Hmm I haven't looked at monitors in a while, I wonder if the naming schemes are any better-

Oh. Oh no.

I've had enough

After 3 years, I finally sat down and got the author time on E05 in Trackmania Nations Forever. This track is notorious for having 60 laps, with a target time of 1 hour. It was actually super easy- only took 1 try with 10min warmup.
So this is your reminder to stop putting off things you want to do.

LFG

New PC - 5800X and 9070XT in the XTIA Xproto-L V2. Full write-up here: pcpartpicker.com/b/gFtnTW

40mm fan. It's so tiny!

Exploded.

I spent a decent bit of time this winter testing which fan configuration was the best for my PC. Here are the results with the lowest noise-normalized temperatures:
1. no case (and thus no fans)
2. all fan slots populated, no dust filters
3. all fan slots populated
Very predictable and boring tbh

More pics of cable management (I have never been good at this)

I finally did what I should have done initially and liquid cooled the Shoebox! (Silverstone SG13) This PC build is sooooo tight, it took a lot of test fitting to make the 120mm AIO work. Cools great though, a 10-30 degC drop vs the stock cooler on my R5 1600AF. Very happy with this PC now.

Dropped the temps by 10 degC on average, which is far better than the paste even when it was fresh. Phase-change pads are supposed to get better with time AND avoid negatives of paste such as pump-out, so I will follow up in a year to see if that's true. (2/2)

Finally posting results for my fan config testing in the Cougar QBX. I tested single, dual-fan, fully populated, and fully populated minus one configs. Result: more fans is better most of the time. Not by a lot, but removing any fan had worse temps in gaming. Best CPU-load config was 2 exhaust only.

Time to re-fill the QBX with fans, then onto some noise-normalized testing. What a great use of my Sunday.