Hardware enthusiast must haves

Every group of gamers has that one guy who takes his hardware way to seriously. The guy who spends the first 6 hours of rAge fixing other people’s PCs, after they snapped off part of that new high-end graphics card that was just too long to fit into their case [no, I’m not bitter at all].

But apart from the screwdriver hanging out of his pants and the headlamp, how can you spot a hardware enthusiast? One of the below are sure tells:

RAID controller cards

RAID controller cards made by companies such as Areca and LSI are expensive pieces of equipment designed for workstation environments where performance and stability is key. They cost an arm and a leg, and any serious hardware enthusiast will probably be running one in his main rig.

Controller cards such as the Areca ARC-1882ix offer space for up to 24 SATA drives, and feature their own built in dual core processor clocked at 800MHz and up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM just to help speed up data transfers.

If you hear him talking about how multiple drives can fail in his RAID 6 array without losing any data, you know you’re dealing with an enthusiast.

Acrea ARC 1882

Extreme cooling

So you’ve got a high-end Zalman air cooler keeping your CPU temperature manageable? That’s cool. Nearly as cool as dual- or triple-loop water cooling systems keeping your entire system under wraps.

However, hardware enthusiasts take things one step further, with extreme cooling capable of sub-zero temperatures under load.

Whether they’re using a range of Thermo electric coolers (peltiers) to keep things chilled, or have rather opted for a phase change unit that uses expanding and condensing gasses to pull heat away from the CPU, enthusiasts want the coldest temperatures possible so that their system will be stable at incredibly high overclocks.

So if you see an enthusiast disappearing around the corner with a roll of armaflex insulation and a tub of Vaseline, don’t worry, he’s just dealing with a small condensation problem around his CPU socket.

Prometeia cooling head

Dremel tools

Buying a flashy gaming case is something most gamers do. Some even take the liberty of installing lights and custom fans for a more unique look. Enthusiasts will probably have the Dremel precision tools warmed up before the case is even out of the box.

Dremel tools are the standard kit used by case modders to do everything from cutting panels, drilling holes for riveting, and to give chrome water pipes that extra shine. They come with a range of attachments for precision modding, and coupled with time and a bit of patience, they can make any case look like one in a million.

Dremel tool

They overclock their monitor

Yes, you read that right; monitor and overclock in the same sentence. The process is fairly simple using Nvidia graphics cards, and allows users to force faster refresh rates at high resolutions for a better gaming experience.

Overclocking has become pretty mainstream nowadays, with every second gamer launching a company’s bundled overclocking software to increase the GPU and RAM frequency by a few MHz – but the art of monitor overclocking hasn’t caught on quite as much with the general population.

If he’s complaining at a flickering black screen after pushing too hard, he’s probably an enthusiast.

Samsung 32-inch Full HD

They rock up to a LAN with a bench table

Enthusiasts love to tinker, and can’t deal with annoyances like case side panels and cable management compartments. They want instant access to their components, even if it’s in the middle of a game at a LAN.

Luckily for them a range of manufacturers now make benching tables in all shapes and sizes that leave their precious exposed for all to see. These aren’t expensive or unique, but any gamer who will deal with all the issues arising out of running a system on a test bench at a LAN [like friends sticking chips into every fan in sight; no I’m still not bitter at all] is truly a hardware enthusiast.