Adding Pizazz to Your RAM

EliteTEK noted that Extreme Tech is running a review of some fancy new illuminated DDR RAM. This one actually has a 10 char alphanumeric display that normally displays stats on your system, but with their software can display anything you like. It's about time that people can read RSS feeds on their RAM.

Comments

Hungry?

[cloudmaster]

At first, I thought "Why woudl my RAM want Pizzas?" Then I read the article, and I still thought "Why?"...

Re:Hungry?

[browngb]

This will lead to a whole new realm of modding. I can invision mods where super bright LED's set your case aglow, while people still don't care that they're cooking their system from the inside out.

Re:Hungry?

[SpongeBobLinuxPants]

I'd like a large DDR and a medium RamBus with bread sticks.

Re:Hungry?

[DingerX]

I understand if you order 4 gigs of that, a neon case light, a backlit keyboard, and a digital readout cooling fan display you get a free copy of "2Fast 2Furious" and the opportunity to appear on the hit new reality show "Who would want to date an IT Redneck?"

Re:Hungry?

[cloudmaster]

You know, I could just about see cooking something inside the case. Make an EZ-Bake oven sort of thing in a 5.25" slot. That sounds like something that's been done before, or at least photoshopped...

Re:Hungry?

[Masami Eiri]

LEDs are relatively low heat... I don't think they'll cook your system.

Re:Hungry?

[Rev Wally]

Maybe that's how you cook the pizzas?

Re:Hungry?

[orkysoft]

I'm still using PC-133 SDRAM I bought in 2001.

Funny thing is, I still have the bill for that, and last week, I was in a computer store, which had DDR-RAM with the exact same capacity, and PRICE!

I challenge anyone claiming that there HASN'T been any price fixing to explain that!

I want a gig for EUR 20 (USD 26.31), dammit!

Re:Hungry?

[mirko]

You might have heard of the pizza oven RiscPC... A terrific hack, indeed, even though carbo-hydrate excesses are not recommended if you don't work out at least a little.

Re:Hungry?

[zakezuke]

"Why woudl my RAM want Pizzas?"

Rather than using a heat sync you use your RAM to cook micro pizzas. The heat is dissipated and consumed by the user in the form of 7mm circular pizzas. Betty Crocker eat your heart out.

Re:Hungry?

[nadadogg]

Oooooh, it could cook those little McDonald's pizzas that they had a few years back. It could fit into a 5 1/4 slot and everything!

Re:Hungry?

[WormholeFiend]

but what if you modded laser LEDs into your case, then the pizza heating problem would be solved...

Re:Hungry?

[alhaz]

I know this is going to come as a shock to all of you, but dynamic ram doesn't get hot. It doesn't need a heat sink or heat spreader.

Technically, dynamic ram doesn't even consume electricity, let alone dissipate it as heat. The power consumption of the actual memory cells is essentially zero.

The row and collumn drivers do consume some small amount of power, and in theory, a 'heat spreader' would help even out the temperature across the chip.

Except, remember, this is dynamic ram, which means that every row and collumn is refreshed in unison whether or not it's in use, so every row and collumn is generating the same tiny amount of heat, so the distribution is entirely even.

Someone please point me at test results that show any thermal advantage to sticking some copper or aluminum to my 400mhz ram. Everything I've seen indicates that the temperature of the dimms is within 1 degree of the ambient temperature inside the case with or without 'cooling' devices.

Re:Hungry?

[Alan]

Maybe it's supply and demand. You paid $N for it 4 years ago, and say, 2 years ago it was $N-x, a lower price because everyone wanted it, and therefor the prices were lower (marginally lower I'd gather, as ram doesn't move around that much from what I've seen).

Then over the next two years DDR became more popular and your ram price went UP from $N-x back to $N, because it was more expensive now that it was in less demand. Case in point, see how much a 32 or 64mb stick of the old 72pin ram costs, I'd bet that proportionally it's 10x the cost of pc133 or DDR (that's just a guess though). Even though I have about 10 sticks of 1 and 4mb sitting in my parts bin.

Or, it's price fixed of course :)

Re:Hungry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Modders -1 Total Asshat

Yes, you must provide power to your memory. Perhaps you are thinking that a purely capacitive load consumes no power? That you charge it up, then get the power back when it discharges? What mechanism were you hoping for that allows the power supply to recover this energy?

No. Sorry. CMOS consumes power when changing state from 1 to 0, and from 0 to 1. If you actually use the memory (as opposed to leaving it powered up but idle, when there is just leakage current), then a typical 512MB DIMM will need 1000-3000 mA of actual current, much of which is used to charge up and discharge the memory cells.

Note that this comes out to a couple of watts, which must be dissipated someplace. If you prevent the heat from leaving the DIMM (by covering it with crap like this mod) then it will raise the temperature.

Re:Hungry?

[gstoddart]

Rather than using a heat sync you use your RAM to cook micro pizzas. The heat is dissipated and consumed by the user in the form of 7mm circular pizzas. Betty Crocker eat your heart out.

Yeah. Makes sense. I have two Athlon 2500 or greater machines at home running 24x7.

I should cook an average of, what, 1 pizza every two minute/machine -- so 30 pizzas/hr/machine x 2 machines x 24hrs/day x 365 days/year giving me about .... carry the one , add the two ... something like 525,600 pizzas/year.

Makes perfect sense to me. Just think of the sideline business I can have selling AMD-cooked mini pizzas. =)

Re:Hungry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. I'm betting that the grandparent went to university, memorized all the textbooks yet understood nothing, and the parent is a real hands-on type who understands what's going on because s/he learned by themselves.

Re:Hungry?

[araemo]

Well, lets see, in 2001 you bought PC-133, which was the Ram Du Jour of the day, required 168 pins on the edge connector, and ran at a speed of 133 mhz, with a single-pumped bus.

You then go to the store and look at (Well, I'll guess pc2700 since it seems most common in actual stores) some DDR ram, that uses 184 pins, runs at 166 mhz, with a double pumped bus. The chips are a newer technology, and the higher speed coupled with a double-data rate bus means the traces on the PCB have to be routed more accurately, and manufacturing costs have gone up.. So you get newer technology of the same capacity as your older technology for the same price you paid for that older technology 4 years ago, and you accuse them of price fixing? (Well, besides the fact that a few companys DID get sued for it over PC133 days. ;P)

While I'm not too happy with the current price of ram, most components have gone up in price except for hard drives. Hard drive technology hasn't had a major shakedown in a few years(SATA doesn't count, since it's relatively compatible with EIDE at the chipset level.)

Re:Hungry?

[nolife]

I agree with you to a point but ram is not exactly a fast moving technology either. Compare CPU prices and technology to the same with RAM. It would appear that if you took everything into account including R&D and amount sold, that a stick of 512MB ram should cost MANY times less then any CPU, even a recently produced low end Celeron or Duron. You can buy a decent (not top of the line) much newer and technically advanced video card that has magnatudes less in total sales for about the same price as 1GB of ram. Considering those video card companies also had to have R&D and a large software side support stucture that memory companies do not require at all. That just does not seem right.

Re:Hungry?

[MyLongNickName]

I'm betting parent and grandparent are same person.

Re:Hungry?

[SunFan]

advantage to sticking some copper or aluminum to my 400mhz ram.

It makes your 400MHz a faster 400MHz. Also, I have some electro-audacity coated and synergized speaker cable to sell--only $200. Any takers? Sure, it looks like lamp cord, but the sound! Oh, the highs! And the lows!

Re:Hungry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, only one person knows for sure, and it ain't you!

Re:Hungry?

[Wdomburg]

PC EZ-Bake Oven

Re:Hungry?

[AwenAnam]

Easy, if you use the laptop carry box disguissed as a pizza box, it will be very easy to make a mistake and add pizza to your ram (and the rest of the system too)

from the B-F-D dept

[Anonymous Coward]

Really. This is "Hardware Hacking"?

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[stupidfoo]

More so than the Knoppix article was. At least this actually involves hardware and doing something sort of interesting with it.

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is only interesting to people who are also interested in crappy imports with stickers, tacky clip-on wings, and coffee-can exhausts.

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[LurkerXXX]

No. This is 'ricing out your computer'. The equivalent of sticking on a big wing on the back of a civic. Something that makes it look fast rather than be fast.

This is all show, no go.

A real mod would be adding a bigger heatsink so you could actually run the machine faster or more quietly.

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[stupidfoo]

Those stickers make my car go faster, you insensitive clod!

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you and your civics, bleh :-r

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people do both. Using your analogy about ricing computer, the computer I modded out back in 2003, for both speed and beauty, would not get the same respect as it did then.

Of course this ram also has some of the best timings.

2-2-2-5 at 400MHZ
2.5-3-3-6 at 500MHZ

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[Presidential]

No. This is 'ricing out your computer'. The equivalent of sticking on a big wing on the back of a civic.

I read that as saying The equivalent of sticking on a big wang on the back of a civic.

I read it again and thought wang would be funnier anyway..since they've been out of business for years!

*sigh* I get too much viagra spam.

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[jo42]

No, it is "ghey". It had to be said. Mark my words...

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[Jozer99]

I think it would make a lot more sense to stick the LED display somewhere you might actually use it, like on the front of the case. Even if you have a window, no one gets down on their knees to peer at their RAM to find out how much physical memory they have free. A bigger heatsync makes much more sense. BTW, a giant wing on a Mercury Sable looks much worse than on a Civic (I learned this from what is parked in my neighbors driveway).

Re:from the B-F-D dept

[Anonymous Coward]

Up yours homophobe. Why don't you mention your race or religion. Bet there are some insults you wouldn't like.

really?

[krudler]

I think its pretty cool to have some LEDs on your case, you know, it can look pretty cool. I think this, however, might be going a big far. It is very cool that people think of these things to create! I for one, welcome our new glowing ram overlords. Actually, I was kidding, I'll stick to my non-glowing ram :)

Krudler (fp?)

blinky lites!

[EvilStein]

For those of you that just cannot get enough bling bling... we bring to do, "Das blinken RAM!"

hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow now you can tell when you get hacked! The lights will start flashing a lot and stuff will start smoking! Oh, we still need to make the smoke generator...

Cool. It's about time we got computers that are up to the advancements in Movie Tech.

More lights please!

[British]

We need more blinky lights(functional or not). That way we can retro-ize our computers to look like big glitzy units shown on 1980s Tv shows and movies. Sign me up!

Re:More lights please!

[R.Caley]

What we need is a huge panel of lights, say a meter square, which plugs into the memory bus without IDing itself as memory and changes the pattern of lights based on the pattern of address access.

Computers have never looked like REAL computers since they didn't have that kind of thing on the front panel.

Add a hacked reel-to-reel tape deck which swiches back and forth in time to system activity, and perhaps some magnisium wiring set to go bang and emit sparks whenever there is a small error and we'd be back on course for Star Trek and Lost In Space!

Re:More lights please!

[nadadogg]

My computer needs to make more internal "beep boop boop beep" noises.

Re:More lights please!

[Fred_A]

Well yes, but what's wrong with those people ? They put the blinkenlights on the inside !

Idiots.

Re:More lights please!

[moeffju]

Download NullSoft Beep from http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nbeep/ (Windows only)

Re:More lights please!

[Necr0maN]

does anybody know of something like this for lunix that uses the pc speaker? :) Should be fun to run it on every server at work.

Re:More lights please!

[moeffju]

I believe that should be possible with shell scripts alone. You can control pitch and duration of the pc speaker from the shell.

Re:More lights please!

[RFC959]

Ah, you bastard, you made me go and code this. :-)

$DELAY = ($ARGV[0] =~ /^-([.\d]+)/) ? (shift, $1) : 1;
$| = 1;
while ($freq = int(rand() * 1870 + 30)) {
`xset b 50 $freq`;
print("");
select(undef,undef,undef, 0.005 * $DELAY);
}

A little too fast with no arguments - sounds better with -25 (but feel free to use -10 to indicate you have a lot of computrons). Only works under X 'cause I'm running X right now and lazy. For terminal use, you'd do something with 'setterm -bfreq'.

Re:More lights please!

[moeffju]

:D

You could do something like

$xwin = $ENV{'DISPLAY'};
while...
if ($xwin) {
`xset b 50 $freq`;
} else {
`setterm -bfreq $freq`;
}
print("\a"); # I assume \a will work, if not you'll need \007, I think?
select...
}

Too Expensive

[moshez]

Wouldn't you get roughly the same thing by just glueing some display to the RAM, for something like a quarter of the price?

Re:Too Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

If niggers could use computers, they'd be first in line for this bullshit. Spics too.

I wonder

[cheezemonkhai]

Would the light and circuity required to drive it increase electrical noise. If it does, yoru scrolling a message on the display could start to flip bits which would be interesting.

This seems to the the Manufacturers ricing equivelent of Gentoo.
(Except that gentoo actually does something useful).

And before I but Gentoo is teh R0x0r.. I am very happily running it as I write this.

Re:I wonder

[hoagieslapper]

I take it you have already installed one on yoru keyboard?

Re:I wonder

[Ironsides]

Although the lights would increase electrical noise, we are already talking a very hostile RF environment in the PC to begin with. These displays should be so low power (both electrical and processor wise) that they should be too slow to really affect the ram. This thing probably has orders of magnitude less processing power than the motorolla 68ks I used in college.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please explain what the parent is trying to say? I have tried and for the life of me I can not get it.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ricing" is a term usually applied to cheap cars that are made up to look flashy, without actually ading anything of substance (for example, adding a spoiler to a 4-cyl whose top speed is 60 MPH). Doing things like putting neon and windows and all this other crap into your PC is the wannabe geek equivalent.

Guess Im all Alone?..

[Deluxe_247]

I like this idea. For the modders its an extra spot to add a little more 'umph' to their home made beasts.

I'd be hesitant to bring this to a LAN type even though, seems like these would be a hot item for some of the less honest members of that community (quick finger willy anyone?)

Very Flashy and a great idea, although not a lot of characters and I read that a personal message would scroll.. With the breaks inbetween each LED character I don't think that would look exactly as nice as it COULD. I expect other Memory chip makers will follow suit with this idea and improve on the design a little bit.

On a side note, what kind of heating issue would this cause for the memory? It looks like theres a little vent on the top of these LED strips.. With my limited knowledge of these displays, is there any issue with increased heat to the DIMMs?

Re:Guess Im all Alone?..

[JaffaKREE]

The question is, can the RAM move to the funky beat of the music like my speakers' LEDs ?

Re:Guess Im all Alone?..

[A. Lynch]

Despite my dislike of LAN parties, I invested a few bucks in locking screws, and have a case that can't be taken apart without taking said screws out...

Its not the best security, but coupled with a very loud case-intrusion alarm, its not too bad.

-Adam

Re:Guess Im all Alone?..

[R.Caley]

Despite my dislike of LAN parties,[...]

ISTM that if you have to physically take your computer somewhere, you are missing something quite fundamental about this internet thing.:-)

And taking a computer to a party,... well... come on guys, beer and a MOTAS is traditional and hard to improve on.

Re:Guess Im all Alone?..

[nolife]

A rivet gun with aluminum pop rivets would work great. Replacing screws with rivets would be enough a deterent to prevent others from secretly probing inside. A rivet gun and a variety pack of rivets costs about $6. The aluminum being much softer then steel would not damage the threads and screws could be put back in place when you need to get into it yourself.

How the heck would I read it?

[jmcmunn]

I have never had a case where I could actually see the RAM very well. It's useually hidden in behind cables (which a case modder would have fixed) and behind drives. Not to mention that it stands up in the RAM slots, so that the face of the RAM isn't even viewable.

It would be cool if there were a case with RAM mounted in the front (like in a drive bay) and had a window that showed through into the "RAM bay", I could see a lot of modders liking that, but the latency from the bay to the MoBo seems like it would hurt the performance of the RAM.

Re:How the heck would I read it?

[nine-times]

um... and in that case, why does the display need to be on the RAM? Why not just put a display in the front of your case?

Re:How the heck would I read it?

[Arielholic]

"Not to mention that it stands up in the RAM slots, so that the face of the RAM isn't even viewable."

How can this be insightful? If you had RTFA you would have seen that the display is on top of the RAM, not on front.

Of course it still has no use. Oh well.

Re:How the heck would I read it?

[Albanach]

Looking at the pictures - I know this is slashdot and no one will have looked at the pictures yet - the display seems to be mounted on top of a plastic case sorrounding the RAM rather than on the chips themselves. Not that I didn't think it was a con when I openned the article, but this is just a plastic LCD display stuck on top of a RAM module. Why would anyone...

Interesting, but...

[FrogofTime]

I'll keep my current RAM, thank you very much.

Re:Interesting, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you will? Hey, that's great!

Re:Interesting, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true New Zealander...

RAM Usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be cool if you could see at a glance how many megabytes are being used up, but that doesn't seem to be one of the options available to you.

Re:RAM Usage?

[pope1]

It wouldn't be as cool as you think, modern OS's gobble as much RAM as possible to help speed things up by cacheing common requests from the disk. It would most likely confuse people: "why is my RAM almost totally full when I'm really not doing anything besides playing this huge divx file?"

Advertisement?

[LoverOfJoy]

Which company will be the first to put ads on that thing?

Re:Advertisement?

[behindspace]

my guess is the X-11 Cam!... now we'll need hardware popup blockers too... WTF!

Re:Advertisement?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which company will be the first to put ads on that thing?

Claria, as soon as they can modify their "product" to hack the memory's display controller.

Joy

[behindspace]

Like we don't have enough power consumption problems already... For a decent gaming system we need a 450watt+ power supply, now with nVidia's requirements of a couple free power dongles and the massive storage capacity of the new hard drives, we need more power then ever... it won't be long until 1000 watt power supplies are standard in your e-machines POS paperweight boxes... I don't get it, what's the point in wasting precious power to have your RAM say somethign like "I R teh 1337 h4xx0r" But maybe that's just me...

Re:Joy

[jpmkm]

If a few little lights on the memory is going to cause power problems or make someone upgrade their power supply, then there is something else wrong and it was time to upgrade anyway. The power draw of the lights is completely insignificant compared to everything else in a computer.

Re:Joy

[mobby_6kl]

Oh come on, how much do those few LEDs consume? Anyway, the PS might be 450w but this doesn't mean the computer consumes that much, maybe about 150 idle and 250 under load. And how exectly more hard drive space results in higher power reqs?
I still think putting flashing LEDs on RAM is stupid, but don't really care what other people do with their computers so I don't bitch about it.

Re:Joy

[MindStalker]

Seriously this thing couldn't possibly use more than 1 watt.

REAL Nerds...

[goldspider]

...don't give a shit about case mods and flourescent lights and blinky RAM, just like how real car enthusiasts don't adorn piece-of-shit imports with stickers and tacky wings. It's all about what's under the hood, not how pretty it looks on the outside.

People who waste money on this nonsense should be ridiculed by us proud, genuine nerds.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Jarlsberg]

...don't give a shit about case mods and flourescent lights and blinky RAM, just like how real car enthusiasts don't adorn piece-of-shit imports with stickers and tacky wings. It's all about what's under the hood, not how pretty it looks on the outside. People who waste money on this nonsense should be ridiculed by us proud, genuine nerds.

Damn straight. I did succumb to the case modding frenzy a couple of years ago and cut open one of my old PCs (P2 with a Voodoo2 card). While the modding work was rather enjoyable, the end result was a PC that glows red in the dark and is really annoying to look at ;P.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[FooWho]

My computer doesn't run any faster because my fan has a blue light in it. However, I was able to choose for my fan to have a blue light (as opposed to red light or a green light, or one with multi-colored lights that flash). And that's really what it boils down to. I could care less that you would prefer a plain jane box. Why should you care if I like my box to sport a little bling bling?

Re:REAL Nerds...

[MindStalker]

Guess it depends upon how serious you want to take the art. The guys who develop unique moddifications have some serious skills. Same as the guys who develop serious case mods. Case in point the HyperCube
and its Building log
Thats serious artwork.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[dead sun]

I'd say that some nerds may go so far as to do both. I'd even say that some do it because they find it personally amusing that so many do so and want to have more opportunity to make sometimes not so subtle digs by having the subject brought up to them.

You know, like:
"Hey nice case Bob."
"Thanks, the lights I put in there give it an extra 100 MHz!"

And you'll also have a hard time convincing me that car enthusiasts don't care about looks. Their cars are loved more than people. They get routine wash, wax, and cleaning for that special shine. Engine compartments kept immaculate.

I call shenanigans on looks being unimportant. Secondary maybe, ignored no.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Golias]

Why should you care if I like my box to sport a little bling bling?

On another forum, and in another context, that question would sound really horrible... yet still none of my business.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Their cars are loved more than people. They get routine wash, wax, and cleaning for that special shine. Engine compartments kept immaculate."

Right, and missing in that is decals, aftermarket body kits, clip-on wings, and coffee-can exhausts. They love their cars for what they are, not try to make them something they're not with not-so-cheap (cost, anyway, though they LOOK cheap) accessories.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[denis-The-menace]

I agree.
It's a computer, not a chrismas tree

Re:REAL Nerds...

[djplurvert]

Art? Craft maybe.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say you're somewhat wrong in saying that. A real car enthusiast isn't going to show a rusted out piece of shit with a great powertrain. He's going to fix up the body so it is worthy of the engine inside. Same thing goes for computers. Yeah the inside is important, but why would you want to have it look like shit?

Re:REAL Nerds...

[hey!]

Nah, just a different subculture.

To be a nerd, you have to care passionately about something, anything, that the majority of people can't see the point in.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[gosand]

I agree. I recently did a case mod, but it was in the opposite direction of most. I got (for free) a dual-Pentium Compaq server from work. I gutted it, and built my PC in it. The thing is massive, steel, and ugly. But it is quiet and cool. There is tons of room inside for when I need to get in there, there is tons of air-flow. It is quiet because it is thick steel, not tinny aluminum. I mounted my hard drives in the SCSI trays, and just removed the backplane so I could hook them up.

I think it is a pretty cool setup. Does it look cool? Not by today's standards. But it isn't for looks. Just like my previous car wasn't about looks (although it looked DAMN sweet). A 1988 BMW M3. And I would argue that it isn't everything under the hood that matters. The E30 M3 had an inline 4cyl that put out 189HP stock, naturally aspirated. It was near-perfectly balanced @ 51/49 front/rear. It was the best car I have ever owned by far, and it wasn't a powerhorse. But I passed Porsche 911s and NSXs with it on the track. (and I couldn't drive it anywhere near its capabilities) It did have a wing, but it was stock from the factory. And it actually had a FUNCTION, unlike most of today's glamwings. It was lean and mean and I miss that car. But I digress.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[KyleJacobson]

"just like how real car enthusiasts don't adorn piece-of-shit imports with stickers and tacky wings. It's all about what's under the hood, not how pretty it looks on the outside."

I agree that they dont care about piece of shit imports, but to say they dont care how pretty it is on the outside is nonsense... I personally think all those imports with wings and stickers look just plain stupid, but a good paint job etc means a lot to car enthusiasts...

I would like to know why some people do case mods, and im sure most people that do them have imports with at least 10 stickers and the biggest wing they can find... I would rather spend my money on something useful, like another computer

Re:REAL Nerds...

[SuperBanana]

No, REAL nerds have workstations that came from the FACTORY with blinky lights for everything!

(old HP workstations has memory bank, cpu heartbeat, network, etc indicators on the front bezel. Also, the BeBox had LED cpu graphs up the side. Let's not forget the Cray units with the big red LED boards showing memory status...)

Oh, and an aside- I imagine a Beowulf cluster of these would be necessary to read a webpage.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[bersl2]

I would think that cases with a window on the side and a switchable light is within the bounds of good taste and certainly not ricing, nor is adding extra fan mounts.

Either that, or turn the case into a work of art, instead of a bunch of blinking crap. I know there are very good mods out there with actual themes, and those are acceptable too.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[jrushton]

I couldnt agreee more. Huge inflatable santa clauses and singing snowman appeal to the same crowd. My PC is completely black and unobtrusive :)

Re:REAL Nerds...

[MikeBabcock]

I sleep in the same room as my computer (and my wife, to you losers out there who want to make rude comments) ... having *no* lights on it would be very nice.

First thing I did with my new Antec Sonata was disconnect the front blue lights. Not that I don't like sleeping in a room that is illuminated like a porn set, its just a little distracting for actual sleep.

A nice "lights off" switch would be a good hack, come to think of it ... on an activity timer, so after not using the PC for 15 minutes or so, all the lights go out, including power, making it nice and dark.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[smithmc]

...don't give a shit about case mods and flourescent lights and blinky RAM, just like how real car enthusiasts don't adorn piece-of-shit imports with stickers and tacky wings. It's all about what's under the hood, not how pretty it looks on the outside.

No, real nerds never keep the same hardware together inside the same box long enough to bother with making it pretty. Real real nerds never even bother to close up the case. (I used to be a real real nerd, but then I got old. I'm even typing this on... on a notebook! That I've never even opened! *Sob*)

Re:REAL Nerds...

[2centplain]

I just don't get it. Shouldn't computers eventually become mundane appliances like TVs and vacuum cleaners? If not, why don't "modders" add LEDs to their blenders, toasters, and espresso machines?

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Xibby]

Wings? And all this time I thought they were stealing park benches.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[justforaday]

First thing I did with my new Antec Sonata was disconnect the front blue lights.

Considering you have to hook the lights up in the first place, I doubt it was the first thing you did...OTOH, I've been curious about hooking the lights up to one of the "Fan Only" voltage regulated plugs on the PS - get some cool brightening/dimming effects depending on load. Maybe I'll try that when I get home this evening...

Re:REAL Nerds...

[mink]

Do any of them bother to do anything about RFI?
If they fail to account for the basic reason we encase computer systems to start with then the mods no matter how pretty are counter productive.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[llefler]

They're still waiting for the ethernet connection.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way you pass a 911 or an NSX with your 1988 M3. Porsche 911 is more than 300 HP with 270+ lb-ft of torque. Newer M3's have performance near this, but not 1988 ones.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me. Some of us actually enjoy modding out a computer. Both for aesthetics and functionality. Some of us also like to show off our cool water cooling units we spent so much time working on.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded INSIGHTFUL?!? This is flamebait/troll pure and simple.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Don't forget the Connection Machines. They had at least one face that was just a bunch of red LEDs. They were mentioned and were in the background of Jurassic Park.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I use to pass 911s in my Golf (also a 1988) at the track.

It was a short track sans any straights.

Considering the M3 was one of the best handling cars in its day, I don't see this as doubtful at all.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[gosand]

There is no way you pass a 911 or an NSX with your 1988 M3. Porsche 911 is more than 300 HP with 270+ lb-ft of torque. Newer M3's have performance near this, but not 1988 ones.

Which is precisely why I said "it isn't all about what is under the hood". For one, it was at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan. Lots of twistys, not too many straights. When I was at Road America, I went on a session with my instructor. He was in his wife's 530i wagon with automatic transmission. He was passing E36 M3s. Funny thing about HP, people tend to rely on it instead of learning how to drive properly. One guy who was a really great driver suggested buying a 318 track car with full race setup. It is relatively cheap, and you HAVE to learn how to drive well to do very good because you don't have the HP or torque to save you.

On a track there are two factors: the capabilities of the car and the capabilities of the driver. I am not saying I was very good, but a hot car can only do so much. Without a decent driver, it isn't much use. That NSX I passed was a poser. He went off track twice trying to catch me after I passed him. I have heard those cars aren't easy to drive, and I didn't get the impression that he had somewhat of an ego. I was only 1 of 4 non-Porsches there - the NSX, my car, and two friends, one with an Eagle Talon and the other with an E36 M3. It was an event with the Michiana Porsche Club. I am not saying I didn't get passed (a lot) but I have seen good drivers do amazing things with not-so-amazing cars.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[MikeBabcock]

I tried it -- no go. The lights are LEDs -- pretty much fixed output levels.

And I connected the lights when I set it up, but then shut them off after having tried to sleep with them on.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Ayanami Rei]

but why would you want to have it look like shit?

So no one steals it.

Re:REAL Nerds...

[vanyel]

I've got an IMSAI 8080, still the best looking computer ever built, that I've been meaning to hook up some way so a modern computer can make interesting use of the lights and the switches can be put to use...

Re:REAL Nerds...

[dasdrewid]

I, as a car buff, disagree. Slightly.

I'm not about to go out and tack on shit to an import, but if I'm restoring an old car, the job ain't done until the leathers shiny and the chrome practically blinds passersby. And it's not always what's under the hood. A big Mercedes sedan can often outperform a small sportscar, but I'd still take an RX-6 over the AMG sedan...

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Tablizer]

...real car enthusiasts don't adorn piece-of-shit imports with stickers and tacky wings. It's all about what's under the hood, not how pretty it looks on the outside.

V8's in Yugo bodies!

Re:REAL Nerds...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can set the output intensity of an LED to any level between zero and the rated output (or a little bit over, if you don't mind a shorter LED life). The best way is to use a PWM circuit but if you don't want to get too carried away you can use a variable constant-current supply. You can make that out of a transistor and a couple of resistors. Total parts cost, around a dollar.

Reminds me ....

[cheezemonkhai]

These things look just like the old PII & PII slot chips.

In next weeks article I'll be showing you how to turn a stick of ram, a serial cable, an LED array and an old PII into one of these babys using a glue and a dremmel :)

Running out of screen space?

[Yankel]

Wouldn't it be easier to watch a ticker on your keyboard? I'm sure the next 'big mod' will be putting a full-sized LCD against that big window in your case. No.. wait.. that's a Mac.

Re:Running out of screen space?

[behindspace]

Actually, my friend modded his case to mount his LCD on the side, I can get pics of it, it's really funny looking

Re:Running out of screen space?

[Ahnteis]

It's been done. I've seen several different versions online.

Memory Slots

[bradphan]

Why would I want to buy memory that eats up 2 slots of space for a single chip. Seem they would have to tier the LED modules in order to utilize all of the memory slots.

Re:Memory Slots

[WaterBreath]

These things are so stinking huge that a regular stick will probably fit under the overhang.

But I do agree. A lot of this modding stuff seems like a waste of time and money to me. Unless you're just going completely all out and creating a real piece of art, like the Hypercube^2 guy at bit-tech.net. Obviously a lot of the hardware in that thing he's going to be stuck with because of all the custom-built fittings. But it's still a piece of art with an aesthetic value completely separate from it's functional value.

Re:Memory Slots

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case it's useful data, because normally the ram talks via the motherboard, and the motherboard can lie about temperature and mhz. They're often up to 10% out. I tried some of this ram and the mb reported 196mhz but the ram said 210mhz. Imagine if harddrives had speed, dma, whether they were slave or master, all those debugging info, on the hdd so that we could know.

I think it's wrong to call this just modding because it has some techy benefits. More info is good.

For $30-$40 more? Seriously?

[dj42]

No offense to any of you clear-side-panel, rounded cable, enthusiasts out there, but isn't tricking out your computer a little bit like ... you know what, no, I'm not even going there. So, I assume you'll all be racing in your Civics with the coffee-can exhaust and Type 2 stickers to the store to pick up these bad-boy memory sticks. I hear they add 4 Mhz.

Re:For $30-$40 more? Seriously?

[BrK]

Thanks for saving me the trouble of posting essentially the same message.

A PC is just not a work of art, sorry. The best boxen are the ones that are silently, cooly, tucked out of the way somewhere.

Why does it sometimes seem that an entire generation has just discovered a 30 year old piece of technology (LEDs) and now feels compelled to put them EVERYWHERE remote'y near a DC power source?

I saw some RAM advertised yesterday that had 16 LEDs on the top that went around in a chase pattern, and it also had (as they termed it) "blue ground effects lighting".

Re:For $30-$40 more? Seriously?

[dj42]

Agreed. At the rate we're going, computers will eventually become one large LED surrounded by other LEDs flashing in various patterns for no apparent reason on than the fact it's possible to do so.

Re:For $30-$40 more? Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

you don't know how tired I am of this analogy. Down right sick of it. Why should I have to ignore the look of my case after I spent $2K-$3K building it with the latest and greatest hardware. I like being able to modify my case to my pleasing.

Is the display....

[morten poulsen]

... memory mapped? ;-)

RAM BORKED and steganography

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a coincidence that there are just enough LCD characters on it to write "RAM BORKED"?

Seriously, I'm going to get this and use it instead of a Post-It note to store my master password. If I ever forget that password I can always look it up from the module. It would be meaningless to anyone else since I keep my encrypted password database hidden through steganography, so even if you know what the master password, you cannot use it.

Pimp my RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

All that's missing is the chrome in chrome fan cover for the processor, and of course, a 60" plasma screen in the trunk

Review?

[publius1234]

Here's an actual review:
[H]ard|OCP,

and here's a better picture:
Legit Reviews

Re:Review?

[Otter]

I like Legit Review's benchmark:

The Corsair XMS Xpert modules increase the memory bling factor ten fold.

From the article...

[tarsi210]

...except it won't be giving you the latest news headlines and sports scores.

The hell it won't.

*tappity, tappity, linux scripty*

There. Scrolling stats on the ever-changing size of Britney's bosom.

Except a PC is in your house, not your garage

[P-Frank]

I agree with you to a point, the functionality of my PC is what comes first. But looking at the aesthetic of Apple computers and the growing amount of pretty cases out there, people want their appliances to look nice, or at least not look completely out of place in their homes.

Now there are some pretty ugly cases out there, giant flashing LED monstrocities with bad car paintjobs and racing stripes, but some people are making interactive sculptures that have computers inside them and I don't think that's negative at all.

Re:Except a PC is in your house, not your garage

[TomorrowPlusX]

But that's the difference between *style* and gaudiness.

Apples have style. They're like a well dressed man in a nice suit. or a ( car-analogy ) BMW. Restrained, not fancy -- but impressive.

The gamer machines are like one of those overweight jersey guys in shiny velour jogging suits or some sort of football team jersey; they're covered in gold chains and have so much gel in their hair that the specular highlights are visible from space. Or, conversely, like a ricer honda. All cheap rims, spoilers and stickers. Absolutely tasteless.

There's a difference.

Re:Except a PC is in your house, not your garage

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

You're putting too many people in to one group. I have a "gamer machine" and the case is a Thermaltake VA3000 and it is beautiful. There are two blue LEDs for a soft accent in the front and the rest is a nice black case. There are a lot of nice cases out there. You just happen to have seen the god awful ones.

Re:Except a PC is in your house, not your garage

[0racle]

Not everyone goes overboard. I am slowly replacing green lights with blue leds and orange with red, because I don't like green or orange. Beige boxes I have I painted. Solid colours, a red one, purple, black, blue, they look a lot niceer now which is important because many of them are visable and I am around them most of the time I'm at home.

Not everyone who makes changes to their cases makes it look like they crapped all over it. These ram things look stupid though.

Re:Except a PC is in your house, not your garage

[Jozer99]

I will personally guarentee you that Apple will NEVER EVER come out with combo RAM/Displays. (And if they did, you can bet they would be a heck of a lot more expensive then these are).

Re:Except a PC is in your house, not your garage

[Anonymous Coward]

you said: "overweight jersey guys in shiny velour jogging suits"

Don't you mean Staten Island?

How about...

[Captain Large Face]

"GET A LIFE"

10 characters, and if you're considering putting a message on your RAM, you probably need this kind of "helpful" advice.

Flashy, but not visible

[Tycho_Atreides]

This is somewhat similiar to Corsairs older XMS RAM that has LEDs to indicate memory activity. The thing is it look kind of flashy, but its completely useless as an accurate measurement, and you have to look deep into the case to see it anyways. May as well just install some pointless LEDs in there that have nothing to do with RAM.

Oh my god!

[DeeZee]

Ohhh! My! God! That's soooo cool!

This is NOT hacking...

[djplurvert]

I remember a boss I had once who was so proud that he built his own pc. He had soldered all the sockets on the board and pressed the chips into the sockets.

I also remember thinking "That's not building a pc", that's building a kit, so what. I built my second computer (first computer was a kim 1) with wirewrap and and handful of parts on clearance from radio shack (8080 et al).

PCs are just not truly "hackable" by the average hobbiest anymore. I'm not lamenting the loss, it isn't important. What I'm saying is that calling people who stuff crap into their computer case a "hacker" is about the same as calling someone who puts rim covers on their car a "mechanic".

PCs are appliances and talking about how people are "modding" them is about as interesting as talking about how people are "modding" their toasters.

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[Yankel]

Like this?

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're on a techie site reading about news for nerds...clearly the PC is *not* just an appliance to you. Now, about this new voice-activated, massaging toaster...

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[jhesse]

Or this?

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[wcrowe]

PCs are appliances and talking about how people are "modding" them is about as interesting as talking about how people are "modding" their toasters.

I love the way you put that. I couldn't agree more.

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[Anonymous Coward]

I built my second computer (first computer was a kim 1) with wirewrap and and handful of parts on clearance from radio shack (8080 et al).

Pfft! That's nothing: When I was a kid, I built my third computer using nothing but gold nuggets (which I had to melt myself into leads and connectors) and silicon wafers (which I had to very precisely carve with a fork and a magnifying glass)!

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[djplurvert]

Well,

It seems some of you seem to miss the point. My point was NOT that one is less of a person because they haven't built a computer from parts. My point was that changing cables is so far from ANY reasonable defintion of hardware hacking that it does NOT need to be news on a tech site.

There are plenty of people still "hacking" today but they are not building PCs. Embedded micros still allow plenty of opportunity for genuine hardware hacking.

I don't disagree you have to start somewhere, but I don't see anyone reporting on slashdot that little billy has just built a morse code practice oscilator with his fifty in one radio shack electronics kit. Take offense if you like, but ricing a pc isn't even as difficult as little billy's task. He at LEAST had to follow a wiring diagram, even if it is JUST a picture which indicates which spring to connect the yellow and blue wires to. Christ, computer cables are all keyed these days.

And certainly parallel ports and usb ports are useful for interfacing to other projects, and frankly, when those projects are reported they are certainly interesting, but that doesn't change the appliance nature of the PC. Whatever you are interfacing it with might not be an appliance, but the PC certainly is.

Before PCI it was still pretty easy to build cards to plug into your pc. You could wirewrap boards that ran at five or eight megahertz, it's not quite so practical with current pc busses.

As I said in the original message, I don't lament that it's not practical to build your own PC, it's not important. If you like "hardware hacking" then there are plenty of things that you can build. But plugging things into a PC ISN'T hacking and it ISN'T tech news.

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's building a kit, so what. I built my second computer (first computer was a kim 1) with wirewrap and and handful of parts on clearance from radio shack (8080 et al).

So your second computer you "built" was also from a kit?

Re:This is NOT hacking...

[djplurvert]

Ok, I'll bite. Are you trying to be funny? Or do you think you're being witty? Or do you really not get it?

Well, I'll just assume you have best intentions.

My first computer was not a kit. I'm pretty sure the kim 1 was sold assembled only, but don't quote me on that. I did build its power supply and 4k memory epansion (not from a kit). But the computer was purchased used from someone in the local computer club.

My second computer was built on perfboard from an 8080 chip set that I purchased on clearance sale from radio shack. To the best of my knowledge radio shack has never sold a (microprocessor based) computer kit.

However, that's not really the point. Again I'll presume that you AREN'T just trolling.

Building an electronics kit, particularly one which only contains digital circuity, requires only an ability to solder. Presuming, of course, that the builder posesses at least average motor and reading comprehension skills.

Building, or even just modifying an existing machine at the component level, at least when you come up with the idea yourself, requires an understanding of what the components are doing.

But stuffing computer peripherals into a case is just "consuming". You don't need soldering skill, you need only minimal mechanical skill, and what you need to know about which things go where can be learned in an afternoon.

My point was not really intended to come off sounding like "if you can't do what I can do you aren't shit", but rather, "stop calling what you do something that's more than it is".

Building a PC today is EASY. It might be a "simple" skill, but it doesn't represent any depth of ability by itself.

Real geeks play with Linux and C++

[redonion]

Those that cannot, play with case mods, flashing lights, color coordinated disk drives and glow-in-the- dark cables.

Sprewells

[vurg]

I can't wait for a stick of RAM that has spinning sprewells on it (bling bling).

Re:Sprewells

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the Chris Rock theory of wealth vs. rich, all you need is some brother who got a good sports contract to be a computer geek and "It's spinning nigger! it's spinning!"

coming soon to ram near you...

[m2bord]

Ads flashing on your ram???

who knows...or how about porn on your ram?

think about it...the possibilities are endless.

however, i would avoid the pat robertson sermon on my ram.

Spinning rims on my fans!!!11!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! I just put spinning rims on my fans!!!11! Wanna see!??!?!?!

Re:Spinning rims on my fans!!!11!!!!

[Moos3d]

When the fan stops spinning do the rims still spin?

You knew this was coming

[SethS]

And so when somone hacks your computer, it can flash "All Your Bits Belong To Us"

Seriously...why?

[onida]

Can anyone give me a serious reason as to why this might be useful at all? I mean, let's say the display can be reduced to something other than the "seventies calculator" look. What possible value does it posess?

I may be suffering a lack of imagination here, but this looks about as useful as those digital displays on cases in the nineties that told you the CPU clock speed...

Actually, with...

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

the amount of heat some of these things generate nowadays, you could probably use your RAM to warm up that slice of pizza you left out last night. Maybe even cook a fresh one!

wah

[WaZiX]

and i thought HL2 modded cases were useless... I really didn't see this one coming. Some people just have to much time on their hands....

Too bad they're not green and pixel-based

[unfortunateson]

With a big character set, you could do the Matrix scrolling characters through the RAM, which has a certain geeky appeal.

ASCII porn within your computer, mentioned above, has its appeal, but since you're not likely to have more than, say, four rows by 16 columns, it's pretty low-res even for ASCII art.

With scrolling, though, it would be sort of an ASCII peephole.

Dont't buy it..

[trailerparkcassanova]

Wait til next year when they come out with CameraRam.

Those lonely nights in are over

[kernelblaha]

I now know how to get a girlfriend! All women love a man with his RAM flashing.

Something pretty close to this has been done

[hey!]

Rather than using a heat sync you use your RAM to cook micro pizzas. The heat is dissipated and consumed by the user in the form of 7mm circular pizzas. Betty Crocker eat your heart out.


Well, something close to this has been done, only on car engines. The book's out of print, unfortunately, and you'll have to pay almost $50 for a used copy ;-(

With the power dissipation of processors these days, they can easily play a toast-r-oven to your six cylinder's stove.

Re:Hungry? For Pizza

[canuck57]

Why woudl my RAM want Pizzas

With RAM prices so silly I have been buying pizzas and not RAM. It is myself that wants the pizza and a 1GB RAM stick buys a lot of pizza.

VTEC!

[Cyn]

That's like putting a VTEC sticker on the bottom of your muffler.

It's gay, and it's stupid.

Booyah! Just what I've been looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

A really cheap MP3 display for my in-car media player. I wonder if it will work with a ribbon cable extender...

Re:Booyah! Just what I've been looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, Really Cheap? Looks to me that this is Corsair memory, really cheap doesn't enter the equation.

no news headlines and sport scores

[kanna]

"...except it won't be giving you the latest news headlines and sports scores." Ha, we'll see about that...

Virus target

[wowbagger]

Sounds like a great target for a virus - !nF3><0r somebody's machine, but give no sign other than scrolling a message across the moron's RAM:

D!5 DuMFu!< w@573d h!z $$$ 0n D!5 D!5Pl@Y !n573D 0f @ V!RU5 5c@nn3r! L@m3R!

How to do it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Every recent motherboard brings the system i2c bus to the memory sockets. Just find the two wires (data and clock) and connect an i2c display to them. A lot of I/O peripherals can be controlled through the i2c bus such as displays, keypads, AD/DA converters etc.

Make sure the peripheral has its own unique address or demons will flow through the motherboard's nose!

From TFA

[OverlordQ]

This LED display unit simply fits onto a pin configuration on top of the XPERT memory stick. Obviously you see that the display extends over one side of the memory stick. The display is configured so that you can move it to extend over either edge of the memory stick. Of course on most motherboards that use a 2x2 DIMM configuration, you will only be able to install two display units, not that you would need more anyway. The height of the display unit should ensure that you can still install four sticks of memory in just about any motherboard given the proper headroom.

End blockquoteh the article.

"hackers"?

[3point1415927]

Yeah, case modders who do things like this are about as close to real "hackers" as were the kids in the hilarious and eponymous 1995 movie i'm sure we've all seen...remember that, where sysadmins sit in front of giant room-size screens that flash the password "GOD" over and over, and where hackers spray paint their laptops? Maybe the people who got the idea to mod RAM in this manner watched that movie and that's where they got all their hardware hacking ideas from. Personally, I feel that (with the exception of truly artistic case mods, like those posted above) "real" hackers/nerds/whatever shouldn't waste time to do any superficial aesthetic hardware mods beyond stuff like ripping the Dell sticker out of your monitor/case and replacing it with a linux one, or something along those lines.

Random computer noises.

[British]

My computer needs to make more internal "beep boop boop beep" noises.

That's easy, get a radio nearby it and set it to an unused frequency. It was always fun to hear my TI-99/4A make all sorts of fun noises(not exactly of the beep boop beep variety) when I was doing various operations.

One just might be able to make music out of it. I think it was done once.

Re:Random computer noises.

[nadadogg]

That would be pretty good, but I'm thinking more along the lines of early 80's game show noises, like the game with whammies, when the lights went around the board.

Re:Random computer noises.

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on,big money, big money, no blue screen, big money...STOP! Awww....a general protection fault....

What to Display?

[JeffGB]

A real-time MD5SUM of the ram or...
0xFEEDFACEDEADBEEF

it's hard to champion the hacking ethos

[circletimessquare]

by shitting all over a person's sense of pride in doing something on their own

so what some are calling "hacking" may not really be hacking as you define it, sure

but maybe those people are the same people who go on to delve even deeper under the hood and wind up being hackers in the sense you mean it many years later: by following their sense of wonder and curiosity

and if they ever do arrive there, they won't have your ivory tower holier-than-thou snobbery to thank for that now will they?

what you should be doing is encouraging other people's curiosity, but instead you stand there and shit on it

so while you debate what really is the right definition of the word "hacker", i think i've found a new definition in my book of the word "asshole"

Re:it's hard to champion the hacking ethos

[coso]

Bravo. My teenage clumsyness got me started. It may not have been buidling a computer from used pinball machine parts, but everyone has to start somewhere. My first hack was soldering a long ribbon cable onto the TI-99/5a motherboard so have keyboard seperate from the computer/PEB nightmare. (If you bumped at all, it would freeze.

Re:it's hard to champion the hacking ethos

[mink]

I have yet to see any of these casemodders understand or bother to deal with RFI they introduce to the environment.
I hope the sense of pride is not simply limited to "look at my bling", because at least on the surface it looks way much like the "rice" trend I see with cheap import cars that adds looks but no substance.

Re:it's hard to champion the hacking ethos

[Anonymous Coward]

right o My good man. Right o

Re:it's hard to champion the hacking ethos

[Psychotext]

Nicely flamed. I couldn't have said it any better myself. :)

Re:it's hard to champion the hacking ethos

[djplurvert]

What was that line from the incredibles..."We keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity", I think that's it anyway.

However, I'm not insulting any "person's" sense of pride in doing something for themselves. I'm talking about what is news and what isn't.

Now there is SOMEONE here who is INSULTING someone else in PARTICULAR. That person is YOU.

What you should be doing is encouraging other people's particiapation in the online forum, but instead, you stand there and shit on it.

ymmv.

Orange County??

[Jeff Carr]

I personally agree with your opinion on asthetics vs functionality, but I don't think you can stretch that to a generalization.

I've worked as a technician at drag races, and the best amateur racers, with the best cars on the track, kept their cars immaculate and beautiful as well. Now, they weren't putting stickers on piece of shit imports, but the best case modding nerds out there aren't putting decals on old steel Packard Bell cases either.

Your primo case-modders are more like Paul Teutul, and I don't know many bikers who are going to ridicule the Orange County Chopper crew.

Re:Orange County??

[mink]

But case modders are nothing like the OCC crew IMO.
I have yet to see a single mod that tries to address a basic issue of case modding. RFI. That nice big window or plexi. case is cute, but if you are within 10 feet of anything like a TV, cable box, radio, or game console you will see how poorly thought out the design is.

Do you see the OCC crew doing something cool, but ignoring somting important like proper brakes or steering?

Whatever next ...

[turgid]

Cheap plastic bolt-on spoilers and aerofoil wings for small hatchbacks with 1100cc engines?

Kinda like games

[Chemisor]

> I also remember thinking "That's not building a pc"
> ...
> PCs are appliances and talking about how people are "modding" them

Sort of like games nowadays. Nobody writes them any more. Everyone just mods the ones he buys.

Why on the RAM?

[AC-x]

I'm sure this will be posted about a hundred times, but what's the point of having a programmable display on the ram?

Why not have a separate programmable display you can put anywhere? You used to be able to get a programmable LCD display for the Amiga, it plugged into the parallel port and you could use the system's built in scripting to display anything, so you could have the CPU load, available ram, time remaining in your ray-tracer rendering or even the subject of your most recent unread email. Now that was cool and useful at the same time.

This just seems to be the LAN party equivalent of a 12" tail pipe

Re:Why on the RAM?

[mutterc]

Broadcom switching-chip-development reference boards have a 4-character LED display on the CPU card (you don't usually see it unless you have the lid off). It gives status for early bootup (before the serial port starts outputting stuff), and, our operational code scrolls a message across it. Great for seeing if a box is hung or sitting on a breakpoint.

Elitism

[SuperBanana]

PCs are just not truly "hackable" by the average hobbiest anymore.

Bullshit. They've never been easier; you're dismissing USB, serial, and parallel ports, along with I2C, among other things. All are quite easy to interface with (probably the easiest is parallel, since you can use it as 8+ digital IO lines...with suitable current draw protection of course!)

I would counter that the development of inexpensive microprocessor systems like the Basic STAMP, the Rabbit, etc which usually have (or come with) libraries to talk to other stuff have made interfacing things easier than before. No hard-coding in assembly that routine to do serial to your Apple IIe.

Re:Elitism

[MikeBabcock]

That's hacking together a PC of your own from parts still.

Its almost "hacking" but by strict definition, I think modding the traces on your motherboard to allow a second AGP slot would be a lot more of a hack.

More money than brains.

[wcrowe]

The same idiots probably put huge spoilers on the rears of their front-wheel-drive cars.

What's with all these blinking lights and

[Anonymous Coward]

neon?

How about something for us over 50 guys!

I want:
Chrome!
Raccoon tail (or at least squirrel tail)
Fuzzy Dice.
A wolf whistle.
and email notification that plays La Cucaracha!

Obligatory DDR-"Dance Dance Revolution" Joke.

[SirFozzie]

The reason there's only 10 display characters on the RAM?

Because DDR songs only go up to 10 feet, silly.

Elitist Snobs

[Aceto3for5]

Is it flamebait for me to call you all snobs? Cant be any more flamebaitish then making fun of case modders. Case modding is just a different subculture within geekdom and you should defend your brothers. Granted, it is a lesser position in the kingdom, but we can't all be haxors now can we?

People looked at the beige boxes and wanted something different, just like SOMEONE looked at minix and wanted something different. Sure you dont NEED the lights or extra fans, but you could say the same for X, or a graphical browser, or color monitors.

I do remember a certain app when i first started using linux. It was a pair of eyes that followed the mouse. Hmm... now that is a program that certainly deserves my time and attenti... DELETED!

Re:Elitist Snobs

[GtKincaid]

Nothing wrong with a bit of case-modding that adds style and functionality to a dull old box But ...... ... Isnt displaying info on the state of your system the monitors job , or some other form of easily accesable component . RAM is useualy not in a position that would make this of any use . I can imagine people dangling over there cases and hanging upside down in order to read the funky panel , whilst all the people with some form of logic have saved the money and bought a front mounted LED panel

Re:Elitist Snobs

[Aceto3for5]

We have a fatness crisis in america anyways apparently, maybe a little twist n' lean to read the tiny letters inside the case could burn a few calories.

Re:Elitist Snobs

[elgatozorbas]

Is it flamebait for me to call you all snobs? Cant be any more flamebaitish then making fun of case modders.

We aren't making fun of modders here. Great mods have appeared on Slashdot before. What some people DO criticise is the uselessness of this particular mod: it doesn't speed up your PC, probably lowers the reliability of RAM, adds dissipation, apparently takes more slots than needed, and in the end is hardly visible at all.
(Just summarizing the comments I read here and there.)

Show us a nice mod which doesn't degrade the performance, and we'll applaud.

Z

Uses unused parts of memory?

[DocTillo]

The article states "and your message gets sent to some spare bits on the memory." This sounds like complete nonsense to me.

IMHO they connect the display to the i2c interface present on all modern rams. This is usually being used to read the ram modules configuration eeprom, but people have already attached other things to this port via a simm shaped interface board.

I wonder if this could interfere with other on board hardware connected to the systems i2c bus.

Regardless of position...

[Licorice101]

With the case cover on you can see anything inside anyway.

Might be slightly entertaining to have it say "Warranty VOID" so when people break the seal on the case they know right away ;-)

I feel sort of nineteen seventies

[human bean]

It looks just like the led displays on a number of mainframe memory boards from way back.
I felt so nostalgic that I hooked up my old KSR-33 to type this, but Slashdot's lameness filter kept complaining about all upper-case.
30

who cares about illumination?

[poot_rootbeer]

What I want to know is, how come I can hardly ever find a store that stocks any RAM faster than PC2700, when the PC I bought over a year ago uses PC3200.

And when I do find a rare supplier of 3200, why does it still cost $250 per gigabyte, the same price it was in 2003? Are we facing another chip shortage? Have we hit a wall in terms of fabrication capability and efficiency? Is that why RAM manufacturers are turning to case-mod gimmickry to maintain sales instead of real technological advances?

Re:who cares about illumination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pricewatch.

3200 @ 100 per gig.

'nuf said

I just don't get it...

[tsangc]

Let me add to the string of "I don't get it" replies.

I get case modding. I understand and appreciate those who try and build beautiful cases, like the Art Deco HTPC or all the cool stuff on Mini-itx.com: It's an artistic or creative pursuit.

That's great--there will always be people at different levels of any field: There will be engineers at racing and car companies with CFD and simulation, the guy who builds custom hot roads, and the guy who airbrushes artwork on the side of vans. That parallels the people who design supercomputers, or the guy who hand built their first computer out of discrete logic, the guy who builds neat cases. There will also always be the guy who lamely screws on some parts he ordered from the "custom performance" shop. That's fine, we all have different abilities or interests.

But what I don't understand is all the case mods with the ugly window, the garish neon lights, and the crazy colours. It looks so...crass. Looking for a new case for my PVR, I tried hard to find a case that wasn't ugly. Apparently such cases do not exist for under $100 Canadian.

Is it me, or are these things just ugly!? Like, a giant perspex case with neon bulbs? You couldn't find something so tacky this side of Las Vegas.

These RAM displays not only seem ugly (you'd expect a stock quote or "Now Serving Customer 87" to scroll by) but they even seem like they keep you from adding extra DIMMs because they overhang the adjacent slot.

Re:I just don't get it...

[doorbender]

i cut a window for my mother-inlaw for her borthday and added a light.

she interperts signlanguage for a living so i cut a window in the shape of an "I Love You" sign in the side of her PC. the mobo was a bright red color which at the time matched her convertible, so i added a light in the case to show it off. For the ppl that don't really know why they shouldn't use windows making thier pc look "pretty" is a user friendly thing to do.

cutting a window in the side of a power users PC is just a future reminder of how old thier stuff is.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Blakey Rat]

It's a free market. They come up with a product idea, they bring it to market. People either buy it, or they don't. If people buy it, they make money from it. If they don't, they cancel the product and move on to something else. There, I've just answered your question.

Re:I just don't get it...

[tsangc]

It's a free market. They come up with a product idea, they bring it to market. People either buy it, or they don't. If people buy it, they make money from it. If they don't, they cancel the product and move on to something else. There, I've just answered your question.

I guess that's why they still sell the Pontiac Aztek or the Toyota Echo.

Re:I just don't get it...

[fallen1]

I've always been reserved when it comes to building systems but after my last one died due to "severe ingress of a high-voltage electrical charge" (yeah, lightning came in on my modem line :-p), I decided to build something different. I concentrated on performance first and then dressed it up slightly with a clear window side, glow-in-the-dark cabling, and then making sure all my other cabling was clean, neat, promoted airflow, and was (for the most part) hidden. So, being a long time hacker and geek, my system is not only ultra-quiet and rocks power wise but it adds something interesting to the computer room for sparking conversations when people visit.

How is this useful?

[Von Helmet]

How is it easier to look inside the side of your case at the RAM, than to open the task manager in Windows or run top/free or look at Gkrellm in Linux?

Rice, rice baby!

[jabber01]

What? You don't have a coffee can attached to your CPU fan to make it cool better and run faster?

Looking at this thing makes me wonder...

[foxtrot]

How ever did I survive without this for so many years?

Less lights.

[El Camino SS]

We need more blinky lights(functional or not). That way we can retro-ize our computers to look like big glitzy units shown on 1980s Tv shows and movies.

Who was paying attention to the lights?

What we really need is Erin Grey from Buck Rogers standing next to our computers in her skintight, shiny blue flightsuit.

Screw the lights! I want a space disco with slave girls.

Re:Less lights.

[Kris Magnusson]

Who's Erin Grey?

Kris Magnusson
b. 1990

you just don't get it do you?

[circletimessquare]

everyone has to begin somewhere

it would be interesting for your younger, less-experienced self to meet someone as elitist as you are now, and then ask that younger version of yourself what they think of what you have become

legit reviews has a better write up

[doorbender]

and a "Marketing Guy" interview

http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=139

A good way to save desktop space

[sczimme]

Acquire an LCD monitor that will accept a 75mm or 100mm wall adapter (like this).

Acquire 1" wide aluminum stock (available at Lowes or other DIY places).

Create brackets that look like a large, squared-off letter J: the horizontal piece is meant to be the width of your mid-tower case; the short vertical piece goes toward the back of the case; and the longer vertical piece goes toward the front:

|
|
|__| (The picture is backwards/inverted 'cause the ASCII art was easier that way. Use your imagination.)

Drill holes in the long vertical part of the brackets to match the holes on the back of the LCD monitor.

Use appropriately-sized machine screws to mount the monitor on the brackets.

Hang the LCD on the side of the mid-tower.

No "profit" - sorry.
Your success will depend in part on the weight of the LCD (so 20" might not work - 15" should be okay).

Silly, but not that much

[Pig Hogger]

As silly as the thing sounds, it could be quite useful in, say, a standalone box used as a router or rack server or whatnot, to enable some sort of mini display without having to get a fancy specialized mini-display.

Please do the following experiment

[Anonymous Coward]

Open the case of your computer after it has been on for an hour. Run memtest if you want to push it. Ground yourself to the case. Touch the DIMM sticks. Notice the temperature difference between the case and the sticks. They will be warmer than the case, guaranteed, and more than by a degree. Last time I was in a computer with a IR thermometer, there was an easy 10deg C difference.

minimal existance

[just1]

Beige box, dank room, brown shoes. Why? Not everyone enjoys a minamal existance. Come out into the sunlight and enjoy all the differant colors that before you thought only existed on your monitors. Let the people who have a little fun in life alone. Not everyone thinks that women in flannel p.j.s is good enough. Same woman but for makeup and silk.

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of gives new meaning to the term "Flash Memory".

decreasing reliability of your RAM

[elgatozorbas]

How useful.

Useless Technology

[Nom du Keyboard]

If I had that RAM -- and if I'd had paid one cent more for this feature -- the only use I could see for it would be to continually flash SUCKER to remind me of my stupidity in paying for useless features that suck power and do nothing to improve performance.

And I wouldn't let someone else talk me into buying it for them either just because they want to look cool either. Look cool with your own money!

Just because we can do something, doesn't always mean we should.

Aesthetics

[Sloppy]

Unlike many people here, I have never had a problem with case modding and I think it's just fine for people to do things to their computers for purely cosmetic purposes.

And if it's a display, that's not even purely cosmetic. You can do something with it.

But I just don't get the side-window thing and all the spinoff stuff (like this) that has happened as a result. Side windows don't look cool. They look stupid.

To put it another way, this isn't like putting a spoiler on your Civic. This is like putting a lawn gnome and some pink flamingos on your Civic. Oh shit, I hope I didn't just give someone ideas..

reading your post-= I keep hearing Doc Brown

[way2trivial]

1.21 Jigawatts?

It's shareware/trialware

[MiKM]

If you don't pay $30 after a month, it starts displaying ads as well as defamatory messages such as "My other computer runs Windows ME"

but this sucker can also display temp

[way2trivial]

which means, you can run it faster...

Re:but this sucker can also display temp

[LurkerXXX]

So you know the exact temp at which your particular RAM modules become unstable? No, it's trial and error to find out. For that job you already have a couple temp sensors on your motherboard you can go by to see how hot things are.

Big aluminum fins on that RAM would cool it and make it capable of running faster. That block of plastic with LEDs and crap in it is just blocking airflow and holding the heat into your RAM.

Just like rice on a car just adds weight and decreases performance, this thing is blocking cooling and prevents you from hitting the potential speed you could run stably at.

Once again, all show, no go.

If you are into bling, fine. Just don't pretend it's actually making you faster.

"Ratcomputer"

[Slorv]

This is just stupid. You are meant to look at the screen not the computer - if you know what to do with it that is... OTOH when will we see the first "ratcomputer", and I mean a real one not the frequently /.ed HL2 with fake-rust-and-too-many-phony-fan-knobs. May be dip a G5 in salt and acid and weld a couple of rusty cutterwheels on the side?

Regardless of how you spell it

[pileated]

I won't read anything with a headline of "pizazz." Surely it must be the oldest cliche around. Just what is "pizazz?" My dictionary says it was first used in 1937. Since I assume you mean to indicate something new and flashy don't you think you could come up with something better than a word from 1937?

Nothing personal mind you. I've just never understood the use of this musty word to indicate something new and exciting. Then again maybe it's just me.

About side windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I like my side window, I can quickly know when my computer needs dusting inside.

Sign me up

[Java Ape]

This is just what I need for all my servers. I can put the hostname on the first stick and the root password on the second stick! No more post-it's stuck to the panel door! ;-)

But then again...

[Anonymous Coward]

...my pet hedgehog likes to watch all those blinking lights!

I don't have these monstrous display sticks, but I do have those "activity light" sticks that have what amounts to a VU meter on their spine. Why? Because I happen to like blinking lights. I'd get the same effect by taping one of those novelty LED buttons to my monitor, but frankly that would have cost me more money! (Fry's had these things mis-priced for $80 less than retail, making them cheaper than their non-blinking siblings!)

But there is one thing I must admit, it's much easier now to tell when my system has suffered a serious crash... The blinking stops, and I wake up from my trance.

In the end, these lights have no relation at all to those ridiculous wings people put on those worthless econo-boxes. I've spoken with a rather large number of these ricers, and they honestly believe that the bodywork aids in "performance" (generic term, used by them to communicate some sort of mystic force), and that their 10" diameter mufflers slapped onto the 2" exhaust pipe somehow increases their horsepower.

These sticks are for bored people with money to spend on entertainment. Nothing more.

I wonder ...

[imaniack]

if it has enough segments to display "SUCKER!"

Re:I wonder ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It has enough segments to display "NIGGER!"

Embedded

[dbIII]

Would this be a way to get a nice little compact status display on a gumstix or similar tiny embedded machine? Ten characters could work for some things, even text editing with ed if you are really desperate.

Now PC's really _are_ supercomputers

[laird]

The Connection Machine CM-4 (http://www.corestore.org/cm5.htm) had tons of LED's that generally indicated system status (e.g. CPU activity), and were both nice to look at and sometimes useful for debugging (you could see inefficient communications patterns, which really slow things down when using thousands of CPU's). But the LED's were actually controlled by Z80's (!) that could be programmed independently, to scroll messages, play pong, etc.

So sure, your PC may have 4,095 CPU's fewer (heh, heh) but it can have a nifty LED display wired into the RAM... one more step