This stuff is going to be an HTPC and I want to get at least some use out of my DVDs. So yeah, I did want to have an internal optical drive.
I do find it kind of surprising that this was the question and not “where’s the RAM?” (in the picture the package was stuck between the SSD and the box for the case) and “where’s the Graphics card?”, which I’m going without (for now).
I know that, but I had an external DVD drive already and didn’t want to have to buy a USB stick. If I didn’t have the external drive, then yeah, I probably would’ve gone that route.
I guess I wrongly assumed that all tech people of a certain age have like, a huge pile of spare USB sticks just lying around, as I do.
Fair enough. Offhand, I think I only have about 3-4 USB sticks, and I think only one of them is large enough to hold Windows install media on. I’m already using that one as my keychain USB stick that I keep portable tools on, use for sneakernet when there’s no other option, etc.
I’m also a pretty cheap bastard (yay living up to my own personal ethnic stereotype), so I don’t go around buying USB sticks willy-nilly and, for whatever reason, I don’t seem to attend many events where USB sticks are given away for free.
Great thing when you want to put your PC together only to find that you can’t use the boxed CPU cooler because AMD deigned to attach a useless logo to the outside rim of the fan. If I try to put the Cooler on one way, this logo touches the memory sticks. If I try it the other way it touches a cooler-piece on the mainboard. Either way I can’t screw it down into the motherboard and I had to order a different cooler :X
I do have a literal pile of ~20 USB sticks. Most of them are even pretty big. But, they’re old and SLOW.
I have one USB DVD-R that I use as my all-purpose optical drive. I plugged it into the HTPC to watch a movie once about a year ago. (The DVD-R in the HTPC is fried, and I just never removed it).
What motherboard is this? You don’t screw in the current amd stock cooler on most boards, it just kinda clips over.
God I have to have at least a dozen of varying sizes and vintage. I have a few from my old job where they sent out a ~1MB software updates for our automated key duplicators on 8GB sticks.
I have a vestigal optical drive in my desktop. I used to use it but it’s IDE and I unplugged it to put an old IDE drive from my old computer into my current one and didn’t bother taking out the optical drive. At this point I can’t be asked to look for the plate to cover the slot on the front of my case so it’s just there forever.
It’s an MSI B450i Gaming Plus AC
Oh man, getting down the the mini-itx stuff. I see what you’re talking about now with the “useless logo on the outside rim.” I assume you tried removing the shroud and positioning it every which way. Kinda points to why Intel sticks with such a basic stock cooler and doesn’t even provide one for the higher end things.
When my htpc dies, I’ll either build another full ATX with a real video card, or go ultra micro and get something extremely minimalist and stream games from the real PC in the other room.
TBD. The old GTX460 is still working like a champ.
Yeah, it’s this thing:
The logo on the outside gets in conflict with the other parts on a Mini-ITX board. I even considered switching out the RAM but of course the necessary slot I have is the one closer to the CPU.
Someone on newegg said they were able to fix it by “removing the shroud” and googling that for the wraith I saw a couple different things, some where people unscrewed stuff and another where someone actually had to do something with removing hot glue. But probably just easier to get a new cooler shipped or whatever.
Just file it off? Take it back most of the way with an aggressive rasp, like a woodfile, and do the rest with a finer file, maybe finish with some sandpaper.
Yeah. If it were mine I’d just take it to a belt sander and then polish it a little with sandpaper.
I’d just cut it off with a sharp knife. ABS is quite whittleable. That is a pretty stupid design element.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. It was how I went from having to buy $40 a piece headlight bulbs to $15 ones because the only difference was the flange to hold it in was like 5mm wider on the cheap ones.
It’s amazing how fast a simple knife will carve some plastic. That logo would bother me for as long as it took to extend an OLFA. (Or at least within the same order of magnitude)
You can get a 128GB USB stick on amazon for ~$30.
I have watched the prices for these suckers get exponentially cheap per GB. technology is wild.
