Posts Tagged ‘geek’
The WOPR
I got my RMA’d chip back from NewEgg yesterday.
Since that time, I have overclocked that little bastid to 4.005Ghz, and seem to be Orthos and OCCT stable, with plenty of headroom left. The hope is to get it to about 4.2-4.5GHz and stop before i hit the vcore limits of the chip.
Once I get everything stabilized, I’ll post some performance pics and graphs.
That Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme is a beast. 
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Tags: cpu, e8400, geek, new pc, newegg, overclock
New PC Build – Day 2
Well, I got everything connected, installed a stripped down version of XP, and away we go…
I also posted more pics to the FLICKR set.
No project is without problems though. When I was doing all of the research on the components, I came across a few threads regarding faulty temp sensors on the E8400. Basically, the temp sensors get “stuck”. As a result, instead of showing the high 30-low 40c temps for the CPU core, I’m showing 59c. I’ve tried troubleshooting as much as I can…setting and resetting the heatsink, applying different thermal paste, swapping 120mm fans on the CPU and running stress test after stress test. All the results are the same: 59c on the core.
My hope is that the sensor is only stuck on idle temps, and that the proper triggers will flip when the temperature gets too high. My guess is that I may see some of this when I up the voltage a bit.
Speaking of fans…I bought the wrong one, and boy do I feel like an idiot. The Scythe 120mm I originally bought to sit on the sink has a max speed of 800rpm, and is only a 3 pin fan. The header on the P5K-E is 4-pin, so I can’t adjust the fan speed. Regardless, 800rpm ain’t gonna cut it on an overclock.
Maybe Bearclaws can help me out a bit tonight.
All that aside, I can already feel the potential of the machine.
Tags: cpu, geek, intel, pc, scythe
New PC Build – Day 1
I just couldn’t wait anymore. I had to start the build process today. Going into it, I know I won’t finish, but I HAD to start playing around. I dropped Mrs Nerd off at Logan Airport this morning so she could head to Korea for a week, so in the meantime, it is pure geek freedom.
The whole goal of this project is to build a machine that I can overclock. When I built my last PC in 2005, I used an AMD64 3400+ (2.2 Ghz) which didn’t allow me to overclock at all. I have to blame Ivan for reinstilling the build-jones in me, so here we are.
Let me back up a bit first, though. Here are the components of the machine. Newegg loves me.
LianLi Metal Boned K10 mid-tower case
ASUS P5K-E WIFI-AP Motherboard
Intel E8400 Wolfdale CPU
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme Heatsink
Corsair 620HX Power Supply
eVGA GeForce 8800 GT PCIe Video Card
Samsung DL DVD writer
Seagate 7200.10 250GB Hard Drive
G. Skill D9GMH 6400 DDR2 RAM – 2GB
Logitech G51 5.1 surround speakers
Tags: asus, corsair, evga, g.skill, geek, intel, lian, pc, thermalright
Back to Normal?
So now that the major renovations are over, it’s time to shift the focus of this site back to that for which it was intended (was that English?). I realize that no one wants to read another self-indulging home remodel blog, so back to geekery we go.
You may have noticed that the message board was reset. I noticed that I had left registration “off”, so it got flooded with thousands of spam posts which, while entertaining, do nothing for the content of the site. A couple of SQL commands later and blammo, a fresh start.
I have been struggling as of late with BSODs on my main PC. After extensive MiniDump analysis with the Windows Debugger, I’m almost kinda sure it’s my RAM. So I come to the crux of my problem. Do I replace the 1GB of DDR400 RAM on an AMD 3400+ machine, or rebuild a whole new machine with the Core 2 Duo E6600, 800Mhz RAM and speed things up a bit? Let’s put that decision aside for a moment, shall we?
If you know anything about my basement setup, you know I have hundreds of CDs, a ton of vinyl records, and tens of thousands of MP3s. Add to that the hours of DV footage and thousands of digital pictures, and I’m like the poster boy a storage company. Unfortunately, all of these 1’s and 0’s are spread across the 3 drives in my system, 2 external USB drives, and countless DVDs. With this storage problem in mind I have been looking at Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. The prices of drives have been steadily falling, making enterprise-capable storage available for the consumer. I am gravitating towards the 2 TB Buffalo Terastation with built-in FTP server, RAID5, and multiple USB ports (for external drives, printer sharing, etc). At a price point of about $1100, it winds up at about $.50/GB, which isn’t all that bad. And for the added security of RAID 5, I’m all bout it bout it.
So therein lies the problem. Backup ALL my stuff and continue to work on a failing machine, or upgrade the machine and struggle with storage? Can any human truly be capable of making such a decision?
If I get enough cash for the blood I’m selling, I’ll let you know how this story ends…
Tags: geek, renovation
Web Shmoes
I’m in Web hosting hell. The host that I have for Deepshine.tv, Gearhost, supposedly suffered a DDOS attack on one of the websites that they host, however, this brought down all of the sites that they host. Where is the redundancy? Where is the disaster recovery? My sites (and email) were down for almost 2 days as a result. I’ve had support nightmares with Gearhost before, so now it seems like the right time to move. I’ve never had the best feeling about this company, so this latest incident was just the kick in the ass I needed.
My other host, f0e.net, soon to be Angry Hosting, has been nothing but stellar. For $10/month I get 3G of space with 30G bandwidth, and a whole bunch of bells and whistles. The greatest part is that this guy (friend of a friend) built the entire service and since there aren’t THOUSANDS of customers yet, the support is awesome.
So that brings me to my next point. I want to switch my domains at Gearhost over to f0e, and I’m ok with the DNS stuff, but I wonder what is going to happen to the email that is on the Gearhost servers…I suppose I’ll lose whatever’s there. Not a big deal, but there are a few folks that have accounts that I’ll have to make sure have got what they need before I switch.
I was able to port the full SQL DB, so I got that going for me, which is nice…
As I comb through thousands of MP3 directories, burning bunches of them to DVD as a backup has become normal, however, it’s tough to list all of the contents on the cover of the DVD. Yeah I know I can make an autorun html file, but I want to be able to look at the DVD real quick and know what’s on it without having to load the disc. So I made a little batch file and modified the registry according to this guy’s directions and everything works great! I like the addition of the /b switch, and making the verbose/non-verbose options…see the bottom of the page for that stuff. Now I can easily print off the contents of the DVD without copy/pasting my life away…
Who’dathought Windows would actually yield something productive?
Tags: geek, web hosting