🐝 American Truck Simulator VR: I found MY Truck

till the next ride, bee safe.....

The Beeast

The Beeast PC

Had my new PC for a couple of months now but now that i have abit of free time due to my treatment I’ll be using it abit more. I didn't built it this time as I don't really have the patient or know how to get it done in a short space of time. I could do it but i research for months before hand and I just wanted to get something and get gaming soon as possible. I decided to get it built by CyberPowerPC UK who where very helpful and made changes when I asked & I finally went with this spec as its the latest available.

Final upgrades to HiVE 2.0

Well over at the start of the month I finally pulled the trigger on HiVE 2.0 final series of upgrades.
I have been waiting for the prices of certain components to come down in price for the last 6 months. The graphics card I wanted was just under £2000 around Christmas and that was more than what I paid for buying everything else including the case. So I waited for the prices to come down and also heard that a new VR headset was on the way so good reason to wait til that came out at the same time. Get everything in one delivery

So I bring you the Asus RTX 2080Ti Strix OC Edition

Well the graphics card came down in price and new VR headset came out (Oculus Rift S) and I waited to see what people thought and reviews. Reviews where good so I pulled the trigger finally.

Oculus Rift S

Oculus Rift S

Oculus Rift S & additional eyes and antennae

I'm totally enjoying the combination and I know for sure I won't be needing any upgrades for a long while. Well til i find something I want again


till the next ride, bee safe.....

HiVE 2.0 is Online

Well HiVE2.0 is finally here.

After swapping out the power supply the screen blanking issues disappeared. I thought it was all over and finally got a working system. Started up my game and it started without any problems. Soon after I heard the fans on the graphics card going at full speed. I thought shit something broke somewhere. I checked the fans where working but the case wasn't getting much cool air in or moving inside the case.

Took apart the water cooling system and moved it to the roof of the case so the 2 big fans up front can pull the air inside. Managed to clean up all the wires as well so the case so it looks VERY clean inside.

Booted up again, played my game watching the temperatures and CPU never went over 35C and graphics card didn't go over 65C when before it was hitting 90C. So its up and running without any issues now.

I present to you, HiVE2.0

till the next ride, bee safe.....

The power of yellow

So like I said I would do something with the mesh panels that can be taken apart which gave me the idea. Saw something on Overclockers Forum where someone did pretty much the same but with multi colours. 

So I got some primer & yellow spray paint from my local DIY/car part store. Don't know if they are any good or not but the bits I want to do are pretty small and mistakes can be hidden if needed.

First of some primer, not too bad for my first go in many years.

I let it dry over night and did some yellow in the morning.

Safety first right? :D

Seems to be pretty good for the first coat of paint. Let it dry for a good couple of hrs even though it probably won't need it. Better to be safe than sorry I guess.

Hoping the end result will be as good as I have it in my head.

till the next ride, bee safe.....

The gathering of Project HiVE 2.0

It's here and delivered right on the time they said they would too. Both packages from different sources but same courier.

Thank you Overclockers.co.uk & scan.co.uk

The gang's all here

Is it only me that hears that song "I Need a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler when I read that? Well I just got my hero :D

Now I was expecting something special with the retail version of the i9 processor is why I held out to get it as well as the warranty being 3yrs instead of 1yr with  OEM version.

Mysterious bubble wrap

Mysterious black cloth bag

SEXY or WHAT??????!

Seriously, OMFG.

ok how do you open this thing up?

Hello in there

Yay finally worked it out :D

FINALLY

We meet in person

Ok I will tell you the truth right now, it took me AGES to open this thing up, atleast 10 solid minutes. I didn't want to break it but DAMN it was a tough one figure out to open. I may even do something with the Hex case in future, maybe add lights to it.

Now this is something new on me as this is the nano ssd drives that stores your data, next level of  solid state drive which is tiny but still holds just as much if not more than the drives before it.

1 TB 970 EVO M.2 nano SSD

Now a few people have said to me that I don't need so much memory, but this isn't just for gaming I will probably do video and photography work with it at some point too. Plus all the extra 3rd party programs I have running so need the extra. You can never have too much memory or drive space, you will always fill it in time.

4x 8Gb = 32Gb

Yeah I know I went over board with the RGB lighting but I don't care.

Watercooled CPU Cooler

and finally a new OS, this will be the tough bit as when I tried Windows 10 as a free upgrade I uninstalled it after a few hours as I just couldn't get on with it after using Windows 7. Hopefully this time will be better.

Time to build this thing, if I don't hit any issues it will be up and running soon, if I have issues then it may take me while but I have a whole week to figure it out as I'm on holidays from work. Whole reason why I ordered everything to get delivered pretty much same time. :)

till the next ride, bee safe.....

Power problems maybe

The thing about me is that sometimes I noticed the VERY tiny little things that people miss.

While test fitting the PSU into the new case I noticed that when I screwed in a screw for the PSU holder into the PSU itself that something inside the PSU looked like its being pushed. Its hard to see and take pics so i tried a to take a little video instead. 

Will be emailing my supplier just to see if this is normal as this is the first time I'm using this make of PSU. Will be linking this video and see what they say.

Also noticed that the motherboard I'm looking at getting is now part of a bundle too and is cheaper and comes with a FREE Intel 256GB M.2 PCE-e SSD which will come in handy.

till the next ride, bee safe.....

and now for something completely different.....

WOW I can't believe its been over a year since I have posted in this blog.

The reason? Pretty much not been cycling much at all over the last couple of years other than commuting to & from work.

I’ve kept up to date with the Facebook group London Brompton Club which is still going strong but not posting, maybe the odd comment every once in awhile. I have to say that I am very proud of the LBC and how it still growing and many active members all the time. I've been going though some personal issues over the last few yrs and seeing the LBC still going strong gives me a warm fuzzy feeling and makes my dark days a little brighter. So thank you to everyone in the LBC.

I’ve been considering posting about other things I'm also doing. Blogging was a kinda of therapy for me in someways, I look back at my blog to see the things that I have done and think to myself, damn I really did do that.

So on with something a little different.

New case for next PC

Currently I'm in the process of building myself a new PC. Only the last couple of yrs I have been gaming more and my current is PC is 8 yrs old and just a couple of hardware updates in that time. Basically its showing its age in regards to gaming.
I've been planning this new PC for about a year now but waiting for the optimum time to buy components. Getting the balance right between price & latest tech is tricky as  technology doesn't wait around. As soon as some new tech comes out its pretty much outdated within a couple of months, probably less.

As you can see the case its basically black but will have programmable lighting. While I wait for the availability of of certain components I will be working on the case to give it a little colour.

First thing to do is strip down the case to its bare bones to see exactly what I've got to work with.

First idea that came to me was when stripping the front panel & top panels, which consist of a frame and wire mesh panels.

Front Panel

Front Panel Stripped

Top  Panel Stripped

First thing I thought was spray painting the mesh, give it a little pop. Well you folks should know by now I'm a bit of a fan of black and yellow so how about the mesh panels in yellow. Will be trying out tests on small bits of strap metal to see how this paint goes as I've never used it and its been a long while since I've spray painted anything. I MAY look for a professional spray painting place to see if they could do these little bits for me if I don't feel I will get good results.

Proposed Specs:
Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus XI Hero
Processor: Intel i9-9900K Processor
CPU Cooler: Hydro Series™ H115i RGB Platinum 280mm Liquid CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4
HardDrive: 970 EVO Polaris 1TB M.2 NVME Solid State Drive
Display Card: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti ROG STRIX OC Graphics Card

till the next ride, bee safe.....