Fortunately, wages have increased to match, right?

Ah yes. I remember preparing a recipe once that included frying up the ingredients in a cup of oil, and that turns out seriously fucking greasy if you use the UK cup size.

Bear in mind that the gallon we use is different from the US gallon, too:

• a UK gallon is eight (imperial) pints of 20 fluid ounces, so 4.54 litres
• a US gallon is 231 cubic inches, so 3.79 litres

The reason that I thought American car fuel economy was so terrible as a child is partly because UK mpg is +20% on US mpg for the same car on the same fuel. But also, because American car fuel economy is so terrible.

That’s not correct, I’m afraid.

Thermal expansion is proportional to temperature; it’s quite significant for ye olde spinning rust hard drives but the mechanical stress affects all parts in a system. Especially for a gaming machine that’s not run 24/7 - it will experience thermal cycling. Mechanical strength also decreases with increasing temperature, making it worse.

Second law of thermodynamics is that heat only moves spontaneously from hotter to colder. A 60° bath can melt more ice than a 90° cup of coffee - it contains more heat - but it can’t raise the temperature of anything above 60°, which the coffee could. A 350W graphics card at 20° couldn’t raise your room above that temperature, but a 350W graphics card at 90° could do so. (The “runs colder” card would presumably have big fans to move the heat away.)

Tell me about it. The numbers that I’m interested in - “decibels under full load”, “temperature at full load” - might as well not exist. Will I be able to hear myself think when I’m using this component for work? Will this GPU cook all of my hard drives, or can it vent the heat out the back sufficiently?

Oh yeah. Partying like its 1989 and I’ve booted up my Amiga. Let’s get some unicycling friends in here and do some hacking in 3D.