans dedicated to some socket or one GPU type only.
I bought a WC (not to confuse with ?) kit from a local company Cpc/Hydrox. Needless to say they changed company name like 3 times, didn’t last long etc. But sometimes their parts still appear on auctions. I even sold my surplus once this way.
To put it short, their cooler was crap, their WC PSU plain garbage (cheapest and also had a loud fan), water pump is just a cheapo for aquarium.
So a kit was really a bad way. But water blocks were cheap and really good.
My PC evolved the most since 2004, when I bought that Pentium 4 and started water cooling it. My current PC still has most of the WC parts from that time (water blocks, 6mm (~1/4″) tubes, water reservoir and pump).
My choice for that kit and 6mm was its low price. Seriously, whenever I tried looking at other water blocks after (thinking I could maybe improve mine), all were 10 or 12mm (~1/2″) diameter and literally 3x more expensive.
Back then, once a while, I was looking at pics of modded water cooled PCs, with “style” and plenty of lights too. How do I put it, just IMO OFC, let’s just say that’s the most illogical (retarded) thing to do with a PC. It’s the same approach as in modding cars. It’s a huge profiting business, a hype and really nothing more IMHO. Apart from water cooling, which is the most logical way of cooling, but for PCs it is way overpriced. Modded PCs are the culmination of commercial stupidity, visible from a distance and eye catching (i.e. self promotion).
For me it was a matter of how loud my PC still is, best measured in acoustic dB. Just like I said: “a PC should not be heard”, I also add: “and should not emit any light” or otherwise be visible even.
Of course, since my PC is on floor under own desk, I do have some white lights to make it visible when needed.
And it also mattered a lot more for me to have other modifications. as described in next chapter.
I changed the radiator from kit, to a decent (got it used) copper for one 12cm fan. It was too small as it turned out. Water was heating up, fan didn’t manage to cool it when CPU was at maximum. At some point I had two such one fan coolers. I think it still wasn’t enough, definitely not for CPU and GPU, and too much tubing trouble.
So at that point I bought a 3 fan radiator Black ICE GT Stealth 360 and I’m still using it today. It isn’t very deep and it’s easy to vacuum clean the dust from it. I do this like once in 6 months.
After moving my PC to WC (water cooling, right), I surely hated every CPU stock fan, especially those loud, stupid, cheapest Intel vibrating fans. I once even just cut off that fan of radiator and mounted a quiet Noctua 9cm fan above it, this worked well and was way quieter.
At some point I searched for quietest fans. After I think 4 tries I settled for Noctua. It actually varies from model to model. And the downside is their ugly, distinct color, which I didn’t spray black, I don’t want to risk damage.
For the radiator I bought 3 Noiseblocker fans (to be cheaper than Noctua and black already). They also have those rubbers good for mounting on radiator. I’d say they’re okay at low RPM, but not when higher, I can hear some motor noise.
Naturally after having CPU and GPU water cooled and quiet, the next thing is PSU and HDD.
HDD is easier. I used to wrap it in cloth, but this makes them too hot. So now I have one in some foam, covered by some old noise reduction foam, with the back being open to air.
I did try 2 noiseless fanless PSUs in 2004 or 5:
After Pentium 4 for better GPUs, I needed more power but there were no such fanless PSUs. I made a very stupid thing and tried using both fanless PSUs in 1 PC. Just connected their grounds and I killed Yesico this way?☠️.
Finally, some time later I found an awesome PSU: Antec CP-850. I even bought a 2nd one for my other PC, a year after.
It is bigger then most though. Inside, it wasn’t freaking all cramped to still fit the old retarded dimensions from very first PC ATX PSUs. It is just stupid: airflow is chaotic, no space left, all big hot inductors are nearby big capacitors (which don’t like heat) etc.
Bigger PSU is spacious inside and its design with components in lines is good for airflow, thus the 12cm fan is rotating very slow. BTW I eventually replaced it to a quieter one. There is a big surplus of power 850W, I’m probably using 130W to 300W. So it won’t heat up and suffer from it and/or make noise.
Yes the Antec PSU is bigger and won’t fit most PC cases, at the time there were only 3 available for it, but that was just a stupid commercial for their products.
PC cases are likely my last concern and I buy them as rarely as possible.
I used this PSU outside of my PC case from 2008 for 15 years now. My other PC has it on top.
Eventually I moved to even smaller PC case and I placed it inside, thus making it look like it does now, sticking out.
Apart from water cooling things, I have many utility mods for (or in) my PC:
Well this chapter is very optional, since it has quite nostalgic value for me, but otherwise it’s just mostly (ancient) history. Yeah, it’s almost 30 years since my first PC.
Legend for the below table:
? – I’m not sure about exact amount or date
💀 – Dead, it broke by itself. Obviously very undesired.
🔨 – I killed it, so my fault. By bad overclocking @, or by accident otherwise.
♻️ – Sold it, eventually.
🗑️ – It became electronic garbage.
☑️ – Still using it.
| Year | CPU, MB | CPU Freq. @OC | RAM | HDD, SSD | GPU | Monitor | Audio, PSU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | PC XT | 8 MHz | 640 kB | 20 MB 💀 | 14″ CRT EGA | PC Speaker | |
| 1994 | 386, 486? | 33 MHz | 1?, 4 MB? | 260 MB 💀 | 14″ CRT VGA 💀 | ||
| 1996 | Pentium 1 | 120 MHz 🔨@ | 32 MB? | 1 GB 💀💀 | borrow Voodoo1? | ||
| 1999 | AMD K6-2 | 300 @366 MHz | 32? 64? MB | 4 GB? | borrow Voodoo3? | ||
| 2001 | Duron K7VTA3 📷 | 1.0 GHz | 256 MB | GF2 MX400 | 17″ CRT Samsung 753dfx ♻️ | ||
| 2004 | Pentium 4 MSI 865PE Neo2 | 3.0 GHz ♻️ | 2 GB? | 40, 80 GB? 🔨 | Ati 9600 | 19″ CRT Samsung ♻️ | SB 128 PCI? 💀 Yesico FL-550ATX PSU🔨 |
| 2005 | Ati X800 💀 | 21″ CRT Dell 🗑️ | |||||
| 2008 | Quad Q6600 P5E Deluxe | 2x 2.4 @3.0 GHz | 4 GB? DDR3 1066 🔨@ | 320 GB | GTX 8800 512MB 💀 | 24″ LCD TN Iiyama ♻️ | SB X-Fi PCIe Xtreme 💀 Antec CP-850 PSU ☑️☑️ |
| 2011 | 1TB? 💀 | GTX 560 Ti 1GB💀♻️ | |||||
| 2012 | i7 2600K P8Z68-V GEN3 | 4x 3.4 @4.4 GHz ☑️ | 8 GB DDR3 1333? | 2TB | |||
| 2014 | 24″ LCD IPS Eizo EV2436W ☑️ | ||||||
| 2020 | 16 GB DDR3 2133 | 1TB | RX 570 4GB ☑️ | DAC AIYIMA A5 PRO ☑️ | |||
| 2023 | Ryzen 5 7600X B650M DS3H | 6x 4.7 GHz ☑️ | 32 GB DDR5 6000 | 1TB M.2 Gen4 NVMe | RX 6600XT 8GB ☑️ |
As a kid I didn’t have new PCs too often, they were also getting faster and obsolete quite often. Then after a brief period of having newer hardware (mostly GPUs) somewhat often, while most of them died too early I think I realized it’s not good to buy (they’re soon to be garbage anyway).
Later I realized that since years CPUs don’t really get much better, yet they do cost same or more. Thus my CPU and MB is still from 2012 (happy 10 years man).
I did have them overclocked for few years, but now I even don’t. It gets 30% faster, but uses 30% more power. So I’d rather have 100W (not 130W) at idle, when I just listen to music or watch something. I don’t need that extra 30% like I did when I was building C++ often, for Stunt Rally.
After all PCs are just tools (and not just gaming like consoles) but for learning, creating and entertainment too. So naturally buying a PC is an investment, that has to be done rationally.
Some time later I decided it will be better to buy (instead of new PC) a new ergonomic chair (for PC) and a bed. Those are similar priced but much better for health.
Well in Sep 2023 I bought a new PC, even with case, only PSU still same. Added it to history table. It feels way faster than my previous, like 3 to 5 times. It seems I’ve skipped a new PC (CPU+MB) somewhere along the last 11 years. I always aimed for new PC to be at least 2 times faster to not waste money and time for updating. It needs some time to update, like a week to choose right components, move OS setup, etc. I cleaned dust in this now old PC and moved to air cooling again, then set it up and gave to my mother. Replacing previous one, which was way too slow, nowadays even movies were not smooth. Yet still almost all PCs of mine drain above 100W at idle. Well it’s good to update and do stuff faster, but of course still a high cost for new technologies.
