The Upgrade! *Cue Dramatic Music*

First off, Happy New Year! 2009 was a hell of a year for technology and I was proud to keep (for the most part) up to date on it!

Next up, Steam Sale. Freaking EPIC! Lots of great deals for really cheap. For 75 bucks, I ended up running off with Burnout Paradise Ultimate Box, Borderlands + DLC, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, STALKER: Clear Sky, and the Unreal Deal pack. I'd say close to 150 dollars in games for 75 bucks, but I didn't do the math, so I may be a tad off. I also got Nick into CS Source, he purchased a copy at 14.99 the day before it went on sale for 4.99... Tough luck, but such is life. He'll get the most out of the game.

Hardware side of things, I just recently got an XFX GTX275 from my friend (And host) Corie. I traded my GTX260 along with a little bit of cash for the card, and in my eyes, the extra 10FPS in some games is well worth it, and it'll definitely help me when I get Bad Company 2. For Christmas, I had, of course, received my second Acer H233H, and I couldn't be happier. Matching dual monitors is much better than having the 23 and the odd 20. Of course, Jon being Jon, he can't decide if he wants to keep the 20" monitor, or sell it. I could probably get about 100 dollars out of the thing, or, I could save it for a future project. (Details soon!)

So, onto my upgrade! With so many new games coming out that are better optimized for quad core solutions, I have decided that instead of a laptop, I would be much better off to do a platform upgrade! And what better platform for a guy on a bit of a budget than the P55/i5 combo! I was originally looking at grabbing a Core i7 920, but for the cost of the motherboard and processor alone, I could get 8Gb of RAM, an SLI capable P55 board, and an i5 750 Quad core. In fact, the i5/Motherboard/RAM is CHEAPER than just the motherboard and the i7 920. Also, I don't believe I'll need hyperthreading or 32 PCI-e x16 lanes, or even triple channel RAM. (No matter how much I would want those things anyway) So, my choice of parts right now as standing is the Core i5 750 quad core processor, an MSI P55-GD65 motherboard, and 2 4Gb kits of some Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM running at 1600Mhz.

I chose the i5 because of it's overclockability, price and best of all, it's a quad. Plus I have no need for hyperthreading with just gaming going on, and the occasional virtual machine. The MSI P55-GD65 was chosen due to the fact that it's gotten a load of good reviews, seems to have some decent features for the price, board layout is good, and it supports SLI if needed. My other choice, and it's dependent on if I want to spring the extra for it, would be the EVGA P55 FTW board. This board would be chosen for it's overclocking features, such as triple bios, cmos reset BUTTONS, LGA775 mounting holes, and an extremely robust and thought out bios, making it one of the best, if not THE best P55 overclocking boards. Seriously, the board reminds me of my DFI on CRACK. It makes me LUST for it. Though that is a little corny. The RAM was chosen mainly because of the price on it, but also because of the fact that it's low profile. Speeds are very decent, and Corsair is an extremely good name in the computer industry. Great customer support, amazing RAM, amazing cases, and amazing power supplies.

The reason I needed low profile RAM was due to the fact that I'll be recycling my NH-U12P with the push/pull NF-P12s on it. I'm hoping it will be enough to allow me to push my beast to 4Ghz while retaining a decent temperature. The one great thing about Noctua is that they provide newer mounting hardware for free! That's right, all you need is the invoice for your NH-U12P or similar heatsink, send it in, tell them what you need, and they'll send you the new hardware, free of charge. So, I'll be ordering my LGA1156 hardware very soon. (I forgot to bring the invoice home this weekend to scan, so I'll send it back with Dad on Sunday)

Anyway, that there is my planned hardware upgrade, in total, it should cost me about 556 before taxes and shipping, and I believe the parents are eventually going to be paying for half of it. (Around tax return time) For my old hardware, I have a few choices...

Choice number 1. Sell the old hardware. I can always sell the old hardware and make a bit of money off of it. If I push hard enough, I can probably get about 250 out of the motherboard, processor, and RAM, even if I have to part it out. This would mesh nicely with my upgrade plan, as then instead of my upgrade costing me half of the total, it's more like half the total -250 dollars. This has it's merits, and combined with selling the 20" LCD, my upgrade could be essentially free.

Choice number 2. Keep the parts, and build a PC for here at home! This is something that has really been nagging at me for a while. Last semester, I had to deal with the netbook for 2 days while here in Amherst. That was all fine and dandy when I was hanging out with Kristin, or with the guys, or doing something, but when I DIDN'T have anything to do, it got boring REALLY fast. I love my little netbook to death, but it can't play anything intensive gamewise. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm running Windows 7 on the machine. Anyway, so I could keep my Lanparty board, my e8400, and my 4Gb of Redlines, put those into an Antec 300 case along with a 500Gb Western Digital hard drive, a 500w PSU (maybe smaller, Antec or some other GOOD name), cheapo Samsung DVD Drive, slap a cheap heatpipe cooler on the processor, and drop in one of the newer Eco 9800GTs that don't require a 6 pin power connector. Or, hey, if the price is right at the time, why not a 4870 or a GTX260? It'll only be driving that 20" Samsung LCD, so I don't think I'll need that powerful of a video card. GTS250 would even be a good choice!

Of course, both of these are great ideas, and since I'll probably be working 1 shift a week at the beast that is Wallyworld, I'll have a little extra income for these fun things. (They want me to come back Saturdays, but I'll only do it if they can promise that I work until 6 at the latest. Saturday evening is for Kristin or the guys, not for Walmart. Money isn't worth taking away time spent with them.) I'll ultimately decide once I do the upgrade (which will be rather soon I should hope! Probably after the 12th of January, rest of the Student loan is in).

Classes this semester are kinda boring. 3 squishy classes as I like to call them. Lots of writing and boring things. Systems Analysis and Design, Technical reading and writing, and Project Management. We also have Database and Programming (VB). I'll probably find all of these unattractive and to be frank, extremely boring. The 2 good classes that we do have are Unix (We gets to play with Linuxeses! :B) and... HARDWARE! My absolute favorite most anticipated course of this whole common year. Of course, I know I could pass the course right now, considering the course outcome is "dismantle and put together a computer", which is laughable thinking about the number of PCs that I have built or upgraded or fixed. Of course, I'll do the course, and I'll pass with absolute flying colors.

Anyway, with the lack of sleep the first week back, I'm kind of dragging right now, so I'm going to head for bed. I have to visit Wallyworld for my pay check and a chat with management tomorrow. (Worked all Christmas break, decent pay I hope! :))

Oh, and PS, Baconsalt is probably one of the most godly inventions ever in the history of seasoned salts. TRY IT.

Cheers,

-Jon

Rainmeter

I think I might be in love. And no, it's not Windows Sidebar. Screw that! I've moved over to Rainmeter [Link], a fully customizable monitoring skin. It's simply beautiful. Of course, there is much much more you can do with it than what I have shown here, but this is just from a night or two of playing with the default Enigma skins. The skins are extremely easy to modify as well! My modifications have been simple, but it took me a little bit to figure out. I added names to the weather widgets, and for the RSS feed, I changed it from 3 RSS and 1 ATOM feed over to 3 RSS feeds. All with some basic tweaking of the INI files. Overall, performance wise, it uses a lot less memory than Windows sidebar, and does almost everything it does and more. At the moment, Rainmeter is using 13Mb of RAM. If I had sidebar open, it would be chewing on about 60-80Mb doing the same things. The only things I miss from Windows Sidebar are the visual graphs, and how it doesn't minimize to the desktop when hitting Win+D. Of course, with a simple download of some new skins, I can easily fix the problem of the visual graphs, but I'm happy with this right now. As for minimizing to desktop, I still don't have any idea how to fix that. I also find that while in game, performance stutters about every 5 seconds with Rainmeter open. That was an easy, but slightly annoying fix, I just wrote a simple batch file to taskill it while in game, and bound it to one of the G keys on my G15. Then, another G key reopens Rainmeter on close. Overall, I'm very happy with Rainmeter, and urge those of you who want a pretty and functional sidebar replacement to check it out.

Games Games Games!

Haven’t posted in a while so I thought I’d do a little update.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying Windows 7, both on my desktop and netbook. I haven’t had any trouble with either so far, so if you’re still on the fence about upgrading, go for it. Victor moved over to Windows 7, and he is already enjoying it. Although it took a bit to build an ISO from the digitalriver student copy, it was worth it in the end. Windows 7 Pro for 40 dollars? Well, it’s not free like my MSDNAA, but it’s still a hell of a good deal.

The majority of my time lately has been taken up by school and homework, making sure my everyday tasks in my apartment are completed, and sleeping enough so I don’t pass out in class. The majority of my spare time beyond that has been spent either browsing the web, or playing new games! I’ll get to the new games in a little bit. First of all though, future upgrades.

The netbook really isn’t cutting it, processing-wise. So, my first upgrade that will be happening very soon will be a new notebook! I’ve been looking around for ages, and I really like the form factor of the netbooks, I just wish they were more powerful. Enter the affordable ultra portables, namely the Asus UL series. Currently available is the UL20, UL30, UL80, and the UL50. 12.1”, 13.3”, 14”, and 15.6” respectively. The advantage of the Asus UL series lies in the 14” model, the UL80VT-A1. It has a 1.3Ghz Intel SU7300, 4Gb of DDR3 RAM, a 320Gb hard drive, and switchable graphics- An on board Intel GMA 4500MHD for energy savings, and a discreet 512Mb nVidia GT210M for multimedia. One of the best things about this laptop, besides its tested 9.5 hour battery life while browsing, would be the fact that the CPU is overclockable to 1.73Ghz, while only dropping about an hour off that battery life. That’s a nice little performance boost, for an ultra portable, ultra thin laptop. Of course, I was very set on this, and was going to order it very soon, but Mother and Father made me an offer I couldn’t let go. If I waited to get a laptop until after Christmas, they would put 450 dollars toward it. And if anything comes up in the boxing week sale on NCIX, I might even be able to order then. So, I decided to wait on it. And that was, of course, a good idea. The UL30VT has been announced, with the same specifications as the UL80VT, minus the DVD drive, and it’s smaller and lighter. Mid December release. So, with this, I’ll be able to game while at home on the weekends, as well as not have to tote around a charger while out and about at school or at friends places. And the processing power is much greater than my netbook, which is just amazing for something with such a great battery life. Anyway, enough of this notebook, let’s get onto the games.

There have been a lot of really big releases and some not so big, but definitely worth trying out. First off, I did not, and WILL NOT purchase Modern Warfare 2. Why? Because, unlike some people, I know what boycotting is. I assume if you’re reading this blog, you probably already know my thoughts on Modern Warfail 2, so I won’t go into details. I’ll save it for another blog post.

So, the past few months I’ve been gaming in my spare time. The latest title that I just played through was Borderlands, an amazing RPS [Role playing shooter]. It’s like a mix of Diablo, and COD4, in a Fallout 3 style environment. 2 of the most amazing features of this game would definitely be the art style, all of the textures are hand drawn, and the random weapon generator. There is something like 17 billion different guns, if not more, that can be made by the generator. Amazing. And the more you play through the game, the better the guns get. So, first play through, guns are average, second, it’s like holy shit this is awesome!, and third, simply blows your mind. Of course, as you play through, the enemies get harder as well, but you get to keep your weapons and level from the previous play through.  But yes, I went through that pretty quickly. Overall, very fun game, and ran very smoothly at 1920x1080, all settings on high. [45-60fps]

Next game would be a shooter from Futuremark, the benchmarking company. Multiplayer first person shooter, based in space. Basic gist is that it’s 40 years in the future, something impacted the moon causing a giant crater, and now 2 different factions are fighting over control of mineral heavy portions of the moon. The game supports 16 vs 16 multiplayer, dedicated servers, and free downloadable content when it’s released. Game play is really fun, albeit a bit confusing at first. You’re in space, so there is no gravity. You have a jetpack though. It’s just getting used to having everything going on around you, and not having a true up or down. There is only 1 weapon, the assault rifle, but it’s multipurpose. Fires either automatic, or while scoped, it will fire 10 shots at once, acting like a sniper rifle. It also fires your grenades. Emp [shuts down the suit and all of the control/sound until it reboots. You can still turn and shoot though, just no targeting reticule or sound.], ice, which is the smoke screen, and an explosive grenade, which is self explanatory. Sadly, the game pretty much rapes my system, which isn’t a slouch at all. I can run the game at the highest settings, 2x AA, but I need to run it at 1280x720. It looks good in windowed mode, but when expanding to full screen, it makes me vomit slightly. Overall, really fun, albeit confusing as all hell at first.

After this, we have Audiosurf! This game is simply awesome. You can upload any track from your collection of music, it will convert it to an audiosurf track, and then you ride down it, collecting coloured blocks, while evading the grey ones. There are different game modes as well, but I have yet to explore them. Generally speaking, the faster the song, the faster and harder the track. It’s a game that needs to be tried to get the full experience, and try you can, because Steam has a demo available. And hey, if you like it, it’s only 10 dollars! It’s what I consider a chill game; it allows you to occupy your mind while you just listen to music. I find that a lot of the songs by The Killers are really fast paced, such as Mr. Brightside. Really fun, check it out.

Other titles purchased but yet to be played a lot, are the Sins of a Solar Empire expansion Entrenchment, really fun, addition of star bases and a few other things, Knights of the Old Republic for the PC, got it off Steam with Audiosurf, one of my favourite titles on the Xbox, so I should enjoy it on the PC whenever I get around to it.  The latest title would be Left 4 Dead 2, mainly due to PEER PRESURE. A lot of my friends are going to be playing it, so I thought I’d grab it and enjoy it, especially at 38 dollars in the Steam black Friday sale.

And of course, I’ve been playing 2142 as usual.

Probably going to see me get into the evil card game again, Yu-Gi-Oh. I guess there are a few guys that play in the dorm, and I still have all of my cards left over, along with my macro monarch and warrior toolbox decks, so I should be well armed. I just hope they play advanced format, because if they don’t, I’ll try to convert them over. I hate playing traditional, as it seems a lot less fair to me.

So, that’s the blog post for tonight, I’m going to really try hard to get things updated more.

Cheers,

-Jon

Gloade's Build

Well, it's been a while since I've posted, but yes, I AM still alive and kicking. I'm almost done at my current job, and will be moving soon to Truro to start college in the fall. I will be attending NSCC and taking Information Technology. From what I could tell from the Jumpstart tour, the school is very nice, and the instructors are very knowledgeable. I will be moving on August 8th, and will be living in my own apartment.

On another note, Victor will be down from Ontario on the 28th of July. He'll be staying in Nova Scotia for 3 whole weeks! I can't wait, as I haven't seen him in about a year. The shenanigans that we'll get into are going to be priceless.

Hardware wise, things have been a little lax. I modded the fan on my power supply. I removed the noisy stock ball bearing fan, and replaced it with a nice and silent NF-P12, just like the beasts in my case. Overall, it was a very easy mod, and only took me about 15 minutes to get everything wired and hooked back up. Since then, no more silly whining noises from the fan, and everything seems to be running a bit cooler.

I also replaced my main hard drive with a 640Gb Western Digital black. Dual processors, and 32Mb of cache. I notice that Windows tends to load a little faster, which makes me happy. Oh, I also had to format the box. After leaving it on for 7 days straight, it decided to not be able to find Winload.exe on boot. Okay, that's fine. I just reinstalled and off I went. Everything is running faster, and a lot better since the format.

On the headphone front, I recently ordered and received a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros. I thought the Etymotic's were good, but nothing that I have can seem to beat these wonderful closed back circumaural cans. Overall, I'm extremely happy with the purchase, and would recommend them to anyone. The response is fairly flat, they have a nice and wide soundstage, and they're very durable as well. Very pleased overall.

Game-wise, I've been playing some Counterstrike Source as of late. I'm not overly spectacular at the game, but the one life per round thing really teaches you something about valuing your digital life. Going from Counterstrike back to 2142 was quite the easy transition though, and netted me a lovely 4 kill to death ratio in the first round that I played back. Before Counterstike I went on a little Call Of Duty binge. That actually went over quite well. I find the game is great for relieving stress.  I also picked up a couple of other titles that I have yet to really play. Quake Wars Enemy Territory, GTA4, and on Steam, Fallout 3. I guess I played for a day or so on Fallout 3, until I had to format. I haven't reinstalled it as of yet. My system handle the game at max settings, with 4xAA and 15xAF like a champ. Practically a constant 60FPS, if not better. Very beautiful game too. No wonder it received Game Of The Year.

On the PC building front, I recently did a build for my good friend Mark. He wanted a decent rig that would last him for a little while before needing to upgrade. I did it for under 1350.

AMD Phenom II x4 940 Black Edition @ 3.0Ghz
8Gb Mushkin EM series @ 800Mhz [1.8v]
Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P
eVga GTX 260 Core 216 [Stock clock speeds
LG DVD Burner
Western Digital Caviar Black 640Gb Dual Processor [32Mb Cache]
Western Digital Caviar Black 1Tb Dual Processor [32Mb Cache]
Antec Truepower Blue 750w modular
Antec 900
Stock Antec Tricools. 2x 120mm Intakes, 1x 120mm exhaust, 1x 200mm exhaust, all medium speed.
23" Acer H233H bmid
Windows Vista Ultimate x64 SP1

Overall, very fun build, and it went very smoothly. Oh, right, there are pictures too!

Enjoy.

-Jonathon

Shall we dance?

Woooh! New 23" Acer H233H BMID. Very happy with this monitor. Absolutely blows my Samsung out of the water when it comes to color accuracy and brightness/contrast. The resolution is a touch higher than the Samsung, sitting at 1920x1080, so it's a bit harder on the video card, but everything plays on it great. The best part about upgrading to the 23" though, was keeping the 20" as a second monitor! Yes, I've got it sitting to the left of the 23", and it works well for instant messaging and things I want to monitor while doing more important things on the 23". If I knew how helpful that dual monitors was going to be, I would have gotten a second a loooooooooooooong time ago.

NEW IEMS!
Yep, ordered some in ear monitors. I was torn between 3 entry level phones, the Shure SE115s, Etymotic ER-6is, and the Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 3s. I ended up going with the ER-6is, even though they are the oldest. From the reviews I had read they were the most accurate of the 3, although they lacked bass. I really don't know what those reviewers were smoking, but I don't want any of it, because the bass on these things is perfect. Not enough to overpower the highs and mids like my EP-630s, but not so little as to ruin the music listening experience.

All I can say about these buds is... Wow. I never knew what I was really missing in music until now. MP3s are okay, but my lossless collection really shines. I could hear things I never could before. Slight coughs, breathing, people in the background, etc... It's amazing.

Anyway, that was just a quick post to update.

Cheers,
-Jon

GTX 260

Well, it has graced me with it's presence. The GTX 260 was sitting on my bed when I arrived home from work. I quickly set to work opening the shipping box, and removing the internals.

Such a beautiful box. Lets see the back.

Alright, down to business, let's open it up...

The Accessories...

The treasure at last.



And now we get to take it out of the packaging. The card must weigh about 4 pounds...

The size in comparison to my arm. The card is 10.5" long...

Out of its anti-static packaging.

This card in particular has no backplate. This denotes that it's the 55nm revision.

Here is my case, with the 8800GT installed. It does look a little messy cable wise, and it's dusty for sure, but there is a clean path from front to back for airflow. All cabling is tucked as close to the back panel as possible.

This is a size comparison between the 8800GT and the GTX260. The card is MASSIVE.

And here would be an awful picture of the GTX 260 installed.

Now, stock clocked, the card comes in at 576/1242/999 [Core/shader/memory], And I managed to overclock it a little bit. Its currently sitting at 700/1500/1140. It passes 10 rounds of the crysis warhead benchmark tool without any artifacting or locking up, and max recorded temps durring the bench were 74 degrees celcius. EDIT: Well, I tested stability in Warhead today, and after playing for about 10 minutes, I got some massive artifacting. I decreased the clocks to superclocked speeds, [626/1350/1107] and everything runs fine now. EDIT2: Well, looks like the memory on this card just sucks, so I have it clocked at 650/1400/1050 now, and I don't see any artifacts in any games. Oh well, for what I'm playing, more than fast enough. I managed to pump out an average framerate of 30.71 at 1680x1050, all enthusiast settings, no anti-aliasing. I beleive my average framerate was still around 30, playing through the first level on high settings. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I really like the fact that the card underclocks itself while in regular 2D mode, or low power 3D mode. Very energy efficient.

Anyway, that was my blog post for tonight. I'll be playing through FarCry 2 over the next 2 days, and I hope that impresses me, as I've been waiting. [Oh, I already have a copy, the one that came with the GTX 260 is going to be sold with the 8800GT.]

Cheers,

It's on its way.

Hoorah! My GTX 260 Core 216 is on the way, [55nm from what I hear] and for a hell of a lot less than I thought it'd be. Ncix had the wonderful XFX model on for 240 dollars, with a 30 dollar mail in rebate. I paid 297 after shipping and taxes. [Just a shout for Purolator, you're amazing.] Stellar deal if you ask me. Of course, there were only 30 of them, so I scooped one up quick. XFX being my favorite graphics card manufacturer, after all. The bundle also includes Farcry 2, which of course I already have, so I'll be selling that along with my 8800GT. I'm hoping to get around 140 out of both of them together, as that would bring the cost of the card down to less that half of the cost after shipping/taxes/MIR. The best part about this is, the card arrives Monday. I work durring the day, get off at 4:30, and have the next two days off! So that means 2 whole days of GTX 260-lovin' for Jon. My plans are to test frame rates in Battlefield 2142, then play through Farcry 2 after overclocking.

I was also quite suprised today when I got home from work, to find a package from Nick on my desk. I open it up, and inside lies Sins Of A Solar Empire. I guess me talking to him the night previous about him taking half of my games to trade in must have motivated him to get me it. *cough cough*. Anyway, if you don't know what Sins is, please, do yourself a favor, and download the demo. I was simply blown away by the scale and complexity of the game, yet it's easy to pick up and play for a few hours. And trust me, you'll have to play for a few hours if you want to finish a match. It took me 5 hours to beat a single AI on a small sized map. Something like 18 planets. I finally did it though. =P I do strongly suggest giving the demo a try, and supporting Stardock and their lack of DRM, if it really matters to you. The fact that the game is only 30 dollars is a godsend as well. No disc in the drive, and you only need the CD key to play online/ update.

I've also been playing with the beta of Windows 7 on the Acer Aspire One. Actually, I'm currently posting from that right now. The beta is nice and snappy, and seems like a very viable alternative to XP for netbooks. The interface is nice, the new paint/calculator is nice, the ability to disable almost any windows component is a godsend too. I really do enjoy the new aero peek, and the mouse gestures. So far, I'd say I prefer it over XP on my Aspire One, just because of the interface. I'll be upgrading the AAO to 1.5Gb of RAM here soon, so that should improve performance vastly. [Idling at 500Mb of RAM!? Oh my! It's not that bad though. Firefox open with 4 heavy tabs along with anti virus software nets me 570Mb used.] I'll be sure to post an update.

Cheers,

Bloody Hell...

That 1Tb hard drive was a total bitch to install...

It all started when the hard drive arrived with the Jessomes parts. This, of course, was the day that the power went out, and I was 2 hours late for work. How pleasant. Anyway, I get home at 4:30, and the power is still out. I sit in the realatively cold, unpowered house, enjoying a Baconator from Wendys. The burger was delicious, but the cold ate at me. Eventually, getting tired of sitting around doing nothing, I head up to my room, open the blinds, and start assembling the Jessomes PC. I got as far as installing the front fan and power supply, when the lights came on and my clock started flashing! Halleluajh! Er, yes, quite enjoyable, the power is back on... Anyway, I pop the side panel onto the case, push it aside, and pull open my own. I grab a SATA cable and the 1Tb from the shipping box and go to work, first unplugging the 500Gb Seagate, and then installing the 1Tb Western Digital. My plan was, -mainly because I'm lazy- to format the 1Tb as D:/, plug in the 500Gb, transfer all files to the newly appointed D:/, and not have to worry about chaning any directories. Of course, my computer thought otherwise. I boot up after installing the 1Tb, and am greeted by a System Disk Error, Insert system disk and press any key to continue. Pleasant. So, I restarted, and played with a few bios settings to no avail. "Alright," I tell myself, "I'll shut down, plug the 500 back in, and see what's wrong." After googling around for a clean 2 hours, I found out that although the operating system was located on C:/, the bootloader was located on D:/, for some reason or another. Okay, so all I had to do was download and burn a vista recovery disc, mark my C:/ as active, shut down, disconnect all hard drives except for C:/, boot from the disk, and repair my start up files. After that, everything was peachy. I plugged in the 1Tb, formatted as D:/, shut down, plugged in the 500, transferred the files, formatted the 500, and it now resides in Nick's PC. We're all happy.

The hard drive itself I haven't benchmarked or anything, but it is quiet, and it is cool, and that's the important thing, considering it's for media storage, not for the operating system.

I've also solved my problem with Teamspeak. The issue was whenever Teamspeak was open, no other application would produce sound. Firefox, Digsby, iTunes, etc, etc, etc... No sound, except from Teamspeak. After playing with it for a while, I decided to try switching from DirectSound to WAVE, and now everything works fine.

I've also decided that I'll be getting an eVga GTX 260 Core 216 55nm version. It's clocked at 675Mhz on the core, 1458Mhz on the shaders, and 2300Mhz on the memory [effective]. It also comes with a free copy of Mirrors Edge, which I'll likely sell for a couple bucks. Looking at benchmarks, this model should pull approximately double the frame rates in some games, in comparison to my 8800GT. And knowing me, I'll be overclocking it a bit further. [700Mhz core, 1500Mhz Shader, 2400Mhz memory, anyone?]

So, I'll leave you with a bit of work I did in Sony Vegas, and then I'm off to play some battlefield. Oh, and the Jessomes build went great, they were really impressed.

Just playing with Vegas.

Zac's PC.

Hello again everyone. Been a while. I'm going to do a slight look at Zac's PC that I built, and an upcomming build for the neighbors.
For starters, Zac's PC was built around the same time that my e8400 arrived. His PC was brand new, other than for my e4400 and 160Gb Western Digital that I used in the build. The specifications are as follows:

• Intel Core2Duo e4400 @ 2.66Ghz


• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro


• 2Gb Patriot Signature Line DDR2-800


• DFI Blood Iron P35-T2RL [40mm Northbridge fan mod]


• 160Gb Western Digital Caviar


• XFX GeForce 9800GT


• Antec Sonata III w/ 2x Scythe Kaze Jyuni fans


• Antec EarthWatts 500w PSU

All this running Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. He mainly uses it for gaming, and it seems to do the job fairly well. He's quite impressed with it, anyway.

The next build will be the neighbors PC, the Jessomes. I chose to make something budget gamer, so that Nick and Kirk could enjoy themselves, while still keeping the cost down. The build is as follows:

• Intel Pentium Dual Core e5200 @ 2.5Ghz


• 2Gb Kingston Valu-RAM


• Asus P5QL-Pro P43 based motherboard


• 250Gb Western Digital Caviar


• eVga 9600GT SC 512Mb edition


• Coolermaster Elite RC-330 [W/2x Coolermaster 120mm fans]


• Seasonic SS-ET400 400w PSU

The build here will accelerate at not only gaming, but basic, everyday tasks, as well as media usage. This build will be running Windows XP Home 32 bit.
Along with the Jessomes build order, I purchased a Steelseries QcKPad mini for Nick, a DvD drive for Kristens PC, and a 1Tb Western Digital Caviar Green for myself, to replace my current 500Gb Seagate. The 1Tb will be dedicated to media, whereas the 500Gb will become my main drive for FRAPs footage, of Battlefield 2142.
On the topic of Battlefield 2142, I've been playing it A LOT lately, so much as to join an online community called Tactical Gamer. [This was probably just after my e8400 arrived] I quickly became involved with the community under my alias, Dictate. I started out looking around, and playing with all of the various In House Squads [Essentially a small contingent of TG that promotes tighter team play and a more clan-like experience between it's members.] Eventually I came across the 55th Infantry Division, and quickly went about finding out how to become a member, which Stark was so nice as to help me with. I joined |TG-55| early in November, and have been happy at TG ever since. Sadly though, not all is fun and games, and while my In House Squad is lots of fun, I want to game outside of the hours they do, so I decided to jump on my DakNaydor alias, and rip it up, run and gun style. [TG is more tactic than anything.] Nick and I play together, a lot, and he holds 3 soldiers with a KTD about 2.4, and one of those has a KTD above 3. My KTD on Dak has been increasing a fair ammount, from a lowly 1.07, all the way up to 1.34 [current]. Nick still gets way too mad at the game, and I really don't understand why. Anyway, the run and gun is extremely satisfying, and has made me aspire to become better at the game. I've played with a lot of the best players in the game [Such as those from the larger clans], and a lot of really big Euro players as well [German_fighter, JamesRyan08] I've shown marked improvement, and I'm overall happy with myself. I'll be posting videos and screenshots up eventually, which should be lots of fun.

Here's a teaser of what's to come.

The 4Ghz Mark.

Well, I've finally hit the 4Ghz mark, thanks to my e8400.

The magical processor came only two weeks ago, in all it's glory. Of course, I had to wait an extra day or two to install it, as my Noctuas and Asus Xonar DX were still in transit. Of course, when the parts DID arrive, I couldn't help but express my happiness by squealing with glee.

It took about 2 hours to rip everything out of my case and reinstall it, and to get it booted up. I installed the Xonar drivers, and all was good. On my meager X-530s, I can't really notice much of a difference between the Xonar and onboard, but it really does shine in games. Hardware audio FTW.

I then booted into the bios, changed the multiplier to x8, and pushed the FSB to 450. Voltage was bumped to 1.28, and it primed happily for 14 hours. I then bumped the FSB up to 500, and the voltage up to 1.344. It primed nicely for 24 hours. So, that makes me stable at 4Ghz for 24 hours, which in my books, is stable enough.

So, now my PC specs are...

Intel Core2Duo e8400 @ 4Ghz [500x8] [1.344v, 1.328 load]
Noctua NH-U12P w/2xNF-P12 in push/pull configuration
DFI LanParty Dk P35-T2RS [40mm Northbridge fan mod]
4Gb Mushkin Redlines, DDR2-1000 [Operating at 1000Mhz, untuned]
XFX 8800GT
Asus Xonar DX PCI-e sound card
Coolermaster CM690 w/ 7x Noctua NF-P12 fans
Fortron Source Power FSP-GLN600 600w 85% efficiency PSU
Samsung 206bw 20" LCD
Logitech G15 keyboard
Logitech G9 mouse w/Razer eXactmat
Logitech X-530 5.1 speaker system
Sennheiser PC151 headset

[A side note, I just recieved the PC151s today, and overall they're superb. They're both comfortable and they sound good.]

-Jonathon

Everything is cold now...

It's that time of the year again, and it's getting cold outside. I really dislike the cold, but the upside is my room is going to be a bit better for overclocking.

Anyway, I'm quite bored right now. I know there's things I can do, but I just don't want to do them. I've got 2 models to build, a 600Mhz Celeron based system to play with, a room to clean, and games to play, but I just don't feel like doing it for some reason. Maybe it's because I've done so much in the past week that these past two days I've just wanted to chill out and relax. I certianly did that alright.

The upside of last week is that I did make a bit of money, other than what I made on my pay check. I got 40 dollars out of people for 3 separate repairs, 10 for 2 and 20 for another. I'm going to stop charging 10 dollars now, and charge constant 20 for repairs. I've been letting that slip a little too much. That 40 dollars could have easily been 60, and I'm a bit upset about that. Oh well, hopefully we'll have a few builds comming up that will rip things up, and make their owners happy. Two of my friends are looking for builds, one with a 2 grand budget, and the other with a 650 budget. I'll have fun with both.

Last night I finally got around to patching my theme files, third time is the charm I guess. It was a bit confusing at first, having a 64 bit OS and all, as to where to place my theme files, as they exist in both System32 and SysWOW64. That, and I needed the 64 bit SP1 files, which I didn't have either. Anyway, everything is running quite nicely now, and I'm running the Aquos 2 skin by yoitzalvin, the 22px size. I find it's a lovely theme, and really puts a spin for the better on the Aero interface.

I'm also currently trying Trillian Pro 3 and Firefox 3. I do like Trillian, but Firefox has some issues, that could probably be easily fixed. Other than that, not much else new there.

Anyway, I work in the morning, so that's enough for this post.

G'night,
-Jonathon

Crysis Warhead

Well, let's put it this way:

CRYSIS ON STEROIDS.

Now that I have that out of my system, let's talk about gameplay. The storyline follows Sargeant Michael Sykes, AKA: Psycho, in a parallel story to the original Crysis. Psycho is given the task of making sure the Koreans don't obtain a "secret weapon" by any means necessary.

The game is mostly fighting against the Koreans, which I found a lot more amusing than fighting the aliens. Being able to manipulate the battle is always the most fun part of Crysis. You do what you want to do in the battle. Like I said in my previous post, you can use stealth, brute strength, confusion, or a combination of both to take out the enemy, although this game is definitely focused on brute strength. Everywhere you look there's rocket launchers, explosives, and even grenade launchers. You almost always have a full pack of grenades. Really, everything you learned from Crysis can be applied, but more effectively now.

The multiplayer included, Crysis Wars, is a spectacular adition to the 30 dollar title, and functions like a stand alone game. Consider it along the lines of the battlefield series, combined with Call Of Duty 4, plus nanosuits. The only thing that would make it better was a ranking system with unlocks/stats, and more vehicle maps.

Overall, I'm quite impressed with Crysis Warhead. It's a lot better than Crysis, both story wise, and performance wise. For anyone with a decent little system, I can strongly recommend dropping the 30 dollars on what has so far been the best shooter for me this year.

-Jon

My System Specs.

Here they are, in the full:

• Core2Duo e4400@ 3.0Ghz


• Noctua NH-U12P w/ 2x NF-P12 in Push/Pull


• 4Gb Mushkin Redlines 2x2Gb @ 1000Mhz [600Mhz]


• DFI LP Dk P35-T2RS [40mm fan modded to northbridge]


• XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog edition [700 l 1750 l 875]


• 320Gb Western Digital Caviar


• 500Gb Seagate Barracuda


• Fortron GLN-X600 85% efficiency power supply


• Coolermaster CM690


• 3x Noctua NF-P12 1300 RPM fans


• 3x Scythe Kaze Jyuni 1200 RPM fans


• Samsung 206bw 20″ LCD


• Logitech X-530 5.1 speaker system


• Logitech G15 revision 2


• Logitech G9


• Razer eXactmat [Using speed side]


• Windows Vista Ultimate x64 [SP1]

Soon to be added is a 640gb Western Digital SE16 drive to replace my media drive, the 500Gb Seagate. I'm also going to be replacing all of my fans with 120mm Noctua NF-P12s, like the ones on my heatsink. They're really nice fans, and they're quiet. I also believe that my brother and sister are getting me an e8400 for Christmas, which will be a great gift. Then all I need is a new videocard. But the video card isn't as important.

-Jon

Crysis

So yesterday, while in Moncton, I picked up a copy of Crysis, Crytek's beautiful first person shooter. The game is currently the most technologically advanced game available, and brings most systems to their knees. I'm running the game on all high settings, no antialiasing, at 1680x1050, and I am having no trouble at all with frame rate.

The game is simply beautiful. Standing in the jungle, the light flowing through the canopy is simply breath taking. The best part about the game though would be the open world, and the ability handle encounters how you want. Sneak into a korean base? Brute force your way in and kill everything? Make distractions and take them out one by one? All your choice. In one encounter, I'd sneak up behind a group of enemies, pick up the one in the back, activate strength, and throw him into his buddies. While they were all confused, I'd put on my cloak and run away, just out of sight. When they passed me, I'd toss a grenade into the mess of them, and they'd scatter. A couple of bullets would handle the stragglers. After encounters like that, you feel a sense of self satisfaction.

Overall, my first impressions of the game are quite positive, and I'm really enjoying it. Crysis Warhead releases on Tuesday, and I'll be getting that as well. From what I've been reading, it looks better and will run on ultra high on most average gaming rigs.

Ontario Trip

Well, I forgot to mention, that 2 weeks ago, I went off to Ontario for my 1 week paid vacation. I went up and stayed with my good friend, Victor, who is currently attending Sheridan Institute of Applied Arts [?]. He has an apartment up there, in Oakville, two bedroom, 9th floor. The view from the apartment was really nice, and overall, it was a comfortable stay.

The night before I left, I got to throw together Ewan's PC, but I'll detail that in another post.

I headed out to the Moncton airport on the 22nd, and left on the plane to Ontario at 7:30. The flight was quite smooth, and the view from the plane was spectacular. I really do enjoy flying now, and would gladly do it again, when I have the chance.

I arrived at Pearson International at around 9 o'clock, and after about a 10 minute walk, and a 10 minute wait for my bag, I was outside and talking to Victor. We waited another 10 minutes for his father to come around with the vehicle. A half hour drive, and we arrived at the apartment complex.

Once inside, I got to meet Victor's lady friend, Kailey, who lives with him. She's a really nice person, and a pleasure to stay with for the week. I can applaud her for putting up with Victor and I the entire week.

Durring the week we had gone to Square One, a mall in Mississauga, twice. Let's just say that mall is massive. While there, we found a nice little hobby shop, which had an abundance of models, action figures, mangas, paints, and cards. After mulling over the entire selection of models, I left with two. A 1/100th high grade Buster Gundam from Gundam Seed, and a 1/100th high grade Saviour Gundam from Gundam Seed Destiny. Both models are favorites of mine, and when I feel a bit more energetic. I've already started on the Buster, so it shouldn't be too much longer for the build to be completed, and the painting to start.

We also went to 2 movies while there, Step Brothers and Tropic Thunder. Both were spectacular movies, but Tropic Thunder was what I would consider better, as it was on a screen 4 times the size of Amherst's theatre screens.

Also while in Ontario we went to Canada's Wonderland, which was a nice 2 hour trip full of transfers from train, to subway, to bus. Once we arrived though, we had a lot of fun. The ride lineups were long, but worth the wait. In the 5 hours we were there, we went on a total of 5 rides. We went on the 2 wooden roller coasters, 2 steel coasters, and another ride as well. The roller coasters were fun, but the wooden ones rattled me. All together, it was a fun time.

We all visited downtown Oakville, which has some really nice shops. We walked into one store, and assumed it was a flower shop, but it ended up being an asian corner store.

Anyway, I left for home on a Saturday morning, after not the night previous. The flight was scheduled for 6:25AM, and I arrived at 4:45. It was a pleasant trip through security, and a nice 10 minute walk to get to my terminal. The size of Pearson is sheerly massive, and I really enjoyed marvelling at how big it really was.

The flight back was as smooth as the flight there, and the view was still hypnotic, although I did read the copy of CPU I picked up durring most of the flight.

I arrived at the airport in Moncton at about 8:30 in the morning, and the family, sans mother, were waiting. We mulled around the mall for a bit, and I picked up a strawberry banana smoothie for myself, and a copy of Assassin's creed for Nick.

Afterwards, we made our way home, and I visited mother, then made my way home to my waiting PC.

Anyway, That's enough for this post, I'll write about Ewan's PC later.

Cheerio,
-Jonathon

Updates, updates, updates.

Been a while, I've been busy with work, and with PC building.

Of course I've updated my own rig, changing out my motherboard, RAM, main hard drive, and heatsink for better parts.

I replaced my 2Gb of Kingston RAM with a 4Gb kit of Mushkin Redlines, wonderful RAM, great support, and a lifetime warranty. It also came with a copy of 3dmark Vantage.

My motherboard, an MSI P965 Neo-F2 was replaced with a DFI LanParty Dk P35-T2RS. It's a beautiful board, with more features than I can wrap my head around for overclocking, and it runs off of the P35 chipset from Intel, which is spectacular.

I replaced my main hard drive, a 160Gb Western Digital Caviar, with a 320Gb Western Digital Caviar. Really quiet drive, and really quick. I can notice some slight performance differences between this and my old drive.



I replaced my old heatsink, and Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, with a Noctua NH-U12P, as pictured here beside the freezer.

I've also mounted two NF-P12 fans to it, shown here.

The fans are dead silent, and push a load of air. I really do like them, and I'll be replacing all of the fans in my system with them.





Anyway, that's the upgrade log, and other than my processor now being clocked at 3Ghz, nothing else has changed but the fact that I'm running 64 bit Vista Ultimate, and the hardware changes in my log.

Cheerio,

Jon

Redlines ordered.

I ordered my Mushkin Redline 4Gb kit yesterday.

Along with that, Corie also asked me to chuck on a DFI Blood Iron motherboard and another set of Mushkin Redlines, along with 5 SATA cables. Once I recieve the money from him on Monday, I shall send the money off to NCIX. The parts should arrive by Friday, and I'll be a happy boy on my weekend off.

Of course, I'll probably end up doing absolutely nothing with the redlines other than installing them. I can't overclock my processor any higher without instabilities. So, until the next pay check, they will be 1000Mhz DDR2 running at 533Mhz. Almost seems like a waste.

Oh well, perhaps they'll find their home in a DFI P45 Lanparty Dk, or a DFI P35 Blood Iron. I know I'll probably end up going with the Blood Iron, because it's a bit cheaper, and has all the features I'll ever need, and then some.

Then, the next pay, I'll end up ordering an e8400 I believe. Perhaps a Q9450, depending on how daring I am.

-Jonathon

Coolermaster CM690!

Hooray! While at work Friday, a wonderful suprise arrived at my house.
Put her together nice and quick, along with the 4 Scythe Kaze Jyuni's I got [1200 RPM models] and now, my processor sits at a nice and cool 21 degrees idle, and 40 degrees under load.
Wuaha.
-Jon