The Beast
A little blog about my gaming machine..
Thursday 29 November 2007, 8:35 PM
How the.....?
Every piece of my PC has been installed by me. Every screw & every cable.
I have learned as I've gone - I have made more than a few mistakes along the way. I have had some extraordinary luck too, but I have learned from that, also.
I'm not a rich guy, but my PC would cost over £2000 to replace. I have never spent more than £400 in one hit. I research my parts very carefully, buying only components that are compatible, upgradeable &, to a certain extent, future-proof. Once I've found the part I need, I also research prices very carefully, remembering to factor in VAT and P&P.
I am a saver. I prefer to have the cash already in hand to buy PC components. I hate to think of paying interest on anything, especially if it depreciates as soon as it's out of the box.
Once I've bought & tested a component, I sell the older one it replaced. eBay is the obvious place, but I also sell in my local paper.
Through my experiences with upgrades, I have learned to build PCs. I often keep some parts, occasionally compiling a whole PC from older parts. Selling these in the local newspaper generates not only interest in the PC, but repairs to other machines, which I find I can do for less cost than the bigger companies.
Ebuyer, Novatech, Specialtech, eBay, Eclipse Computers, Micro-Direct, Dabs & Komplett are all companies I've bought from in the past. They all have their pros & cons. Novatech are, in my experience, the easiest to buy from, with free, next-day delivery. Unfortunately, their prices aren't always the lowest.
Ebuyer are often the cheapest & offer free delivery on all orders over £50.00. The free delivery is only offered as within 5 working days, but orders can arrive within 2 - 5 days, whichever is convenient to them. Not particularly helpful if you wanted to wait in on a particular day.
From experience, if you upgrade the RAM & processor & maybe the graphics card, you'll sail along nicely for a while. If you're like me, however, you'll find that certain games/programs will benefit from a further improvement in hardware, the motherboard.
I'll talk about what I know, AMD. Intel are the obvious & main competition for AMD, but I have found better value in AMD products, thus far.
All motherboards have their limitations. Socket A (aka socket 462) motherboards, for instance, were limited to 400mhz Front Side Bus, without overclocking. The fastest processor I know of, that runs on a socket A mobo, is the 2.2Ghz AMD 3200+. The socket A was limited to 32-bit processing. Also, its graphics were limited to AGP 8x, whereas the PCI-Express graphics we have now are capable of 16x & even 4x16x, with nVidia SLI.
The newer socket 754 & socket 939 motherboards' architecture allowed for 64-bit processing. Simply speaking, the pipelines between the components & chipset on 64-bit motherbards allow higher bandwidth - more data can move at once. Soon after these improvements, dual core processors & dual channel RAM were released on to the market. Expensive upgrades, but worth it.
As you can see, the motherboard will be the most expensive upgrade, even though a decent one can be bought for less than £100. The new processor socket is unlikely to be compatible with your older processor, the RAM slots incompatible with your older RAM. You will, therefore, need to buy a new processor & RAM to fit &, maybe even graphics card, too.
There are hundreds of bundles; barebones (usually case, motherboard, processor & RAM) & motherboard (usually motherboard, processor & RAM) available, especially on eBay. If they're within your budget & match your needs, fine. Honestly, I've never seen a bundle worth buying. You get what you pay for. There will, in my experience, always be a saving in components, to match the saving in cost. Most often you'll find a cheap motherboard &/or RAM in the bundle. These are 2 of the most important components in your rig.
I prefer good makes, from specialist manufacturers, for my machine. Most nerds like me will know, among others, Corsair, Crucial, Kingston & OCZ as RAM specialists; Asus & Gigabyte as top motherboard manufacturers.
I've had a lot of use out of cheaper power supplies, but I think they're the most overlooked component in the box. I currently use a Thermaltake 750W PSU.
My tip for saving..
Set yourself a specific percentage of your take-home pay. You can set it before outgoings, or after. Put it in a separate bank account. This is what I do. I never take more, or less. It's my computer fund.
I use a credit card, but pay it off before the due date, every month. In the meantime, my savings are generating small, but positive amounts of interest.
Tuesday 27 November 2007, 9:03 PM
If It Ain't Broke.....
.....tweak it!
There's never a reason to overclock, if everything already works as fast or as well as you need. On the other hand, there's no such thing as too fast. Not in computing, anyway ;)
There are lots of ways to overclock, but I have found, (using a BIOS that allows it) increasing voltage on both processor & RAM, with an increase of clock speed applied to the processor, gives good results. Today, I did just that. I upped the cpu voltage from 1.4v to 1.5v, the RAM by +0.2v & increased the cpu clock speed from 200 to 210. This raised the processor's speed from 3.2Ghz to 3.36Ghz. My new benchmark best is, as of today, 43,455.
If you're new to overclocking, I strongly suggest only small increments, as hardware can be damaged if you apply too much. Also, use components specifically designed for overclocking. One company who makes these, is OCZ.
Benchmarking is not the only test for overclocking, but provides a tangible score for comparisons.
By far, the best test of overclocking is using your PC as you normally would. If there is a noticeable, positive difference in performance &, after a lengthy period of time (24-72 hours) it is still stable*, then it has worked.
* Stability means no blue screens, or difficulty booting up.
Check to see that your system is still being cooled efficiently by: 1. Put your hand near your power supply, at the back of your case & feel the air blowing out. (It should be warm, but not hot.) or 2. Monitor temperature levels in BIOS/CMOS (if you don't already have a desktop program for that).
Another sign of instability can be programs failing to load as expected, or images appearing fractured/pixelated.
Overclocking is dangerous, particularly if you're new to it, but can be rewarding if you've reached the very limit of upgrades that you can afford, or are available.
Sunday 25 November 2007, 8:09 PM
Specs....
Hardware, internal:
CPU: AMD64 6400+ dual 3.2Ghz 2x1mb cache,
cooled by OCZ Vindicator heatsink, with 120mm fan
Memory: OCZ DDRII Platinum 800Mhz Dual-channel 4Gb
Motherboard: Gigabyte M57SLI-S4
HDDs: Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm 16mb 150Gb, SATA (0)
Seagate Barracuda 7,200 32mb 500Gb, SATA (1)
Maxtor 16mb 250Gb, SATA (2)
Western Digital Caviar 8mb 160Gb, IDE (External)*
Graphics: eGeForce 8800GTS 640mb, PCI Express
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1, PCI
TV Capture: Hauppauge DVB-T Nova Digital, PCI
USB/Firewire: Generic USB/Firewire slots, plugged to motherboard ports
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 750w
Case: Akasa Eclipse62, black, with window
Cooling: 1 Front intake 120mm fan, blue
1 Rear exhaust 120mm fan, multicolour
Optical Drives: Samsung Writemaster 20x DVD-RW, SATA
HP dvd840 Lightscribe 18x DVD-RW, IDE
Hardware, external:
Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming keyboard
Mouse: Logitech G7 Gaming Laser mouse
Monitor: Toshiba Regza 32" HDTV
Speakers: Altec Lansing 5.1 surround speakers
Headphones: Sennheiser HDR130 cordless rechargeable surround headphones
HDD: Generic external HDD enclosure, currently housing (see *, above)
Sunday 25 November 2007, 8:02 PM
Benchmarking.
I discovered benchmarking, which became the search for the holy grail of faster frame rates. I perform a benchmark before & after every hardware upgrade & after every defragmentation. I started off with Futuremark's 3DMark2001SE, from http://www.madonion.com. The first test I ever did scored a measly 2,713 points, just over 5 years ago (10/11/02). This score reflects the upgrade of graphics card to a GeForce4 MX 420.
To illustrate the vast difference, between then & now, I recently scored 42,820, on 07/09/07.
These scores mean absolutely nothing however, unless the machine does what you want it to. I love playing high-end games like (currently) Crysis, Need For Speed: Pro Street, Two Worlds, Tiger Woods '08, Race '07, etc. I've found that lower end games, like the loveable Links 2003 or Shot-Online golf games, still benefit greatly from high end hardware.
Sunday 25 November 2007, 8:01 PM
What do points make?
During infrequent sleep to recharge my gaming batteries, my wife would use the PC. Among her favourite pastimes was entering competitions & completing paid surveys, which she had heard about in a chat room she frequented. Occasionally, we would receive small gifts or cheques from survey groups. Sometimes, we received prizes. We have spent the odd free nights in hotels & once, a brand new 17" CRT monitor arrived at the door. I successfully traded that for 512mb of Kingston RAM, at a local PC shop.
I participated in an online golf game - Shot-Online (an MMORPG golf sim), in 2006. Through qualification, in-game, I won an invitation to the European finals, held at Leipzig, Germany, in August 2006. I finished in second place there, & was then flown, all expenses paid, to Suwon, Korea, the following month. I would love to tell you I won the grand prize of US$5,000 but, unfortunately, I was knocked out in the first round, by the eventual winner, a young guy from Japan.
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