Santouka is overrated

Jo and I went to Santouka at Central last week (before Ben arrived) to get a good bowl of Japanese chashao ramen. I heard lots of good things about the chain and thought why not?

The ambience was great, and service was really good. Was nice of them to give us a big pitcher of water.

I ordered the premium chaoshao set, hoping the taste was up to the standard of the reviews.

To cut a long story short, everything was good, including the ramen but it had no love. The soup, chasao and everything was technically perfect but it lacked something.

We couldn’t feel the chef’s love in the food.

In Singapore, there’s only 1 chaosao ramen I remember. It’s a small shop owned by a very stoic Japanese chef (funny, they seem to be all like that) near the KTV lounge behind OG Orchard. It’s called Osho, it opens at about 11am, has takeaway bento for lunch and opens late till 11pm or more. It seats < 30 people and it’s literally a roadside shop so it’s pretty warm. The chasao is very nicely textured and has a layer of fat surrounding it. Plunged into the soup before it reaches you, the fatty layer is semi-dissolved in the broth, but the chaosao still packs a punch that makes you remember the taste long after. Better yet, the chasao ramen is also cheaper than Santouka’s by quite a bit.

Sorry Santouka, your ramen’s good but it has no spirit.

Why I don’t SLI (or Crossfire)

Firstly, what is SLI?

It’s a technology that scales graphics performance by combining multiple NVIDIA graphics solutions in an SLI-Certified motherboard. This simply means that you can get more performance by putting 2 (or 3) same graphic cards together.

A few reasons why I don’t like SLI:

1. In practise, the performance increase is only 20%-50% at maximum. (Nvidia claims up to 100%. Right)

2. Some really good games don’t support SLI, this means only 1 card is used, wasting the other card.

3. In the early days, there were incompatibilities with games that were supposed to run on SLI.

4. Now, there’s ‘micro stutter’, irritating and probably game-experience breaking.

Anybody keen for watercooled super quiet PC?

I have set up about 5+ systems in the last year and it’s been pretty fun. After this round building 2 Core i7s and a quiet Quad Core, I am designing a new serious watercooled system with a customized case for folks who want a quiet computer without sacrificing power. I am not going to charge any fees for building the system but I need a really good budget for parts (some to be flown/shipped in) and transport fees. I also need about a month or 2 to design, fabricate and get the system up. System suggestion as follows:

Core i7 920
GTX 295 (watercooled version)
12GB RAM
Asus P6T V2
150GB Velociraptor
Corsair 850w
External DVD writer (to keep the case small sized)

If anyone is interested, drop me an email at wesley@memphiswest.com

Thanks!

Some thoughts about the Core i7 and case modding

I have been using the new Core i7 for the last month+. It’s definitely a good processor, the motherboard runs 12GB well and it overclocks well too. A few things that might concern the system builder:

1. This chip runs very hot, almost like the Pentium-fry-an-egg-D. At the moment, the OCed chip shoots up to 64degrees in 31degrees ambient. And this temp is with a high-end 3rd party air cooled heatsink. The current Duo & Quad Cores are running <45degrees.

2. Because of the way the cores are laid out in the chip, the cooler runs best with the fan blowing in a north-south direction. Normal PC cases have the PSU mounted at the top above the processor heatsink. This is not good for the PSU as it increases heat load. New cases have the PSUs mounted at the bottom, so the case is a major consideration for the Core i7.

3. I am using an older PC case (Lian Li PC-G7B) so I decided to flip the PSU upside down with the fan facing up.

flipped PSU upside down, so the fan faces up

4. I had to get the case top plate modded for extra blowholes for the PSU fan and exhaust.

top plate has been modded to expose 3x120mm holes for exhaust and intake

5. The PSU fan is barely visible at the top of the image. The PSU runs cooler and overall the system is also cooler by 1-3degrees because there’s proper holes for the hot air to exit.

6. The whole procedure was slightly troublesome as there are only a few guys doing case modding professionally in Singapore. There is only 1 shop in Sim Lim Square, name of the shop is Uvnium #03-19. Gary (the owner) did a splendid job with the case cutting. I had to buy the M3 screws and nuts myself from a DIY shop.

7. The Lian Li PC-G7B (similar to the PC-7FW @ 218×440x490mm W, H, D) is probably the smallest sized case for the Core i7/ATX with a full length graphic card like the GTX295, any smaller and there will be major issues installing and fitting the parts.

8. The case is extremely light as it’s made of aluminium (<7kg). Combined with the mid/small tower size, it’s very portable for on site workstation setups and shipping overseas if needed. I had a Thermaltake Armor (full tower steel) and I have learned my lesson in weight management.

Out of warranty white Macbook has top plate replaced for free. woot!

The palm rest of the Macbook was cracking last December and I thought it was due to mishandling on my part. Turns out it’s a design defect that Apple finally admitted to. Posted here at The Inquirer and Gizmodo. Here’s the damage.

cracked palm rests

After reading the news, I went to the Apple shop at Wheelock. The repair centre is run by Sapura and I talked to the lady saying that Apple is repairing this for free even if the Macbook was out of warranty. I was put on a phone with Apple Support and talked to tech guy. I used an alpha voice and told him that Apple had admitted to this issue and was repairing this laptop for free. I assured him that the damage was right at where the lid touched the top plate. The guy said he had to talk to the cheif engineer (!!) and after a 10min hold they told me it was FOC. Repair took about 2 days, including a 1 day to wait for the part. It would have taken 3-4 days if I had left it at Wheelock. I took it straight to Toa Payoh North where the service centre was located.

Here’s the new top plate. Looks brand new as it includes a new keyboard (!!). Yay.

new top plate. nice.