My new toy...
I pensioned off the P4/3.0 and dragged my system into the 90's
Monday, June 8, 2009 by Jafo | Discussion: Personal Computing
The old box served well for over half a decade ..... but eventually life was passing me by.... particularly during the FULL boot time being around 10 minutes....
It was [in its day] a fairly decent machine...P4/3.0 in an ASUS P4P800e Deluxe mobo with 2 gig [4x500] ram and eventually about the 'fastest' AGP card still around....a HD3850 with 512 GDDR3...all in an old Lian Li P60, powered by a TruePower 550 Watt PSU.
Then I got hacked....ending up as a mule server for email spam [I think] ... along with my having a Win 7 RC to experiment with prompted me to 'do it' sooner, rather than later.
So, off I went to my fave Comp shop armed with a list...
...and a credit card.
Just a little time later.... I had a boot full of boxes and not much money left.
Thursday last it was....as I get it all home and eagerly started poking and prodding and lots of RTFM-ing.
Friday, and out came the drill and jigsaw to cut a hole into the MoBo tray of the Case ..... so the after-market cooler would fit.... bugger of a bloody big thing it was, too.
By Saturday arvo I was sitting at the dining table with fingers in my ears as I switched it on...no OS, etc....no Keyboard or Mouse .... just to see if lights would come on....and there'd be NO smoke......
They did...and there wasn't.
Sunday...was OS time...so in went Win7 RC1 [32 bit].
Took 4/5ths of eff-all time to install and there it was in all its quasi-Vista 'splendour'.
About the only way to describe it all [other than black - as in the box] was/is "fucking fast".
I ain't got the MoBo drivers all in [Win7 compatibility]...and haven't rebooted yet since the Graphic Card driver install....
Can't even see it in real detail/scale as it's currently on a 17" CRT ....
...and I'm learning all about what won't always work as expected [like Sysmetrix]...but darn it's good...
The 'bits' I already have....to migrate across to the new machine ar the bits that plug in .... The DiNovo Edge KB ...the MS Explorer mouse ...the ASUS M221u LCD....scanners....printers....Logitech G15 wheel and pedals...etc.
What I got....
Lian Li PC-A6010 case [black]
Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w PSU
ASUS P6T-se X58 i7 MoBo
Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz LGA1366 CPU
OCZ 6G-Triple [3x2G] PC12800 Gold Ram
CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler [that bloodey big thing]
Vantec EZ2 Sata hot-swap racks x2
1TB Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for backup/data]
250G Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for OS]
ACR-105 Multi card reader
LG Sata DVD-RW x2
XFX 1G GTX285 Black Edition [vid]
When Win7 is finally released I'll opt for the 64bit ver...and possibly double the ram....
Funniest thing is....I thought sysmetrix wasn't working....looking at CPU load and ram usage.....till I looked closer....
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Reply #122 Monday, July 20, 2009 11:37 PM
I found a benchmarking Demo...of Resident Evil 5 .....seems like my machine handles it OK....
Reply #123 Monday, July 20, 2009 11:38 PM
Forgot to close other stuff in the background, though....[was running 'MyDefrag 4.0' at the same time....
Reply #125 Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:14 AM
off topic
jafo, i think you love winky smiley faces
and is that signature of sorts? i just noticed all your posts seem to have one if not more( i never saw a large amount of them til about now)
Reply #126 Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:20 AM
Yes, probably.
They 'help' convey a friendly atmosphere.
Often comments without them are seen by others as authoritarian and argumentative, if not down-right hostile...
Affectation, maybe...but if you see a particular comment from me without one.....chances are I'm somewhere between frustrated and annoyed with someone...
Reply #127 Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:29 AM
...maybe someday I'll be able to give you a Winki......
.....I'm not overly optimistic.
Reply #129 Tuesday, July 21, 2009 8:09 AM
I reran the RE 5 Benchmark demo....whilst monitoring GPU temps as it played.
Managed a max of 83c [on 40% fan] which wasn't too bad at all...
It's a pretty darn graphic-intensive game....
Reply #130 Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:51 AM
My old machine...2 generations ago [in between was the P4 / 3gig with 2gig ram and an ATI 3850 AGP in the Lian Li PC60 case].
This is a Slot one, P3/500 with 192 meg ...using an old PSU from an Ipex desktop case.
I'm thinking of doing something 'artistic' with it...leaving it naked but functioning.
The only bit really not 'original' is the HD....it's not the original 1.2 Gig.
To the right is my wife's old machine...[was the Ipex]...a 1.6gig P4 ... now a test-bed for all the Screensavers I mod. [saves screwing up my i7]...
Reply #132 Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:24 PM
I'd think twice before trying to type on that KeyBoard unless you'd want shock therapy to your left elbow -- loose wires can fry pine slabs even if varnished, not that putting a vinyl album on that turntable wouldn't mean a few acrobatic moves either. 
Towers are better left sealed, once 120'ed.
Thunder even blew up a Beta VCR through 60ohms cabling.
Spike suppressors can save a gear -- if you're lucky.
Grey foam pads underneath a mobo don't prevent body static though.
Reply #133 Saturday, July 25, 2009 3:42 AM
Jafo... have you setup the new system to dual boot or triple boot between different operating systems?? I always recommend at least a dual booting environment for several reasons.
If YES to the above question... what have been the differences when running benchmark tests??
Reply #134 Saturday, July 25, 2009 11:11 AM
I just recently installed the 64 bit ver of Win 7 ....but on a separate phys HD....each OS is in a separate hot-swap caddy...so only one is negaged at any one time....and only the 32 bit win7 has all the kit loaded for benchmarking, etc...
Reply #135 Saturday, July 25, 2009 11:30 AM
"negaged"? i'll have to look that up.
he's going to hurt me in september, i'm sure.
Reply #137 Saturday, July 25, 2009 12:32 PM
Best way to do it.. if the HD dies with more than one OS on it you lose everything... on separate drives you're unlikely to lose both OSes. I've been dual and/or triple booting for years now and have always installed my OSes on separeate physical drives... makes it easier to get into the PC if/when there's a crash, etc.
Reply #138 Sunday, July 26, 2009 2:13 AM
If YES to the above question... what have been the differences when running benchmark tests??
I just recently installed the 64 bit ver of Win 7 ....but on a separate phys HD....each OS is in a separate hot-swap caddy...so only one is negaged at any one time....and only the 32 bit win7 has all the kit loaded for benchmarking, etc...
Kool I'd be interested to see the benchmark results of your different operating systems.
Reply #139 Sunday, August 16, 2009 10:02 PM
Well....things have moved on...spent a bit more dosh....
I'm now running the RTM TechNet release of Windows 7 [64 bit] ....and things are looking spiffy....it's on a nice new [little] OCZ Summit 60 gig SDD [took a bit of mounting into one of the Vantec caddies].
Windows experience score was 5.9 ....thanks to the old 250 gig SATA 7200 Seagate....
Now it's 7.3 .... STILL limited by the HD.....though to be fair, all the other numbers are 7.4 or 5 so it's not that bad...
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Reply #121 Monday, July 20, 2009 8:48 AM
The surgery was a success, then.... and people sitting behind you at the MCG don't have a 2nd helmet to peer around/over.
Just as well... I hear those ping-pong crowds aren't as understanding about helmets blocking their view as the cricket mob.
Same here! I have crushed nerves in my cervical spine that make me perspire profusely, particularly in hot AND humid weather, and that can make me feel quite ill at times. Even in Winter I can saturate a T-shirt just mowing the lawn... but in Summer it's worse and I can become quite ill afterwards... probably will have to pay somebody to do it for me next Summer,