Gadgetory

if you've probably never heard of it they're called Spotswood taxations Thera and they're pretty obscure coolermaster v-series semi modular power supplies feature 80 plus gold efficiency and their gold guarantee five-year warranty click now to learn more so I bought the Spotswood tech station for a personal project of mine which will be in a bill blog update video in the future but some of you may know that we use high speed PC tech stations for our tech stations at work so why deviate from what I know is already good I mean I've been using high speed PC tech stations for years I've never had a problem why you something else outside of work honestly the main reason was looks but outside of that I appreciate that it is made entirely of aluminum it's extremely modular and every one of its arms is a mountable rail so you can put anything on it that you want I really liked how you can put a radiator virtually anywhere so I went through the ordering process which was great by the way rich chum accesskey AKA Spotswood helped i said his last name right is very accommodating and seemed to go out of his way to answer every question I had very quickly upon receiving the unit I was happy to see that he did a great job packing it with gratuitous amounts of bubble wrap and tons of packing peanuts as well for an independent the packing material was great tons of peanuts and bubble wrap had the bench actually quite secure before it showed up first thing you'll notice is that the tech station is in two halves it goes together very easily and it's quite secure once you have it in place next up you'll notice the accessories oh my god the accessories there are so many the amount of bolts nuts and washers this guy included is insane and it doesn't stop there he also included all the different mounting brackets and arms you could possibly want and all of these things came in nice little resealable bags that are nicely labeled other than a couple brackets I didn't order anything extra and everything you can see right now is just the leftovers that didn't end up on the tech station there will be no kit limitations here the only complaint I can see anyone having about the accessories is that they are all hex bolts which can be kind of annoying because you can't use your standard screwdrivers with them but not only two spots would include the three different hex keys needed to install everything but if this is a bench that you'll be taking to something like a LAN or any public place the added security of say your graphics card not being able to be removed by a simple thumb screw in a matter of like three to ten seconds is kind of nice next up we have the tech station itself starting from the top of the station we have these standoffs which I wished were installed by default as it shows in Spotswood pictures but it's not a very big deal as they're very easy to install also with the standoffs and the open rail system it is very easy to access the back of the motherboard which will make CPU block swaps a breeze speaking of the open rail system for those of you that may want to install motherboards that are not ATX format all the rails are easily adjustable and even removable by simply loosening or removing the bolts that are at the rail intersections even the expansion card support bar is adjustable just in case you may have short expansion cards like maybe a raid or sound card although I expect most people to leave this bar exactly where it is then we come to the power supply mounting I really wasn't so sure about this before I started working on the unit but once you install the power supply there it's actually quite nice the cables don't look messy up top due to the cable management hole created by the motherboard support rails and it leaves you with more room to be creative with what you want to do on the lower level but you may notice the Wii U game no unfortunately this tech station does not come with Mario Kart 8 for Wii U I put it there to support the power supply as it is roughly the same thickness as one of the aluminum rails which is already holding up one side of the power supply unit well I do mostly trust the standard mounting setup it sketches me out that there is no support for the bottom of the power supply on that side now this power supply isn't necessarily short but it isn't long either if you had a long power supply like the one I intend to eventually install in this test bench it will reach to the second motherboard support bar but if you don't it will just kind of hang there all of this in mind it's probably fine I'm sure Spotswood knows about this as the power supply unit in his pictures is roughly the same length as the one that I have on the bench and he probably didn't see it as a problem I don't see it as one necessarily either as long as the tech station is left alone if someone was to wrest something on top of the power supply or bump it it's possible that something bad could potentially happen and however unlikely the situation is I personally would rest easier if it was just supported hence the Wii U game all of that aside we can move on to the bottom of the tech station first off we have the hard drive and SSD mounting which is essentially the same process and it can take a little while but once they're in place it's actually quite secure and it has a bit of vibration dampening due to the rubber mounting solution which is a nice added bonus due to the spacing differences of three and a half and two and a half inch drives you would need to install them on different rails if you wanted to do it properly but what exactly is properly when working on a tech station which caters to creativity I don't know but I will likely be buying a hard drive cage either from Spotswood or some other vendor to free up some real estate in the bottom of this tech station as multiple drives take up quite a bit of space if I wasn't interested in buying an extra cage I would likely end up fixing the SSD to one of the rails just below the motherboard just to get out of the way secondly there was mounting my radiator the process of fixing the tab system to the radiator and taxation through the use of the standard bolt nut and washer method was easy enough to do and looks quite sharp once you're done but you may again notice the way your game no yet again sadly it does not come with Super Mario Bros u or super Luigi u and this is another one of my ghetto mounted support systems being only able to mount my thick and heavy alpha cool neck success radiator which by the way will only get heavier once you run water through it on one side of the tech station causes it to torque and pull down on the far non-secured side now again it's probably okay but I especially don't trust this one as it seems to be talking much more than the power supply was and has the same kind of issues if someone bumps into it or if I say accidentally pull it while trying to install a fitting it could get torqued too much and I would be livid because of this I got my trusty Wii U game mounting system before it was even fully installed this is something I will be finding a proper and more permanent solution to before I move my personal rig to this tech station Taryn and I were able to come up with a few potential solution - this radiator mounting problem one if we had longer tabs we could fit it to the bottom of the tech station as well meaning it would have two points of contact to another rail I could install myself on the other side would add another two points of contact and supported on both sides or three a rail mountable rubber pad system which could replace my Wii U game in its exact same form and function in conclusion is this the easiest thing to build on No but it's damn fun the Spotswood tech station is extremely high build quality overall and allows you to do almost anything that you want with it because of how modular it is that being said the almost non-existent documentation can be more than a little annoying when trying to figure out how you're intended to do something and there's so few build examples out in the while that some of the issues I ran into could have honestly just did myself failing to understand how something was intended to work especially since I may have been doing this build well streaming at 3:00 in the morning last but not least is the purchasing experience again rich Thomas Sweatt ski hope I'm saying that right aka Spotswood as far as I can tell is a one-man operation and despite that he managed to keep on top of things very well I received shipping confirmation surprisingly quickly after ordering my unit and he continues to this day to answer any and all of my questions both quickly and thoroughly alright guys that's it are you just in a tech bench of tech station let me know in the comments down below and while you're down there like dislike favorites subscribe share and +1 Google +1 is that a thing I don't know if you don't want to 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