It was that time of the year again. It’s been 3 years since my last PC build, and now it’s time to upgrade. This time around, I’m not following my golden rule of using parts half the price for double the capacity1. When I waited this long, the technology improved so much, no matter what I choose, it’ll be a major step up.
I began with the basic necessities first: the ThermalTake tower case and Antec Power Supply. I liked the ATX case with plenty of room for the motherboard and hard drive cages. The power supply is a good (orange) looking 750W with extra 6-pin plugs for Crossfire capable video cards.
Next, oddly enough, when I began the research about 5 months ago, I thought it was a good idea to buy the Kingston HyperX RAM because there was a rebate promotion at Newegg. Then RAM prices dropped dramatically, by almost half! For sure, a painful lesson learned here. [Updated: Photo]
In the last 2 weeks, the shopping went into high gear, with the indication there were more online sale after Black Friday/Cyber Monday. It was the time to start buying the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 motherboard.
In order to test the motherboard, I had to make a quick decision to buy the CPU. During my research, I was originally going with lower end AMD Phenom II X6. But I read an awful lot of negative reviews on the AMD. There are many glowing reviews on the Intel i7 2600-K. I decided I needed to spend the money on a much better chip. The CPU is the brain of the operation, so it needed to be the best one. The Intel happens to be good at overclocking without requiring much power and producing heat. Additionally, I also got the Cooler Master 212+ CPU cooler, with a large heat sink and fan, to cool it off.
Next, I had to get the video card. This was an interesting decision that I had to make. The choices were high-end Radeon 69XX series, the recently discounted Radeon 68XX series, or go with new territory of Nvidia GTX series. I also had to decide on getting a card with 1G or 2G RAM. Since my 23″ monitor only has 1920×1200 resolution, I thought the 1G RAM version is sufficient. Anyway, I decided to get the discounted ASUS EAH6850. My strategy here is to get another one so I can link them in a Crossfire configuration, at a later day when prices have gone down. I need to watch the prices regularly because if the supply is gone, availability will be scarce and prices won’t come down. It’s a lesson I learned from the last build with Radeon 4850.
Finally, I couldn’t resist the temptation to try out the latest craze: Solid State Drives. It promises faster boot up time and operation. Reviews only said to stay away from first generation SSDs, so I ended up buying the more recent OCZ Vertex 3 90GB drive. I knew it’s going to be a big improvement over hard drives. Also, in the future, I may be able to use this as a cache for RAID hard drives2.
Part of this exercise is to discover the advantages UEFI “BIOS”. Microsoft touted Windows 8 to take advantage of UEFI to secure the boot process. It can also (possibly) speed up power-on bootup, as shown in their video. Right now, I haven’t explored this possibility since there’s no Windows 8 public beta, at least not until February 2012.
The ASUS’s UEFI is quite beautiful.
I always overclock my CPUs. With the new motherboards and CPUs, this has become an easy exercise. I overclocked the i7 2600K from 3.4 GHz to 4.6, with relative ease. This P8Z68 motherboard made it painless: just change the multiplier and set everything else on Auto. It’s so easy, my Grandma can do it. 
Of course, with overclocking, I’ll need a good cooling system. Putting in the massive CPU cooler was not the only thing I needed for my overclocking adventures. I had to make sure the case has good air flow. So I made sure there are three 120mm fans blowing in from the front. I also sealed any holes on the sides and the top of the case. Now, when the computer is on, it’s pretty noisy – even when I close the cabinet door, where I stored the PC. I’ll need to tweak the chassis fan speeds to make it more quiet. It’s going to be a balancing act between better cooling and lower decibels.
But for now, I can get the CPU cores to operate around 70°C under full load3 at 4.6 GHz. Later, I’ll go search for that holy grail of 5.0 GHz.
Here was my shopping list. The only thing left to do is putting in another Radeon HD68XX based card for CrossFireX configuration. I can definitely wait for the price to go down a little more. Otherwise, I’m pretty much done with this setup.
There are plenty to be thankful for, every day of my life. To focus on Thanksgiving month, I’ve made an exercise to write down what I was thankful for in the past 24 days, leading up to turkey day. So here they are:
Day 1
Thankful for a cool sunny weather so I could take my daily walk in comfort. I do power walks almost every day for about 15 minutes. I should be doing 30 minutes, but 15 seems to be good enough for me. Even in that seemingly short time, I can work up a sweat, especially during warm days. So during cool days, I can return at the end without being drenched in sweat.
Day 2
Thankful of the OC fire fighters. Santa Ana winds were at it again and dry weather caused brush fires around here. I’m glad the fire fighters are always on alert and ready for it now.
Day 3
Thankful for co-operative co-workers. In a company where every one works together as a team, stress is not an issue. I was glad I could have at least one day of it at work.
Day 4
Thankful for the rain. I would hate to have more brush fires, so a good amount of rain was needed!
Day 5
Thankful for my Indonesian friends. I’m very much a Canadian/American, but I can’t forget my roots. Because of my wife, I now have many Indonesian friends!
Day 6
Thankful for reliable transportation. In California, a car is the only reliable transportation and I have two working and safe ones.
Day 7
Thankful for free software. A lot of generous people out there. My PC, iPhone, and Android tablet have many useful ones like Google Maps, Google Earth, Kindle reader (with free books!), etc.! [Update: Coincidently, Lifehacker has an article on 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For.]
Day 8
Thankful for a hot shower. November is cold season – both temperature and the health-issue kind. A nice hot shower brought relieve!
Day 9
Thankful for 3G Data Connection. I love Pandora Radio. I listen to it every day during my commute. The 3G data on my iPhone made that possible.
Day 10
Thankful for my thankless job. I’m a sysadmin. I’m expected to work late and work often. I work behind the scenes, so I don’t get the glory. It’s a stressful job that gets little or no appreciation. But in this economy, I’m glad I have a job that I still love doing.
Day 11
Thankful for the men and women in the armed forces who are keeping this world free and secure. Veteran’s (or Remembrance) Day is by far the most important day in November. To our military personnel, thank you for your service!
Day 12
Thankful for my spiritual leaders: Pastor Rick Warren, John, and Elizabeth. These folks lead by example on how to be a good and faithful Christian. Excellent mentors!
Day 13
Thankful for God’s healing and friends’ prayers. My family’s been suffering the cold & coughs. With prayers, we’re healing and recovering nicely.
Day 14
Thankful for clean sheets. Nothing feels better than clean, bouncy, and soft bedding sheets. Feels like heaven!
Day 15
Thankful for cheap DVD-Rs. I’ve got a ton of kids and vacation videos. The cheap discs let me experiment with authoring techniques and archive my hard drives, on a regular basis – without hurting my wallet.
Day 16
Thankful for an uneventful day. Sometimes, things just work out without a glitch. Everyone’s happy as they can be. I always count these blessings!
Day 17
Thankful they FINALLY opened an extra lane for turning right on Northbound Imperial Highway, making my commute home much easier. This used to be one lane and always always cause a backup all the way past the Highway 91 overpass. For years, I drove this road and got stuck for 10 minutes. Now, turning right on La Palma is fast, resulting in less congestion. It’s ABOUT TIME!
Day 18
Thankful for coupons. I always appreciate free or deeply discounted stuff. Especially stuff that I need, like food, or a new computer!
Day 19
Thankful for all of the warm birthday greetings from family and friends. Everyone left a message via Facebook, email, phone calls, and in-person. I’m touched everyone remembers. These are the people that matter in my life!
Day 20
Thankful I’m sharing the joys of Christmas together with my family. We’ve put up the Christmas tree and decorated it. My 6-year old was so excited about it. Got the Christmas music going in the background. It’s too bad it wasn’t snowing – but at least it was raining. The tree turned out beautiful!
Day 21
Thankful for free shipping. I just love Internet stores with free shipping. They make everything so affordable – and convenient. Now if they could all get rid of the State taxes…
Day 22
Thankful I got my Ultrabook! I got my Toshiba ultra-thin and light notebook computer and enjoy being super-productive with it. Not to mention it’s kinder on my back since it’s so much lighter than my other 5-pounder Notebooks!
Day 23
Thankful I could beat the holiday traffic. The commute to work was easy, but the traffic after 4:30PM was brutal! Good thing I got out early from work at 3PM, so I managed to miss the pile up.
Day 24
Thankful for my wife and child – for being there when I need them! My family is wonderful!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Photo Credit: LeAnneEverydayCelebrationsTags: thankful, thanksgiving
Just got the latest Ultrabook offering from Toshiba, the Portégé Z835. It’s the light weight, very slim, full functioning, and affordable Notebook PC. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. I need it mainly for portability because I need to have a PC ready while traveling. The specs are quite impressive for it’s size. It boots in 30 seconds. I got the machine up and running in no time. The new battery lasts about 7 hours in “Eco Mode”.
So far my biggest gripe is the fan noise. It’s the only moving part in the box that I’m unable to turn it off since the laptop runs cool most of the time. I have other minor ones like the sticky feel of the keyboard and the lack of choice in chassis color.
All in all, it’s a solid performer. I’ve owned many laptops before1, and I can say, with all honesty, I’m impressed with the Z835.
- Since 1993 [↩]
It’s Nov 11 2011 at 11:11pm.1
To me, today is just another day. I have a slight cold and feeling tired.
Today is Veteran’s day, though. That’s more important!
- Well technically 23:11, but who’s counting? [↩]
Tags: Ordinary
A lot happened this month. Two of the most influential people in the world have died: Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie. Everyone knew of Steve Jobs from his days with Apple Inc. The computing world knew Dennis Ritchie from the C programming language.
Both have a memorable impact in my life.
In Junior High, I was hooked by Apple when they made computers with “Hi-Res” graphics that looked spectacular (at the time). I asked my Dad to buy me an Apple //e. I sunk a lot of time playing with it – learning everything from doing school work, tinkering with computer graphics, and word processing1. I remembered visiting downtown Toronto and hung out at the computer stores along Queen St. I remembered forming a Toronto Apple User Group with a bunch of friends I knew online via BBS, to talk about the latest hardware hacking and software recommendation.
Fast forward to 1990. In University, I was doing a computer science major. They introduced a C Programming class.2 I always wanted to learn a programming other than Fortran and BASIC, so I dove right in. The text book I used was Kernighan and Ritchie’s C Programming Language. I remembered it well, a clean white book with lots of text. If you ask me now what was in it, I couldn’t recall, because of a couple of reasons. One, it was over 20 years ago since I last read it. Two, the book was written like a documentation. I like learning by example, and this book had very few of it. I’m terrible at theories, so I tend to forget most of it. Nevertheless, the learning experience was a good foundation. I recalled spending hours in the computer lab doing an assignment on re-inventing a parser by making a version of Karel interpreted programming language. Also, learning C made me comfortable in doing hacks for Netrek servers in campus.
So the products both Jobs and Ritchie produced made quite an impression on me. As a geek growing up in front of computers, I can definitely appreciate their contributions. Their products were a part of my life – from my humble beginnings to my professional life.
RIP, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Ritchie.
- With a package called “Gutenberg“ [↩]
- It was a popular language at the time, until C++ and Object Oriented programming takes over. [↩]
Tags: apple, Computers, programming
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