Hardware Archives - The Silicon Underground

Why Intel stopped making motherboards

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:00:31 +0000

For nearly two decades, Intel was a go-to brand not just for CPUs but also for motherboards. On January 20, 2013, Intel pulled out of the market, ending an era. Here’s why Intel stopped making motherboards. Intel saw motherboard production

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Athlon 64: How AMD turned the tables on Intel

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 11:00:54 +0000

22 years ago, on September 23, 2003, AMD changed the game for x86 once and for all. They released the Athlon 64 CPU, a chip that did something Intel didn’t want. Intel didn’t want to extend x86 to 64 bits.

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RTX 3050 GPU in an HP Elitedesk 800 SFF PC

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 11:00:55 +0000

An RTX 3050 GPU seems like the ideal video card for a small form factor desktop like the HP Elitedesk 800 G4. In this blog post, I’ll explain the obstacles that stand in the way of this pairing and options

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Using a dual fan GPU in a Dell Optiplex 3010

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:00:37 +0000

I recently went to install a modern dual fan GPU in my Dell OptiPlex 3010. It is an outmoded machine for gaming, and it’s not supported for Windows 11, but with a powerful enough GPU, I can do some other

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What a DASD is besides curious IBM terminology

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 07 May 2024 11:00:33 +0000

When reading IBM documentation or looking at a piece of IBM hardware, you may see a reference to an unfamiliar term: DASD. In this blog post, I’ll explain what DASD means and what other terms you may know it by.

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Reduce the pinginess of a mechanical keyboard

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 12:03:18 +0000

A mechanical keyboard will always be louder than a membrane keyboard because of their physical characteristics. A membrane keyboard involves a plastic tray with some keyboard sliders striking a rubber membrane to make contact with a circuit board. Mechanical keyboards

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A life hack to keep cables organized

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 13:03:09 +0000

We all have a supply of cables that we aren’t using at the moment, but don’t want to discard because we might have a use for them again at some point. And some people will tell you you shouldn’t do

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Is it time to stop buying used Dell Optiplexes?

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 13:03:14 +0000

I saw a YouTube video the other day saying it was time to stop buying used Dell Optiplexes, and he advocated building a new PC based on an AMD Ryzen 5 instead. But is it really as cut and dry

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A retro style mechanical keyboard

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 13:03:31 +0000

The resurgence in popularity of mechanical keyboards makes me happy. Today, you can get an affordable keyboard whose quality rivals those of the late 1980s and early 1990s but in a variety of sizes and styles and with a USB

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Are IBM and Lenovo the same company?

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 13:03:54 +0000

Are IBM and Lenovo the same company? It’s complicated. They aren’t the same company, but it’s easy to see why someone might think they are at least related. For a while at least, they wanted it that way. So let’s

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