Big hardware jokes a neat hobby

Placing a nylon sock over the TV to make black and white colorful is an immortal and technology-related April Fool’s joke from the year 1962. April 1 is a date when it is traditionally extra important to have eyes with you so as not to be fooled and on the theme of technology several gold grains of varying sizes are often glimpsed. A joker to be reckoned with is Kasper Andersen from the Youtube channel Captains Workspace, who year after year manages to get his hands on the graphics card of the future.

Kasper has for five years maintained the internet with well-made graphics cards model huge from Nvidia, Intel and 3dfx, which tense the muscles in laughable performance tests. This year’s April video took the pulse of the monster card Geforce RTX 4090 from Nvidia, to top it off with the meter – long sibling RTX 4090 Ti – a video seen by over 2.6 million viewers. We talked to Kasper about the fascinating and nerdy hobby.

Retro enthusiast from the neighboring country

Kasper Andersen is 25 years old and comes from Denmark, where he works with server management and has a degree in IT support. In addition to model building, model trains, old cars and retro hardware are hobby activities, where the latter is part of the fact that Kasper has some control over SweClockers. He has namely been part of three retro-LAN signed Brain Drain gang.

Always been fascinated by high-end hardware and collected old insane military 3D live rendering systems (Etc: “Quantum3D”, “Evans&Sutherland” and “Silicon Graphics”) so the consumer grade hardware became a little too pathetic. So made my own insane graphics cards. First I used Paint.NET to do some fakery I posted on forums and Facebook. Later I moved on to making physical stuff and uploaded videos to make it more convincing.

The secret behind credible bullshit

Kasper’s interest in high-performance hardware is the basis for the well – turned 1 April models and there is a lot of work behind the graphics cards. In terms of materials, these are well-turned 3D-printed parts with backing of motors, fans and lighting from old systems, where the aforementioned Geforce RTX 4090, for example, borrowed fans from old Pentium coolers.

The shell of the cards I have 3D modeled and later printed on a Creality CR10 3D printer, of course have to put a lot of work into the 3D printed parts to make them look legit. For the technical stuff I use motors and diodes from either old semi-defective hardware or new cheap components bought off Ebay etc.

4 fans motors on the back of the RTX 4090 comes from Pentium II and III CPU coolers. The circuit boards are made of an aluminium advertising sign that I order online with a uploaded picture containing the PCB:s. When I have cut them out, I glue on some SMD components, mainly from defective hardware or even homemade. Takes about 2 months making all the stuff.

The convincing circuit boards consist of sign material with printed images of circuit boards, which are topped with surface-mounted components – genuine or homemade. The work of creating the convincing products takes about two months. The videos also contain not only ridiculously well-made graphics cards but are accompanied by well-equipped motherboards, special effects and tailored performance tests such as reputable Bungholio Marks.

Fresh hardware only in the imagination

With good craftsmanship and imagination, Kasper thus manages to get hold of tomorrow’s hardware at regular intervals, but components of the latest cut are not what he uses in everyday life. The latest gaming system is a quad-core Intel X79 platform from 2013/2014 in company with an Nvidia Geforce graphics card from the 900 series. In the way of screens, these are real antiques in the form of 13-year-old screens, which also guest star in the videos. The camera that captures the material is a nearly decade old Panasonic DMC-FZ200.

Everybody can relate to graphics cards, but I have made plenty of other fake hardware, mainly to keep a low budget. For example I don’t own a single DDR4 module, so I had to make quite a LOT of fake memory modules (36 in total to be exact) and two fake motherboards for my videos combined with defective hardware bought off Ebay.

My most recent gaming system is from 2013/2014, a Quad core Intel X79 system with a GTX 900 serie GPU and some old HP LP2475w monitors from 2008, same 13 year old monitors I also use in my videos, recorded on a 9 year old Panasonic DMC-FZ200 camera.
Maybe I should start putting video ads on my YT to afford some modern stuff

On the other hand, it is not only the graphics cards of the future that Kasper is putting together, although it is perhaps mainly these that the general public recognizes. Retro giant graphics cards are one part, while accessories for graphics cards are another. In the absence of real DDR4 memories, Kasper has, for example, made 36 pretend modules with two associated motherboards for his own machine. Somewhere on the horizon, AMD’s graphics division is also waiting to get a slap in the face.

Quantity not on the map

As part of the “GPU June” competition, Kasper recently broke the sparse schedule of only publishing videos on April 1. This is done by wholeheartedly embracing the retro theme with more than 20 older, credible cards, which take up space in an equally convincing motherboard with meters of PCI and ISA connections – all powered by four series-connected power supplies.

However, the great publicity and interest in the well-produced videos is not something that Kasper is completely comfortable with, as he does not like being in front of the camera. With more followers, he feels that the already demanding process of filming will not be easier. A higher publication rate than once a year, with any bonus clips, is therefore not to be expected.

As you know, however, you never wait too long when it comes to something good, and the undersigned can guarantee that the hardware nerd will find many good laughs in Kasper’s videos. SweClockers thanks for the insight into how the pretend hardware is made and who is behind the videos, and wishes good luck with getting the next big card!

Read more interviews: