It's been a while. Lots has happened since last post. Four major things though. Did my upgrade! Finally! It's "all done"! (We know that all done is never done. Especially with me.) Girlfriend dumped me. Won't get into that. Third, really, really nice tax return. Very happy. The final. Battlefield Bad Company Two! Alright. I'll use those for my topics. Except number three.
So, the upgrade! I ended up upgrading three components, ordering four items, because I didn't want to wait for a mounting bracket from Noctua. So, without further adieu, the parts:
I had ordered the motherboard first, and did a quick un-boxing with a few pictures:
Really nicely priced for a board too. I was still considering going with the MSI board, but once I saw the P55 FTW on sale for 200 with a 30 dollar mail in rebate, I jumped on it. And EVGA is pretty good with their rebates, as the cheque has already been mailed out. I actually took this board to hardware class for the motherboard lecture, and ended up showing it to the class. Lovely piece of work it is. About a week later, the other 3 components arrived, and I got down to building and overclocking the thing that weekend. I did take a few pictures too!
The parts:
Pre-installation. The old hardware! YE SHALL BE MISSED BABIES! (MESSY MESSY MESSY CABLING):
RAM on board:
Board, heatsink, and RAM:
And finally some beauty shots of everything mounted in the case. Much better cabling!:
Now, I only ran into one issue when first starting up. I had the RAM in the wrong channels, but that was a quick fix. I reinstalled Windows 7, activated it, installed essential apps, then went to overclocking. This wasn't as easy as my e8400 was, but I'm 24 hours stable at 4Ghz.
Took a bit of voltage and some learning of new terms, but, over the span of 2 days, it made it to rock solid stable! I believe 67 degrees was my maximum temperature! I can't wait to get a new PSU for this thing, along with a GTX470 and some watercooling! :D (Yeah, I'm gonna venture into a custom loop)
Some things that I really like about the new build... Hmmm. Rock solid stable. No instabilities, even over long periods of time. The thing has been up for 11 days before restarting for updates, and it was still solid! I think getting rid of the Xonar DX was a good idea! Another thing, variable processor speed! Not only does it underclock itself massively when idle, it also adjusts clockspeed to match load! So, when idle, it uses a 9x multipler. 9x200=1800 or 1.8Ghz. I have seen the multiplier vary anywhere from 9 to 20, all steps! So, instead of just 6x and 9x like my e8400, this will do anywhere between 9x and 20x depending on how fast it needs to go! Idle temperatures in this case are great too! It idles at about 28 degrees in my apartment, and while playing games, I haven't seen it hit above 55.
Bad Company 2. FRIGGING AMAZING. I've been playing this a TON, and I really do like where they took the battlefield series, and I'm glad they switched things up a bit, even if I do miss my commorose. Graphics are beautiful, even at the mix of medium/low I'm running to get a constant 60+ FPS. Ranks come quickly, and with ranks come unlocks, which are equally as fun. They tweaked the game a lot from the beta. You seem to run a bit faster, weapon switching is a bit more fluid. Game play seems a bit more fluid, frame rate wise as well. The new maps are really fun to play on. I've mainly been playing conquest with my friend -=99th=-Airborne, but Rush is pretty fun too. I'm already almost rank 20, and I've unlocked all the assault tree, and I'm moving through medic and engineer. They've changed it a bit. Instead of Assault getting the medic equipment, they get ammo. The medic now has the light machine guns. It's kind of annoying, but the LMGs are really easy to use in this game, so I can't complain. All of the engineer main weapons that are specific to the engineer are silenced. Kind of weird as well. I'm really liking the engineer's AKS-74U though. Brings back memories of COD4. Hmm... I find the only gun worth using in the assault kit is the M16A2. Really high accuracy, damage, and fire rate. Good feel to it too. Getting knifed is getting annoying. Seems as though you can put a clip into a rushing sniper and still get knifed. So, even though hit reg has improved, it's still iffy.
I purchased a 15 man Teamspeak 3 from Bargainvoice. Overall, I've been very pleased with the quality of it. It's mainly used for myself and friends to chat, and for Airborne and I to chat in game because VOIP is still iffy. We hope to expand the number of players on our Teamspeak. Maybe get Airborne's airborne friends to join. If anyone is interested in the info for the Teamspeak, just post in the comments section. I'll get back to you on it.
It's 2AM, and I'm just glad I could get this "quick" blog post done. So, I'm off to bed for some reading, then some sleep.
Cheers,
-Jon
PS:
Mr.Snipar | ToxicInsanity CAN|AiM "The Canadian"
So, the upgrade! I ended up upgrading three components, ordering four items, because I didn't want to wait for a mounting bracket from Noctua. So, without further adieu, the parts:
Intel Core i5 750 LGA1156 Processor
EVGA P55 FTW Motherboard
4Gb Corsair XMS3 DDR3 9-9-9-24 1.6v RAM
Noctua Secufirm3 LGA1156/1366 mounting hardware
I had ordered the motherboard first, and did a quick un-boxing with a few pictures:
Really nicely priced for a board too. I was still considering going with the MSI board, but once I saw the P55 FTW on sale for 200 with a 30 dollar mail in rebate, I jumped on it. And EVGA is pretty good with their rebates, as the cheque has already been mailed out. I actually took this board to hardware class for the motherboard lecture, and ended up showing it to the class. Lovely piece of work it is. About a week later, the other 3 components arrived, and I got down to building and overclocking the thing that weekend. I did take a few pictures too!
The parts:
Pre-installation. The old hardware! YE SHALL BE MISSED BABIES! (MESSY MESSY MESSY CABLING):
RAM on board:
Board, heatsink, and RAM:
And finally some beauty shots of everything mounted in the case. Much better cabling!:
Now, I only ran into one issue when first starting up. I had the RAM in the wrong channels, but that was a quick fix. I reinstalled Windows 7, activated it, installed essential apps, then went to overclocking. This wasn't as easy as my e8400 was, but I'm 24 hours stable at 4Ghz.
Took a bit of voltage and some learning of new terms, but, over the span of 2 days, it made it to rock solid stable! I believe 67 degrees was my maximum temperature! I can't wait to get a new PSU for this thing, along with a GTX470 and some watercooling! :D (Yeah, I'm gonna venture into a custom loop)
Some things that I really like about the new build... Hmmm. Rock solid stable. No instabilities, even over long periods of time. The thing has been up for 11 days before restarting for updates, and it was still solid! I think getting rid of the Xonar DX was a good idea! Another thing, variable processor speed! Not only does it underclock itself massively when idle, it also adjusts clockspeed to match load! So, when idle, it uses a 9x multipler. 9x200=1800 or 1.8Ghz. I have seen the multiplier vary anywhere from 9 to 20, all steps! So, instead of just 6x and 9x like my e8400, this will do anywhere between 9x and 20x depending on how fast it needs to go! Idle temperatures in this case are great too! It idles at about 28 degrees in my apartment, and while playing games, I haven't seen it hit above 55.
Bad Company 2. FRIGGING AMAZING. I've been playing this a TON, and I really do like where they took the battlefield series, and I'm glad they switched things up a bit, even if I do miss my commorose. Graphics are beautiful, even at the mix of medium/low I'm running to get a constant 60+ FPS. Ranks come quickly, and with ranks come unlocks, which are equally as fun. They tweaked the game a lot from the beta. You seem to run a bit faster, weapon switching is a bit more fluid. Game play seems a bit more fluid, frame rate wise as well. The new maps are really fun to play on. I've mainly been playing conquest with my friend -=99th=-Airborne, but Rush is pretty fun too. I'm already almost rank 20, and I've unlocked all the assault tree, and I'm moving through medic and engineer. They've changed it a bit. Instead of Assault getting the medic equipment, they get ammo. The medic now has the light machine guns. It's kind of annoying, but the LMGs are really easy to use in this game, so I can't complain. All of the engineer main weapons that are specific to the engineer are silenced. Kind of weird as well. I'm really liking the engineer's AKS-74U though. Brings back memories of COD4. Hmm... I find the only gun worth using in the assault kit is the M16A2. Really high accuracy, damage, and fire rate. Good feel to it too. Getting knifed is getting annoying. Seems as though you can put a clip into a rushing sniper and still get knifed. So, even though hit reg has improved, it's still iffy.
I purchased a 15 man Teamspeak 3 from Bargainvoice. Overall, I've been very pleased with the quality of it. It's mainly used for myself and friends to chat, and for Airborne and I to chat in game because VOIP is still iffy. We hope to expand the number of players on our Teamspeak. Maybe get Airborne's airborne friends to join. If anyone is interested in the info for the Teamspeak, just post in the comments section. I'll get back to you on it.
It's 2AM, and I'm just glad I could get this "quick" blog post done. So, I'm off to bed for some reading, then some sleep.
Cheers,
-Jon
PS:
Mr.Snipar | ToxicInsanity CAN|AiM "The Canadian"