Hi there, I'm Nicholas. Welcome to my profile!
I am a computer hardware enthusiast and I love helping others. Over the years I have helped over one thousand individuals online with diverse technical backgrounds to resolve computer-related issues and queries. I am also a distinguished contributor of the BuildAPC community and the global Folding@Home project. Check them out, as they are both wonderful initiatives!
I have spent two years working in the industry as an IT professional and I am currently finishing my undergraduate degree at York University.
I discovered the importance of computer hardware while trying to run Starcraft without any dedicated graphics. The rest is history.
Here I am holding an NVIDIA GTX 980:
Once the fastest consumer graphics card in the world, it is now considered entry-level by modern GPU standards. That's alright with me - this card is happily retired, and looks fantastic hanging on my wall!
I always found it enjoyable to push hardware to its limits (mostly within reason). The big takeaway? It's important to keep your cool! My journey took me through overclocking and benchmarking, to optimizing memory subtimings, to replacing the thermal interface material (TIM) on my processor with liquid metal so that it can transfer heat more efficiently. My processor running 10°C cooler never sounded...cooler.
I've also had some not-so-cool moments with hardware. I had the pump in a liquid cooler fail on me, rendering my PC unusable until I found a replacement. It was at this time that I discovered Noctua coolers, which quickly became my favourite hardware manufacturer. I trust their cooling products so much that I bought a sweater from them to actually keep me warm. Also in the realm of not-cool is that...apparently some electronics can explode if you run them outside of spec for too long. I must have missed that section in the documentation. I had an AMD R9 290 literally go out with a bang. Remember, you gotta keep your cool!