Some love for your books, please

It really drives me a little crazy every time I see a book covered with self-adhesive plastic. Here's an example borrowed long ago (before the lockdown) from the local library in Bonn. Click any of the photos for a full-size view:

Self-adhesive plastic, like Con-Tact or other brands, will stick to your original book cover permanently. Nothing against Con-Tact et al, just against adhesive plastic used like this on books.

The risky undertaking of removing self-adhesive plastic from a book (e.g. with heat guns or what not,) almost certainly will cause some damage to the exterior of your original book cover. Not to mention cover coloration changes caused by the glue, even if perfect removal was possible.

If you have ever covered any of your books with self-adhesive plastic, I am here to tell you that you should not do that ever again. Ever.

Instead, use non-adhesive plastic and the zero-damage technique hereby described, which:

• Does not alter the book at all, not allowing any glue or sticky thing to touch any surface of your precious book whatsoever (<= this is single-handedly the most important characteristic.)
• Because of the above, it is easily removable and hence replaceable, without causing any damage to your book.
• Protects the book perfectly.

Needless to say, I love books. Have done and enjoyed some DIY book bindings, book cover reconstructions, and book restorations myself actually. But besides that, I have been protecting most of my books this way since I can remember - for sure since undergrad university times, likely since some time in highschool, possibly even primary school.

First of all, the needed materials. This could not be easier:

• The book you want to protect and cover
• Non-adhesive plastic of your choice, here using a very nice frosted/textured one
• Some Cell-o-tape
• Scissors 
• Optional: some tupperware-like container (bare with me.)

And here are the steps:

1) Pre-cut all the pieces of cell-o-tape to be used. We will need exactly 12 pieces, each one about 3-4 fingers long. Have them ready to be pulled and used when appropriate. Normally I stick them all onto the edge of a tupperware before starting:

2) Cut a rectangle of the plastic to use as cover, so that when folding it around your book, you would get at least 3-4 fingers of plastic beyond all the borders of the book. Something like the following:

3) Starting with the back, fold the plastic onto the back cover of the book:

4) Apply pieces of cell-o-tape on both ends of the folded plastic, so that it sticks not to the book, but to the plastic itself. This is the whole essence of what we want to do: never sticking anything to the book directly. As you'll see, absolutely all the cell-o-tape pieces are to land completely on the plastic, never on any part of the book:

5) Do the same folding for the front part, and stick the cell-o-tapes there as well, just as we did for the back:

With that, we are four little cell-o-tape pieces down; eight more to go.

6) Now fold little triangles inwards on each corner of the folds, and then apply tapes on each, again landing the tapes completely on the plastic. You can leave some couple of mm between the triangle and the border of the book, as shown here:

After all four corners are done, we are now eight little tape pieces down; only four more to go. The work so far will look like this:

7) Now near the spine of the book we need to make cuts in the plastic, for the top and bottom folds that will be needed onto the book covers. Two cuts for the front and two for the back, so four cuts in total. This should preferably be done slightly away from the spine edge to make the next step #8 easier:

8) Now starting let's say from the top rear, fold the plastic piece onto the inside of the back cover of the book. A ruler or something similar hard and flat will help a lot in doing this properly. Notice how I sort of pull and pin the plastic down onto the plastic itself which is already folded onto the book cover from the side and from an earlier step:

9) And here comes the magic trick again: apply another little piece of cell-o-tape, this time diagonally, so as to bind that plastic fold coming from the top with the plastic fold coming from the side of the back cover. Yet again: the little sticky tapes are always placed so that they land completely on the plastic, never letting any part of them land on any part of book. They simply hold some of the plastic against some other part of the plastic:

10) Repeat the previous step for the remaining corners, and after that, we are done with the 12 little pieces of cell-o-tape. The work now looks as follows:

11) Now we must finish those little wings of plastic that remain hanging out from the ends of the spine of the book. There are two ways to proceed depending on whether the book is a soft-, or a hard-cover one. Here are both scenarios:

11-A) For soft-cover books: simply trim those little wings of plastic near the spine of the book, and our work is done:

Ta daaaaa!

11-B) For hard-cover books: Some hardcover books have no space between the spine and the spine cover (they might be glued together.) Or even if they are separated, the spine might be too narrow. In those cases, simply proceed as if it was a soft-cover book: just cut the plastic as in step 11-A above.

If there is space between the spine of the book and its cover, and the spine is wide enough, then cut the sides of those little plastic wings, so that you end up with single flaps that can be folded into that space. It is convenient to trim the plastic so that the remaining pieces end up slightly trapezoidal, so wider near the spine's edge, and narrower at the end of the plastic, as shown here for the top flap:

Folding the final little plastic flap into the space between book spine and spine cover:

Push it all the way in, and then, with your fingers, press the plastic softly onto the edge of the spine cover, so that it stays bent and remains put. The same must be done for the bottom flap of course. The end result for a hard-cover book should look like this:

Here a couple of additional photos of this hardcover book showcasing this non-adhesive, zero-damage plastic cover technique:

And here a few more books already covered and protected this way. The yellow one on top does not have the frosted plastic as cover but a completely clear one, so it's hard to see on the photo:

This kind of protective cover is not only super durable, but also perfectly replaceable. If after many years and/or lots of usage that plastic cover looks worn or bad, simply remove it carefully by cutting out the tapes on the corners, unfolding the plastic all the way, removing it, and then going through the process described here once more, covering the book again with a brand new plastic and the same technique: no sticky tiny bit of cell-o-tape ever touching any surface of the book or book cover anywhere. No alteration, no damage whatsoever. Just protection.

Why some libraries keep covering books with self-adhesive plastic really beats me. In any case, I hope this little guide will help you better protect your beloved books.

PS. Step 12) Clean your tupperware! ;)

Ultimate solution to GPU sag?

If you are looking for the ultimate solution to GPU sag, you came to the right place.

Here are four other working solutions to GPU sag as suggested by famous tech YouTuber's Paul´s Hardware, and Jay's Two Cents. Basically:

#1 (Paul's): PCIe power cables routed upwards and pulling a bit.
#2 (Paul's): buy and install a GPU support bracket
#3 (Paul's): put a toy or some other supporting object right under the saggy corner of the GPU.
#4 (Jay's): install a little m3 screw through the back of the case, right above the GPU tab that is diagonally opposite to the saggy corner of the GPU.

With respect to suggestion #4, I tried it on my own PC and it caused my GPU to overheat massively (+20 ºC). My explanation was that the torsion imparted by the little screw may have warped the GPU board enough to compromise the contact between the GPU die and the GPU cooler. Fortunately, when removing the little m3 screw, the GPU was back to normal thermal behavior. I would not recommend option #4. Wrote a comment about that in Jay´s video.

In any case, neither one of those four solutions is satisfactory when you not just want to avoid GPU sag, but when you really need to immobilize that GPU. For example, when you might want to ship the PC internationally, with a (relatively wobbly) GPU installed. Which is exactly what I needed to do.

Recently I built a mini ITX system for my sister using the following components:
Case: Cougar QBX
PSU: Cooler Master MWE White 450 W
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro Wifi
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3600
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 3000 MHz
SSD: WD Blue SSD M.2 Sata 500 GB + Crucial 1 TB Sata
GPU: Asus Strix GTX 1070


The system ought to be shipped from one country in Europe to another, and my sister does not like to have absolutely anything to do with electrical stuff. So she would not welcome the idea of receiving the PC, plus something separately (the GPU), and having to open the PC and install said separate thing somewhere inside there somehow. No siree, nope, not a chance. She would gladly rather wait for my next visit, for me to do that installation myself.

So either I shipped them separately, and I installed in my next visit, or I find a way to really immobilize that sag-prone, wobbly corner of the GPU, and ship the full PC ready for her to power up. I wanted to do the latter, and that´s what I did.

Here´s the process in photos.

First, let´s see the sag-prone corner of the GTX 1070, the GPU in this build. (Ignore the little red electrical tape on the power connector; installed that just to dimm down the blinding white LED of the card.) Notice the top little corner of the backplate of the card, highlighted in the red circle. That is a structural spacer between the actual GPU board, and the plastic ROG backplate on top. One appropriate way to immobilize this specific GPU would be to somehow clamp this point of this corner safely:

The same corner seen from below shows that there is a screw head holding the spacer. Notice also that there are tiny delicate electronics very close by:

The screw head is taller than the tiny components, but just in case I decided to protect all of that with at least five layers of electrical tape, actually not just there but also on the back plate side, so both sides of what would be eventually clamped:

And the following photo shows my little GPU stabilizer solution, with the materials I used. The aluminum flat bar is 2 cm wide, and 2 mm thick. The assembled little screw rod shows the nuts and washers I used. The little black piece at the bottom represents what would be the bottom of the PC case, while the two white cloth pieces represent the aluminum pads that would clamp the now electrical-tape protected, sag-prone corner of the GPU on the previous photos, here represented by a little USB stick drive placed between the white pads:

Here is the rod already installed at the bottom of the Cougar QBX case. Please be aware that drilling into a PC case better be done either without any components in it, or very carefully isolating/protecting all remaining components in the case, so that no metal dust/debris falls on them. Such debris can easily cause short circuits and damage your components, so watch out!

Here some photos showing the construction of the clamping pads. These required some Dremel and metal files. The final size and shape is up to anyone's taste. The important thing I wanted was to have some placement flexibility. That´s why I made that inner slot instead of just a hole for the screw rod. I also decided to apply several layers of electrical tape on the pads' tips, for additional cushioning and isolation between the clamp pads and the GPU corner:

And finally, here is the GPU stabilizer fully installed, holding steady the formerly hanging corner of GPU.

This little stabilizer actually does quite some more than just completely removing GPU sag: now there is no GPU movement whatsoever.

Some additional notes/tips about the final installation process:

First I placed the PC lying horizontally on its back side, so that the whole weight of the GPU was resting on the PCIe slot, and therefore the GPU had no sag whatsoever. That is the exact position of the GPU to preserve and immobilize with the clamp.

All the bottom pad related elements in the stabilizer should be screwed in and loose further down the rod. That means: the bottom clamping pad, and the nuts and washers under it. By the way, as you can see in the photos, I used a total of three washers under the bottom pad: a large one right under the pad, then a smaller split lock washer, then a normal washer between that one and the bottom nut.

The top clamping pad can be completely fixed first and independently of the bottom one. Notice that it prevents the GPU from moving further upwards. That pad can be tightened somewhat strongly, since it´s just a stop, and it can be tightened while the pad is just in contact with the electrical-tape-covered corner of the backplate of the GPU, not pushing it downwards at all, just keeping it exactly where it already is, while preventing it from going anywhere further up. The internal nut and a washer under the top clamping pad not only allows this independent fixing of the top pad, it also helps replicate near the rod the thickness between the clamping tips touching the board.

After the top clamping pad is properly placed and fixed, then the bottom pad should be brought in contact with the underside of the board´s corner. Then the nuts and washers under the bottom pad can be slowly and gently tightened up, till the whole arrangement becomes rigid enough, clamping and completely immobilizing the GPU.

So there you have it: the ultimate solution to GPU sag. Not just a GPU sag killer: it immobilizes the GPU for good. The system can now be safely and worry-free shipped, even with the GPU installed.

Another similar solution could have been not to use clamping pads but a simple horizontal stick somehow attached to the vertical rod, and then immobilize the cables of the GPU power connector attaching them to that stick, maybe with tie-wraps. But I eventually favored the clamping approach since I thought it would provide a lot more precision, stability, and rigidity.

Note of caution: your mileage may vary depending on your specific GPU, how heavy it is, and how its sag-prone corner is actually constructed.

PS. Replaced the main grill using a DIY one with larger holes for better GPU breathability. Made of zinc plated steel, it was quite too shiny. Painted it with a thermal black spray paint, which after dried down required to be placed in the oven at 180 ºC for 1 hour for hardening:

When to upgrade your PC, a golden rule?

After basically thinking aloud writing some comments on this Youtube video from BPS Customs, I thought I could elaborate further here on my own blog.

If you have a cell phone, a gaming PC, or if you are using or have used any computer for that matter, very likely you have experienced the harsh realities of tech obsolescence. Science and technology improve on a daily basis, often quite drastically. Give it just enough time, and you are left with a gadget that is only a few years old, yet newer gadgets are way more powerful, or support newer standards and protocols and connectors that yours does not, even though yours was probably not exactly "cheap" when you got it not that long ago. Sounds familiar?

There's nothing we can do about this, except to upgrade to some newer, more powerful gadget at some point in time, whenever we decide to do so. But when is it a good time to do so? Not always an easy decision.

Isn't your gadget/computer still powerful enough? Do you really need already that newer one? Is the newer one really that much different/better/faster/more capable? Can your current "old" rig not serve you well enough for some more time, before you drop all that cash for the newer stuff, which will for sure go through the same aging process quite inevitably anyway?

Tough call. Tough call.

Everyone can approach such upgrade decisions their own way. Each has his/her own interests, priorities, and most importantly, pockets. If you have money to burn, simply get the latest/best equipment you want whenever it becomes available or whenever you want, and done with it. No choice paralysis whatsoever :) But plausibly many people do not have deep enough pockets to adopt such an approach. Some others may want to use their resources in an efficient, sustainable manner. In any case, when to upgrade? Is there a golden rule?

Here is a rule I have sort of internalized to guide my own decision making, trying to optimize the utilization of my money, the usability of my existing rig, and yet staying with a current and well performing system.

Technology obsolescence aside, my golden rule is the following:

Consider upgrading only when you can get 2x the performance for the same price you paid last time.

Notice, such rule is not at all the same as suggesting to upgrade when you get similar performance for half the price. Those are two completely different things, and here's a concrete example why: right now an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card (currently a best value in the mid to upper-range GPU category) offers about the same performance the "old" Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti did three years ago, at somewhat near half the price (considering european prices.) But there is simply no existing option right now that would offer you 2x the performance of a 1080 Ti for its original price. GPUs have not evolved that quickly. So whenever you get the same performance for half the price, you don't necessarily get double that performance for the same price.

Updates / corrections early Feb. 2020:

With respect to CPUs, the AMD Ryzen 3700X currently does provide about twice (in fact 2.1x) the multi-threaded performance of the now 4+ years old Intel i7-6700K, for about the same price, or even slightly less. Such an upgrade would perfectly exemplify the application of this golden rule --if you mostly cared about multi-threaded performance, that is.

Notice that the rule can be applied even if planning to jump up to a much higher performance class of equipment.

The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X CPU offers about 3x (more exactly 2.9x, according to PassMark's CPU Mark) the multi-threaded performance of the i7-6700K, but at a higher price, more exactly, 1.5x the price in the US market. So as of early February 2020, their relative performance/cost ratio is really 1.9x, close to but not 2x quite yet. (Cost of the 3900X would need to get to about or below $450 to match that 2x ratio.) Still a clearly beefy upgrade.

For the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, the relative performance/cost ratio gets worse at 1.34x - 1.5x because of its much higher cost (2.2x) over the older Intel, while its multi-threaded performance is only slightly higher than the 3900X's (3.2x  vs.  2.9x). The higher a performance jump you aim at, the louder the law of diminishing returns will scream at you. That ~12% extra performance offered by the 3950X over the 3900X costs however ~60% more.

If your system had some different old parts, or if you are eyeing different new parts, the situation might be different. Also if you have some urgency to upgrade (e.g. you need support for some new standard, you want some new feature, or you want a better gaming experience just because,) then you could make that 2x smaller and to your taste, let's say 1.75x, 1.5x, or even lower? Up to you and your needs. This golden rule at least gives you a good framework to keep in check how much you would be spending, vs. how much or how little extra performance you would be paying for yet again.

Technology improves quickly enough, so I think it's not worth it to use inflation-adjusted costs when applying this golden rule. But as they say, your mileage may vary, so don't quote me on that ;)