100 Members, 200 Discussions!

We've just crossed those milestones, and while they are small in the grand scheme of things, I feel that they deserve at least a modicum of recognition.

We've seen slow and steady growth on the forum over the past few months, and although I know we can be so much more for so many more people, our moderate pace is (in many respects) the best means to grow our community -- continuously and deliberately, in a way that preserves the culture and tone and camaraderie that inspired SFF Forum's creation from the beginning.

My thanks to our newest members, and to everyone that's participated on the forum thus far. We're all friends or friends-of-friends, and it's wonderful to have a place to talk shop, learn, and enjoy each other's company.

-PP

 

[Phuncz]

Hear-hear and lets hope 1000 members and 2000 discussions in 2016 !

 

[iFreilicht]

Yay we did a thing!

Well we're a smallformfactorforum after all

 

[esplin2966]

This is pretty cool! Good to see smaller getting bigger

 

[iFreilicht]

This is pretty cool! Good to see smaller getting bigger

Except were talking about cases

 

[|||]

Cool, I guess I got in in the first 100 when I signed up yesterday. I had been following SFF for a bit now, as well as the Nova on [H] even longer, and figured I'd create a profile the other day.

 

[iFreilicht]

Cool, I guess I got in in the first 100 when I signed up yesterday. I had been following SFF for a bit now, as well as the Nova on [H] even longer, and figured I'd create a profile the other day.

You sure got a catchy username What case is that in your profile pic?

 

[jeshikat]

Cool, I guess I got in in the first 100 when I signed up yesterday. I had been following SFF for a bit now, as well as the Nova on [H] even longer, and figured I'd create a profile the other day.

Welcome!

You sure got a catchy username What case is that in your profile pic?

It'll be the only username like that, I had meant to limit the character types when I setup the forum and forgot. It's fixed now for new registrations going forward

The case is a Digital Storm Bolt II. It was a custom design they did but apparently their manufacturer couldn't produce them quick enough or something and they discontinued it.

 

[|||]

Welcome!

Thank you!

It'll be the only username like that, I had meant to limit the character types when I setup the forum and forgot. It's fixed now for new registrations going forward

Ha...I was just matching my user name on the [H] forums.

The case is a Digital Storm Bolt II. It was a custom design they did but apparently their manufacturer couldn't produce them quick enough or something and they discontinued it.

Yep, DS Bolt II. The picture is actually an early version where they had the fans on the back side of the radiator pushing air out (exhausting). In production they swapped it around with fans on the other side taking fresh air in. They also had another design iteration toward the end of the production of the Bolt II where they deleted the slim ODD and increased the height of the chassis by 2" to accomodate larger GPUs. I have messed around and found, if you're willing to take more than side panels off and change around some thing internally, you can really fit a GPU up to 6" high and 13" long. The thickness of the card is limited to not much more than two PCI slots wide, unless you have the Battlebox edition that had the extended window for the Titan Z, but you couldn't lay that one over on its side.

 

[jeshikat]

I wish they'd delete the ODD off the Aventum, or at least switch to a slot-loader. I think it looks ugly.

That's interesting, I didn't realize they had changed the dimensions of the Bolt II in the later models. Too bad they discontinued it, it was the only thing they have that I seriously considered purchasing. The Bolt III just uses a modified Lian Li PC-05S I believe, which isn't nearly as exciting.

 

[|||]

The drive cover blends in fairly well with the default matte black cases. They had said that the drive cause serviceability issues on the Bolt II (which I haven't had any issues with) and I've noticed that when you try to remove the drive the cover pops off and it feels like you're going to break it (thankfully, so far it has been fairly resilient). I have expressed to DS that Streacom has a nice slot-loading drive solution with the cut out slot and central button that can support left or right eject buttons on the drives, which can potentially solve the issue of removing the drive without feeling like you're breaking it. I don't know how good the Streacom central eject button is; I haven't seen any reports on how well it actually works. I also think DS has a good deal on slim tray-load DVD drives (the Blu-ray drive is the slot-load UJ-265). So that may be part of the reason why they keep the hole for the drive.

 

[iFreilicht]

Just had a look at it, it does look pretty sweet.

 

[BirdofPrey]

How do you pronounce that name anyways?
is it Three?

I wish they'd delete the ODD off the Aventum, or at least switch to a slot-loader. I think it looks ugly.

I'd go with delete. Don't have THAT much use for ODDs anymore, though when there is one, I don't like slot loaders regardless of if it looks better or not (and I don't think they do anyways)

 

[|||]

I never really thought about pronunciation...it's three pipes, so I guess Three is alright.

Some people, me included, still like physical media for video. It has a much greater bit rate and uncompressed audio tracks for a much higher quality viewing and listening experience.

 

[Phuncz]

Reply about physical media:

Spoiler: Off-topic

A remuxed BluRay (meaning unaltered streams) is just as good as its source, but a digital file doesn't have the same restrictions a physical format has in the consumer world. At one point my small collection HD-DVDs was worthless, I couldn't play them anymore because it wasn't supported after a Windows update. I made an image, muxed the video and audio and I still have these, playable on about any device thanks to it being just a file and not a sad attempt at debilitating the people who buy media in the first place eg. DRM or copy protection.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

I'm more into external ODD now, as I only need one for all my computer (Main rig, netbook, ARM boards, etc.) and it allows for smaller chassis and / or improved airflow.

I'm slowly converting all my CDs into FLAC files. The only thing you can't part with are analog sources (mostly vinyl records).

For the same reason, I moved all my data to a NAS and only have a single SDD on all machines. The NAS will later be replaced with a file server / offloaded computation farm (ARM grid ?).

 

[|||]

And now the forum is up to 500 members! Congrats to the SFF creators! Excellent quality of members, too!