you've you've you've probably never heard of it they're called Spotswood
Tech stations they're uh yeah they're pretty
obscure Cooler Master V series semi modular power supplies feature 80 plus
gold efficiency and their gold guarantee 5-year warranty click now to learn more
so I bought the Spotswood tech station for a personal project of mine which
will be in a build log update video in the future but some of you may know that
we use high-speed PC tech stations for our Tech stations at work so why deviate
from what I know is already good I mean I've been using high-speed PC tech
stations for years and I've never had a problem why use something else outside
of work honestly the main reason was looks but outside of that I appreciate
that it is made entirely of aluminum it's extremely modular and every one of
its arms is a mountable rail so you can put anything on it that you want I
really liked how you can put a radiator virtually anywhere so I went through the
ordering process which was great by the way rich Suki AKA Spotswood I hope I
said his last name right is very accommodating and seem to go out of his
way to answer every question I had very quickly upon receiving the unit I was
happy to see that he did a great job packing it with gratuitous amounts of
bubble wrap and tons of packing peanuts as well for an independent the packing
material was great tons of peanuts and bubble wrap had the bench actually quite
secure before it showed up first thing you'll notice is that the Tex station is
in two halves it goes together very easily and is quite secure once you have
it in place next up you'll notice the the accessories oh my God the
accessories there are so many the amount of bolts nuts and washers this guy
included is insane and it doesn't stop there he also included all the different
mounting brackets and arms you could possibly want and all of these things
came in nice little reable bags that are nicely labeled other than a couple
brackets I didn't order anything extra and everything you can see right now is
just the leftovers that didn't end up on the tech station there will be no kit
limitations here the only complaint I could see anyone having about the
accessories is that they are all hex bolts which can be kind of annoying
because you can't use your standard screwdrivers with them but not only does
Spotswood include the three different hex Keys needed to install everything
but if this is a bench that you'll be taking to something like a land or any
public place the added security of say your graphics card not being able to be
removed by a simple thumb screw in a matter of like 3 to 10 seconds is kind
of nice next up we have the tech station itself starting from the top of the
station we have the standoffs which I wish were installed by default as it
shows in Spotswood pictures but it's not a very big deal as they're very easy to
install also with the standoffs and the open rail system it is very easy to
access the back of the motherboard which will make CPU block swaps a breeze
speaking of the open rail system for those of you that may want to install
motherboards that are not at TX format all the rails are easily adjustable and
even removable by simply loosening or removing the bolts that are at the rail
intersections even the expansion card support bar is adjustable just in case
you may have short expansion cards like maybe a raid or sound card although I
expect most of people to leave this bar exactly where it is then we come to the
power supply mounting I really wasn't so sure about this before I started working
on the unit but once you install the power supply there it's actually quite
nice the cables don't look messy up top due to the cable management hole created
by the motherboard support rails and it leaves you with more room to be creative
with what you want to do on the lower level but you may notice the Wii U game
no unfortunately this tech station does not come with Mario Kart 8 for Wii U I
put it there to support the power supply as it is roughly the same thickness as
one of the aluminum rails which is already holding up one side of the power
supply unit while I do mostly trust the standard mounting setup it sketches me
out that there's no support for the bottom of the power supply on that side
now this power supply isn't necessarily short but it isn't long either if you
had a long power supply like the one I intend to eventually install in this
test bench it will reach to the second motherboard support bar but if you don't
it will just kind of hang there all of
this in mind it's probably fine I'm sure Spotswood knows about this as the power
supply unit in his pictures is roughly the same length as the one that I have
on the bench and he probably didn't see it as a problem I don't see it as one
necessarily either as long as the tech station is left alone if someone wants
to rest something on top of the power supply or bump it it's possible that
something bad could potentially happen and whoever unlike likely the situation
is I personally would rest easier if it was just supported hence the Wii U game
all of that aside we can move on to the bottom of the tech station first off we
have the hard drive and SSD mounting which is essentially the same process
and it can take a little while but once they're in place it's actually quite
secure and it has a bit of vibration dampening due to the rubber mounting
solution which is a nice added bonus due
to the spacing differences of 3 and 1/2 and 2 and 1/2 in drives you would need
to install them on different rails if you wanted to do it properly but what
exactly is properly when working on a tech station which caters to
creativity I don't know but I will likely be buying a hard drive cage
either from Spotswood or some other vendor to free up some real estate in
the bottom of this tech station as multiple drives take up quite a bit of
space if I wasn't interested in buying an extra cage I would likely end up
fixing the SSD to one of the Rails just below the motherboard just to get out of
the way secondly there was mounting my radiator the process of fixing the tabs
system to the radiator and tech station through the use of the standard bolt nut
and washer method was easy enough to do and looks quite sharp once you're done
but you may again notice the Wii U game
no yet again sadly it does not come with Super Mario Bros U or Super Luigi U and
this is another one of my ghetto mounted support systems being only able to mount
my thick and heavy Alpha cool nexx exos radiator which by the way will only get
heavier once you run water through it on one side of the tech station causes it
to torque and pull down on the far non-secured side now again it's probably
okay but I especially don't trust this one as it seems to be torquing much more
than the power supply was and has the same kind of issues if someone bumps
into it or if I say accidentally pull it while trying to install a fitting it
could get torqued too much and I would be livid because of this I grabbed my
trusty Wii U game mounting system before it was even full installed this is
something I will be finding a proper and more permanent solution to before I move
my personal rig to this tech station Taran and I were able to come up with a
few potential solutions to this radiator mounting problem one if we had longer
tabs we could fit it to the bottom of the tech station as well meaning it
would have two points of contact two another rail I could install myself on
the other side would add another two points of contact and supported on both
sides or three a rail mountable rubber pad system which could replace my Wii U
game in its exact same Form and Function in conclusion is this the easiest thing
to build on no but it's damn fun the
Spotswood Tex station is extremely high build quality overall and allows you to
do almost anything that you want with it because of how modular it is that being
said the almost non-existent documentation can be more than a little
annoying when trying to figure out how you're intended to do something and
there's so few build examples out in the while that some of the issues I ran into
could have honestly just been myself failing understand how something was intended to work especially since I may
have been doing this build while streaming at 3: in the morning last but
not least is the purchasing experience again Rich chety hope I'm saying that
right AKA Spotswood as far as I can tell is a oneman operation and despite that
he managed to keep on top of things very well I received shipping confirmation
surprisingly quickly after ordering my unit and he continues to this day to
answer any and all of my questions both quickly and thoroughly all right guys
that's it are you interested in a techbench OR tech station let me know in
the comments down below and while you're down there like dislike favorite subscribe share
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time