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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I’ve heard it claimed that motherboards are much more likely to go bad than other components, so there’s a legitimate market for new motherboards on obsolete platforms, to be used with secondhand CPUs (and presumably, secondhand RAM). I think that sort of thing is especially popular in developing countries that have less access to top-of-the-line stuff and/or where it costs a much higher percentage of the average income.

    For example, looking at Aliexpress, I’m seeing brand-new motherboards like this for about $40 and this for about $30 designed to be used with old Xeons that you can also get from the same site for like $10 or less. (The second board is a better example than the first, because it’s DDR3 whereas the first is DDR4.)







  • A full tang blade is one where the metal of the blade extends all the way through the handle. Often, full-tang knives have “scales” instead of one-piece handles, where the two sides of the handle are riveted on and you can see the metal of the knife tang all the way around. Full tang knives are usually stronger than partial tang knives because the steel of the blade is stronger than the material used for the rest of the handle. A partial tang knife shouldn’t have a rivet at the back of the handle (because it wouldn’t actually be attaching anything); if it does, it’s because it’s trying to imitate a full tang to fool you.

    Also, the difference between a stamped knife and a forged one is that a stamped blade is of uniform thickness except where the cutting edge is ground down to a point, whereas a forged knife is more of a wedge through its entire width and can have a thicker (stronger) spine, as well as a bolster to make it more comfortable to handle. (Some better-made stamped knives are stamped from a tapered sheet of steel so that they’ve got some of the “thicker spine” benefit, but they definitely never have a bolster integral with the blade.)