Motherboard replacement

Unplanned hardware replacement.

The darkroom PC motherboard started failing. It would not remember any bios settings between restarts. The PC would eventually boot, after hitting reset button enough times. The PC would boot with default settings.

I have replaced the MB with a new one of the same vintage and rolled in a minor CPU upgrade at the same time. The CPU is now an 8 core 16 thread model (from 6 cores.) It overclocks nicely.

All this was no real fun. Some sleep was lost but, in the end, it's a sweet machine.

With some of the new software for denoise more cores are needed. The video card is still an Asus NVidia 1660 and pulls its weight in DXO denoise.

The boxes

Better keyboard design for the darkroom PC

Some darkroom hardware notes:

 I had a large keyboard (Corsair K55) on the darkroom PC. I found that the numeric keypad portion was not used very much. By moving to a keyboard (pictured) without the keypad portion I was able to make room for my mouse to be on the desk beside the keyboard. Ergonomically this is better. Everything on the same level. Where before the mouse was on the higher desk portion and not the keyboard tray.

I did try the 61 key keyboards but found that not having dedicated arrow keys unworkable in my software. The arrow keys move you quickly around the grid in Lightroom. The small 61 key keyboards did not work out.

The new keyboard and mouse are from Razer (pictured.) They do cost a bit more than cheaper hardware but are worth it. Its Thanksgiving Friday and they were on sale. Optical keys are sweet. I like the mouse, its high resolution and has that thumb rest extension.  I know that there are custom devices for PS, but at this time I will not go there. The smaller keyboard works well!

Best!