• 15Aug 08

  Summer Update

  Well, summer is here and is almost over now. I haven't had a chance to really add to my computer, the main new addition is the case.

  It is a Cooler Master Cosmos S. It looks nice.. if not a bit bigger than I expected. The airflow is not as great as the Antec 900 (even though I have added 3 additional fans to the case). I plan on keeping this case for a while though.

  

  I look forward to the release of nehalem, and the x58 chipset. The x58 chipset is rumored to be both crossfire and sli capable, and have a bunch of great features. Since the new cpus will force people to use ddr3, I think the upgrade will be expensive, so I will start saving when I get back to college and continue my work as a butcher (I know you are jealous of my awesome job).

  

  Image thanks to VR-Zone

  On a personal note, I have decided to stop taking engineering cl@sses and move towards business. I was not enjoying the math and science like I used to, and didn't have the heart to get any more tutoring than I was getting already- which was almost daily. This should give me some more time and freedom... something I have not had much of in the past two years.

  

  Summer was a bit of a bust.. my trip to Utah to see my girlfriend did not go as well as I had hopped, my friend that I see a few times a year was pretty boring when I had him over for a weekend, and a lot of my friends are out of town or just live at college for the summer. No big deal though, the internet still keeps me connected, and I have had some time to play games.

  

  I haven't beat GTA4 yet, but I promised myself I would. I also need to get my WoW character up to level 70, and give Crysis a true chance. I was very disappointed with crysis when I first played it, and turned it off 45 minutes in- only to uninstall it a few weeks later. Now that Nvidia has released some good drivers, and Crysis has been patched a few times, it seemed like a good oppertunity to try it out. It is fun, but still doesn't really make a deep impression like games such as Half Life 2 or Bioshock.

  

  Not so sure how I feel about the new look on gamespot. It needed to have a nice wide interface, but it feels a bit odd right now. It also seems unfinished, considering pages such as the forums are STILL IN THE OLD S7YLE How can you launch a new site, but have a mash-up of content s7yles? Seems very poor to me. I will just have to get used to it I guess. Anyway, that seems like enough random junk for anyone to read. As always, feel free to comment or toss me computer part suggestions. See you guys in the forums = )

  • Posted Aug 15, 2008 4:31 am PT
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• 19Dec 07

  Winter Update

  Well, I am trying to remember everything I said in my last blog post relating to my computer. I ended up RMA'ing my video card and ram, and flashed my bios for the second time- with the newest one on EVGAs site. It seems to be stable (for the most part) now, and I haven't seen the blue screen of death since... lest hope it stays that way.

  I decided that since everything has been stable for over a month, I might as well make the dive and go for SLi. I have been in a bit of a competition for the best computer with a good friend of mine, and he was lucky enough to be able to step-up to a 512MB version of the 8800GTS on one of his last couple days of step-up availablilty. Since I am stuck with a 640 (don't get me wrong, it is an amazing card), I figured I might get a new PSU and the cheapest 8800GTS 640MB on newegg. It will be a BFG and an EVGA, and I guess they will downclock to the lowest clock setting (540MHz). I may OC them when the time comes, but I think this will be more than enough.

  

  Image thank to Newegg

  The new PSU is quite an awesome looking antec product. It is an 850 watt, modular PSU that passes the 80%+ efficiency testing. It may seem like overkill, but newegg was having one awesome deal on them ($160 US). I figured that my antec earthwatts 500W could work, but I don't think it would be wise to keep pushing a power supply 24 hours a day. This new one should do the trick, and hopefully survive to the next computer.

  

  Image thanks to Club Overclocker

  It really bums me out that the new 780i board is here, and that EVGA will only let people with the nf68 boards can step up for a small cost, even though I have an nf63 which uses the same bios even as the nf68. I might call EVGA and complain or something, but I guess it is not a big deal. I like my board, and I don't need pcie 2.0 or penryn support for a long while. Maybe in a year, I will go for a new board, but my current 680i can do all that I need it to, and hopefully stay error free. The new 780i board does look pretty slick though = )

  

  Image thanks to Newegg

  Other than computer talk, I must say I was on the verge of canning my account due to the whole Jeff Gurstmann issue. I consider him to be the life of Gamespot.com, and he will be missed greatly. I must say, however, that the hotspot podcast that week was very good at making me calm down about the issue. I was so angry at the time, that I got the first moderation on my account. This account is very old, and I was happy having a clean reccord. Atleast I got it while doing something more meaningful than dodging word ban... or getting accused of some lame moderation issue.

  Anyway, I hope that everyone is having a good winter, and have a Merry Christmas

  • Posted Dec 19, 2007 7:08 pm PT
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• 22Oct 07

  Computer issues

  Alright, felt I would make another post. A bit has happened since the last with my newish post. It seems that nvidia has a known issue with EITHER the motherboard I am using OR the graphics card (they quoted 2% occurance for any single 8800 user) and they have no idea what the problem is. I get a screen looking like this:

  

  After calling BFG for a couple of months, I think they got tired of me and agreed to give me an advaned RMA. Since I am at college, it is very difficult to be without a video card for a few weeks. I was warned by EVGA (my motherboard manufacturer) that it might be my motherboard. I tend to think that the mobo is the true problem, but I want to try to see if it is the video card before I take apart my computer.

  The most funny thing is that the issue stopped once they agreed to do the replacement. I want to send it in anyway, just to be sure it is not this card. The last things I tried for a fix were unlinking the memory and CPU on the FSB, and using the newest beta drivers on nvidia's site (released October 9th I believe).

  As for good news, I have a new sound card in the computer that is actually working nicely with Vista home premium X64 (amazing, huh?) It was a pain to get the drivers installed properly, and ended up reformatting since I would have had to fix the registry.. and being as that I installed 64 bit three days prior, I had no data to back up... and some free time anyway. Anyway, the card is an X-fi creative fata1ty sound card. I decided that if I was going to get a sound card, might as well make it an investment so I don't need to get a new one any time soon.

  Sorry I havent posted a picture of my computer, I did clean it up nicely... but my camera phone requires a USB cable with an odd connection, and I lost that somewhere in the move to my new dorm room. I should find it eventually, and if not, I can bluetooth it over to my macbook pro, then send it over to the PC. Thanks for the comments on the last blog, I would love to keep one current if anyone actually found it interesting. Well, I have some studies to take care of, later guys = )

  • Posted Oct 22, 2007 10:37 pm PT
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